Mergers? Synergy? Rebranding? Are these guys reading the Koran or Business Week?

Tawhid and Jihad, the Iraqi militant group of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, apparently has changed its name two days after announcing its merger with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization.

An Internet statement released Tuesday under the purported new name, al-Qaida of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers, claimed responsibility for an attack on a U.S. military convoy west of the Iraqi city of Fallujah the same day.

I'm not crazy about the new name, although it's no more stupid and awkward than the average corporate branding consultant would come up with.

Accenture anyone?

ABC News reports the results of its American Sex Lives 2004 poll:

When asked whether they had ever faked an orgasm, more Democrats (33 percent) than Republicans (26 percent) said they had.

Of course, if you Democratic girls started shagging Republican men, you wouldn't have to fake it.

Not since Cicero stode the Roman Senatus has the world seen his equal. Daniel Webster shall forever stand in his shadow. Behold! Massachusetts' greatest Senator -- John F. Kerry.

Look upon his legislative feats with awe and wonder.

Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has written an open letter, appealing to Muslims in the United States to vote against President George W. Bush, describing a vote for Kerry as an act of religious devotion.

He also described Americans as "very ignorant" and claimed that US policy was controlled by Jews. The latter is hardly surprising -- Mahathir rarely gets through breakfast without launching into an anti-Semitic tirade.

Russian president Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, endorsed President Bush, stating that a Kerry win would be a victory for terrorists.

Meanwhile, former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is no doubt rooting for the challenger:

The commander of the UN peacekeepers in Haiti has linked a recent upsurge in violence there to comments made by the US presidential candidate, John Kerry.

Earlier this year Mr Kerry said that as president he would have sent American troops to protect Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was ousted from power in February.

The Brazilian UN general, Augusto Heleno, said Mr Kerry's comments had offered "hope" to Aristide supporters. Much of the recent unrest has centred on areas loyal to Mr Aristide.

More than 50 people have died over the past fortnight.

Eight months ago the Bush administration withdrew all support for Mr Aristide and made it clear he should leave Haiti.

John Kerry called that "short-sighted" and said he would have sent troops to protect Mr Aristide, who was an elected leader.

Now General Heleno, says those comments have offered hope to Aristide's supporters that should Mr Kerry win the US election in November the former Haitian president might be restored to power.

Removing Saddam Hussein was the wrong war, at the wrong place at the wrong time. Propping up the murderous Aristide wouldn't be.

Very nuanced.

UPDATE: Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority has declared itself in the Kerry camp.

None-too-soon to be ex Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri first refused to concede defeat this month's presidential election, despite preliminary vote counts showing her suffering a 61%-39% trouncing at the hands of her opponent, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Since then, Megawati has toyed with the idea of challenging the election results, failed to acknowledge Yudhoyono's victory, refused to congratulate the winner and declined all invitations for transition meetings, either with her or with her cabinet.

Now Megawati has announced that she will boycott Yudhoyono's inauguration ceremony.

Megawati's pettiness may indicate coming political grid-lock, since remains at the head of the country's second largest political party, the PDI-P, which holds 109 of the legislature's 550 seats. Yudhoyono's Democratic Party holds a mere 56. Any alliance between the Democrats and the country's largest party, Golkar, which holds 127 seats, is problematic, since Golkar is spectacularly corrupt and self-serving.

Last Friday's Sex Day was about, of all things, not having sex. Or, to be more specific, about not having sex as a form of having sex. I'd have posted the link earlier but I was too busy this weekend trying to have sex, but not having it, in the non-sexual kind of way.

From the folks who brought you the Khmer Rouge:

China is trying to stop the United Nations imposing sanctions on Sudan over the crisis in the Darfur region to protect its oil imports from the country, say western diplomats.

For the past six years Beijing has been the Sudanese government's main backer, buying 70 per cent of its exports, servicing its $20bn debt and supplying the Khartoum government with most of its weapons.

[. . . .]

China was identified by diplomats as the member responsible for watering down last month's Security Council resolution which threatened to halt Sudan's oil exports if it did not stop atrocities in the Darfur region, where Arab militias are terrorising African villagers.

Sudan is the largest recipient of Chinese overseas investment and some 10,000 Chinese are working in the country. Since 1999 China has poured up to $3bn (£1.6bn) into developing several oil fields and building a 930-mile pipeline, refinery and port.

Meanwhile, Kofi Annan claims that it is "inconceivable" that bribes and contracts awarded by Saddam Hussein to officials and companies, primarily in China, Russia and France, could have influenced those policy decisions in countries.

"I don't think the Russian or the French or the Chinese government would allow itself to be bought…" Annan said.

"I think it's inconceivable. These are very serious and important governments. You are not dealing with banana republics."

Kofi needs to get out more.

Oops:

A Chinese satellite has smashed into a villager's house on its return to earth, the country's media reports.

The satellite destroyed the building in Sichuan province, but officials say no-one was hurt.

"The satellite landed in our home. Maybe this means we'll have good luck this year," the tenant of the wrecked apartment was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

He also thanked the glorious Chinese Communist Party for allowing him to participate in the space program and local Party cadres for keeping his reconstruction grant safe by placing it in their own trouser pockets.

It's been quite a week for what is fast becoming the most contemptible US presidential campaign in modern memory. First, John "is that an ambulance I hear" Edwards outrageously promises that a vote for his ticket will cure paralysis, in response to which an actual victim of paralysis had this to say:

In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable.

Then, a Kerry campaign spokesman Chad "ban that book" Clanton threatened that, if elected, a Kerry administration would use to power of the presidency to retaliate against a critical media company.

Then John "it's seared into my memory I tell you" Kerry crassly exploited Mary Cheney's sexual orientation for a vile and divisive political objective.

Then Elizabeth "my ass is so fat it has its own gravitational field" Edwards dared to accuse the Cheney's of being ashamed of their daughter.

What a disgraceful performance. I've decided, if this lot wins the election, I'm leaving the country.

. . .Oh wait, I've already done that.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein disagrees:

"What the Senator said was perfectly tasteful. After all, he could have taken Terry Mcauliffe’s advice and reminded America that at some point, Mary Cheney has almost certainly had some leatherclad butch’s pierced tongue up her ass."

This guy would be a natural in Singapore.

President Bush has announced a new program to combat spinal cord injury:

At the center of the study will be what the president described as a "breakthrough" in "pre-trauma spinal-maintenence therapy". Essentially, as explained by the president, this involves "telling people not to get on big stupid animals and try jumping them over stuff."

[. . . .]

"Turns out a lot of folks get on these enormous, witless critters and then - get this - try to make 'em bounce over walls and hedges and such," said the president. "My panel of experts tell me this is no way to maintain viable spinal integrity."

In a demonstration illustrating the potency of Bush's claims, a sack of kittens equivalent in weight to a standard showbusiness identity was elevated to a height approximating that of the rider of a leaping horse and then dashed to the ground. Fewer than half the kittens survived without injury, and all were subsequently killed when a weight equal to that of a mature horse was dropped upon the writhing, howling sack.

"See?" said the president, holding aloft a bloodied, lifeless tabby. "Stem cells ain’t going to do much for this little guy."

(From Tim Blair)

A Hong Kong University psychologist observes that the locals would do well to heed the words of H.L. Mencken:

The taste for gambling, like that for sports, is a kind of feeble-mindedness--maybe even an insanity. It can be justified only by a resort to the most preposterous sophistry. Whenever it has seized a man of any visible talent--for example, Dostoevsky and C. C. Colton -- he has ended crazy. It is the silliest of all the vices.

The Standard article, asserting that the SAR has one of the world's highest rates of gambling addiction, is supported by banner ads for online gaming and learning the secret to beating casino slot machines.

The Inamorata called this evening to tell me her father died last month. Given that I never liked the sonofabitch and he was the only thing keeping her from parting ways with the kackhanded religious hucksters at Iglesia ni Cristo , this was not especially unhappy news for me.

I expressed my not entirely sincere condolences.

She broached the possibility of rapprochement.

And now I'm flying to Cebu next weekend.

Tom offers the Presidential Debate that might have been:

9:25 - Reading of the rules complete, the first question goes to President Bush: What's that rectangular box on your back under your jacket? President Bush stares off into the distance, as if listening to something no one else can hear, before begining his reply, "Forget it. Ignore the question. Go into your opening. Bob, I'd just like to thank you and the good people of the state of Arizona..."

9:45 - Senator Kerry, in reply to a question regarding his healthcare plan, points out that he understands healthcare because he was in Vietnam. "When you're under fire," Kerry says, "you think a lot about your healthcare coverage. And as an officer, I thought a lot about the healthcare coverage of my men."

8:52 - President Bush makes fart noises under his arm.

Read the rest here.

I've previously posted regarding the plight of five executives of the mulitinational mining company, Newmont, jailed in since September in Indonesia on baseless charges that the company is responsible for mecury pollution in North Sulawesi province. Tests conducted by the World Health Organization and the Indonesian Health Ministry show no abnormally high levels of mercury in the region allegedly affected.

The executives, which include an American and an Australian, were arrested pending a police investigation into the allegations against their company.

The results of that investigation were submitted to the state prosecutor on October 6th who rejected them yesterday, on the grounds that the report contained insufficient evidence to bring charges. Nevertheless, prosecutors extended the detention order against the executives -- without bringing formal charges and despite the lack of evidence -- until November 20th.

The detention is part of a transparent shake-down attempt to extract a payment from the company after it ceased all operations in the province in August.

The US embassy has formally protested the detentions. The Australian government has been strangely silent as far as I am aware.

Globalization suffers a blow.

The human race celebrates the latest addition to its gene pool.

A group of concerned Norwegians have sent an open letter to US President George W. Bush:

The Honorable George W. Bush President of the United States Washington, DC

Mr. President

As friends of the United States we respect your country's strength, generosity and creativity. At this point in history we are compelled to speak out. Four our of five Norwegians oppose the U.S.-led war on Iraq and our government has failed to clearly express the majority opinion of its people.

Mr. President –- we urge you to change your foreign policy. To pursue a flawed and failed policy is a sign of weakness. We want the United States to be strong and creative enough to apologize to the Iraqi people for an unjust war, and to the Allies for having misled them. We want the USA to be generous enough to compensate the innocent victims of violence, looting and trauma inflicted by torture. We firmly believe that the quest for peace in Iraq is best led by the United Nations and a democratically-elected Iraqi government.

Mr. President, your country can once again be a leading example of democracy and freedom, inspiring a world where terrorism can no longer breed. Your present policy only fosters resistance, more than ever, everywhere.

Mr. President -- the choice is yours.

Sincerely,

Concerned citizens and organizations of Norway

The Gweilo Diaries has obtained a copy of the President's draft response, the authenticity of which has been attested to by the guy who replaces the toner cartridge in my printer.

Concerned Citizens and Organizations of Noway

Helsinki Oslo, Norway

Dear Concerned:

I myself was very concerned to receive your letter informing me that four out of five Norweginians oppose my administration's efforts in Iraq. Then Karl Rove informed me that, not only is Norway not a swing state, but that five out of five Norweginians don't get to vote at all this November. I felt much better after that, let me tell you. Plus Colin Powell says that there are only about 4.5 million of you Norweginians in total, which means that, even if each and every one of you were concerned -- and if you're anything like Americans, a lot of you know fuck all and care even less -- that would still only amount to 9 electoral votes, which to be honest with you, isn't that many. Now, if you were concerned Floridians, then that'd be a different thing entirely. But you're not, so it isn't.

I'm sorry to hear that your government isn't 'clearly expressing the majority opinion of its people'. You shouldn't feel too bad about that though. The same kinda thing happens everywhere sometimes, even in the good ole USofA (just ask Al Gore). Also, I'm not really sure what you expect me to do about it. You might want to have a chat with your own president on the subject -- although, to be honest with you, I'm not really sure who he is (I've never been very good remembering the names of foreign leaders). It isn't still Vidkun Quisling is it?

In response to your request that I apologize to the Iraqi people, how exactly would that go? Maybe something like this:

Dear Iraqis:

Sorry about invading your country and deposing Saddam Hussein. My bad. Fortunately, we have him in our custody, safe and sound, along with most of his henchmen, and can restore him to power faster than you can say "mass grave." Unfortunately, we did kill Uday and Qusay. Sorry about that too. You'll be happy to know, however, that America has a few murderous sociopaths of its own and we are happy to ship you a pair from our prisons to replace the two you lost.

I could try running the above by Mr. Allawi but, I gotta tell ya', I don't think he'll be very keen.

As for compensating the Iraqi people for the violence, trauma and torture they have suffered, I thought we did that by liberating them from their torturers and I'm sure that most of the Iraqi people feel the same way, just as you Norweginians did after the US and its allies liberated you from the Nazis.

I am glad to hear that you all have such confidence in the soon-to-be-elected Iraqi government and I guess it would be churlish to point out that there wouldn't be any such animal, except for the 'unjust war' that you Concerned Norweginians are so all-fired concerned about.

Finally, I note your suggestion that the UN take the lead in stabalizing Iraq. That would be easier if they didn't flee the fucking country every time a bomb went off. Sorta like Congo, Sudan and Kosovo, huh?

Thanks for your letter.

Sincerely,

George W. Bush

(Via Captain Ed)

The Washington Posts reports that local Iraqi insurgents are turning against foreign fighters in Fallujah.

Relations are deteriorating as local fighters negotiate to avoid a U.S.-led military offensive against Fallujah, while foreign fighters press to attack Americans and their Iraqi supporters. The disputes have spilled over into harsh words and sporadic violence, with Fallujans killing at least five foreign Arabs in recent weeks, according to witnesses.

[. . . .]

Several local leaders of the insurgency say they . . . want to expel the foreigners, whom they scorn as terrorists. They heap particular contempt on Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian whose Monotheism and Jihad group has asserted responsibility for many of the deadliest attacks across Iraq, including videotaped beheadings.

"He is mentally deranged, has distorted the image of the resistance and defamed it. I believe his end is near," Abu Abdalla Dulaimy, military commander of the First Army of Mohammad, said.

One of the foreign guerrillas killed by local fighters was Abu Abdallah Suri, a Syrian and a prominent member of Zarqawi's group. Suri's body was discovered Sunday. He was shot in the head and chest while being chased by a carload of tribesmen, according to a security guard who said he witnessed the killing.

It has to have dawned on the locals that the neither Saddam nor the Baathists are coming back to power, a new government is going to be formed in January whether they participate or not, continued resistance means more death and destruction and that the best prospect of an eventual US withdrawl is the cessation of open hostilities.

Plus the infidel American pigs blew up the local kabab house.

Zarqawi and his cohorts know this as well. The difference is that continued occupation and conflagration suits their purposes.

Dissention within the ranks? If I didn't have John Kerry to tell me better, I'd almost think this sounded like a plan coming together.

I've taken Pepe Escobar and Asia Times to task in the past for shoddy reporting (see here, here, here, here and here) but -- especially in light of the new journalistic standards established by Dan Rather and CBS News -- it's only fair to give them their due now:

Asia Times hosts a five part series on the Philippines, written by Escobar, that is revealing, largely accurate and well worth the time it takes to read it all.

From Part I, The Sick Man of Asia:

Incredible as it may seem in booming East Asia, the Philippines' average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is actually shrinking. It peaked at $1,180 in 1996 (before the Asian financial crisis), stood at $998 in 1999 and was at $953 in 2003 Compare this with Thailand: from $1,876 in 1999 to $2,322 in 2003. Last year, at least 27 million Filipinos - one-third of the population - were living with well under $1 a day, too poor to sustain their basic food and shelter needs. Today these poorest of the poor may be closer to 40% of the total population. According to a 2002 National Statistics Office report, during that year 3.4 million Filipinos were unemployed and 4.6 million underemployed. Today it is widely assumed, unofficially, that there are at least 10 million unemployed or underemployed Filipinos. The national debt is hovering around 85% of GDP. And with the price of oil on the rise, poverty in the Philippines is expected to worsen.

From Part II, Goodfellas, with Tagalog Subtitles:

[T]he key to the whole equation is in the Philippine Congress. "The typical Filipino legislator is male, middle-aged, and college-educated, most likely with a degree in law. He has previously held a local government post and is a member of a political family ... There is one chance in two that he is related to a former legislator. He is also into business and has multiple income sources ... He is well off, with a net worth (most likely understated in his statement of assets) in the P10 million range [almost $200,000]. The likelihood is that the longer he stays in Congress, the richer he becomes ... The typical representative or senator therefore is not the typical Filipino, who is likely to be 35, with a few years of high-school education and an annual family income of about P150,000 in 2000 [less than $3,000]".

Philippine politics is the ultimate family affair. In Landlords and Capitalists, political scientist Temario Rivera revealed that 87 families controlled the top 120 Philippine manufacturing companies from 1964 to 1986. Sixteen of these families were involved in politics, and most were part of the landowning elite. According to The Rulemakers, most of the representatives in the Philippine Congress over the past century have come from only 134 families.

A certified member of a Filipino political family needs, for starters, loads of money. Elections are a costly affair - for local standards. A Congressional campaign in Metro Manila cost as much as $500,000 in 2004. In rural provinces, it's much cheaper - less than $200,000. Once in Congress, however, families are impeccably positioned to expand their business empires, manipulating the state as a cash cow: they can get loans, franchises, monopolies, tax exemptions, subsidies, cheap foreign exchange, the works. And as they get wealthier, they become formidable election machines.

From Part III, Poverty and Corruption, the Ties that Bind:

Smoky Mountain, in the Tondo neighborhood across Manila harbor, is a Dantesque vision from hell turned postcard of global poverty. Smoky Mountain is a 40-year-old mountain of garbage. The locals literally live off it - they search it, burn it, separate it in plastic bags, recycle it, sell it to junk shops, even eat some of the remains.

Eighty percent of the children of the estimated 30,000 people living in the area don't go to school - although there are a kindergarten and an elementary school in the surroundings. Some of the locals set up food stalls at the harbor, some are cargadores (porters), some are pedicab drivers, but most live off the garbage. Under a bridge by the Pasig River rattled by the non-stop traffic of container trucks, stuck under the pollution, haze and that unbearable smell, a teenager beams: "It's good to make money here. Three hundred pesos a day [a little more than US$5] if you work hard". . . . He wouldn't leave Smoky Mountain for anything. "There are no jobs out there," he says, pointing toward Metro Manila.

The notoriously corrupt Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) - which also indulges in a quirky form of performance art, tagging colored walls around town with its acronym - keeps a sinister top-10 list of the dirtiest barangays (districts) in town. Just for the record, Smoky Mountain is not even close to No 1; that honor belongs to Barangay 145, Zone 16 in Pasay City - notified 225 times (and counting) as having mountains of uncollected garbage.

From Part IV, Last One Leaving Please Turn Off the Lights:

There they are, concentric rings of Filipinas spread out in Hong Kong, on the tarmac, on the subway, on the way to the Star Ferry pier, spilling over from Statue Square through the vault of the HSBC building engulfing Armani and Bulgari luxury compounds, mobbing wily Cantonese operators promoting lucky draws of Nokia cellular phones with prepaid SIM (security identity module) cards - "as little as HK$0.15 a minute [2 US cents] to the Philippines". Everywhere there's the infectious atmosphere of a larger-than-life social club; women of all ages chatting non-stop, comparing notes, staring endlessly at photos of boys and girls in school uniforms, sharing their food, reading Tagalog-language papers or calling home on their discount Nokias. By all means, Filipino maid Sundays in Hong Kong's Central district remain one of Asia's social-anthropology highlights.

The maids configure the most conspicuous example of Ferdinand Marcos' 1970s drive to export Philippine labor as a policy to increase foreign currency and so repay the country's mounting international debt. Now there are at least 7.5 million legalized OFWs spread throughout 186 countries, apart from at least 1.7 million illegals. The soundtrack of Southeast Asia - and most of the Middle East - is played by Filipinos. Officials and crews on cargo and cruise ships sailing across all oceans are invariably Filipino. Filipino doctors and nurses migrate to overseas hospitals by the thousands every year. At least 4,000 Filipinos risk their lives working in Iraq. (The Philippines banned its citizens from going to work in Iraq after truck driver Angelo de la Cruz was kidnapped by Islamic militants on July 7. However, 42% of all Filipinos believe they have a right to look for a job in a danger zone such as Iraq.)

[. . . .]

There are OFWs who are not as patient as the Hong Kong amahs and prefer to take a shortcut. Every day, when the bright lights start shining in Wanchai, one of Hong Kong's financial districts, an army of made-up, dressed-up young Asians - Chinese, Mongolians, Thais and most of all Filipinas - hits a string of bars like the immense Neptune II. At 4 or 5 in the morning, if they're lucky, they may be richer by US$100 or so - courtesy of business executives and expats. This certainly beats one week of toiling under the domestic Cantonese Inquisition.

These so-called public relations girls play the game with deftness. All it takes is to be "tabled" (served drinks by a customer), occasionally danced with, served as many drinks as possible, and then the girl can collect a percentage from the bar or club owner (who is not her employer). In one hour in a nightclub, a girl makes three or four times what she would make in one hour under the Cantonese Inquisition. And everything extra that happens outside the nightclub is the girl's own business. More than a few young Filipinas in Hong Kong end up following the bumpy road of working as a maid, then a waitress, and then PR girl, until they reach Valhalla: marriage with a Westerner.

From Part V (the most problematic, where Escobar's usual paranoid anti-Americanism is most evident), All Quiet on the Second Front:

Arroyo's master plan since 2001 has been to turn Manila's fight against Muslim separatists into an anti-terrorist campaign, in exchange for increased US economic and military aid. This explains the Bush-Arroyo frenzy in tagging as terrorists the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People's Army (NPA) and famous activist Professor Jose Maria Sison, the key political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), and currently exiled in the Netherlands. Labeling them as terrorists seemed the easiest approach to get them out of the way and force them to capitulate. They didn't.

As for Arroyo's gamble in the Angelo de la Cruz case, it was not even a gamble. If de la Cruz had been beheaded, she knew there would have been another People Power in the streets of Manila - this time against herself. According to Social Weather Stations, 67% of Filipinos approved the withdrawal from Iraq, despite fears that US work visas for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) might become harder to come by. Arroyo lost nothing, apart from being on the receiving end of the usual barbs from Washington hardliners. There are at least 4,000 OFWs working in Iraq at the moment. They are civilians only in name and remain especially valuable because they are engaged in military-related work inside US military bases in Iraq.

And, finally, if you'd like to know what I'd do to solve the problem, were I annointed dictator of the Philippines, follow this link.

How incompetent are communists? Forget famine, environmental degradation and economic collapse, and consider this:

China's police ministry on Sunday handed out rewards of up to $240 to people who reported pornographic Web sites in a campaign to stamp out online smut, the government said.

How useless must you be to need help finding porn on the internet?

John Edwards promises that, if elected President, John Kerry will heal the lame and raise the dead:

"[W]hen John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again."

That should lock up the deceased gimp vote.

I'm back from Tokyo but am incredibly busy and stll suffering blogger burnout.

In the meantime, here's something from South Asia:

>

And now I'm off to Tokyo. See you next week.

Jay Nordlinger reviews three books on China in National Review Online. Excerpts follow.

In Losing the New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal, by Ethan Gutmann, the author observes of the American expat community in China:

From time to time, the Chinese government will do something really, really gross, and the conscience of an expat may prick. But the Americans tend to find ways to overcome this. At one point, our author "started slipping, sometimes blurting out 'police state' in discussions of China," as if he had "expat Tourette's syndrome." But he learned to control his tongue. So too, every American "strays into the Other China at some point," separate from the Beijing prepared for foreign eyes. But Americans duly shove this Other China from their minds. Many permanent colonists seem to have banished a sense of right and wrong as an inconvenient luxury. They are contemptible.

As our businesses in China can be. They practice not so much capitalism as bribery and deception (especially self-deception). One wag came up with a hilarious description of such businesses: "American companies with Chinese characteristics." The roll of dishonor includes Cisco, Motorola, and Microsoft. And special shame belongs to Nortel (a Canadian firm), which presented an Internet surveillance mechanism "specifically designed 'to catch Falun Gong."

On Peter Hays Gries book, China's New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy, Nordlinger notes:

The patient reader will mine this thickly written and often silly book for worthwhile ore. Here is a nugget: When the computer program known as "Deep Blue" defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov, the cover of Beijing Youth Weekly blared, "Chinese Defeat Kasparov." Why? Because two members — two — of the six-man IBM team that designed Deep Blue happened to be Chinese-Americans — not even Chinese, mind you, but Chinese-Americans. That is interesting.

And finally:

[W]e have a book of stunning power, Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard, by Fan Shen (University of Nebraska, 294 pp., $24.95). Shen now teaches English at Rochester Community and Technical College in Minnesota. But long ago he was a preteen Red Guard in Beijing, the son of "revolutionary" parents. It was "agonizing" for him to write this book, in part because the book had the potential to make those parents "regret that they had ever given birth to me." Shen turned his back on his revolutionary heritage; in doing so, he performed a service for us all.

You can read all three reviews, in their entirety here.

(Thanks to reader Walter for the heads-up)

Every single one in the world? Really? In Iraq? In Libya? In North Korea? In Syria? In Iran? Indeed, the morning papers in many parts of the world weren't exactly shedding tears -- or anything more than crocodile tears --over 9/11, including the official Chinese media, who were pretty damned non-committal.

By sending American troops to Iraq instead of to Afghanistan, Bush permitted Osama bin Laden to escape, Heinz Kerry said.

"Osama bin Laden is Osama been lost," she said.

Actually, I'm pretty sure he's Osama bin dead but, even assuming that bin Laden did escape from Tora Bora, he did so long before any US troops were in Iraq. Besides which, while I'm all for seeing the sonofabitch suspended from a rusty meat hook on the Washington Mall while crows pluck at his eyes, the US was attacked by a religious/ideological movement, not by one man, and bin Laden's whereabouts -- whether a US Federal Prison, a cave in Pakistan or a grave -- are largely immaterial to the outcome of the ensuing war.

"The Taliban is back running Afghanistan"

Someone really ought to phone Hamid Karzi with that news, as well as the 4 million women who registered to vote in this weekend's election and the millions of girls who are now attending schools.

"No American boy or girl should lose their lives for oil."

So, if radical Wahhabi extremists seize power in Saudi Arabia and shut off the flow of oil, what will a Kerry administration response be? A Franco-German-US summit? A UN resolution? Or shall we just put our cars on cinderblocks in the front yard and start harvesting the national forests for firewood to heat our homes?

Oil is the life-blood of the US and world economies. An interruption in its supply would be absolutely devastating. If a Kerry administration is not prepared to commit American forces to prevent that eventuality, precisely what national interest is it prepared to us force to protect?

Americans need to think of security in broader terms than bombs and terror, Heinz Kerry said. "Seldom do we think of security in terms of one's job, one's health care benefits, education."

Because those people leaping out of the World Trade Center two years ago weren't trying to escape an inferno, they were distraught because their HMO co-payments were too high.

"Every child in America will receive health care from day one if John is elected. Period," she said.

Every child? From the day he's elected? Period?

Bullshit.

I didn't think it would be possible for me to have warm feelings for Hillary Clinton, but compared to this witch. . . .

John Edwards appearing on ABC News Nightline:

"I'd say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you've lost your mind."

I guess we expat absentee Bush voters are okay then.

I'm back from Indonesia with an enormous pile of work on my desk and a bad case of blogger burnout. Consequently, you'll have to make due with this:

I'm off to Tokyo the day after tomorrow. Don't expect much new content until I get back on Monday. Maintaining this constant level of creative genius isn't easy and I need a break.

George W. Bush has fallen dangerously behind in the only survey that really counts -- the US Presidential Boobie Poll (although there are some pretty skanky Kerry titties out there).

Meanwhile, happy birthday to the most 'ex' of America's ex-presidents, Jimmy Carter. With friends like Yasser Arafat, Kim Il Sung, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, Lester Maddox, Kim Jong Il, Hafez al-Assad, Haile Mariam Mengistu, Fidel Castro, Raoul Cedras, Marshall Josip Broz Tito, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Saddam Hussein, Daniel Ortega and the Georgia Ku Klux Klan, it ought to be one hell of a party.

And finally, the New York Times runs a screed John Kerry is no doubt reading intently in preparation for tonight -- "How to Debate George Bush", by . . . Al Gore.

This is reportedly the first in a series of 'how to' pieces by prominent
politicians. Coming later this month, How To:

"Speak Eloquently", by George W. Bush

"Pick Up Girls", by Bob Packwood

"Drive", by Edward Kennedy

"Keep Your Man Faithful", by Hillary Clinton

"Make Friends and Influence People", by Ken Starr

and finally, in November:

"How to Win the Presidency", by John F. Kerry