China’s shame. They are calling it “cleansing” – the same terror they impose during the “People’s” Congress, getting the “undesirables” off the streets; we all know the script. The undesirable in this instance is one of China’s most noble activists for human rights and AIDS, exactly the kind of person they should be calling a national hero.

Mr. Hu, 34, and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, are human rights advocates who spent much of 2006 restricted to their apartment in a complex with the unlikely name of Bo Bo Freedom City. She blogged about life under detention, while he videotaped a documentary titled ‘Prisoner in Freedom City.’ Their surreal existence seemed to reflect an official uncertainty about how, and whether, to shut them up.

That ended on Dec. 27. Mr. Hu was dragged away on charges of subverting state power while Ms. Zeng was bathing their newborn daughter, Qianci. Telephone and Internet connections to the apartment were severed. Mother and daughter are now under house arrest. Qianci, barely 2 months old, is probably the youngest political prisoner in China.

For human rights advocates and Chinese dissidents, Mr. Hu’s detention is the most telling example of what they describe as a broadening crackdown on dissent as Beijing prepares to play host to the Olympic Games in August. In recent months, several dissidents have been jailed, including a former factory worker in northeastern China who collected 10,000 signatures after posting an online petition titled ‘We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics.’

I’ve written about Hu Jia many times before. All I have to add tonight (when I’m working) is that this is an act of evil, as sickening as their detention of Hao Wu or the imprisonment of Zhao Yan and Shi Tao and some whose stories are even more heartbreaking.

There have been times when I regretted calling the CCP “the evil empire,” because things are never so black and white, not even in the current US administration. Governments are, after all, a multi-headed beast. But when I read this story and so many others like it I fervently believe they deserve the epithet. The supreme irony is they do this because they fear these “dissidents” will make them look bad. Do they honestly believe in the eyes of the world these arrests make them look good?

Obtuse, ham-fisted automatons who go into automatic pilot as soon as they perceive a threat. The formula is familiar: Lie, cover-up, arrest. One can only wonder, how can they possibly be so stupid? It’s the equivalent of shooting oneself in the head.

As I’ve learned, there are many delightful, humane and totally decent party members. They must be as sickened by this as the rest of us. Why aren’t they the ones who decide who should and should not be arrested? (A rhetorical question; I already know the answer.)

Total comments, that is. Sonagi had the honor of posting the 60,000th comment about two minutes ago in the post below this one. Not that it means anything (and thousands of comments were lost when I switched from blogspot), but it’s still a landmark, I guess.

Ripped off from here.

One of the most delightful examples ever of the how the CCP does propaganda – badly. If you’re going to deceive and create BS scenarios, can’t you at least do it with some finesse? Does it have to be so ham-fisted and so un-thought-through that anyone using a search engine can see through it?

Via eswn. And while you’re at that wonderful site (which I’ve got to blogroll), check out the other post eswn recommends. Could it be that not so long from now, CCP meetings will be as testy and out-of-control as those in Taiwan?

That’s the only way I can describe the beasts who ordered and committed this atrocity (with all due respect to animals).

Once you get outside the bustling city, it’s still a jungle out there where might makes right and the poor migrant worker is wholly expendable. May the bosses burn in hell, along with the deranged system that lets so many of them get away with it.

At least in this case the bad guys got fired, the authorities vow to put them in jail, the migrant workers got their back-pay and the company paid a hefty fine and got driven out of town. And we’re reading about it in the Chinese media. But it’s only because in this case the story got out. We all know there are a lot more similar stories we never hear about.

My Dopod smart phone, which I love, is ready for the junk heap, and I’m looking for a substitute. The feature I use by far the most, after SMS and the phone itself, is the acclaimed Pleco dictionary, which along with standard E-to-C/C-to-E dictionary functions lets me quickly draw and recognize any Chinese characters I see. Once you have it you never want to be without it.

Like everybody else, I also want Apple’s iPhone. I always carry the Dopod and my iPod, and if I got an iPhone I’d have less to lug around. Just to complicate things, my company will soon be getting me a Blackberry (without a phone), so that means I’ll have three appliances to carry – unless I get an iPhone, which I can use as both phone and iPod.

But what about my Pleco dictionary? If I don’t have a smartphone or a PDA, I lose my dictionary. Impossible dilemma, I suppose. I’m thinking my best choice is to get the slick new HTC Touch phone (also made by Dopod), which will give me an iPhone-like experience along with the smart functions I need. Yes, I’ll have to lug around three devices, but I can’t think of a better solution.

The problem is, I can’t find the HTC Touch in China with an English-language interface so right now I’m in a holding pattern, hoping that any moment now I’ll be able to track one down. I saw this phone in Taipei and it is truly sensational, not to mention sleek, lightweight and beautiful. Does anyone know where I can get it in Beijing? Any other suggestions? I have to make a decision this week.

One of the most-asked questions I hear is why this site prominently states I am now living in Taipei, when I am actually living in Beijing. The answer is, I can’t get rid of the artwork up above. This site’s designer has all the artwork and she appears to have vaporized. Not only that, but she vaporized with $600 I paid her 18 months ago to overhaul the site and get rid of that Taipei balloon and make trackbacks functional, etc. She kept promising me she was working on it, and month after months she said she was almost ready. Then she stopped responding to my emails, and finally she replied telling me she may never finish it but would not send back the money. Based on the tone of this email, I could tell something was a bit off, i.e., she was bipolar or something. She has my sympathy, and my money. And I’m stuck with this site template.

Which all leads me to one question: Should I get rid of this template and do away with a design that one reader told me had become “an icon” (whatever that means)? I either scrap the whole thing or keep what’s there despite its dysfunctionality. Tough call to make after nearly five years with the same design, like giving up your well-established brand.

I would now place bets she will win the primary, and almost certainly the presidency. I wish it were Edwards or Obama, but I now believe the magic of Obama’s Iowa surprise has faded completely, and the majority of Democrats and independents are skeptical he has the stuff to lead. As much as people hate Clinton, she still enjoys immense support among those whom Nixon famously dubbed “the silent majority.” This silent majority consists of retired people, lots of blue-collar Democrats and the average middle-income middle-aged adults who don’t show up on the blogs but who always vote. Today she won an important endorsement and I expect her support to rapidly increase.

Part of the reason is the sheer nastiness of those who hate Clinton, including us liberals. I’ve been combing message boards at some liberal sites and am stunned at the hostility. Yeah, she’s hard as nails and opportunistic and ruthless (is there any president who wasn’t, at least to some degree?). But what has she done to qualify as “loathsome” or “a hateful bitch”? Those are tough words, and we should save them for the real thing, like Bush and Karen Hughes.

Ezra Klein has a good piece about this today, and it further increases my conviction that the attacks against Clinton have ironically done more good than harm.

On the one hand, Hillary Clinton is running a bare-knuckled, often unfair campaign, and pundits should mention that. On the other, the sort of attacks she’s levying — misrepresenting Obama’s payroll tax plan, or exaggerating his comments about Reagan — are pretty much par for the course. We’re not hitting some sort of new low in politics, here. And the overarching theme of Waldman’s column — that Clinton is “running like a Republican” — almost pushes me to her side on the issue. The winner of the Democratic primary, after all, will have to run against a Republican.

This seems like good practice for Obama, who needs to prove that he can do precisely that. And, so far, it looks to me like Clinton is getting the better of this one: Obama and his folks are spending a lot of time clarifying statements and categorizing attacks as unfair, while Clinton keeps throwing more punches and controlling the conversation. While I can name a half-dozen open attacks Clinton has on Obama right now, I’m not really sure what line his campaign is taking against Clinton. This is what folks feared with Obama: That he’d be too high-minded to stand up to the smear machine. And distasteful as some of Clinton’s hits are, they’re nothing compared to what he’ll face as the nominee.

Clinton now has the upper hand and I think she will retain it, for better or for worse.

Is anyone watching the meltdown? All I’m seeing is collective willed ignorance, ostrich-style. (“America is strong and it will always be strong.”) When you have companies the likes of Citigroup and Merrill Lynch facing calamity, the very foundations of our system are in question. And it’s just starting. Yes, definitely a good time to be paid in RMB. It’s Asia’s century.

James Fallows, always one of my favorite columnists, does the impossible, simplifying some terribly complex issues about China’s dollar-surplus and providing answers that actually can be understood by those who are MBA-less. The chief question he sets his sites on is this:

Why should the Communist Party of China countenance a policy that takes so much wealth from the world’s poor, in their own country, and gives it to the United States? To add to the mystery, why should China be content to put so many of its holdings into dollars, knowing that the dollar is virtually guaranteed to keep losing value against the RMB? And how long can its people tolerate being denied so much of their earnings, when they and their country need so much?

Fallows’ answers are cogent and depressing. The bottom line is that China ends up with a much better deal than the US, even if it’s sitting on all that money that can’t be used for the good of its own people. China holds most of the cards, and they’ve reaped the most benefits. We’ve reaped benefits, too – it’s allowed us to borrow all we wish, and to live well while consuming more than we produce. But as Fallows makes gloomily clear, that situation cannot last forever, and it is probably about to end sooner than most of us imagine. And it won’t be pretty.

Sorry for the huge gap in posts. A combination of working/sleeping offsite and not feeling I had much to say recently.