Blood & Treasure

cramped, tattered and rain-stained

Taiwan prepares for tourists from the mainland:

A city health director in southern Taiwan apologised last week after saying authorities would "disinfect the places where Chinese tourists have passed through," local media reported.

On the other hand:

Many Taiwan buildings are cramped, tattered and rain-stained. The Taipei domestic airport has been compared to Pyongyang's.

It’s Britain and America all over again.

Meanwhile, the forces of democracy muster to greet the Chicom hordes.

Mongolian state of emergency

It’s about the gold, possibly. Full spectrum blogging here. Maybe germane: Mongolian neo-nazis.

tacky, but oddly appropriate

Ian Curtis memorabilia on e-bay. Shortly to be joined by this.

I read Touching from a Distance a while back: our hero came across as a kind of existential scally. In fact, nicking Ian Curtis' gravestone is exactly the kind of thing I can imagine Ian Curtis doing.

somebody found a finger

In the mid-1990s, Tibetans started boycotting Muslim restaurants in Lhasa after it was claimed that somebody had found a finger in a bowl of soup, setting off a rumor that Muslims were cannibals. Another rumor had it that Muslim cooks were urinating on food or adding their bathwater to soup, which, it was said, would function as a charm to make Tibetans convert to Islam.

Curious: I never knew that Melanie Phillips had readers in Lhasa.

tactical wall hugging

A military urbanist writes:

Baghdad is starting to remind me a lot of that old wooden board game Labyrinth, I think it was called, or, maybe it was Tilt-A-World. The one you angled two wooden platforms back and forth with rotating knobs to maneuver a little steel marble through a maze of walls without dropping it into a hole. Ultimately, it was a game of delicate touch, floor balance, and tactical wall hugging. Advancing the marble required a strategy of resting it in a sequence of corners, or hold-outs, until you were ready to carefully slope the board again and make a run rolling the it along a fragmented edge hoping to reach another little bunker to pause once more.

But, it’s almost as if Baghdad has been turned into a mortal-sized version of this game since everyone and everything in the city now moves according to a system of blast walls, security barricades, revolving iron gates, military checkpoints, bunkers, IEDs, car bombs, etc. Perhaps, in this case, the American and Iraqi forces have their hands on one of the dials, while the sectarian militia groups collectively have their hands on the other. Wrestling for control of the city, Baghdad is in a constant state of imbalance and instability, subject to ceaseless shifts of power, while its civilians teeter on the edges of sudden death…

Via.

belated greetings

Happy Canada Day.

Anglican geopolitics

Obviously, being an atheist means that I don’t have any opinion on the doctrinal basis of the latest Anglican split: one doesn’t take sides in a row between jibber and jabber. But there’s a fascinating account of the whole thing here and here, as the Telegraph’s religious affairs honcho raises the spectre of an African takeover of the church: even worse, a post colonial African takeover. There follows a comment box meltdown between various rightwingers: the blacks are taking over! But they’re conservative, Christian blacks! The odd non believer also pops up to waggle his ears and smirk, as various others call each other whited sepulchers and make reference to Bishop Nazi-Rally, which personally I thought quite funny. It all gets very heated.

There is a geopolitical issue here. The church leans pretty heavily on its third world dominions; eventually they are going to want to swing the stick on their own behalf rather than just take orders. There are a lot of worldly things at stake here. That’s why the Gafcon crowd in Britain want to “reclaim” the church rather than leave it. If they leave it, they have to get off church property in the widest sense of the word, and as it says in the Bible (Book of Mortgages, 3:16) a religion that loses its property becomes a superstition. It is therefore necessary to drive the apostates from the temple rather than leave and start over from a shed in the back garden.

What makes this more interesting is that Rowan Williams is currently pitching for the Protestant account in China. I say pitching advisedly. The Communist Party officially divides officially recognized Christian churches into two categories: Protestant and Catholic. Naturally, the Vatican is currently in negotiation for the Catholic account. That’s a no-bid process. The Protestants, however, are not organized denominationally but as three-selfers. If the Achbish gets the contract, they will all – without exception – be organized under the Anglican aegis. I say that this is interesting because what the church is pitching for here is essentially a joint venture with the Chinese state to keep its protestant believers pious, patriotic, socially productive and under control: the C of E’s original mission as given by Henry VIII.

The numbers alone make that one hell of an account: and you can also throw in thirteen seminaries jammed to bursting and the world's biggest christian publishing venture. How Rowan Williams deals with the current insurgency may well be instrumental in determining whether he gets it or not

modern proverbial wisdom

There is no anti-terrorism device so stupid that someone won't try it out.

Wengan MGI update: thought work

Original B & T coverage here. The story continues to unfold. We now know that the uncle of the girl who drowned in the Simen river survived, though he was beaten up by unidentified assailants and according to a petition submitted by the family taken away by the cops for “thought work”. The results of that can be seen here. It now also looks likely that Li Shufen may have killed herself, as official sources originally claimed, rather than been raped and murdered by the Children of local CPC cadres. As Jeremiah points out:

Whatever the current status of this case, what is perhaps most interesting is the perception by the people that the local government is sufficiently corrupt so as to make the rumors–as yet unsubstantiated–plausible, plausible enough that when mixed with opportunity and given support by numbers, it can allow the participants to justify to themselves acts of violence in the name of justice.

The picture on the left is of the local Party and government building after the rioters had finished with it. Meanwhile, Roland notes a shift in government information management strategy:

Many of the current crop of central government leaders are technocrats with engineering background. As such, they must understand that public opinion is water that can carry the ship as well as turn it over. The point about hydrological engineering is not to build dams to hold the water back because there will be a catastrophic dam break one day that might bring down the entire system. Instead, the point should be about controlling and redirecting the awesome power of nature in less harmful ways down selected channels.

In the case of the Weng'an mass incident, the major portals were deleting the related posts as quickly as possible. At Tianya Forum, it was estimated that a Weng'an-related post has an average lifetime of 15 seconds before being deleted by the administrators. That was supposed to be a record speed. The same thing was happening at Sina.com, Sohu.com, Baidu, etc. So this was building massive dams all over the map which builds up a tremendous pressure. Where was the pressure release point? You may be amazed that it was over at the Xinhua Forum. The webmasters posted the official Xinhua news story on the forum. That does not help in itself because Chinese netizens think that this Xinhua story was vague and misleading. However, the webmasters allowed the comments to run freely. This meant that the Xinhua posts became the meeting points of all those who want to talk about the Weng'an incident but could not do so elsewhere. Although that post did not contain any news information (such as photos and videos), it was a place for people to vent their outrage. As a result, Xinhua got a record-setting number of visitors who were very appreciative. Is this the plan for the future? You'll find out at the next mass incident (and there will be many).

Again, we have the hydrological metaphor. And as Blog for China notes, comments in the forums are being recycled into features run by state media. Meanwhile the Sinosphere is aware of all internet traditions.

deckhands wanted for sinking ship

Obsolescent Blairite snack thought bucket shop Progress is hiring. I'll pass on the e-mail:

Progress is seeking an experienced, politically savvy communications professional to join our small but busy team, getting smaller through being busy sending CVs off in all directions before the whole ship sinks gently beneath the waves. You’ll have lead responsibility for our website, weekly e-bulletin, increasing range of e-publications amd other varieties of active and passive spam. You’ll also assist on our monthly print publication, Progress magazine. Actually, you’ll be holding the fort while the rest of us try and set up bogus consulting businesses. And you’ll take charge of our advertising strategy across our electronic and print publications. Must be able to endure cruel laughter of millionaire ex- Labour donors as they draw on their cigars and sneer: but what use to me are you any more?

You must be committed to furthering the New Labour cause over the very, very, very long term, have a good political knowledge and have writing and editing skills. So why haven’t you fucked off to join Cameron like all the other prehensile little influence monkeys, then, loser?

the gospel of Davis

"This is an erosion of civil liberties and it needs to be opposed from every quarter of society.

"What will be next? 52 days? 62 days? The right not to be imprisoned by state without charge or reason are elements of British freedom dating back to the Magna Carta.

Well there you have it in short form: the Gospel of Davis and fair enough as far as it goes.

Here it goes as far as the Jamia Mosque on Woodlands Road, Cheetham Hill, maybe a quarter mile from where I sit blogging resplendant. The speaker is Imran Rizvi, a local Tory activist, and he was addressing a post Friday prayer protest meeting. Opportunistc? It would be naïve to assume anything else. But his audience weren’t cynical.

His sentiments were echoed by many in the crowd, including Mohamed Siddiq, 67, also of Lansdowne Rd, who said: "This law is wrong. This is a country that values democracy and the rights of the people, and we are proud of it on that score, but unfortunately this law infringes on individual freedom and liberty."

Meanwhile, Mohamed Harif, 54, of St Kilda's Drive, Cheetham Hill postulated that the bill was passed simply to make the government appear to be acting on terrorism.

"I think they have done this because of pressure" he said. "Passing the law to try and show that they're doing something about terrorism, but there isn't any real need for it".

Actually, maybe they were being cynical. It’s easy to doughnut the guy from the local happy shopper paper with activists. But then we have the fact that the Tories now seem to have the activists to do it: the Tory vote in this ward went up by two or three hundred at the last local election. There are various reasons for this, I think, and it was obviously before 42 days was rammed through parliament. But everyone knows that this is the latest measure in a legislative architecture designed to target some before others. Here’s the local MP’s reaction:

Blackley MP Graham Stringer, who voted in favour of the bill said: "I thought long and hard before voting because I wasn't very enamoured with it, but ultimately it's a reserve power. I doubt it will ever be used.”

This is quite apologetic in a way: Stringer doesn’t need the votes, and a lot of them will be going over to the new Broughton constituency. But he used to be leader of the local council, and like any good city boss he knows where the votes are and why they do what they do. As a Labour man, he votes the party way. But also as a Labour man, he mourns a local instance of the general disintegration of the coalition that put him and his party in office. You can probably track it equally well in other places with other demographics.

Stringer was the first to call for Brown to go, incidentally – or maybe not.

rouba, mas faz*

Happy 87th birthday, Communist Party of China, a sickly baby that came mewling to official life on this day in the French concession in Shanghai. It’s the late Lady Di’s birthday too, as I’m sure those Diana folk who still occasionally populate the comments box here are aware.

*Brazilian Portuguese. It means “on the take but gets things done”, with the implication that a lot of the things are non-too pleasant. To be spoken with a shrug and weary sigh.

War plc

An interview with Stephen Armstrong, author of the above mentioned, below the fold. It appears in this week's Big Issue in the North.

aside from everything else

2003 rewound:

It was about the oil and he’s a poodle.

It wasn’t about the oil and he’s not a poodle.

It’s about the nukes and he is a poodle.

carpet bombing

Heavy formations of US military docudumps darken the sky (this latter the On Point studies from Iraq circa 2004-5, but released now). For when I’ve got more time, really, but help yourselves.

They’re hitting the books on the other side of the hill too.

MGI watch: Wengan

On not taking it lying down.

The story goes like this. A 15 year old schoolgirl is allegedely raped and beaten to death by the son of a senior CPC official in Wengan, Guizhou Province.

The police find that she had “committed suicide.” The girls’s uncle, a teacher at a local high school protests to the police. He is beaten to death.

A group of students go to the police station to protest. After the cops attack them, they are joined by locals who lay siege to the police station. Eventually, a group estimated at around 10,000 assembles, torches the local Communist Party offices and the county government hq and is prevented from making a barbeque of the cops by the arrival of 1500 paramilitary police. Here’s the crowd in action.

If this was Zimbabwe, people would be thinking that Mugabe’s time had come. I read this and thought, ‘well things are back to normal in China.’

Update here.

the whole scam

Hassan Butt attended my son’s school here in North Manchester. I first heard of him after he left, in the days when he was planning to run a caliphate from the bedroom of his parents’ home up in Prestwich. He used to come and preach jihad in the playground at Abraham Moss, a process which would inevitably end with the would be Emir of Crumpsallstan being chased round the playing fields by teachers and security guards before making a tactical retreat in the direction of Hazelbottom road.

So he never got much traction here in Manchester, and it wasn’t until he changed his line of bullshit that he really found his market. Now it looks like the saga has finally ended:

I've never met anyone from al-Qaida or anyone who claimed to be from al-Qaida in my entire life ... I actually arranged for myself to be stabbed in the shoulder, sorry, in my arm and in my back because I knew if I said I had been attacked Shiv was going to ask for some proof so basically I stabbed myself ... you know, it was just part of the whole scam.

Incidentally, I see that Nick Cohen is pursuing some obscure grudge against Jon Snow. It couldn’t be something to do with Channel 4 News outing our friend the peacemaker, could it?

invisible line

Why Martin Jacques isn’t just a hack but actively pernicious. But first:

The message - which worried China scholars around the world - was clear. There are topics China will not tolerate discussion on and the government is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep a lid on them.

Foreign scholars are finding the China field an increasingly dangerous territory to navigate, and some readily admit to avoiding certain topics and to tweaking their research. And the situation is getting worse as China grows more economically and politically powerful.

One of the authors of the banned book - titled Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland - who declined to use his name, said Beijing is stepping up efforts to control how China is perceived internationally. "We're in a period where China's influence is expanding and they're seeking ways to control the message outside of China just as they do inside China."

Edward Friedman, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, said the effects are multiple: "People who do research in the country want continuing access. There is a tendency not to do anything that will threaten your ability to get access."

The problem is that it is not always clear where the invisible line is drawn.

via. In this article, Jacques pushes the invisible line quite far by bootlegging the Chinese government’s specific description of the Tibetan uprising (as “rioting” full stop, without qualifiers) into a supposedly objective piece of analysis about overseas Chinese communities and their support for the PRC. Anyone who sees that in Beijing is going to think: if he uses our keywords and talking points why can’t the others do the same? What can we do to make them?

There’s been a huge amount of China scholarship over the past twenty years or so, and part of its cumulative effect has been to gradually wear down the old CPC conviction that those not with us are therefore against China, and to get Beijing towards acceptance of the notion that give and take is what China should naturally expect when it opens up.

This in turn is partly because Beijing has always been surprisingly “underlobbied” in terms of systematic message presentation: so long as the trade and investment that underpinned China’s economic rise went ahead without interference, everything else could look after itself. A certain level of critical scholarship goes with the territory.

Or rather it did go. It was to be expected that China’s economic muscle would inspire it into making a more systematic attempt at wider international influence. It’s at this point that Beijing begins to look around and see what it can get away with, what standards it can reliably enforce. And it’s at this point that you have Martin Jacques reproducing their talking points and generally reassuring them that they can get away with quite a lot.

had enough

But everything changed July 11 in the bright sunshine of Adhamiyah, Iraq. That day, while out on a simple meet-and-greet patrol, McKinney stepped out of his Humvee and yelled.

“F— this!”

He raised the barrel of his M4 to his chin and squeezed off one shot.

contrarianism today

A GOLD Coast teenager who wore a T-shirt by English extreme metal band Cradle of Filth that reads 'Jesus is a c**t' has been charged with offensive behaviour.

Above the offensive slogan a nun is depicted masturbating.

via.This is basically how the people from the Furedi cult make a living, when they're not advising Boris Johnson.