Blood & Treasure

the liquidator

So that's that. It moved the Colonel to tears. What I liked was the way the man just laid it all out, like the official receiver come to settle the final affairs of a particularly misbegotten enterprise: letsinvadeiraq.com, a kind of last holdover from the dotcom boom, from the age of America can do anything and don’t you dare say anything different. No crowing about victory, no Vietnam style superpower self-pity. Thanks for all your work, form an orderly queue and pick up your stuff by the door marked exit. The smell of adult supervision in the morning...

presidential eloquence

Via this fascinating gadget I learn that Calvin Coolidge uttered the word ‘tit’ twice during his State of the Union addresses.

Sinosphere Friday, edition the second

And here we go again…

China. Peru. And Guano.

Taiwanese president’s gay encounter with disc jockey caught on DVD. Allegedly.

Students forced into popup hell:

So you entered the Band 4 and 6 English test in China, and the College English Test (CET) committee tells you that there is a free website where you can check your marks. You go to the website and see that the page is divided into checking results on one side and advertising on the other side. You want to check your marks. The page tells you that you must install an additional piece of software. You install this piece of software and you enter your candidate identification number and the pass code. A page pops up to count down from 30 seconds while there is a prompt for you to enter your QQ number to register. 30 seconds later, you found your marks. The page then shows a list of other candidates who are your fellow students and who have left comments. You want to see what they have to say. But you need to register before you can read them. You finish registering and then you find out that there are no comments, just another online game advertisement ...

I see a Cameronite education policy in embryo here.

Are you smart enough to join the Chinese Civil Service?

Tenement Dave has an aggregator of historical Chinese image collections. This chap is a member of the Red Swastikas, a local 1920’s variant of the Red Cross which later ran into branding issues.

Ayn Rand in China, metaphorically speaking.

More Carl Crow: Land of the Lonely Bachelor.

In praise of uselessness.

Chairman Mao meets Benny Hill, makes film.

 Strange Chinese cult worships The Economist magazine

mocking foreign food is the lowest form of wit

But I’m prepared to make an exception for this.

more barter

A trio of Louisiana nitwits agreed to swap two young children for a $1500 cockatoo and $175, police charge. The deranged exchange was hatched after Donna Greenwell, a 51-year-old trucker, learned that the bird was being offered for sale by Brandy Romero, 27, and Paul Romero, 46. According to Evangeline Parish Sheriff's Office investigators, Brandy Romero told cops that Greenwell contacted her and said that while she could not afford the cockatoo's price tag, she did have children to trade

It’s the decline and fall of the property owning democracy.

will work for cabbages

How’s this for barter:

Libya, which imports close to 90 percent of its grain and is understandably anxious about access to supplies, has leased 250,000 acres of land in Ukraine to grow wheat for its own people in exchange for access to one of its oil fields. Egypt is seeking similar land acquisition in Ukraine in exchange for access to its natural gas.

China tried to lease the output of a tenth of the Philippines entire arable land stock a couple of years ago, but there was too much domestic political opposition when the details were revealed. And Manila recently negotiated a deal whereby it gets 1.5 million tones of rice from Vietnam every year for three years. And Vietnam is leasing extra capacity from Cambodia, which is also selling rice to Albania, many of whose former farmers have relocated to Italy, where the local dodgy banks are being bought by a Libyan sovereign wealth fund.

I'm not sure where it all leads but it does make me think about getting an allotment.

don't be left out

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Chas on China and other things

There’s some flap about a chap Obama wants to oversee his eyes-only intelligence called Chas Freeman: too close to the Saudis, say Israel’s fans. He certainly seems to be almost as close to the House of Sordid as the Bush clan.

Philip Weiss reproduces a chain e-mail from his opponents which cites extensively the work of Crazy Mel on the man. There’s also a link to this speech, which is absolutely first rate. Explains why Mel’s so down on him too: a naked, existential struggle between Crazy and Sane.

This, however, is not so pleasing:

I find the dominant view in China about this very plausible, i.e. that the truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud, rather than -- as would have been both wise and efficacious -- to intervene with force when all other measures had failed to restore domestic tranquility to Beijing and other major urban centers in China. In this optic, the Politburo's response to the mob scene at "Tian'anmen" stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.

I don’t know about “dominant”, at least outside official circles. It’s certainly a popular view in China that if the demonstrators had been crushed earlier that this could have been done with less or no violence.

Of course, Ted Heath said very much the same thing for which he was rewarded by various consultancies and the chance to waggle a baton in front of a Shanghai symphony orchestra. And I think it’s a view held widely among most senior politicians in the democratic countries, for whom Chinese dictatorship has delivered a lot of benefits: cheap goods, cheap loans, the illusion of general prosperity that helped them get elected and re-elected. I don’t like his views but it’s always a bit of a relief when you get someone prepared to finally cut the crap. And I suspect Beijing  will like very much the idea of him overseeing the US intelligence effort.

coconut milk

From The Catholic Orangemen of Togo, Craig Murray’s latest diplomatic reminiscences:

“Mr Ambassador, I create you an Officier of the Order of Mono. Well done. Very well done.”

“Thank you. If I get two, is it the Order of Stereo?”

He released my hand and clapped his great paws on both my shoulders. He leaned his head in towards mine, still smiling but bloodshot eyes glaring balefully.

“Craig” – it was the first time he had used my name, I was surprised he knew it – “You should drink coconut milk. It will make you piss.”

would love to meet

It's basically foresight. Wait too long, the economy collapses and bag ladies are going to be in demand. Then they'll start getting fussy and everything.via.