Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University. 

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Can we Sart Calling it Wilsongate Yet?

THERE'S A LONG history in this city of combat over unauthorized disclosures of classified information. We have tended to be wary of criminal investigations in search of leakers, which are usually fruitless and can have a chilling effect on legitimate disclosure. But we've also recognized that the government has a right and duty to take steps to protect certain secret information. "

The latest case involves the suggestion that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak and other journalists out of a vindictive spirit and a desire to undercut the agent's husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Bush administration. The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate the matter because the intentional disclosure of a covert agent's identity is a violation of federal law. But the request for investigation is not what makes this incident so unusual.

What sets this case apart is that it was a Bush administration official who turned (anonymously) on other Bush administration comrades. We know this because on Sunday Post writers Mike Allen and Dana Priest reported that "a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." The senior Bush administration official told The Post, "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge." Asked about the motive for disclosing the behavior of other administration officials, the purported whistleblower said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility.
So who is Deep Throat?
  

3:02 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Evangelical Christians and I Have Never Been on the Same Page

...same for Nicholas Kristof, but he reserves the right to change his mind from time to time; so do I.
MAPUTO, Mozambique: Mention the words 'evangelical missionary,' and many Americans conjure up an image of redneck zealots' forcing starving children to be baptized before they get a few crusts of bread.

In reality, the wave of activity abroad by U.S. evangelicals is one of the most important — and welcome — trends in our foreign relations. I disagree strongly with most evangelical Christians, theologically and politically. But I tip my hat to them abroad.

In a house beside the filthy garbage dump here in Mozambique's capital, a 17-year-old named Sonia Angeline was giving birth in early June. She had no doctor and no midwife, and after four days in labor, she was a hairsbreadth from becoming one more Mozambican woman to die in childbirth.

Read this in full.
 

9:55 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, September 28, 2003

Daily Dish (of velvet crap)

Perhaps if Mr. Sullivan got stoned occasionally he would read something else entirely into that fund-raising ramble. But, really, for true, folks, does anybody--even from the right--take this Andrew dude seriously?

If you're not a little alarmed about the prospect of a president Clark after reading this, then I don't know what to say. What on earth is he talking about? How can he say so much and so little at the same time? The Wall Street Journal says he sounds like a Republican. I'd say that's a bit insulting to Republicans. There are a lot of passages in there that make him sound stoned.
"Don't Bogard that Joint, my friend, pass it over to"...him.
  

9:06 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Maybe Dubya Needs to Consult a Numerologist

All of your numbers are coming up craps, Mr. Bush. But they will probably let you keep the ranch--you might have to take in some boarders, though, on the cheap.

Sept. 26 — In a report that offered fresh ammunition to critics of President Bush’s economic policy, the government said Friday that the nation’s median income fell nearly $500 in 2002 and the poverty rate climbed for a second straight year.

THE CENSUS BUREAU REPORTED that 34.6 million people, or 12.1 percent of the population, were living in poverty, up from 32.9 million people or 11.7 percent in 2001, when the economy fell into recession after a decade of growth. The median household income, when adjusted for inflation, fell 1.1 percent to $42,409, according to the bureau, which released two comprehensive annual reports looking at poverty and income in America.

"These estimates reflect the effect of the recession that began in March 2001 and ended in November 2001," said Daniel Weinberg, chief of the Census Bureau division that produced the report. He noted that median household income has fallen 3.4 percent since 1999, after adjusting for inflation, statistically the same as in the 1989-92 period, which followed the 1990-91 recession.
Deja vu all over again; ask Pappy what the deal is, Junior.
 

8:54 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Say It Ain't So, Joe!

It's Dubya, Joe. The folks who will most likely determine the nomination and then the election want to hear what you're going to do differently from Junior. By the way, what are you going to do differently than Mr. Bush?
WASHINGTON--Joe Lieberman on Friday accused new presidential rival Wesley Clark of joining the Democratic Party for "political convenience, not conviction" as the retired general came under increased scrutiny.

Lieberman's criticism, leveled one day after Clark emerged unscathed from his first debate, underscored how quickly campaign strategies are shifting in the wake of two political phenomena: Clark's burst upon the crowded scene Sept. 17 and Howard Dean's front-running, Internet-driven campaign.

Dean, a former governor of Vermont, was criticized over several issues in Thursday's debate while Clark was largely given a pass. The day after, Lieberman took issue with Clark's support for the Bush administration's policies in a May 2001 address to the Arkansas GOP.

"I was fighting (Bush's) reckless economic strategy while Wes Clark was working to forward the Republican agenda by raising money for the Republican Party," the Connecticut senator said.
Nice line, it's even true; but that was way before the Patriot Act nonsense, the muck hit the propeller in Iraq, and the economy tanked deeper than anyone expected: What have you done with your Senate vote lately, Joe?
 

8:32 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Courtesy of C-SPAN, the General Performed "Presidential" Here in China Also

Three of the four Democrats to be elected president since Truman came from the south. Odd coincidence? Or is there a paradoxical dynamic at play in American politics, society and culture? Maybe some smarter folks than me should ponder upon it.
DOVER, N.H., Sept. 27 -- New Hampshire Democrat Larry Taylor was leaning toward supporting former Vermont governor Howard Dean for president until he turned out on a damp Friday night at New England College in Henniker, N.H., to see retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark. By the time Clark had finished his town hall meeting, Taylor was ready to change his allegiance.

"I think Clark can win," Taylor said. "I don't think Dean can win. I think Dean's going to be pegged as too liberal. He doesn't have the kind of military background and some of the strength that Clark seems to have."

Whatever else Clark's late entry into the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination has done, it has forced the issue of electability back to the top of the agenda for many Democratic and independent voters.

Lately, however, both Lehmens have begun to question whether Dean is the best Democrat to beat Bush. Peter said he finds Dean inconsistent in some of his views. Theresa said Dean is "coming across as a little more abrasive" and appears to let his ego get in his way. Clark, she said, impressed her as someone who could successfully negotiate with foreign leaders. "He certainly presented himself in a very diplomatic but forceful way that I would call presidential," she said.
Presidential indeed; but he also came across as a man who wasn't afraid to be human and say I don't know. He also did a very strange think for a modern politician--he listened to the questions and thought about his answers. You could see him thinking about what he was saying. It will be interesting to see if he can stay that way in the grinding weeks and months ahead.
  

8:02 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




I am Absolutely SHOCKED!

And to think it only took them four months to figure this mindbender out.
Leaders of the House intelligence committee have criticized the U.S. intelligence community for using largely outdated, "circumstantial" and "fragmentary" information with "too many uncertainties" to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda.

Top members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which spent four months combing through 19 volumes of classified material used by the Bush administration to make its case for the war on Iraq, found "significant deficiencies" in the community's ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq, and said it had to rely on "past assessments" dating to when U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998 and on "some new 'piecemeal' intelligence," both of which "were not challenged as a routine matter."

"The absence of proof that chemical and biological weapons and their related development programs had been destroyed was considered proof that they continued to exist," the two committee members said in a letter Thursday to CIA Director George J. Tenet. The Washington Post obtained a copy this weekend.

The letter constitutes a significant criticism of the U.S. intelligence community from a source that does not take such matters lightly. The committee, like all congressional panels, is controlled by Republicans, and its chairman, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), is a former CIA agent and a longtime supporter of Tenet and the intelligence agencies. Goss and the committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), signed the letter. [....]

As to Iraq's ties to terrorists, the committee scrutinized three volumes of data and found "substantial gaps" in credible information from human sources that would have allowed U.S. intelligence agencies "to give policymakers a clear understanding of the nature of the relationship." Instead, the agencies had a "low threshold" or "no threshold" on using information the intelligence community obtained on Iraq's alleged ties to al Qaeda.

"As a result, intelligence reports that might have been screened out by a more rigorous vetting process made their way to the analysts' desks, providing ample room for vagary to intrude," the letter states. The agencies did not clarify which of their reports "were from sources that were credible and which were from sources that would otherwise be dismissed in the absence of any other corroborating intelligence."
Actually, I suppose we should be shocked; but we're not, and that's a very sad and scary fact.
  

7:23 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




CHAMPAGNE CENTRAL

It wouldn't feel real if I didn't also offer up the story from the Trib!
Perhaps the hardest part of being a Cub is having to hear about the team's woeful history from the start of spring training until the end of the season.

Constant reminders of past failures ring in their ears, as though they're doomed to repeat the sins of their predecessors before the first pitch is even thrown.

But Dusty Baker's 2003 Cubs threw the history books out the window, clinching the Central Division title on Saturday with a doubleheader sweep of Pittsburgh while Houston was losing to Milwaukee, setting up a division series showdown with Atlanta.

Kerry Wood will face the Braves' Russ Ortiz in Tuesday night's opener at Turner Field as the Cubs continue their storybook season.

"The first thing Dusty told us this year was you have to respect the history, but it has no bearing on what happens this year," first baseman Eric Karros said. "We've approached the season like that and there's no reason to change that now."

The Cubs won their first division title since 'the Boys of Zimmer' in 1989 and will try to end the 95-year drought since their last World Series title.
I knew I could count on the Trib to keep our joy within Cubbie fan limits; not only do they own the club, they're fans and baseball historians too.
 

6:22 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




How 'bout dem Cubbies!!!

I believe I can hear the fun going on in Wrigleyville all way over here in China! Forgive me folks if get a bit giddy. The last time the North Side Boys won the division title--1989--I was traveling with them and writing a book about their minor league system. It was a blast; the pennant, not the earthquake that jolted the series with the Giants; the series that featured two great young hitters, Will Clark and Mark Grace, and neither disappointed. "Mad Dog" Maddox was still a Cubbie, and Rhyno too, with Popeye pulling the strings and talking the best baseball talk of any baseball man anywhere, any time (course, Zim's still doing it, except it's at Yankee Stadium and Mr. Torre is the listener). Lordy, Lordy, it's a fine day indeed. Now, I just have to find a TV channel carrying the series in Beijing! Ain't it sweet...!
CHICAGO, Sept. 27 - The Cubs could feel it now, the unbelievable becoming believable, the improbable becoming probable and the normally vacant days of October magically becoming filled by postseason baseball. Postseason baseball that involves the Cubs, the lovable losers who are still lovable, yet are losers no more.

The feeling built throughout a cool, anxious day at Wrigley Field. Every time Mark Prior struck out another batter, the fans yelled as if it were New Year's Eve. Every time the scoreboard operator offered them more encouraging news about the faltering Houston Astros, they toasted the developments occurring 1,100 miles away. They could feel it, too.

After the fatigued Prior helped the Cubs stop the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-2, in the first game of a doubleheader and the Astros lost to the last-place Milwaukee Brewers, 5-2, the Cubs were one victory away from winning the National League Central. There was one victory left for the Cubs to secure, and they had the chance for the parlay on the same special day.

And the Cubs did it, eliminating the suspense in a suspenseful season by scoring six runs in the first two innings to win, 7-2, and qualify for the postseason for the first time since 1998.
Being a Cubbie fan (in the National League; I'm a pin-striper in the junior circuit) it would not be fitting if I didn't remind myself that the last time the Cubs were in a World Series, the United States Army was beginning the occupation of Japan--in other words, it's been awhile. The Boys are due!
So happy hour, or a happy slice of history, came early at Wrigley. Sammy Sosa smashed a home run, Matt Clement pitched splendidly and the Cubs snared their first division title since 1989.

"For us to win the division in Chicago, it's like a dream come true," Sosa said. "All the fans have been supportive of the team through the years. There's so many things that happened with this team this year. To celebrate together, it's awesome. It's beautiful."

Who would have thought a team that lost 95 games last season could make it to the playoffs? That a team that had not swept in 48 of its last 52 doubleheaders could sweep the most important one ever? That a team that has not won a World Series since 1908 would instantly be considered a formidable contender to rumble there? Apparently, the Cubs believed.
What a wonderful diversion from all this worldly mess...
  

6:04 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Another Version of That First Shoe Dropping

Is this hardball partsan politcis or Nixonian paranoia and reflexive revenge?

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that an administration official leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, administration officials said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy 'yellowcake' uranium ore from Africa, which can be used in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity can violate federal law. A senior administration official said two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. That was shortly after Wilson revealed in July that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account eventually touched off a controversy over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.
Are Republican Party practitioners just naturally mean-spirited? Or is it all of that piety eating away at their already congenitally weakened souls?

 

1:22 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




SALESMAN? Dubya? Somebody is Smoking Their Socks

In this case it's The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The American president has always played multiple roles in the drama of the United States: commander in chief, steward of the economy, symbol of the nation, head of the party. But presidents have to be salesmen, too.
And they want him to sell Democracy, no less!
Salesmanship and democracy are intricately linked in that most presidents have had to learn how to sell difficult policies to the public in trying times. President Bush is now faced with the challenge of selling the public on his policies in Iraq, but Woodrow Wilson had to sell World War I and Franklin D. Roosevelt spent six years talking Americans into World War II. 'Roosevelt was in a sense a master salesman of what the public thought at the time were some largely unpalatable items,' said David M. Kennedy, a professor of history at Stanford. 'If anything, he faced even deeper, widespread opposition than Bush.
I'd be careful of mentioning FDR around Junior; for chrissakes, Mr Roosevelt's administration censured Dubya's Grandfather, Prescott Bush, and stripped him of his banking and shipping companies for violating the Trading With the Enemy Act during World War II. The Bushies have been a might touchy over that little fact ever since.

Whatever, it was almost exactly 60 years ago. But still, Salesman for Democracy?
 

1:04 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Fresh From the Pages of the People's Daily, Without Comment

Japanese orgy in Zhuhai hotel sparks Chinese fury

A hotel orgy involving nearly 400 Japanese male tourists and 500 Chinese prostitutes has sparked outrage on the Chinese mainland.

People were angry both because of the scale of the incident and the sensitive timing - two days before the 72nd anniversary of the start of the Japanese army's occupation of Northeast China in 1931.

"The Japanese are animals. They deliberately selected the date to humiliate the Chinese people," one netizen wrote, citing the fact that the Japanese had attempted to raise their national flag at the hotel but to no avail.

The tourists collectively patronized the prostitutes in a five-star hotel in Zhuhai, South China's Guangdong Province.
Read on...
 

12:40 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Ooops!

Did I just hear a shoe drop?
WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman’s husband, a former ambassador who publicly criticized President Bush’s since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade uranium from Africa, NBC News has learned.

THE FORMER ENVOY, Joseph Wilson, who was acting ambassador to Iraq before the first Gulf War, was dispatched to Niger in 2002 to investigate a British intelligence report that Iraq sought to buy uranium there. Although Wilson discredited the report, Bush cited it in his State of the Union address in January among the evidence he said justified military action in Iraq.

The administration has since had to repudiate the claim. CIA Director George Tenet said the 16-word sentence should not have been included in Bush’s Jan. 28 speech and publicly accepted responsibility for allowing it to remain in the president’s text.
Do I smell just a faint whiff of...something?
Wilson published an article in July alleging, however, that the White House recklessly made the charge knowing it was false.

“We spend billions of dollars on intelligence,” Wilson wrote. “But we end up putting something in the State of the Union address, something we got from another intelligence agency, something we cannot independently verify, in an area of Africa where the British have no on-the-ground presence.”
Is Tenet planting a seed on his way out to pasture?
The next week, columnist Robert Novak published an article in which he revealed that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction. “Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate,” Novak wrote.

The White House has denied being Novak’s source, whom he has refused to identify. But Wilson has said other reporters have told him White House officials leaked Plame’s identity.
It's only a tiny hunch; but mark it down, that on this date, I said, Ooops!
 

12:26 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, September 26, 2003

Hmmm...this is Interesting

New York, Sept 25. — A significant meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly was the “troika” meeting of the foreign ministers of India, Russia and China, at which the three “agreed to adopt a common approach” on a variety of key issues, including Iraq and reforms to the UN system.

Being held for the second year in a row, the “troika” appears set to assume an institutional mechanism, by which India will coordinate with two members of the P-5 (permanent members of the UN Security Council) to form a stronger pressure group for influencing the remaining three “Western” members of the P-5 — the USA, France and Britain — on pressing international issues.
The news one gets on the other side of the world from home is...different.

 

11:12 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




How to Win Friends and Influence People?

Read the book. Do not, under any circumstances, take public performances of George W. Bush as examples. But, if you do, please don't make a stalwart General have to explain to Congress why no one wants to help an arrogant whelp out of a lethal jam everyone asked him not to get them and him into.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 — The commander of United States forces in the Persian Gulf said today that he was no longer counting on foreign troops to relieve American soldiers in Iraq early next year. A lack of such troops would require the Pentagon to send active-duty and National Guard soldiers to fill the gap.

The commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, said he had until Wednesday to tell the Joint Chiefs of Staff whether sufficient allied forces would be available to replace American forces in Iraq.

But the administration's negotiations with allies to provide more troops have so far proved fruitless, and General Abizaid said that he could no longer assume there will be large-scale international support, and that the Pentagon had to begin deciding how to make up for the shortage of foreign troops.

"Since it doesn't look like we'll have a coalition brigade, we have no choice but to plan for American forces," General Abizaid told reporters after he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

To avoid drawing on an active-duty Army that is already stretched thin, military analysts said, the Pentagon will now have almost no choice but to call up additional reservists and deploy marines in Iraq in a long-term peacekeeping mission for the first time.
Maybe Dubya should call the families of each reservist or National Guard or over-extended regular duty serviceman and explain personally why they must sacrifice when he never has. If nothing else, it will keep him busy and he will have less time to devote to his peculiarly skewed vision of nation building.

What the hell, read all about it.
  

10:40 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The Failure to Find Iraqi Weapons

I still believe The New York Times is the best newspaper in the world; this editorial only reaffirms that belief.
This page did not support the war in Iraq, but it never quarreled with one of its basic premises. Like President Bush, we believed that Saddam Hussein was hiding potentially large quantities of chemical and biological weapons and aggressively pursuing nuclear arms. Like the president, we thought those weapons posed a grave danger to the United States and the rest of the world. Now it appears that premise was wrong. We cannot in hindsight blame the administration for its original conclusions.
Read it in full, please.
  

7:24 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Has Colin Powell Finally Won a Battle With Rummy, Cheney, Rice & Wolfowitz?

Apparently the Secretary of State's stock is on the upswing again; I for one always feel considerably safer and saner when Mr. Powell is in the ascendency.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, responding to demands from France and others for a rapid timetable for self-rule in Iraq, said yesterday that the United States would set a deadline of six months for Iraqi leaders working under the American-led occupation to produce a new constitution for their country.

The constitution, which would spell out whether Iraq should be governed by a presidential or parliamentary system, would clear the way for elections and the installation of a new leadership next year, Mr. Powell said. Not until then, he added, would the United States transfer authority from the American-led occupation to Iraq itself.

"We would like to put a deadline on them," he said in an interview with editorial writers, editors and reporters for The Times, referring to the Iraqi task of writing a constitution. "They've got six months. It'll be a difficult deadline to meet, but we've got to get them going."
Mr. Powell gets rather candid at moments in this piece.

 

7:18 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Don't be so sensitive to billionaires

More of what is news in China, billionaires, from the People's Daily :
When Forbes Global CEO Conference was held in Shanghai, billionaires again attracted people's attention. Former Forbes-listed Chinese billionaires, such as Mou Qizhong, Liu Xiaoqing, Yang Rong, Wu Zhijian, Chen Shunli, Zhou Zhengyi, Yang Bin and Qiao Jinling, who got into troubles due to various reasons, were mentioned again and again. Meanwhile, those who attended this conference, such as Liu Yonghao, Liu Yongxing, Guo Guangchang, Xu Min, Tao Xinkang, Zhang Yue, Huang Qiaoling, Wu Ying and Yang Lan, have also received a special concern.

There seems to be in existence a kind of 'collective unconsciousness' in China, i.e. people are too sensitive to billionaires. People's concerns on those billionaires are focused on two points: first of all, why so many billionaires broke the law? Secondly, how many of them can keep on law-abiding?
Take a look at who these "Communists" look to for a model of doing business:
As the chief editor of the FORBES magazine Steve Forbes is not like that. When talking of the Chinese billionaires in jail, he is not at all embarrassed, saying his magazine will continue to issue the list of billionaires in the Chinese mainland.

We can get some tips from the calm attitude of Forbes magazine: although we are not as influential as the Forbes, we should still take a calm and composed attitude towards billionaires.
Again, this is an example of "happy" news In the People's Republic of China.
 

6:58 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




A Lesson in Crying Wolf?

This isn't a matter of folks not believing, as in the old fable, but rather a matter of one too many wolf cries and there not being enough troops or political capital to do anything but bluster.
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 25 — Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency have found traces of highly enriched uranium at an electrical plant on the outskirts of Tehran, the second site where such evidence of unreported enrichment activities has been discovered in recent months, a Western diplomat with access to the agency's reports said today.
This is a problem.
 

6:29 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




This is News

Japan's oldest bar 'mama' dead at 101
TOKYO — Hideko Arima, known as Japan's oldest bar 'mama,' has died of heart failure at the age of 101 after running a tiny watering hole for half a century in Tokyo's glitzy Ginza district.

She held court from the same stool at the end of the counter at the Gilbey A, for 52 years until six days ago when, braving a sudden illness, she spent what would be her last day there.

'She was taken ill at her apartment last Friday but dared to come, saying she could rather cheer herself up at the bar,' said Gilbey A bartender Fukuichi Nakagawa, 53.

'She was pale but her face turned rosy when the patrons strolled in. She kept talking as usual but she did not order her favorite beer. She just had a few glasses of juice,' Nakagawa said Thursday.
You can't really say that passing away like this is bad news.
 

6:14 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




My Chinese Hosts Are Not Making Me Proud at the Moment

More on Senator Clinton's dust-up with Chinese Communist-Capitalism (which is only oxymoronic when viewed from outside.)
In response, Yilin [Chinese publisher] sent an apologetic letter to New York-based Simon & Schuster, but one that blamed the international episode in part on the failure to receive the book promptly from America.

"As you might know, we hadn't received your working copy until June 2 (we were told that the first one was lost on the way) much later than we expected and than the publisher in Taiwan,'" Yilin president Zhang Zude wrote.

Yilin argued the delay forced the company to rush the Chinese version to stores in order to compete with counterfeit versions sold by street peddlers.
So far this embarrassing dispute has not become public here in Beijing.

Do you think Dubya & Company would like to be able to control bad news in the same fashion as it often is here?
 

5:54 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Billy, You're Still a Lotta Laughs

I lived in New Orleans for about 25 years; it's nice to see that things haven't changed much. Billy Tauzin sure hasn't. Well, he has a lot more money and a much more powerful audience to play up or down to than he did in those days way back when.
"Boudreaux and Thibodeaux were out in the woods hunting one day. The pair stayed out so late that it got dark, and they got lost on the bayou. Standing at the edge of the water, Boudreaux looked at Thibodeaux and asked, 'So how we gonna get across? It's cold, and it's deep, and we got all these hunting clothes on.' About that time, a fellow from Texas A&M showed up across the way, and Boudreaux yelled over to him, 'Do you know where we can cross?' 'No,' said the fellow, 'but I got this here flashlight with me. I can shine it across the water and make an artificial bridge for you to walk across.' Boudreaux yelled back, 'You must think we're stupid!' 'Why?' asked the Aggie. 'Because,' said Boudreaux, 'we gonna get halfway across, and you gonna cut that light off!'"

In his two decades on Capitol Hill, Representative Billy Tauzin has become famous for his 'Boudreaux stories': tall tales--most of them corny, many of them racy--about a fictional clan of ne'er-do-wells from the Cajun stretch of southeast Louisiana where Tauzin was born and bred. He has 'zillions' of such stories, say friends, and, with minimal tweaking, can roll them out to warm up the crowds at bayou barbecues and congressional hearings alike.
This is a wonderful piece of political reporting on a fascinating man and politician, in TNR.
 

5:18 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Bush Hatred: The Debate

These guys are having so much fun that John Ashcroft will surely declare it illegal and Pat Robertson will try to pray them into silence.
Bush Hatred: ONLINE DEBATE at TNR

By Jonathan Chait & Ramesh Ponnuru
Do you think Dubya cares? Do you think Dubya Reads TNR? Do you think Dubya reads? Do you think Dubya thinks? I suppose it depends on how much or how little you hate or love George W. Bush.
  

4:57 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The Folks at Spinsanity Just Doing Their Thing

A new, but already extremely tiresome canard is put back into its dark hole by Spinsanity.
Despite new information, a number of conservative pundits continue to spin the widely-debunked story of a phone call Democratic presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark says he received shortly after Sept. 11.

The source of the controversy is an appearance Clark made in June on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' Clark told host Tim Russert that 'there was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001 starting immediately after 9/11 to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein.' When Russert asked 'By who? Who did that?' Clark stated that:
"Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, "You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein." I said, "But--I'm willing to say it but what's your evidence?" And I never got any evidence. And these were people who had--Middle East think tanks and people like this and it was a lot of pressure to connect this and there were a lot of assumptions made. But I never personally saw the evidence and didn't talk to anybody who had the evidence to make that connection."
As we demonstrated earlier this month, a careful reading shows that Clark never claimed the phone call in question came from the White House, and he has been consistent in his position, telling Sean Hannity on July 1 that the call came from "a fellow in Canada who is part of a Middle Eastern think tank."
It is so very hard to unring the bell. If all the neo journalists flooding into the profession would learn just one thing, and that is--get it right the first time--what a more civil world this would be.
 

4:22 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Taiwan authorities condemned for tampering with history

Here is another People's Daily piece; interesting to note that Texas isn't the only country, I mean, state, of course, that has problems with doctrinally correct textbooks.
In the newly compiled syllabus of the history book for senior high school recently published by Taiwan authorities, which went so far as to include Chinese history after the mid-term Ming Dynasty all into world history. This action has aroused great indignation among various circles in Taiwan. Academic and educational circles both expressed their strong protests against the Taiwan authorities' malicious intention to cut off the umbilical tie between Taiwan and the motherland in the fields of culture and education, and finally to realize 'Taiwan Independence'.
Actually, it is a very interesting topic and issue. Read it; perhaps you'll learn something you didn't know, or at least see a perspective you haven't viewed before.
  

3:46 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Focus: 'The last land grab in China'

Here is a very positive story from the People's Daily; note the jazzy, western influenced headline.
The Chinese government has finally realized that simply owning a wealth of business assets does not necessarily mean they are productive.

In China, the State used to own almost everything. But as economic reforms have introduced new equity holders into the system, State assets have been gradually withdrawing from centre stage. To shape State-owned enterprises (SOEs) into veritable businesses with strong market orientation, the State has decided to pull even further out of the equity arrangement of China's economic juggernauts. One estimate puts State equities in publicly listed companies alone at 6 trillion yuan (US$725 billion).

And who will take over this giant stake?

Management, proclaims a chorus of advocates. Of all the companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, only 0.08 per cent of the equities are currently in the hands of management. There seems to be interest as well as room for growth in this area.
You must understand how very POSITIVE the use of the term "management" really is.
  

3:32 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Corrupt media officials sacked in major bribery sweep

It occurred to me that most folks back home probably don't click on the website of the People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Central Government of the People's Republic of China. Not to fear: I will oblige, since I'm right here where it is helpful to keep abreast of the local news.

Three prefecture-level officials from Guangzhou's major media have been investigated and dismissed from their posts in Guangdong's provincial capital in the first eight months of this year.

The disclosure came from Zhu Zhenzhong, secretary of Guangzhou's Municipal Commission for Inspecting Discipline of the Communist Party of China, at a working conference Wednesday in Guangzhou.

The three senior media officials include Zhang Suihua, deputy editor-in-chief of Guangzhou Daily Group, Ouyang Guinan, deputy Party secretary of Guangzhou Television and director of Guangzhou Cable Television, and Tao Jianjun, deputy director of Guangzhou Television.

Ouyang Guinan was suspected of accepting bribes valued at 280,000 yuan (US$33,734) when he granted an interior decoration project to a contractor at his office building in July and August of 1999.

Zhang and Tao were also suspected to have taken large bribes when they were in office.
For those interested in the debate over how negative or positive news should be, that is a very positive story in the eyes of the CCP.
  

3:17 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Give 'em Hell, Joshua

If Rep. Jim Marshall (Georgia) is good for the Democratic Party then I'm good for the Temperance Society.
It really doesn't get much lower than that.
-- Josh Marshall
No, shameful claptrap such as that is why folks such as him should really rejoice that we have freedom of speech and he gets to continue feeding such poisonous horse manure to his constituent base, as base as it is.
  

2:51 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Mama Told Ya there'd Be Days Like This

It sure is hard to feel sorry for a rich boy who got to go to Yale with bad grades, be in the armed forces but not have to show up, make a lot of money of his own by dumping his own bad stock before it tanked for the little guy, get to buy a Major League Baseball team with the ill-gotten capital gains, and become president of the USA even though he loses the election. But, golly gee, Dubya is starting to be such an underdog that he might just morph into a lovable loser. NAH!
NEW YORK, Sept. 24 -- President Bush ended two days of meetings with foreign leaders today without winning more international troops or funds for Iraq and with a top aide saying it could take months to achieve a new U.N. resolution backing the U.S. occupation.

Bush's failure to win a promise of fresh soldiers in meetings with the leaders of India and Pakistan -- aides said the president did not even ask -- increased the difficulty the United States will have in assembling another division of foreign troops in Iraq, which senior Pentagon officials say is the minimum needed to relieve overstretched U.S. forces.
In testimony on Capitol Hill today, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said, 'We're not going to get a lot of international troops with or without a U.N. resolution. I think somewhere between zero and 10,000 or 15,000 is probably the ballpark.'
Did somebody say 'ballpark'? Down Dubya, down; you sold the team and you really do have to begin finishing what you start--one of these days.
 

2:06 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




One-Billion Dollars?

Maybe Dubya should take Mr. Chalabi up on his offer to have the Iraqis do the job on the cheap. The way his contractor buddies are slopping at the public trough is starting to remind historians of another president with a drinking problem: Grant!
BAGHDAD -- When grease-stained technicians at the Baghdad South power plant needed spare parts recently, they first submitted a written request to Bechtel Corp., the engineering firm given more than $1 billion in U.S. government contracts to fix Iraq's decrepit infrastructure.

Then they went to the junkyard.
Maybe this is one of those feel-good stories the neo-cons are frothing for. But I don't think so; it's worth reading no matter if you''re left or right or down the center and even upside-down.
  

10:31 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




This Was Just Too Good To Give It a Pass

I don't care what anybody says, I read Ms. Dowd religiously. Lucky for me or I never would've found something upon which I totally agree with ARNOLD.
I asked him about an '88 Playboy quote in which he said he didn't let Maria Shriver wear pants. No Gray Davis pandering; Arnold sticks to his gams. 'Skirts look more feminine,' he insisted. 'I like her more in dresses. She can wear whatever she wants.'
He had a great closing quote, too:
Later that night, he called to say he hadn't given me properly reflective answers. Oh, boy, I thought, here comes the usual pretentious pap pols dish out about reading Winston Churchill and watching foreign indies. "I forgot to tell you," Arnold said eagerly, "my two favorite actresses are Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep. And my idol is Clint Eastwood. And I loved `The Lion King.'
Okay. But 3 out of 4 ain't bad.

 

12:20 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, September 25, 2003

Dubya Done In By Those W M Ds

The Kay report is leaked; read the excerpts while they're hot.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — An early draft of an interim report by the American leading the hunt for banned weapons in Iraq says his team has not found any of the unconventional weapons cited by the Bush administration as a principal reason for going to war, federal officials with knowledge of the findings said today.

The long-awaited report by David Kay, the former United Nations weapons inspector who has been leading the American search for illicit weapons, will be the first public assessment of progress in that search since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1.
Mr. Kay's team has spent nearly four months searching suspected sites and interviewing Iraqi scientists believed to have knowledge about the country's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Kay and his team had not found illicit weapons. They said they believed that Mr. Kay had found evidence of precursors and dual-use equipment that could have been used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.
Well, it's not like anyone was really expecting Mr. Kay to find anything, right? Not even Dubya. Unless he was giving it about as much thought as he's proud of not giving anything else. Think about it. If Mr. Kay & Company had turned up a cache of Anthrax-ladened artillery shells at this late date, everybody would believe for sure they'd been planted. Dubya is already being compared to Hitler by the crazies and the Greens, does he want to get into Fuhrman territory? Read all about what was not found under all that sand...
  

11:57 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Fourty-Nine? Fourty-Nine? Do I hear Forty-Eight? Fourty-Nine Going...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — George W. Bush is in the worst political trouble of his presidency, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday night. Bush’s approval rating now stands at 49 percent, the lowest point of his tenure. Whether Democrats will be able to exploit Bush’s woes is unknown, since they are four months away from their first primary, but party activists say they are ever more determined to find the candidate who can go toe to toe with Bush in a debate and reduce his standing to political rubble.
And the Rangers are losing, too. Does this mean God has moved out of Texas?
  

11:21 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Glenn Reynolds Bites Lassie; Renowned Pooch's Condition Critical

The Esteemed Professor and my fellow Southerner is, by all reports, a storied legal scholar, a gentleman of calm distinction, a discerner of smooth running horse flesh, an expertly moderate tippler of good bourbon, and the numero uno Blogger recognized by all as simply the InstaPundit--and I'm sure he never bit a dog (at least a live one, anyway; I mean, he might've visited southern China at some point in his career).

So why the silly headline above? Because Mr. Reynolds is currently at the center of an increasingly bitter debate over the oldest--and surely the silliest--canard ever spun about journalism: Real Men Want To Read Happy News Stories.

In other words, it's a lazy Tuesday morning in, say, Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a new elementary school is dedicated and old Miz Holloway gets herself murdered. The local newspaper is a staff of one: which story gets covered? Sophomoric? Even soporific?
That's the point. It's a gimme. And all the silly ninnies decrying the lack of stories about new schools being built in the peaceful parts of Iraq know it--but it's making their boy Dubya appear, what? Beleaguered? And we just can't have that, can we?

However, there is a pretty good compendium of what real journalists have to say on this really, really old saw at Howard Kurtz's digs. Most of the usual suspects are represented--if anyone wants to believe that Andrew Sullivan is a journalist, that is.

Glenn Reynolds himself is there--even though he doesn't claim to be a journalist--rather ungentlemanly beating up on Josh Marshall, who is a real and excellent journalist whether you like his politics or not (most of the time I do).

Are journalists painting an unduly bleak picture of Iraq? Are they doing this for ideological reasons? Have they fallen victim to Vietnam syndrome? Such questions died down after the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad was bombed, but now they're coming back.

After all, Bush and Cheney and Rummy insist that things in Iraq are pretty much going according to plan. The media report otherwise. Who's right? Or is the reality too murky for an easy answer?

As long as American soldiers continue to die in ambushes and suicide attacks, the tone of the news will probably remain downbeat. And the polls are starting to reflect the public's impatience with what looks like a long and costly occupation. The drop in the president's approval rating, to the point where a couple of Democrats can hypothetically beat him, make that clear.
Mr. Kurtz's Media Notes is must reading for folks interested in the news business.
  

12:27 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, September 24, 2003

Who Says Liberal Journalists Don't Write Positive News Stories?

Glenn Reynolds at InstaPundit has an ongoing thread taking journalists to the woodshed over what he sees as a propensity to only write about the bad things powerful people and entities do. Perhaps the good professor should read Nicholas Kristof's column about what one very powerful and very rich man is doing.
JOHANNESBURG — Here's a titillating scoop: Bill Gates has an assignation planned today with Botswana prostitutes, not just one of them but a whole team!

Wait, it gets kinkier: He's bringing his wife, Melinda.

This encounter between the world's richest man and some of the world's poorest prostitutes is part of Mr. Gates's new passion: doing to AIDS and malaria what he did to Netscape. He's going to talk to the prostitutes about male and female condoms, the sex trade and safe sex options as part of his campaign to understand and ultimately defeat AIDS in Africa.
It seems Mr. Kristof--who has been on a world-wide jaunt of late--is traveling along with Mr. Gates just to see if there really is a Santa Claus.
The buzz among African aid workers is that Mr. Gates will be remembered more for his work fighting disease than for Windows. Certainly the wealth of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is improving the prospect that vaccines will be found for malaria and AIDS. The foundation's most banal work is with vaccines, but those programs have already given out vaccines that will save 300,000 lives.
Make yourself feel good about capitalism and read the whole column.

 

9:11 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




When Will They Ever Learn? Damn It, Not Soon Enough.

As Joseph Kahn, a really fine journalistic colleague, who covers China for The New York Times and is based here in Beijing, reports, while things are getting better and better every day in almost every way, when it comes to freedom of the people's right to know, it can't happen soon enough. Senator Clinton is hopping mad about it, too; and she should be:
BEIJING, Sept. 23 — In her autobiography, 'Living History,' Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton recounts how China's imprisonment of a prominent human rights activist, Harry Wu, caused a sensation in the United States and nearly derailed her plans to attend a United Nations women's conference held in Beijing in 1995.

In the officially licensed Chinese edition of Mrs. Clinton's book, though, Mr. Wu makes just a cameo appearance. While named, he is otherwise identified only as a person who was 'prosecuted for espionage and detained awaiting trial.'
It's more than just a damn shame; the success the book is having here in the Middle Kingdom bodes well for so many things. I'm not talking about intellectual property rights, or accurate accounting for royalties, or even the petty censorship in this individual case, which was not done at the instigation of the Central Government, but by the business executive in-house, preemptively (which is the norm nowadays). I'm talking about image and perception--what everyday Chinese people think and believe about America and Americans. While many folks back in the States might think Senator Clinton isn't the best role model for the USA, the Chinese admire her greatly; and that's a good thing.
Mrs. Clinton's book has become a major best seller in China, as it has in the United States, and her smiling likeness decorates bookstores and airport shops nationwide. Yilin Press, the government-owned publisher of the mainland version of the book, says it has become the most popular foreign political memoir in Chinese history, with 200,000 copies sold in just over a month.

But nearly everything Mrs. Clinton had to say about China, including descriptions of her own visits here, former President Bill Clinton's meetings with Chinese leaders and her criticisms of Communist Party social controls and human rights policies, has been shortened or selectively excerpted to remove commentary deemed offensive by Beijing.
The explanation was as lame as the perceived harm the truth would have occasioned, which is zero.
In fact, the publisher has advertised the book — titled "Qinli Lishi," which translates to something like "Personal History" — as the most unabridged foreign political memoir in Chinese publishing history.

"In the past, translated books always had some cuts," an official of Yilin Press told the Beijing Evening News after the book's release last month. "But the Chinese translation of this keeps 99.9 percent of the original's content."

What the official did not mention is that the other one-tenth of 1 percent, if the edited passages indeed constitute such a tiny fraction of the total, involve most references to China itself.

The manuscript appears to have been combed for even stray mentions of China or its leaders, though the Chinese editors did not mark or otherwise indicate where they had made changes or elisions in the 466-page text.
It's a good piece of journalism, but it turned a good day bad when I read it on The New York Times website. Yeah, uncensored, right here in Beijing. Go figure.
  

8:04 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




These Two Are Gonna Be Fun To Watch!

You knew it was coming, and it didn't take long:
Howard Dean, whose campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has been built on an antiwar message, yesterday questioned the antiwar credentials of his newest opponent, Gen. Wesley K. Clark.

Dr. Dean, who himself has been accused by rivals of flip-flopping on issues, focused on remarks General Clark made last week when, in interviews, he first said that he probably would have voted for the Congressional resolution authorizing war in Iraq and then, the following day, was led to backtrack.

"I was shocked" by General Clark's initial comment on the resolution, Dr. Dean, former governor of Vermont, said in an interview as he flew from a rally in Boston to a series of fund-raisers in New York. "I was even more shocked that he switched the next day."
The good Doctor might've been shocked, but he certainly wasn't at a loss for words; and not the all too expected words he shot at the fine General. Rather the words of a couple of other gentlemen of note:
"What's at stake in this election is democracy itself," he said. "James Madison and Thomas Jefferson spoke of the fear that economic power would one day seize political power. That fear has been realized in this administration."

Dr. Dean used the language of the Constitution's preamble to condemn the president's record on court appointments, race, education, domestic security and the war on terrorism. "This democracy and the flag of the United States," he then said, "do not belong to Rush Limbaugh and Jerry Falwell and Tom DeLay and John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney."
Doctor Dean, General Clark, Senators Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards, Braun, et. al. will probably find more success going after those latter fellows than each other.
  

6:52 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Wait a Minute, Who's the Sheriff In This Town?

I guess it really is lonely at the top--or bottom:
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 23 — A president who has led his forces to victory, ostensibly on behalf of the United Nations, would in theory deserve a hero's welcome. But that was not what President Bush encountered in an icy chamber here today, almost five months after he declared an end to major hostilities in Iraq.
Of course, a little humility might have helped.
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