It’s not a totally absurd notion. When people lose their livelihoods and their homes, and see the investment bankers who brought this upon us continuing to reap fat bonuses after receiving taxpayer-funded handouts of unprecedented size, there’s no telling where their emotions might lead them. Expect to see more articles like this in early 2009, as people begin to realize exactly what’s at stake here. The troops are standing by. Those giving the order for them to do so know what’s coming down the road.

[Note: Moving this up to keep it on top.]

Big question mark in the headline. Things have been slow, it’s the Holidays, comments have been relatively thin. But I’ll be in classes most days and want to offer a space for posting links, random thoughts and whatever, especially to keep extraneous comments out of the threads.

Simply beyond belief.

A commenter compares this to saying the pledge of allegiance in the US or having a flag in school. I beg to differ, strongly. We were indoctrinated in America’s schools, too (I still remember the USDA poster on the wall extolling the benefits of drinking milk and eating beef), but nothing like this. Not even close. A taste of the toxic chorus:

Lead: Earthquakes, shifting back and forth like the positions of Sarkozy, with his dirty tricks, trying to shake the great China

Lead: Did China retreat?

All: No. The Shenzhou-7 launched. We are victorious!

Lead: Pathetic Europe will never stop the insurmountable force of our great dynasty

All: Just the aftershocks from the earthquake would destroy France!

Watch the video. A shocker. And we wonder what makes the anti-CNN crowd so hostile. It’s surprising they aren’t hunting down French people in the streets with machetes.

Update: Speaking of propaganda, stop what you are doing and go here now. A moving, Karaoke-ready tribute to the Chinese heading to the Gulf of Aden to fight the Somali pirates.

With lofty sentiments, the Chinese navy heads for the deep blue
Braving wind and waves, the warship’s flag flutters,
The Chinese navy, a bright sword to harmonize the ocean.
Chinese warriors, valiant men with iron wills….

Has to be a parody, right? Harmonize the ocean?

No, not the musical – the debate raging in Guangdong on whether or not to eat them. Photos and message board comments and lots of passion.

This is a hard one, Do we not eat animals that are adorable and/or smart? Because no animal (aside from man) is as smart as the pig, and some of them can be quite adorable. Being a cat lover, I could never eat one, but does that mean others shouldn’t be allowed to? My emotional impulse is to answer Yes, but I’m not sure that argument would sway the jury.

Update: Speaking of pets, please take a look at this heartbreaking post by a fellow China blogger whose dog may be dying due to Optima dog food made in the US but apparently contaminated in China:

Allegedly, the reason for the contamination is because during the Olympics the Chinese gov’t set tight restrictions on ports of entry for importing. All the dog food was therefore brought in through the hot and humid Guangzhou, where it sat in a non-temperature controlled warehouse long enough for the aflatoxin to develop in the food.

So sorry to read that post, and hope Addie pulls through. Ryan sounds uncharacteristically upset; I would be, too.

I just want to say Vineyard Cafe is now my favorite restaurant in Beijing. Their food is consistently excellent, the service is great, the manger is cool, the environment is fantastic and it’s the only restaurant I can find that isn’t playing piped-in Christmas carols at ear-splitting volumes. In fact, today they weren’t playing any Christmas carols at all; I was in heaven.

Their English-style brunch is the best in town for the money (if you want to spend a lot more, this place is highly recommended), their pizza and salad lunches are a smoking deal, and their apple pie with fresh cream has been my dessert of choice since I discovered this place four months ago, thanks to my friend and co-blogger. It’s also right around the corner from a subway stop making it easy to get to, and it’s on a street with so much “local charm” I’m willing to place bets it’ll be the next Nanluoguxiang not too long from now.

I wasn’t paid anything for this, but wrote it simply because I love the place. Last Sunday I was invited for brunch at my earlier haunt, Steak & Eggs, and the entire time I kept asking myself why I hadn’t suggested Vineyard instead. Why eat (barely) adequate when you can eat great for the same price?

[Update: the suit was rejected, as a commenter points out.]

This blog was home to a spirited argument some months ago regarding the government’s efforts to bribe and/or silence parents of the children killed in the Sichuan earthquake who were demanding accountability. Now 57 of those parents are trying to have their day in court, but it is not at all clear whether the court will hear them.

A group of parents whose children were among the 127 killed in the collapse of an elementary school during the May earthquake that devastated western China have confirmed that they filed a lawsuit against government officials and a construction contractor. The lawsuit is the first filed by grieving and angry parents who say shoddy construction cost the children their lives.

Radio Free Asia reported the lawsuit in early December, but China’s official news media have not mentioned it. This weekend, the parents confirmed the filing in telephone interviews. They said the court has yet to tell them whether it will hear the case.

The lawsuit was filed on Dec. 1 in a court here in the city of Deyang, in Sichuan Province, the region hit hardest by the May 12 earthquake, which left 88,000 people dead or missing. Up to 10,000 schoolchildren were killed as some 7,000 classrooms and dormitory rooms collapsed across the quake zone, according to government estimates.

That they have gotten this far is pretty remarkable, though I doubt they will get much farther. Possibly all of them have signed an agreement with the government not to speak about the issue. The only bright side of the story is that the Chinese people are far more willing to speak out than they were just a few years ago, and they are beginning to see their right to protest and complain as a given.

In similar legal action, parents in three provinces filed lawsuits this fall against dairy companies after tens of thousands of children across China fell ill and at least four died from drinking milk and baby formula tainted with a toxic chemical called melamine. Local officials had been involved in covering up the poisonings, and judges have so far declined to hear any lawsuits.

After the earthquake, the central government assigned a committee of experts to look into the school collapses, but the committee has yet to issue a final report. In September, an official from the committee, Ma Zongjin, said at a news conference in Beijing that a rush to build schools during the Chinese economic boom might have led to shoddy construction that resulted in the student deaths. He said more than 1,000 schools had one of two major flaws — they were built on the earthquake fault line or they were poorly constructed.

Government officials at all levels have tried to suppress discussion of the school collapses.

So it’s a maddening situation, where you can protest, but only so much. Rule of law and accountability are still abstractions. You can complain and sue and speak up on the Internet and even in the media, and the government may actually investigate (which is why I bolded the text above – in the earlier thread there was a lot of skepticism of whether there would be any investigation at all). But when it comes to demanding accountability, don’t get your hopes too high. It’s great that these parents can sue the government. Until the courts start to act and hold officials accountable for their actions, however, it’s little more than a gesture.

Note: If you want to be reminded of the very human nature of the school tragedy in Sichuan, please revisit this famous post. I still get chills when I look at those faces.

Well, not quite but they’re certainly heading that way. The economic crisis is pushing them closer together and making what just a few years ago would have seemed like very strange bedfellows.

China offered 130 billion yuan ($19 billion) of loans for Taiwan companies operating on the mainland as the ruling parties of both governments laid out proposals to boost financial ties.

Beijing would provide the financing over three years and also purchase $2 billion worth of flat-panel displays from the island’s companies, Wang Yi, director of the Taiwan Affairs Office, said at the conclusion of a weekend forum.

The meeting between officials of Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang and their Chinese counterparts sets a blueprint for further government-level talks after a nine-year suspension. Taiwanese businessmen have invested an estimated $150 billion in China and are clamoring for the island’s financial firms to be permitted to offer services to ease access to funding and capital.

“Cooperation at this time is especially meaningful as the global financial crisis will soon spread to the manufacturing industry,” said Schive Chi, chairman of the Taiwan Stock Exchange. “As both China and Taiwan have few foreign debts and both have high savings ratio, we should really actively use up the huge savings to help boost our economies.”

Comb through the article to see just how extensive the cooperation is, and what it will mean for Taiwan businesses that have invested huge amounts in China and are now being hit hard by the crash.

What is significant to me is the tone of the dialogue on both sides (“The consensus reflects the expectation from people from the two sides and will have an active influence over the policy- making of the governments of both sides,” said Jia Qinglin, a Chinese Communist Party Politburo member.”) You would never have read an article like this just a year or two ago. They sound like two lovers separated by a war who have just re-found one another.

Like it or not, this is one more milestone in a new era of increasing cooperation and mutual dependency, and it’s only going to intensify. Will they reunite and live happily ever after as one? Not anytime soon, and maybe never. But it’s a stake in the heart of the Taiwan independence movement, for better or for worse. Whether independence is a noble goal or not is irrelevant. All that matters is reality, and the reality is that Taiwan and the PRC are moving closer together, and that will carry enough advantages for all sides to keep independence off the table.

Staying in touch with many of my friends in Taiwan, I know that only one thing matters right now, and that is the economy and the jobs that come with it. If they see this as step toward economic improvement, the enthusiasm over the independence movement, which has already sagged dramatically, is dead in the water. A pity perhaps, but there we are.

They might keep up the old arguments about which pinyin to use and how Taiwan should be referred to by Google Earth, etc., but if the Taiwanese and the Chinese see the relationship as economically mutually beneficial, they’ll happily go along. There’s a reason regular direct flights between Shanghai and Taipei started a few weeks ago. Tough times call for pragmatism. And times haven’t been this tough for Taiwan for decades.

This is just the start. Once we begin to emerge from the crisis in four or five years, expect to see a whole new world order of alliances and agreements, and a whole new balance of power. Yes, America will still be up there at the tippy top, but it won’t be there alone and it won’t carry the weight it did from the end of WWII to 2001.

James Fallows has an update. Appears that you can get to most of the articles if you simply delete the “www” that prefaces the URL. Some links, such as those to NYT blogs, don’t begin with www, and these sites will now open from the homepage, albeit slowly. But for nearly all their articles, clicking the link without manipulating the address will still result in a timed-out server.

This holds true in Beijing as of right now. Fallows says he’s having no trouble accessing the NYT from Shanghai at the moment, making the situation even more baffling. On again, off again.

Facebook has been this way for the past couple of months now – you never know if you’ll get on or not. Why do they bother? [Rhetorical question, no reply necessary.]

Update: The NYT writes about the block.

Palin’s new in-law’s mom arrested and charged with six felony counts, and the whisper is that she was running a meth lab. Ah, traditional family values. Remember, it was Palin who presented her white trash classy son-in-law-to-be at the convention as an exemplar of those values, since he was going to marry the 18-year-old Bristol Palin after getting her pregnant. Palin put him in the spotlight and used him for political purposes, and fairly well, at that. So to say that this is fair game is an understatement. Palin pallin’ around with meth dealers. What goes around comes around, no?

Since last night, I haven’t been able to access any articles in the NYT. Oddly, the home page opens fine, but click on any link and you end up with the dreaded “Server is not responding” message. Same thing happens if you click on any links to NYT articles from other sites. I thought China had made some big strides in opening up its Internet. If this is more than a passing glitch I’ll be quite disappointed.

Update: Go here to let James Fallows know if you can access the NYT or not. (Poll ends Dec 19 at 9pm, Beijing time.)

And now, suddenly blogspot is blocked again too. And it’s not the same as usual – normally, it takes a minute or two for the server to time out on the blocked site. This time, the instant I click the link the message pops up that “the server has unexpectedly lost the connection.” Totally weird. Of course, the blocking of blogspot has been random and temperamental, like blogspot makes the Nanny go completely bipolar. So this could just be one of those off-nights, where suddenly everything goes back to normal the next day. I hope so. Back to normal, she’s back on her meds.