Absurdity, Allegory and China

The persistent and very public meltdown of Herman Cain (the latest is here) has gone beyond the obliviously wretched clown phase and into the obliviously wretched grotesque phase that continues to reveal his fundamental lack of understanding that he’s morphed into the latest caricature of the guy who doesn’t get it. Politics and political races are rife with [...]

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What a difference a few years makes. Hillary in Beijing in 1995 and again in 2009 is a study in sharp contrast. The only thing missing on camera this past weekend was a kowtow. There was a very ‘by the short hairs’ feeling to this one. One can only hope she managed to say something [...]

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Woke up this morning and can’t stop wondering about Dick Cheney in a wheelchair. I watched the whole affair, or at least until after the poem – which limped and did nothing for me. The CNN coverage held up well, though the Facebook aspect was totally lame. Though I knew beforehand that “The Dick” would [...]

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From yesterday’s Xinhua, China earmarks 73 mln USD for rural environment protection we read that the Ministry of Environmental Protection is throwing what seems to be a lot of money into the polluted countryside to deal with environmental issues. The fund would help save 600 villages out of severe environment problems and award 100 others [...]

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It’s well after midnight and I can’t get to sleep. The wind is whistling through the windows, which don’t quite shut. Never have. Later today I’ll head to Beijing and early tomorrow morning to Qinghai where the wind will be stronger and the temperatures colder. The sky will be brilliantly blue if it’s not raining [...]

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What a week! First the Phillies won the World Series, and now Barack Obama has won the US presidential election.  This blog usually deals with things nominally China, though there are times when I foul one off into the cheap seats, most notably regarding baseball. No apologies. I love the game despite the hyper-spectacle of [...]

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I’ve written in here a time or two concerning the rule of law, so it seems appropriate to illustrate what that term means to some people, and why it’s sometimes necessary to publicly demand it when confronted with its opposite. Below is an email from a US friend, a Democrat, who went to her polling [...]

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To be officially an atheistic country does not mean there isn’t religion in China, or within the hearts of some of those who sit in The Great Hall of the People. A religion often has nothing to do with a god. In a nominally communist country with 5,000 years – count ‘em, f-i-v-e t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d y-e-a-r-s [...]

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What will happen tonight, in three hours, in Lhasa may very well hold the key not only to the Olympics, but also to China’s future. If the Chinese actually do strike harshly after the midnight hour passes, then there is a very good chance that there will be growing support for an international Olympic boycott. [...]

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Depending on who you read, the dates given for the beginning of the Warring States period (Zhanguo Shidai) in Chinese history vary. There was no demarcating event – no Sarajevo or Pearl Harbor, no bold first incident that set the wheels of chaos in motion. It was not as if there wasn’t any war and [...]

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