I've been meaning to write about this at length, in the context of some longer "ohmigod the world is going to hell, and I'm panicking" type post, but since I haven't gotten around to that yet, I want to call your attention to an excellent series in the Los Angeles Times about the dire condition of the earth's oceans. This is a five-part series, but a few graphs from the first article should give you an idea of just how serious this is -- "sobering" doesn't begin to cover it:

MORETON BAY, AUSTRALIA -- The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour.

When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

"It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked."

As the weed blanketed miles of the bay over the last decade, it stained fishing nets a dark purple and left them coated with a powdery residue. When fishermen tried to shake it off the webbing, their throats constricted and they gasped for air...

...The venomous weed, known to scientists as Lyngbya majuscula, has appeared in at least a dozen other places around the globe. It is one of many symptoms of a virulent pox on the world's oceans.

In many places -- the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway -- some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing "the rise of slime."

For many years, it was assumed that the oceans were too vast for humanity to damage in any lasting way. "Man marks the Earth with ruin," wrote the 19th century poet Lord Byron. "His control stops with the shore."

Even in modern times, when oil spills, chemical discharges and other industrial accidents heightened awareness of man's capacity to injure sea life, the damage was often regarded as temporary.

But over time, the accumulation of environmental pressures has altered the basic chemistry of the seas.

The causes are varied, but collectively they have made the ocean more hospitable to primitive organisms by putting too much food into the water.

Industrial society is overdosing the oceans with basic nutrients -- the nitrogen, carbon, iron and phosphorous compounds that curl out of smokestacks and tailpipes, wash into the sea from fertilized lawns and cropland, seep out of septic tanks and gush from sewer pipes.

Modern industry and agriculture produce more fixed nitrogen -- fertilizer, essentially -- than all natural processes on land. Millions of tons of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, produced by burning fossil fuels, enter the ocean every day.

These pollutants feed excessive growth of harmful algae and bacteria.

At the same time, overfishing and destruction of wetlands have diminished the competing sea life and natural buffers that once held the microbes and weeds in check.

The consequences are evident worldwide.

In addition, our ocean waters are becoming increasingly acidic -- from the same causes as global warming:

Scientists estimate that nearly 500 billion tons of the gas have been absorbed by the oceans since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That is more than a fourth of all the CO2 that humanity has emitted into the atmosphere. Eventually, 80% of all human-generated carbon dioxide is expected to find its way into the sea.

Carbon dioxide moves freely between air and sea in a process known as molecular diffusion. The exchange occurs in a film of water at the surface. Carbon dioxide travels wherever concentrations are lowest. If levels in the atmosphere are high, the gas goes into the ocean. If they are higher in the sea, as they have been for much of the past, the gas leaves the water and enters the air.

If not for the CO2 pumped into the skies in the last century, more of the gas would leave the sea than would enter it.

"We have reversed that direction," said Ken Caldeira, an expert on ocean chemistry and carbon dioxide at the Carnegie Institution's department of global ecology, based at Stanford University...

...Scientists say the acidification of the oceans won't be arrested unless the output of CO2 from factories, power plants and automobiles is substantially reduced. Even now, the problem may be irreversible.

"One thing we know for certain is it's not going to be a good thing for the ocean," Barry said. "We just don't know how bad it will be."

I've had the sense for some time now that we are balanced on the edge of a precipice, in more ways than one. Poised at the brink of a region-wide Middle Eastern war, of economic collapse, of encroaching fascism, any number of worst-case scenarios, none of which are likely to improve as long as the current regime occupies the White House. But after reading things like this, it's no wonder to me that Al Gore has chosen to forego another presidential run and devote himself to fighting global warming. As horrific as our political and social problems are at present, just about everything tends to pale in the face of severe climate change, mass extinctions and the death of our oceans.

Real solutions will have to arise out of our sadly dysfunctional political systems and global diplomacy -- and I don't expect much progress from the US government in the next couple of years (no wonder Ah-nuld's Kuh-lee-phone-eyuh and a number of states are raising their own internal standards and making separate deals with sovereign countries. California Uber Alles, baby!). In the meantime, we can at least spread the word. It's a small thing in the face of such staggering problems, but you have to start somewhere, I guess.

It's either that, or eat your jellyfish.

cross-posted at the paper tiger

cross-posted at the paper tiger

Last month, I wrote about a wrenching Washington Post article about the appalling lack of basic supplies for American troops in Iraq and the tragic consequences. In addition to this lengthy feature article, the journalist and the father she profiled participated in an online chat at the Post. Brian Hart, the father of a soldier who died after being shot riding in an unarmored Humvee, emphasized that American soldiers still needed support, and not just slapping a yellow "Support the troops!" magnet on your SUV bumper either. He recommended several blogs that gave information on how you really could support the troops.

Anyone who knows me or who has followed my blog for any length of time knows that I am utterly opposed to the Iraq war, that I think it is an appalling waste of lives, American and Iraqi, and quite possibly the biggest strategic blunder in the history of American foreign policy. It is a moral travesty, one of many committed by an Adminisration whose corruption and lust for power seem to have no limits.

But I was touched by this father's plea. I started exploring the blogs he mentioned. In some ways, it was a disturbing trip. This was just a day or so after the two kidnapped US soldiers had been found, tortured and killed, their bodies booby-trapped with explosives. The front-page poster on one of the blogs, a woman (a soldier's wife? a soldier's mother? I don't know), began her post, "Now can we kill them?" or words along those lines. The level of violent anger, of hatred that she expressed was so white-hot that I couldn't get through the post. I wanted to respond, to say something about how sorry I was, but didn't she get it yet? That sentiments like hers were a big part of what was fueling this wretched situation? Now, in light of revelations that those soldiers' horrific deaths may have been to avenge the rape and murder of an Iraqi teen and her family, it's all too easy to discern the pattern, the vicious cycle of hatred, barbarism and revenge.

But. And yet. The soldiers who are fighting this war are fighting in my name as an American, whether I want them to or not. They are frequently living in miserable conditions, under constant threat, in a war with no boundaries, no battle-lines, no clear-cut enemies and few certain friends.

So I found a website called Soldiers' Angels, where you can "adopt" a soldier who may not have a good support system at home and could use letters and care packages and the like.

I signed up. Committed to writing a letter a week and sending a care package every month or so. Shortly after filling out the forms, I received an email back from the organization with a message from "my" soldier. I won't tell you his name or where he is; we are supposed to keep that information private. But here's a part of what he wrote:

I don't really need much but we don't really have a lot of food and hygiene products. I have lost almost 30 pounds because of not eating that much. We have mre's but you can only take so much before you get sick of eating them."

The heat, he added, is almost unbearable.

I got a letter out right away and the first care package two days later. Of course it's hard to know what the reality is of a situation that I can't verify. I could be getting a line of b.s., who knows? But I assume he's telling the truth. And I wonder, how can the wealthiest country in the world have soldiers in a war zone who do not have enough to eat? We are not talking about the days of trench warfare here, with people cut off from supply lines and having to live out of cans because there's no way to get them other food. Particularly when KBR and friends have constructed permanent bases, small towns with Pizza Huts and ice cream stands and taco bars, how is it that guys elsewhere are only getting MREs?

I may never know. I'm told not to expect to hear back from my soldier. I may, I may not.

It was an odd feeling, packing up a box of stuff for a guy I've never met and know virtually nothing about. I sent a tub of cookies, packages of beef jerkey and trail mix, some sunscreen, toothpaste, dried fruit, paperbacks, a Sudoko book. I've got another half-full bag for the next package. I mean, how can you not want to send food to a guy who's lost thirty pounds, who's trying to survive getting shot at in 140 degree heat?

Writing letters to a person you've don't know is odd as well. The organization asks that you keep the letters positive, "light" - the last thing these guys need is bad news from someone who is supposed to help support them. I would never write about my own feelings regarding this war. He doesn't need to hear that from me, I figure. But I'm not going to indulge in a bunch of "hero" rhetoric either. I can't. I just can't. Instead I talk about, well, pretty trivial stuff. The weather. The San Diego Padres winning season. Stuff like that. I wish him and his buddies well, and tell him I'll be writing again soon.

I went to mail my second card the other day. There's a post office station in a sundries store close to where I work. It's run by Korean ladies. The older one is generally pretty brusque; the younger, sort of softer and shy. She doesn't speak much English. The younger woman was there the day I went to mail the letter. I had to buy a book of stamps too, and I figured, I'd just use one of those. But the clerk, seeing that this was going overseas, to a military post office box, selected a stamp for me. A Purple Heart stamp.

Seeing this, I just wanted to cry.  Thinking about this young man, a stranger, over there, the appalling, horrific waste of it all, it fills me with despair.

Tomorrow or Tuesday, I will buy a couple of things for the second care package, to supplement the crackers and beef jerky and trailmix I already have. Some razors and deodorant, maybe, and toothbrushes. And another tub of cookies. The troops really like cookies, I'm told.

Photograph by L.X. Gollin

After the positive news reported here, this story in the NY Times feels like a punch in the gut:

For as long as anyone can remember, Anyie Apoui and his people have lived among the majestic trees and churning rivers in an untouched corner of Borneo, catching fish and wild game, cultivating rice and making do without roads. But all that is about to change.

The Indonesian government has signed a deal with China that will level much of the remaining tropical forests in an area so vital it is sometimes called the lungs of Southeast Asia.

For China, the deal is a double bounty: the wood from the forest will provide flooring and furniture for its ever-expanding middle class, and in its place will grow vast plantations for palm oil, an increasingly popular ingredient in detergents, soaps and lipstick.

 The forest-to-palm-oil deal, one of an array of projects that China said it would develop in Indonesia as part of a $7 billion investment spree last year, illustrates the increasingly symbiotic relationship between China's need for a wide variety of raw materials, and its Asian neighbors' readiness to provide them, often at enormous environmental cost.

Since this article has disappeared behind the NYT's subscription wall, I'll quote at length...

cross-posted at the paper tiger

Some interesting environmental news related to China.

First, activist Yu Xiaogang, founder of the environmental group, Green Watershed, is one of this year's recipients of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, which he accepted at a ceremony in San Francisco. It is one of the continuing paradoxes of modern China, where political competition is relentlessly stifled, that an environmental activist who organizes local communities that are impacted by the seemingly endless hydroelectric projects on China's rivers is able to do work which directly empowers people to participate in decisions that affect their lives. Go read the interview with Yu at Grist Magazine. Here's an excerpt:

Q: I understand that the watershed project inspired many local residents to speak publicly about their experiences. How did you encourage them to break their tradition of silence?

A: For about six years, we have had several kinds of workshops in Lashi Lake, and all of them are very participatory. So the local people have practiced this approach, and gradually they know that they can speak for their own interests, and change their lives themselves. For instance, one of the local people participated in a United Nations hydropower meeting in Beijing, where he could freely dialogue with hydropower CEOs and the decision-makers in the Chinese central government. He could talk with these leaders to protect his interests and his community's interests.

Q: What kind of opposition did you encounter as you developed the project?

A: There were many challenges -- there are still many rumors about me, about my organization, about the management of the project. There are some rumors that the organization is illegal, and that any people who participate in it should be careful. Many people think I have a secret agenda.

Any activity that involves organizing people outside of the CCP's auspices involves a certain degree of risk. Kudos and congratulations to Yu Xiaogang. China's future depends on people like him.

Several British papers have reported on a Green city to be built near Shanghai. The most comprehensive article is in the Independent:

Soaring demand for energy and heavy dependence on coal, China is often depicted as the world's environmental bogeyman. Yet Dongtan, a ground-breaking eco-city to be built near Shanghai, is already setting new standards in sustainable urban planning and inspiring decision-makers worldwide - including London's mayor, Ken Livingstone.

Dongtan will be built just 3km from a bird sanctuary whose varied residents include the endangered black-faced spoonbill (just one thousand of these large, white wading birds are estimated to remain in the wild). And its location, in protected wetlands on Chongming Island at the mouth of the Yangtze river, doesn't exactly sound like a good starting point for an environmentally sustainable city with a population of half a million.

But Dongtan's designers insist that it's a blueprint for how cities could support, rather than destroy, the environment. For its two major goals are to generate zero carbon emissions and cut average energy demands by two thirds via a unique city layout, energy infrastructure and building design.

"Two years ago we were approached to assess the likely ecological impact of developing a city in an area adjacent to protected wetland," says Alejandro Gutierrez, design leader for Dongtan at Arup Urban Design, London. "Our belief was that there was a wonderful opportunity to build a new city that, through its design and construction, would also address a broader range of concerns, such as air quality, and energy demand."...

...Dongtan will be built on an island that has grown over the past 100 years from silt dumped by the Yangtze. The Chinese government has consistently reclaimed land from the marshlands around it, but the plan is that Dongtan will be the area's last piece of development - so further silt deposits will simply increase the available natural habitat for the birds.

Well, the proximity of the bird sanctuary does give one pause. But the plans for Dongtan sound pretty impressive:

The city itself is being designed around a series of village-style neighbourhoods to make it pedestrian- rather than car-friendly. The alignment of streets will capitalise on the microclimates created by urban development, and the width and aspect of buildings will optimise the benefits of shade and direct sun to ensure efficient energy use. An integrated mix of residential, commercial and industrial areas - common in the West but unusual in China - will ensure people walk to most places they need to reach.

Technology to both generate and save energy will be integrated into buildings and all modes of transport. The emphasis is on making eco-living the norm, rather than trumpeting Dongtan's green credentials with bold - and, potentially, intimidating - statements.

"We don't want to replicate a European city in China, or create an alienating futuristic environment," says urban designer Braulio Morera, who is also working on the Arup team. "We want to reinterpret a Chinese city - and Chinese urban lifestyle - for the 21st century. Bicycles, for example, will be a major feature, as will boats, but the bikes will be powered by renewables, and the boats by hydrogen."

Dongtan's developers are also commited to returning agricultural land around the city to its original wetland state. This will create a buffer zone between the city and the marshes that will cut down the spread of pollutants to areas where the black-faced spoonbills congregate. Farmland around the city will grow food for the residents.

The project has implications far beyond China. For better or worse, cities are the future homes for most of humanity. A project like Dongtan could provide a blueprint for sustainable development around the world. It's a model we desperately need.

See my earlier diary for background

This is not exactly good news. But because there has been no word from Hao, because the attempts of his family to handle this quietly and without too much outside publicity have not worked, the campaign to free him is escalating with a letter-writing campaign and a petition to President Hu Jintao for Wu Hao's immediate release. President Hu will be visiting the United States from April 18th through the 21st. Originally the hope was that he would consider releasing Wu Hao as a gesture of good-will in advance of that visit. Obviously this hasn't happened. Whether this is because Hao's detention is especially sensitive or because it simply hasn't been brought to Hu Jintao's attention is impossible to say. But now is the time to try and get some publicity for Hao.

freehaowu

[promoted by BooMan. A friend of a friend is in need. Please, help spread the word.]

I met Hao Wu a few years ago. At the time he was an aspiring screenwriter working for an internet company. From Sichuan via Beijing, Hao had been in the US for over a decade. I was really impressed by the quality of his prose - in English, his second language, mind you - his passion, heart and vision.

Hao followed his dream in spades. He decided to return to China, to Beijing, to see what had happened to the city he'd once known and experience China's changes first-hand. He took a month long trip along the Silk Road and sent back regular dispatches. Then he produced his first film, Beijing Or Bust, a documentary about the lives of Chinese Americans trying to navigate contemporary Beijing. He then started a blog by the same title, in which he writes about his own navigations through today's Beijing. There are some truly wonderful essays: evocative, original and informative, covering aspects of contemporary China that you will rarely find elsewhere.

One continuing thread was Hao's search for a new documentary subject. He'd finally settled on "family churches," not quite legal but not really underground religious congregations - go here for Hao's vivid and scary post about his visit to one such church when the police show up.

The last email exchange I had with Hao was on Feb. 21st. I'd owed him an email. We chatted about various things, his new position as editor for Global Voices Online and the need for volunteers to post about what's happening in the Chinese blogosphere.

Then, silence.

Hao Wu , freehaowu

[Promoted by susanhu. This is an important take on Jill Carroll's situation that I've not read elsewhere.]

Written last night, cross-posted at the paper tiger

Well, one of them anyway. Hey, I'm pissed off about a lot of things tonight. But I'll leave the gross outrages to other, more articulate bloggers (check out this post from Digby for a little soul-soothing, if you are in need of it, as I was).

Here's my smaller outrage of the day: the headline to this AP article about abducted journalist Jill Carroll -

"New Video Shows Kidnapped Reporter Weeping."

Followed by this lede and opening:

The U.S. journalist Jill Carroll, weeping and veiled, appeared on a new videotape aired Monday by Al-Jazeera, and the Arab television station said she appealed for the release of all Iraqi women prisoners.

The video was dated Saturday, two days after the U.S. military released five Iraqi women from custody.

Carroll, 28, was crying and wore a conservative Islamic veil as she spoke to the camera, sitting in front of a yellow and black tapestry. The Al-Jazeera newscaster said she appealed for U.S. and Iraqi authorities to free all women prisoners to help "in winning her release."

Well, okay. It's legitimate to report that Carroll was crying in the video. But to lead with it? ... continued below ...

cross-posted at the paper tiger

It takes a lot to flabbergast me these days. I mean is anyone really shocked by the relevation that the NSA is engaged in domestic surveillance, authorized by the Preznit, without any judicial review, not even by the secret court which generally reviews such things (apparently any kind of oversight is too much oversight for the Bush Administration, which certainly leads one to question just whom they are surveilling, and why).

Here's what it took for me to gaze upon my computer screen in slack-jawed amazement: this story, via the invaluable Digby, about a student who was visited by agents from Homeland Security because, wait for it...

He tried to check out a copy of Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book" from a university library.

No, really.

Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."...

...The professors had been asked to comment on a report that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to spy on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002 in this country.

The eavesdropping was apparently done without warrants.

The Little Red Book, is a collection of quotations and speech excerpts from Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung.

In the 1950s and '60s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was required reading. Although there are abridged versions available, the student asked for a version translated directly from the original book.

The student told Professor Pontbriand and Dr. Williams that the Homeland Security agents told him the book was on a "watch list." They brought the book with them, but did not leave it with the student, the professors said.

Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that some of his calls are monitored.

"My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think," he said.

Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk.

"I shudder to think of all the students I've had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that," he said. "Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless."

So can I just say, I am so going to Guantanamo? I mean, I have maybe four Little Red Books floating around my house, in both English and Chinese, including one featuring Mao's then "Closest Comrade in Arms" Lin Biao's calligraphy on the frontispiece, which I figure, given the brief tenancy of anyone occupying that particular position, has got to be some kind of collector's item.

In fact, I've had one of my "Xiao Hong Shu" since high school, when my school represented "Red China" in the annual Model United Nations conference. Which, come to think of it, is probably another black mark on my permanent record.

And boy, if any of these hard-working Homeland Security agents have actually surveyed my house - I'm doomed. What would they make of the wall of books dealing with the history of the Peoples Republic of China? The Collected Works of Mao Zedong? The compilations of CCP documents? The framed Four Modernizations posters on my wall, one of the "Peoples' Premier," Zhou Enlai, showing his domestic side, spinning yarn in Yenan, the other of a rosey-cheeked, chubby baby holding up this, well, I'm not sure what it's supposed to be, some kind of festive, lantern thingie with a nuclear atom in the center and a rocket ship on top? Not to mention my, erm, Chairman Mao piggybank.

Remind me again. Was it ultra-leftist, unreconstructed Red Guards who flew planes into the WTC?

But maybe I've got this whole thing wrong. Maybe owning such things isn't the problem. Given the obsession that the Bush Administration seems to have with wanting to access library records (without the patrons' knowledge), well, maybe it's libraries that are the real danger here, the subterranean threat to American security.

Just remember: if library cards are terrorized, soon only terrorists will have library cards. Or something.

[From the diaries by susanhu . . . TIger Leaping Gorge . . . for its name alone it must be saved.]

By Other Lisa, cross-posted at the paper tiger...

The invaluable Three Gorges Probe, a news service/website originally reporting on the infamous Three Gorges Dam, has for some time expanded its focus to deal with other hydroelectric projects in China and their environmental and cultural consequences. They continue their excellent coverage with this translation of a CCTV documentary about local people in one of China's most beautiful natural attractions, Tiger Leaping Gorge, whose ancestral lands may be flooded by future dam building projects on the upper Yangtze (Jinsha) River. Here's an excerpt:  

1. Who is going to break the villagers' rice bowl?

Legend has it that Shangri-La is heaven on earth, a mythical, exotic, dreamy landscape. In Lost Horizon, American novelist James Hilton depicted Shangri-La as a wonderland in which people live in harmony with nature and each other.

Late last century, people found a real Shangri-La in the Hengduan mountain range, where the Jinsha [upper Yangtze] flows in southwest China. Jinjiang town in Diqing Zang autonomous prefecture, Yunnan province, is the real Shangri-La in many people's minds, where a multitude of minority groups, including Yi, Tibetan, Bai, Naxi, Lisu and Miao, have lived together for generations in peace and harmony.

Recently, however, local people have begun to feel uneasy, upset by a piece of news. They have heard that a big dam is to be built on the Jinsha River so that water can be diverted to central Yunnan province and, in particular, to the provincial capital of Kunming. Roughly 100,000 people will have to move if the project goes ahead.

Engineers are conducting surveys of the proposed dam site, and red marks [indicating the future water level of the dam's reservoir] have already been painted on some walls, despite the fact that the central government has not yet approved the project. Although the scheme is still at the feasibility-study stage, everybody here is extremely worried, particularly because they have been given so little information about the project.

Chezhou village, part of Jinjiang town, is one of the places that will be affected if the dam is built. Villagers set off together for the village office, hoping to learn more from village leaders. One of the villagers is 67-year-old Ding Changxiu. Her children are grown now, and have left the village for jobs in the county seat. It would be better for her and her husband to move there to live with their children, but Ding would rather stay put because she loves her native place so much.

Villager: We know nothing about the project. I'm wondering if the village leaders know anything about it. We old peasants deserve to know something about it, don't you think?

Ding Changxiu: I feel as if there's a stone weighing down my heart. I was told we'd have to leave tomorrow! The whole village is on tenterhooks. I just met an elderly woman in the village who swore she'd rather die at home than be driven away. ... Continued BELOW:

(cross-posted at the Paper Tiger)

Once again, Eastsouthwestnorth has done us a great public service by translating a huge chunk of an important article that recently appeared in the Chinese press. In ESWN's words, the article is significant because:

First, the newspaper is the Chinese Youth Daily, an organ of the Chinese Communist Youth League and therefore an article of this nature must have received official blessing from higher up.  The editor-in-chief of Chinese Youth Daily would not dare to publish this without the approval of his superiors at the Chinese Youth League; in turn, they would not have dared to approve this without the approval of someone in the State Council.

    Second, the author is Lung Ying-tai, one of the top public intellectuals brought up in Taiwan, educated in the United States and Germany and presently affiliated with Hong Kong University.  She had been named as one of the top 50 public intellectuals of the Chinese world, and then promptly attacked by official Chinese media for being unduly influential.

    Third, the topic of the article is Taiwan and its mainstream values of democracy and freedom.  This article goes a long way to explaining that the overall reluctance of the people of Taiwan for immediate re-unification has little or nothing to do with any independence movement but much more with a lifestyle that has democracy and freedom ingrained in every aspect of daily life.  The appearance of this article may be interpreted as a relaxation of media control about discussion on the Taiwan issue.  How shall the government or people in mainland China respond to what Lung Ying-tai is saying?

Talk about mixed messages from China regarding the media, with the appearance of this piece virtually coninciding with the detention of the prominent reporter Ching Cheong in Guangzhou.

But one should never assume that the CCP is a monolithic entity these days, with everyone marching in lockstep to the same party line. There are factions that strongly favor reform and greater openness in public discourse, and there are factions which most certainly do not. Still, coming practically on the heels of the Anti-Secession law, you could get whiplash trying to follow the debate on Taiwan, particularly when the article under discussion contains passages like this:

People in Taiwan are accustomed to living in a democratic system.  This means that the democracy system holds the same place in their daily lives as as daily necessities such as tea, rice, cooking oil and salt.

Here is one such person.  His government building is open.  There are no guards at the door to check his documents.  He comes out of the government building just as he would come out of a shopping mall.  If he has to go through a procedure, apply for a document or get a few stamps on some documents, there is no barrier.  He gets a queueing number and he waits, and no one will jump in the line ahead of him.  When his turn comes, the workers will not give him a hard time or cause him trouble.  When he is done, he can wander around the government building, browse in the bookstore and have a cup of coffee.  The coffee and the snack is brought over by a mentally handicapped youth, because the government requires that every government office must employ mentally or physically handicapped people in certain ratios.  He sits in center court to sip his coffee and if he sees the mayor walk past, he can run over to get an autograph.

If he waits too long at the government office, or if the attitude of the government worker was bad, he can cast his vote for another mayoral candidate in four years' time.

There's much, much more. Do go and read the whole thing.

[From the diaries by susanbhu. Cross-posted at the Paper Tiger]

My dear friend Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink, has been in Iran this past week with a Code Pink delegation. If you're not familiar with Code Pink, they are, to quote from their mission statement, "a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement that seeks positive social change through proactive, creative protest and non-violent direct action." Emphasis on creative - Code Pink's protests are attention-getting, eye-catching, on point in terms of message, and most of all, they are damn funny. You've probably seen one of their giant "pink slips" given out to many of those officials we'd all like to see fired. They've disrupted every major Republican event of note in the past few years, including the Bolton hearings and Bush's convention acceptance speech.

But this email from Iran is anything but funny, as Jodie writes from another country that may be on the verge of experiencing the shock and awfulness of George Bush's foreign policy.

Jodie writes:

Our last night in Iran, it's 2am and I am looking out at the park along the river in Esfahan, a fabulously beautiful city, full of parks and squares and monuments more beautiful than the next.  It is as beyond my imagining as it is all the Iranians I have met this last week, that the US could be thinking of bombing anything or anyone here ... below:

(cross posted at the Paper Tiger)

Philip Pan reports in the Washington Post that many of China's intellectuals, journalists and CCP reformers have concluded that Hu Jintao, far from opening up China's political process to greater transparency and the competition of ideas, has instead presided over a crack-down on public discourse and a call for increased Party discipline with rhetoric that echoes that of the Cultural Revolution:  

Hu has placed particular emphasis on tightening the party's control over public opinion, presiding over a crackdown to restore discipline to state media and intimidate dissident intellectuals. He has also gone further than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, by adopting new measures to regulate discussions on university Internet sites and the activities of nongovernmental organizations.

The crackdown has been a great disappointment to scholars and party officials who welcomed Hu's rise to power in the hope he might be more open to political reform than Jiang. After giving him the benefit of the doubt during a long political honeymoon, many have concluded Hu is an ideologically rigid and exceedingly cautious apparatchik who recognizes the party's authoritarian system is in trouble but wants to repair it.

"He is the ultimate product of the system," said one party academic with access to the leadership who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He never studied overseas or had much contact with the outside world. He was educated by the system, spent his entire career in the system, and his values are the same as the system's."

As an example of the kind of rhetoric that has alarmed reformers, Pan cites Hu's address to the full Central Committee at the end of September:

Hu warned that "hostile forces" were trying to undermine the party by "using the banner of political reform to promote Western bourgeois parliamentary democracy, human rights and freedom of the press," according to a person given excerpts of the speech.

Hu said China's enemies had not abandoned their "strategic plot to Westernize and split China." He blamed the fall of the Soviet Union on policies of "openness and pluralism" and on the efforts of "international monopoly capital with the United States as its leader." And in blunt language that party veterans said recalled Mao Zedong's destructive Cultural Revolution, he urged the leadership to be alert to the danger of subversive thinking.

"Don't provide a channel for incorrect ideological points of view," the person who had read some of the speech quoted Hu as saying. "When one appears, strike at it, and gain the initiative by subduing the enemy."

Hu also was said to have commented that while North Korea and Cuba's economic policies were regrettably flawed, their political policies were essentially correct - as though there was no connection between the utter poverty of North Korea and its seriously whacked-out neo-Maoist Cult of Personality politics.

Writers have been arrested, lawyers disbarred, professors fired, restrictions on the internet increased - not, as some have noted, the actions of a man confident of his or his Party's authority.

Still, I really have to wonder, in this day and age, how it is that Hu thinks censoring public dialog and using Cultural Revolution rhetoric is going to shore up his power. China is not North Korea. It isn't the country I first saw in 1979, stunned and blinking as it emerged from the trauma of its recent history. China has made the choice to engage with the world. Restricting the flow of information is not only counter-productive, it's on a practical level, impossible, regardless of the technological sophistication of the Great Firewall. Every foreigner carries with him or her the virtues and flaws of their own culture; every Chinese who studies abroad comes back with the awareness that there are different ways of interpreting history and different methods of doing things.

China was able to maintain rigid political control when the government and the Party controlled nearly every aspect of Chinese peoples' lives. But that isn't the case any more. The government has ceded that portion of its authority. Hu apparently thinks that rigid political control combined with pumped-up nationalism will keep China's people in line, will be sufficient to deal with ups and downs in the economy, with corruption, with economic dislocation, with environmental devastation. I personally have my doubts. People need a real safety valve, not just permission to demonstrate against Japanese sins of the past, however justified Chinese anger might be. People need a mechanism to express their grievances, to have their wants addressed, to exchange ideas that might improve the way things work. A country as large and complex as China needs this sort of exchange, I think, in order to function at its best. And when things go wrong, perhaps to function at all.

(cross-posted at the Paper Tiger )

Well, this should be interesting...

China's foreign minister called Tuesday for an end to anti-Japanese protests, the first signal that the leadership may no longer welcome the sometimes violent demonstrations that have underpinned a new and more confrontational approach to Japan.

The minister, Li Zhaoxing, told a meeting of the Communist Party's propaganda department attended by 3,500 people that government, military and party officials, as well as "the masses," should stay off the streets, state media reported.

"Cadres and the masses must believe in the party and the government's ability to properly handle all issues linked to Sino-Japanese relations," Mr. Li was quoted as saying. "Calmly, rationally and legally express your own views. Do not attend marches that have not been approved. Do not do anything that might upset social stability."

(SNIP)

The big test of the order will come next week. Urban residents have been sending text and e-mail messages to one another calling for major marches on May 1, China's traditional Labor Day, and on May 4.

May 4 is significant in Chinese history because it is the anniversary of the first major student-led nationalist uprising, in 1919. Popular outrage over the Versailles Treaty, which gave German-controlled territory in China to Japan after World War I, sparked that protest.

Authorities generally step up surveillance and harassment of critics of the government on such anniversaries to guard against unrest.

(I wrote about the historical background of May 4th at length here, for those curious)

It's tempting to look for historical parallels here, and I have no doubt that the demonstration's organizers are well aware of the resonances and are invoking them deliberately.On the other side, the last thing the Chinese government wants is to clash with students on May 4th, a date they claim as significant in the founding of the CCP. Whether today's students are willing to risk what the original May 4th students did (or their counterparts in 1989, for that matter) remains to be seen. Today's Chinese government, whatever its deficiencies, is not the warlord government of 1919, and the Japanese are not colonizing Manchuria. China's capitalists, technocrats and emerging middle class have a lot to lose in any serious break with Japan, as do many ordinary Chinese workers. But as one commentator pointed out (and if I could remember who this was, I'd certainly link to him/her), China's students are not necessarily the stakeholders with at-risk investments here. Many come from less than affluent backgrounds; all face heavy competition for employment and a great deal of economic uncertainty. Maybe they are angry enough, regardless of how misdirected their anger might be, to hit the streets again come May 4th.

If I had to bet, I'd say they won't. But I sure wouldn't bet the farm on it.

(cross-posted at the Paper Tiger)
For top-notch political theater, you couldn't beat the fireworks at yesterday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on controversial nominee for Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

If you haven't been following this story, it's hard to know where to start. Perhaps with Bolton's past statements on the United Nations (he recommended eliminating the top 20 stories, for one). Or his remarkable timing during then Secretary of State Colin Powell's sensitive negotiations with North Korea over their nuclear aspirations (Bolton called Dear Leader Kim Jong Il an evil dwarf, or words to that effect, which though there are many things one could say about an absolute dictator who favors pompadours, elevator shoes, fine cognac and kidnapping Japanese film directors while his subjects are eating bark, does not exactly illustrate a light diplomatic touch). Or the repeated allegations of his abusing subordinates, of his trying to fire CIA analysts who refuse to cook data to his specifications, his withholding of intelligence from superiors Powell and Rice. Perhaps my favorite tidbit is the story of Melody Townsel, a US AID worker (and staunch Republican) who provoked Bolton's ire in Kyrgyzstan and claims: "When I was dispatching a letter to AID, my hell began. Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel, throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door, and genuinely behaving like a madman. I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton then routinely visited me to pound on the door and shout threats" (here's a link to the Daily Kos diary that brought this story to the public's attention).

But in spite of the fact that John Bolton appears to be a bullying, lying, stark-raving lunatic, as usual, Republicans in the Senate were lining up to support the choice of their Dear Leader, Bush the Second. I mean, why not? If they could confidentally vote in an obsequious toady indelibly linked with torturing people for Attorney General, why not John Bolton for United Nations ambassador?

Except that a few Republican Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee were said to be wavering: Chuck Hagel - who has on his staff one of the analysts supposedly threatened by Bolton, and Lincoln Chaffee, one of the last of that dying breed, the so-called moderate Republican. With the steady drip of allegations of less than seemly conduct by Mr. Bolton and rumors of much worse to come in the pipeline, committee Chairman Richard Lugar tried an unprecedented parliamentary maneuver - he moved to cut off debate and bring the Bolton nomination to an immediate vote on the Senate floor.

"Furious" does not adequately describe the reaction of the Senate Foreign Committee's Democratic members. One observer likened Joe Biden to a wolverine. He was vicious, exposing his large white teeth in a rictus snarl that resembled a smile only in that the corners of his mouth were elevated above the midline. Biden called Bolton a liar. Christopher Dodd, armed with flow-charts, stated that Bolton should be indicted, should these allegations be proven true. John Kerry characterized Lugar's maneuvering as "shocking," and was, how to put it? Well, dignified, direct and sadly Presidential. "Is the chairman saying it doesn't matter what we know about John Bolton?" asked Kerry. "If you don't know some of the allegations that have come across the transom then you are voting in the blind. Maybe you want to vote in the blind."

With a 10 to 8 majority in the Committee, however, it looked as though Lugar would have his way, and the Bolton nomination would reach the Senate floor, where Democrats would have to find six Republican dissenters to block the nomination. And given that in recent years, Congressional Republicans seem to have had loyalty microchips implanted in their brains, finding six such rebels did not seem likely. Even Hagel, the Senator with the staffer Bolton abused, stated he would reluctantly vote to send on Bolton's nomination if he had to vote now, but that he might not vote for Bolton in the full Senate vote. As for Chaffee, the supposedly "reasonable" moderate Republican, he just sat there, quivering and occasionally equivocating, middle-of-the-road roadkill.

And then, out of nowhere, Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich spoke up. He had not said a word up to this point and had not attended last week's two day confirmation hearing. First he apologized for his absence. He'd had to attend to other duties. And then...

"I don't feel comfortable voting today," said Voinovich. Senator Dodd's presentation had planted serious doubts in his mind about Bolton's fitness for the job.

Take-down! Lugar, whose blinking over the unexpectedly ferocious Democratic resistance had already reached semaphoric speeds, was now twitching wildly as he watched his power play collapse.

Because that was that. A 9-9 tie would be essentially a rejection by the Senate Foreign Relations' committee of the Bolton nomination. It could still reach the Senate floor,  but passage by the full Senate under such circumstances would be doubtful, with other Republican moderates now free to vote their residual consciences.

In the end, the Committee voted unanimously to delay the vote on Bolton for three weeks so that they could examine the allegations in detail and gather corroborating evidence.

Will Bolton tough it out? Develop a sudden "nanny problem?" Enroll in an anger management course? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen!