Happy New Year to everyone who visits this site (and even those who don't). Thanks for everyone's contributions, and I hope to see you around in the year ahead.

The NY Times may have lots of faults, but it's still the greatest newspaper in the world. By far. I've now read countless stories about the tsunami, but this epic and breathtaking article is the best. It may sound insensitive to say at this time, but one day this is going to be a very intense book and movie -- the sheer drama of what went on all around the world as the tragedy unfolded is breathtaking. Terrifying, terrible, unbearable, but breathtaking in terms of dramatic intensity.

Of course, while all hell broke loose our president was clearing brush at his Crawford ranch, and took 72 hours to speak out. Our man of action and daring.

A post I put up earlier today seems to have generated some of the most emotional comments this blog has seen. A fascinating microcosm of different cultures and perspectives...

I'm drawing attention to this because I put up way more posts than usual today, and it's very easy for this post ot get buried. Those who come here for links on China will certainly want to read it.

A writer for the New Republic in Bangkok gives an amazing account of how the Thai people are reacting to the horrors of the tsunami, and how the government dropped the ball.

Bangkok may have a skyline to match any city, an über-modern subway, and Savile Row-suited bankers; but facing this disaster, Thailand's government fails its people, even as individual rescue workers perform superhuman tasks. The Nation, the best Thai newspaper, reports that even after the earthquake off Indonesia, which would trigger the deadly waves, the Bangkok government played down the possibility that a tsunami could hit Thailand, in part because it didn't want to issue an evacuation order that, if no tsunami came, might have hurt tourism, Thailand's biggest earner of foreign exchange. Thailand's national civic defense organization, supposedly designed to handle disasters, suffers from a lack of basic equipment and seems unable to coordinate among relief workers; without enough government-supplied preservative, bodies quickly decompose in the tropical sun, creating a horrific stench. Only after the tsunami does the government issue suggestions on how citizens should act when faced by a killer wave. "Had the officials in charge that morning been working with a clear-cut, well-rehearsed, and properly communicated procedure, a tsunami warning would have been sounded," notes Nation group editor-in-chief Sutichai Yoon.

Instead, Thais, like people in most developing nations, turn for help not to the state but to those they have always trusted--family members, close friends, religious figures. Thousands of ordinary Thais open their homes to stranded peers and Western tourists, in an enormous display of generosity, and even the normally nasty immigration authorities help visitors whose passports have washed away. Volunteers from the country's major hospitals jet to the south to help out, and many individuals, Thai companies, and members of the royal family quickly give blood or set up private donation funds to compensate families of the dead. Thai friends--and people in America--barrage me with emails and phone calls to make sure I'm okay. I am. Paradise isn't.

His descriptions of what's going on over there is wrenching. Please pardon me for quoting a lengthy snippet, but this is great reporting I want to remember:

At one Thai Airways counter, shell-shocked Western tourists up from southern resort islands like Phuket, where over a thousand visitors have already perished, try to figure out how to get home, given that the only possessions they retain are the torn clothes on their backs. Frantic, screaming European, Japanese, and American diplomats grab passengers arriving off planes from the south like Third World taxi touts, demanding any information about survivors. Nearby, Bangkok Thais who have family in the south stand huddled around televisions, scanning for news about the dead, and wailing--unusual in a country where openly expressing negative emotions is discouraged--at what they hear. Screams of "Ay! Ay!" ring out, and yells of "Na sonsa"--"I'm sorry." Some older women collapse at the televised sight of whole southern villages washed away and bloated dead bodies piling up on previously squeaky-white sand beaches. The Thai prime minister, a go-getter CEO-type who normally grins constantly, comes on the television; he looks utterly wrecked.

The numbers pile up like a reaper's pinball machine. Five hundred in Thailand. One thousand. Then 2,000. More. Forty thousand across the region. Then 50,000. Eighty thousand. One-hundred thousand. No one is spared. Thai friends' relatives are dead. My local fixer's family members are dead. Nearly everyone on Phi Phi island, a prime resort immortalized by the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach, is dead; only two hotels on the entire island still stand. It seems half of Sri Lanka is dead. The Thai king's grandson is dead. The former finance minister is dead. Last year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover girl clings to a tree in the water off western Thailand for eight hours; otherwise, she too would be dead. I wonder, guiltily, whether the daughter of a family friend who'd called me in early December to ask advice on Thailand and whom I assured the Thai beach resorts were safe--from bandits or sex tourists, not from a series of giant waves--is dead.

In the Thai south, the situation is Dantesque. Searching for relatives, dazed survivors wander Thailand's beaches, where bodies are being stacked. Many worry that aftershocks will return. Pediatric wards reportedly are packed with children wailing for their parents. Thai dentists are rushing to identify the dead from their jaw records before they must be buried in mass graves; whole primary school classes have been washed away together with their teachers. At local hospitals, foreign tourists tearfully receive news of lost loved ones; thousands are still missing in Phang Nga bay, an achingly beautiful region of limestone karsts rising straight out of the warm water like a moonscape and now one of the hardest-hit areas. For some reason, of all the Western travelers, Scandinavians seem to have taken the brunt of the hit--diplomats say this may be the worst disaster ever in Norwegian history. The fragile coral ecosystem that made Thailand famous lies in ruin. Cars and three-wheeled tuk-tuks have been upended and tossed by the waves into bizarre, abstract patterns all over beach towns. A few stiff-upper-lipped vacationers--Brits, probably--reportedly return to the remaining beaches to sunbathe, along with one unshakeable Thai masseuse.

Nearly a week later, and I suspect we still haven't even begun to fathom the extent of this catastrophe. 911 changed everything for America. This event will change a huge portion of the world for generations, if not forever.

Wingnuts are shedding few tears over the death of one of our great thinkers and writers. Michelle Maglalang (Malkin's real last name)and Charles Johnson spewed forth their predictable populist poison, remembering Sontag only for her unfortunate remarks after the September 11 attacks, when she said American actions had much to do with the calamity. They can scarcely conceal their glee (no, I won't link to them) as they live up to the Sean Hannity standard of journalism, where you find an incendiary thing someone once said or did and brand them permanently with it so it becomes their whole identity. (Think Willie Horton and Kerry's "I voted for it before voting against it.") It's a Karl Rove tactic that is supremely effective and nearly impossible to counteract; the power of the meme is near-invincible.

Anyway, there is is some hope of balance with Christopher Hitchens' superb obituary of Sontag, which puts her dumb remarks into perspective and gives her lavish praise as one of the great thinkers of our age.

In what I thought was an astonishing lapse, she attempted to diagnose the assault of Sept. 11, 2001, as the one thing it most obviously was not: "a consequence of specific [sic] American alliances and actions." Even the word "general" would have been worse in that sentence, but she had to know better. She said that she didn't read reviews of her work, when she obviously did. It could sometimes be very difficult to tell her anything or to have her admit that there was something she didn't know or hadn't read.

But even this insecurity had its affirmative side. If she was sometimes a little permissive, launching a trial balloon only to deflate it later (as with her change of heart on the filmic aesthetic of Leni Riefenstahl) this promiscuity was founded in curiosity and liveliness...She was always trying to do too much and square the circle: to stay up late debating and discussing and have the last word, then get a really early night, then stay up reading, and then make an early start. She adored trying new restaurants and new dishes. She couldn't stand affectless or bored or cynical people, of any age. She only ventured into full-length fiction when she was almost 60, and then discovered that she had a whole new life. And she resisted the last malady with terrific force and resource, so that to describe her as life-affirming now seems to me suddenly weak. Anyway—death be not proud.

I met Sontag many years ago and she signed my copy of her book On Photography with a very warm, personal note. I loved the way she wrote, I loved the way she bravely faced her lifelong battle with cancer, I loved her ability to cut through the crap and to present time-worn topics with a wholly original and often brilliant perspective. She was sometimes too critical of the US, a bit far to the left, but that's a very tiny speck, a crumb of what she stood for. But of course, Johnson and Maglalang and their wingnut friends see only treachery and evil. It's their loss.

Update: For a good example of wingnut loathing of Sontag, go here.

Great news -- the AARP is going head to head with Bush's inane, insane plan to "privatize" Social Security. They don't call this "the third rail of politics" for nothing, and Bush is about to get electrocuted. Once geezers get mobilized, there's no easy way to fight them, and those who try usually do so at the risk of ruining their political careers.

But I just gave what I could to the Red Cross to help the victims of this week's tragedy in South Asia. I gave through Amazon and want to encourage everyone to give whatever they can. Talk is great, but these people need help that only money can buy.

...from my favorite Asian blog. This one depicts life in an impoverished rural village in China.

And while you're at ESWN, be sure to see this story, which I meant to blog about last week but was just too busy. It's absolutely a must-read.

Here's another essay on China, this one focusing on Confucianism and what it has wrought [pdf file]. I agree with its fundamental premise, i.e., that China is still reeling from the negative aspects of its Confucist and Legalist mindsets, which are inherently unjust and unhealthy. Unfortunately, their influence is still going strong in the China of the 21st century, where power and hierarchy matter above all else.

We all know about the near-uncontrollable hatred today's young Chinese harbor against Japan, but I didn't quite grasp the scale until I read this intriguing article.

The explosive growth of the web in China, where the number of users is growing by more than 25% a year, is often cited by advocates of political reform as a source of hope for greater openness in the world's last big communist state.

But there is increasing evidence that the opposite may be true. Sites advocating democracy, religious freedom or union rights are closed down by the authorities and their operators often arrested. But there are countless sites like Mr Song's devoted to one of the few political passions permitted by the government: hatred for Japan.

Every day on the "My View of Japan" bulletin board, Mr Song and his contributors post reports of perceived slights by their neighbours, who are referred to at least once as "shitty little Japanese". Many predict that military conflict is inevitable, and some wish it would come sooner rather than later. "I'm 30 and a fire burns in my heart," writes one contributor. "Only war can extinguish these flames."

While hate-mongering is a feature of extremist internet chatrooms around the world, in China such inflammatory comments appear to represent anything but a small minority. In the past two years, small anti-Japanese protests have mushroomed into nationwide campaigns through the internet and mobile phone text messages.

The article focuses on one prosperous young man in Beijing who seems to have it all, and yet is a burning pillar of rage and fury, obsessed with Japan's refusal to acknowledge and take responsibility for its monstrous crimes against the Chinese people in World War II. I can understand the anger, but I have to admit I can't understand the obsession, where one's entire life is focused on and consumed by the events of 65 years ago. Read the article to see just how all-consuming this hatred can be.

Thanks to the reader who alerted me to this.

...that half of China's population cannot speak Mandarin? I knew it was a large number, but fifty percent?!

I've been corresponding a bit with a writer in Taiwan, William Stimson, who has a very interesting site -- not a blog, but more a collection of writings that's well worth a look.

He also sent me an essay on one of our favorite topics, the smoldering Taiwan-China conflict [PDF file], written by a friend of his, Jerome Keating. So here it is; it, too, is worth a read. If you're of the school that Taiwan rightfully belongs to China, your blood pressure may increase several notches by the time you've finished the piece.

Thanks to a commenter for pointing me to a great articlce by Philip Pan on the libel trial against the authors of Zhongguo Nongmin Diaocha. It reads like a courtroom drama, though it's about much more than this case -- it's about the changing face of justice in China and a peasantry that's mad as hell and unwilling to take it anymore.

While it is a great sign that this trial is happening at all, any joy you might feel will be greatly tempered by the descriptions of the peasant's misery at the hands of corrupt officials.

Please read this article. You will not be disappointed.

What can one say about the tsunami that swallowed so many lives in Asia the morning after Christmas? The death toll seems to double every few hours. It's as incomprehensible as September 11, with 20 times more bodies.

I spent my 2001 Chinese New Year holiday in Phuket and had one of the happiest weeks of my stay in Asia, snorkeling at Phi Phi Island and taking boat rides and lounging on the gorgeous beach. I look at the pictures now and can't fathom it. Cars and boats piled on top of one another a mile away from the beach. Perhaps 1,000 tourists drowned.

This morning CNN showed video footage shot by an Australian tourist from his hotel rooftop at the exact moment the wave came. I've never seen anything like it, the water just pouring into the streets and carrying away anything and everything in its path.

We think we're so safe, and we're just ants, waiting to be squished. Just like 911, it puts things in perspective, and the tragedy makes us look at our own lives and conclude that maybe they're not so bad after all....

Well, it's official -- my company today promoted me from Senior Copywriter to Manager of Public Relations, a big step up the ladder and the job I've been hoping for since I got here.

It's an incredible opportunity and it will certainly change my life dramatically. I've never been a manager with a big, publicly traded company before. While it's a little daunting, I feel up to it; I can do PR in my sleep (one of the few things in life I'm completely confident about). And I have a real vision for putting this company on the map.

Hopefully this will be the psychological boost that gets me blogging again, as opposed to the pseudo-blogging I've been doing the past few weeks. In my stupor, site traffic has dropped literally 50 percent in the past month. Hopefully now I'll bounce back.

This is, quite simply, one of the most shocking stories I have ever read. Many of us have criticized the all-too-common practice in the Middle East of rape and incest, but to read about it happening here by the people we've been led to believe are so gentle and lovable.... You simply won't believe it. The worst part is how our prosecutors and judges give the criminals a wink and a nod, while the victims' lives are ruined.

Because McDonalds dares to list Taiwan as a separate country, a Chinese hacker got into the fast-food titan's computer system and altered its homepage.

The Chinese-language Web site of fast food giant McDonald's Corp. was broken into twice on Christmas by a hacker protesting against its listing of Taiwan as a separate country, the Beijing Youth Daily said Monday...

McDonald's English-language home page features a sign saying "I'm going to McDonald's" pointing at a drop-down menu listing China and Taiwan as separate "country/market" identities...

On Christmas night, the McDonald's Chinese home page was turned into a black-and-white picture of a skull bearing the words "protest McDonald's official Web site listing Taiwan as a country," the newspaper said.

On top of the skull were the English words "Chinese hacker."

Kind of goofy, don't you think? I mean, most multinational sites list Taiwan as a separate country. This hacker is going to find himself very busy if he tries to protest them all.

Pomfret spoke on National Public Radio today about China's economy and whether it poses a threat to the US. Nope, they are not a threat, he concludes, but a partner whose boom is good for the US in most ways. Listen to the whole thing.

It sure sounds like a distinct possibility.

European policymakers have been advised to prepare for "sudden change" in North Korea amid growing speculation among diplomats and observers that Kim Jong-il is losing his grip on power.

An EU delegation to Pyongyang recommended a review of the union's policy towards the peninsula, including proposals for closer engagement with North Korea and contingency plans for a possible collapse of the reclusive state, the Guardian has learned....

In the past month, however, the North Korean rumour mill has been working overtime. While no one is ever quite sure what is going on in one of the world's most closed countries, diplomats, intelligence agents, academics and defectors across the political spectrum and from several different countries are reporting signs of potentially destabilising change.

North Korea without Kim? Inconceivable.

Wow.

In a column noting the high number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq who will be far from home on Christmas, USA Today founder Al Neuharth declared today that if he were eligible to serve in Iraq, "I would do all I could to avoid it." He also wrote in his weekly column for the paper that America's New Year's resolution should be to bring the troops home "sooner rather than later."

Neuharth, 80, a World War II vet, said he would happily volunteer for that kind of "highly moral duty again." But he would avoid serving in Iraq, likening it to the Vietnam war, which "many of the polticially connected" managed to escape.

He concluded that "support our troops" is a wonderful slogan but "the best way to support our troops thrust by unwise commanders- in-chief into ill-advised adventures like Vietnam and Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later. That should be our New Year's resolution."

Neuharth served in the infantry in World War II in France, Germany and the Philippines. He noted that he and his colleagues in that war were "properly armed and equipped."

Three more marines were just killed in Fallujah. Patience is really wearing thin.

I keep waiting for news of Hu's much-heralded reforms, but instead I keep seeing articles like this.

China should immediately release Li Guozhu, a farmers' rights advocate who was detained in early November after he investigated deadly ethnic clashes in Henan province, Human Rights Watch said today. Farmers' rights advocates are increasingly visible in assisting farmers in petitioning the government to redress grievances.

Witnesses told Li's family of his arrest, but Li's family has received no formal notification of his status or whereabouts. Li's detention appears to be part of a widening crackdown on both intellectuals and rights advocates in China.

"This detention shows China's determination to keep a grip on the flow of information," said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. "It also shows the clear risks for those left out of China's macroeconomic boom who dare to seek justice for themselves and their communities."

Keep those reforms coming. And remember, this is the regime that was going to stand up for the rights of the farmers and peasants. There's a lot more to the article, none of it particularly uplifting.

The New York Times has given this new movie just about the worst pan I've ever read, blaming it all on the lugubrious and bombastic music of Andrew Lloyd Weber. Among the more irresistible quotes:

Lord Lloyd Webber's thorough acquaintance with the canon of 18th- and 19th-century classical music is not in doubt, but his attempt to force a marriage between that tradition and modern musical theater represents a victory of pseudo-populist grandiosity over taste - an act of cultural butchery akin to turning an aviary of graceful swans and brilliant peacocks into an order of Chicken McNuggets. The songs fill your ears, but you are unlikely to find yourself humming any of them after the movie is over (which may, come to think of it, be the only merciful thing about this "Phantom.")

Actually, I like some of the tunes from Phantom. But he's right about ALW, who is way more popular than he deserves.

Funny, if in rather poor taste.

A devastating first-hand account of today's carnage, the most awful Christmas gift 24 families could ever receive. And for what? No one seems to know anymore. And so our slam-dunk cakewalk flowers-and-chocolates invasion and occupation continue, even after the Fallujah battle that supposedly "broke the back" of the insurgency. At least more and more Americans realize that Bush really is a miserable failure and the war in Iraq is a needless tragedy.

There is now no way we can continue to argue that the torture of prisoners by American military personnel is the work of "a few bad apples," as our truth-loving generals told us last spring when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. Torture is used by Americans at Guantanamo routinely, and most officials know it. And I'm sure we're using it just as liberally in Iraq.

Detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours at a time, left without food and water, and allowed to defecate on themselves, an FBI agent who said he witnessed such abuse reported in a memo to supervisors, according to documents released yesterday.

In memos over a two-year period that ended in August, FBI agents and officials also said that they witnessed the use of growling dogs at Guantanamo Bay to intimidate detainees -- contrary to previous statements by senior Defense Department officials -- and that one detainee was wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded with loud music in an apparent attempt to soften his resistance to interrogation.

In addition, several agents contended that military interrogators impersonated FBI agents, suggesting that the ruse was aimed in part at avoiding blame for any subsequent public allegations of abuse, according to memos between FBI officials.

The accounts, gleaned from heavily redacted e-mails and memorandums, were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit. They suggest that extremely aggressive interrogation techniques were more widespread at Guantanamo Bay than was acknowledged by military officials.

"...extremely aggressive interrogation techniques." Like putting lighted cigarettes in prisoners' ears. What role models we are, and what masters at winning the hearts and minds of the world.

I usually don't quote from Counterpunch because its writers can be awfully shrill, but there's a fine piece there today on the BS the Chinese government is doling out as they try rather comically to convince us the Three Gorges Dam is God's gift to man and nature. My favorite part (it's long, but it's good):

I pick up a picture book, The Three Gorges Project On the Yangtze River, at the new Three Gorges Project (3GP) museum gift shop in Yichang. The preface enthuses over the benefits of the project. Indulging in the Chinese penchant for systematizing with numbers, it proclaims "When the Three Gorges Project is completed, it will be beneficial in ten aspects, including flood control, power generation, navigation, aquaculture, tourism, ecological protection, environmental purification, developmental resettlement, transferring water from the south to the north, water supply and irrigation."

This is very dense disinformation. How can aquaculture be improved by quintupling river traffic, as the development plans dictate, or by the algae blooms that inevitably accompany the creation of reservoirs, choking out oxygen and increasing acidity? Will tourists be drawn to an epic cesspool, in which millions of people's raw sewage festers in stagnant water, or enticed by gorge stumps? What about the 1300 celebrated cultural sites and archeological digs that will now require SCUBA equipment to explore? The temperature of the reservoir will be several degrees higher than that of the river, possibly contributing to a surge of endemic infections-malaria, encephalitis, and the parasitic disease schistosomiasis-leading The Lancet, the prestigious journal of the British Medical Association, to warn that the 3GP could be the "Chernobyl of hydropower." Anyone care for a dip?

The article ends with the rather startling conclusion that China should dismantle the entire dam. Not very likely, I'm afraid.

Brainysmurf's been down for weeks, but its traffic is going up every day. If you look at Adam's site meter, you can see that about 80 percent of the hits are from Google searches for incredibly obscene phrases ("panty pee" seems to be one of the most popular). Now, Adam wasn't one to use a lot of incredibly obscene phrases. No, the hits he's getting are all from spam comments for sex products and services, the content of which is unbelievably obscene.

Is there a lesson here, that we should welcome spam comments because they boost site traffic? Obviouasly the answer's a resounding "No," since there's a world of difference between serious traffic and random meaningless traffic that leaves your site in seconds. But for the unscrupulous blogger who just wants to show off a lot of traffic, this could be the way to go.

It's good to see that ESWN has now pulled ahead in the Asia Blog Awards and is now the leader in the Hong Kong blog category. (Of course, that can change by the time you see this post.) I love Conrad and Gweilo Diaries, but it's gone and it doesn't make much sense to proclaim it the winner and then not be able to see it.

I don't just think ESWN is the best Asian blog, I think it's one of the best blogs, period. As in the best in the world. I go there religiously, and I want to link to just about everything.

His chronicling of stories and photos of the Iraq war is a gift (be sure to see his latest addition -- oh, and check out who his readers named as Man of the Year).

Today, the wisdom I received there was in regard to those sweet touchy-feely Kodak-moment photos that are always linked to by InstaPuppy and Little Green Cesspools -- the smiling marines surrounded by adoring kids at a newly built-by-Halliburton school. ESWN points out how the story of Pat Tillman's death was, a la Pvt. Jessica Lynch, revised and fictionalized to evoke maximum sympathy from us folks back home. He then makes the astute and important observation, punctuated with a link you must see to believe:

Consequently, happy-talk photos, especially those credited to United States Marine Corps personnel, must be automatically assumed to be part of United States pscyhological operations since that function is integrated with and indistinguishable from information operations and public affairs. This is how Pentagon treat it, and they have the combined weight of the multi-billion dollar budget to support them. I am only here to support alternative viewpoints such as in The Children of Iraq, where you can fill in your own words without anyone telling you. Remember, photos don't lie. Right?

[Link is here; scroll down to the bottom.]

Anyway, I just felt I had to give a tribute to this great blog, which has more accumulated wisdom than any I know. Now, if only I could view it perfectly in Firefox, I'd be totally satisfied.

Here's an eye-opening article from the none-too-liberal Bloomberg on just how disliked we poor Americans are by our friends overseas, and how Asia in particular has lost faith in America in terms of human rights and the dollar.

Being an American overseas these days can be a surreal experience. Virtually everyone, it seems, seeks that 10-minute why-I'm-upset-with-the-U.S. conversation.

Recent stops in Bangkok, Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Mumbai and Vientiane, Laos, featured myriad such moments, leaving little doubt that anti-American sentiment -- or more to the point, anti-Bush-administration sentiment -- is intensifying in Asia.

And is all this negativity manifesting itself economically? Yes, argues Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist of Banc of America Capital Management in New York. It won't make him many friends in Middle America, but Quinlan thinks the U.S. image as a "rogue nation" is a key force behind the dollar's decline.

"The message from the foreign exchange markets" of late "seems to be simply this: The free ride for the rogue nation is over," Quinlan argues. "No more guns and butter, or wads of foreign cash for a nation deeply enmeshed in the Middle East, heavily indebted at home and seemingly disengaged -- some might say -- from the rest of the world."

The sinking dollar, Quinlan says, "could be a sign that the world is no longer willing to underwrite the designs of U.S. foreign policy. To a large extent, we believe a rebound in the U.S. dollar could hinge on a revamped foreign policy."

Read the whole thing for more on the Asia angle. As I feared after Abu Ghraib, we are now looked upon with ridicule when we chide China for its awful human rights record. The pot and the kettle. While I reject that comparison, it was inevitable once those pictures circulated, and it will take a generation to recover our reputation.

Talk of banning and even burning books -- in America?? By US lawmakers?? This is a topic I've been burning to post about, but my current revulsion toward US politics has kept me away. Read about it over at Shenzhen Ren, who expresses the situation eloquently. The day we start burning books is the day I'm outta here.

Phillip Pan has proven himself once more to be a worthy successor of the great John Pomfret over at the Washington Post. He's written a scary and detailed account of Internet essayist and "cyberdissident" Liu Di's story, and the many bizarreries she encountered within China's unique "justice system." (I've previously referred to her as the Stainless Steel Mouse, but I'm sure Pan's "Rat" more accurate.) Absolutely not to be missed by anyone following the repression of online politics.

I'm still marking time until the New Year, when I plan to get back to putting up interesting posts. For now, I'm continuing my holding pattern, giving some links and a bit of commentary. But things are too high-stress right now for long posts. Hopefully right after the new Year I'll be able to share why that is, and what's going on in my life.

Update: A good related article. It seems China's newly energized crackdown on dissidents is receiving lots of press. Should I still hold out for hope for Hu emerging as a true reformer? Remember how optimistic we were, not so long ago...?