Blood & Treasure

start spreading the news

Sinatra? Strictly for mustache Petes:

“One of the best rock albums ever f---in’ made,” a Genovese Crime Family associate is heard to say about “Never Mind the Bollocks.”

“You got that right, man,” another hood replies in a conversation recorded by a sanitation businessman wearing a wire for the FB I. “You absolutely got that right.”

“Man, oh man, ‘God Save the Queen,’” another chimes in, referring to one of the band's classic songs.  “F---in' great album.”

Actually, not such a surprise when you think about it. Part of mob style is liking music that's decades out of date, and the Pistols are surely that. It's a bit like those Camorristi Roberto Savaiano wrote about going round dressed like Brandon Lee in The Crow, in 2005. I'm still having trouble processing the idea of a made guy pogoing, though.

war as a matter of health and safety

Kings of War is annoyed that the Human Rights Act can be used to sue the armed forces over deaths in the line of duty in Iraq. Colin Powell is then cited in a way which helps us understand why:

They’re [the American people] prepared to take casualties. And even if they see them on live television it will make them madder. Even if they see them on live television, as long as they believe it’s for a solid purpose and for a cause that’s understandable and for a cause that has something to do with an interest of ours.

I think the point is that this case wasn’t made in any convincing way over Iraq. If it had been, I’m betting Ms Smith wouldn’t have considered using the HRA to sue over the death of her son. After all, it follows that if you have to go to war, and have to go right now, then you also have to go to war with the army you have, which means the one equipped with Snatch Land Rovers. As things stand, the HRA seems to be the last recourse the public has to impose costs on politicians using war as a casual policy instrument. And that should be the army's defence: not me guv, it's that former prime minister turned dubious international consultant you're after.

There’s also the fact that whatever the merits of the actual complaints, discussions about how the army were equipped tended to substitute for discussions over the war itself. Maybe that was inevitable after the whole thing became a fait accomple: we are where we are, etc. But it’s in line with this depoliticisation process that the army should end up getting sued in what amounts to a health and safety at work case.

lacking mad dictatorship skillz

On first reading of this it’s tempting to make the quick Kim Jong-un/Hitler comparison and write the whole thing off as another stunt from Seoul’s Reunification ministry. On further reading, the context of KJU giving his acolytes copies of Mein Kampf becomes horribly plausible:

During the rule of Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, DPRK officials received holiday gifts of western liquor, tailoring fabric and other foreign luxury goods. Since Kim Jong-un came to power, however, the leader’s customary holiday gifts have been very different, including items such as imported sports equipment, CDs and foreign books in translation.

“Kim Jong-un gave a lecture to high-ranking officials, stressing that we must pursue the policy of Byungjin (Korean for ‘in tandem’) in terms of nuclear and economic development. Mentioning that Hitler managed to rebuild Germany in a short time following its defeat in WWI, Kim Jong-un issued an order for the Third Reich to be studied in depth and asked that practical applications be drawn from it,” the source told us in a telephone interview.

He added that Kim Jong-un highlighted sports as the secret behind Germany’s unity and ideological successes. Kim also stressed the superiority of Hitler’s thinking in childhood-related policies, and issued an order for propaganda departments to encourage a “Three Child” policy.

Apparently, KJU got his half-baked appreciation of all things Adolf while studying in Switzerland, which puts the idea of the Swiss finishing school in a whole new light.

This is a kind of negative illustration of tyranny as a skillset. Junior tyrant is a) making whatever random crap happens to float through the head of the most spoiled child in North Korea a matter of official policy b) trying to spread it through channels that should properly be for the reward of servants and c) interfering with business:

Stop focusing on ways to make money in the markets, and mould yourselves after the Gestapo.

That’s not exactly the equivalent of making the Praetorian Guard greet each other with ‘whoops, ducky’ but I think it may be near enough for us to launch a KJU dead pool. Bear in mind that timing will be influenced by such matters as how long it takes for the relevant actors to trust each other with a conspiracy and/or develop a sucker to do the actual job.

'los brigadistas chinos'

Here's a bit of recovered history for you, courtesy of Justin on twitter: Chinese volunteers in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. The article notes that many were overage for combat and were living in Europe at the time. That points in turn to participation in the Chinese Labour Corps during world war one, a number of whose veterans stayed behind in France, where they became drawn towards the French Communist Party after China got shafted at Versailles. Deng Xiaoping was in Paris at around the same time as a student: it's basically where he got his communism from, too.

revolution will not be cannibalized

You don’t hear statements like this very often at Downing Street press conferences

"I think you will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines, in front of the public and cameras," Putin said at a joint news conference in London with Prime Minister David Cameron.

‘Unless they invite us’, he added.

I made that last bit up. I remember when that story first broke how anti-interventionists tended to insist that it was the heart that was eaten, while pro-interventionists seemed adamant that it was some less emotive organ. Putin seems to have gone with the full-on eldritch horror approach, complete with rummaging.

persons of interest

Although Snowden has repeatedly insisted that the documents he revealed are the story and that his life is of no interest...

 ... let’s not worry about that! It’s an interesting profile, notably for the difficulty the reporters seem to have in nerding him up. The male modeling attempt, the weight training, the obvious interest in women, the fact that he seems to have spent a lot of time online without referring to the illuminati or David Icke or making anything that could be construed as a death threat. None of it really fits the geek with a grievance frame. He was quiet, or as the editors would have it ‘hiding in plain sight,’ but apparently only because he didn’t have much to say to people around him rather than because he was a knot of seething inadequacy.  He had plenty to say to the people he wanted to talk to – the old ‘internet as elective community’ thing. Overall, he just reads kind of modern. If there’s an ongoing screening issue for American securocrats here, it may lie in that.

Generally, the big bone in the throat when it comes to the Nerding of Ed seems to be the woman in his life variously described as ‘vivacious’ and ‘pole dancing’. Such women not for nerd! Such women for recreation of warrior! I can imagine a conversation between her and a reporter:

‘So Edward really, really liked his old Dr Who books, right? Talked about them all the time, right?

‘Not at all! When Ed wasn’t making a principled challenge to the security state we were making sweet love (lowers voice )...and it was this long!’ (expands arms)

Reporter: (coughs, grinds teeth)

Elsewhere, here’s a list of words which allegedly get you flagged up as a person of interest to the NSA. I won’t vouch for its accuracy but it does read a lot like one of JG Ballard’s experimental short stories – something like ‘The Index’, updated.

I did notice the word ‘Jasmine’in there. You’ll recall that the attempt to replicate the Arab spring events in China a couple of years back was called the Jasmine Revolution. So, yeah, maybe they’re taking an interest. I have no idea why the phrase ‘Bubba the Love Sponge’ appears on the list.

close to the monarch

There's always some idiot around who'll tell you that an egalitarian society would be 'just like North Korea, and occasionally another species of idiot who believes this to be true and that there is something therefore to be said for Pyongyang. Here's a nice piece reminding us just how rigidly stratified official North Korean society is:

The thought of having the child of an average citizen personally deliver a bouquet of flowers to the leader of North Korea or sit next to him at a function has always been unimaginable. Such an honor is only ever bestowed upon children of the elite, such as Central Party cadres, who are seen as being of superior breeding.

Even that may not always be enough. To attend events graced by Kim Jong Eun, so-called “No.1 Events,” requires one to be descended from partisans involved in Kim Il Sung’s anti-Japanese imperial struggle, the “Mt. Baekdu Line,” or from persons who studied alongside Kim Jong Il at Kim Il Sung University, the “Mt. Ryongnam Line”. In essence, unassailable Party loyalty is crucial.

The same kind of lineage is required to get into the Chosun Children's Union, the Eton of Pyongyang. It's practically Almanac de Gotha stuff. Elsewhere the whokle Songbun order of things seems to be gradually eroding under the pressure of chronic low-level state collapse. But it's still worthwhile to be part of whatever mountain range KJU names his own cronies after.

not dead yet, but what the hell

I know Nelson Mandela reads this blog – Mikhail Gorbachev told me, via George Soros  - so I was keen to convey the news of his premature death courtesy of an outbreak of sausage fingers at Deutsche Welle. But they've now yanked the obit.

Take my word that it’s franker about his paramilitary activities than I think the British papers will be. Mandela the hard man isn’t really the done thing over here, which is a shame, because it may be an important part of the story. That, and the self-discipline. You don’t go through 27 years in an apartheid political prison without a bit of iron in the soul. You don’t emerge from it, face down the National Party government* and restrain the majority’s desire for revenge without being hard as nails. And you don’t have to play the hard man, either. You smile a lot and ruffle the kiddies’ hair. Certain things just have to be absolutely clear to everyone.

A friend once heard a story from Jonathan Mirsky about Mandela visiting China – at some Freedom House confab in the mid nineties, so take it for what you think it’s worth. Mirsky asked Mandela if his delegation would be publicly raising the issue of human rights when they went to China. Mandela either said that it wouldn’t or palmed off the question, I’m not sure which. But later, an aide approached Mirsky saying that Mandela wanted to make something clear: South Africa would not only not be raising the question of human rights in China in public, it would not be raising the question of human rights in China in private, either.

Assuming this is how it went down, I think Mandela wanted Mirsky to be perfectly clear that there was no possibility of a story in the word combination Mandela, China and Human Rights, and that if Mirsky wanted to make something of that, he was welcome to try. China had been a firm friend of the ANC in opposition; it was a massive potential investor for the new South Africa; and that was the way it was going to be.

So, a hard man, and a narrow one, in a way. Not Bono with a government, but Ataturk without a drink problem. If you’re white and alive in South Africa, you may owe him a lot.

*De Klerk may qualify as a 'hero of the retreat' but that's another blogpost.

serious discredit

In Re Mr Snowden, after a slowish start it looks like the solids have hit the soft power in quite a big way:

The incident “seriously discredits” the U.S. over previous claims about human rights, privacy and due process, Lee Kai-Fu, the former head of Google Inc.’s China division, said in a phone interview. Lee, who has 43.9 million Weibo followers, wrote a microblog post on June 11 saying he admires Snowden’s “principles and values.”

“Most discussion on Weibo is ‘Wow, you are are not really different from the others,’” Lee, now chairman and chief executive officer of Innovation Works, said of the U.S. in the interview. “It’s potentially a massive confidence crisis.”

What we seem to be seeing here is the implosion of a carefully orchestrated and remarkably effective reputation management programme the US has been conducting in China since 2008, involving everything from the frugal habits of ambassadors to the generous sharing of micropollution data from the Embassy roof. And let’s not forget the umbrella moment (whoops). After this little affair, I don’t think you’re going to get many people in China petitioning the White House any more.

So boo-hoo for the Yanks. But over the longer term, it’s probably better for the prospect of political change in China if this isn’t tied to the behaviour or example of any one country. In China the basic issue is the problem of the state, so more scepticism about states in general isn’t necessarily harmful. Likewise, it’s probably easier to eventually apply ‘universal values’ in China if these don’t look quite so much like American imports. As for being disillusioned, the usual riposte applies: what’s so great about having illusions in the first place? Will we have, as a result of this affair, a slightly more sceptical, better-informed, politically astute Chinese public? One that doesn't fall for obvious sucker plays like 'the China Dream?'If so, bring it on.

a better hole

We don't normally do property round here. But for this we make an exception:

One of a few in the world is this chance to own a previous Nuclear Missile Silo in the Adirondacks. Possibilities are endless for the silo portion of this property with a solid steel structure in the 185' hole. The Launch Control Center has been reconditioned with living arrangements.

No officer, I have no intention of manufacturing drugs. I just want to live 185 feet underground because of the ambience...

distant episodes

Check out the geopolitics of Aksai Chin

There’s a border war brewing between Kyrgyzstan and Tadjikistan

Here’s the War Nerd on the Chaco war.

our security is democratic

And so it begins...

The Chinese and U.S. approaches to surveillance and how each of their security apparatuses go about organizing and carrying out such activities are fundamentally different in nature. It might be useful to label them into two distinct models: the U.S. approach can be described as the democratic security state model and the Chinese version is the authoritarian surveillance state model.

I thought all this voting, legal checks and balances, civil liberties stuff was supposed to stop the state spying on me, not justify it. There's also the fact that, specifically as a UK citizen, China isn't spying on me while as a non USian I'm a potential target of PRISM. 

And of course, the way the question is framed assumes that I have any say in the matter. I mean, if the 'democratic security state' model does at least allow me a choice between spooks, can't I be spied on by someone small and harmless like Luxembourg? No flying killer robots, just the occasional mysterious delivery of cake or anonymous inquiries about whether I'd like to put a brass plate on something.

definitely Chinese; not sure about the rest

The institutionalisation of TCM was not inevitable. It arose out of China’s damaged encounters with the West, out of the ideological struggles of the 1930s, and the political needs of the early People’s Republic. And like most traditions, from kilts to Christmas trees, it’s a lot younger than people think.

James has another great chin-puller at Aeon on the subject of Traditional Chinese Medicine, involving, among other things, its relationship with Modern Chinese Nationalism, its survival as a treatment of the poor in a catastrophically privatised medical environment, and how the market for seal penises collapsed. Go read.

who's afraid of winnie the pooh?

But unfortunately China's censors have nipped in the bud what could have been a positive PR campaign tailor-made for President Xi Jinping to potentially woo friends and enemies.

The disappointing move came after China’s net users linked two of the world’s most powerful leaders - Xi and US President Barack Obama - as Winnie the Pooh and Tigger this week.

A bit short sighted there. Whatever the origin of that picture, it’s a brilliant bit of white propaganda, worth a bucketload of Eric X Li TED talks or Martin Jacques effusions. Whoever squelched that is a bear of very little brain. Adding an extra layer of irony, it’s may be the censorship environment that makes the Sinosphere full of incredibly close readers with a talent for bizarre yet exact metaphorical comparison: a culture which may have given us lovable old win-xi-the-pooh in the first place.

define them down

On point: psyops and propaganda during the Kenyan counterinsurgency campaign:

The name "Mau Mau" was never used by the Kikuyu themselves, and did not exist in their language. In general, they called themselves the "Land Freedom Army," or the "Freedom Struggle Association." It may have been invented as part of a psychological operations campaign by the British like "Hun" or "Wog" in an attempt to demonize the Kikuyu people, make them less than human, and easier to hate and kill. It worked quite well. The name is still known today and signifies murderers and savages, although it has no meaning in the Kikuyu language. More interesting, the term has gradually entered the language.

Hasn't it just. I think every news item I saw covering the compensation award last week referred to the 'Mau Mau'. I suppose another example would be Viet Cong for National Liberation Front.

you shall know them by their omissions

Blocked on Weibo has a list of the senior CPC officials for whom searches on weibo are indeed blocked. Some are obvious – hello Vice Minister Qiu of the Ministry of State Security! Manchester knows you!  - Some, I suppose, are blocked because of particular circumstances which don’t form part of any larger pattern. Perhaps some are under investigation. But if we take China’s information management structure as a neural map of what’s going on right now in stability maintenance thinking, there’s a pattern here that’s way too far inside the Party’s inner brain for me to comprehend. On which subject, it's well worth downloading the PDF at the link on China's attempt to use information management to positively shape public opinion.

One thing. I can get why searches for Tibetan and Uighur CPC delegates are blocked, but why on earth are the Zhuang sensitive? 

geopolitics of Ron

People wondering why Edward Snowden went to Hong Kong forget something: he’s a Ron Paul fan. It’s through this filter that we need to consider him sitting in Hawaii, from where he cannot fly to Iceland, considering his options.

Australia, New Zealand, Canada: staunch allies of the metastasized American state. Also, a bit socialist.

South Korea, Japan. staunch allies of the metastasized American state. Also, a bit corporatist.

South America: all sorts of chaotic leftism breaking out. Patchy wifi, probably. And everyone says they have no toilet roll in Venezuela.

Hong Kong. Famous free market beacon, wired to the gills, lots of people protesting and stuff. Almost a seastead! Cool!

Elsewhere, terms like ‘PRISM’ and ‘Snowden’ still seem to be searchable on the Chinese internet, though the case hasn’t aroused great interest as yet. Some responses rounded up here and here. They'll be chuckling at this in Zhongnanhai if it makes the internal reference news.

“It looks like Obama has been assimilated by a certain political party,”

one man, two countries, one and a half systems

I think it was Evan Osnos of the New Yorker who remarked on twitter that travelling to Hong Kong because of free speech is like travelling to Tibet because of Buddhism. There’s a lot of it about, but it’s not necessarily where you’d want to go to do it yourself.

As I understand the situation now, Edward Snowden left the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong this morning, where he’d apparently been staying under his own name, and is now somewhere else. He’s in Hong Kong covered by a three month visa. He’s also, of course, a person of interest to both the US and Chinese intelligence services.

When he went to Hong Kong, Snowdon inadvertently shifted the debate about surveillance into the realm strategic competition between the US and China. And a  lot of the framing of this issue now revolves around whether ‘China will give him back’. Technically this question is beside the point. Hong Kong and the US have an extradition treaty in force since 1998 which covers alleged national security crimes. So if the US wants him, the procedure should be pretty straightforward.

The problem is that Hong Kong is generally regarded as so much under China’s thumb that even a straightforward extradition process will be thought of as being made under Chinese control, which is going to be embarrassing for the US ans well as putting a significant spike in its self-presentation as the white knight riding to Asia's rescue from the depredations of the autocrats of Beijing.

But it’s going to be great for China all the way down the line. The original PRISM revelations came in the run up to the Obama-Xi summit over the weekend, and seems to have knocked the Chinese cyberespionage issue off the agenda, despite it being a main plank in the US rhetorical case against the PRC. The overall effect of the leaks, along with Snowden’s flight to Hong Kong, seems to be to put the US and China towards parity as big, grown up surveillance states ready to establish what China calls a ‘new type of great power relationship’, marked by all kinds of ‘pragmatic co-operation’.

So China could simply let the whole Snowden case take its course. Since Hong Kong does have many functional aspects of the rule of law, this may take a long time, punctuated by an embarrassing amount of campaigning. But since Hong Kong is also regarded as a puppet of China, it will all be thought of as China’s doing. Alternatively, China could try and locate Snowden, have him picked up and directly hand him over to the US, thus ‘sealing the deal’ between Xi and Obama. China could even spirit Snowden across the border on some pretext and have the US beg for the big nasty dictatorship to give him back so they could slap him in jail for ‘revealing state secrets’. I suppose they could also try and embarrass the United States by giving him some form of asylum, though from Beijing’s point of view that would set a horrible domestic precedent.  And it implies an ideological competition with the US that just isn’t there. Snowden’s far more use to China in an American jail than anywhere else: which of course is also where the United States wants him.

too many enemies

Well whistle-blowing seems to be in the news right now, so here’s a Chinese version:

Zhou, the Guangzhou-based senior media practitioner, who dubs himself "an amateur-but-absolutely-reliable whistle-blower," has been dominating media headlines since the end of last year, when China saw a surge in anti-corruption campaigns online. 

"I wear a mask because I've made too many enemies who want me dead," Zhou told the Global Times, adding that he was once targeted in a bounty hunt with a 10-million-yuan ($ 1.63 million) reward offered by one of his "enemies," who he exposed of fraud through charity activities.

 You can see by the photo-caption that he hands out his own publicity shots. It’s actually a fairly good strategy to be publicly enigmatic in this manner, since it means you’d be missed if you disappear one day. But it’s still difficult to believe that he’s not working as some kind of cutout for CDIC. The discipline inspectors are undergoing a form of internal purge right now, so using a third party to investigate would be a useful way of compartmentalizing information. And of course, if Zhou’s independent contacts know or assume he’s operating under some form of official protection, that would give them confidence in him.

In related news, GT has confined its coverage of PRISM so far to a wire story in which Obama condemns the hype, thus placing itself securely and prudently in the ‘nothing to see here’ column.

UPDATE: Whistleblower surfaces in Hong Kong. Can't help but feel this is a very bad choice.

a new accord

The presidents of the world’s two greatest superpowers issued a surprise joint statement today intended to ‘clear up certain misunderstandings’ in the light of recent revelations that both countries routinely engage in massive deep state surveillance operations.

‘I fully intended to skewer my gracious host for his hypocrisy in constantly making allegations about Chinese ‘cyberwarfare’ while securing access to basically what everyone is doing everywhere’ said China’s Xi.

‘But all I could say was ‘dude, that’s awesome.’ “

The two men immediately bonded over the audacity of the NSA’s prism programme, leading Obama to drop plans to lambast his Chinese counterpart over human rights.’

‘Freedom of expression, assembly, elections, yada yada’ said the US President. ‘It’s all good stuff. But it’s a bit hard to drone on about it with a straight face when you’re trying to ensure that no-one, anywhere gets out of line.’

‘And anyway, what’s the point? We banged on about the open internet for years but we could never get that guy or his predecessors to let our back doors into his country.’

A chuckling President Xi said that China still had much to learn from the United States. “We keep running round like blue arsed flies putting down demonstrations, chucking people in jail and so on. But really, why not loosen up a bit? I’d quite like to be actually elected to something – it looks like fun -  and clearly it makes no odds when you look at the big picture. Maybe China’s ready for democracy.”

Asked if the new-found friendship between the two would lead to a weakening of the US pivot to Asia, President Obama said that he thought it time to revive the policy of spheres of interest.

“We’re interested in what you lot are doing, President Xi’s interested in what his lot are doing. “

President Xi agreed. “Just so long as everyone’s covered. That’s the important thing.”