If you despise Bill O’Reilly — and if you dont, you’re at the wrong blog — stop now and head over to Larry Lessig. There, you’ll find his exquisite letter blasting O’Reilly for his cruel and ongoing slander of one Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the attack on the World Trade Center. I watch this every night on Fox and I feel sick — I’ve never seen a pundit so abuse his bully pulpit. I won’t excerpt or paraphrase — all I’ll say is that Lessig’s letter is breathtaking. A masterpiece. Some fine comments, too.

This, too, is via the directory of wonderful things.

Since I’m writing about sports now, I thought I’d recommend this link to a high-action clip from the new Thai kick-boxing flick, Mach. (I’m presuming the movie’s Japanese but am not sure.)

I saw Bourne Supremacy today and loved it, but this looks way more intense.

Via BoingBoing.

Taiwan war exercises, via the Telegraph

I swore not to post about this over-blogged topic anymore, but this story about China scaring the shit out of P’eng-hu Islanders — unfortunately situated between China and Taiwan — is quite scary.

The most aggressive practice run to be staged by China for an invasion of Taiwan is terrifying the inhabitants of a tiny archipelago in the South China Sea.

The P’eng-hu Islands, which lie in crystal clear waters between Taiwan and mainland China, have been identified by Beijing as the first stepping-stone for an all-out assault on Taiwan, which governs the islands.

Last week, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) massed over the horizon to prepare a fearsome demonstration of its power – using 18,000 seaborne troops to launch a mock invasion of Communist-controlled Dongshan island, a part of China’s Fujian province, 170 miles to the south-west.

Such war games are an annual event, but this year’s exercise has a chilling intent. China’s Communist mouthpiece, the People’s Daily newspaper, declared: “This year’s military exercise is a substantial warning to Taiwan’s independence elements” – a reference to Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian, who plans constitutional changes to which China objects.

In the event of an invasion, the People’s Daily added, “the PLA would immediately take the P’eng-hu Islands, forming an outpost position to control Taiwan island”.

The P’eng-hu’s citizens are, understandably, hysterical. One woman tells the reporter, “I love this island, it’s my home, but I’m planning to leave as I have no doubt that P’eng-hu will be attacked. I have no choice but to think of the safety of my family.”

We all know there’s been a lot of back and forth about how China could or could not attack Taiwan. While I find it very unlikely, I’ve seen stranger things happen in my lifetime. It’s improbable, but appears more than possible, especially considering today’s bizarre state of international affairs (an antagonistic Chen, a xenophobic China, a preoccupied America, etc.)

A few days ago, Joseph of the Longbow Papers recommended a study by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace titled Deterring Conflict in the Taiwan Strait: The Successes and Failures of Taiwan’s Defense Reform and Modernization Program (pdf file). It’s long and detailed, and may not be for the casual reader. But it opened my eyes as to how Taiwan’s military operates and what its challenges are. And it reinforced my feelings that, no matter how far-fetched it may seem, an invasion by China is something Taiwan must seriously consider and be prepared for.

The Financial Times has picked up the dramatic story, which should help ensure its continuity.

A Chinese journalist’s eloquent protest against his newspaper’s political masters has thrown a spotlight on the Communist government’s media controls…..

Mr Lu wrote that Youth Daily staff had long taken a pragmatic view of the role of a Communist party paper, “holding their noses” when filling news pages with the activities of Youth League leaders and “transmitting lies when forced to do so by senior levels”. But a desire to be professional and objective journalists meant such accommodation had limits.

“The China Youth Daily can be a rubbish bin for the League central committee, but the paper itself must absolutely not be turned into rubbish,” he wrote. “There will certainly be people to produce a garbage paper, but it won’t be us….

The Maoist dictum that the party must control both “the barrel of the gun and the barrel of the pen” was hopelessly unsuited to modern China’s needs, he wrote, blaming a harsh editorial in the party’s People’s Daily as a factor behind the bloody end to student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.”

This guy is supernaturally brave; the article quotes sections of his letter that seethe with rage and contempt at a government that tolerates neither dissent nor idealism. So far, no punishment or repercussion.

Reading his words, I think back to my interview with the 1989 student protestor and flag bearer in Shanghai, and how he told me the Chinese people today don’t care about repression and rights and freedom of speech. Financial security is all that matters. And I know that to a large extent he’s right. But then, there’s Jiao Guobiao and Liu Di and Du Daobin and Lu Yuegang and Jiang Yanyong and those frightening study groups, so we know somebody in China sure cares about liberties. They’re mainly academics, but the schools are where the unrest that leads to change so often begins, especially in China.

The article wonders how China can reconcile its efforts to commercialize its media and attract more foreign investment, while at the same time prohibiting dissent and censoring anything it sees as “idealistic.” It’s an excellent question.

UPDATE: This is indispensable — go to CDN now for a translation of much of Lu’s letter. It’s great.

Update II: Also impressive is this translation of the entire letter.

I had no idea.

I don’t think I’ve ever posted on sports before, so this’ll be a first. A Brit is mad as hell that the head of the Federation Internationale de Football Associatio, Sepp Blatter (what a name) is trying to suck up to the Chinese by telling them they sorta kinda invented soccer. Apparently to an Englishman that’s the equivalent of high treason.

I nearly choked on my chicken chow mein. The news was devastating. Alright, I know the sun has clearly set on the British Empire — all but for the Rock of Gibraltar, that is — but now Sepp Blatter is trying to take away our last vestige of dignity.

The all-powerful president of world governing body FIFA had the nerve to say recently that the Chinese — not the English — invented soccer. The most powerful man in football, who once suggested female soccer players should wear skimpy outfits, is now pandering to the Chinese. He’s even offering so-called evidence that soccer began in the Orient and not on the lush playing fields of Merry Olde England.

Where’s Sir Alex Ferguson when you need someone to kick a soccer boot at someone?

I’m devastated. My forefathers, who once chased a pig’s inflated bladder through muddy fields from one English shire to the next, are turning over in their damp graves. “But you cannot deny the history that in China there is a recollection and evidence that they played the game a thousand years ago,” Blatter told Sky Sports this week.

“When in China, tell the Chinese they invented everything,” seems to be Blatter’s motto. After all, think of all those soccer shirts you can sell to a nation of 1.3 billion people that love David Beckham. We all know the Chinese invented gun powder, printing and fortune cookies, but nowhere in Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book did it mention anything about soccer. Come on Sepp! Are they padding your expense account in that so-called land of great Socialist equality?

I didn’t know articles on sports could be so well written. Maybe I should stop automatically tossing the sports section in the trash.

Some of us obnoxious bloggers were predicting this was going to happen well over a year ago. Alas, no one listened to us, and look at the consequences.

It seems that the exhortations of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), calling for the urgent handling of floating waste in the Three Gorges section of the Yangtze River only two months ago, has not had the desired effect. Large quantities of floating matter are now heading down the river towards the dam and reservoir and the local authorities involved say that they do not have the funds to deal with it.

Work to block the waste in the counties of Wanzhou, Fengjie and Wushan is facing complete cessation because the money to pay for the equipment and the staff has not yet arrived, according to a report in the official western Chinese news service, Zhongguo Xibu Wang (China West News).

As Interfax previously reported, SEPA issued an emergency notice in May, urging local authorities and enterprises to implement the guidelines previously set out by the State Council on the handling of waste in the river. However, SEPA has discovered that in the recent period of heavy rain, floating matter now covers the entire surface of a number of estuaries on the Yangtze, and says that it might not only affect the quality of the water in the Three Gorges, but also navigation, tourism and the Three Gorges Project itself.

According to the State Council, the Three Gorges Project Corporation (TGPC) is responsible for the floating waste in the Yangtze River, but local county governments are responsible for the tributaries. However, the TGPC “has up to now not yet started” its work, SEPA says.

There was so much evidence this was going to happen, and as I noted before, Simon Winchester saw it all coming years ago! When we look back at this ecological catastrophe ten years from now and survey all the damage it caused, what will we think? How can it be explained or justified?

Yep, they somehow weren’t really destroyed, and they just sorta “turned up.” Only problem is, they don’t tell us a damned thing. Atrios complains in a devastating little post that once more we’re given Bush records that offer not a single shred of new information on whether the preznit performed his National Guard duties in 1972. By the end of the post, he’s visibly pissed.

And, while we’re on this story, what was the reason we didn’t get to the bottom of this 4 years ago.

Oh, and one more thing.

“I continued flying with my unit for the next several years [after completing training in June 1970]”

claimed Bush in his autobiography A Charge to Keep. That, we’ve known for years, is bullshit as he stopped flying 22 months later. Tell me again why the liberal media doesn’t care that Bush lies about his military service? Tell me again why the military doesn’t care that Bush lies about his military service?

Sorry, but the man has a point. While the “liberal media” spent days poring over whether Kerry threw medals or ribbons some 30 years ago, it can’t get itself to focus on something far more important: did our president lie about his military service? I know, I know, it’s a tired issue, it was talked about 4 years ago, it’s been brought up again and again. All true. But the question has never been answered, and it’s fundamental to the Commander in Chief’s integrity. It’s not a nitpick.

Update: Here’s the DNC’s sublime reaction to the newfound material (according to Drudge):

“The supposed discovery of these records on Friday afternoon, as reporters converge on Boston to cover the Democratic National Convention, is highly questionable. If the Bush Administration continues to search, maybe they’ll find answers to the long list of unanswered questions that remain about George W. Bush’s time in the Air National Guard. Bush’s military records seem to show up as randomly as he did for duty.”

Precious.

Village Voice regular Rick Perlstein tells us of his encounters with a strange and unshakable cult — true believers who know in their hearts and minds that george w. bush is Christ-like, incapable of sin or error, worshippers who, when faced with facts that may prove otherwise, simply block them out.

It brings to mind the reverence the Chinese once held for Chairman Mao, or the way North Koreans are taught to revere their Dear and Great Leaders, lapping up the nonsense of their ability to move mountains and reshape the universe. The sentimental idiocy of this movement is breathtaking, and as Perlstein notes, their unyielding hero worship keeps them well divorced from reality, helping to propel American conservatism in a new and unhealthy direction.

For the faithful, there are lots of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; no one high up ever knew of any memo licensing torture of prisoners; bush can’t be blamed for the deficits, and he always speaks honestly. Perlstein describes his attendance at a surreal “Party for the President,” one of many such events organized by the bush campaign, a kind of love-fest that includes a call-in from Laura bush and a lot of starry eyed reverence. Perlstein asks why they so adore our preznit.

Ponytailed Larry, who wears the stripes of a former marine gunnery sergeant on his floppy hat, bursts into laughter; it’s too obvious to take seriously. “Honesty. Truth. Integrity,” he says upon recovering. “I don’t think there’s any difference between the governor of Texas and the president of the United States.”

Gingerly, I offer one difference: The governor ran for president on a platform of balanced budgets, then ran the federal budget straight into the red.

Responds Larry (of the first president since James Garfield with a Congress compliant enough never to issue a single veto): “Well, it’s interesting that we blame the person who happens to be president for the deficit. As if he has any control over the legislature of the United States.”

Larry’s wife, Tami Mars, the Republican congressional nominee for Oregon’s third district, proposes a Divine Right of Eight-Year Terms: “Let the man finish what he started. Instead of switching out his leadership—because that’s what the terrorists are expecting.”

Larry is asked what he thinks of Bush’s budget cuts for troops in the field. He’s not with Bush on everything: “I hope he reverses himself on that.”

I note that he already has, due to Democratic pressure.

Faced with an existential impossibility—giving the Democrats credit for anything—he retreats into a retort I’ll hear again and again tonight: Nobody’s perfect. “I don’t think we’re going to find a situation in which we find a person with which we’re 100 percent comfortable.”

The article offers insights to the confused and out-of-touch liberal like myself, who struggles to get into the heads of the die-hard bush worshippers. Hearing them live and in person is illuminating and disturbing. They really do see our tongue-tied, frightened, helpless little leader as angelic. They even buy bush kitsch reminiscent of the Mao memorabilia sold everywhere in China.

It’s important to know what people in America are thinking, especially those whose beliefs are farthest from your own. I just wish it didn’t have to be this depressing. If they see bush as God, will they not see Kerry as the Antichrist and seek to undermine him after he’s elected? I sure hope not.

“Read the whole thing,” as bloggers like to say; there’s a lot more there.

It’s quite interesting to see the human side of people like Liu Di (aka the Stainless Steel Mouse), whose situation causes them to achieve a mythical stature. Anyone who has followed her case will want to read this excellent interview that explains who she is, how she ended up in jail and what her future looks like. A brief snippet:

She began participating in discussions on Democracy and Freedom, a Web site that is often at odds with the government. By 2001, she opened her own Web site, much of it dedicated to literature, but she also published some articles calling for more freedom and openness. And as cyberspace became her home, she began to be more bold.
.
She wrote an essay defending a man jailed because of political postings on his Web site. She defended another intellectual who was targeted by the government for organizing a reading association and for posting political essays online. She wrote a critical attack on an advocate of nationalism, and also began dabbling in satire and parody at the expense of the government.

In one posting, she called for the organization of a new political party in which anyone could join and everyone could be chairman. She says it was a spoof. But by September 2002, college administrators summoned her with a warning. “They said the postings I published on the Web went too far,” she said. “Some of the stuff I thought was written in a joking manner. But they thought it was too far.”

Terrified, she said she scaled back on her online writing. But two months later, administrators ordered her to the campus police station, where officers took her to a Beijing prison. She was put into a cell with three other women, including a convicted murderer. Even today, she says she does not know which of her essays led to her arrest.

“I think a normal government should not be challenged by these writings,” she said. “We are not promoting violence. We’re not organizing to challenge the government.”

A normal government? You’d think someone this bright would know that the CCP is not quite your normal government, and that in its eyes, everything stated via a public medium like the Internet is automatically a potential threat to its stability. She certainly learned the hard way. And she’s damned lucky that she made it out — thanks to a worldwide outcry. The tragedy is that many others were not so lucky, and every time I think of them, I feel sick and helpless.

To all those trying to stoke this non-story, see Josh Marshall’s post today.

A difference of opinion between Tucker Carlson and the 9/11 Commission …

“There is nothing random about the documents he took. Berger stripped the files of every single copy of a single memo which detailed the Clinton administration’s response to the Y2K terror threat.”
Tucker Carlson, Crossfire, July 22nd 2004

Then there’s 9/11 Commissioners Gorelick and Gorton …

DOBBS: Let me ask you, not necessarily directly on point, but certainly related. Sandy Berger, the former head of the national security — national security adviser under the Clinton administration, accused of, and admitting taking classified documents from the National Archives, those notes, whether copies or originals still unclear. Did the commission review that material, to what — can you shed any light on what happened there? Slade Gorton, first.

GORTON: Well, we can’t shed any light on exactly what happened there and on Sandy Berger’s troubles with the Justice Department and the Archives. What we can say unequivocally is we had all of that information. We have every one of those documents. All of them have — are infused in and are a part of our report.

DOBBS: So the commission was denied no information as a result of whatever Sandy Berger did or did not do at the National Archives?

GORTON: That’s precisely correct.

GORELICK: And we have been so assured by the Justice Department.
Dobbs, Gorton & Gorelick
Lou Dobbs Tonight, July 22nd 2004