Feel the love.

I don’t think they should have whited out the faces. Those young people would be well served with a dose of shame.

A must read. I’ll give a snip, but due to time constraints I can’t say another word.

The founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, has defied the Chinese government by refusing to bow to censorship of politically sensitive entries.

Jimmy Wales, one of the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine, challenged other internet companies, including Google, to justify their claim that they could do more good than harm by co-operating with Beijing.

Wikipedia, a hugely popular reference tool in the West, has been banned from China since last October. Whereas Google, Microsoft and Yahoo went into the country accepting some restrictions on their online content, Wales believes it must be all or nothing for Wikipedia.

His stand comes as Irrepressible.info, a joint campaign by The Observer and Amnesty International for free speech on the web, continues with the support of more than 37,000 people around the world. The campaign calls on governments to stop persecuting political bloggers and on IT companies to stop complying with these repressive regimes.

‘We’re really unclear why we would be [banned],’ Wales told The Observer. ‘We have internal rules about neutrality and deleting personal attacks and things like this. We’re far from being a haven for dissidents or a protest site. So our view is that the block is in error and should be removed, but we shall see.’

Wales said censorship was ‘ antithetical to the philosophy of Wikipedia. We occupy a position in the culture that I wish Google would take up, which is that we stand for the freedom for information, and for us to compromise I think would send very much the wrong signal: that there’s no one left on the planet who’s willing to say “You know what? We’re not going to give up.”‘

Wikipedia’s entry on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 includes the government’s official claim that 200-300 died and the Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross’s estimate of 2,000-3,000 deaths….

‘One of the points that I’m trying to push is that if there’s a small town in China that has a wonderful local tradition, that won’t make its way into Wikipedia because the people of China are not allowed to share their knowledge with the world. I think that’s an ironic side-effect and something the people in the censorship department need to have a much bigger awareness of: you’re not just preventing information about Falun Gong or whatever you’re upset about getting into China, you’re preventing the Chinese people speaking to the world.’

More follows. I know this isn’t very useful, slapping up the article with no comment. But it’s a great story, I couldn’t leave it unmentioned.

I can’t blog for more than a few seconds today (and tomorrow). Suffice it to say it’s clear that 9/11 has now become for most of us another day. For me, for the first time in five years, September 11 arrived without fanfare, aside from a few pangs of relatively distant memories. Relatively. Because the first couple of years these memories were so vivid. And then time works its wonders, and the day breaks down into a series of snapshots and associations and miscellaneous memories, finally becoming a thing of the past.

Every year on this date I listen to the same long radio broadcast, which evokes to me the curiosity and unfathomability of what happened. (It’s been playing in the background in my office the past hour.) At first, no one can put their arms around it, and on the hourly news at 9 a.m. they go ahead reading about ordinary things going on, not willing to admit yet that the whole world had changed, and everything else they were announcing would soon seem utterly meaningless. (“Today Libby Dole is expected to announce she will run for the US senate…”) And then, as more and more information becomes available, the implications of the day become clearer. It’s an interesting thing to listen to, hearing the reporters trying to think through the unthinkable. Listen to the strain and exhaustion in their voices as they try to figure out which reports are true or not. It’s not dramatic or sensational, which is what makes this broadcast so good. Keeping sane at a moment of insanity; I really admire good reporters when they live up to their charter, as these reporters do.

I’ll be busy on a big project for the next two days. Very limited access to the Internet for at least two days.

Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?
By FRANK RICH
Published: September 10, 2006

‘THE most famous picture nobody’s ever seen’ is how the Associated Press photographer Richard Drew has referred to his photo of an unidentified World Trade Center victim hurtling to his death on 9/11. It appeared in some newspapers, including this one, on 9/12 but was soon shelved. ‘In the most photographed and videotaped day in the history of the world,’ Tom Junod later wrote in Esquire, ‘the images of people jumping were the only images that became, by consensus, taboo.’

(more…)

You simply have to read this mind-boggling article to believe it. I have never given these “theories” any mind, but when nearly 40 percent of the American public says they believe them, we know some odd phenomenon is at work. And when you read the names and titles of many of those leading the movement, includng former Bush appointees and academic luminaries, and when you read about all the startling contradictions in the 911 report – well, take a look at the article, then respond.

I am not endorsing the crackspot theories. Far from it. But there is no denying that they could never have gained this much traction if the government had been more forthright about what actually happened. Again, read the article, which is the single best roundup piece I’ve seen on the subject. I was shaking my head the whole time in dismay. Sure, the conspiracy freaks are nuts, but when you take a look at the force behind their movement, you realize just how powerful
they are becoming. (The proof is all the ink they’ve garnered over the past two weeks alone.) What’s going on?

I am not saying another word. Just go read the post for yourself.

I’m too busy to join my fellow liberal bloggers who are justifiably furious at Disney and ABC for their obscene attempt to air as docudrama an intensely biased mini-series designed to put Clinton in the worst possible light, with scenes that are pure fiction. The only thing I have time to do is refer readers to this excellent post with some photoshopped images that say it all.

This book review is one hell of a read. Sorry for the extended clip, but it’s worth preserving here.

It is thought that Sars originated in the city of Shenzen, in southern China’s Guangdong province. Early on, Greenfeld swoops in on the aptly named Fang Lin, an illegal immigrant to the city from the countryside, who finds a job handling and slaughtering exotic wild animals for restaurants. “Wild flavour”, as it is known, is an important ingredient in China’s new culture of conspicuous consumption. Thanks to lax regulation, the trade in snakes, camels, otters, monkeys, badgers, bats, pangolins, geese, civets, wild boars – anything that can be trapped or hunted – has become a multimillion-dollar industry. Animals are kept in filthy conditions in the backs of restaurant kitchens, where they are butchered only after diners have made their choice. Fang Lin would emerge after a night’s work covered in the blood and excreta of panicked animals, and would chain-smoke to kill the stench.

It is in this overcrowded, pollution-ridden environment that a virus hops over the species barrier, from civet cats to humans. Sars is born. But it has yet to be identified. The disease that emerges is a terrifyingly contagious mystery fever, developing swiftly to a horrific pneumonia, fatal in many cases, and with a high incidence among healthcare staff.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, sensitive and alert after the 1997 outbreak of avian flu, a handful of migratory birds are found dead of the H5N1 influenza. The fear that the new, atypical pneumonia in China, word of which spreads through medical networks, might be the dreaded, mutated avian flu is tested repeatedly, after samples of body effluvia pass perilously and illegally from mainland China to laboratories in Hong Kong. The negative results only add to the rising panic.

The story unfolds like a whodunnit, with a large cast of rogues, victims and heroes. The chief villain is the Chinese government, so secretive and paranoid that it seems it would rather unleash a deadly virus upon the world than be castigated for letting foreigners blame China for it. As one microbiologist comments: “Human lives just aren’t as valuable in China.” But the author reminds us that this ostrich-like attitude is not unique; indeed, it mirrors the Reagan administration’s response to Aids in the 1980s.

We all know how the story unfolded. And while the comparison to Reagan and AIDS has some merit, it has to be remembered that SARS threatened everyone, men, women and children. AIDS was far more selective and more difficult to acquire. When the CCP ignored AIDS, there was barely a whimper from the international community because all of the victims were the disenfranchised – gays, prostitutes, injection drug users and dirt-poor peasants selling their blood for a pittance. SARS posed a danger to everyone, and it still amazes the world that it took so long for China to admit its cover up at the expense of its citizens’ lives.

You simply have to read it for yourself.

This is rich. At least one province in China is trying to implement software judges can use to render instant sentencing.

Judges are not usually at risk of losing their jobs to modern technology but that may be changing in China, where new software is handing down sentences automatically. The Zichuan District Court in east China’s Shandong province has installed programs on judges’ computers that provide advice on the proper verdicts in criminal cases, the state-run China Daily reported.

The move appears to be aimed at ensuring standardized decisions and addressing common complaints that China’s judges are ill-trained, corrupt and make arbitrary rulings.

“We aim to establish a regular sentence pattern for criminal trials to avoid different penalties for the same crimes,” said Wang Hongmei, chief judge at the court.

Many judges in China have not received a college education and lack sufficient training in law, although the government has made efforts in recent years to raise the professional standard.

In the Shandong experiment, judges simply enter the relevant details of the crimes plus mitigating circumstances — and the program immediately comes up with an appropriate verdict, according to the paper. But the penalty calculator will not have the final say. Judges will retain the power to hand down their own sentences, depending on circumstances they deem particular to a case.

This is from an email from Brendan (one of the smartest and most talented bloggers out there), who writes,

The Chinese article I found on it actually
makes a bit more sense — it’s a reference for sentencing, rather than verdicts, which WOULD be a useful thing.

Still, I can just imagine what a software judge would be like:

“The court will now hear the case of –”
– GUILTY
“I object!”
– VOID
“This is a violation of my constitutional rights!”
– UNRECOGNIZED INPUT: ‘CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS’
“I’m going to appeal this! I’ll take it to Amnesty International!”
– FATAL ERROR

I’m blogrolling him now (his blog was dark for months, but it’s back in full swing now).

Update: Brendan’s own post is here.