You will almost certainly enjoy this tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek article on the “first new recruit to the terracotta army in more than 2000 years.” Thanks to the commenter who pointed it out.

An oily little demagogue is sticking his thumb in Bush’s eye, using ammunition Bush provided himself.

Hostage to Iran Again?

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 20, 2006

It was galling to be lectured on ethics, truth, justice, virtue and respect for the rights of human beings by a Holocaust-denying, Iraq-meddling, American-hating pipsqueak. A guy who showed up to address the United Nations without even bothering to wear a tie, so casual in a disco-looking cream suit and open-necked pink shirt he looked like he was going to kick back later in Chelsea.

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Am I the only one who finds this story so sickening, so repellent and vile in every way that I want to see my president and his henchmen tried for crimes against humanity? I hope not.

Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.

The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States’ “extraordinary rendition” program, which has secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods.

The inquiry, which focused on the Canadian intelligence services, found that agents who were under pressure to find terrorists after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, falsely labeled an Ottawa computer consultant, Maher Arar, as a dangerous radical. They asked U.S. authorities to put him and his wife, a university economist, on the al-Qaeda “watchlist,” without justification, the report said.

Arar was also listed as “an Islamic extremist individual” who was in the Washington area on Sept. 11. The report concluded that he had no involvement in Islamic extremism and was on business in San Diego that day, said the head of the inquiry commission, Ontario Justice Dennis O’Connor.

Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan — where he never has been — and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.

Syria is always made out by Bush to be one of our pro-“Islamofascist” enemies – yet when they provide a service we require, torture on demand, it’s all love and kisses. On every level, this story should make us tremble with rage. This is what we have become – a nation that employs the tactics once celebrated by Juan Peron and other scum, where “enemies” vanish in the night to face torture or death. Think about how you would feel had this been your sister or your brother – or yourself. We are talking about a flesh and blood human being, an innocent IT consultant, put through hell on earth for nearly a year. If he’s not insane from the experience, I can bet you anything he harbors an undying and immeasurable rage against us all for the rest of his life. As will all those who know him. Thanks for that, Mr. President. Thanks for making me once again utterly ashamed to be an American.

Note that the Canadian agents were “under pressure” to find suspects after the 911 attacks. It reminds me of Stalin’s and Mao’s quota system, where local leaders were put under pressure to come up with lists of “class enemies.” That kind of pressure, of course, leads to hideous and tragic errors. America was supposed to be way better than that.

Hitch tears into the Pontiff’s recent thoughtless remarks on Islam, and finds him guilty of a multitude of sins, from hypocrisy to dogmatic closed-mindedness to old-fashioned stupidity. When he is in form, there is no one like Hitchens. Sample:

To read the bulk of the speech, however, is to realize that, if he had chanced to be born in Turkey or Syria instead of Germany, the bishop of Rome could have become a perfectly orthodox Muslim. He may well distrust Islam because it claims that its own revelation is the absolute and final one, but he describes John, one of the apostles, as having spoken “the final word on the biblical concept of God,” and where Muslims believe that Mohammed went into a trance and took dictation from an archangel, Ratzinger accepts as true the equally preposterous legend that St. Paul was commanded to evangelize for Christ during the course of a vision experienced in a dream. He happens to get Mohammed wrong when he says that the prophet only forbade “compulsion in religion” when Islam was weak. (The relevant sura comes from a period of relatively high confidence.) But he could just as easily have cited the many suras that flatly contradict this apparently benign message. The familiar problem is that, if you question another religion’s “revelation” and dogma too closely, you invite a tu quoque in respect of your own. Which is just what has happened in the present case.

Much more; the final paragraph is a showstopper. I found the masterpiece via this blogger, who glibly remarks,

Of course, what Benedict has said about Muslims is positively benign compared to what he has said about homosexuals. But somehow, I don’t think we’ll get an apology. After all, we don’t threaten to kill people.

“Heh.” “Indeed.”

Hilarious, as always, because there’s so much truth to it.

A photo of Hainan Island taken by my friend Ben in Beijing. (Click to enlarge.)

Strip-mining into dusty oblivion a piece of China’s soul. A sad story.

Michael Turton, ESWN and Taiwan. And now I won’t say another word.

It’s good to see China’s Netizens making fun of their dinosaur leaders as they continue their desperate, artery-popping quest to seal off communications, as though they can just make the Internet go away. We all know it’s an uphill, losing battle, but still they press on. They may as well be chasing windmills.

Hours after the government announced new regulations tightening Beijing’s grip over foreign news agencies this week, Chinese Internet users went on a tirade.

“Dear officials,” said one anonymous posting on Netease, a popular web portal. “Since modern technology is so advanced, why don’t you invent some pills which people can take and lose their ability to think? Then you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

Similar outbursts have followed the release of rules aimed at tightening the state’s grip over books, the Internet, magazines, karaoke, broadcasting, video games, satellite dishes and even children’s cartoons.

With every passing year, Chinese increasingly expect freer information from varied sources with less government spin, to the consternation of a ruling Communist Party long reliant on an information monopoly to bolster its political monopoly.

The growing appreciation among young Chinese for unfettered news — and their ability to convey those opinions rapidly across cyberspace — is a key reason why Beijing will ultimately lose the information war, analysts say, even if it wins some near-term battles.

“The fact that Chinese officials are trying harder and harder means they’re actually having less and less control,” said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley, journalism school. “Between now and the Olympics, it will continue to weaken. They’re fighting a losing game.”

So the question is, why do they bother? It only makes them look senile and calcified, and any short-term successes will, as the article says, be wiped out by their inevitable final defeat. No matter; it’s a fight to the death, and instead of embracing reform and striving to use the technology to their better advantage, they can only swing their fists in the dark as they struggle to hold onto the total control that the Internet has made obsolete. Give it up, ye Chinese censors.

This article in today’s CSM is sure to ruffle the feathers of my friends for whom the notion of an independent Taiwan is sacrosanct – a notion I fully understand but have never actively lobbied for, as I believe the realpolitik of the situation makes it unrealistic and perhaps an invitation for major headaches. (As much as it hurts, I remain in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it school,” at least for now.) The article, written by Fei-Ling Wang, a professor of international affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, seems to me hopelessly optimistic.

Since the time of its first emperor, Qin Shihuang, China had been under centralized, authoritarian rule. But when the ROC was formed in 1912, hopes were high for democratic political change. However, external and internal wars, self-serving warlords, and abysmal ROC leaders tragically retarded China’s political progress. In 1949, a peasant rebellion influenced by communist ideology created the PRC and drove the ROC offshore to Taiwan. Mao Zedong, the self-proclaimed new Qin Shihuang, perpetuated and intensified mainland China’s despotic political tradition.

Today’s China is once again on the verge of parting from its Qin system. Yet democratic reform in the PRC is still far from a certainty, much less a success.

Fortunately, there are reasons to be optimistic. For one thing, the ROC has survived since 1949 and is prospering today. Over the past decades, the Taiwanese have proudly proven that Western ideas of capitalism, freedom, and the rule of law can thrive together with Chinese culture. Taiwan has gradually but successfully transformed from an authoritarian, one-party system into a young democracy, driven by the combined force of bottom-up and top-down efforts, as well as conducive foreign influences. The Taiwan story of economic growth and political change should be considered a great success story for all Chinese, on and off the island.

Unfortunately, the Taiwan story has been grossly discounted and marginalized by leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Rather than viewing Taiwan as a viable force of political opposition and a model of successful political change, China sees the ROC as just a local regime taking refuge under foreign protection and seeking independence. And Beijing’s stubborn refusal to enact political reforms has made full independence even more attractive to many Taiwanese. Beijing has also successfully portrayed Taipei as an anti-China traitor that has harmed and divided the Motherland. Many Chinese are therefore simply led to despise and reject Taiwan’s story of success.

This dreadful situation must change. The political rivalry from Taipei should stimulate rather than stifle, China’s democratization. Instead of propelling China into imperialism and militarism, Chinese nationalism could become a powerful driving force to constrain rising Chinese power and reorient it toward democracy. Taiwan must act as a catalyst for this because only with a democratic, free, and peaceful China as a responsible stakeholder in the international community can the Taiwan story securely continue. And only by assisting the peaceful rise and change of China can Taiwan solidify lasting support from the US.

To successfully help China change politically and rise peacefully, the Taiwanese craving to declare independence – while understandable – must be sacrificed.

Well, simply saying this awful situation has to change doesn’t mean very much. Sometimes awful situations, like Stalin’s tyrrany, go on and on, spanning generations. The professor goes on to praise Ma’s approach of upholding the one-China priciple if, and only if, the PRC’s government becomes accountable to its people. Well, it sounds good on paper, but to me it seems awfully dreamy. It concludes:

Only when the Chinese government is accountable to its own people can (and should) there be a peaceful rise of China. Toward that end, the democratic, free, and Chinese Taiwan will work wonders when it genuinely – but conditionally – unites with China.

What can one say aside from “Don’t hold your breath”? As it stands, the idea of unification with the PRC draws snorts and snickers from nearly everyone I’ve spoken with in Taiwan. I would be way more optimistic if the PRC were truly living up to its agenda of reform and not heading backwards in the area that matters most to the people of Taiwan – freedom of expression and government accountability. They like their freedom to protest and demonstrate here, and to choose the media that appeal to them (11 cable news channels in a country of 23 million!). Until such freedoms become a given in China, the idea of unification will be laughed at by most Taiwanese. And sadly, I don’t see the PRC coming around to Taiwan’s model of individual liberty anytime soon.