If you don't read Josh Marshall every day you're definitely missing out. He outdoes himself today with a prediction that is almost certainly going to become a reality, and it would surely be in full flower already if Andrew Sullivan, ever apoplectic over the BBC and his "fifth column," weren't still on vacation.

He spells out a scenario that's likely to develop as everybody in Team Bush passes the buck on the utter mess that is now Iraq:

It would go something like this: To the extent that we're facing reverses in Iraq, we're not facing them because the plan was flawed or incompetently executed. We're facing them because the plan was sabotaged - by its enemies at home.

The saboteurs were the folks at the State Department and the CIA who stymied effective collaboration with the pre-war Iraqi opposition and members of the defeatist press who have a) demoralized Americans by exaggerating the problems with the occupation of Iraq and b)encouraged the mix of jihadists and Baathists, by creating that demoralization, to keep up their resistance and bombing by giving them the hope that America can be run out of the country.

For my part, I doubt it'll work. But I think that's where we're going.

He likens the scenario to that which developed in Germany after it lost the Great War, when the nationalists (including, most notably, the fuehrer to be) blamed it all on the "November Criminals," a consortioum of Jews and Communists they insisted were bent on seeing Germany humiliated and defeated.

We'll know pretty soon whether he's right. It would be totally consistent with this administration's behavior as exhibited during the blame-the-CIA frenzy over the Niger uranium.

A shocking story over at Salem Pax about a recent raid of his house by American troops. It's not that they did anything brutal or cruel. But it certainly isn't the way to win friends and influence people. It told me me how much the Iraqis must despise us.

SP is educated, erudite and urbane, probably more so than your average Iraqi. So imagine how they must feel during events like this, which are apparently quite commonplace now. Are we welcomed and beloved by most Iraqis or feared and despised? My common sense tells me it has to be the latter, in which case I wonder, how can we ever succeed there? The whole thing was based on the premise that we'd be greeted with open arms and welcomed as liberators, if not saviors. And to a certain extent, we were. But as so many of the "weasels" and "anti-Americans" feared, there was no realistic plan to deal with the aftermath. We over-reached, the most common blunder of heady conquerors.

Via M.K.]

The economy rocks, the middle class is growing, the shackles of the Cultural Revolution are a distant memory of a bad dream, but some things in China take a longer time to change. Like censorship.

The second Tomb Raider film, starring actress Angelina Jolie, has been banned in China because it portrays the country "negatively", authorities said.

[....]

Censors said the film portrayed China as a country in chaos.

"After watching the movie, I feel that the westerners have made their presentation of China with malicious intention," an unidentified official said in reports. The Chinese also complained the film had made the country appear to have no government and run by secret societies.

"The movie does not understand Chinese culture. It does not understand China's security situation. In China there cannot be secret societies," the official said.

No secret societies? What does he think the Chinese Communist Party is? The irony is that the film will be banned from the movie theaters, but pirated copies can already be bought all over the country for less than $1 USD per disc. Why do they bother?

However well intentioned Singapore's laws banning chewing gum may have been, they have provided endless grist for the parody mill, helping paint a picture of a country run by control freaks who look upon their subjects as children who must constantly be told what they can and cannot do.

As all visitors know, a running joke, reflected on tourist t-shirts, is that "Singapore is a fine city" -- no matter what you do here, there's a good chance it's illegal and you're liable to pay a fine for it.

Yesterday, the all-knowing, paternalistic, gently authoritarian government added a new crime to the fine roster: gluing unauthorized ads to lamp posts. (Apparently it costs about $15,000 every month to scrape glue off of lamp posts.)

Here's what gluers may face:

Offenders can be fined up to $2,000 (Singapore), jailed for up to three years and caned under the Vandalism Act for defacing public property. In 1994, American teenager Michael Fay, who was caught spray-painting cars, was caned despite the objections of then-President Clinton.

A high fine, three years in jail and a caning -- for gluing an ad to a post? To a Westerner like me that seems mighty strict. But you have to understand just how obsessed leaders here are with keeping Singapore antiseptically clean and tidy. And it works. So is their approach good or bad? Interesting question.

[Off-topic but not really: Why do they have to bring up the decade-old Michael Fay story, which is wholly irrelevant to this issue? While I sympathized with Fay at first, after doing some research on his post-Singapore adventures my well of compassion is nearly totally dessicated. What an out-of-control brat.]

Earlier in the week I was thinking of how great it would be if Bill Clinton were to be our next president. This was inspired by a description of how, at a recent Fortune conference, Clinton stole the show with his amazing passion and charisma, two key ingredients for any president.

He was in campaign mode but without the restraints of campaign mode. While there was clear bitterness on his part toward the successor who had rushed “to undo everything I’d done,” and the Republicans who “will run over you unless you beat their brains out,” there was a feisty humor too. Of the disputed Harken oil deal, Clinton said Bush had “sold the stock to buy the baseball team which got him the governorship which got him the presidency.”

Clinton kept referring to the media as (contrary to Kinsley’s view) the “supine” media, pointing out that when Bush insulted Helen Thomas (who, by asking a rough question in the infamous prewar press conference had, Clinton said, “committed the sin of journalism”), no “young journalists” stood up and walked out.

The media, the supine media, was going to have to “go to the meat locker and take out its brains and critical skills.”

Everybody seemed to love this. Clinton was not just the beloved former president, but he had become some sort of sassy oracle.

There was a party on the second day for Clinton.... This turned out to be the pivotal moment of the conference—even the primal one. When Clinton took questions, a young man from a technology company who identified himself as chairman of Bush-Cheney 2004 in California said he was offended by Clinton’s partisanship. To which Clinton, without hesitation, and with some kind of predatory gleam in his eye, said, “Good!” From there, Clinton went on, with emotion and anger, at a level seemingly foreign to most everyone here, to rip to shreds the motives, values, and legitimacy of the Republicans.

It was all anyone could talk about the next day. People seemed genuinely taken aback (some people kept offering that since it was late at night, in a bar, it didn’t quite count) that one of their own might have violated the accepted codes of lofty liberal behavior. There was a little current of fear at the sudden recognition that testosterone could fuel politics. It was a shock, apparently, that we might be this close to real feelings. That politics could actually be personal.

Why is there no one else in the Democratic Party who can do this? Where are the masters of rhetoric, the Marc Anthony's who can inspire a revolution with their words? Where is the courageousness? The zeal, the spirit of truly contagious leadership?

Now on to part two of this post. I was intrigued to read just a few minutes ago that Matt Drudge says Clinton may indeed run for president. Not Bill Clinton, but his wife Hillary.

I have a lot of respect for Hillary, though I never found her to come anywhere near her husband in terms of speaking skills, leadership or sheer intelligence. Still, looking at the rather depressing roster of Democratic possibilities, this could really liven things up. (Wesley Clark seems like an interesting possibility as well, though from here it's hard to gauge how Americans are reacting to him.)

Could Hillary be the one to add some much-needed fire to the race? I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Right now I can't imagine Dean or Kerry actually beating Bush. Whoever's going to stand a chance will have to be able to do what Bill Clinton did in the above example, ignite passion and inspire awe. Can Hillary do it? I'm not sure yet. But I'd sure like to find out. Please Hillary, throw your hat into the ring and show us what you can do.

I really loved the opening grafs of Josh Marshall's latest post:

Old lefties used to opine that you could never say that socialism or communisim had failed since they'd never really been tried. No need now to dip into that debate. But just before the start of the war I told a friend that you'd never be able to say the same about neoconservatism. This was really all their show, pretty much from soup-to-nuts. So at the end of the day the movement would either be vindicated in a very profound way or deeply discredited.

You'll never again be able to say that the whole cluster of ideas, personnel and tactics never got a good field test.

This is why, quite honestly, I was always impressed with the sheer chutzpah of what Bush & Co. were doing in Iraq. I'm not saying it was good or bad, just that it took big balls. After all, the costs are mind boggling; not just the trillions of dollars, but the political costs and the costs to America's reputation. Not to mention human lives. Unlike so many goings-on in world politics, it was ultimately going to be a matter of black and white: The neocons' program would succeed or fail. They assured us they knew what they were doing, and Andrew Sullivan insisted we'd be greeted as true liberators and paradise would be regained.

I'm willing to give them more time, and I sincerely hope they can still pull it off. If they do not, history will not be kind, and the neocons will lose just about all of their credibility. (They've pretty much lost it in my case.) If it all works, Bush will be utterly invincible. As always, the clock is ticking.

To get the real story, you have to check out Incestuous Amplificiation's pithy, perceptive and take-no-prisoners comments on the news coming out of Beijing. He manages to slash through the BS rhetoric and get to the heart of the matter. (What's really disturbing is that apparently at the heart of the matter is a festering jealousy and resentment of the US on all sides.) Many of these comments are hilarious, especially his blasting to shreds the platitudinous soundbites dribbling from the spokespeople's mouths.

For some reason, until now, I never before made it over to Hemlock's Diary, another HK expat site. It's a great site, and definitely offbeat.

What caught my eye is a quasi-essay/laundry list of why Singapore is in reality "a pathetic place." If you're as lucky as I am and live in Singapore, this is a must-read. Even if you're not so privileged, you'll probably find it droll.

I was especially enchanted by his 8th reason for why Singapore is A Pathetic Place:

8. Singapore is famous for not being corrupt. It is true that if you are Lee Kuan Yew's eldest son you can become brigadier general after just five years in the army, and six months later you can become a member of parliament, and soon after that you can become deputy prime minister. And if you are the eldest son's wife, you can be put in charge of the state holding company (it holds key interests in 40% of the stock market by market cap). And if you're Lee’s number-two son, you can run the main Telecoms company. But that’s not corruption, or nepotism. That’s "meritocracy". (No, that's pathetic.)

Check out today's article in the International Herald Tribunre on this complex and very strange topic. A taste:

But amid all the excitement, little attention is being paid to the risks. One of the biggest is China's fragile financial system, which many observers believe harbors a bad-loan problem that dwarfs even Japan's. You would think that when the legs on which an entire economy stands are shaky, investors would care. Few seem to.

Like Internet companies in the 1990's, China is thought to be run by geniuses with boundless prospects. Companies that do not join in will miss capitalism's greatest gold rush. But two developments this week serve as reminders that investing in China comes with risks, and big ones.

The reasons he cites are 1.) the attempts to bail out the banks, devastated by bad loans (a direct result of the state-owned enterprise fiasco) and 2.) attempts to increase reserve requirements on commercial banks. He doesn't see imminent implosion, but he does see huge risks.

He also points out how suspicious the glowing numbers trotted out by the CCP ministries are; it is quite amazing that so many US firms and investors have been suckered by them. I love statistics in China, because they so precisely reflect the way things are done there (i.e., make the statistics say whatever will please The Party). Anyone remember the SARS "statistics" back in March, proving that the plague had been eradicated, with no cases in Beijing? As Santayana so pithily put it, those who forget the past....

Breaking News:

John Pomfret, possibly the best foreign correspondent in China, has filed a bombshell story that tells us all just how sincere the Chinese Communist Party is about political/intellectual reforms in China.

I've been saying for months that the alleged "reforms" were all smoke and mirrors. It certainly looks like that's the case:

After several months of permitting China's intellectuals the freedom to call for political reform, ponder sweeping revisions to the constitution and consider changes in the official history of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Communist Party has reportedly ordered a stop to such debate, and security personnel have begun harassing leading academics, economists and legal scholars.

Some pro-CCP idealists were adamant that the new "openness" necessitated by the bungling of the SARS crisis in April signalled a permanent relaxing and liberalisation of the media. Would that it were so! I alway said they were forced into that openness after their lies about "no SARS in Beijing" were exposed to the world. I said freedom of the press was a myth in China. Now we are back to business as usual, i.e., repression and massive censorship.

In the past weeks, party organizations, research institutes and universities have been instructed to stop all conferences and suppress all essays about those three subjects, according to sources within the Communist Party. The Ministry of Propaganda has informed China's news media there are other topics that can no longer be broached, the sources said.

At the heart of the shift back to the suppression of free thinking, Pomfret says, lies a political issue:

Chinese sources said the number and vociferousness of these demands [for reforms] had worried party officials, especially those close to Jiang Zemin, the former Communist Party boss. Jiang rose to power after the Tiananmen crackdown, and any change in the official version would undermine his legitimacy and that of people he placed in power.

More broadly, the effort to muffle debate about these issues appears to be part of a broader struggle between Jiang and his successor, Hu Jintao, according to the Chinese sources and analysts. Jiang and his allies, the sources said, generally oppose any political loosening. By contrast, Hu has portrayed himself as a friend of reformers and liberals.

Whatever the reasons, this is certainly no surprise. As always, the dictatorship is focused on its own survival. Too much light being shined under the rock would cause the entire creaky system to collapse like a house of cards. The only practical solution: extinguish the light.

It's a smart short-term fix. Long-term, it's just another piece of Scotch tape trying to cover up a massive whole in the dam. It's just a matter of when that dam will finally burst and wash away the scheming, deceitful "leaders."

I know, it sounds like wishful thinking; but I sincerely believe their days are numbered, if for no other reason than the economy. which is not nearly as robust as so many outside of China have chosen to believe. Manufacturing is strong, and cheap labor will help keep things looking rosy. But so many other areas of the China economy are built on sand. The clock is ticking.

[UPDATED at 8:45 pm, Singapore time]

Everbody's seat belts fastened? Today's Singapore headlines will move earth and heaven. (If you have a history of heart failure, you are advised to skip this jarring post. The Peking Duck is not responsible for health problems related to these graphic and hair-raising headlines.) Ready?

1. Sports water bottles are selling in record numbers in Singapore

2. If budget air travel grows in the region it could mean more jobs

3. Singapore companies might benefit by studying the WalMart business model

4. An early Singapore jet fighter has been restored in Australia

5. The Prime Minister will soon announce changes in the national retirement fund (CPF)

And that's the way it is here in Singapore, where no news would be infinitely more interesting than the artificial non-news that the papers spoon-feed us each day.

This just in:

ACCORDING TO THOSE who witnessed the bizarre incident, Coulter was in the middle of an extended rant about liberal comedian Al Franken when her face became beet-red and smoke began to shoot out of both of her ears. Then, almost without warning, Ms. Coulter appeared to burst into flames, sources said. The New York Fire Department immediately rushed to the scene to extinguish Coulter, who continued to talk even while fully ablaze. “We were dousing her with three fire hoses, but she just kept on yapping,” said Hal Reuss, a fireman who helped put out Ms. Coulter. “It was freaky.” Meanwhile, outside the Fox News Channel’s New York headquarters, thousands of publicity-starved authors congregated, begging Fox to sue them.

Via Atrios.

Mainlander tourists are flooding into HK in record numbers and helping the SAR's economy stay afloat. The problem, according to this article, is that with the new guests comes counterfeit money, illegal workers and countless prostitutes eager to take advantage of HK's higher hourly rates.

The Immigration Department has had to step up the number of raids it conducts on construction sites and red-light districts to stem a steady flow of illegal workers and women who come to Hong Kong to ply the flesh trade.

In the first seven months of this year, officials mounted 3,149 raids and nabbed 8,580 illegals. In the same period last year, there were 2,374 raids and 6,354 arrests.

[....]

Mainland moral guardians are concerned that travellers are picking up vices not readily available on the mainland. These include patronising Jockey Club betting booths, watching X-rated movies and buying pornographic magazines or politically sensitive books.

Interesting situation. China is very keen on censorship, so they must be going ballistic. But they really don't have a choice. Either they join the world and pay the costs freedom brings with it, or isolate themselves and hide under a rock, like their friends in Pyongyang.

Another new find today, this blog is as opinionated about Korea as I am about that big country up north. I particularly enjoyed his outspoken analysis of a CNN report on China's out-of-the-blue criticism of the DPRK's constant preparations for war and sudden urging for a kinder, gentler Pyongyang. One of his conclusions:

The fact that party sources are feeding this to western media 2 days before the talks start is a pretty clear signal that they're attempting to deflect any (American) criticism of indifference. They obviously want it well-known that they're on the right side of the table and are working hard to give themselves a "well, we did our best" response when the talks are stuck in neutral.

The entire post is too long to quote, but I strongly recommend it to those cynical about sudden fits of altruism from Communist dictators. Much of it is quite hilarious.

I just read a detailed, eloquent and well-researched post on the staggering gender gap in China. Just a sample:

Perhaps by forcing down the percentage of women in society China will finally come to value them more equally with men. For the time being however, the imbalance is, in my mind, a damning indictment of a culture that values one half of its population more highly than the other half. For those who believe that every human being is endowed with intrinsic and equal worth and rights for the fact of being human, it is an intolerable realization to know that in China this is not so, to the point that abortion, infanticide, and abandonment, are used to underline how worthless a female's life is.

For those who want all the figures and charts on this phenomenon, the same poster led me here.

Internet Ronin has an interesting take on the huge imbalance of men vs. women in China that I wrote about a few days ago.

All of this may lead to what must be the largest unintentional experiment in sexuality in history. It would appear that, with millions of males likely unable to find a female partner within their lifetime, we may gain some insight into whether circumstances and environment contribute to homosexuality.

Before anyone gets all huffy about this entry, don't take this all that seriously because it isn't really meant to be. The ramifications of forced family planning in the Peoples' Republic are serious, however.

I'm skeptical, frankly, that they'll become gay simply due to the lack of women. More likely adulterous affairs will blossom, as will pornography. It will be interesting to see. Sad, too. It did not have to be this way, and the butchery of baby girls will come at a very heavy price.

Interesting article on how China sells nukes and other weapons to countries that may not be ready for them (like North Korea) as part of its foreign policy plan.

China uses missile and nuclear transfers to Pakistan and North Korea, both widely regarded as rogue states, to keep countries that it sees as adversaries, such as Japan and India, on their toes. Given the ambivalence of the US Administrations to the Beijing-Islamabad-Pyongyang `Axis of Proliferation', New Delhi will have to dealing on its own the security challenges it may face from the axis, says G. Parthasarathy.

The author is an Indian official, so there has to be some pro-India bias, but it appears to be a pretty level-headed piece. He writes that both the Clinton and Bush administrations are to blame for giving tacit approval to China's strategy, and I have to agree with that.

Given the ambivalence and obfuscation that have characterised the approach of both the Clinton and Bush Administrations to the activities of the Beijing-Islamabad-Pyongyang Axis of Proliferation, it is obvious that New Delhi will have largely to act on its own in dealing with the security challenges it faces from the axis. Washington is deeply divided on how to deal with China, which now has powerful commercial, diplomatic and military lobbies across the US, arguing for a policy of constructive strategic engagement with Beijing.

Those who speak of an India-US partnership to deal with Beijing are, therefore, living in an unreal world.

UPDATE: At the same time, the Chinese are apparently "talking tough" to Pyonyang, criticizing its obsessive, never-ending preparations for war and demanding an end to its development of nuclear weapons. [Via Conrad.] Is it talking out of both sides of its mouth, or is China truly seeking to force the DPRK to clean up its act? Let's hope for the latter. Let's see.

It's a terrible, terrifying story. I couldn't quite believe it as I read it. Could a bunch of zealous church goers really hold down an 8-year-old autistic boy and try to "exorcize" the autism out of his body by blows?

The story itself is frightening, but the post is most remarkable for the beautiful thoughts of its writer, himself the father of an autistic child.

Via Atrios.

Pretend that the city under the fireworks is Beijing and not Hong Kong.

At last, my beloved friend in China, Ben, got the job of his very most lofty dreams. The call came just a few minutes ago. What seemed so impossible yesterday is today a magnificent reality.

To everyone who helped and who offered to help (and there were certainly a few), I can never thank you all enough. I wish I could convey just how much this means to me.

This was Ben's dream, and seeing him attain it washes away months of anguish -- mine and his. There is a god; there are miracles.

[The stunning graphic is stolen from Gweilo Diaries; thanks Conrad!]

I just watched in astonishment a piece on the BBC on how many in South Korea believe they were brainwashed with anti-Communist propaganda, and that North Korea is a better, more fair model of government than that of the repressive Americans. They interviewed college students who, with a straight face, praise their northern divided half.

This reflects an apparently growing mindset that the American troops should leave the peninsula so reunification can be achieved.

I don't have to go into the surreal brutalities and psychoses of the DPRK. All I can say is, Be careful what you wish for -- it just might come true. I can understand wanting to get foreign troops off your soil. I can't understand anyone seeing any redeeming qualities in the living, breathing hell created by Dear Leader and his goons.

70 million men in China are currently unable to find wives due to a staggeringly high imbalance of males vs. females.

Men outnumber women as a result of the country's one-child policy which leads to many female foetuses being aborted as girls are traditionally discriminated against....

The traditional Chinese thinking that men are more valuable than women has dominated the country for many centuries. Some rural people just dump their baby girls outside orphanages, Ms Pan said.

The minister said 99 per cent of Chinese children adopted by foreigners were girls. There were millions more boys under the age of 10 than girls of the same age group.

'Although the Chinese government has banned gender selection of newborn babies by ultrasound and selective induced abortion, many doctors secretly provide such services for extra fees, sometimes as high as 1,000 yuan,' Xinhua said. One thousand yuan works out to S$213.

In a country where getting married and raising a family is all-important, this situation is a catastrophe for the millions of men who will not find wives. It reflects an attitude that goes way back in China's history, and reading Wild Swans last month drove home to me just how horrific it can be for women. (I still cringe whenever I think of the author's detailed descriptions of what foot binding actually encompasses.)

A sad story about how Singapore maid agencies are "displaying domestic helpers in agency shop windows, prompting a women's activist group to describe the practise as 'appalling.'"

The article explains:

Mostly shy and some as young as 19, they sit without moving or talking as strangers peer at them.

“It presents a good opportunity for potential employers who can just walk in and interview them in person,” an agency spokesman told the newspaper Today, “better than looking at a photo.”

Some observers compared the scene to prostitutes who appear in window displays in the red-light districts of Amsterdam or Russia. Others expressed concern about displaying maids as commodities.

I find it truly repulsive, and I want to believe that most Singaporeans do as well.

Another great post by Orcinus today on how Republicans are rewriting history a la 1984 with their use of the latest meme, "Bush Haters." As usual, David digs deep into what the Republican spinmeisters really said about Clinton, and proves that there is no comparison between the Clinton Haters and today's so-called Bush Haters. Quite the contrary.

The Bush Haters meme is now all over the media, the latest attempt by Republicans to use languaging to convey what they want . They really have honed it to a fine art, and the way they all sing from the same songbook with no dissonance and no beat skipped is something I look at with a true sense of wonder. Until the Democrats learn how to jam the air waves with their own tunes and drown out those on the right, I'm afraid the Republicans will continue to win in the all-important area of messaging.

Sorry for overdoing the songbook metaphor.

Yes, it is now a trend -- the media are reporting that more and more Americans are getting fed up with the war Bush pompously declared was over, and how we are handling it. Here is the latest:

Aug. 23 — Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the U.S. mission in Iraq, saying the United States should reduce its spending and scale back its efforts there, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll.

SIXTY-NINE PERCENT of Americans polled say they are very concerned (40 percent) or somewhat concerned (29 percent) that the United States will be bogged down for many years in Iraq without making much progress in achieving its goals. Just 18 percent say they’re confident that a stable, democratic form of government can take shape in Iraq over the long term; 37 percent are somewhat confident. Just 13 percent say U.S. efforts to establish security and rebuild Iraq have gone very well since May 1, when combat officially ended; 39 percent say somewhat well.

It's invigorating to see that Bush's popularity has plunged 18 percent since April to 53 percent, indicating that a healthy number of Americans have maintained their critical faculties despite the noise and fireworks of the Bush propaganda machine.

Bush attack dog Andrew Sullivan is still on vacation, and I look forward to seeing how he spins this when he returns. He always placed great importance on Bush's high ratings, proof that his imaginary "fifth column" would be vanquished and marginalized. He has to face the fact that Bush, his shining soldier, has lost the trust and the respect of much of the population. One thing's for certain: he's going to try to blame someone, and it will most likely not be Bush. (Based on past behavior, candidates would be Bill Clinton, the BBC, Paul Krugman and the rest of the SCLM.)

While browsing through Singapore-related blogs, I came upon one that instantly stood out. I wondered for a moment whether I'd come upon my lost twin brother, at least in terms of style, love of music, and a bitter-sweet perception of the earth and its inhabitants. A sample:

As I was walking by the canal, I had that familiar feeling that my life was indeed a mediocre and insignificant one. Perhaps, I would have been gravely perturbed a few years ago but it seems that over time, I could think on this with a certain detachment, that even if it caused me to be mildly upset, I could attach to it no greater importance than the other fleeting emotions that might seize upon me occasionally, as if they were the strangers that wandered past the glass window of the cafe, sometimes peculiar enough to merit a second glance, yet largely indistinguishable from the general atmosphere. It is hardly the life of a poet. We do not have the luxury to indulge in our feelings, to taste its subtleties, to discover the myraid possible causes that might have led us to such a state, yet now and then, we find ourselves unexpectedly caught up in reverie, as if while transversing through a gallery, we find ourselves attracted to an exceptional painting, a painting that I have seen several times over the years and from its initial rawness of beauty, I have applied to it an intellectual understanding, so much so that I no longer separate cause from effect: its beauty and the artistry that produces it become indivisible, a complete appraisal of the genesis of the thought. However, on some occasions, when suddenly confronted, the original senseless impact of the thought is renewed afresh, and it would become unbearable, that life seems to treat us indifferently.

Definitely not your typical Singapore blog. Check it out and dig around.

I am always intrigued by the way politicians and media talk, the way they language their points. Today, Josh Marshall has a terrific post on how Bush's vagaries and all-but-empty platitudes reflect the mess that is today's War on Terror.

He starts by describing Bush's latest radio address, weighted in the vacuousness that has become Bush's signature:

I understand what the president's saying. I recognize a general truth in it. But the generality, vagueness and abstraction is the problem. They are becoming the engines of policy incoherence and the cover for domestic bad-actors who want to get this country into fights few Americans signed up for.

[....]

Just as vague and abstract language makes for bad prose, it is also the handmaiden of bad policy and the abettor of buck-passing.

All this talk about civilization, totalitarianism, fascism and terror is just preventing us from looking at what's happening and recognizing what are own interests are. They also make it possible for some people to convince themselves that it's not a screw-up that we've turned Iraq into a terrorist magnet. After all we're at war with 'the terrorists' and it makes sense that 'the terrorists' would attack us anyway, if only in a new venue. And we always knew it would be a long fight, a long twilight struggle, and yada, yada, yada and the rest of it. Same with the mumbo-jumbo about totalitarianism.

[....]

But the White House is being run by men and women who've already made a lot of really stupid mistakes that are going to cost a lot of American lives, money and credibility. And now they're trying to hide from accountability in their own idiot abstractions.

Marshall's been getting increasingly aggressive in his attacks on Bush. He started off in favor of the war and now seems totally disillusioned with our post-war bungling. Like Mark Kleiman. Like me.

It now seems that the one good thing to come out of the war on terror, along with the fall of the Taliban and Saddam, may well be the defeat of Bush in the coming election.

It's swell that the Taliban and Saddam fell, but, to use Ronald Reagan's language: Are we better off (in terms of national security) than we were a year ago? Two years ago? Are we safer and more secure when it comes to terrorism?

Terrorism has been moving full-speed ahead, far faster and more lethal than pre-911, as witnessed in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bali, Jakarta and, just last Tuesday, the UN blast in Iraq, not to mention the suicide bombings in Israel despite the much-ballyhooed "roadmap."

And our great victory in Iraq more and more resembles a true quagmire. mainly because we decided leadership there had to be on our terms, and because we paid infinitely more attention to the oil pipeline than we did to the people's lack of water and electricity. How could we be so stupid, alienating just about everyone with our incompetence and lack of fundamental sensitivity?

Sorry for wandering a bit off-topic there.

Hilarious, wickedly funny article on why the new GWB Aviator Doll makes a perfect gift. Here's how it starts:

Country's in shambles and economy's gutted and schools are shot and Iraq's a violent bloody mess and joblessness is rampant and it's a proud time indeed to be an American, and hence you might be asking yourself, what, pray what, can I give the hardcore lockstep pseudo-Christian homophobic Republican on my gift list?

What can you give the one who just loves bogus wars and BushCo's lies and thinks SUVs are way bitchin' and believes every bile-filled opinion crammed down their throats via Fox News and Hannity/Coulter/Limbaugh et al., hates them damnable gays and libs and environmentalists and has one hand over his heart while the other gropes the cat?

It only gets funnier. And I mean much funnier. The writer definitely has a streak of genius.

Via tbogg -- thanks!]

Three separate road accidents have killed at least 34 people in China over 24 hours.

In the worst of the incidents, 27 people were killed in north China when their bus plunged down a 30-metre deep ravine late on Friday, Xinhua news agency said.

I used to be amazed at the number of traffic deaths commonly reported in the newspaper in China; it wasn't the number of accidents, but the sheer number of lives that would be lost in a single one, often involving buses. Having taken a couple of bus rides outside of Beijing and in South China, I wonder why there aren't even more accidents. You wouldn't believe the condition of some of these roads, and the way drivers abuse them. Anything goes.

Shocking. And the White House brushes it aside in the name of "national security":

WASHINGTON - At the White House's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) gave New Yorkers misleading assurances that there was no health risk from the debris-laden air after the World Trade Center collapse, according to an internal inquiry.

President Bush (news - web sites)'s senior environmental adviser on Friday defended the White House involvement, saying it was justified by national security.

The White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" by having the National Security Council control EPA communications in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley.

"When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement," the report says, adding that the EPA had yet to adequately monitor air quality for contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin.

In all, the EPA issued five press releases within 10 days of the attacks and four more by the end of 2001 reassuring the public about air quality. But it wasn't until June 2002 that the EPA determined that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels — well after respiratory ailments and other problems began to surface in hundreds of workers cleaning dusty offices and apartments.

[....]

Andy Darrell, New York regional director of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group, said the report is indicative of a pattern of White House interference in EPA affairs.

Tell me one reason I would want the Bush White House to go on for another four years (aside from the fact that, at the moment, there doesn't seem to be a better alternative).

Yes! Fox News loses its idiotic lawsuit against Al Franken over use of the term "Fair and Balanced."

In rejecting Fox's argument, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin called the network's lawsuit "wholly without merit, both factually and legally."

A fair and balanced decision. Al Franken summed it up with a pithy soundbite:

"In addition to thanking my own lawyers," Franken said after the ruling, "I'd like to thank Fox's lawyers for filing one of the stupidest briefs I've ever seen in my life."

I wonder what Bill O'Reilly thinks about Franken's book rising today to #1 bestseller over at Amazon. A classic exercise in stupidity, and accomplishing exactly the opposite of what you set out to do.

[Via Eschaton]

China has responded defensively to allegations by the US that it is "backsliding" on human rights.

Reacting to his American counterpart, Richard Boucher's statement on China's alleged "backsliding" on human rights promises, Kong said the Chinese government rejected the US charge. Kong claimed that the human rights situation in China has made "great progress" in the past few years, which has also received wide acclaim from the international community.

[....]

Last December, China pledged during talks with the US to allow UN investigators to look into allegations that China jails people without due process, tolerates prison torture and restricts religious freedoms.
"Those visits have not yet taken place," US State department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

I guess Kong missed the recent articles on the kind and gentle treatment of AIDS victims and the recent infamous ten-year prison terms for Internet essayists. Maybe he's right, maybe there have been great strides. There's also a ways to go, and it appears, unsurprisingly, that several specific promises were not kept.

I've been waiting for this article to appear for some time now, and only wondered why it took so long. With the horrific bombing of the UN building in Iraq last week, I guess it's time had come.

As far as I can tell from 12,000 miles away, there has been a real shift in just the past few weeks, with the UN bombing accelerating the process dramatically -- a shift in the belief that Bush has proven himself invincible in restoring a sense of national security after September 11.

Just compare the mood today to that on the day he made his Top Gun landing and declared the combat in Iraq to be over. It is a shame that the combat isn't over. But it's also a shame that Bush chose to glamorize our great victory -- as though it were a done deal -- with such hubris. And he may pay a heavy price.

Here is how the article begins:

The wave of violent death this week in Iraq, Israel, Gaza and Afghanistan brought to the fore a reality that President Bush has been reluctant to discuss: Peace is not at hand.

A confident Bush stood in the Rose Garden less than a month ago, saying, "Conditions in most of Iraq are growing more peaceful," boasting of "dismantling the al Qaeda operation" and pronouncing "pretty good progress" toward Middle East peace and a Palestinian state within two years.

Those sunny characterizations may yet prove true, but Bush allies and foes alike are coming to the conclusion that the progress may not be noticeable by the time Bush faces the voters again in 15 months. For a president who has staked his reputation on making "a tough decision to make the world more peaceful," this could be a big problem.

We'll probably see more and more of this if gloomy news keeps emanating from Iraq. After all, with the economy in shambles, unemployment at its worse in recent memory, and America's image tarnished in the eyes of just about everybody overseas, what is Bush going to point to as his great success?

It looks like the progress in human rights in China, so loudly trumpeted a year ago, was just a lot of noise over nothing. The US today accused China of "backsliding" on the issue.

"Despite the progress in 2002 we've been disappointed to see the negative developments in 2003," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

[....]

Mr Boucher said "backsliding" in this context consisted of a number of "troubling incidents" including the execution of a Tibetan activist without due process.

In January, activist Lobsang Dhondup, 28, was put to death following a series of bomb blasts in southwestern China, on what supporters say were politically motivated charges.

Mr Boucher also cited the "arrest of a number of democracy activists, the harsh sentences that were laid down for Internet essayists, labor protestors and a number of other things that constitute backsliding."

Of all the sins committed by the Chinese government, contempt for human rights is the most unpardonable. I don't understand how they can allow it to happen at the same time they are striving to be a world economic leader. They have so much going for them, with the 2008 Olympics, ascension to the WTO, a (seemingly) strong economy -- why ruin it all by treating your citizens as though you're still in the Dark Ages?

The answer lies in China's history, where one finds a disdain for human life that goes back thousands of years and was epitomized by Mao's indifference to the great famine (and every other atrocity he fomented, each of which was paid for with the blood of the people).

Many societies have episodes of brutality, even genocide, in their history. But today, we expect that only from backward, uneducated societies, not from a country pulling all the stops to be seen as the world's leading economic engine and a model of improvement in every way. China has to wise up: if it wants international respect, it has to live up to international standards. They clearly haven't gotten this yet, and in fact are now heading in the exact wrong direction.

Update: Maybe I need to clarify this, as some have misunderstood my point. Brutality is not unique to China, and it is probably safe to say all or certainly most societies have had their ample share of it. My point is that, unlike the countries that grew out of their long periods of brutal, repressive government, much of the old mentality remains in China, as manifested in the huge number of executions, the documented human rights abuses, the total inability of "the little man" to receive justice, the rampant corruption, and the violence that goes with it. The arrests and long prison terms of essay writers. Also the viewpoint that women are mere trinkets, which is still alive in much of the country today, as witnessed by the continuing infanticide of baby girls and the widespread selling of young girls by their own families into slavery and/or forced prostitution. Some of these things were way worse under the Nationalists than they are now (they used to simply shoot suspected Communists on the streets in front of everyone), and China has made strides in the right direction. But Mao's attitude of the low value of a human life is legendary, and not dissimilar to that of rulers during the warlord days. As other nations in the 20th Century embraced what we call "modern-day civilization" and a greater respect for human life, China got stuck somewhere along the line. My simple point is that this attitude is grounded in a pattern of the way the "common mass of people" has been treated in China throughout much of its history. It isn't new. Mao didn't invent it. He just took it to shocking extremes (though less extreme than his contemporaries Hitler and Stalin). So I am not branding China as having a more brutal history than other countries -- just as still being under the effect of the spirit and psyche of brutality long after many (most) other civilized nations have come to recognize the value and necessity of justice and equality. South Africa and Russia were able to end long-ingrained behaviours. Now it's China's turn, at least if they expect to win the respect they so crave.

Ann Coulter's not in Kansas anymore. In fact, she is not even on the planet earth, but rather in her own bizarre and depraved universe.

Check out a great new post from Orcinus on how Ann's religious mission to redeem Joe McCarthy defies sanity and constitutes revisionism at its most dangerous.

The first half of today was so awful, so thoroughly depressing that for a moment I wondered why I should bother living. And I have to be mighty depressed to think that way.

I have been trying to send money to my love in America to pay the mortgage, and the Internet transaction seems to have vaporised in the ether. No one seems to be able to explain where the money went; all I know is it was taken out of my account. A health insurance company owes me more than $2000 for my medical bills in Beijing following my fall, and that, too, seems to be lost in some bureaucratic maze, and I feel like K in Kafka's The Trial, absolutely unable to get any information or answers. I felt desperate.

A whole wave of headaches like this came crashing down all at once, and I left the office for lunch feeling utterly helpless and overwhelmed. I was shaking, I felt so frustrated.

As I staggered back to the office, I was counting all the reasons why life just wasn't worth it. What's the point? It's so easy just to end it. And then....

I opened my email, and there was one of those moments that belonged in a Hollywood movie. My eyes saw the Subject of the email, and as my brain processed the letters, I suddenly heard Louis Armstrong's gravelly voice in the background singing, "And I think to myself, what a wonderful world...."

The header simply said something along the lines of, "I may have a job for your friend Ben." (Ben is my dearest friend from Beijing, someone whom I treasure, the one to whom I "pushed the envelope.")

It was a very simple email, extraordinarily kind and gracious, from a reader who has an ad agency in China. Maybe nothing will come of it. It was just that it came at that moment when everything seemed totally black, and it filled my world with a beautiful light, and I felt all the fears and sadness of the earlier hours melt away. As I read the content, tears welled in my eyes, and I finally just rested my head in my arms and cried silently.

The writer had read my posts about Ben and his difficulties landing a job in Beijing, and he was simply saying that maybe, possibly, he might have something to offer. Maybe not, but why not see?

I do not want that person to feel that now I expect anything to come of it. Just as when I brought Ben to my own company back in Beijing for an interview, I was determined that Ben would succeed based on his own abilities, and not on my lobbying. I have since helped Ben find a couple of other job leads, but, to be fair, I divorce myself from the process after the introductions.

So it may not amount to anything, but it reminded me that there is still a lot of goodness on the planet. I picked up the phone and called my health insurance company, and for the first time in months, I actually made progress, and got a commitment from a real person. Suddenly, the world was just...different.

The day also drove home to me just how badly I want to go home after my two and-a-half-years away. I owe it to my company to stay for now, and I am giving them everything I've got -- after all, they got me out of China. But it's definitely the last stop on the way back to my family and my cats and my home.

Ages ago I wrote about the near-obsessive care Chinese people take to avoid "bad-luck numbers" like 4 and 14.

Then there are the good-luck numbers, most prominently the number 8, which in Chinese is "ba" which sounds like "fa" which means "to prosper."

All of this is background to a tiny anecdote, namely that Sichhuan Airline a few days ago bought the telephone number 8888-8888 for $288,000 USD, which is about 2.33 million yuan. It's going to be their customer service number. It illustrates just how powerful these superstitions can be.

Superstitions and feng shui and luck play an amazingly important role for millions of Chinese, even here in Singapore. One of my clients told me we had to delay the launch of his new company because the third week of August had bad feng shui (something to do with the Hungry Ghost Festival, I think) and the second week of September was the earliest he could do it. This is a computer geek in his 20s, not an old villager. Some traditions just linger on....

Update: In case you skip the comments, a reader referred me to this informative article on the magic of 8. Thanks, commenter.

An unwittingly self-parodying article just came out in People's Daily in which half the phrases are put in "quotation marks" to indicate the author's (i.e., the government's) scoffing at the idea that there is any semblance of legitimacy to Taiwan's "presidential elections." Unintentionally funny. Vintage CCP.

UPDATE: Link corrected

Now this is really surprising:

BANGKOK - Wolfgang Wagner, grandson of the late opera composer Richard Wagner, will lead a delegation to Thailand in November to attend the opening ceremony of the Thai branch of the International Wagner Society, the first such group in Southeast Asia, a new report said Friday.

They'll actually be performing Das Rheingold in Bangkok in 2005, with the rest of the Ring to follow.

I was involved in an effort to start a Wagner Society in Beijing back in April, but unfortunately I had to depart before it really got going. Does Singapore have a Wagner Society? Hmmm.

Far-right talk radio psychopath Michael Savage can again be heard on NYC's airwaves (he was fired from WABC radio earlier for his foul-mouthed racism). Mayor Bloomberg is recommending that New Yorkers clean their ears thoroughly with antibacterial soap after listening to the new program.

Sad article on the difficulties today's college grads are having finding jobs in China.

This is a subject close to my heart. My best friend in China, Ben, is having a terrible time finding a job, and I keep telling him that the competition is more intense now than it's ever been in his lifetime, and he should not blame himself for rejections. It's just the way it is for nearly every Chinese job hunter at the moment.

I wonder if there is any place in Asia where jobs are easy to come by. HK and Singapore have been steeped in unemployment for a couple of years now. The difference with China is that at least in HK and Spore the students have known for a long time just how hard-to-impossible finding their dream job would be. In China, it is apparently coming as a shock, and a lot of young people are realizing sadly that they must rearrange their plans and dreams. At the moment, there's no end in sight.

Adam over at PRC News tells us (toward the end of the post) "...China has just begun accepting people with AIDS as regular people. Very telling."

Very telling indeed. Tell it to the villagers referred to in the post below -- the ones whose skulls were cracked open by the increasingly tolerant and magnanimoius CCP and its hired thugs.

I guess nothing can shock me about China anymore, particularly in regard to its psychotic approach to AIDS. As Conrad once posted, the government first infected its populace (via contaminated blood and no controls), then blamed them, then beat them to a pulp, literally.

The latest article from the WaPo shows just how depraved conditions in China truly are, and I choose the adjective carefully.

Here are the opening paragraphs, but read it all; it only gets worse:

XIONGQIAO, China -- Xiong Jinglun was lying in bed on the night of the raid, resting his frail, AIDS-weakened body when the shouting outside jarred him awake. The 51-year-old farmer struggled to his feet and shuffled out of his shack to investigate, but someone had cut off the electricity in the village, and it was difficult to see in the pitch dark.

Suddenly, several men wearing riot gear and military fatigues surrounded him, struck his head with a nightstick and knocked him to the ground, he recalled. Xiong begged them to stop hitting him, crying out that he was an old man, that he had AIDS. But he heard one of the assailants shout: "Beat them! Beat them even if they have AIDS!"

A few days earlier, residents of this AIDS-stricken Chinese village had staged a protest demanding better medical care, rolling two government vehicles into a ditch to vent their frustration. Now, local authorities here in central Henan province, about 425 miles northwest of Shanghai, were answering their appeal for help. But instead of doctors, they sent the police.

More than 500 officers, local officials and hired thugs stormed the muddy hamlet of 600 residents on the night of June 21, shouting threats, smashing windows and randomly pummeling people who got in their way, witnesses said. Police jailed 18 villagers and injured more than a dozen others, including an 8-year-old boy who tried to defend his sick mother.

I really savor the posts I read now and then from idealistic dilettantes (something I can be at times myself) who defend the CCP at any cost, no matter what they do. I'd love to hear them defend this. Of course, they'll say as usual that it is isolated and atypical and they "need more information" before they can comment.

The key to understanding the depravity of the CCP on the AIDS scandal comes mid-way down:

The leadership is reluctant to allow an open discussion about AIDS in part because it fears it would be blamed for the epidemic. Hundreds of thousands of poor farmers like Xiong contracted the virus by selling blood in the early 1990s at state hospitals and private clinics run by local officials and their friends. These programs often used unsanitary collection methods, including a process in which blood was mixed in a centrifuge to remove plasma and then reinjected into donors

Can everyone get that? Can the defenders of the CCP process this? Can anyone at all find a reason to defend what is happening?

I want the non-believers to visualize what happened, to see themselves protesting a gross injustice from the government, and for that being beaten and arrested and treated like animals -- all because that very same government helped them contract AIDS.

After several days without a response, five villagers went to the provincial capital, Zhengzhou. But officials there would not see them and instead contacted local authorities, who had the men arrested. Police beat them, tied them up and hauled them back to a local jail, said Xiong Changmin, 31, one of the representatives.

That night, police launched the raid on Xiongqiao. A senior county police official, who asked to be identified only by his surname, Jia, confirmed that about 500 men participated in the raid and that they arrested 13 villagers. He said those detained had attacked a local official. But asked whether his men beat up people in Xiongqiao, he replied, "I'm not clear about that."

I have referred to China as "the other Evil Empire," and I stick to it. If we are imposing trade sanctions against Cuba, we should be doing 10 times more when it comes to China. Two years ago I was the government's biggest sympathizer, and now I am and always will be a very harsh critic. Those of you who remain dazzled by the pyrotechnic display of China's miraculous growth and prosperity, be forewarned -- when the foundation is rotten, the collapse of the entire structure is inevitable. Just pray you're not around when that day comes.

The Singapore headlines are a bit more intense than usual today:

Singaporeans' miss the smiles of the late Iranian Siamese twins

Lee Kuan Yew's son is being groomed to be the next Prime Minister (no surprise there)

The Singapore junior college debate team won great scores

Some mobile customers are unhappy with their phone numbers

Parents should choose primary schools close to their homes

And that's the way it is here in Singapore, where it sometimes gets so deathly dull that even the little flies on the wall tuck in their wings and go to sleep. I think I'll go home and watch some paint dry.

What's with the Asia Pacific bloggers lately? Preston has literally evaporated, Conrad's been silent for three days, Phil for 5 days (!), and my own posting has been sporadic at best. At least BWG is still at it, but who wants to read about Tai Chi all the time?

What will it take to rekindle our passion and restore our lost lustre? God, what a tragedy.... Taxi, can you drop me off at Beijing please? Yes, that's what I said -- Beijing. At least there's stuff to write about over there!

Actually, a few things:

1. Apparently the Something Awful site has been around a long time, but I just stumbled onto it during lunch today and for half an hour I was fighting to suppress my laughs as colleagues wondered what I'd been smoking. It's right up there with the funniest things of all time.

2. Also well circulated is news of the George W. Bush Aviator Doll. I really thought it was a joke at first. It's not. And that's not funny. In fact, it's reallly, really scary.

I went to Google and typed aviator + "george w. bush" and was overwhelmed by all the linksl some of which are among the funniest I've ever seen. Like this and this. I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.

Browsing once again through Richard Webster's great site, I was directed to another site, one of the most indispensable I've found, The Memory Hole.

The Memory Hole specializes in keeping track of the government's Orwellian practice of very quietly removing information from the Internet and elsewhere. It is also in a league of its own when it comes to looking at arcane government reports and spotting the enormous story hiding in an obscue footnote that has gone totally unnoticed by the mass media.

You can browse this site for hours. It's not only the government that's called to account, but the media as well. Further evidence that as more and more information becomes available, it only becomes more and more difficult to ascertain what is true.

Interesting article on areas in China where people live well into their 90s, as did their parents and grandparents before them, with many living past 100.

It seems the key trick is avoiding fat and protein and eating lots of savory things like bitter gourds and soy beans. Somehow I can't see many Americans going for that....

Can anyone, ever, believe anything that Bush says, has said and will say? Everyday we hear of new duplicities, half-truths and outright lies, including this latest report that his much-touted working of "miracles" ("No Child Left Behind")for the Texas educational system was a lot of malarkey.

Via Mark Kleiman -- don't miss his scathing analysis of the story.

I was shocked to find a right-wing message board that is enjoying a veritable orgy of glee as it mocks the French in the horrors of death by heatwave.

Sample:

Wow. Only 98 degrees and 3,000 people die. That's not very indicative of a robust gene pool. No wonder the French didn't want to get involved in Iraq - they'd wither in the sun.

Ha ha ha. And we wonder why everybody outside the USA hates Americans?

[Via Silt]

It appears Idi Amin (for those of us who remember who he is) is having trouble finding a kidney donor. If you think you might be compatible with him (kidney-wise), he's hanging out in a hospital in Saudi Arabia.

It's 1:40 in the morning in Singapore and I just can't fall asleep. Maybe I can blog myself to sleep; god knows, I've done it to others.

My trip to Hong Kong was illuminating. I spoke to a few Westerners there and was amazed at their gloomy outlook for the future of the SAR. I was also reminded of just how fundamentally different Honkies are from Singaporeans. This hit me the minute I took my first ride in the subway there and counted no fewer than 11 commuters yakking on their mobile phones. Loudly. Proudly. They just don't do that in Singapore. Lots of things like that, from the way they walk up escalators to the way they cross the street to the way the taxis drive. More on these topics after I get some sleep. I am not looking forward to the alarm clock going off tomorrow morning.

...an utterly devastating visual indictment of our president's big fuck-up in Iraq. Do not miss it. I literally trembled toward the end. (Via Daily Kos.)

I thought we were doing the right thing to go in, and I believe Saddam's downfall is a spectacular event. But there was no serious strategic plan about what to do after the easy part, and all the nightmare scenarios prophesied by Krugman and Kristoff and so many others have materialized, and every day it appears that the glorious hero's welcome and great liberation were groundless fantasies spouted out by a breathless and delusional Andrew Sullivan and his cult.

On top of the lack of realistic planning is Bush's sickeningly cavalier attitude ("bring 'em on"), exquisitely captured in the link above. I am now beginning to believe that he truly may be beatable in the next election. God, what a joy that would be.

No, these are not from a sicko snuff movie. This is what happens if you chew gum in Singapore. (Not really; the canee was convicted of rape, and this is just part of his punishment.) An interesting glimpse into an aspect of the culture here that is so different from anything we know back home....

I also thought this would offer a nice balance to Conrad's weekly "Different Perspectives" photos.

Nearly everyday I visit a better-than-average tech news site, The Register, which tells it like it is with a good deal of irreverence and sardonic wit. Its slogan is "Biting the hand that feeds us," i.e., they won't hesitate to attack their own advertisers when called for.

So I was disappointed today to see them turn on Dave Winer for holding a blogging conference at Harvard's Berkman Law School with an admission cost of $500. Yeah, it's pricey, but the article implies that Winer is "fleecing" attendees and making out like a bandit. (He isnt.)

It's quite interesting to read the nasty swipe and then read Dave Winer's reply to it. (It will certainly get you thinking about The Register's slogan.) You can decide which of the two is more noble.

I don't disagree with all of The Register's points about some who take blogging way too seriously, and the article has some great references to "Googlewashing" which, if you haven't heard of it, is a must-read. It's just that the writer filled his pen with a bit more venom than was called for when it came to Winer and the BlogCon.

Check out Adam's sandbox, Brainysmurf, which now has a new face. While we'll all miss that picture of Adam munching on a chunk of chicken at the Tianjin cafeteria, the new look is really nice.

Update: Adam, you need to fix those "Voices of Perspective" links!

The radio and TV news this morning is abuzz with a horrifying story that occurred Wednesday morning, when a technician at the National University of Singapore walked into a conference room packed with people, pulled out a paper cutter, walked up to a 47-year-old professor and slashed his throat. The professor died shortly afterwards. On his way out of the room, the deranged technician walked over to an administrative officer and slashed her across the face with his paper cutter.

Obviously, in ever-placid Singapore this is startling news. It takes up most of the front page of today's Straits Times.

So, the question arises, why is there only a photo of the killer and a brief caption about it on the Straits Times web site? And no link?

The story gets shockingly disproportional coverage compared to the "big stories" on the web site. Click on the link for Singapore news and there's no mention of it at all!! Instead, there are headlines for the truly earth-shattering stories, such as:

Upgrading of Marine Terrace is on track
A local construction company is seeking judicial management
Free flu shots for health workers

You get the idea. It's as though, aside from the photo on the home page and a caption, this story doesn't exist.

My theory: They (which always refers to The Government) want to do whatever they can to contain the story. Local news is heard locally (duh); once it's on the Net with an active link it's everywhere. By including the photo/caption, they can't be accused of ignoring it. But by offering almost no text and no link, they drastically reduce the chance of the story being spread around worldwide. (Of course, that can't work, because I'm sure it's going to get picked up by the regional/international media. But I can't come up with any other reason to explain it. )

If you were here and could see the local papers and TV news, you would see just how bizarre this really is.

This is a long-delayed trip to meet with former colleagues and pick up some of the things I left behind more than a year ago. I don't expect to be on-line much at all, but one never knows.

I just watched the Bali bomber on TV rejoicing as he was given the death penalty and, in a sickening gesture, turning to the crowd in the courtroom to give them two thumbs up, his face beaming with an ear-to-ear grin. It's at a moment like this that you realize just how dangerous these fanatics are (not that I ever really doubted that).

I am no big fan of the death penalty. But in this case, I am delighted, and hope that however they kill him, they do it slowly. Bastard.

How else to explain his hate-filled blast at the Anglican church over the gay bishop controversy? Just a little taste:

This is a dreadful event, a triumph for the forces of death over the forces of life. Robinson cheerfully acknowledges that he is an active homosexual. The Bible is perfectly clear that homosexual acts are sinful. Our Lord gave sinners strict and clear instructions: stop sinning, and repent your past sins. Robinson is in brazen violation of fundamental Christian doctrine.

It gets worse. He's got to be doing a self-parody -- doesn't he?

These are the top headlines today:

1. Singapore composer is honored for his songs

2. High auto costs affect which insurance policies S'poreans buy

3. The prime minister will address the nation this weekend

4. Singapore nurses are playing a bigger role in health care

I am not making this up.

Now, if those stories don't move earth and heaven I don't know what will. And you wonder why I don't blog as much as I used to?!

The BBC has a story out today about how Singapore parents often push their children to study and learn, resulting in a less-than-joyous childhood.

Andrew Wood, the editor of Teach magazine, a monthly journal about the Singapore educational system, says that traditionally, children in Singapore are put under a huge amount of pressure.

"Every parent seems to want their child to become a doctor, a professor or a government scholar, and that puts an enormous amount of pressure on children to learn things at a very early age," Mr Wood said.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the case in many Asian societies? I know I saw it in China and Hong Kong....

UPDATE: BWG tells a similar story about students in HK, where some are pushed so hard they are apparently jumping out windows, which is definitely not a good sign.

Mark Kleiman has some thought-provoking comments on the subject, and I don't think the topic is going away anytime soon:

Jane Galt objects to the release of the 28 censored pages about Saudi involvement in the 9-11 massacres on the grounds that, once we acknowledge publicly that the Saudi Royal Family was directly responsible for the murder of 3000 Americans, we will have no alternative but to go to war, conquer the Kingdom, and then face the rage of the "Arab street" at the spectacle of infidel boots marching through Mecca and Medina.

I don't agree with her analysis, but she deserves credit for putting the real issue on the table; the Administration's "protecting sources and methods" story just won't wash.

Of course it won't wash, but I am still shocked (though perhaps not surprised) over the lack of outrage at the Administration's sloughing off the issue. Kleiman holds no punches and sees it, as do I, as ample grounds for rejecting Bush come November '04:

Now an argument could be made -- and it's one I'm not professionally competent to judge -- that the US national interest is best served by appeasing the Saudis rather than confronting them. That argument would be politically very unpopular if the report were released; that is why the Bush team is so intent on not releasing it.

But if this President is so incapable of leadership that his only means of restraining popular fury is to keep the public in the dark about who attacked us on 9-11, that's the best argument I've heard yet for getting ourselves a new President.

Emphasis is mine.

Is anone getting this? Are we willingly going to allow the president to blindfold us?

It does seem, from these thousands of miles away, to be a politically extraordinary time in America. I've really never seen anything like it before.

If you have the patience to wade through her cutesy, tiresome, sing-song prose, larded with the same weary jokes she's been spouting for years, you may find Maureen Dowd's latest column downright shocking.

Dowd predicts with a steely confidence nothing less than the "retirement" of Colin Powell himself (along with Richard Armitage, for those who remember who he is) come Bush's second term. If you know Dowd and her track record, you'll know that for all the nonsense, she is extraordinarily connected and doesn't make such pronouncements willy-nilly.

More shocking are her predictions for Powell's replacements including the scourge of the early Clinton years, Newt Gingrich. (I really hope -- I pray -- that if he is nominated, someone will dig up the old interview with him and Phil Donahue in which he warns, with a totally straight face, how the US is in danger of invasion from....Nicaragua. Now, if that sort of prescience doesn't qualify him to be SOS, what does?)

It's hard to believe. They knew it was coming, they knew the Marriott was on the JI hit list, they took "precautions" and it didn't matter a bit.

Police on Wednesday said they seized documents last month showing that terrorists had planned to target the area around Jakarta's Marriott Hotel that was devastated by a powerful car bomb, and that they had increased security around Marriott thereafter, anticipating an attack.

The revelations came as the Australian government said intelligence showed more attacks across Indonesia, particularly in its capital, were likely in coming days.

The intelligence also indicates Jakarta could be in for more such attacks over the next few days.

According to today's Times, an age-old Chinese tradition is about to be made extinct, another victim of Western marketing:

For many tourists, one of the indelible images of China is that of the cutie-pie baby wearing the pants with the giant hole on the bottom. If their timing is right, the tourists might even catch a toddler relieving himself, right on the street.

Visitors may find this disgusting, or delightful, but they may not see such sights much longer, at least in the cities. China's famous split pants may soon be eclipsed by the disposable diaper.

The article goes into copious detail about every conceivable aspect of the Diaper Revolution, for those who care.

My laptop is being completely overhauled; Windows is being uninstalled and reinstalled, all my data saved on a separate drive, and I won't get it back for at least another day, so again, no evening or morning posting. It feels downright weird to be at home with no email or Internet for four whole days. Nightmare.

It all started on Saturday night, after I downloaded McAffee anti-virus software (legally). Suddenly my cable modem stopped responding. The computer repairpeople and Starhub (my cable provider) told me McAffee is notorious for screwing up a computer's software. I sure wish I had known that before I forked over $60 for their antivirus and firewall package (I never even got to download the firewall). One more of life's myriad headaches....

That question arose in yesterday's comments and I'd like to answer it as a post, maybe more for myself than anyone else.

If you look at the little legend to the side of the page -- "A peculiar hybrid..." -- you'll see that I describe my journeys to/from Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore as occurring "for reasons that are still not entirely clear" to me. And those are the truest words I ever wrote.

How did I end up here? As in nearly all of the phases of my life, it just sort of happened. An act of happenstance. Not just Singapore but practically everything I've ever done. This struck me as something of an epiphany. I've let myself be taken from one place to another to another, very rarely plotting the course or steering the ship.

My first three jobs all came to me when various friends recommended me to their bosses. In fact, that seems to be how I've got nearly all my jobs. I'm not saying this is bad. But it was something of a scary revelation to see that my life has not been so much about choice as it has been about quirks of fate, an unexpected recommendation, a phone call in the middle of dinner, an invitation...someone else's initiative.

My being an executive in my field sometimes seems so absurd I can laugh out loud. A background in classical music and German, and here I am doing high-tech marketing in Asia! It's simply too outlandish to even consider. But that's my life. Ever since I let go of my initial dreams, I've basically let life lead me around.

I just went back in my archives because this conversation reminded me of somthing I wrote back in January. (Sorry, can't link to it.) Sure enough, I had written:

Experienced, well read, a couple of degrees and good marks, a labrynthine knowledge of Wagner and the World Wars and a few other topics, I still feel that I am adrift, anchorless and rudderless in a world that I have allowed to pass me by. When I was young, things seemed to just come to me, and I always thought that would continue. Surprise. Not that there haven't been successes and extraordinary experiences, including my living and working right now in China. But I made the mistake of which Joseph Campbell warns us so eloquently -- I never followed my bliss. I allowed myself to be talked out of pursuing a career in classical music, my life and my passion and my joy; I took the path of least resistance and dropped out of my advanced music theory course because the professor, Louise Thalmadge, terrified me. I allowed my close friend, who meant no harm, to talk me out of my dream, and in giving up that dream I gave up a very big part of myself. I can hardly look back to that moment without a flood of poignancy that goes straight to the heart, and my eyes fight back tears as I wonder how I could have been so stupid. There's a passage in Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, toward the end, where the hero looks back on how he had "simply given up the best years of his life," to paraphrase. That heartache, that realization that our love and our dream and our passion have gone to waste, it hurts and haunts as does nothing else.

Sorry to bring such a whiny, mawkish post up again, but it is key to figuring out my existence -- and, if you are still young enough, maybe it will help provide an important learning. Do what you love. Don't waste time. Choose your life and your course and don't get blown around like a feather.

So anyway, getting back to what led me to Singapore before I went off on that endless sidetrack. The short answer is that I was quite desperate to escape from Beijing. I was physically cold and emotionally battered, and when the opportunity arose, again by happenstance, I seized it. It hasn't been bad, I enjoy my co-workers and most aspects of my job, and it's certainly warm enough. But again, it isn't who I am. It's not what I was meant to do. As always, I'll stick to it and do it well enough, but I have made a promise to myself that when I return to America I'll take a new course, one where I can feel wholly alive and thrilled about what I am doing.

So you see, Singapore is one more stop along the way, something of a lifesaver tossed to me by the Lifeguards On High. I've certainly had worse experiences, but I have never before, ever, ever, ever felt so adamantly that is time for me to get into the boat and chart the course instead of being dragged along, grasping a lifesaver.

And now that I have totally overused and abused that metaphor, I'll call it a day.

The problem wasn't with my cable modem but with my laptop, which is now being worked on. So I can only post from the office before and after work, and maybe during lunch. In any case, posts will be few until the problem is fixed.

(Is life anything more than moving from one headache to the next? Probably not. Whenever I reach the state where there are no immedite headaches, I get restless and bored....)

During the month of April in Beijing, when Sars was at its peak, I was getting as many as 3,000 unique visitors a day, which for me was pretty amazing. Now I feel lucky if I get 150 (though I still keep getting traffic to my old blogspot site, often more than I get here thanks to all the old links out there.)

I knew the minute I left China that I would have to give up most of that traffic; I would no longer be able to post around the clock and I would no longer be a mole in a mysterious country going through an unprecedented political, social and medical crisis. As I've said before, controversy is all but unknown here in Singapore, and there isn't much to take a stand on. And I know that my style of writing plays to a limited audience, to say the least.

So why am I writing this? I guess I am just feeling philosophical, wondering whether this exercise is worth the time and effort. I'm not calling for a vote; I'm going to continue because I enjoy it and I keep making new cyberfriends, even now when my traffic is at a trickle. Still, I have to say, those days when I knew thousands of people were coming to my dinky site to read about what Beijing was going through -- that was one of the most exciting times of my life. Not necessarily happy, but certainly exciting, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it.

Okay, pardon this little cathartic exercise. All part of my effort to come to terms with Singapore and my new life here....

On Saturday night my brand-new cable modem went into a coma and I haven't been able to get online until now. It should be repaired later today, but until then I am pretty helpless. Please bear with me....

At least that's the way it appears at the moment. According to a new article in The New Republic the hand-wringing by high Saudi officials, whining that they want the redactions in the 911 report un-redacted is just a show. And GWB is a principal actor.

If their request were granted it would mean the end of US-Saudi relations as we know them. This just may be the most devastating story of the year, because if it's true Bush will be proven to be a prevaricator and hypocrite beyond redemption. It will mean that he has knowingly protected those who make terrorism possible, its bankrollers.

The article quotes at length a high official in the know, and it's a true bombshell.

"[A]n official who has read the [9/11] report tells The New Republic that the support described in the report goes well beyond [support for charities]: It involves connections between the hijacking plot and the very top levels of the Saudi royal family. "There's a lot more in the 28 pages than money. Everyone's chasing the charities," says this official. "They should be chasing direct links to high levels of the Saudi government. We're not talking about rogue elements. We're talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government."

This week, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal flew to Washington for a hastily convened meeting with President Bush. Faisal publicly demanded that the 28 pages be declassified, but he had to have known in advance, and welcomed the fact, that his request would be denied--ostensibly friendly nations don't normally send their foreign ministers to meetings halfway around the world to be surprised. For his part, Bush has insisted that revealing the 28 pages would compromise "sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror.

[....]

The Bush administration has, of course, good reason for not wanting to ruffle the Saudis by declassifying the 28 pages. Saudi Arabia sits atop 25 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and, through its dominant position in OPEC, essentially controls the global energy market.

This is astounding. If it's all so obvious to the official quoted, it is certainly obvious to the White House. What it boils down to is the report has information that can help lead to key players behind 911, and these links and any reference to them have apparently been blacked out.

Could this be what Democrats have only dared dream of? If so, it could alter the war on terror, and the nation's opinion of its beloved president. After all, if it's 911-style terrorism we seek to obliterate, it seems Saudi Arabia -- far more than Iraq -- is the logical place to focus. But then, lots of people have been saying this for nearly two years now (Thomas Friedman of the NYT has brought it up many times.)

Bottom line: By deleting information about the Saudi connection to the 911 terrorists, Bush has protected them. Why? The only sensible answer, according to the article and to common sense, is the cliche, it's all about oil. I never subscribed to that cliche, but I'm about to change my mind.

[via Josh Marshall, who says he'll soon be providing some new inside information about the WMD search in Iraq.]

UPDATE: The cat is definitely out of the bag. It is even a banner headline over at Matt Drudge.

Edited, 11:58 a.m. SGP time, then again at 4:38 p.m. as new facts emerge.

Four total suckers fall victim to Singapore scam artists. How could they be this stupid:

FOUR people were duped into handing large sums of cash to strangers last weekend.

In each case, a man asked to borrow the victim's cellphone, then asked for the victim's bank account number so someone else could transfer money to it. No transfer was made, after which the man asked for a loan.

One of them actually gave the scammer his ATM card and PIN!

And that is the most exciting news out of Singaore today....

I stumbled fortuitously onto a new site today and went on to spend way too much time there. It's not for the casual browser -- lots of stuff on politics and religion and Freud and long book reviews, a great piece on how trustworthy the BBC can be, and a whole lot more. The fellow is obviously a genius, and I could imagine hanging around here for many hours at a time. Again, definitely not for lighthearted entertainment.

It also has some of the best articles I have ever read on the McMartin daycare witch hunt and related scandals.

[One hour later.] I just went and browsed through it again. This is a magnificent site.

I had no idea a writer for the NY Post could be this hilarious:

July 29, 2003 -- Dead men tell no tales - except at the New York Times.

The obituary of comedian Bob Hope, who died Sunday, carried the byline of Vincent Canby - a Times writer who has been dead himself since 2000.

If there are any mistakes, obviously don't call the writer.

In fairness, the Times Web site, which posted the story last night, did say that the writer had died in 2000.

Was it a post mortem obit? If not, was Canby able to collect a kill fee before he left?

Joe Lelyveld, the Times interim executive editor - who passes the baton to William Keller tomorrow - said it is not the first time that a writer has "predeceased the subject."

We all want to give our colleagues - and fellow working stiffs - their due, but isn't the practice a little unusual?

Usually when an editor sends someone to the morgue, he means the area where long-ago clippings are stored. "He wrote the piece and we don't take his name off it," said Lelyveld. "Notice our dead reporter did not report that Bob Hope had died Sunday."

"He wrote the piece a few years ago," said Lelyveld, "and not much has happened in Bob Hope's life since."

That ends that mystery. At least he didn't bury the lead.

If you haven't seen this yet, be sure take a look. The public defender who presented this legal brief all about the word Fuck is going to have a bright future ahead. Ingenious.

[Via Daypop]

I always felt the argument that the significance of what a president (or anyone else) says is proportional to the number of words used to say it is patently absurd. This little cartoon drives the point home.

[From Bush for Dummies, via Idle Days]

I hope my last post on President Bush didn't come across as too critical. My sole criticism (in that post) was in regard to his public speaking abilities when he can't lean on a script. I was truly amazed at his incoherence yesterday, three years into this presidency.

From everything I have heard, I believe if I met George W. I would truly like him. Apparently he comes across as amiable, compassionate and empathetic, at least when the meeting is on a one-to-one basis and he's out of the public spotlight. And there's no doubt he is intelligent. That doesn't alter my opinion about his (in)ability to think and speak on his feet.