I posted about the plight of Chinese Uighurs detained in Guantanamo over three years ago. As the Washington Post reported at that time:

In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China’s communist government — not the United States, according to senior U.S. officials.

More than 20 months later, the 15 still languish at Guantanamo Bay, imprisoned and sometimes shackled, with most of their families unaware whether they are even alive.

Now, after nearly seven years in detention, a US judge has ruled that the Uighurs must be released into the US, agreeing with their attorneys that holding the men without cause is unconstitutional:

At a hearing packed with Uighurs who live in the Washington area, Urbina rejected government arguments that he had no authority to order the men’s release. He said he had such authority because the men were being held indefinitely and it was the only remedy available. He cited a June decision by an appellate court that found evidence against the Uighurs to be unreliable.

Urbina said in court that he ordered the release “because the Constitution prohibits indefinite detention without cause.” He added, “The separation of powers do not trump” the prohibition against holding people indefinitely without trial…

…Justice Department lawyer John O’Quinn asked Urbina to stay the order for a week, giving the government time to evaluate its options and file an appeal. Urbina rejected that request and ordered the Uighurs to appear in his courtroom for a hearing on Friday. He said he would then release them into the custody of 17 Uighur families living in the Washington area.

Apparently the government plans to appeal, but Urbina seems firm in his determination that these men have gotten a raw deal and that they will be released from custody, period (he didn’t take kindly to the proposal that US Immigration authorities might re-detain the Uighurs either). Good for him.

I’ll go further: the United States of America should pay these men an annual stipend equivalent to a decent income for a period of time allowing them to adjust to their new lives here. I’d say for about seven years, at the very least.

This is not prime time for writing a post today. Just spent the last 4.5 hours at the Polytheater watching The Berlin Opera’s magnicificently sung and conducted Tannhauser, one of Wagner’s most difficult operas to pull off. In some scenes, nothing “happens” on stage aside from back and forth declamation. No matter. The music was so overpoweringly gorgeous, the crowd, mainly Chinese, sat enraptured to the very end, at which point they were clapping their hands and stamping their feet in rhythm to express their approval. The kind of perfect operatic night I haven’t experienced in America for,oh….10 years now. And seeing the Chinese get into Tannhauser tonight was a treat.

As you can probably tell by the erratic typing, I’m ready to tip over. Wagner operas always end late, and it’s time to call it a night. Let me just say in closing, that it was so heartwarming to see a performance of the Berlin Opera performed with such beauty and perfection at Beijing’s Polytheater. What a beautiful night, what a beautiful way to share culture, and what a beautiful crowd of mainly young Chinese people eager to learn and seeming to adore ever note. Another I-love-China kind of night, though one I enjoyed with bittersweet feelings as I realize fate my be leading me in other directions. More about that later.

Sorry for no posts today but this. Suddeny I have a daunting lists of deadline tasks, from memorizing vocabulary sheets to writing a new business plan to preparing some case studies for a potential client. I’ll be back in a day or two, but let me just throw out the teaser notion that I’m working on a plan to start a new business in Beijing. If it gets off the ground maybe I’ll be staying here longer than I expected. It all depends on whether I can convince a friend of mine in Arizona that Beijing truly is a beautiful, inspiring, if often challenging and frustrating place to live. At a time when opportunities seem to be shuttered everywhere, China seems to offer just about the most promising potential for entrepreneurs. I’ll know in the days ahead whether I have the stomach, the brains and the wherewithal to actually be one. I’ll keep you posted.

Use this as an open thread if you’d like, with emphasis on the swearing in of Obama in just a few weeks, and anything to do with China you’d like.

Was anyone alse at Tannhauser tonight? all 4.5 hours of it?

Jim is a loud-mouthed hysteric on CNBC who usually shrieks at his viewers to buy his recommended stocks. He is a perennial bull, nearly always insisting stock prices will soar.

Please watch this very brief but instructive clip. It’s a shocker.

The right wing’s answer to Wikipedia describes itself as:

…a clean and concise resource for those seeking the truth. We do not allow liberal bias to deceive and distort here. Founded initially in November 2006 as a way to educate advanced, college-bound homeschoolers, this resource has grown into a marvelous source of information for students, adults and teachers alike…. The starting point for increasing your knowledge, your faith and the well-being of you and those around you is to understand concepts better. Conservapedia enables you to do that, and to impart what you have learned to others by editing here. The truth shall set you free.
No other encyclopedic resource on the internet is free of corruption by liberal untruths.

Please go now and have a look at their entry on Barack Obama. Here’s just a small snip:

Obama is likely to be Muslim because:
Obama’s background and education are Muslim
Obama’s middle name remains Muslim, meaning “descendant of Muhammad,” which most Christians would not retain
Obama recently referred to his “Muslim faith”
Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for “Pakistan” rather than the common American one

Scroll through the rest for more goodies. How did we get to this point, where people could actually read crap like this without laughing out loud or recoiling in disgust? It’s like that famous guy with the mustache warning us about the characteristics that make someone likely to be Jewish.

I felt sick as I read this maudlin, sugar-coated column that’s really all about encouraging slander, racism and swift-boating. Literally sick. I was thrilled, on the other hand, as I read the comments. Seems like everyone with a mind thought the exact same thing. This guy should be fired. He’s not good enough to write for Reader’s Digest. He is a pimp for McCain and an embarrassingly bad writer as well.

One of the best articles on why the swiftboating of Obama that Kristol is itching for won’t work can be found here. Sorry everyone, the writer tells us; Obama is our next president. When the economy is melting down and people are losing their jobs and their hopes and their houses, the last thing on their minds is a candidate’s entirely uncontroversial relationship with an aging 1960s radical who committed some violent acts when the candidate was 8 years old. A snip:

Absent a domestic terror attack the economy will remain the number one issue in the race, and there is little Senator McCain can do to make up his gap with Senator Obama on it. Oh, Senator McCain will try to make issues of Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko and Rev. Wright, and that might hurt Senator Obama around the margins — but it will not prevent him from winning. The economy is simply bigger than the rogues gallery that John McCain is conjuring up.

Why is this? Why won’t the swiftboat tactics work this year?

Its easy to lose sight of it in the day to day coverage, but the collapse of Wall Street in the last weeks was a seminal event in the history of our nation and our politics. To put the crisis in perspective, Americans have lost a combined 1 trillion dollars in net worth in just the last four weeks alone. Just as President Bush’s failures in Iraq undermined his party’s historic advantage on national security issues, the financial calamity has shown the ruinous implications of the Republican mania for deregulation and slavish devotion to totally unfettered markets.

Meanwhile, the meltdown continues. When was there ever a better time to live in China and be paid in RMB?

The Party is already having convulsions.

Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) — Two Chinese dissidents are among this year’s Nobel Peace Prize contenders, prompting moves by leaders in Beijing to pre-emptively counter possible negative attention on their human rights record.

Gao Zhisheng and Hu Jia are deemed top candidates by Oslo’s International Peace Research Institute, which handicaps competition for the award that will be announced Oct. 10. It’s preceded by Nobel prizes for medicine today, physics tomorrow, chemistry on Oct. 8 and literature on Oct. 9.

A decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo to honor Hu or Gao may increase tensions between the West and the government of the world’s most populous nation.

“I hope the committee will make the right decision and not challenge the original purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize or hurt Chinese people’s feelings,” said Liu Jianchao, spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, on Sept. 25. The prize should go to those who “truly contributed” to world peace, he said.

We certainly wouldn’t want anyone to have his feelings hurt. But if these two guys didn’t contribute to the betterment of humanity and to world peace, no one did.

The reasoning behind this is just so tortured:

The US government is cutting its funding for the supply of contraceptives to family planning clinics run by Marie Stopes International in Africa, alleging that it condones forced abortions in China.

MSI has categorically denied that it supports forced abortions or coercive sterilisation in China or anywhere else in the world, and says that the actions of the Bush government will result in more abortions in Africa, as women will be unable to get contraceptives and will end up with unwanted pregnancies.

One of George Bush’s first acts after becoming president was to stop all US funds to foreign organisations that helped women in any way to get an abortion, including providing advice. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) lost $34m that Congress had appropriated for it in 2002.

…”At a time when governments have pledged to increase their commitment to improving the health of women, only the Bush administration could find logic in the idea that they can reduce abortion and promote choice for women in China by causing more abortion,” said [MSI CEO] Hovig.

I think the nation will breathe a collective sigh of relief after we’ve sworn in Obama and Biden. A pity they’ll face the near-impossible task of cleaning up all the crap Bush & Co. will leave behind, like numerous wars, a battered global reputation, a broken economy and a whole lot more. But at least it will put an end to nonsense like this.

A rare spoof about China.

A final link for the night, and it’s a good one. Artists in China have to go to great lengths to get their works approved, often to no avail. An interesting and unusual look at what the Propaganda Department does, how the censors operate, how artists seek to second-guess them, and the effects of their efforts on Chinese talent.

A tiny snip, and then the computer goes off.

About the intellectuals, Mao Zedong often remarked, “If they don’t listen to us, we won’t give them food.” This kind of dependence on the state for one’s physical existence has handicapped Chinese writers and artists and intensified their self-censorship. Worse, China’s literary apparatus automatically excludes and isolates writers who are determined to exist outside it. Every now and then, some young writers raise a war cry against the Writers’ Union, but the truth is that most writers, old and young, are eager to join it.

Is it that hard to figure out why?

Wait. That is not my theory, but that of the author of an article written more than four years ago that a reader pointed me to and that I recommend you read. Not because it’s necessarily right, but because it’s fascinating to see where we actually stand four years after the writer’s prediction.

Today, the currency and export policy of China is anchored around its peg to the dollar. The main reason for this is that by artificially undervaluing its own currency, and therefore overvaluing the dollar, China artificially stimulates its manufacturing exports. The second reason is that by buying the excess U.S. dollars and reinvesting them in U.S. government bonds, it acts as a foreign lender to the United States. The third reason is that this foreign lending stimulates American demand for Chinese manufacturing exports and allows the Chinese government to relieve its current unemployment problems… No doubt, most of these loans will turn out to be very expensive because they will be repaid with greatly depreciated dollars, which in turn will exacerbate down the road the growing financial distress of the banking sector in China.

Therefore, it is clear that China travels today the road to Depression. How severe this depression will be, will critically depend on two developments. First, how much longer the Chinese government will pursue the inflationary policy, and second how doggedly it will fight the bust. The longer it expands and the more its fights the bust, the more likely it is that the Chinese Depression will turn into a Great Depression. Also, it is important to realize that just like America’s Great Depression in the 1930s triggered a worldwide Depression, similarly a Chinese Depression will trigger a bust in the U.S., and therefore a recession in the rest of the world.

Unless there is an unforeseen banking, currency, or a derivative crisis spreading throughout the world, it is my belief that the Chinese bust will occur sometime in 2008-2009, since the Chinese government will surely pursue expansionary policies until the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in China. By then, inflation will be most likely out of control, probably already in runaway mode, and the government will have no choice but to slam the brakes and induce contraction. In 1929 the expansion stopped in July, the stock market broke in October, and the economy collapsed in early 1930. Thus, providing for a latency period of approximately half a year between credit contraction and economic collapse, based on my Olympic Games timing, I would pinpoint the bust for 2009. Admittedly, this is a pure speculation on my part; naturally, the bust could occur sooner or later.

Of course, macro-economic predictions like this usually prove to be far off the mark (except those made by me), the most (in)famous perhaps being Gordon Chang’s prediction of “The Coming Collapse of China.” In the case of the article above, the story seems to have occurred almost in reverse – a US (and increasingly European) crisis is what is plunging the world into a recesion, not government-generated inflation in China. America’s economic crisis, not China’s, was the catalyst for the tailspin, and if China is be plunged into a depression, it will be for reasons very different from what the author envisaged. (He was shrewd enough to say that his theory might be offset by “an unforeseen banking, currency, or a derivative crisis spreading throughout the world.” And what we are seeing today was certainly unseen by most in 2004.)

However…however… I honestly believe China is going to be one of the few players that emerges from the current crisis relatively unscathed (and “relatively” is a key word.). Simply because of the size of its own domestic markets and the trade it carries out in Africa and Asia. It will suffer, lots of factories will continue to close and lots of dreams will be erased and jobs lost. But it won’t be depression. What it will be, more than anything else, is a test for the CCP. Running a country the size of China with the staggering problems is hard (to say the least), but it sure helps when the economy is roaring year after year.

One of the most frequently repeated motifs is that as long as the economy is kicking, most Chinese don’t give a damn about human rights and censorship and corruption. Once things slow down and people have more time (and more fear), as they see their opportunities dimming, as they realize the joy ride they were counting on was finite while the ruling classes are doing just fine – will they lose some of that Zhongguo jia you spirit and begin to demand their government do better? Will they look at they way America ousted the Republicans, and demand that same freedom? Short answer: probably not; at least not yet. China is better positioned to weather the current storm without enough rampant misery in the cards to get people thinking about revolution. The government can still spend its way out of this mess they way it usually does. One day China will face an economic moment of truth, the way America is facing one now. I’m pretty sure this isn’t it. Yet.

I swore I wouldn’t post anything today, that I’d focus only on my homework. The Internet is such a monumental distraction. And that will be the subject of an upcoming new post.