Outrage Of The Day

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

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

"New Video Shows Kidnapped Reporter Weeping."

Followed by this lede and opening:

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

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

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

Well, okay. It's legitimate to report that Carroll was crying in the video. But to lead with it? Did the headlines about injured ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff read: "Wounded News Anchor Cries in Pain After Roadside Bombing"? Which he did, apparently. I mean, wouldn't you?

Jill Carroll was abducted three weeks ago, and I don't want to think too much about how she's been treated and what kind of condition she's in, because the whole situation is horrific and devastating. But to lead with the terror and degradation aspects of this strikes me as...I don't know. Prurient? Sexist, certainly. A way to whip up the outrage level to support a war that most of the American public has grown weary of, maybe.

From what I've read about Jill Carroll, she is a brave, resourceful journalist who cares deeply about her work. Reducing her to a weeping victim in a headline is disrespectful and dehumanizing. The most important news here is that Carroll is still alive, or at least she was two days ago, more than a week after the deadline set by her kidnappers for her execution. And that's what the headline should have said. "New Tape Shows Kidnapped Reporter Alive." You know? Something like that.

Every time I see this fucking headline, which has been in the top news stories on Yahoo all day and all night, I feel sick. I am sick with outrage at her kidnappers, who really are thugs and barbarians and cowardly swine. I am sick with outrage that a talented woman has been reduced to a weak, weeping stereotype. And I am sick with outrage at an American President who started this war to fulfill neocon dreams of Imperial ambition and his own sick need to prove that he's a bigger man than his father.

The 4th Estate Stands Up

Here is a man who understands the vital importance of a free and independent press and is willing to take a considerable risk to preserve it. I'm reposting the entire article:

The chief editor of a hard-hitting newspaper supplement shut down by Chinese authorities denounced the closing as an arbitrary act and vowed to fight it in an impassioned protest letter circulated Thursday.

Li Datong reproached Communist Party officials for shutting down the supplement, Bing Dian, which he founded in 1995.

"This action has no legal or constitutional basis and seriously violated and trampled upon the party's constitution and political standards," Li wrote in an essay circulated on the Internet. "Who gave them that kind of power? They're so disgusting I don't know whether to laugh or cry."

Bing Dian, published by the state-run China Youth Daily, won legions of loyal readers through in-depth articles on sensitive topics like rival Taiwan's democracy and wrongdoing by well-connected individuals.

Its shutdown, ordered by the newspaper's owner, the Communist Youth League, was the latest act in a year-old campaign by President Hu Jintao's government to rein in wayward media.

The move drew criticism from Bing Dian fans, who bombarded the Internet with expressions of support for Li and condemnations of the crackdown.

"In the past year, those who can be gotten rid of have been gotten rid of," Chinese journalist Wang Xiaofeng wrote on his blog. "Those who can be disposed of, have been disposed of — all in secret."

Li said he would issue a complaint to the Central Discipline Inspection Committee, the party's internal affairs watchdog, over the closing.

Li said officials gave no reason for the shutdown, but he described it as the culmination of continuing tensions over the content of the four-page supplement.

"As a professional journalist, stopping the publication of Bing Dian is something I cannot understand, something I cannot accept," Li said.

He said Chinese journalists from other publications had been warned against writing about Bing Dian's closure and that some readers terminated their subscriptions to China Youth Daily in protest.

Gagging state media is the main focus of the Chinese government's effort to regulate the flow of information within the country. In the latest campaign, the government has fired aggressive editors and jailed or intimidated enterprising reporters.

Last month, the government forced the transfer of a senior editor at the Beijing News, another daring tabloid.

Li said the party's Propaganda Department came down hard on the supplement several times, notably for a report alleging plagiarism by a scholar favored by high-ranking party members. The supplement was suspended for one issue after that, and Li said they were forced to withdraw a follow-up report.

Bing Dian also got in trouble when it ran an essay by Taiwanese writer Lung Ying-tai highlighting the democratic evolution of the self-governed island in recent years. China considers Taiwan its territory, and state propaganda regularly portrays the island's people as enthusiastic supporters of unification unfairly thwarted by their political leaders.

"Certain people within the Central Propaganda Department accused this essay as being 'against the Communist Party at every step' and their narrow-mindedness was truly astonishing," Li wrote.

Lung rallied to Li's defense Thursday. In an open letter to Hu, Lung warned that the closure risks alienating Taiwan's people.

"People once thought that as a figure of the new era, your mind-set and vision would be deeper and more open than your predecessors," Lung wrote in a half-page commentary in Taiwan's China Times newspaper.

Excuses, excuses...

It seems like my blogging quality and output is inversely proportional to how well my novel writing is going. The novel's coming along nicely...so...um...well, you get the picture...

Grandson of the Revolution

Fellow blogger China Fool (and I highly recommend you pay this blog a visit - the Fool offers a unique perspective on today's China, from a Chinese who lived in the US for many years and recently returned to Beijing) alerted me to this website - which just about made my head explode. It's a "my space" blog from a young Chinese man living in the UK who is pursuing a career in fashion design. The site features photos of him looking quite fetching and stylish, and well, sticking his hand in his fly in one snap, along with a photo tribute to one of his obsessions, the Carpenters (yep, Karen Carpenter and brother Richard).

Why the exploding synapses, you might ask? Because the blogger in question is Lin Biao's grandson.

Yes, Lin Biao, revolutionary general, briefly Chairman Mao's "Closest Comrade in Arms," whose calligraphy introduces the Cultural Revolution edition of Mao's Little Red Book. Yep, the same Lin Biao featured in my favorite Chinese souvenir, a pink plastic TV framed 3-d photo of Mao with Lin following a few steps behind his Chairman, in an appropriate display of deference.

"Surreal" very nearly doesn't cover it.

UPDATE: China Fool expresses some skepticism that this fellow really is who he claims to be - and of course, that's the beauty of those internets...people make all kinds of claims that are difficult to substantiate and shouldn't be taken at face value...

Now, it's a whole 'nother interesting question - what would inspire someone to pose as Lin Biao's grandson? I can't say it's an obvious choice...

Poison Pen

From David in the UK comes this obituary from the Manchester Guardian on Yao Wenyuan, the last surviving member of the Gang of Four. Yao was the Gang's polemicist, whose infamous critique of the play, Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, signaled the launch of the Cultural Revolution.

In the essay Yao claimed that a play written by Wu Han, a deputy mayor of Beijing, was a coded attack on Mao for dismissing, in 1959, the then minister of defence Peng Dehuai (who had criticised Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward).

Confused by this unexpected salvo from Shanghai, Beijing's party leadership tried to protect Wu Han, thus providing the pretext for the full-scale "struggle" launched by Mao against them in the following year. Yao was soon promoted to the Cultural Revolution Group.

If the Gang of Four had not been arrested after Mao's death in 1976, Yao, though devoid of practical experience in government, would have become one of China's supreme leaders. In a popular cartoon published after their downfall, Jiang Qing is shown standing next to a deer on which a placard hangs proclaiming it to be a horse. The image is based on a story, satirising those who demand blind loyalty, which dates from the first Chinese imperial dynasty.

In the cartoon, the second most senior member of the gang, Zhang Chunqiao (obituary, May 13 2005) gives instructions to Yao, who has his notebook open. "Anyone who dares call it a deer," said Zhang "take his name down!" The fourth member of the gang, Shanghai worker-rebel Wang Hongwen, stands on guard. In denunciations of this kind, Yao was always portrayed as a literary hack who wrote to order. The truth was more complex.

Although Yao was often opportunistic in his polemics, their radical views were shared by many other young intellectuals who believed, with Mao, that the pace of China's "transition to socialism" was too slow.

A part of the complexity was the real role of the Gang of Four in the Cultural Revolution. As the LA Times points out:

Many observers say the arrest and imprisonment of the foursome decades ago allowed the Communist Party to avoid taking responsibility for the disastrous policies of its founding father, Chairman Mao Tse-tung.

"The Gang of Four was created as a symbol by the post-Mao leadership to pass off the burdens of the Cultural Revolution," said Andrew Nathan, a political scientist at Columbia University. "One reason the regime does not want to open discussions on the Cultural Revolution is it does lead back to Mao — not just Mao the man but the single-party system that allowed the Cultural Revolution to happen."

Perhaps Jiang Qing, Madame Mao put it best at her trial in 1981: "I was Chairman Mao's dog. What he said to bite, I bit." The same could be said of Yao, her "literary hit man."

Yao received the lightest sentence of the Gang and was released early on medical grounds in 1996. Apparently he continued to write, unpublished articles and entries in a journal he'd kept since he was 15.

It's doubtful we'll be seeing any of this writing soon. But what I wouldn't give for a look at Yao's own version of Hai Rui Dismissed from Office...

(Thanks again to David for the link)

My Country Went to Iraq...

And all we got was a two trillion dollar bill:

The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion, far above the White House's pre-war projections, when long-term costs such as lifetime health care for thousands of wounded U.S. soldiers are included, a study said on Monday.

Oh, yeah, and another generation of maimed, traumatized soldiers:

Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes included in their study disability payments for the 16,000 wounded U.S. soldiers, about 20 percent of whom suffer serious brain or spinal injuries....

...Unforeseen costs include recruiting to replenish a military drained by multiple tours of duty, slower long-term U.S. economic growth and health-care bills for treating long-term mental illness suffered by war veterans.

They said about 30 percent of U.S. troops had developed mental-health problems within three to four months of returning from Iraq as of July 2005, citing Army statistics.

I guess I could include in this tally however many tens of thousands of Iraqis who've been killed or wounded and the cost of rebuilding a devastated Iraq, but apparently that's not our problem...

King George

One of my new faves, Glenn Greenwald, links to an extremely revealing article by conservative legal theorist - oh, the hell with it, on the basis of this evidence, let's just call him Bushevik apologist Harvey Mansfield, professor of government at Harvard. In his essay in the Weekly Standard, Mansfield defends the Bush Administration's extra-legal activities thusly:

Enemies, however, not merely violate but oppose the law. They oppose our law and want to replace it with theirs. To counter enemies, a republic must have and use force adequate to a greater threat than comes from criminals, who may be quite patriotic if not public-spirited, and have nothing against the law when applied to others besides themselves. But enemies, being extra-legal, need to be faced with extra-legal force...

Mansfield goes on to state that "the rule of law is not enough to run a government," that today's civil libertarians frequently "forget to consider emergencies when liberties are dangerous and law does not apply," and in rejecting monarchy, the republican framers of the Constitution "had forgotten" that though monarchy might be unsafe, it could also be effective.

In other words, at times one-man rule is the only way to go.

We've had numerous examples of the Bush Adminstration's lawlessness (Greenwald refers to the Administration's "ideology of lawlessness," and I think that's right on) - my current favorite being Bush's "signing statement" with regards to the defense appropriations bill that included McCain's anti-torture ammendment. If you missed this little nugget, here's an excerpt from the Boston Globe:

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.

''The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief," Bush wrote, adding that this approach ''will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks."

Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law.

A senior administration official, who spoke to a Globe reporter about the statement on condition of anonymity because he is not an official spokesman, said the president intended to reserve the right to use harsher methods in special situations involving national security...

''We are not going to ignore this law," the official said, noting that Bush, when signing laws, routinely issues signing statements saying he will construe them consistent with his own constitutional authority. ''We consider it a valid statute. We consider ourselves bound by the prohibition on cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment."

But, the official said, a situation could arise in which Bush may have to waive the law's restrictions to carry out his responsibilities to protect national security. He cited as an example a ''ticking time bomb" scenario, in which a detainee is believed to have information that could prevent a planned terrorist attack...

...David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit.

''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,' " he said. ''They don't want to come out and say it directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to anyone who has been following what's going on."

Golove and other legal specialists compared the signing statement to Bush's decision, revealed last month, to bypass a 1978 law forbidding domestic wiretapping without a warrant. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without a court order starting after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The president and his aides argued that the Constitution gives the commander in chief the authority to bypass the 1978 law when necessary to protect national security. They also argued that Congress implicitly endorsed that power when it authorized the use of force against the perpetrators of the attacks.

Legal academics and human rights organizations said Bush's signing statement and his stance on the wiretapping law are part of a larger agenda that claims exclusive control of war-related matters for the executive branch and holds that any involvement by Congress or the courts should be minimal.

Oh, god, NOT the "ticking time bomb" scenario. All I can say is, we must have already had a ton of those, given this Administration's obsession with having the power to torture whomever they want to whenever they'd like.

That, by the way, was snark. I don't believe for a moment that Bush, Cheney and their cronies have diffused, 24-like, a string of explosive devices with their timers showing 1 second left till Doomsday. Far easier to believe (because there's actually evidence for this stuff, as opposed to wing-nut fantasies) is that innocent people have been caught up in the Administration's "Terror Crusade," that they've been rendered to regimes where torture is commonplace, imprisoned without evidence or charges in our own American gulag (though here, at least, is evidence that the Bush Administration has some small budget-consciousness, seeing as how they're using recycled Soviet prisons).

The nice thing about assuming the mantle of "War President" in a "War on Terror" is that the war never ends. As some wag put it, you can't declare war on a noun - or at least, you can't win one. There will always be terror of some form or another. The Bush Administration even revamped their own acronym at one point, downgrading "GWOT" - the "Global War on Terror" - to "GSAVE" - the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism". Seeing as how we are now officially engaged in a "struggle" as opposed to a "war" - isn't it time to reject the Bush Regime's Imperial assumptions?

Not that our current little King George shows any signs of doing so.

I'm thinking it's about time for another Tea Party...

A New Year

I started this blog almost a year ago, in somewhat the same way that I started writing novels - as something to do while I figured out what I should be doing. The novel-writing came about after I'd finished writing a bunch of teleplays for an original series, mostly for fun - because probably one of the least likely things that can happen to you in Hollywood is to sell an original series when you are pretty much an unknown writer. But I liked the idea; I had a blast writing it, and I could crank out an episode in a relatively short amount of time, without a lot of angst or fuss. I did do some "should" stuff as well, but I knew that if I were really serious about establishing myself as a writer, I needed to do the smart thing, and that was to write a stand-alone spec feature that wasn't too out there or strange.

The problem, of course, was thinking of something along those lines.

One thing I'd learned while cranking out all that TV was the value of writing regularly. I decided that I shouldn't just stop writing while I was thinking up that slam-dunk six figure spec feature. I had a first chapter of a novel I'd written nearly ten years earlier - why not write that in the meantime?

Of course in the process of writing a novel "in the meantime," I discovered that I liked writing novels much better than writing features, and quickly burned through two and a half (in a projected series of three). Of course these books did not fit neatly into a genre, and they were pretty much tree-killers, lengthwise, as well.

I didn't really care; I was having too much fun. It was only when I actually received some interest in the first one that the whole incredibly painful - and predictable - cycle of hope and rejection set in.

So I reached the end of 2004 in a funk, and at a crossroads. Novel #3 didn't seem like fun any more. I needed to get serious. I needed to figure out what I should be doing.

I didn't have a clue, so I started this blog. I figured, it would keep me writing, make me "publish" something on a regular basis. Perhaps it would eventually become a place where I'd put more of my stuff, a novel, some songs, who knows?

I still haven't precisely figured out how productive a project this has been for me, or whether it's just a semi-creative way to procrastinate, but it has been fun, and I've "met" some cool people as a consequence (particularly Richard and all the cool folks at the peking duck).

One thing I have been thinking about as a result of doing this is how I am not really a great analytical essayist or political commentator - I read folks like digby, the troika at firedoglake, my new favorite, Glenn Greenwald, and all the folks at booman, and I am constantly shown what great political blogging is all about. This made me think about how as we grow up and grow older, we tend to specialize, to figure out the things that really motivate us, and if we're smart, we do those things, reinforce those skills, prune away the less-used neural pathways in our tangled brains and develop the paths that take us where we really want to go.

So for me, that means here I am, starting another quarter of Chinese and slogging my way through another novel. And this one has been a real slog. I was lucky enough to have about seven years where I was able to write like I was turning on a faucet every night, and when the well went dry towards the end of last year, I had to look for water down an unfamiliar road. All I had guiding me was intuition and outrage.

The "intuition" part is all about how I like to write. I am fortunate to have an online discussion/critique group with a couple of great writers. A month or so back, we "talked" about how we wrote. None of us believe in outlining. For me, I just don't know what the story is about, for the most part, until I write it. Sure, I have a few plot points in mind - maybe - a character or two - but it's the process itself that generates the ideas. I posted that it felt a lot like writing songs to me. The musicality of the words is important, and the rhythm of it is what tells me when it's time to move on, from one idea to the next. Also, writing for me has always had an element of performance - how am I going to do, when I sit down at the keyboard this time? Am I gonna kick ass, or clam?

Writer #2 responded that for her, it was like sewing a dress. She had this pattern, these parts cut out, and it was all about fitting them together into a coherent garment.

For Writer #3, it was cooking, or baking. Sure, you have a basic recipe, but it's the improvisation of certain ingredients that really makes it interesting, and tasty.

If I were using the cooking metaphor, a lot of my ingredients would be politics, history and current events. The kind of stuff I post here, now and again, and the material the above-mentioned bloggers cover so well every day.

Only for me, what my brain wants to do, what it's been trained to do, is turn such things into fiction. Not, I sincerely hope, overly didactic fiction (yuck!). But this latest novel really has been fueled by outrage, and god knows, I've had plenty of gas in the tank to keep me going, even when the actual writing has been a bitch, when I've been clueless about the plot, when I can't figure out whether I'm at the verse, the bridge or the chorus. Anybody who's played in a band - you know when you have a trainwreck? Where you're in the middle of a tune and it's like, "oops. Where the fuck am I?"

It's going better now. I'm actually getting up to my old speed, intermittently anyway. I think I know where I'm going...well, up to a point. But that's good enough for now.

All of which is a very roundabout way of saying that the kinds of things I've been posting here over the last year, about China and about US politics, are still obsessing me - but they're getting thrown into Novel Stew instead of being posted here.

For your China and political fixes, check out the links I've posted above and on the right - these guys say it way better than I can. And I'll do my best to post more regularly here as well (if anyone has any preferences as to topics, let me know).

Hey, it's a new year. And while not everything is possible (I am reasonably certain that at this point in my life, I will not become a rock star. Or a ballerina. But I never wanted to be a ballerina, so no loss there), who knows?

I still might get better.

Happy Holidays - Just To P.O. Bill O'Reilly

To start, I am not a religious person. I have probably seen the inside of a church more often as a tourist - you know, gazing at the gorgeous, stained glass windows and medieval statuary - than for any occasion of worship. But I like Christmas. I like the trees and the wreaths and the pretty colored lights, and the cheesy decorations. I like the carols and the songs. I like getting together with friends and family. Hey, I like presents!

You move away from home, and, if you're lucky, you start to form your own traditions and holiday rituals. I have a number of them. Every year, I say I'm going to get my own tree, and then I never do. Ditto with sending out Christmas cards. And I shop at the last minute.

Then there are the social gatherings. There's the annual work "holiday party," which is generally a bore. Plus, it usually occurs during my annual "Christmas cold." I don't get sick that often, but I will, every year, get sick in December. It's like, all the hard work of the year is over, okay, you can get sick now. This year it came slightly early, but made up for that by lingering as a mild sinus infection.

And then there is, for me, the traumatic holiday psychic reading.

Now, I can't claim this as a full-fledged ritual yet, as it's only happened twice. But it's happened within the context of one of my genuine annual events, Jodie's Christmas party.

I can always count on Jodie to have this party, even when she claims she isn't going to have it. At the last minute, she'll change her mind. It will start as, "well, maybe I'll have a few friends over for potluck," and morph into a full-fledged party in about 48 hours after she announces it. With the party comes the psychic.

I am like a little kid in many ways. "Oooh, there's a psychic? Cool! Sign me up!"

I was fourth on the list. This was not the best set-up for the psychic, as she was in residence in the front sitting room where the stereo was located - the stereo which is so sophisticated and complicated that no one can figure out how to make the speakers work in the main house. So this poor woman is trying to give psychic readings with Johnny Mathis crooning "White Christmas" loudly in the background, in the hopes that the music will be heard in the living room too.

Plus, she had a cold and couldn't stop coughing. "I never get sick," she told me. "But I've been in bed for the last week."

This particular psychic does a combination computer-assisted astrologic ("I use Indian astrology, so this may not look familiar to you") and tarot card reading, helped by her spirit guides, one of whom is Merlin - I don't know whether this is the Merlin or some other less well-known spirit guide. And I didn't ask.

Because, as mentioned above, this was a sort of traumatic psychic experience. Oh, it started out harmlessly enough.

"I can see by your chart that you're a very creative person. Do you see yourself as a spiritual warrior?"

Me: "Erm...I don't know."

From there, it was all trauma, baby. Without going into all the details, let's just say that my chart made her want to cry, and that she gave me her card, saying, "I haven't given this card to anyone else, but I think you could really benefit from an extended reading and some healing soul work."

To her credit (I think), I surveyed others who'd had readings, and in fact, none of them received business cards.

Afterwards, I shrugged it off and went forth to mingle. I had a nice time. Towards the end of the evening, I mentioned the trauma aspects of the experience to several friends (and nope, they hadn't gotten business cards either).

One of them said, "Oh my god. Don't you remember?"

"Nooo..."

"I saw that psychic and I thought you must have recognized her, and I couldn't believe you signed up for a reading."

And she proceeds to tell me how, several years ago, I'd had an even more traumatic reading with this psychic, to the extent that I came out of it teary-eyed and mumbling about how this was a great capper to a really shitty year.

I thought about this. I sort of, kind of, remembered it. I couldn't pin down the year, though. I'm thinking, huh, maybe 1997, that kind of sucked, but my friend insisted it was more recent than that. Now I'm thinking, it must have been 2002; the end of that year was just a tad gnarly.

Lest you think this is the result of, oh, too much drugs and alcohol, I've always had a kind of weird memory. I mean, I can remember song lyrics (and tunes and orchestrations) pretty much forever; I'm good with foreign languages and facts; I can learn lines for plays and up to a point, recall conversations with a high degree of accuracy. But in terms of that last category, I only remember up to a point. Then I might remember that something bad or intense happened, but I can't remember what it was.

Certain events I remember with a high degree of vividness. Or I forget the actual events and remember the relevant sensory details. This is the kind of stuff I mine when I'm writing fiction (and for whatever it's worth, I'm pretty good at writing fiction. Apparently I'm better at creating characters than directly deconstructing my own).

And if you remind me what happened, I usually will remember it myself.

Unfortunately, my friend with the better event memory didn't witness the first traumatic psychic reading, so I'm still not sure what the psychic said that got me so upset that Christmas party...erm...whenever it was...okay, I'm going with 2002.

This year, I wasn't all that upset. I've learned to accept that, as much as I in general enjoy the holiday season, for me it is also suffused with an inevitable melancholy. Another year has passed. My life is pretty good, but there are things I think I'm missing. Some of what's lacking I could name, some of it...

Well, I'm just not sure. There's the inchoate sense that I'm not quite doing what I could be doing, what I should be doing, but I don't know how to get from where I am to a place I can't even define.

Jodie's party is only one of several gatherings that I attend this time of year. There's the Monday Before Christmas Musicians' Party. Working musicians tend to work this time of year, so one of my former bandmates has always thrown a big bash on the Monday before Christmas, when musicians are more likely to have an off-night. He mixes up this concoction called "Gin Alexanders" in a blender - the starter is something that's decades old and passed down from family members to the next generation, and it lives in the freezer, in the dark, until it's loosed in December, and the resulting drink tastes like a minty milkshake that will drop you to your knees if you aren't careful. And he serves Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale - more my speed. I see people I see maybe a few times a year; we talk politics (good, lefty politics, because these are musicians we're talking about) and stay up really late, and eat samosas and drink beer.

Then, Christmas Eve. My other bandmate has, for the last ten years or so, thrown a party. His parents were from Sicily, which means the party includes a huge vat of cioppino. My job is to bring the desert wine. I did this once, sort of by accident, and Tony's mom, born and raised in Sicily, was so pleased that I did it every year. When she passed away a few years ago, I brought a couple of bottles to her wake.

This year, I brought a bottle of excellent port (from Lion's Peak Winery - try their cabernet!). About the time we opened it up, Dave sat down at the upright piano and started playing tunes - Christmas songs, Vince Guaraldi. Tony got out his guitar. One guy had brought his hollow-body metal electric bass along - that came out too. Christmas blues came next. I had to sing "Rocky Raccoon" - because Tony's wife, Nancy, asks me to every year, mainly for the line, "But everyone knew her as Nancy."

We do some Beatles. A guy with a great soul voice sings "My Girl," and hey, this is a houseful of musicians, so we have an entire girl choir for the backups.

And somewhere in the middle of this impromptu but predictable jam session - it happens every year - I am having this flurry of thoughts, like: this is what most people in America have lost, the ability to get together and entertain each other, to sing and play and make a joyful noise.

And, more importantly: this is what I do, every year. To bring some ritual and meaning and joy into my life.

Christmas day, I drive to my folks' house. We exchange gifts, eat party mix and ham and pie. I will read at least one mystery novel. My mom and I will take a walk. I'm in no hurry for this to change. I want it to go on as long as possible. All of it. Jodie's party, the musicians' party, Christmas Eve at Tony & Nancy's, Christmas with my folks (and New Years Eve with Billy, but that's another story).

If there are things I am missing, there are so many more things that I have.

I'm not so sure about the traumatic psychic readings, though.

Sometimes We Get Burned...

And the only thing to do is correct the record ASAP:

The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.

The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.

. Rest of thes tory is here.

So rest easy, everyone - you can hang on to your Little Red Books for now...

China's Gemstone Workers - How You Can Help

Last week I posted an article about the horrific conditions in China's gemstone industry. Now I'd like to direct you to a Hong-Kong based campaign advocating better working conditions in the Chinese gemstone industry, via CSR's Stephen Frost. There were some technical problems with the campaign's website, but it's up and running now. Please take a minute to sign their letter - you can send it to Hong Kong, American or European jewelry associations, depending on where you're located.

My Little Red Book

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

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

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

No, really.

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

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

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

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

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

The eavesdropping was apparently done without warrants.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Life, One Story...

No reporter does a better job of illuminating the vast complexity of modern Chinese life on a human scale than the Los Angeles Times's Ching-Ching Ni. A few months back, I blogged about an incredibly moving piece of hers, "Loving Others' Rejects, the story of an old man and his wife who rescue abandoned babies, literally from garbage heaps and the side of the road.

Now, Ni has written about the struggle of a young man who is dying from lung disease caused by years of working in a gemstone factory. I hesitate to edit Ni's work, so here's the beginning:

The boulders were as big as farm animals, and for $20 a month Feng Xingzhong's job was to slice them with an electric saw, cutting the hulks into fillets small enough to throw into a bowl.

Other workers in the jewelry factory would trim the pieces of jade, turquoise, onyx and other gemstones into little hearts and beads, polish them, drill holes and string them onto earrings, bracelets and necklaces to be shipped off to American shoppers.

Feng thought little about that, or anything else during his earsplitting 12-hour shift. By day's end, he looked like a coal miner emerging from the shaft, covered from head to toe in red, green or yellow dust, depending on the stone he had been cutting.

From age 18 to 26, Feng toiled without so much as a mask, trying to turn himself from an impoverished peasant into a prosperous city worker. He married a fellow employee, had two sons.

"We had a beautiful dream," Feng said. "To make some money, go home and start a small business."

Today, Feng hopes mostly to live long enough to collect some money from the factory where he developed silicosis, an incurable ailment known as dust lung that kills more than 24,000 Chinese workers each year in professions such as mining, quarrying, construction and shipbuilding.

Most slowly suffocate without protest. But not Feng. He sought workers' compensation. He sued his employer in two courts. He picketed near the company headquarters. He went to arbitration with the help of a Hong Kong labor group and even won a judgment.

But he hasn't received so much as a penny.

The area where Feng worked, near Shenzhen, processes some 70% of the world's semiprecious stone jewelry, much of which ends up exported to US wholesalers. Not surprisingly, conditions in many of these factories are dismal:

When Feng started in the early 1990s, his factory, called Gaoya, had about 50 employees. The crowded workshop had no ventilation system.

"We asked for masks, but they said no. There was no why," Feng said. "They knew we were peasants thrilled to have a factory job."

Ni details Feng's struggle to collect what he's owed, in the face of incredible obstacles. The company literally packed up and moved its factory to avoid workers' lawsuits; it further evaded them by changing its name - by one letter:

Furious, he tried in 2002 to apply for workers' compensation from the Labor Dispute Arbitration Committee in Haifeng. His factory had moved there from nearby Huizhou and changed its name from Gaoya to Gaoyi.

He was turned down on the grounds that the factory where he had worked was in Huizhou.

Next, he tried to sue. But two courts rejected his case, ruling that the factory in Haifeng was not the same business as the one in Huizhou.

"They changed their name from Gaoya to Gaoyi," Feng said. "One letter, and they are able to dodge all responsibility."

Feng continues to struggle, and a group called the China Labor Bulletin is helping him with his case and living expenses. So far, victory has proven elusive:

The group relaunched his claim against Gaoya through an arbitration committee in Huidong County, the site of the factory where he worked. He sought $76,000 in compensation for his disability and to cover medical and living expenses for himself and his family...

...In May, the committee ruled in favor of Feng. The factory was ordered to pay him $3,800 for medical expenses, plus $100 a month for the rest of his life.

It was a hollow victory. Staphany Wong, the Labor Bulletin case worker assisting Feng, said officials ordered the defunct Gaoya factory to pay Feng, not the working Gaoyi factory.

All of this takes place against the backdrop of Feng and his family's grinding poverty, the motivation that drove him to work in such wretched conditions, in the hope of bettering their lives.

As Feng waits in Shenzhen for his appeal to move through the bureaucracy, his family is scattered and struggling to survive.

His wife is working in another city. Her room is too run-down and cramped for Feng to live there full time, and there is no phone or fax to allow him to keep up with his case.

His sons, now 8 and 10, rarely see their parents. They still live in the remote village where they were born, looked after by Feng's ailing, widowed mother.

Large cobwebs dangle from the concrete walls of their farmhouse, and bugs crawl in the kitchen. All they have to spice up their meals of rice and scavenged vegetables is salt, held in a dirty sack. Barefoot and dressed in dirty clothes, the children kill time watching a tiny black-and-white TV with one blurry channel showing cartoons in the afternoons.

Feng has not told his mother about his ailment. But she suspects he is dying.

"I know a guy from our village who did the same work, he died three years ago. I think my son has the same disease…. I know he probably won't live long," said Li Sulan, 64, who is blind in one eye.

Her biggest worry is her grandchildren. "If my son dies and I die too, and his wife doesn't come back, what's going to happen to these kids?" she said.

Li calls her son from the village pay phone, crying and asking when he'll come home. Feng always tells her soon. Very soon.

"I want to go home, to take care of her and the kids," he said. "But I can't. I have no money."

Read the whole thing. And think about how many more stories there are like this, behind the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the gadgets with which we amuse ourselves...

Dongzhou Update

From AFP:

The official who gave the order for security forces to open fire on a group of demonstrators in southern China last week, which state press says claimed the lives of at least three people, has been arrested.


The official Guangzhou Daily newspaper did not give the name or title of the official or specify when he had been detained but said he had been arrested for his decision to open fire on the villagers' demonstration.

China on Saturday broke its silence on the protest, acknowledging demonstrators were killed when police opened fire and put the death toll at three -- far fewer than the dozens described by residents.

The official Xinhua news agency said police fired into a mob of explosives-lobbing protesters on Tuesday after being blockaded near Shanwei city, Guangdong province.

Hundreds of armed villagers had earlier attacked them in a "serious violation of the law", Xinhua said, quoting a Shanwei government report.

One villager said on condition of anonymity that 30 people were killed while the New York Times quoted residents as saying that "as many as 20" died.

Yes, it's once again time to quote Zhou Enlai, when asked for his opinion of the French Revolution...

"It's too soon to tell."

Turning Point?

The LA Times files its report on Dongzhou today. Much of the information is similar to the accounts posted below. But the story asks an essential question, the answer to which I believe will profoundly affect China's immediate future - and specifically, the future of the Hu/Wen administration and perhaps the CCP's continued monopoly on political power:

Residents said the police who opened fired Tuesday appeared to be from the area, but reinforcements sent later were outsiders equipped with armor, shields and machine guns. Experts said it was unclear whether local police had panicked and exceeded their authority, or whether there had been a policy shift by the central government.

"Part of the pattern is continued tension and inadequate central control over local governments," said Sharon Hom, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights in China. "This doesn't take Beijing off the hook, but there are tensions between local police and other arms of government. It's not a monolith."

Jean-Philippe Beja, a senor fellow with the Paris-based Center for International Studies and Research, said the central government usually opposes strong shows of force. But indications are that Beijing also gave more authority to local officials to deal with unrest after villagers in Taishi, also in Guangdong province, tried to eject a local official over corruption charges.

If this is yet another case of a corrupt, out-of-control local government that the central government has been unable to bring to heel, well, then Hu and Wen still have some time to make good on their promises of greater "social harmony" and bringing some economic justice to the rural masses who have been left behind by China's "Economic Miracle." But if this escalated use of deadly force comes as a result of a policy change by the central government...

Well, then Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen had better prepare themselves for a very bumpy ride. And perhaps a rather short ride as well.

No regime in China has been able to survive very long or very well if it loses the support of the peasant masses. By the Chinese government's own account, there were around 76,000 significant demonstrations in China last year, which if nothing else, indicates an increasingly desperate - and emboldened - population. There aren't enough police, there aren't enough soldiers, and empty promises have lost their power to pacify the millions of Chinese who have very little to lose, who are quickly adopting modern organizing tools and are able to communicate with others across distances who feel as they do.

Hu has made things worse for himself by cracking down on China's media, which could at least give honest reports on local problems about which the central government would otherwise be unaware (I know that there is some debate as to whether this crackdown is Hu's doing or the remnants of that bad old Shanghai clique, and I'll hold that possiblity open). Hamfisted, violent responses to poor people with legitimate grievances open the door to levels of chaos which China has not seen in a long time.

I can't say this scenario is something that I would celebrate, because the pain and misery which are likely to result would be staggering. And if the current regime were to collapse, what would rise in its place?

On a lighter (?) note (now that was a poor segue!), check out Richard's take-down of Xinhua's account of what happened at Dongzhou. Y'know, just a bunch of criminals and hooligans disturbing the social harmony again...

Death in the Countryside

Howard French reports on a deadly protest in southern China:

Residents of a fishing village near Hong Kong said that as many as 20 people had been killed by paramilitary police in an unusually violent clash that marked an escalation in the widespread social protests that have roiled the Chinese countryside. Villagers said that as many as 50 other residents remain unaccounted for since the shooting. It is the largest known use of force by secur1ty forces against ordinary citizens since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The violence began after dark in the town of Dongzhou on Tuesday evening. Terrified residents said their hamlet has remained occupied by thousands of security forces, who have blocked off all access roads and are reportedly arresting residents who attempt to leave the area in the wake of the heavily armed assault.

"From about 7 p.m. the police started firing tear gas into the crowd, but this failed to scare people," said a resident who gave his name only as Li and claimed to have been at the scene, where a relative of his was killed. "Later, we heard more than 10 explosions, and thought they were just detonators, so nobody was scared. At about 8 p.m. they started using guns, shooting bullets into the ground, but not really targeting anybody.

"Finally, at about 10 p.m. they started killing people."

The use of live ammunition to put down a protest is almost unheard of in China, where the authorities have come to rely on rapid deployment of huge numbers of security forces, tear gas, water cannons and other non-lethal measures. But Chinese authorities have become increasingly nervous in recent months over the proliferation of demonstrations across the countryside, particularly in heavily industrialized eastern provinces like Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiansu. By the government's tally there were 74,000 riots or other significant public disturbances in 2004, a big jump from previous years.

As with so many of disturbances in rural China, the demonstration at Dongzhou began over a land dispute, in which land was seized to build a coal-fired generator. Farmers claimed they were not properly compensated for the lands seized, and villagers worried over potential pollution from the plant. Additionally, authorities planned to fill in a local bay, which for generations had supported the area's fishermen. The villagers' complaints led to arrests, which led to a burgeoning protest movement that now has apparently triggered an unusually violent and harsh response from authorities, all of which French chronicles in detail.

Early reports from the village said the police opened fire only after villagers began throwing homemade b0mbs and other miss1les, but villagers reached by telephone today denied this, saying that a few farmers had launched ordinary fireworks at the police as part of their protest. "Those were not bombs, they were fireworks, the kind that fly up into the sky," said one witness reached by telephone. "The organizers didn't have any money, so someone bought fireworks and placed them there. At the moment the trouble started many of the demonstrators were holding them, and of those who held fireworks, almost everyone was killed."...

..The Chinese government has yet to issue a statement about the incident, nor has it been reported in the state media. Reached by telephone, an official in the city of Shanwei, which has jurisdiction over the village, said, "Yes, there was an incident, but we don't know the details." The official said an official announcement would be made on Saturday.

Villagers said that in addition to the regular security forces, the authorities had enlisted thugs from local organized crime groups to help put down the demonstration. "They had knives and sticks in their hands, and they were two or three layers thick, lining the road," one man said. "They stood in front of the armed police, and when the tear gas was launched, the thugs were all ducking."...

Over the last three days, residents of the village say that other than people looking for their missing relatives, few people have dared go outside. Meanwhile, the police and other security forces have reportedly combed the village house by house, looking for leaders of the demonstration and making arrests.

Residents said that after the villagers' demonstration was suppressed a senior Communist Party official came to the hamlet from the nearby city of Shanwei and addressed residents with a megaphone. "Shanwei and Dongzhou are still good friends," the party official said. "We're not here against you. We are here to make the construction of the Red Sea Bay better. Later, the official reportedly told visitors, "all of the families who have people who died must send a representative to the police for a solution."

Today, a group of 100 or so bereaved villagers gathered at a bridge leading into the town, briefly blocking access to security forces hoisting a white banner whose black-ink characters read: "The dead suffered a wrong. Uphold justice."

The AP reports:

Armed with guns and shields, hundreds of riot police sealed off a southern Chinese village after fatally shooting as many as 10 demonstrators and were searching for the protest organizers, villagers said Friday...

...Police fired into the crowd and ki11ed a handful of people, mostly men, villagers reached by telephone said Friday. Accounts of the death toll ranged from two and 10, with many missing.

Although security forces often use tear gas and truncheons to disperse demonstrators, it is extremely rare for them to fire into a crowd...

...State media have made no mention of the incident and both provincial and local governments have repeatedly refused to comment. This is typical in China, where the ruling Communist Party controls the media and lower-level authorities are leery of releasing information without permission from the central government.

All the villagers said they were nervous and scared and most did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. One man said the situation was still "tumultuous."

A 14-year-old girl said a local official visited the village on Friday and called the sho0tings "a misunderstanding."

"He said (he) hoped it wouldn't become a big issue," the girl said over the telephone. "This is not a misunderstanding. I am afraid. I haven't been to school in days."

She added, "Come save us."

Another villager said there were at least 10 deaths.

"The riot police are gathered outside our village. We've been surrounded," she said, sobbing. "Most of the police are armed. We dare not to go out of our home."

"We are not allowed to buy food outside the village. They asked the nearby villagers not to sell us goods," the woman said. "The government did not give us proper compensation for using our land to build the development zone and plants. Now they come and shoot us. I don't know what to say."

It will be interesting to hear what sorts of responses come out of the local and central governments. The fact that such uses of force remain rare in China has to be a reflection of central government policy - and one to their credit. With protests on the rise throughout rural China, one wonders if this escalation of force marks a turning point in official policy or is yet another example of a local government running rampant over the rights and lives of its citizens.

Coming hard on the heels of the Harbin crisis, will the central government respond in a way that increases confidence? Or instills fear?

Pink Cadillac

I'm not sure what to make of this:

Four years after the death of Mary Kay Ash, nearly 350,000 Chinese women are emulating the icon, some earning big money selling TimeWise cleansers and facial whitening masks.

In every province, they're reading her books, which have been translated into Chinese, and singing her songs, like "That Mary Kay Enthusiasm," in Mandarin.

This fall, a few began driving her car, a pink Cadillac.

A decade after Mary Kay entered the country, China represents its second-largest market, even though a 1998 ban on direct sales threatened to ruin the venture. Within another 10 years, executives predict, this Asian giant could surpass the United States to be the No. 1 market.

The direct seller of skin care and cosmetics owes much of its success to an amazing marketing feat.

In a nation still coming to terms with memories of Mao Zedong and his Communist teachings, Mary Kay has gotten Chinese women to identify with a Caucasian cosmetics mogul with big hair.

This article, from the Dallas Morning News (and what city would better understand Big Hair?), had me alternately chuckling and shaking my head in the sheer wonder of just how weird the world can be. It profiles several Chinese Mary Kay distributors, some of whom are making six figure incomes. And it explains some of the adjustments that Mary Kay has had to make for the Chinese market:

In a country lacking religious freedom, Ash's mantra - "God first, family second and career third" - became "Faith first, family second and career third." "Principle" is often used instead of "faith". And unlike in the United States, prayers are absent from large company gatherings.

The company also discovered it needed to broaden the appeal of its culture. In addition to Ash's principles, such as her belief in the beautiful potential inside each and every human being, it added Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" to its employee training seminars starting in 2000.

But one of its biggest challenges involved something much more mundane: where to hold its annual seminar.

The seminar, modeled after the one held every summer in Dallas, brings together the company's managers and thousands of its sales force members for award ceremonies, executive speeches and educational sessions. The event helps motivate Mary Kay's sales force each year.

Two years ago, the Chinese government, which is suspicious of large gatherings, told Mary Kay it couldn't hold its seminar. It wanted the company to conduct smaller meetings around the country. But that would have defeated the seminar's purpose.

So Mary Kay moved the event last year to Hong Kong. This past August, attendance reached 16,000.

But many of Mary Kay's traditions have been transplanted to China intact. The pink cadillacs, for example. Mary Kays' books and songs (including "That Mary Kay Enthusiasm"), translated into Mandarin. And this:

The day Hao officially debuts as a national sales distributor is filled with ceremony.

Twenty-one lower-level Mary Kay distributors, women Hao helps, form a circle around her. The lights go out. And the smell of melting candle wax begins to fill the air.

With her husband and 7-year-old daughter looking on, Hao calls out the name of each distributor. She gives each a hug, a personal note and a candle in the shape of a small ball of pink roses.

A few distributors silently cry. Others dab at their eyes. Gradually, a glowing circle of pink lights appears in the middle of the room.

Then, Hao picks up a tall pink candle and places it at the bottom of a giant heart-shaped candleholder. Her distributors follow her, setting their lit candle balls in the slots around the pink heart.

Everyone gathers around the now burning symbol of love, clasps hands and silently makes a wish. Together, the women blow out the candles and clap.

Springtime In Harbin

The Harbin water crisis is far from over, according to this article from the AP:

A top Russian environmental official tried to reassure the population Tuesday by drinking a glass of water on television. But a spokesman for the World Wide Fund for Nature said the river faced "ecological catastrophe" from the 50-mile-long slick of chemicals floating toward the Russian border from China.

"There will be an effect on nature plants and fish will die and economic damage," said Ilya Mitasov, a Moscow-based spokesman for the global environmental organization.

The pollution will result in massive fish deaths and force city residents and industries to search for alternative sources of water, he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The only way to get rid of the toxic chemicals including cancer-causing benzene is evaporation, but the water temperature would have to be 68 to start that process, Mitasov said. Currently it's about 50 and there is ice on some stretches of the river, which ultimately feeds into the Sea of Okhotsk.

"The benzene will remain in the ice until spring, and the (situation) will be dragged out," Mitasov said.

Meanwhile, Der Spiegel (via the invaluable Salon.com) features this grim summary of the evironmental costs of China's economic miracle:

Even if water began flowing once again to the city's residents on Tuesday, the horrific environmental catastrophe reveals the flipside of the socialist economic miracle. Secretiveness and sluggish crisis management highlight the price the Chinese are paying for their boom. And even as Westerners envy the half-communist, half-capitalist country for its impressive growth figures and endless backyard market, China is no longer merely the world's factory. It is also the world's toxic waste dump.

China's rise as a global power, achieved with high economic growth rates, is reminiscent of the conditions in the era of early capitalism. Everything that drives production is good, and everything that slows it down -- safety technology, for example, that prevents industrial accidents from leading to massive factory explosions -- is harmful. The result is exploding tanks, burning factories, collapsing mine pits and all manner of toxic leaks. According to official statistics, 350 Chinese die each day in industrial accidents, but the unofficial figure is likely to be much higher. "Occupational safety is a serious problem, because the number of accidents and deaths remains high," said Wang Dexue, deputy director of the State Office of Occupational Safety, commenting on the horrifying figures from the country's manufacturing industries.

Adding to the problems are economic reforms that have made many businessmen greedy. China's laissez-faire brand of socialism doesn't prevent executives from spending their money on cars and villas instead of investing it in worker safety and environmental protection. Although the government is constantly vowing to monitor manufacturers more closely, local officials and party leaders are often in bed with the captains of industry in China. This Mafia-like alliance between the politically and economically ambitious is known as "local protectionism."

Chen Bangzhu, an environmental expert on Beijing's Parliamentary Council, says he recognizes an "irrational development" in his country. In an interview earlier this year, Pan Yue, the deputy minister of the government environmental agency, SEPA, predicted a bitter end to the economic miracle. "This boom will soon come to an end," he said in an interview with Der Spiegel, "because the environment isn't cooperating anymore." The negative consequences of the boom are devastating. Five of the world's 10 most polluted cities are in China. More than two-thirds of all Chinese rivers and lakes are turning into sewers -- even before the recent accident, the Songhua River was hardly a model of cleanliness -- and more than 360 million people have no access to clean drinking water. A toxic soup splashes through the country's waterways, while people living along the banks die from cancer at above-average rates. Nowadays, the then 72-year-old former party chairman Mao Zedong's legendary swimming outing in the Yangtze River in 1966 would no longer be seen as evidence of his strength, but more as a suicide attempt...

...The People's Republic, which could soon surpass the United States as the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, has lost its ecological balance and is paying a heavy price as a result. About 400,000 people die prematurely each year because of the polluted air they breathe. Experts estimate the annual loss at 8 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product -- or up to $250 billion -- a figure that does not include the costs of treating cancer, skin conditions and bronchitis.

The Chinese leadership has become increasingly concerned about the possibility that environmental damage could jeopardize China's industrial ascent. After the Harbin incident, even Prime Minister Wen Jiabao admitted that the environmental situation is "bleak" and called for "sustainable growth." But many other party leaders see this kind of talk as nothing but Western social nonsense. They prefer to follow the lead of Mao, who summed up his take on the environment in 1958 when he said, "Make the high mountain bow its head; make the river yield its way." Today's comrades, profiting handsomely from industrial growth, believe it is cheaper to clean up in the distant future than to invest in protecting the environment today.

Of course, such attitudes aren't unique to China. I could cite our current Administration in the US, with its disbelief in global warming and its infinite faith in the power of more drilling (and foreign wars) to solve our energy issues. Or, going back a couple of administrations, I could mention former Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who did not think we needed to concern ourselves overmuch with conserving resources for future generations, because in his words, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns." Such faith is touching, in a way, as is the faith of the Chinese Communist Party's materialists, who believe we can innovate our way out of any crisis we create, or at least can leave the mess for our children to take care of - as opposed to the faith of the Bush Administration, which preaches that the mess simply does not exist. But the grownups in the room, in China, America and elsewhere, realize that the longer we wait, the greater the reckoning. Whether the grownups can take charge from the greedy, selfish children who all too often seem to be treating the world as their playpen, before that playpen collapses under the weight of its own filth, remains to be seen.

China's Press Kicks Some...

So you know how I'm always pontificating about how a grassroots environmental movement has the potential to be a democratizing force in China? Newsweek thinks so too:

In China, where the ruling Communist Party discourages or outright crushes any attempts at grass-roots movements, environmental protection is one of the only areas of activism that is thriving. Led by an increasingly feisty domestic media, some crusading lawyers and a few maverick bureaucrats, the Chinese are beginning to demand information from corporations and their government about the harmful effects of rapid economic development on the environment. In some cases, the public pressure has worked; in a few cases, even the state agency that regulates the environment has joined sides with environmentalists.

More notably, the Newsweek account contains a fascinating chronology of who knew what when, and just how important the role of China's press was in exposing the disaster:

On Monday afternoon, Nov. 21, an editor at one of China’s most aggressive magazines, China Newsweek (not related to this publication), spotted a curious headline on the Internet. Harbin officials had announced they were cutting off water to residents for four days to make repairs. Finding it odd that an entire city’s water supply would be shut down at once, the editor called her boss to brainstorm. Rumors that an imminent earthquake was behind the mysterious “repairs” had been circulating on the Internet, but the two editors’ suspected the recent chemical plant explosion in Jilin was behind the mysterious shutdown. When they consulted maps of the two provinces and the location of the plant, they agreed the two events must be related.

With only 24 hours to press time, China Newsweek called a well-placed source in Harbin, who all but confirmed their suspicions. “He said the river had been contaminated, but the government had not publicized this,” the editor told NEWSWEEK. At dawn, the magazine sent three reporters to Jilin and Harbin to get the story, before the government intervened to stop them. “We knew that if we didn’t do the story then, we might not be able to do it the next week,” said an editor, who asked that she not be named because of the sensitive nature of the situation. “The seriousness of this incident could affect the future of a lot of officials in the Northeast.”

The China Newsweek story came out Nov. 24, about one day after the country’s environmental regulators finally owned up to the contamination that had left more than three million people who lived in and around Harbin without running water. The story provided details about which government officials knew what and when. It reported that the governor of Heilongjiang province had told 400 officials in a closed meeting that the city of Harbin had lied about the water-supply shutdown because it was waiting for permission from higher authorities to disclose the spill and didn’t want to contradict Jilin official reports. And it said that the cover-up ended only after provincial officials in Heilongjiang sent a desperate request for guidance to the central government. The editor of China Newsweek said she hoped the story would show people the harm done by “the conflicting interests of government officials from neighboring parts of the river.”

CDT also links to a fascinating blog from a Chinese journalist, and Jilin native, who provides an insider's look at the factory where the disaster originated. Here's a taste:

The political rumors in Beijing these past few days are that the governor or party chief of Jilin Province and the CEO of CNPC will soon be sacked and replaced. Maybe not so fast. But one thing is for sure: for lower-level bureacrats, heads are going to roll. At least I hope so. Roll, roll, you stupid heads. There has been so many mayors of Jilin in recent years that even my parents lost count. And the local chief manager of CNPC's Jilin subsidiary looks like dead meat. Workers were already complaining so much about this guy. Fascist, was the word the used the most. Apparently this guy, Yu Li, introduced draconian rules and is pathetically obsessed with appearnce: workers are fined when they don't don their uniforms and masks neatly, when they forget to put on a name badge for work, when they don't walk in a straight line on factory grouds -- hell, sounds like first-years at Westpoint. All workers must put down whatever they are doing when there's a snowstorm in the winter, to clean snow off the paths, or somebody will be find. "My first concern everyday was not safe production anymore," a distant relative who works at 101st Factory told me. "It was making sure I look OK for the job. I had to check if I was wearing my badge properly when I rushed to the explosion site during the rescue -- I was afaid I'd be fined even when I was trying to dillute toxic chemicals and save lives."

Be sure to check out the Newsweek article and especially, the blog - there's lots more.

Sorry About That...

From the AP:

HARBIN, China - Visiting Premier Wen Jiabao ordered local leaders to clean up toxic benzene by Sunday night from the river that provides water for this northeast city, where residents spent a fourth day Saturday without supplies in freezing weather.

The foreign minister, meanwhile, delivered an unusual public apology to Moscow for possible damage from the spill on the Songhua River, which is flowing toward a city in the Russian Far East.

Beijing's show of care and contrition was almost unprecedented and represented an effort to restore its damaged standing with both China's public and Moscow, a key diplomatic partner...

...Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing's apology to Russian Ambassador Sergei Razov was reported on the state television evening news, which is seen by hundreds of millions of Chinese.

"Li Zhaoxing expressed his sincere apology on behalf of the Chinese government for the possible harm that this major environmental pollution incident could bring to the Russian people downstream," the report said.

It was an extraordinary step for the newscast, which usually carries only positive reports about China's foreign relations...

Here's one form of apology I wish corporate wrongdoers in the US would adopt:

The plant was run by a subsidiary of China's biggest oil company, state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., which issued an apology this week and sent executives to help dig wells in Harbin.

Meanwhile, the UK Guardian reports on how the crisis has impacted Harbin's poorest residents:

For the first time in her life Mrs Li is thinking of splashing out on a bottle of water. It may only cost 7p, but for the migrant mother living in one of the city of Harbin's poorest neighbourhoods, anything but tap water has, until now, been an unthinkable extravagance.

Decision time is looming. Since China's biggest recent pollution scare prompted the authorities to cut off water supplies two days ago, the 25-year-old has conserved every drop. She no longer washes the family's hair and clothes. She eats only bread, buns and other food that does not require water for cooking. And, though it worries her immensely, she has stopped boiling her baby's bottle to keep it sterile.

But her family's supplies are already running out. Unlike most of the rest of the city's 3.5 million residents, she had no bath or barrels to fill when the government warned everyone to prepare for a dry patch. Instead, the family of three drink and wash from three small buckets that are fast emptying.

"We can probably manage for a day or two more, but if it goes on much longer I'll be very worried," she said. "I never imagined this would happen when I came to live in the city."...

...Despite freezing temperatures, people queue on the streets with kettles and flasks when the emergency water tanker, a converted street cleaning truck, pulls in once a day with fresh supplies. For some there is even an air of festivity. "It's a bit like the war," says one veteran. "Everyone pulling together and the [communist] party providing for us."

But in the poorer parts of town there is resentment that the burden and the risk are not being equally shared. "It is all right for the rich and the communist cadres," said Zhu Yuan Liang, a scrap collector. "But most people are poor and cannot afford to waste money on bottled water."

The Guardian article also contains an interesting speculation::

The exposure of the cover-up may have been a ploy by central government to make companies and local authorities more responsible for the environment. According to Chinese journalists the order to go public came directly from the state council - led by prime minister Wen Jiabao. A day later Mr Wen held a meeting with ministers in which he emphasised the environmental woes facing China.