I just watched a newsclip of Bush answering questions at a rare press conference yesterday. I am not exaggerating when I say I wanted to cover my face in embarrassment.

I think of the way Tony Blair, through a contagious passion and the confidence of a born orator, can inspire a crowd. I think of Clinton and Reagan, the two greatest American communicators of my lifetime. I think of Churchill. And Hitler (the man could talk, I'll give him that).

Then we come to Bush. As he coughs and sputters and stammers and stutters, trying to decipher his torturous syntax becomes an exercise in sheer futility. He is fine when he has a prepared speech in front of him. But when he's on his own, forced into spontaneous dialogue, all we see is this fat head with two frightened eyes swimming helplessly in their sockets, an obvious "fight-or-flight" dread emanating from his pores; he clutches at phrases, for some banal platitude that will be uncontroversial enough to get him out of the vice alive. When he isn't uttering incoherent gibberish, he's spewing out the tritest and blandest of cliches. It is painful watching him flounder to keep afloat.

More than anything else the president is a communicator. In this regard, Bush gets the lowest marks ever. He is the anti-communicator, the Great Obfuscator, the tongue-tied village idiot. That's the best I can say for him. Watching him simply makes one's skin crawl, in several different directions at once.

About a month ago I complained that Andrew Sullivan was unfairly singling out Hillary Clinton for being "against gay marriage." I wrote at the time:

Politicians know that their critics hang on their every word and, wishy-washy as it seems, they have to measure what they say carefully, especially when it comes to super-charged issues -- and Sullivan knows it. Would he apply the same litmus test to George W. on gay marriages? Because if he did, I suspect he would be mighty disappointed.

Looking at what he has to say about this very topic today, it appears I was right:

It seems clear to me that we are now headed toward a terrible and possibly definitive tempest on the issue of gay equality. President Bush said yesterday, in so many words, that he is considering amending the constitution to deny gays legal equality in their relationships - indeed to enshrine second-class citizenship for gays in the sacred words of the founding document. It is very hard to think of any act any politican could endorse that would alienate and marginalize gay citizens and their families more.

What bothers me but certainly doesn't surprise me is that his tone throughout this very long post is one of guidance; he is offering his friend George counsel on how to deal with the issue.

When Hillary Clinton was put on the spot on the same issue, Sullivan was far less charitable; in fact, he lashed out at her, and sneered, ""So there you have it. The Senator from New York State is opposed to equal rights for gays and lesbians."

Bush went way further than Hillary did, and actually suggested he had legislators working on an amendment to ban gay marriages. Yet Sullivan makes no such pronouncement, no categorical condemnation, no "So there you have it...."

An glaring example of double standards.

To keep them from breeding out of control, horny koala bears are put on the pill.

Those irrepressible psychopaths of the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist network are apparently preparing another Bali-sytle massacre to show the world they are still alive and well.

An article in today's Straits Times paints a vivid picture of just how nasty these guys can be and how Indonesia sits in the epi-center of Southeast Asian terror. Reading it, one comes to the depressing conclusion that no one in the region is safe.

It's almost funny, that on the very day I received that warning from the US embassy on increased threats of terrorism, the US government announces it will be cutting back on air marshalls on many flights. This represents a major disconnect.

You simply have to ask, "What were they thinking?" Grist for the Democrats' mills.

So tell me, is this a joke, or a hoax put out by the Dean people? Can it possibly be for real?

[Courtesy Silt.}

I read a troubling commentary piece in Singapore's Straits Times today on a topic that has become quite hot recently, with the government's announcement that it was scrapping its long-standing ban on hiring gays.

The commentator reflects:

Choosing whom to like and love, whom to feel close to - surely something emotional and psychological - seems less likely to arise from the biological traits of one's object of affections, and more likely her emotional and psychological characteristics.

In short, gays choose to be gays given their individual life histories within their cultures because they prefer it to heterosexuality.

I think there is a fundamental error in this equation, if not a gross misunderstanding. I believe that that there is no conscious choice. There is no discussion along the lines of, "Do I want to be heterosexual or homosexual? Hmmmm."

If, at the time most gays realized their sexuality, they were free to make a choice, I believe most would opt for heterosexuality. But it isn't like that. Most gays at some point resist their fate, even take drastic steps to fight it, to "overcome" what they see as a terrible problem. (And in many ways, it is; in terms of shame, in living in a society that you know does not accept you, in knowing you will disappoint your parents, etc., etc., etc.) But it's not something you can choose, like a Rolex over a Patek Phillipe.

Reading this sort of article makes me infinitely frustrated and saddened. Even though the writer tries to show sympathy and understanding, his conclusions are entirely wrong. There is no choice. There is no deciding. There is no comparing, no writing up checklists of pluses and minuses. Did any of you one day decide to be heterosexual? Was there any choosing involved? "That which we are, we are," as Tennyson tells us.

I remember reading an interview in which the Grande Dame of intolerance herself, Phyllis Schlafly, said matter-of-factly that gays always need to swell their ranks so they go out and recruit. Recruit. Can you imagine someone approaching you and trying to convince you to adopt for the rest of your life this sexuality or that sexuality, as if they were trying to convince you to join the navy? And yet people still believe nonsense like this.

I reflected the other day on my decision in January to discuss this topic in my blog. All in all, I am glad I did. To my true sorrow, I must admit that at least two of my friends in America have stopped communicating with me since that day. But then again, maybe this is just the sort of thing you need to do to discover who your true friends really are....

Just got this email from the US Embassy; a little more intense than usual:

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT - WORLDWIDE CAUTION

This supersedes the Worldwide Caution dated April 21, 2003.
It is being issued to remind U.S. citizens of the
continuing threat of terrorist actions that may target U.S.
citizens, and to update these potential threats. The U.S.
Government remains deeply concerned about the security of
U.S. citizens overseas. U.S. citizens are cautioned to
maintain a high level of vigilance, to remain alert and to
take appropriate steps to increase their security
awareness. This Worldwide Caution expires on
January 26, 2004.

Tensions remaining from the recent events in Iraq may
increase the potential threat to U.S. citizens and
interests abroad, by terrorist and other groups. Terrorist
actions may include, but are not limited to, suicide
operations, hijackings, bombings or kidnappings. These may
also involve commercial aircraft. Other potential threats
include conventional weapons, such as explosive devices, or
non-conventional weapons, such as chemical or biological
agents. Terrorists do not distinguish between official and
civilian targets. These may include facilities where
American citizens and other foreigners congregate or visit,
including residential areas, clubs, restaurants, places of
worship, schools, hotels, outdoor recreation events or
resorts and beaches. U.S. citizens should remain in a
heightened state of personal security awareness when
attendance at such locations is unavoidable.

U.S. Government facilities worldwide remain at a heightened
state of alert. These facilities may temporarily close or
suspend public services from time to time to assess their
security posture. In those instances, U.S. embassies and
consulates will make every effort to provide emergency
services to U.S. citizens. Americans are urged to monitor
the local news and maintain contact with the nearest
American embassy or consulate.

While I think this relatively new blog may be a bit overzealous at times, it's definitely a very interesting read. Most of his points are well taken and the book reviews are great.

My main problem with it: the writer points out all the sins and hypocrisies of the Bush Kingdom, and concludes that they are so serious and ugly they will end up rising to destroy Bush in the future.

I think this is wrong. From what I am reading, no matter how much we whine about Bush, the fact remains that in Middle America and among the far right he has taken on the aura of a true demi-god (see the previous post for proof). For some inexplicable reason, the more rational the arguments against him, the more they fall on deaf ears. The more articles that pour forth on Niger uranium and outing CIA agents and limiting citizens' rights, the louder these groups laugh at us and ignore the evidence. Since I am so far away, I can't say what effect this phenomenon is having in America, but I see it certainly as a potentially dangerous recipe.

For now, I see Bush as virtually unbeatable. There would need to be a true catastrophe that affects the average voter to reverse this. Maybe Iraq will ultimately provide this, but I don't think so. Right now, the right has near total command of the media, from the blogs to the newspapers to TV. No, I am not saying the media are necessarily conservative. I am saying that the Republicans have figured out how to use them to transmit and reinfore their messages -- even many of the "liberal" media. When it comes to blogs, it's the libertarian/conservative bloggers whose voices dominate. These super-bloggers are tending to minimize if not totally ignore recent evidence of Republican foul play; often they just laugh at it and say, "Who cares? Look at how successful we've been in Iraq!" And I worry that this is an extremely powerful message. A little bloodshed or unfairness are acceptable; these crimes are merely ancillary -- we are at war and we've got to be "tough." The complainers are weak-kneed, whiny Democrats -- imagine if they had been in office when 911 occurred!

I didn't mean to veer off like that; the way the Republicans have mastered the art of communication is a whole other post, soon to follow.

Back to topic: check out Northwest Citizen. His review of Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest really got me thinking.

[Thanks to David for leading me to this blog.]

You really have to see this to believe it. There really is a whole body of ignoramuses out there who have willingly surrendered their critical faculties to embrace idiocy, xenophobia and a cult-like devotion to their very own Dear Leader (GWB). Shocking.

Here's just a small sample; it gets worse:

Erickson was followed by Jack Abramoff, a powerful right-wing lobbyist and former College Republican chairman, who exhorted the next generation to fight hard, lest "the ascension of evil, the bad guys, the Bolsheviks, the Democrats return."

That equation -- evil = communist = Democrats -- was nearly axiomatic at the convention. Ann Coulter's latest book, "Treason," which tarred virtually all Democrats as traitors, may have been denounced by conservative intellectuals, but its message has pervaded the party. Gene McDonald, who sold "No Muslims = No Terrorists" bumper stickers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in January, was doing a brisk trade in "Bring Back the Blacklist" T-shirts, mugs and mouse pads. Coulter herself remains wildly popular -- Parker Stephenson, chairman of Ohio College Republicans, calls her "one of my favorite conservative thinkers."

I've been away for a couple of years; is this mentality shared only by a tiny, contained fringe group or has it seeped into the mainstream?

Literally seconds after finishing that last post on Coulter, I came across yet another masterful review of her latest screed, this one from the WaPo. It's by Anne Applebaum, author of a new book on the Gulag that is high on my must-read list.

A scholar on the USSR, Applebaum is nothing if not direct:

I should reveal here that I have spent a great deal of time -- perhaps the better part of the last 10 years -- writing about communism, Stalinism and the West's relationship to both. Yet about halfway through Treason, an extended rant on these subjects, I felt a strong urge to get up, throw the book across the room, and join up with whatever Leninist-Trotskyite-Marxist political parties still exist in America. Even the company of Maoist insurgents would be more intellectually invigorating than that of Ann Coulter. More to the point, whatever side this woman is on, I don't want to be on it.

After chronicling the book's abundance of errors, misleading generalizations, distortions and outright lies, Applebaum concludes:

All of this, of course, might be funny if it were meant to be funny, but it doesn't seem to be. Coulter hasn't got an ironic or witty bone in her body. Her insults are crass and dull-witted, and her jokes fall flat. She has no sense of history and skips back and forth from the Truman administration to the Reagan administration, as if 40 years made no difference. She quotes liberally from newspaper cuttings, television interviews and other conservative diatribes, apparently having done no actual research at all.

She wonders, with some bewilderment, why -- how -- this trash made its way to the top of the Times best-seller list. That Coulter apparently has so many fans who are willing to shell out money for this shit should make us all very afraid.

According to Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter's just signed a new book contract for nearly $3 million.

The Coulter bonanza is expected to be finalized this week at CROWN FORUM. The deal comes after more than 600,000 copies of her SLANDER and TREASON have been sold at market.

If you haven't been living in a cave the past few weeks, you'll know that Coulter's latest book Treason is unique in receiving near universal condemnation from liberals and conservatives alike. David Horowitz, Andrew Sullivan and Dorothy Rabinowitz have slammed it, and Spinsanity brilliantly ripped it to shreds in a much-cited article.

A few months ago, a perceptive critic remarked (paraphrased but pretty accurate), "Ann Coulter lies through every orifice of her body, including her pores."

Her reward for unabashed, outrageous lies? Mountains of money. And I thought things were irrational in China.

It just bugs me because I am at a time of my life when I need to save more money and make some serious decisions (which are all based, unfortunately, on money), and this shit-spewing harpie shrieks inane accusations damning all liberals for the high crime of treason -- treason! -- and instead of locking her up or washing her mouth out with soap, what do they do? They pay her! No, the don't just pay her; they pay her millions and millions and millions of dollars.

I want to scream, Ms. Coulter, have you no shame? Have you no sense of decency? But no, those are stupid and naive questions. She's obviously way, way, way smarter than I am or ever will be. After all, she's walking away with wheelbarrows of cash and I'm struggling to pay for my house in the US while also keeping my head above water here in Asia. So who's the fool?

Did you know that in 2000, more than 300,000 women in China committed suicide, making it the only country in which relatively more women than men take their own lives? This article will help you understand why that is.

And I miss China?

It seems while I was gone America's taken some quantum leaps toward liberalizing prime-time TV. I really had no idea just how far this revolution had proceeded until I read this eye-opening article by Frank Rich.

The article gives plenty of specifics as to how once-taboo topics have become typical prime-time fodder. Anything goes.

I would have thought that during the Age of Bush the media might have become more conservative, but it seems just the opposite is true. In fact, the administration has changed its tune when it comes to the "morality" issues they were whining about during the 2000 campaign.

It's all about money, of course, as Rich tells us:

A classic example of the political turnaround is the current attorney general, John Ashcroft. In his 2000 senatorial campaign, he attacked his Democratic opponent for "standing with the producers of pornography and Hollywood's worst trash" by accepting a $2,000 contribution from Christie Hefner, the chief executive of Playboy. You no longer hear Mr. Ashcroft, or anyone in the Bush administration, complaining about far larger political contributions from News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch, AOL Time Warner, Viacom or Marriott, to name just some of those who stand with the producers of pornography by either making their own soft-core variants or taking a cut when porn-industry videos are beamed through cable and satellite into hotels and homes.

There are only a handful of posts at this new blog by a student trying to cope with the miseries of learning Chinese, but for someone like me, also trying to deal with this migraine-inducing language, it's quite interesting. I really like the online Chinese dictionary he pointed me too.

I wanted to move my dialogue with Conrad out of the Comments because I think it's an interesting debate.

He wrote today:

Bush said the Brit's believed Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium when US intelligence didn't share that view. Big friggin' deal. So what? Who cares? Snore.

I said, months before the war began, that WMDs were, in my opinion, a mere pretext. If the world understood the actual strategy, the US would never have succeeded. Therefore, misinformation was required. Since it wasn't possible for Bush to call 270 million Americans into the oval office and say "I'll tell you the real reason we're doing this, but shhhh, don't tell anyone else", the government mislead. Good. If I was smart enough to know what was going on, so was pretty much everyone else. Those who now claim to shocked, shocked, shocked that the government would engage in disinformation in wartime are awfully naive.

Saddam is gone and the world is a better place. Now let's get rid of the wicked North Koreans and, if to accomplish that noble mission, the government finds in necessary to mislead me again with respect to its intentions, go right ahead.

To which I respectfully replied:

You know, I agree with you on many of your points. The big issue where we part ways is on methodology. In other words, I always thought it would be a great idea to topple Hussein, for lots of reasons, with or without the WMD issue, and like you, I knew what it was really all about. But by framing it almost solely as a reaction to an imminent threat of WMD (which I admit I fell for), and by then tarring and feathering those who raised questions, and by passing the buck in a show of arrogance, and by then revising the reason for the invasion and making it out to be a humanitarian issue -- these were shabby things to do, and they leave Bush in a bit of a rut. Lost credibility, appearance of shiftiness and duplicity, and failure to live up to promises of accountability -- there's a lot here to criticize. I've read Den Beste and Counterspin's savvy rebuttal, I've read you and Instapundit and Atrios and Daily Koz, and in the end I 've come to my own conclusion, which is, in a nutshell, Right thing to do, wrong way to do it. I applaud the victory, I criticize the ugliness that's emerged in the wake of it (like leaking to Drudge that an ABC reporter is gay, or intimidating the wife of a CIA agent, or dodging questions about grandiose claims in your SOTU address, etc.). Were those things truly necessary? Was there no way to act with some honor and decency? Would it have mattered if now, months after the invasion, Bush were to say, "Perhaps we were a bit reckless, perhaps in our eagerness to combat terrorism at its roots we went against some good advice and allowed some words into my speech which, in retrospect, were wrong and I want to tell you how sorry we are about that"? You see, it's not just "the left" that is perpetuating this, it's the Bush administration in its utter inability to say it may have been wrong.

I really respect your opinion on Iraq, but I cannot give Bush carte blanche the way you do. We have a history of holding our leaders' responsible for what they say and do, and I can't just let Bush off the hook because we won in Iraq. If we do so, we'd be saying that those in power can do anything as long as they believe the ends justify the means. That's not supposed to be the way it works. It could lead to a catastrophe.

About why the uranium thing is such a big deal.... You say, "Bush said the Brit's believed Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium when US intelligence didn't share that view. Big friggin' deal. So what?"

That would be fine were it that simple. But Bush's top advisors were warned it was probably false, and someone Up There still insisted it stay in, and then passed the buck back to the CIA for not complaining loudly enough. I agree, the debate on the 16 words has gone on too long and is becoming a real waste of time. What is still debate-worthy is the pattern that's emerged in its wake of deception, avoiding responsibility and reacting to criticism in an ugly way (back to the CIA agent and the ABC reporter). Those who keep asking about it are finding their loyalty to America questioned, in an Ann Coutlerish way. No, these things merit a lot of comment.

Had it been Clinton, would the Republicans now be respectfully silent? Uncovering a CIA operative's cover is serious stuff, and I am curious why the more right-sided blogs are simply ignoring the story.....

So the debate rages on. My honest suspicion is that Conrad will "win" and the back-and-forth will eventually just peter out due to lack of interest. Those who think it will spell Bush's downfall are probably fooling themselves. But I think there's still plenty here to question, and the discussion is valid. Now, if Bush were to be smarter, he would realize the opportunity he has to soften his cowboy image and mend fences. All it would take is for him to act like a gentleman, own up to mistakes and show true leadership (as opposed to buck passing). Then he could truly "move on."

I'm not going to go on about Bush's over-analyzed 16 words.

But I do want to point out an interesting example of what is either monumental self-deception or an intentional obfuscation of what lies at the heart of the issue. I refer to a post by Andrew Sullivan today:

The problem with the critics is that they ignore the context and the impossibility of complete certainty in intelligence.

This is the kind of punditry that gets me upset because it is so misleading, and I simply cannot believe that someone as smart as Sullivan doesn't know how misleading it is.

The intelligence was exactly right. The CIA's concerns were spot-on. It is not at all about any expectation of flawless intelligence. It is about a conscious and persistent effort to distort, alter, falsify or ignore that intelligence by the president of the United States and his highest minions and, along the way, smearing and/or scapegoating anyone who shows the temerity to challenge the administration's perfidy.

I just re-read this post from some months ago, and I have to say, every word is utterly perfect. I couldn't have said it better myself!

Update: My wording apparently caused some confusion. It's a post about a great blogger, written by a fan, not by me.

I' ve been getting emails alerting me to the fact that the Chinese characters to the right of the date, which are supposed to mean "sliced duck," are incorrect and actually mean "opium." I'll have to have a long talk with Brainy Smurf the friend who supplied me with this odd cast of characters.

While my writing may have an opiating effect on some (and at times they even put me to sleep), I promise this was strictly a typographical error and will be fixed as soon as I get a jpg with the right characters.

If it's an opium blog you're looking for, go here (and let me know what language that is; Polish?).

Update: The hyperactive Brainy, who has obviously been drinking too much Chinese tea of late, has written a droll parody of this entire debacle.

Wow. Hauntingly beautiful post on the death of the Brothers Hussein, the butchers of Baghdad, as seen through the eye of their loving dad. Unforgettable.

[Via the foreign devil of HK.]

Exceptionally well-written and evocative post over at Daily Koz, that really brought a lump to my throat. While I may not agree with him on all issues, I do agree that the willingness with which the president's men smear and ruin anyone who stands in their way has been unforgivable, and ultimately these sins will catch up with him.

A brief sample:

There are 20 year olds with prosthetic legs who aren't getting past anything about Iraq. Its altered their lives permenently. If you ask for sacrifice, the reasons at least need to be sound. But with each passing day, you don't get accountability from the White House, but the nastiest slurs and innuendo. Joe Wilson's wife is exposed as a CIA officer, ABC reporter Jeffrey Koffman is smeared as a gay Canadian on Drudge, despite the fact that he did a big interview with the nation's leading gay magazine, the Advocate.

Here's a simple question for the White House political staff: do you think your smears hold the same power as the story of a young officer who's lost both his limbs and is seeking to recover his life?

There's much more. For the best analysis of the smearing, check this much-cited post by pro-Iraq war blogger Mark Kleiman. Brilliant and scholarly, as usual.

And I mean it. Go here at your own risk.

Singapore's King Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew wants to assure everybody there's no cause for alarm and that, although all the jobs are going to China and India, things will be rosy again:

In two, three years, if we make the right decisions now, we will see sunshine through the clouds.

[....]

Let me assure you that the ministers have thoroughly studied all the options and know that the best approach is to meet the challenge head-on, even if this calls for painful measures. They know what they are doing.

As always here, it is the ministers, the government, that will take care of it. This isn't criticism, but an acknowedgement -- it's just the way things are done here, and as I've said before, it's worked amazingly well, at least so far.

Lee didn't make any reckless promises, and he made it clear that there will be periods of reduced wages and fewer jobs, but that there will also be light at the end of the tunnel. And the government, of course, will be holding the flashlight.

As a relative newcomer, I still marvel at how everyone's fate is in the hands of the government, and at how happy the citizens are to have it that way. It's worked so far, so why shouldn't they be? It's just such a far cry from Hong Kong where, at least when I was living there, no one cared much at all about the government and wanted it to be as laissez faire as possible. An interesting and dramatic contrast.

I just watched with some amazement the BBC news report on the death of the Brothers Hussein. The main point of the report was why the US used such massive force against 3 men and a teenager in a little house. Nothing about why this was such an important victory.

I am all for asking questions, but why are they so obsessed with making the US appear to be worse than devils like the Husseins?

I thought this was bad, until only moments later I saw-- courtesy of Conrad -- an article by the infamous Robert Fisk. You literally have to read it to believe it. Here's a random sentence; tell me what you think:

And American intelligence - the organisation that failed to predict events of 11 September, 2001 - was also responsible for the air raid on a Saddam villa on 20 March, which was supposed to kill Saddam. And the far crueller air raid on the Mansour district of Baghdad at the end of the air bombardment in April which was supposed to kill Saddam and his sons but only succeeded in slaughtering 16 innocent civilians. All proved to be miserable failures.

I mean, isn't this bizarre? Yes, I dislike Bush and I think there have been lots of duplicities for which he and his buddies need to be made accountable. And accidental deaths are a terrible thing. But he is making it sound as though the "slaughter" was an intentional act of malice. It's friggin insane. The bold prejudice -- a mission isn't a failure, it is a "miserable failure." How can they publish this cockeyed drivel?

He then questions whether the whole story is another lie by the US military:

And in a family obsessed, with good reason, with their own personal security, would Uday and Qusay really be together? Would they allow themselves to be trapped. The two so-called "lions of Iraq" (this courtesy of Saddam) in the very same cage?

Finally, he closes the article with a brilliant prophesy:

If he [Saddam] and his sons are dead, the chances are that the opposition to the American-led occupation will grow rather than diminish - on the grounds that with Saddam gone, Iraqis will have nothing to lose by fighting the Americans.

I have a lot of misgivings about the war, but articles like this truly are, as Conrad says, "beyond parody."

Predictably, the Singapore government's sudden about-face on its traditional policy of not hiring gays is creating a backlish, according to The Straits Times:

The Government's change of policy in hiring gays is causing a stir in the Christian community. So far, it has prompted a meeting led by the mainstream National Council of Churches of Singapore and an online campaign against homosexuals by another group.

One local pastor put up a post on his church's Web site titled Don't Be Silent:

'We cannot stand idly by. Homosexuality is a sin and it is far more rampant, militant and organised than most of us actually believe it to be. The battle lines are now drawn and it is time for the Church in Singapore to rise up and make a stand.'

(The article also cites another religious group that urges tolerance and acceptance.)

The outcry is really a silly thing. They are deriding the government's decision to hire gays, but I have bad news for them: gays are already there, just as they are in the military and just about every profession you can think of. To say they are forbidden is an exercise in self-deception.

These proteseters should also see that this has little to do with toleration or compassion. Only one thing matters now to the SGP government, and that is holding onto the international businesses it has here and wooing new ones. The no-gays policy has been a turn-off to some of these companies, and the last thing the government wants to do is turn any company off.

Singapore is in a terribly perilous position as US companies that previously would have set up their Asian headquarters here or in Hong Kong choose instead to skip the "stepping stone" and set up shop right in Shanghai.

This could literally suffocate the HK and SGP economies over time. It is no time to chase away potential business because of outdated and prejudicial hiring practices. So the government has made the correct and moral decision, even if their motivation had little to do with correctness or morality.

[Courtesy of a tip from Vaara.]

In case you haven't noticed, The Peking Duck has been spiced up with some new graphics and features. My thanks to Sekimori for helping me out, and to my consultants (willing and un) Conrad, Adam and Jeremy.

There's an interesting post over at Adam's Brainysmurf about a topic of unmatched interest -- me. Check it out, as well as my comment on it (which I still can't believe I wrote).

Click to enlarge. [Via Tblogg]

Absolutely fascinating article on how a little-known policy group (boasting some of the most prominent names in Bush's coterie) has been pushing for war on Iraq for years and years. This article is an eye-opener from the opening sentences.

Sample:

An obscure, ominous-sounding right-wing policy group called Project for the New American Century, or PNAC - affiliated with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rumsfeld's top deputy Paul Wolfowitz and Bush's brother Jeb - even urged then-President Clinton to invade Iraq back in January 1998.

"We urge you to... enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world," stated the letter to Clinton, signed by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others. "That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power."

The mission statement of this little group, PNAC, is downright prophetic:

"The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire," says the PNAC's statement of principles. "The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership."

Read the whole article, then comb around over at this site for the full scoop on what PNAC is all about. (Be sure to check out the links in the right-hand sidebar.) This is really a bit of a revelation.

This is all thanks to a post from Orcinus, to whom all I can say is "Thank you."

[Disclaimer: I wrote this post after drinking a can of Baron's Strong Brew Beer, and only after I finished it did I see how high the alcohol content is. (I'm amazed they actually sell it here.) So I am not responsible for anything that follows; blame it on Barons.]

It is infinitely harder to blog in Singapore than in Beijing, and I am really facing a dilemma. Everything here is so status quo, so...predictable. The weather, the news, the weekends. (Yes, of course the weekends are predictable, because the only thing to do during the weekend is shop and eat.)

That is actually a compliment, of course. It's what many societies strive to be -- harmonious, workable, under control, contented....(boring?). It's great for Singapore, but it really sucks for blogging.

China, of course, is a Western blogger's paradise. So much there is, to the average Westerner, extraordinary, incomprehensible, a true shock to the mind and the senses. And, thanks to our friends in the CCP, life over there never ceased to amaze me, from the ubiquitous deification of Madman Mao to the insane rituals of the annual Party Congress (which this year was made just a bit more insane than usual -- if such is possible -- by that devious little pathogen we call SARS) to the machine-gun-toting guards who stand in front of the national TV station buildings (without a tightly controlled media, the Party stands naked and vulnerable)....

No, there was never a shortage of blog material in the PRC. In fact, from my memory bank alone, I could blog about China for years and years to come. If my mother and my current boss didn't read this blog, I would tell you all stories that would make your hair stand on end. I wasn't happy living there, but God, I miss it, at least from a blogging perspective.

I am jealous of Phil and Conrad over in Hong Kong, where they've got the best of both worlds; they're a stone's throw from all the lunacy over in the People's Republic, and they're in the center of a vortex, witnessing "history in the making" as Hong Kong wrestles with defining itself in the wake of reunification with a very foreign mother country. They have blog material handed to them on a plate, with a red ribbon tied around it.

And then we get to Singapore. Work, eat, shop, watch sanitized TV, sleep, work, eat, shop.... Sorry for whinging, but it's getting on my nerves lately. It's really nice, really comfortable, really pretty. But there's no Wan Chai, and there are certainly no demonstrations in the streets, no political upheavals or convulsive controversies.

My day begins each morning with my alarm clock going off; a radio clock, it is tuned to the only classical music channel in town, and like everything else in this city-state-whatever-it-is, it's maddeningly predictable. There are rules (and if anyplace loves rules, thrives on rules, it is Singapore). Each piece of music will be no longer than 10 minutes. There will be no complete symphonies or complete operas or complete musical works of any kind: only 10-minute-long, instantly digestible, pleasant, bite-sized nuggets of music. A movement of Eine Kleine Nacht Music; a cheerful excerpt from a Beethoven Symphony; lots of happy, innocuous 10-minute pieces by Teleman and Haydn (whom I love, but not in little chunks). Pre-digested and pleasant. Never any brooding Mahler or dark late Brahms or sensual Wagner. Not in Singapore.

So that's how the day begins, with some classical cotton candy. Again, it's sweet, but it definitely doesn't match my sturm-und-drang temperament, my thirst for the broadest spectrum of emotional sensations, from the bitterest to the sweetest, from those blinding sunrises to those dark, disquieting midnights of the soul, where one's mind can romp about and pay homage to what D.H. Lawrence refers to as the "dark gods." There are no dark gods in Singapore.

Singapore. What is there to blog about in Singapore, except the difficulty of blogging here?!? I don't know, but what I do know is this: I had better think of something fast or this blog will be cancelled for lack of material. God, what a challenge! And it only goes to underscore the basic nature of man, to be unsatisfied wherever he is. After all, in China I longed for stability and comfort, and now that I have it, I long only for chaos and pandemonium. No, I can't win.

Josh Marshall, who tends to go out of his way to be decorous toward his fellow reporters, today uncharacteristically blasts William Safire to bits for questioning the loyalty of those who dare question Bush's use of unreliable data to justify invading Iraq:.

"I'll be honest with you. I struggled for some time trying to think up a way to discuss Safire's Monday morning column. But the whole thing was such a cynical mix of half-truths, untruths and twisted logic that it ended up besting me."

He finally does come up with a way, and it's great reading. The whole post seethes, which again is uncharacteristic of the usually reserved Marshall, and the closing paragraph is priceless.

A test to see whether I can upload images.

I just watched an episode of the new BBC series, Holidays in the Axis of Evil, in which a reporter visits the world's most evil empires, like Iran, Libya, North Korea and Cuba, and sees what they have to offer the holiday goer.

Tonight's evil empire was North Korea, and it was every bit as surreal as I would have expected, and then some.

The reporter's tour guide (and you can't visit North Korea without one) walks him through one war museum after another where, predictably, the electric lights are always out due to perennial power shortages. She takes him to a bookstore where virtually every book (and there are lots) are either books by Dear Leader or his father Great Leader, or books about the two of them.

They visit the DMZ, where the tour guide explains how the Korean War began when the "US imperialists," as they are always referred to, invaded North Korea. The reporter asks, incredulously, how so many North Korean troops made their way so deep into South Korea if they were simply defending themselves from an invasion coming from the south. Oh, that's all propaganda, the tour guide blithely explains.

Most amazing, at least visually, was the reporter's visit to the annual celebrations of Dear Leader, where 100,000 North Koreans put on this spectacular show in a huge stadium. Holding up diffferent-colored pieces of cloth, the masses create gorgeous and complex frescoes, one after another -- I can't describe it in words; anyone who has seen it knows it is quite beyond belief. Crazy, but beautiful in its way.

This really drove home just how bonkers North Korea is. In one scene that looked like it was going to be a bit normal, the tour guide takes the reporter to relax at the beach. Finally, something that kind of resembles life as we know it! But alas, the camera then zooms in on the fence behind the sandy beach -- an electrified fence that the tour guide warns could kill a man. This is to protect N. Korea from American imperialists when they try to attack the beaches in scuba gear; they will fry on the fence. (It reminded me of the opening of Die Another Day, where 007 surfs his way onto the N. Korean beach.)

This is a great series; it renewed my faith in television. Don't miss it.

It will be interesting to see how Andrew Sullivan responds to this article in the WaPo. Sullivan's been on the rampage lately against ABC-TV for its recent interviews of US soldiers in Iraq who said on the record they believe Rumsfeld should resign.

What would Sullivan say about the White House's apparent efforts to smear the ABC reporter by publicizing that he's....gay? Not just gay, but also Canadian! (Can you imagine?) Read the article; it's worse than you think.

This administration's gleeful willingness to pulverize anyone it perceives as being in its way is frightening. What's more frightening is that they seem to be getting away with it. Maybe I'm wrong; is there a lot of outrage back home about this in the mainstream press, on TV, etc.?

[Via the best news blog in DC.]

It's interesting that on the US home page of Yahoo the story of Dr. Kelly's death was listed for a couple of hours among the top stories and then vanished, while on the UK home page it's been the No. 1 story since last night, with two separate entries in the top stories of the day. It's all we've been hearing about on the BBC here in Asia, but if you go to the NY Times site, you have to scroll down to the International listings to find the story, well below the photo of Kobe Bryant and the day's top stories. Interesting.

It's apparent that in the UK, this is a true bombshell. I suspect there's going to a wave of stories like this over the next couple of days, and Tony Blair's battle will soon be a veritable siege.

The NY Times book review begins thus:

This is sure to be the most often repeated brutal detail from Jon Krakauer's new book: that a Mormon Fundamentalist named Dan Lafferty spoke briefly to his 15-month-old niece on July 24, 1984, just before he killed her with a 10-inch boning knife. Mr. Lafferty explains to the author from his permanent home in a Utah state prison, "I told her: `I'm not sure what this is all about, but apparently it's God's will that you leave this world. Perhaps we can talk about it later.'"

Don't get me wrong; as a member of a minority religion that has seen its share of intolerance, I am a firm believer in religious freedom and tolerance. Still, I've always had problems understanding Mormons, and this was exacerbated after I worked in a predomionantly Mormon office for nearly two years. (I can tell lots of stories about that.)

Anyway, check out the article and see why, in a world of many strange and outlandish religious sects and cults, the Church of Latter Day Saints stands out proudly as perhaps the most bizarre. And, at least in the US, the bloodiest.

Could conspiracy freaks ask for anything better than this? British scientist David Kelly, WMD expert who has been a key figure in the debate on whether the notorious British dossier was fraudulent or not, vanishes into thin air after taking a walk some hours ago, and a body is found outside his home.

Update on the blaring television -- the body has been identified as Kelly's. It will be a busy blog day.

I'm planning on moving my whole site over to Movable Type, so brace yourselves for some changes here. (I'm quite nervous, as I hear MT involves a steep learning curve, and I have enough trouble opening my email. Hope I'm not doing something stupid.) More over the next day or two.

Considering the abundance of free material on the Internet, I rarely pay for things here. One big exception is David (aka Orcinus) Neiwert's magnificent 87-page analysis of what fascism is, what its telltale signs are as it emerges, and how it is taking on a vibrant new life in America today, thanks to propagandists like Rush Limbaugh.

You can download the entire essay, Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis, as a PDF file from Neiwert's blog for free, although Dave is requesting a $5 donation to allow him to devote more of his time to his writing. I gave $10, and I hope you consider doing the same.

In a space cluttered with bloggers trying to get themselves heard, the voice of Orcinus stands out as unique. Instead of tossing out links or offering quips on this story or that, Orcinus focuses like a laser on one of the most disturbing aspects of American politics today, i.e., the subtle and insidious shift of fascism from a marginalized phenomenon to something ever more mainstream and acceptable. His insights into how Rush and his clones are fanning the flames that fuel this trend are priceless. And it's great reading, too.

I know I tend to gush whenever I talk about Orcinus, but that's for a good reason: it's one of the very best blogs out there, and the only one that is carefully monitoring the freeper movement and its quiet but steady spread under the current US government. So get your free copy, and consider making a small donation for a very important cause.

I'll never forget an incident from the mid-80s, when I was walking through the Columbia University campus with my late friend Roy, then working on his MBA at Columbia. We walked past a student wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and a Madam Mao button.

When Roy saw this, he told me to hold on, walked over to the fellow and shouted loudly (paraphrased): "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why would you walk around wearing a button honoring the lady who was most responsible for the Cultural Revolution? Do you have any idea how many people were tortured or killed because of her? Have you ever heard of the Gang of Four and what they did to China? Do you have a brain? Did you think before you put that button on or are you just trying to show how cool you are? Well you're not cool, you're an asshole."

Roy was never one to hide how he felt, but it was certainly unusual for him to lose his temper and burst out like that. The frightened student didn't say a word, but slinkered away as fast as he could (Roy was 6'5").

I was surprised at Roy's reaction because at the time I didn't know as much as he did about the Cultural Revolution. Now I understand. Back then, China was of little interest to me; all I knew was that Mao & Co. had sent a lot of professors to the countryside and attempted to destroy all vestiges of Western culture. I had no idea how vast its scope was, how many iterations it took and how it sought to wipe out not just Western- influenced culture but all culture, aside form the culture of Mao. I didn't really know who Madam Mao was.

I've caught up with history over the past few years, and being confined recently to a hospital bed for five days followed by a week at home gave me time to learn even more. I decided to immerse myself in books about China, with strong focus on the Cultural Revolution. I read three books in all.

I mentioned earlier that I read Grass Soup, the poignant diary of a "rightist" sent off to work in labor camps for his bourgeois beliefs. It puts you right there in the camp with all its inanities, funny, sad and outrageous.

Then I went on to the epic Wild Swans, which chronicles the lives of three women, the grandmother, her daughter and her granddaughter, the author of the book. The most impressive part of the book is its first two hundred pages focusing on the grandmother, a concubine to one of China's last great warlords. In harrowing detail author Jung Chang describes what Chinese women had to undergo to have their feet bound. I didn't realize that the pain was so enormous for the woman's entire life, nor did I realize just how lowly a woman's lot in China was, that she existed strictly for ornamental purpose and to please the whims, however brutal, first of her husband and then of her sons.

It was in these pages that I felt transported; I could feel the grandmother's agony as she hobbled on her tiny feet and succumbed to the cruelties of her masters (her father, her "owner" the warlord and his wife), I felt I was in her house, watching her life disintegrate. Jung paints a magical picture, a huge fresco of life in China in the early 20th Century, and unfortunately the rest of the book never quite reaches such a high level.

The tale of Jung's mother is what interested me most, as it brought to life the maddening irrationality of the Great Leap Forward, the famine of 1960 and the Cultural Revolution. It is actually a case study of one man (Mao) going insane, and insisting that the world's largest population follow him in his insanity, resulting in the brain-death of an entire nation. The description of life during these years is superb if completely surreal.

Fascinating, but never quite so evocative as the earlier part of the book. There is also an annoying tendency on the part of the writer to paint nearly everyone else -- all the side characters -- as greedy, vindictive, selfish, even hateful toward Jung's grandmother and mother (and, to a lesser extent toward herself). The three stars emerge as pearls among the swine, and this black and white contrast is so constant that one can only wonder how authentic it really is. One other comment, on the books stylistics: As the book moves from scene to scene, Jung has the habit of describing, in minute detail, the types of flowers and leaves that are present in an obvious but awkward attempt to create ambiance. I finally started to laugh out loud, waiting for the next description of the bamboo leaves wafting in the afternoon breeze. Not a big deal, but it did detract from what is for the most part an excellent read.

It was the third book that most captured my heart, and I am glad I read it last. I came upon Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress when my former employer in Beijing mailed it to me as a farewell present after I moved to Singapore. It describes the life of two young men sent to a remote re-education camp, and how their discovery of a suitcase full of classical Western books changes their lives, and the life of the object of their love -- the book's heroine, the little Chinese seamstress. From the first page, I was enchanted; there is something so simple, so sweet and so touching about the story, its characters and its tone, I couldn't put it down. Just like Grass Soup and Wild Swans, it drove home the insanity of the Cultural Revolution, but its wonderful story and evocative characters bring it to another level of poignancy. If you haven't read it, go buy it now.

Reading these books answered many of my questions about China during the 1960s and 70s, and raised several new ones. I admit, I didn't realize just what a monster Mao was until now; I had a good idea, but I didn't know it was quite this bad. After reading these books, one can only wonder why huge portraits and tall statues of Mao loom everywhere you look in China. Mao's crimes are on such a grandiose scale, are so audacious and psychotic as to literally defy belief. The great mystery is why he retains his aura of greatness, why he is still revered to the point of hero worship. I don't know, maybe it's because we all need a leader to look up to. But when you read these books you really get a feel for just how intensely Mao was worshipped, to the point that one of the world's great cultures surrendered its critical faculties and allowed this madman, this self-obsessed megalomaniac, take them down a path that would lead to a catastrophe so immense it is still recovering now, a quarter of a century later.

Eric Alterman offers the quote of the day:

It is almost too ironic to point out, for instance, that when the administration (in the form of Rice, Tenet, Cheney, and Powell) attempts to pooh-pooh the Niger lie by saying it was �technically correct� � they did not have sexual relations with that country � or was just one small piece of a larger case, that virtually every aspect of their case was a lie. The WMD threat was a lie. The al-Qaida connection was a lie. The promise of democracy and human rights was a lie. And as today�s front page Washington Post story (see above) indicates, they got stuck with the stupid Niger tale because everything they had been saying about nukes was a lie, too. �But a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq.� (And this to say nothing of the apparently clueless Bush who somehow forgot that it was he who ended the inspections regime, not Saddam.)

Be sure to check out that WaPo story Alterman cites. No wonder Bush wants to "move on."

[Via Eschaton]

That's what Mark Kleiman says it will be if the story told by Calpundit turns out to be true. And he (Kleiman) thinks that it probably is.

This is a complex and headache-inspiring story that I won't attempt to retell here, and Kleiman wonders aloud why there's been complete media silence about it. Calpundit says, "This just gets uglier and uglier, and I hope the mainstream press � having finally smelled blood � will follow this up. "

It appears I can publish again after five days. I'll try to make up for the silence over the next 24 hours.

There's a long and detailed article titled The China Sickness in the July/August edition of Commentary (not my favorite magazine).

Written by Arthur Waldron, a China specialist trained at Harvard, the piece starts with a description of a story we all know too well, how the CCP (mis)handled the SARS epidemic, and notes that many Western media were duped into believing the brief period of openness signaled an opportunity for meaningful reform.

This is a metaphor for the article's theme: Despite the obvious signs that it is a very sick country, the West dons rose-tinted spectacles whenever it looks at China, cheerfully overlooking its horrendous problems, financial, political and social.

Unfortunately, the article can't be linked, and I can't quote too much, lest I be hauled off for copyright infringement. But I'll offer a few excerpts.

Waldron makes astute observations on how the West has fallen for the "China economic miracle" fallacy:

Even today, if you throw a brick on Wall Street you will probably hit someone in a banker's suit who genuinely believes that China has been growing at a record pace and will continue to do so -- indeed, that it is likely to become the motor for Asian and even world development. Over the past twenty years, such people, and their counterparts in Hong Kong and Taiwan, have poured roughly $450 billion in direct investment into China.

What return they will get on this investment remains to be seen, however. Money is made in China by shipping components there to be processed for re-export. With its immense pool of skilled labor, no nonsense about workers' rights or unions, and a police force willing to crack heads, coastal China is an ideal "platform" for foreign business. Nevertheless, China's world trade, which today stands at a little over $250 billion per year, is only a little greater as a percentage of world trade than what it was in the 1920's (though of course much bigger in absolute terms than it was in 1960). Fully half of that figure, moreover, is accounted for by businesses in which foreigners have ownership. While, for Chinese workers, jobs in such processing industries are undoubtedly better than urban unemployment or rural poverty, the sector lacks what economists call backward and forward linkages. The rising tide lifts only the coast...[P]rivate enterprise is everywhere discouraged, and the state sector, which operates largely at a loss and is shrinking in its share of the economy, continues to grow in absolute size in a way that threatens everything else.

He also takes aim at a familiar target, the country's state-owned enterprises, forced to borrow more and more from the nation's banks as prices deflate, consumers put off their spending and the SOEs fail to sell their wares:

Failure to sell means that state enterprises lose money; to avoid bankruptcy, the state forces its banks to make irrecoverable loans to its enterprises, which are thus enabled to produce even more things that no one wants to buy. The result, long noted by some specialists, is that China's banks are in fact insolvent while the state sector continues to waste the precious capital the banks pour into it.

Also examned is the tendency of the Chinese, based on centuries of hardship and tradition, to save and not spend income; the staggering dilemma of China's vast peasant population, the blatant falsification of economic/production statistics, etc., etc., etc. Nothing really new here in and of itself, but altogether it paints a grim portrait indeed. And Waldron takes a hard look at China's weird policies re. our friends in North Korea:

Today China provides the food and energy that keep the same loathsome North Korean regime alive. More critically, and more paradoxically, China has long been Pyongyang's major military ally, and has contributed materially to its nuclear program. Even now, the Chinese seem not to grasp that this program poses a far greater long-term peril to them than it does even to South Korea, not to mention Japan or the United States. Why China would do so much to build up a possible enemy on its own border is again difficult to explain; one can only invoke some sort of feral anti-Western reflex, carried over from the days when, as Mao imagined, the East wind was prevailing over the West wind.

One last quote and I'll call it a night:

As foreign dangers loom, the fragile bargain that has kept the domestic scene relatively quiet since the massacre of 1989 is beginning to break down. The bargain between regime and people was essentially, "you let us rule and we will make you rich," and for 25 years China enjoyed a good economic run. But as we have seen, the rosy aggregate figures barely disguise the rot beneath: deflation, banking insolvency, increasing government debt, misallocation of resources, not to mention the lack of a legal system or a legitimate government, pervasive corruption of the rulers, and demoralization of the populace.

If you're interested in this topic, you're most likely familiar with Josh Marshall. In any case, be sure to read his brilliant analysis of the utterly absurd scenario that has climaxed with the CIA director's self-immolation.

I notice the term "Yellowcakegate" has been used over here. (This is another invaluable site for balanced, intelligent, sane liberal logic and analysis, Atrios is a lot of fun and I read him daily, but he is more infotainment, while Kleiman is a true intellectual.) So I probably won't win any prizes.

I still don't think it'll be a big enough story in terms of rocking American politics. Yes, it is big news -- but most Americans simply won't care, as it was one of many reasons Bush gave for the invasion, and no matter how deceptive and unethical it was, they can ultimately dismiss it as bad judgment or a mistake, and then apologize for it. It's been done before.

[For a far more scathing but not unintelligent analysis, check out the latest posts at this site, which is actually better than its unfortunate name.]

Looking at virtually all of Josh Marshall's columns of the past several days, it would appear that Cakegate (did I invent that or is it already being used in the US?) is the hottest story in town and could be with us for a long time.

I really think there is a lesson here about how GWB operates and thinks, the duplicity and the weaselishness with which he tries to wiggles out of the whole he's dug for himself. I'm not saying the story is unimportant. Unfortunately, I really can't imagine this issue taking America by storm. It may delight some bloggers and intellectuals and anyone who wants to see Bush besmirched, but I still don't see any crime other than lying about one item on a very long list of items (reasons to invade Iraq). It just underscores what we already know about Bush & Co.

This is my perspective from many thousands of miles away. Is America outraged by this, or is it just grist for the boggers' mill? Watergate had actual crimes involved, a vast web of lawbreaking and deception. Is Cakegate perceived in the US to be on that level? Can it escalate to that? It's sure getting a lot of coverage on the BBC (surprise, surprise) but, again, I can't tell how shaken up the American public is about it. My guess is, not much, but I could be wrong....

I am still not 100 percent recovered, so I can't post much. Maybe over the weekend. I went out a couple of days ago thinking I was all better, and within about ten minutes found I was short of breath and headached and I staggered back to my apartment, where I've been hiding out ever since. I am still on a regimen of about 20 various pills a day, so if I posted anything goofy over the past week, that's my excuse.

Mark Kleiman, who supported the invasion of Iraq, today tries to put the costs of the operation in perspective, and his conclusions are depressing:

The Pentagon says the occupation of Iraq is going to cost about $50 billion per year, indefinitely. That's not counting reconstruction costs. Keeping Afghanistan safe for its warlords is now costing about $10 billion per year. Can you imagine how much safer a world we'd have today if we'd been willing to spend half that much on rebuilding the fragments of the Soviet Empire in the years just after 1989? Or how much a tenth of that, well spent, could do for human and economic development in Africa? Or how big a horselaugh you would get if you proposed spending anything like those sums on an activity that didn't also include killing people?

Everything about Iraq right now looks like a quagmire: the US is bleeding, in terms of both money and soldiers, the Iraqi public appears to have lost its enthusiasm of just a few weeks ago and the president is bogged down in scandals of his own making, the yellowcake uranium story dominating the news. Here in Asia it is hard to tell how people in the US feel right now. If what I'm hearing in the media is any indication, it looks like the whole thing is about to blow up in Bush's face. Watching him squirm on CNN over the uranium scandal, it struck me just how shallow, and just how arrogant he really is, placing himself above the truth and above scrutiny in the wake of a duplicity that make Clinton look like an altar boy. The smugness he displayed was truly revolting. If it continues like this, he just may dig his own grave and give the Democrats a crack at winning, something that seemed literally inconceivable just eight weeks ago.

I really enjoy reading Atrios and am forever in awe of his limitless energy and sweeping intelligence. It's just the Atrios cult that I can't stand.

I offered my point of view on Iraq in the comments to yet another of his posts on the Great Niger Uranium scandal and got massacred. I don't want to debate the Iraq War here. What I want to gripe about is the intolerance and hypocrisy of some of those who would call themselves liberals.

And I don't mean we shouldn't demand the truth from the president. But if we allocate all resources to what in the eyes of the public is an elitist issue that fails to resonate, we'll have no strength to make a real difference where it matters, in the next election. There was certainly a deception, but if this is all we focus on -- trying to embarrass/harass Bush & Co. because of the false report -- the left may win a few battles but will certainly lose the war.

The Atrios commenters' response would have made Coulter and Limbaugh proud.

One simply hurled insults and said, "Shut your piehole." Others chanted, like antique Vietnam War protestors, that Iraq was an act of badness with nothing positive to say for it, that 911 was caused because of our (US) exploitation of the Middle East and (implicitly) we therefore had it coming, and every other cliche that makes me cringe.

The hypocrisy that bothers me is not in the debate itself, but in the shrill dismissal of whatever they don't want to hear -- exactly what they are always accusing the other side of. That's it; it is so fashionable to moan about how Republicans are wicked because in their eyes those who are against the war are freaks, un-American, etc. But go tell the same liberals that you think perhaps the war was justified, and how do they react? Exactly the same as those they claim to despise. They all seem to have forgotten that many prominent liberals, even Josh Marshall, supported the war. To support the war doesn't make you a traitor or a rightist.

I really hate to say it, but the older I get the more moderate I become. And trust me, I was once way off to the left.

[UPDATED, 10:46 SG time]

This is probably all over the place by now, but it certainly startled me to see Yahoo's list of "Top News Stories" this afternoon:

-- U.S. forces capture 2 ex-Iraqi officials
-- U.S. plans to seek prisoners' release
-- Bush pledges role in Liberia crisis
-- Microsoft to quit granting stock options
-- Study: U.S. hypertension rate rose in '90s
-- Britney Spears says she's not a virgin

Doesn't one of those items strike you as, um , maybe not quite worthy of banner headlines? Maybe it's me....

For you China junkies thirsting for the latest on what's going on over in the Mainland, be sure to check out Adam's new pinko site (you'll see why I call it that). It's off to a good start.

Today Adam links to yet another China news site, a bit more offbeat -- make that bizarre. Check it out.

I always thought Dorothy Rabinowitz was the best of the conservative pundits, not just in terms of style (and she is unsurpassed) but in terms of getting her point across, which she does with a subtle irony that has become her signature. Still, she is a die-hard conservative -- she broke the story of accusations that Clinton had raped a woman many years back --and I wondered how she would react to Ann Coulter's book, which will no doubt soon be a best seller.

Rabinowitz's review is priceless, practically perfect. I believe her one error (or at least a lapse in judgement) is referring to Coulter as "the Maureen Dowd of conservatives," implying that the real Dowd is a flaming liberal, which is patently false. Bitchy, cloying, annoying, at times stupid -- but no one was as vicious to Clinton during the scandal than Dowd. She'll go after anyone, and her liberalism is no parallel to Coulter's conservatism. The comparison also implies that Dowd writes a lot of falsehoods, which I also think is inaccurate. I know of one case where she abused a quote, but I have never heard her accused of writing outright and deliberate lies, Coulter's trademark.

AIDS-in-China update from the BBC. Is anybody listening?

Courtesy of Gweilo Diaries, this shows us all that the post-SARS Chinese have wised up and now possess the maturity and compassion to deal with its ticking time bomb, the ballooning AIDS crisis.

Below is a cut and paste of Conrad's entire post.

Mainland Government Infects, Robs, Attacks and Arrests AIDS Sufferers

Chinese police, accompanied by clubwielding "hired thugs", raided the AIDS stricken village of Xiongqiao in Henan province, destroying property and beating up and arresting villagers.

Up to a million rural residents are believed to have contracted HIV after selling blood in unsanitary government-approved blood stations in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s.

The attack, which happened at 23:00on June 22, is the most extreme known case in central China's Henan province of a police crackdown on farmers, who are devastated by an Aids outbreak and are demanding more government help.

Some farmers also refused to turn over portions of their harvest as required.

A great review of Coulter's latest screed by a neocon, no less. Sample:

In Coulter's world, there are two types of people: conservatives and liberals. These aren't groups of people with competing ideas. They are the repositories of good and evil. There are no distinctions among conservatives or among liberals. To admit the complexity of political discourse would immediately require Coulter to think, explain, argue. But why bother when you can earn millions insulting?

I wasn't able to web surf in the hospital, so I missed this post by Orcinus, the most intelligent and articulate summary you can find on the breadth and audacity of George W's lies, documented and incontrovertible. Just read it. Why haven't these sins been mapped out this clearly in the major media?

Alarming article in Time Asia on just how precarious Spore's economic situation is. Especially disconcerting is the trend, still in its infancy but bound to pick up speed, of multinationals' sidestepping Singapore and moving their headquarters straight to Shanghai.

The piece also highlights the city-state's increasing liberalism and an easing up of the oppressive laws that for years characterized it. This is not due to any new-found enlightenment, the article says, but rather is a somewhat desperate move on the government's part to do absolutely anything and everything it can to attract and keep foreign firms and the jobs and spending that come with them.

Speaking from the front lines, I can safely say that everything it says is true.

I expected to come home from the hospital yesterday, but the pain was just too acute. Lucky for me, while there I had this state-of-the-art morphine dispenser; whenever the pain made me want to scream, I just pushed a little button. At that point, the little machine started to make this grinding noise for about a minute -- it was pumping extra morphine through a catheter in my neck. About five minutes later, my hands would go numb and soon the excruciating pain vanished, and I'd luxuriate in a gentle, weightless drowsiness.

Unfortunately, they wouldn't let me take this gadget home with me as a souvenir. So now when the pain sets in, I have to take these opiate capsules and a bunch of other tablets and wait as long as 20 minutes for the relief to come. It's so 20th century.

The food was good, the hospital was preternaturally clean and efficient, and all in all it wasn't as awful as I feared. Yes, the day after the operation, as the anesthesia wore off it got pretty intense, but seriously, that morphine machine kept me content.

I did a lot of reading in the hospital. I finished a book called Grass Soup, a diary of a Cultural Revolution prisoner whose staple food for years and years is....grass soup, of course. Witty, downright funny at times (in its insanity), and utterly tragic.

I also made my way through the first 200 pages of Wild Swans, a 700-page family history of a three generations of a Chinese family, spanning from around 1910 to the Tiananmen Square massacre.

I have been spellbound by this amazingly personal account of how one of the world's greatest nations was slowly and deliberately suffocated to the point of being altogether brain-dead. It really is as chilling, as bizarre and surreal as the worst nightmares conjured up by Asimov and Orwell.... More when I feel better.

I'm off to the hospital. Hopefully by the weekend I'll be up to blogging (though I sincerely doubt it). Wish me luck!

Only 3 more hours before I go to the hospital. I have to admit I am getting extremely nervous, just a little short of being totally freaked out. It's disconcerting to know I'll be wearing a sling for the next month or so, and that the coming week will be exceptionally unenjoyable. Also, the doctor tells me the operation is unsuccessful in about 5 out of of every 100 cases. Will I be one of the lucky five?

I am taking a stack of books with me but that may be unrealistic. I think with all the drugs I'll probably just want to gape at the television all day. I have to stay there for three nights, maybe longer depending on how I feel. It's hard for me to think about anything else, so pardon me for whining about it.

...to me. Another year older and much deeper in debt. Feel free to wire me cash.

Links are working again.

I just read Spinsanity's magnificent debunking of Ann Coulter's new screed, Treason, in which she warns us on the very first page, "Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." And it's all downhill from there.

I can't urge you strongly enough to read this shocking, witty, supremely insightful article. It surgically dissects Coulter's argument, not in terms of ideas but simply in terms of misuse of quotes and bold-faced lies. At times it's downright hilarious:

[Quoting Coulter] "Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn't slowed them down."

Of course, Coulter must engage in a complicated set of rhetorical tricks to accuse liberals of "fifty years of treason" (in a 2001 column, it was only "twenty years of treason" -- did inflation set in?).

If you don't know Spinsanity, be sure to check it out. It is the only site I know totally dedicated to identifying and unravelling misleading media spin, be it from the left or the right. They go after all the spinmeisters with merciless honesty, and their analyses are cited by intelligent bloggers on all sides, from Andrew Sullivan to Orcinus to me.