One of the founding fathers of the American conservative movement blasts China in a new article claiming that nothing’s changed much since Tiananmen Square in terms of human rights and religious freedom. He also points to Yahoo and Cisco for aiding and abetting China’s Internet censorship industry, and strongly implies that Yahoo helped the censors tweak its search engine to forbid taboo searches like “Taiwan independence.”

I don’t have a lot of respect for Weyrich, who is off-the-charts when it comes to being right-wing. (He coined the phrase “Moral Majority” back in the 80s.) But he does command a large and faithful audience, and is a good barometer for how the right sees things.

Wouldn’t you know it? The Chinese government, that paragon of respect for human rights, universal brotherhood and the rule of law, is shocked (shocked, I tell you) by the current US scandal over the Abu Ghraib prison abuses. They can barely contain their outrage.

CHINA today expressed shock at the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers and told Washington it must abide by international conventions.

“We are shocked by the fact that Iraqi prisoners have been ill-treated and condemn this kind of acts which go against international conventions,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“Complete investigations should be carried out into this affair and the suspects should be punished according to law.”

China, at loggerheads with Washington over its own human rights record, said it was imperative that the Bush administration abide by international laws and respect human rights.

“The US government should scrupulously abide by the international conventions such as the Geneva Convention and guarantee the basic human rights of the Iraqi prisoners,” said the foreign ministry.

I’m touched by the CCP’s new-found concern for basic human rights, and I’m also made a bit nauseous by their unrestrained hubris. China, lecturing others about human rights??

On the other hand, there is a sad message here, one that’s really depressing: We will have a hard time for years to come claiming the moral high ground again when it comes to human rights. China may be is one of the worst offenders when it comes to actual human rights, but due to the catastrophe of the past few weeks America can no longer criticize them without raising charges of hypocrisy. The ammunition we have given to our enemies and our critics is absolutely staggering. It makes me sick.

For a while I was very sympathetic to the claim that China wasn’t ready for democracy because it’s people weren’t educated enough, it’s too big, it would create chaos and all the usual arguments the CCP trots out when it’s challenged on the topic.

Not anymore. I’ve decided, in fact, that it may be one of the worst arguments out there. A recent article I cited by Joseph Kahn helped shake me free of any delusion in its opening sentences:

When asked why China, with its surging economy and rising power, has not yet begun to democratize, its leaders recite a standard line. The country is too big, too poor, too uneducated and too unstable to give political power to the people, they say.

The explanation is often delivered in a plaintive tone: China really would like to become a more liberal country, if only it did not have unique problems requiring the Communist Party to maintain its absolute monopoly on power for just a while longer.

The case of Hong Kong suggests it could be a great deal longer.

If I still had lingering doubts, today I read something that will keep me forever immunized against the “illiteracy” argument. This delightful new article takes a cool, cynical look at such claims and gives them the pulverization they deserve. It’s a long piece, bristling with irony and wit. Here’s a healthy, hilarious snippet:

You have to feel sorry for the Chinese, because they are just not ready for some of the good things in life. But don’t say that directly unless you want to make enemies of 1.3 billion people. However, if they tell you that they are not yet ready for some beautiful and advanced things, the proper thing is to nod emphatically, or even applaud if you happen to be Chinese. For they will get angry if you beg to differ. Forget that Mao Zedong famously once said: “The Chinese people have the determination and ability to stand tall and proud among the nations of the world.”

It doesn’t matter that from ships to chips, from water dams to dot coms, China is striding fast and furious toward modernization. It is nothing that to date no less than eight Chinese have won the Nobel Prize, from physics to peace to literature, and another brave Chinese has rocketed into outer space.

Still, there is something, however desirable, that is simply beyond the reach of the great Chinese people. This “something” may not be as complicated as lunar exploration or as high-tech as splitting the nucleus of an atom. It requires no more than signing one’s own name, after ticking somebody else’s name, on a piece of paper. Yes. That is called casting a vote, a ballot, a cutting-edge attainment beyond the capabilities of the Chinese, or so the Beijing government says.

In an interview in September 2000 with CBS’ Mike Wallace, China’s then-president Jiang Zemin explained why Chinese people can’t be allowed to have universal suffrage at this time: “The quality of our people is too low.” There, in a simple statement, the people – supposed masters of the country – were deemed not fit for democracy, because once the ignorant, the unqualified, acquire the right to choose their government, “chaos will ensue,” Jiang predicted. So the people are too stupid to know what is good for them. Only Papa, the Communist Party of China, knows best.

How’s that for a dry sense of humor?

I now see the “Chinese aren’t ready for democracy” argument to be a profound insult to one of the world’s most industrious, creative and brilliant people. Worse, it’s a lie. Take a look at the article to see how in the 1940s illiterate Chinese peasants were voting, and there was no chaos. Imagine that. In fact, it went remarkably smoothly.

The article is a small masterpiece, and it ends as bitingly as it begins:

The truth is that Beijing thinks many Hong Kong people are not “patriotic” enough to run the island.

Of course. We Chinese are never good enough, one way or another.

In conclusion, let us consider another editorial exhortation from the Xinhua Daily mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China: “How is democracy possible without ending one-party rule, without popular suffrage? Return the people’s rights to the people!” – September 27, 1945.

And even earlier:

“They [those who oppose the CPC] think the implementation of democracy in China is a matter not for today, but a number of years later. They want to practice democracy only after the Chinese people are as knowledgeable and educated as in democracies in Europe and America … But it is under a democratic system that a better education and training will be available to the people.” – February 24, 1939.

Is anybody here literate enough to spell “hypocrisy”?

This story from the Straits Times has got to be one of the creepiest yet on Beijing’s browbeating the feisty SAR of Hong Kong. I found out about it from a post at Crooked Timber, and she puts it better than I can, so here it is:

Currently appearing in the Straits Times is one of the least compelling arguments I’ve ever heard. Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing stooges are running candidates in the geographical constituencies in the next election, as well as in the “functional” constituencies, which are decided by a small group of hand-picked voters. As the Straits Times dryly notes, “Pro-democracy candidates tend to sweep directly elected Legco seats [i.e., the geographical constituencies] because they enjoy support from the population.” Oh, that. But Mr. James Tien, chairman of the pro-government Liberal Party, thinks that should change.

Mr Tien said: ‘If the central government sees a willingness among Hong Kong people to vote too for conservative businessmen, it will then have more confidence in the territory and might allow Hong Kong people universal suffrage earlier than is otherwise the case.’

And Mr. Ma Lik, of the reassuringly-named Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong (democratic in the “Democratic Republic of Congo” sense, it seems), agrees: ‘The central government would become more apprehensive about speeding up democratic development in Hong Kong if the democrats won a landslide victory.’

So, Beijing won’t let you vote, because they know you won’t vote the way they want. But, if you vote the way they want, maybe they’ll let you vote again later, and for more things, at which point you can…um…vote the way they want again, or risk the dreaded “instability”. If this is an advertisement for “one country, two systems”, then don’t expect to see Taiwan rushing to sign up.

Did you get the inanity (insanity?) of Mr. Tien’s quote?? If we in HK show China we are willing to vote for the people they want us to vote for, maybe they’ll let us vote.

Only in China, as I’m fond of saying.

The Straits Times piece highlights, among other things, the CCP’s charming tactic of smearing and discrediting Hong Kong liberals to “help make Hong Kong accept its ruling against direct elections.” I wonder if Karl Rove is consulting for them.

Update: I edited this post to clarify that Tien is an HK politician, not a CCP higher-up. Also, there’s a good reaction to the Crooked Timber post here.

Yet another addition to my compulsory daily cyber-reading is Media Matters in America, created by David Brock, the former conservative reporter who helped ignite the Monica Lewinsky scandal but who finally saw the light and became a liberal. Brock keeps tabs on the excesses of the conservative media, and though he’s been at it only a few days now, he is already going full-speed ahead. I’m blogrolling it now.

Its mission statement:

In the column below, Media Matters for America will document and correct conservative misinformation in each news cycle. Media Matters for America will monitor cable and broadcast news channels, print media and talk radio, as well as marginal, right-wing websites that often serve as original sources of misinformation for well-known conservative and mainstream media outlets.

It’s about time.

Related Post: Media Matter’s Rush Limbaugh Ad

Tell us Rush, does this look like a frathouse hazing to you?

As everyone here knows, it’s very easy to go completley numb beneath the veritable deluge of information raining down about Abu Ghraib prison abuses and how the Bushies’ line that “it was just a handful of bad apples” is an obscene lie.

Still, there’s going to be a lot more to come — pictures, videos, courtmartials, confessions, senior military officers saying we are now losing the war badly, renewed calls for Rumsfeld’s resignation, etc.

The next big thing is the release today of Seymour Hersh’s second New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib, which will add more fuel to the fire. Its focus is the incompetence of Rumsfeld and the Defense Department, though it also prepares us for what the next round of phtos will look like.

One of the new photographs shows a young soldier, wearing a dark jacket over his uniform and smiling into the camera, in the corridor of the jail. In the background are two Army dog handlers, in full camouflage combat gear, restraining two German shepherds. The dogs are barking at a man who is partly obscured from the camera’s view by the smiling soldier. Another image shows that the man, an Iraqi prisoner, is naked. His hands are clasped behind his neck and he is leaning against the door to a cell, contorted with terror, as the dogs bark a few feet away.

Other photographs show the dogs straining at their leashes and snarling at the prisoner. In another, taken a few minutes later, the Iraqi is lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a soldier sitting on top of him, knee pressed to his back. Blood is streaming from the inmate’s leg. Another photograph is a closeup of the naked prisoner, from his waist to his ankles, lying on the floor. On his right thigh is what appears to be a bite or a deep scratch. There is another, larger wound on his left leg, covered in blood.

There is at least one other report of violence involving American soldiers, an Army dog, and Iraqi citizens, but it was not in Abu Ghraib. Cliff Kindy, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, a church-supported group that has been monitoring the situation in Iraq, told me that last November G.I.s unleashed a military dog on a group of civilians during a sweep in Ramadi, about thirty miles west of Fallujah. At first, Kindy told me, “the soldiers went house to house, and arrested thirty people.” (One of them was Saad al-Khashab, an attorney with the Organization for Human Rights in Iraq, who told Kindy about the incident.) While the thirty detainees were being handcuffed and laid on the ground, a firefight broke out nearby; when it ended, the Iraqis were shoved into a house. Khashab told Kindy that the American soldiers then “turned the dog loose inside the house, and several people were bitten.”

If you’re following this story, you have to read it all. There’s no way Rumsfeld can survive this, but if you think about it, it’s not hard to see why they can’t let him go now. As Rummy himself cleverly warned us, the worst is yet to come, and it will make last week’s pictures pale in comparison. It would be a nightmare to fire Rummy now, and then bring on someone new, only to have to immediately face the next deluge of photos and videos and damning articles.

No, let Rummy continue to be the punching bag (not that he doesn’t deserve it). Let him take all the flak for the scandal. When all the bad stuff is out, then get rid of him so his successor can come onboard with a relatively clean slate. Not that it will matter — we’ve lost the war, in every respect. It’s over, no matter who replaces Rumsfeld.

Be sure to read the last graf of Hersh’s article to capture the exquisite irony of this mess. The most noble player of all, Major General Antonio M. Taguba , who scrupulously and thoroughly documented the horrors going on in Abu Ghraib, is now despised by his peers, who give short shrift to whistleblowers. (I read earlier that he’s been called back to DC, where he’ll be sitting at a desk job.) Oh, what a strange and startling episode….

UPDATE: Seymour Hersh’s 3rd article is just out, and it’s merciless.

It’s not hard to see why Instapundit is one of the Internet’s brightest stars. Like many netizens, he has a strong libertarian streak, leans toward the left-center on social issues and toward the right on fiscal and national security issues. He’s succinct, witty, offers copious links and he never seems to sleep (though he’s out sick at the moment).

But Instapundit also brings out the worst in Republicans, stirring up storms over the inconsequential (if it can hurt Kerry) and blithely glossing over the truly significant (if those things can hurt Bush). He has consistently minimized, for instance, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the outing of Valerie Plame, while posting voluminously about the stuff that really matters — like John Kerry owning an SUV.

I stumbled onto a post today (via Atrios) that lays this argument out far more logically and thoroughly than I ever could. It is priceless, and I’m including the whole thing. Anyone interested in how “the other side” thinks and works has to read it.

Meanwhile, in the Alternate Universe …
I can’t read all the rightwing blogs out there (Oy!) so I cruise over to Instapundit on occasion to gauge the general drift of things in Wingnut World. And let me tell you …

Amid the demands for Teresa Heinz’s tax returns (This just in: She’s rich), misspellings of John Kerry’s last name (“Kerrey” is a popular variation) and nostalgic posts about the UN’s oil-for-food pseudo-scandal, they have actually taken some time to address that little problem in Abu Ghraib.

The verdict? The Instapundit gang is bored, frankly, by all this talk of torture and the steady drumbeat of voices calling for Rummy to go. It has become a distraction from the more entertaining debate over whether John Kerry threw his medals or his ribbons over the White House fence in 1971. They believe there’s a “lynch mob” forming around Rumsfeld, part of a “partisan, crass, politically-motivated campaign” on the level of the Starr investigation (Wait — now conservatives think Starr was a political hack? Finally!). And, as usual, there are dire predictions for the Democrats, who, in the minds of the Instapunditry, wouldn’t be so bad if they would just, you know, start acting more like Republicans. (Paging Senator Leiberman!)

Kerry, they argue, is walking into a minefield, once again precipitated by his misguided decision to serve in Vietnam when he could have escaped to Europe or served in the Massachusetts National Guard. Did you know that war crimes were committed in Vietnam? By U.S. soldiers? Whoa! That, says the Instapundit crew, pretty much negates anything Kerry might say about the atrocities in Iraq, a country more than 30 years and thousands of miles removed from Vietnam. Thank goodness President Bush avoided that little conflict of interest.

At Instapundit, every move Kerry makes is a potential disaster for his campaign.

At Instapundit, every member of Bush’s administration who jumps ship is a disloyal Judas in search of a book contract.

At Instapundit, every time a cabinet member is hauled before Congress to answer for the latest screwup, it’s a dignified and statesmanlike performance. (If we get much more of this “statesmanship,” we’re really going to be f–ked.

At Instapundit, every time a former ally criticizes the U.S., it’s a cold political gambit. (I’m shocked. Shocked! Did you know that some of these countries actually believe their opinions matter?)

At Instapundit, every time the U.S. botches something else in Iraq, we are reminded that Saddam killed little babies and once shared a cab with Osama bin Laden’s third wife’s fourth cousin.

At Instapundit, every time the media shows flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, it could be running stories about that school Halliburton painted (for a mere $100,000).

They believe this because they must believe it. Once they concede the point — any point — the dam will break. They, like the president, are ardent believers in the continuum that drives the GOP strategy — 9/11=Muslim=Patriot Act=Saddam=war=orange alert — to the point that it is a mantra to be repeated ad nauseum, a quasi-religious statement of belief, an article of faith long past the need for any empirical evidence.

Instapundit is a veritable festival of equivocation, which is always the last line of defense. America’s infantile (and toxic) obsession with firearms is rationalized by the occasional (and truly unusual) gun murder in Europe. Strom Thurmond’s recalcitrant racism is negated by Robert Byrd’s youthful (and long since disavowed) association with bigotry and the Klan. The daily death toll in Iraq is likened — favorably — to the risks incurred by drivers on California’s Interstates. The Bush administration has gutted the EPA and sold out to Big Oil, but John Kerry owns an SUV.

The current crisis is no different. Iraqis are being abused, tortured and murdered in Abu Ghraib? Well, did you know that a jailer in Germany abused some inmates in his lockup? So there you go. Bad things happen everywhere, and everyone is a hypocrite. It makes one wish that Professor Reynolds would take this (inadvertantly ironic) advice offered by James Lileks, his favorite folksy-fascist blogger:

“Go away for a week. Blog not. You’re not a public utility! We won’t call our city councilman if the tap’s dry for a while.”

Yes, a nice long break. We can’t help but agree.

It was refreshing, even therapeutic to read this. Turns out I’m not the only one who gets apoplectic reading InstaPuppy’s grandiose pronouncements and maddening dismissal of stuff that really matters. If he’s proven wrong enough times — and when it comes to my earlier examples of Abu Ghraib and Valerie Plame he’s going to be proven very wrong — will his star burn any less bright, will it peter out any time sooner? Not likely, as he’s achieved cult status, but we can keep our fingers crossed.

There’s nothing else in the news, only Abu Ghraib. From today’s NYT:

…the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.

The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country’s criminal justice system.

Yikes. There seems to be a miles-high mountain of evidence that we screwed up big time, in every way. I wonder if the public will be over-saturated with the horror stories. It’s easy to become numb.

And it’s just starting. Yesterday Rumsfeld tried to soften the coming blows by constantly warning of new photos, videos and horror stories soon to be made public (not by the government, but the media; I suspect he knows that some reporter has the material and will be releasing it at any moment). We need to brace ourselves for a fresh wave of anti-Americanism unknown in our history. Matt Drudge has already hinted that the mysterious video shows US soldiers raping female and male prisoners, and beating prisoners right to the brink of death. [Update: Details here. Unbelievable.]

This entire circus comes to us thanks to our leaders, who could have squelched this entire thing — or at least considerably softened it — by taking action months ago when they first learned a scandal was brewing. In January, they put out a blandly worded press release saying the government was investigating alleged abuses of Iraqi prisoners, and that was that. Rumsfled is trying to point to that as evidence that “We told the whole world,” but it’s obvious the release was merely a cover-your-ass device in case the full extent of the abuse ever surfaced. That Rumsfeld is trying to hide behind the short, detail-free release as proof of his openness is pathetically unconvincing.

According to this article, China’s elders are distressed that Hong Kong schoolchildren are so woefully ignorant of China and its history.

A RECENT poll by the Chinese University found that nearly half, or 45 per cent, of some 400 students in four different universities could not name the Chinese Communist Party’s General Secretary, a position held by Mr Hu Jintao since 2002.

Twenty-three per cent did not know that the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949.

….

All these examples suggest that Hong Kong people lack understanding or identification with the motherland.

In fact, mainland officials complain that Hong Kong residents act selectively by insisting that the territory and the mainland are one country in economic matters but two systems in politics.

Therefore, the article says, China’s leaders are a bit bent out of shape and intent on instilling a new sense of patriotism in Hong Kong and make it clear that HK and the PRC are one country, in every way, period.

I’ve been out of HK for more than two years now, but I’m going to venture a guess that this patriotism drive will fall on its face. What with last year’s 500,000-man march and the recent outrage over free elections, is Hong Kong bursting to demonstrate patriotism to the mainland? Hard to believe.

Shanghai Eye offers a beautiful post on his trip to Yunnan, including some fine pictures. Such great writing, and some real wisdom, too.

….[D]espite the pontifications of our fellow travellers, we wonder how much anyone can really know about China. All kinds of foreigners produce all kinds of theories to explain the vastness of China’s territory, and the variety of its peoples. Worst still, their habits, their errors and faux pas, are sometimes reduced to little more than a consequence of the evils of the government. Wandering around some of the markets in Kunming and Dali, one sees what one sees everywhere, from the bazaars of Baghdad to the prairies of Mongolia – the ordinary activities of communities trying to function, and the chaos of individuals trying somehow to get ahead in a changing, challenging world. The changes and challenges in China have been more perilous than most.

There’s definitely talent here.

Travelling to Yunnan was the one thing I wanted to do before I moved away that I never got around to. SARS stopped me last year, lack of time stopped me this year. Thanks to a good friend of mine from a farming village outside of Kunming, I feel that I know it better than anyplace else in China; he loves Yunnan and always talks about it, the land of perpetual springtime. After reading Shanghai Eye’s post, I feel I know it even better.