Blood & Treasure

eight books, two extracts, one ban

The publishing authorities in China recently announced that they were banning eight books by popular authors. Roland Soong seems to be in the process of translating extracts from them and so far has got up to two, which both deal with sensitive subjects – media corruption and the dismissal of elected village heads.

I’ll point to the rest as and when they’re up.

sun city sol

The Great Hall in Manchester Town Hall has all the various crests and arms of the colonies of the British Empire inscribed into the ceiling. I remember back in the eighties seeing one of them covered by a bin liner. It was South Africa. This was the city’s contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle.

How heartwarming, then, to see the city council bring a supercasino to town in partnership with non other than Sun City Sol Kerzner. Still, bet the meetings were good:

Sol has retained his fondness for the F-word in his business dealings ever since. He apparently opens all business meetings with the phrase 'What the f***'s going on?'

Yeah, I got that feeling when I heard the news.

Ms Phillips, your illustrator is here

Via comments at Lenin's place, some absolutely top whack visual insania.

i'm a Hagelian

Chuck!

But Hagel, who as of late last week was in the final stages of weighing a presidential run, is never mentioned in the top tier of Republican candidates for one, simple reason: since the initial buildup to the war in Iraq, he has assailed the Bush administration's policy—in sharp words, in constant refrain and, most unforgivably, in public. His outburst last week was the culmination of a four-year campaign to raise public outrage about a war he's always considered disastrous.

OK, just as a what if: Hagel versus Hillary. Bog standard rightwinger but model of practical sense on Iraq versus opportunistic neoliberal who you can trust as far as you can comfortably spit a rat. Who do us reflexive anti-Americans root for, strictly on foreign policy grounds?

That aside, it’ll be fun watching the brownshirt wing of the Republicans will go into meltdown. It’ll be a tricky one for proper Democrats too.

Well if it happens, I for one promise to put a little banner up that says “foreign lefties for Hagel.” I’m sure that’ll help him a lot.

Roosevelt's jihad

Comrade Lenin links to Roosevelt’s message to the people of the Mahgreb on the occasion of Operation Torch:

Behold. We the American Holy Warriors have arrived. We have come here to fight the great Jihad of Freedom.

We have come to set you free. We have sailed across the great sea in many ships, on many beaches we are landing, and our fighters swarm across the sands and into the city streets, and into the wide country sides, and along the highways.

Light fires on the hilltops; shout from your housetops, and from the high places, and say the sound of the
drum be heard in the land, and the ululation of the women, and the voices even of small children.

Assemble along the highways to welcome your brothers.

Plenty more where that came from. As Len says, enough to get a wistful sigh from the White House’s current inhabitants. I thought this was a bit off though:

If we are thirsty, show us the way to water. If we lose our way, lead us back to our camping places. Show us the paths over the mountains if need be, and if you see our enemies, the Germans or Italians, making trouble for us, kill them with knives or with stones or with any other weapon that you may have set your hands upon.

Now, now. Friends don’t ask friends to attack the Afrika Korps with rocks.

guarding against and opposing

The Marxist internet archive is apparently under sustained DOS attack:

…the nature and origin of the attack, our previous history with the Chinese government (censorship, etc), and the experience of others suggest that this maybe politically motivated and directed by the Chinese government.

So how come? This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the anti-rightist movement, and there’s a blanket ban on any mention of the event in Chinese media; and also, it seems, in any media that people in China could possibly gain access to. Within China this has been applied strictly enough to result in the banning of a fairly innocuous book on Chinese opera masters under Communism by the author Zhang Yihe, at least partly on the grounds that her father was a Rightist.

AFIAK, the origins of this ban aren’t with the CPC. It seems to be coming through the State Council, which is the executive arm of the government, maybe indicating in turn that it’s regarded as primarily a public order issue rather than a political matter. That in itself would be quite suggestive. Additionally, the folks at Marxist.org seem to be right. They are being attacked by the Chinese state.

Well, I’ve seen the current “general line” in China summed up as “guard against the right and oppose the left.” Or possibly, ban both of them.

robust testbed

Glorious news. Manchester is about to become the British headquarters of the taxing-the -stupid industry.

Manchester has now won the right to host a 5,000 sq metre casino with up to 1,250 unlimited slot machines.

The supercasino is to be built in Beswick, a poor area of east Manchester. It will be based at Sportcity, close to the City of Manchester stadium - built for the Commonwealth Games and now used by Manchester City football club.

The leader of Manchester City Council, Richard Leese, said: "This is fantastic news for Manchester and the region. We have always believed that Manchester offers a robust testbed for the successful implementation of this major leisure and tourism development.

I’m sure that Richard Leese’s arse would be a robust testbed for my size ten and a halfs as well. Perhaps I could put in a bid, though I think it would be a competitive field.

You know, I’m sure all our councilors watch It’s a Wonderful Life every Christmas. And when they see that sequence with the angel who shows George Bailey the raucous hellhole his town would have become if it wasn’t for him, they say: that’s exactly what we need here.

porcine political economy

In the run up to the year of the Golden Pig, here’s a comprehensive account of China’s porcine political economy from Neolithic times to the 20th century.

Economically, pigs were a great deal for farmers; they recycled waste which nobody else would touch, produced fertilizer, and at the end of the year this “piggy bank” could be carted to market to realize a cash profit. One scholar counted the fluctuation in pig skulls in neolithic tombs and concluded that pigs were important not only to eat and in religious ceremonies but to build political power…

The human population was so intensive that it didn’t make sense to feed animals on grain since a given piece of land could support many more people if they ate what they grew rather than feeding it to animals. But pigs fit into a niche where cows or other grain eaters could not; the disgusting eating habits of the pig came from the power of its gut to get nutrition from what had already passed through an inefficient human’s. (The fascinating subject of nightsoil will have to wait for another day).

Me, I can’t wait. Anyway, splendid stuff. via.

more Chinese missiles

This time, ones which fly from shore to ship. Indulge me a moment while I draw possibly unconnected things together and speculate wildly. First off, Paul Rogers’ article in Open democracy, the subject of which is partly Chinese missiles supplied to Iran:

…the partnership between China and Iran goes much deeper than weapons; as Navy International says, "the two nations have advanced from a straightforward seller/buyer relationship to one of technology transfer and weapons co-development".

This level of cooperation means that Iran can modify and otherwise develop Chinese designs specifically for conditions in the Persian Gulf and the northern Arabian Sea, and to meet the challenge posed by the ships of the US navy's fifth fleet.

The US navy is the main “red team” in China’s war planning, so this makes a kind of sense. It’s certainly interesting to learn that the Persian Gulf is now China’s western front.

Now, back in early January, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani visited Bejing for a couple of days. Coverage of the event focused on the nuclear issue. But as well as being Tehran’s point man on nukes, Larijani is also the Islamic Republic’s general head of national security, and as such has overall responsibility for Iran’s general defence relationship with China. So it may be that the discussion was about more than just nukes.

Before 2004 Larijani was the Iranian culture minister, and as such in charge of the “orientation” of the local media. Specifically, he oriented it towards Islamic conservatives, so laying the groundwork for Ahmadinejad’s victory.

Yet since Larijani got back from Beijing the direction of travel seems to have changed. Various newspapers connected with the wider conservative faction in Iranian politics and with Larijani in particular have been leading the charge against the A-man.

I don’t think it’s too outlandish to assume that this is in some way influenced by China. It seems clear that we have reached some kind of bottom line here. China is prepared to let its arsenal be used to defend Iran against the US, to the extent of letting the Iranians tinker with the technology to suit their own requirements. But maybe the price for that is dispensing with – or at least marginalizing – Ahmadinejad and his unique take on diplomacy. Missiles yes: loose cannon on the other hand....i hear the sound of hatches being battened down here.

Sort of relatedly, China Matters has a great post on the Belgrade effect.

say it out loud

Another helicopter downed in Iraq, near Najaf. Interesting, because it links operationally the recent spate of air attacks to the kidnap and assassination of several US troops near Karbala. Both are Shi’te holy cities, and the latest helicopter kill was part of a battle to prevent insurgents attacking Shi’te pilgrims during Muharram, possibly on the grounds that only US troops have the right to shoot Iranians on sight. The troops killed at Karbala were part of the same general shrine protection operation. And insurgent forces in both places were reportedly wearing military uniforms, indicating at the very least that the’yre operating together in high enough numbers to need to identify each other at a distance.

The uniforms worn in the Karbala raid were supposedly to deceive the guards, and that mission was apparently accomplished. But the insurgents also seem to have developed the confidence to come out in the open. It’s wonderful what getting an AA capacity from somewhere can do for your morale.

...and see also.

UPDATE: Zeyad dismisses reports of apocalyptic cults:

The “preemptive” crackdown against Al-Hassan – like that against Mahmoud Al-Sarkhi months ago, which I wrote about here – bears all the signs of U.S. Shi’ite allies (SCIRI and Da’wa) fooling the U.S. into supporting them in their intra-Shi’ite struggle to control the south. This is even more shocking because these “cults,” as crazy as they may sound, have never carried arms or posed a threat to anyone; their activities are restricted to theological debate and polemics with other Shi’ite clerics and movements. The fact that they may have a few armed followers means nothing. Virtually everyone in Iraq is armed to the teeth. This might actually turn out to be a massacre against some harmless cultists. If true, then congratulations to the U.S. for carrying out Iran’s dirty deeds in Iraq yet again.

Obviously, more fool me, too.