Due to a server issue, TPD has been down for a couple of days. Which hardly matters, because I’m not posting at the moment. There are some amazing stories going on in China this week that’s I’d love to comment on but can’t right now. So this site may be irrelevant for another few days, sorry.

Lay it on the line, why don’t you?

Does anyone believe that if Iran, say, captured an American soldier, kept him awake for eleven days straight, bashed his head and body against plywood walls with a towel around his neck, forced him to stand and sit in stress positions finessed by the Communist Chinese, stuck him in a dark coffin for hours, and then waterboarded him, that the NYT would describe him as a victim of “harsh interrogation techniques”? Do you think Mike Allen would give anonymity to a top Iranian official who defended these techniques as vital to Iran’s national security?

The last seven years have revealed that almost the entire American establishment views itself as immune to the moral and ethical rules it applies to every other country in the world. Now we know, at least. And you can be sure they will protecting each other to the bitter end.

And you wonder why it’s more difficult for us to challenge China from a moral high ground?

Be sure to see that extraordinary post for the jpeg that says it all: we are doing exactly what the State Department has called “torture” when other countries do it. When it’s America doing it, it gets dressed up in euphemisms. There is only one thing to do: Prosecute.

I’m not saying another word. Go over to China Geeks to read more. Headline is semi-not-work-safe.

Bizarre.

A North Texas legislator during House testimony on voter identification legislation said Asian-descent voters should adopt names that are “easier for Americans to deal with.”

The comments caused the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday to demand an apology from state Rep. Betty Brown, R-Terrell. But a spokesman for Brown said her comments were only an attempt to overcome problems with identifying Asian names for voting purposes. […] “Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Matthew Yglesias responds:

As it happens, it seems to me that people of Chinese ancestry tend to have very “easy” names as things stand—lots of monosyllables and so forth. The big culprits in terms of “difficult” names, I would say, are Eastern Europeans, South Asians, upper-class WASPs, and of course those of us with Galician names like “Yglesias” that combined foreign origin with unorthodox spelling.

Which do you find easier “to deal with,” Li or Wu, or Yglesias?

That seems to be the average time I’m spending behind the desk each day with my new job. Needless to say, it doesn’t give me much time to blog. I’ll try soon, but if the past few days are any indication, I’ll have to cut it way down. I thought I’d be able to sneak in at least one post a day, but lately that’s been simply impossible.

Most painful is the realization this week that I’f have to give up my Chinese classes after making decent progress over the past six months. I really don’t feel like going to class after a long day of work.

On a brighter note, winter finally seems to have ended here in Beijing and the past couple days have been spectacularly beautiful. And work isn’t bad, it’s just tiring. I look at my situation and that of some of my friends and relatives back home, and I have to say I’ve got it pretty easy.

We may never know.

Update: Some great photos, “lest we forget.”

Update 2: While I’m putting up links, this story on the kidnapping of baby boys in rural China is absolutely a must-read.

Heh – several Ducksters (myself included) are included in the joke.

(It’s in Chinese. I can now read enough to at least appreciate the translation.)

Update: Had to add this photo, via this excellent blog.

A totally spontaneous celebration by ethnic Tibetans unable to restrain their joy over the chance to participate in Serf Liberation Day and thank their gracious saviors.

Is this too much?

Saturday, March 28, China will observe a newly created holiday: Serf Emancipation Day, which commemorates the day in 1959 when the Tibetan government was dissolved after the Chinese government crushed a Tibetan uprising and the Dalai Lama went into exile. The holiday was established following last year’s Tibetan protests and riots against Chinese rule and is intended to highlight what Beijing says is the social and economic progress that Tibetans have made over the last 50 years.

In conjunction, China’s state media has unleashed a propaganda blitz surrounding the holiday. Over the last twenty-four hours, headlines on state-run Xinhua news agency have included: “Ending serfdom in Tibet, a giant step in human rights progress that deserves commemoration,” “China calls on overseas Tibet report to be objective” and “Former female serfs recollect tragic past.” (None, however, quite reach the extremes of this report from a few of weeks ago: “A religious ceremony for the Dalai Lama used human blood, skulls and skin“).

I’m reading in Peter Hessler’s River Town about how every time he turned on CCTV, they seemed to be featuring happy minority children performing folk dances, and how most of the time they were Tibetan. Always bouncing with joy and glee. The propaganda never stops, and it never improves. (At least Goebbels and Karl Rove did it with flair and imagination.) Whether or not China’s claims to Tibet are legitimate and whether or not things are better for most Tibetans now than they were pre-Liberation isn’t the point. The point is looking ridiculous in the eyes of the rest of the world for the scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners media blitz that everyone’s going to laugh at. Serf Emancipation Day.

I just realized this past Saturday marked the seventh anniversary of this blog. This was my first inane post, written when I thought I’d be writing just for myself. If I’d only known what I was getting myself into….

To date, 4,715 separate posts and (gulp) 76,427 comments. (And I lost about 10,000 old comments when my site was ported over – badly – from Blogspot to MT back in the dark ages.) In case anyone was here from the beginning, thanks for sticking with it. What a ride.

I hadn’t opened China Daily in months until today. Someone had told me they’re getting much more aggressive, almost becoming a real newspaper, and sure enough the first article I saw was a lengthy exposé of its government’s detention centers and the abuse of inmates there by local police. I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who found this noteworthy:

Inmates in China’s 2,700 pretrial detention centers suffer bullying and torture at the hands of fellow prisoners and police officers, and some experts want a neutral body to take the centers out of police control to curb the abuses, the state-run English-language newspaper, China Daily, reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper noted that the Communist Party’s latest four-year plan for legal reforms does not contemplate changes in the detention system. The full-page article said that since February 8, five inmates had died under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Amnesty International, the human-rights advocacy group, last week reported two additional deaths that the police say were due to illness. Family members dispute those explanations.

All seven deaths occurred in police detention centers, where inmates accused of crimes can be held for months awaiting trial or formal charges. The centers are officially run by the national public-security ministry, but are effectively controlled by local police officials who, one expert was quoted as saying, regard them “as part of their turf and the most profitable piece of their territory.”

Another criminal procedure expert, Chen Weidong of Renmin University, was quoted as saying that officers “will sometimes have the detained suspects, especially new ones, tortured so that they can get confessions and complete an investigation as soon as possible.”

Not sure what’s gotten into them, but this kind of serious reporting is certainly a turn for the better. Meanwhile, this despicable practice of allowing local police to run these detention centers should come to an end immediately. If China Daily is reporting it, I want to think it must mean the government is tired of it. Or did this somehow slip through the cracks, and we’ll hear tomorrow that the reporter got fired? Let’s hope this is the start of a trend. Real journalism in China. If it continues, the China’s media have an opportunity to end their image as puppets of the state. How far can it go?