Michelle’s angry.

I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU
By Michelle Malkin · April 19, 2006 08:53 PM

You know who you all are.

And if you think I’m going to stop blogging/writing/making a living because you’ve plastered my family’s private home address, phone numbers, and photos and maps of my neighborhood all over the Internet to further your manufactured outrage and pathetic coddling of a bunch of lying, anti-troops punks at UC Santa Cruz…

…you better think again.

This is supposedly a political analyst (her title at Fox News) and a pundit. But she’s actually an enraged harpie who describes as “unhinged” anyone who takes issue with her immigrant-hating, flag-loving, Arab-kicking “philosophy.” If you oppose the Iraq fiasco and object to on-campus recruitment to fight in a dirty war, you’re a “punk.” In Malkin’s world, the Swift Boat Liars are valiant heroes, and reporters who uncovered Bush’s illegal wiretappings are traitors. This lady is alive with anger, her belly full of fire, and she’s just itching for a fight with unhinged liberal traitors.

Unfortunately, Ms. Maglalang, in case you haven’t noticed, the tide in America is turning. We are tired of being spoon-fed candy-coated lies from the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and the Codpiece in Chief. We are tired of the death by a million cuts that is our misadventure in Iraq. We are tired of being dismissed as “moonbats” and traitors simply for demanding that America do better. You can rage all you want, and your angry audience can lap it up, but you are increasingly on the fringe, not the mainstream, having made yourself the poster child for all that is most ugly about the present administration. Have you ever asked yourself why so many people hate you so much? I promise, it’s not easy to build up so many enemies. It takes, as our president likes to say, a lot of hard work. It was you who came out with both fists swinging, attacking liberals as though they were a form of bacteria needing to be excised and exterminated. Now that the tables are turning, and it’s you who are under attack, you’re singing a different tune, condemning on-line-organized mobs of angry protestors. How ironic, that it was you more than anyone else who cultivated the idea of the Internet lynch mob. So don’t you go-a-bitchin’ when the spotlight turns on you. Behind that haughty demeanor lurks a frightened little girl, and as the heat rises and she’s fed more of her own medicine, be prepared for a lot of pouting and self-pity.

Update: Nobody (and I mean nobody) has been chronicling the myriad sins of Michelle like Dave Neiwert of Orcinus, who is in super-fine form today, exposing the demagogue and the slick game she’s been playing for years, siccing her minions on those who irritate her and then making herself out to be the victim. Just a small sample from Dave’s must-read post:

We’re all too familiar with this routine. After all, it’s what the entirety of her book Unhinged was predicated upon. Malkin, as I said then, is like the lunatic who walks around the public square and pokes people in the eye with a sharp stick, and then is shocked, shocked, that anyone would respond with anger and outrage.

Of course, there’s more than ample reason to question Malkin’s professionalism. Indeed, this isn’t the first time Malkin has shown a predilection for abusing the power of her large readership.

Hao Wu is a “government-sanctioned disappearance,” as described below, and all of us rise up in chorus to protest. We need to do the same when our own government practices similar atrocitites. The Chinese must love Bush; he’s made it impossible for us to criticize the CCP without being accused of hypocrisy.

Our Dirty War
By BOB HERBERT
Published: April 20, 2006

I said, “Some of these folks have never been heard from again, right?”

“Yup,” said Curt Goering. “That’s right.”

Mr. Goering is the senior deputy executive director for policy and programs at Amnesty International USA. We were discussing a subject — government-sanctioned disappearances — that ordinarily would repel most Americans.

(more…)

Some prominent UK scientists say there is now “an accumulating weight of evidence” that entrepreneurial Chinese organ traffickers are harvesting and selling thousands of body parts from executed prisoners.

Top British transplant surgeons have accused China of harvesting the organs of thousands of executed prisoners a year to sell for transplants.

The British Transplantation Society condemned the practice as unacceptable and a breach of human rights, in a statement released on Wednesday. The move comes less than a week after Chinese officials publicly denied the practice. In March, China said it would ban the sale of human organs from July.

The British Transplantation Society says an accumulating weight of evidence suggests the organs of thousands of executed prisoners in China are being removed for transplants without consent. Professor Stephen Wigmore, who chairs the society’s ethics committee, told the BBC that the speed of matching donors and patients, sometimes as little as a week, implied prisoners were being selected before execution.

Just last week a Chinese health official said publicly that organs from executed prisoners were sometimes used, but only with prior permission and in a very few cases. But widespread allegations have persisted for several years – including from international human rights groups.

Professor Wigmore said: “The weight of evidence has accumulated to a point over the last few months where it’s really incontrovertible in our opinion. We feel that it’s the right time to take a stance against this practice.”

Everything in China can be reduced to a dollar value. Absolutely everything. Frankly, I’d be surprised if this weren’t happening. It’s easy to rationalize; hell, “they’re dead anyway” so what’s the difference? As long as there’s money to be made from this, it’ll continue, just like pirating DVDs.

Ah, the smell of justice is sweetening Beijing’s sandy air.

More than 200 people in camouflage gear demolished a school of disabled and mentally retarded children and beat students who attempted to block the demolition, media reported yesterday.

A Beijing court ordered the school to move out last September because it had no right to use the land on which the school was built. A private company that recently leased the land began sending demolition crews to the Zhiguang Special Education School last Friday.

As of Monday, only several buildings were left untouched. About 70 students and teachers were forced to stay in five dorm rooms at the school in Changping District, reported The Beijing News. Another 30 children returned to their homes in the capital city.

If you have to crack a few skulls of mentally retarded children to clear the property, what of it? China should be proud of its standing up for the rights of property owners. So with that in mind, I’m confused to see that the original story has apparently been removed from China Daily. It’s almost as if they’re ashamed of this act of public service. Go figure.

LA Times headline:

Lemme write that down before I forget it.

Be prepared for a flurry of such articles prophesying the imminent rise of China and the decline of the US. While I think there’s no dispute that the US is declining and China is rising, I am highly suspicious when reporters lead their readers to think they’re going to see role reversal in just 30 years.

When President Hu Jintao of China shakes hands with President George Bush in Washington tomorrow and gives one of his fixed grins for photographers, it will not be just another meeting between the leader of a large developing country and the chief executive of the richest nation on earth.

China is rising fast and is expected to eclipse the United States economically in the future – its gross domestic product is tipped to overtake that of America by 2045.

While Mr Bush has only given Mr Hu an hour of his time for a state lunch, the global balance of power is changing and in future meetings, the Chinese will set the timetable.

The rise of China is posing awkward questions for the US, along with the realisation that its days as the world’s economic superpower are numbered.

Some analysts see America entering a period of “managed decline” not unlike that which Britain has experienced since the end of the Second World War and the end of empire.

Since the Chinese economy began to open up a quarter of a century ago, there are 400 million fewer desperately poor people in China. Now Beijing wants the remarkable domestic growth story to count for something in global terms. China has already overtaken Britain and France to become the world’s fourth largest economy and Mr Hu’s visit to Washington represents a culture clash on a global scale. China, the emerging Asian superpower, is ruled with an iron fist by the Communist Party, which has transformed a once centrally planned economy into a free market one, “socialist with Chinese characteristics”.

What these articles never seem to deal with is the fact that for all the progress China remains, in John Pomfret’s words, “a third, fourth and fifth-world country.” As an antidote to the at-times breathless jubliation, I strong suggest readers re-visit the Pomfret post for another, more measured point of view. And check out this old article while you’re at it. Hu might be making impressive strides in some areas, and there may be a lot fewer people starving than in the Mao days. But superpower status is still a good ways away, and there’s a good chance it will never arrive at all.

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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?