Get used to it. Iran is going nuclear. And our bumbling, credibility-challenged administration is impotent to stop it, thanks mainly to their screw-up in Iraq.

Iraq II or a Nuclear Iran?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: April 19, 2006

If these are our only choices, which would you rather have: a nuclear-armed Iran or an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites that is carried out and sold to the world by the Bush national security team, with Don Rumsfeld at the Pentagon’s helm?

I’d rather live with a nuclear Iran.

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MoDo is in fine form today. I like her when she’s indignant and angry (as opposed to catty and cutesy).

The Decider Sticks With the Derider
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 19, 2006

At first Rummy was reluctant to talk about the agonizing generals’ belated objections to the irrational and bullying decisions that led to carnage in Iraq. The rebellious retired brass complain that the defense chief was contemptuous of advice from his military officers and sabotaged the Iraq mission with willful misjudgments before and after the invasion.

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Not that there was ever any doubt, but the fire-breathing Ms. Maglalang once again proves that she’s purely bad news, a reckless bullying demagogue who has abandoned even the pretense of human decency. And I mean it. She represents the worst of the worst of the right-wing Wurlitzer. Let’s take a look at her latest crusade:

Right now, the dark-haired, lashy, Ann Coulter understudy is happily wrapped in one of her typical controversies: a crew of students at UC Santa Cruz, my alma mater, protested some military recruiters, and Malkin got hold of a press release with their personal contact information — a poorly conceived inclusion on the students’ part, but then, these are undergraduates, not trained media flacks. Rather than calling and speaking to them herself, which is what members of the press are supposed to use such releases for, Malkin published their personal information on her website, prompting her hordes of orcish mouth-breathers to brandish their pitchforks and inundate the unsuspecting students with death threats (some of which you can read here). When the students frantically called Malkin, asking that she remove their numbers, she posted their contact information again.

The invaluable John Amato, who’s got some video from the scene, gets it right. Malkin, he writes, “crosse[d] the line of decency..the death threats are emanating from her blog and she knows it. Malkin understands the nature of the fear and outrage she causes. Will she take responsibility when somebody gets hurt?”

….A skilled and experienced rhetorical warrior, she saw the pale, white flesh of their throats and lunged. The vicious always seek out the weak. Rather than forgive their poorly-written, too-revealing press release, she published their oversight, opening them to danger and harm….

Malkin has created an identity of outrage, she trades in hate because she proved unable to achieve recognition for anything more elevated. It’s a sorry fate for a pundit who, once upon a time, must have been an idealistic college student herself; learning, experimenting, seeking out an identity of her own. I wonder if her younger, better self ever once entertained the notion that she’d soon be a peddler of anger, successful in nothing but demagoguery and appeals to the reptilian brain? I wonder if she saw it foreshadowed in her own darker moments, if she feared it? Malkin may have hurt some idealistic young college students at Santa Cruz, and I loathe her for it. But I pity her, too, because somewhere along the way, she murdered her own.

Say what you will about the big leftie sites like Daily Kos and Americablog and Eschaton – yes, they can be quick on the draw at times, and too outspoken; but they never, ever descend to the type of badness that typifies Malkin’s daily rantings. There is simply no comparison on the lefty side of the blogosphere (and no, I don’t mean the commenters; you can always find deranged commenters on both sides, whether you’re looking at Democratic Underground or Front Page). I have more to say about Maglalang’s inherent badness, lots more. Stay tuned.

Update: Oh, and just in case you forgot what she looks like:

The NY Times savages China in an editorial that throws retraint to the wind.

For 19 months now, China has held Mr. Zhao, a researcher for The New York Times, in prison. For most of that time, Chinese authorities didn’t even bother to come up with charges; they simply held him in purgatory after yanking him from a restaurant in September 2004. Finally, last December, on the last working day on which prosecutors could decide whether to proceed, Mr. Zhao was formally charged with revealing state secrets to The Times.

The accusation of providing state secrets to foreigners is the vague catchall that party leaders invoke after reports surface of some business they want to keep quiet. In this case, a Times article forecast the retirement of China’s leader, Jiang Zemin, from his last official post. Authorities also tacked on a bizarre fraud charge from 2001, unconnected to Mr. Zhao’s work at The Times. Investigators claim he took money for offering to write a story for a Chinese newspaper, an allegation denied by Mr. Zhao’s lawyer and disputed by a witness.

The twists and turns continued. One month ago, Chinese authorities, who have repeatedly refused to clarify the status of the case or even take phone calls from the defense team, unexpectedly dropped the state secrets case against Mr. Zhao, prompting speculation that Mr. Zhao might be released.

But no. Jim Yardley of The Times reports that the Chinese authorities have started another investigation period, which could lead to reinstating the charges against him by early May.

There isn’t even a pretense here of justice and due process. Mr. Zhao, 44, is a seasoned journalist who was well known for covering rural issues before he joined the Times bureau in April 2004. He has denied that he gave the story of Mr. Jiang’s departure to his colleagues, and Times editors have repeatedly assured the Chinese authorities that Mr. Zhao was not a source for the article.

Mr. Zhao’s continued imprisonment demonstrates just how far China still has to travel before it can pretend to call itself a just society.

Zhao Yan, like Hao Wu, is just one of countless others caught up in the Kafkaesque web we call the Chinese legal system, a misnomer in every way. It’s easy to forget about them, to dismiss them as sad but inevitable collateral damage from China’s rapid growth. But it’s important we remember these are people, and the detention of just one of them setsin motion a series of concentric circles, a daisy chain of grief, pain and despair for all those whose lives the unforturnate victims touched.

Hao Wu’s sister, blogging about her helplessness in the face of her brother’s disappearance into the black hole of Chinese justice, reminds us of how human a problem this is, how there are real people, real lives at stake.

Mom also called brother’s apartment this morning. Fortunately, brother’s friend picked up and consoled her by promising to leave Haozi a note to get him to call home as soon as possible. Brother’s birthday is April 18th – looks like it’s getting almost impossible now to hide the truth. I sent another text message to the number of that still shut-off cellphone, asking them to at least let brother call home and concoct some excuse to reassure his parents, seeing as how the old couple aren’t in the best of health. I don’t know if they aren’t paying any attention still. I can only let hubby plan for the worst.

I gaze out the window at the willow catkins flying around, my feelings in an equal riot. Who has made our lives into such a bundle of mess? Have I let all the relatives and friends surrounding me feel pressured? The situation being what it is, I can only blame myself for being useless.

I am still pondering: if I were imprisoned inside, what would my brother be like outside? I trust that he too, would be doing all he possibly could. After all, through our veins flows the same blood – inseparable is the love of kin.

Right now, I feel so helpless. I truly don’t know what I can still do?

How do we tell her that thanks to China’s insidious, faceless bureaucracy, there is next to nothing she can do?

Pandas last week, tour groups this week. However, it remains to be seen if and when the hordes of Chinese tourists will start arriving here.

China issued new rules allowing mainland tourists to visit Taiwan, continuing Beijing’s efforts to court the disputed island with economic overtures, but it was unclear when any Chinese tourism to the island would start.

The new rules reported in state media on Monday allow authorised mainland travel agencies to organise group tours to Taiwan. Taiwan travel services must also win approval from Chinese agencies to host mainland tourists.

The Chinese tourist agencies “must require host (Taiwan) agencies do not lead or organise tourists to take part in any activities involving gambling, licentiousness or drugs,” the rules said.

Both China and Taiwan place tight restrictions on mainland visits to the island. The trickle of mainlanders now able to travel there is tiny compared to the 4.1 million trips to the mainland last year by Taiwan people, many of them investors.

The tourism rules continued Beijing’s campaign of seeking to win over Taiwanese opinion by holding out possible investment and trade rewards. They were issued by the Chinese government on Sunday, a day after China announced possible aviation, agriculture and finance concessions to Taiwan at an economic forum in Beijing attended by Chinese Communist officials and Taiwanese opposition politicians.

As with anything having to do with China (like which pinyin to use) the tourism topic has been reduced to endless bickering between Chen and the Mainland. As always, everything comes down to political posturing on both sides, and the only ones who always, inevitably, totally come out the losers are the people, be they the Taiwanese or the Mainlanders.

(This is a sore topic with me. I’m travelling to China in a few weeks and am not happy about my ticket fare – it would be cheaper for me to fly round-trip to Los Angeles! On a direct flight, it would take about 80 minutes to travel from Taipei to Shanghai. Since you have to go through Hong Kong, however, the ticket price and the amount of travel time soar exponentially. $1,000 for a round-trip flight that, in miles, is equivalent to the distance from Hong Kong to Taipei. As I said, the politicians get to “hold their ground” and “look tough,” while the people down on the ground have to bear the burden. To hell with both sides when it comes to this nonsense.)

(Update: I am moving this post up to the top because I think it’s important, and I insist that everyone comment on it. And be sure to read it to the end so you don”t miss the delicious reference to Taiwan as an “undented trophy.” Thanks for your cooperation.)

First, some background. This op-ed piece comes from one Lin Chong Pin, Taiwan’s former deputy defense minister and an oft-quoted foreign policy expert. I point to it as an example of how Hu is quietly using diplomacy to achieve his foreign policy goals.

On Feb. 27, President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan announced the “functional cessation” of the Unification Council, an office that had become largely symbolic. The move, however, could also have been interpreted as creeping step toward independence.

Beijing’s response was notable in its restraint. Admiral William J. Fallon, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, said on March 7 that the Chinese army showed no unusual movements. On the same day, Lu Zhangong, the Communist party secretary of China’s Fujian province, adjacent to Taiwan, said that scrapping the Council would not affect economic cooperation across the Strait.

But while Chinese officials appeared serene in public, they privately expressed concerns about Chen, as Roger Cliff and Toy Reid reported in an article, “Roiling the waters in the Taiwan Strait,” that appeared on this page on March 21.

Beijing apparently wanted to pressure Washington into reining in Taipei. The tactic appeared to work: The Bush administration issued anxious statements and even sent an envoy to Taipei demanding “clarification” after Chen first indicated his intention in late January to abolish the Council.

Since then, Beijing has mounted at least six more moves to win the hearts and minds of Taiwan’s people. That brought to at least 15 the number of such measures since Beijing passed the Anti-Secession Law in March 2005.

They include inviting Taiwanese farmers to sell fruit on Chinese markets, offering scholarships to Taiwanese students in China, providing loans to Taiwanese businessmen, relaxing regulations on Taiwanese professionals seeking work on the mainland and more.

I had the pleasure of hearing Lin speak a few weeks ago at an American Chamber of Commerce event here and left convinced that China is “winning” when it comes to Taiwan and myriad other foreign policy initiatives. He also talked about Hu’s reaching out to the Vatican and to Buddhists as further evidence of China seeking to soften its image in the eyes of a suspicious world. Reconciliation, peace and cooperation is China’s new world order. “Zhongnanhai reached a consensus on how it would deal with the US and other world powers,” Lin said. “The consensus was to make cooperation a priority.”

Even if you think the whole “outreach thing” is bogus and cynical, you have to look at Hu’s diplomacy with a sense of admiration. He knows what he wants for China and he knows how to get it – at least in terms of international relations. Lin went on about what Hu is achieving in Europe, Latin America and Africa and elsewhere, and it reminded me of how the US consolidated its power through brilliant diplomatic maneuvers after both the first and second world wars.

America’s power is in decline and China’s power is on the rise. Unfortunately, that’s not even debatable. That doesn’t mean they are anywhere close to equilibrium; America is still way, way, way higher than China – we’d have to fall a huge distance and China would have to soar to unimaginable (for now) heights before that happens. But the trend is in place, and this really is China’s century.

Just as the 20th Century was America’s, and just as we quietly built global partnerships to ensure our leading position, China, too, is now extending its tentacles into every corner of the globe and making deals designed to guarantee its steady ascension. And they are doing it very well. Americans for generations believed that the Monroe Doctrine guaranteed Latin America would always be under our influence. Sometimes, when that relationship appeared under threat, we didn’t hesitate to send in the troops. That’s changing fast, as more and more nations realize they have to hitch their star to China.

Hu’s string of policy victories in Latin America and Africa, not to mention his incredible success in winning the hearts and minds of his neighbors in Asia, like Singapore, Malaysia and even – who would have ever thought it?- India, is nothing short of miraculous. The same with the European Union; they see China and there are stars in their eyes (or dollar signs) – and Hu has increased China’s influence on the EU more than most of us imagine, according to Lin. “Hu has elevated the imporatance of the EU as a counterweight to the US,” Lin said. “Whenever there is a vacuum of US or European influence, China will fill it, as they are doing in Africa.”

So, back to the title of this post, Two Chinas. This stems from a question I asked Mr. Lin as he described in breathtaking detail the triumphs Hu quietly achieved in terms of foreign policy from 2003 to the present. So this is, in a nutshell, my question to Lin:

Mr. Lin, you are describing foreign policy performed at the very highest levels of sophistication. The way you are describing Hu, one would have to think of him as an uncannily adept, brilliant deal maker and a man of incredible power and persuasion. And yet, at the very moment of some of his most impressive successes in 2003 – at that very instant, China was making some of the greatest domestic blunders in the nation’s history, lying to its own people about SARS, losing their trust and dragging the country into a state of panic and confusion that resulted in the loss of billions of dollars and immeasurable losses in terms of world public opinion. How do we reconcile this? How can we have Hu the super-diplomat in one corner, and in the other corner we have Hu the great bungler who was too stupid to follow the most fundamental rules of crisis control: don’t lie when it’s inevitable you’ll get caught? It’s almost as if you are talking about two Chinas, one that is skillful and incisive and ingenious, another that is hopelessly inept and amateurish and foolish.

The bottom line is this: Lin said this was exactly correct. There are two Chinas and they exist in separate universes. Now, this is not any great revelation. We’ve discussed it here many times, especially in regard to local officials who are free to act at whim with no fear of reprisal or justice, existing literally in a universe apart from The central Party. Lin said the great paradox here is that despite Hu’s awesome power, he is literally helpless to make any changes in China’s domestic situation, only in its foreign policy (which, granted, can then in turn affect China’s domestic situation).

So I’ve been thinking about this paradox all week. Should we admire Hu Jintao as the Bismarck or Metternich of his time, using political skill to achieve enviable results? Or should we laugh at him for being utterly impotent to effect any meaningful change in the country over which he allegedly rules? If he is so utterly incapable of halting corruption, of freeing the innocent, of enforcing the law, of imprisoning unabashed scoundrel and murderers, why does he even live in China? Couldn’t he set up a condo in Bermuda and run China’s foreign policy from there? What difference does it make? According to Lin, he’s literally irrelevant to China’s domestic situation.

What an odd paradox, a leader with so much power, and at the same time a leader with no power at all.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on China nor have I ever claimed to be. It’s simply a place that interests me and so I blog about it. Nothing that I say here is necessarily “true” (though none of it is intentionally false), and I’m more than willing to be proven wrong about everything, as I frequently am.

On a more mundane note, my home PC is still broken, so this’ll be the last post of the night. This diatribe was written at work, but after working hours (of course).

Update: Just to be clear, Lin believes China is utterly intent on winning Taiwan, no matter how pacifist it makes itself appear. “Hu’s idea is to seize Taiwan as a ravishingly beautiful and smiling bride and to hold her in China’s embrace,” he said. “He intends to win it as he would a shining trophy, which he will then place, undented, on a shelf.”

Feeling too happy? Need to raise your blood pressure and your anger level? Then take a look at this article, which proves that your actual dollar value as a person in China depends on where you are born.

He Qingzhi’s teenage daughter, Yuan, and her two friends lived on the same street near the Yangtze River, attended the same middle school and were crushed to death in the same traffic accident late last year. After that, the symmetry ended: under Chinese law, Yuan’s life was worth less than the others’.

Mr. He, 38, who has lived in this town in central China for 15 years, was told that his neighbors were entitled to roughly three times more compensation from the accident because they were registered urban residents while he was only a migrant worker.

“I was shocked,” said Mr. He, as he sorted through legal papers in his apartment recently while his wife sobbed in the next room. “The girls are about the same age. They all went to the same school. Why is our life so cheap?”

Outraged, Mr. He and his lawyer are considering a lawsuit, saying the decision was discriminatory and that the family was entitled to full compensation under the Chinese Constitution. The problem with that argument is the Chinese Constitution. More Chinese citizens like Mr. He are claiming legal rights and often citing the Constitution, but it is actually a flimsy tool for protecting individual rights.

The Chinese Constitution. Please. They might as well cite the writing on a candy wrapper.

I hate the hukou system. In every way, it is a stacked deck against the farmers, creating a huge Untouchable caste and giving every benefit to the urban-born. Read the whole article to see how blatantly unfair it is. There are some glimmers of hope that Mr. He may eventually get his compensation if he keeps fighting hard enough, but that doesn’t alter the fact that China’s caste system is depraved and unjust in every way.

I like this comment so much i wanted to feature it. In this thread, Jeffrey, who I think lives in beijing, writes about the PBS “Tank Man” web site and its rapid disappearance behind the Great Firewall.
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3 minutes ago (only 3 minutes ago. this time the CCP responded in a very quick way. they have blocked it as fast as flashing lighting) i can view the main page only. although no more pages can be accessed, i am still very great to see the tankman again.

Seeing that indistinct picture of tankman, i can touch his courage, his fearless determination against the tyranny and pursuit of full democracy and freedom. and, more, a little of nostagia in memorizing my childhood(funny? but it’s true).

I was still a very young child at that time when the tiananmen massacre was happening. in that period of time, i had been watching news through my black-white TV. I care for the events happening in Tiananmen square because almost most of my surrounding people care for it. the hunger strike, the emotional public address, the protest, the chaos.. all of them were making me interesting, and all caught my attention. I felt that was the real people power, even though i didn’t understand what means people power. i felt that was the turning point of our mothercountry, although i was so young to understand what was the turning point.

very sooner the crush came, the fire, the tank, the blood,the corpse, the cry,made me uncomfortable. i felt i was betrayed by someone, but could not figure out who is them. I felt misleading, but didn’t know why and how. the propaganda later had been reinforcing the patriotic education by declaring that the tiananmen sqare movement was misled and controlled by a small group of people having the hidden purpose, i believed in their lies. under such misleading, i dislike WanDan,Cai Lin, and many other movement leaders. but somehow i could not forget the tankman because of his courage.

I know i could not express my opinions on this tankman precisely, but in my eyes, he becomes a symbol of that history.
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Jeffrey, I think you’ve expressed your opinions beautifully. The tankman is indeed a symbol of that moment in history, and on a larger level, a symbol of how one ordinary, unknown man can make a mark on the world. Pico Iyer captures Tank Man’s significance in a description that now, 8 years after I first read it, still brings tears to my eyes.

Almost nobody knew his name. Nobody outside his immediate neighborhood had read his words or heard him speak. Nobody knows what happened to him even one hour after his moment in the world’s living rooms. But the man who stood before a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square – June 5, 1989 – may have impressed his image on the global memory more vividly, more intimately than even Sun Yat-sen did. Almost certainly he was seen in his moment of self-transcendence by more people than ever laid eyes on Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and James Joyce combined.

The meaning of his moment – it was no more than that – was instantly decipherable in any tongue, to any age: even the billions who cannot read and those who have never heard of Mao Zedong could follow what the “tank man” did. A small, unexceptional figure in slacks and white shirt, carrying what looks to be his shopping, posts himself before an approaching tank, with a line of 17 more tanks behind it. The tank swerves right; he, to block it, moves left. The tank swerves left; he moves right. Then this anonymous bystander clambers up onto the vehicle of war and says something to its driver, which comes down to us as: “Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you.” One lone Everyman standing up to machinery, to force, to all the massed weight of the People’s Republic – the largest nation in the world, comprising more than 1 billion people – while its all powerful leaders remain, as ever, in hiding somewhere within the bowels of the Great Hall of the People.

When it comes to analysing Tiananmen Square, it’s sometimes difficult determining who were the villains and the heroes. Things weren’t always as they seemed, and as you say, Jeffrey, some of the students displayed the same corrupt and power-grabbing tendencies against which they were supposedly protesting. But there is no question about the decency and the heroism of the anonymous Tank Man during his moment of truth, which is why, as long as modern civilization exists, Tank Man will stand out as a universal symbol of courage, and of man’s thirst for freedom.

The Tiananmen Square “incident” of 1989 is still, for most of us, alive and vivid thanks to the video cameras that documented nearly its every instant. Not so for the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of April 5, 1976, when 100,000 Chinese citizens congregated in the same spot to mourn the death of their beloved Zhou En Lai. There were riots and deaths and suppression, for the demonstrators had another purpose – to demand an end to the Gang of Four’s reign of terror. This article looks at the little-remembered first TS demonstrations, and in particular at how the CCP has blacked out references to it in its history books.

Were China a free country, the significance of April 5 would be known to every school child. China is not free, but even so one might imagine that the current government, which owes its existence in part to that protest, would choose to commemorate the anniversary in some careful and controlled way.

But of course it is impossible for this government to lend even the whiff of legitimacy to an organised protest against Party authority. So each year this anniversary is passed over in deathly silence, and the first Tiananmen incident – like all of Chinese history after 1965 – is never taught to Chinese schoolchildren at all. Many educated young Chinese do not even know that there was a protest in Tiananmen Square in 1976.

Midway through, the article shifts gears somewhat and focuses on how censorship and the ignorance that comes with it dampen the spirit of free inquiry essential for creativity and innovation among the Chinese: “China cannot possibly aspire to technological leadership. If China isn’t ready for open debates about politics and history, it isn’t ready for innovation either.”

I honestly don’t know. Germany’s inventors were damned innovative during Hitler’s 12-year reich (though he did himself no favors expelling the Jewish physicists who were to prove invaluable to the US). And China’s scientists continue to impress me with their innovations in medicine and physics. Can technological innovation occur in an environment hostile to free inquiry? Again, I don’t have an answer, but it sure is an interesting question.

That aside, I appreciated this article for reminding me of another moment in China’s history that its leaders would like to pretend never happened.

Bombshell: Bush and Cheney told us a lot of lies. Hand me a piece of paper – I gotta write that down. Snark aside, Krugman does us a service chronicling the worst of Bush-Cheney’s shameless whoppers. We now have no choice: we simply must assume that everything they say is false until proven otherwise.

Weapons of Math Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 14, 2006

Now it can be told: President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney based their re-election campaign on lies, damned lies and statistics.

The lies included Mr. Cheney’s assertion, more than three months after intelligence analysts determined that the famous Iraqi trailers weren’t bioweapons labs, that we were in possession of two “mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox.”

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