Are preventing me from posting.

In other news, the facebook group ‘Stephen Colbert for President’ is the fastest growing group ever, and is causing facebook quite a problem because of the sheer multitude of people joining it. I posted the link to this blog on its wall and got a huge surge in traffic to this site.

Colbert Nation.

Another incentive to take this thing down!

It’s a very drizzly day…

and I’m bored filling out applications to work for the NSA this summer (and slightly annoyed that they have a ridiculously early, October 15th, deadline).

I decided to apply for the NSA positions to keep my options open; the consulting positions that I’ll be applying for later on are notoriously difficult to get. For all I know, the NSA jobs will be even more difficult, but it would be nice to do some national service this summer. Working for the NSA or the State Department would definitely give me a good sense of what working for the government is like (which, I hope, is better than what I’ve heard).

Writing in Slate, Hitchens implores the Dutch to stand up for their Enlightenment values and protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali from murderous Islamic fundamentalists:

The Price of Freedom: if the Dutch government abandons Ayaan Hirsi Ali, America should welcome her. 

Theme: threats

Military:

• China Announces Gains in Air Defense

The blanket of China’s air defense radar now almost matches similar networks in developed countries, state media reported today, in an announcement that coincided with Taiwan’s first National Day military parade in 16 years.

• Taiwan Plans Missiles Able to Hit China

Faced with a threatening military buildup by China, an increasingly outgunned Taiwan is quietly pushing ahead with plans to develop missiles that could strike the mainland, defense and security experts say.

• China Promotes Taiwan Focused Military Officers
  

China has promoted at least four senior military officers with experience in planning for war over Taiwan, ahead of a major political meeting next week at which the Communist Party has said it will adopt a new strategy to stop the self-governing island from moving toward independence.

Corruption:

• Corruption poses ‘lethal threat’ to China
  

Corruption costs China as much as 3 per cent of its economic output, or $86bn in 2003, and poses a “lethal threat” to the country’s economic development, according to a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Environment:

• Under China’s Booming North, the Future is Drying Up

For three decades, water has been indispensable in sustaining the rollicking economic expansion that has made China a world power. Now, China’s galloping, often wasteful style of economic growth is pushing the country toward a water crisis. Water pollution is rampant nationwide, while water scarcity has worsened severely in north China — even as demand keeps rising everywhere.

Two articles from the Washington Post:

On the environment:

• In China, a Green Awakening

For almost three decades, the city had welcomed some of the world’s biggest polluters. Churning out paper, photographic film, dye, fertilizer, cement and other products for the global marketplace, the businesses helped make Wuxi into one of China’s wealthiest industrial cities. They also poisoned the province’s vast network of lakes, rivers and canals. In late May, when the toxic sludge reached Tai Lake, which is the main source of potable water for Wuxi’s 5.8 million residents, people turned on their taps and got only sludge.

City officials decided they’d had enough. In a series of radical proclamations that sent shudders though the business community, Wuxi declared itself a newly reformed green city.

On China in Africa:

• Struggling Chadians Dream of a Better Life—in China

As resource-hungry China cultivates relationships with countries across Africa — most recently here, for oil — African leaders are debating the merits of that growing influence. Skeptics are troubled, for instance, by China’s role in enabling governments such as Sudan’s, which is accused of carrying out a brutal campaign of violence in its western Darfur region.

But as that debate goes on, something less tangible is happening on the ground, even in this remote, conflict-ridden region where electricity and plumbing are still luxuries:

The idea of China as a symbol of potential prosperity is taking hold, seeping into the consciousness of ordinary Africans and occupying a place that the United States, and to some extent European countries, once claimed.

A great article on the succession struggle from Jottings from the Granite Studio:

• Li Datong on China’s next generation of leadership or “What Michael Corleone and the Yongzheng Emperor taught me about succession struggles”

nobody is going to be losing their heads this time around, that era has thankfully passed, and certainly the CCP leadership has shown itself capable of orderly transitions of power. But a situation in which three or four likely candidates have five years to jockey for position ahead of the next party congress is one fraught with possibilities.

Here is a video of Christopher Hitchens giving his best summary of why he’s not just an atheist, but an anti-theist.

Enjoy!

Tomorrow’s New York Times is running a great article about how leaders at Protestant churches, including those from evangelical branches who’ve actively opposed video games, are using ‘Halo nights’ to induce kids to come to church.

I suppose the pastors, “desperate to reach young congregants,” have come to the realization that the mind-numbing and immoral 2000 year-old preachings of near illiterate peasants stuck in the middle of some desert are not filling America’s youth with enthusiasm. The pastors have got a hard job; the miracles of Moses and his laughable burning bush pale (rather a bit) in the face of the achievements of modern science and medicine (not to mention those of Bungie Studios).

Echoing the mantra of fellow religious fundamentalists all over the world, a young evangelist explains Halo’s appeal:

It’s just fun blowing people up.

The Southern Baptist denomination sent 50,000 e-mails to kids about how to bring faith into their playing of Halo 3: use the game’s themes to discuss good and evil.

The New York Times article amusingly points out that the game’s hero is battling religious eschatalogists: the enemies are part of a religious cult that sees the destruction of Earth as necessary to bring about their ascent to heaven.

That sounds strangely familiar.

A fantastic video of Christopher Hitchens giving a great overview of his atheism, anti-theism, general disdain for religion, and the need for a new enlightenment. The video gives a nice sampling of what can be found in God is Not Great.  I suggest that you fast forward over the doofy man who introduces Mr. Hitchens. Enjoy.

I’m proud to say that I traveled to Brown University to join the student protest for Burma. Xu Wenli, a co-founder of the Chinese Democracy Party, gave a great speech, as did the former president of Brazil Fernando Cardoso.

• 
  Read the Brown Daily Herald article about the protest

Hundreds of students dressed in shades of red and purple gathered Friday at noon on Lincoln Field to draw the campus’ attention to ongoing anti-government protests in the Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar.

It’s also worth reading Christopher Hitchens on holding China responsible for supporting Burma’s military junta.

• Maintained in China: Burma’s foul regime depends on Beijing

I thought President Bush was quite correct in listing his least favorite regimes during his address to the United Nations last week and in trying to ramp up the international pressure on the goons in Rangoon. The governments that he singled out were the uniquely repellent ones that consider the citizen to be the property of the state and the uniquely boring ones that have remained in power until their citizens are positively screaming for release. I do not need to specify these senescent gangster systems individually, except that they all have one thing in common. They are all defended, from Cuba to Zimbabwe, by the Chinese vote at the United Nations.

While on the topic of Chinese politics, there’s a great article over at The New York Times about the NPC battle over who’ll succeed Hu Jintao. The reporters seem to have some inside sources:

• Chinese Leaders Deadlocked Over Succession

Just days away from a major leadership reshuffle, China’s Communist Party bosses remain deadlocked over who should sit on the ruling Politburo Standing Committee and who should be anointed to succeed President Hu Jintao as China’s No. 1 leader five years from now, party officials and political experts say.

Notable posts I read today:
China Law Blog: China Warns Foreign Companies
RConversation: Eating River Crab at the Harmonious Forum
Financial Times: Chinese cyber-call censored (I think a more suitable headline would be Chinese Communist Party censors Communist Party magazine)