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The games have been billed as China's "coming out party" to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism -- central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance -- harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it "authoritarian capitalism," others "market Stalinism," personally I prefer "McCommunism."

By next year, the Chinese internal security market is set to be worth $33-billion. Several of the larger Chinese players in the field have recently taken their stocks public on U.S. exchanges, hoping to cash in the fact that, in volatile times, security and defense stocks are seen as the safe bets. China Information Security Technology, for instance, is now listed on the NASDAQ and China Security and Surveillance is on the NYSE. A small clique of U.S. hedge funds has been floating these ventures, investing more than $150-million in the past two years. The returns have been striking. Between October 2006 and October 2007, China Security and Surveillance's stock went up 306 percent.

Ever since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, U.S. companies have been barred from selling police equipment and technology to China, since lawmakers feared it would be directed, once again, at peaceful demonstrators. That law has been completely disregarded in the lead up to the Olympics, when, in the name of safety for athletes and VIPs (including George W. Bush), no new toy has been denied the Chinese state.

Rebecca McKinnon reports on 27 year-old blogger Zhou Shuguang, aka "Zola," whom the Chinese government have banned from leaving the country as a "potential threat to state security." Snip:

Suppose that the value of the asset the Fed holds falls to zero after the trade. The trade was permanent, so there's no margin call or anything like that - the Fed owns the asset and it is worth nothing. Then, in the end, it is no different than the Fed simply printing that same amount of money and giving it to the banks as new reserves, it is an increase in the money supply.

If the central bank, or some other government agency, were to act as Market Maker of Last Resort and buy the impaired asset at a price no greater than its fair value but higher than what it would fetch in the free but unfair illiquid market, such a purchase would not be a bail-out. It would also be welfare-increasing...

My feeling is that it's not going to happen, mainly for political reasons. In this particular crisis, the distressed assets the Fed would end up buying would almost certainly be mortgage-backed bonds. But buying up mortgage-backed bonds looks very much like giving money to big banks and investors instead of giving it straight to struggling homeowners: the optics are simply terrible. If the collapse of Bear Stearns is seen as a bailout, this would be much worse. It might be a good idea, but its time

CNNIC发布了第二十一次互联网调查报告，这个报告里除了宣称中国有2亿网民外，还有两个数据引起了我的注意。 其一，中国网民的即时通信（IM软件，比如QQ）使用率达到81.4%，是仅次于网络音乐的第二大网络应用，超越了搜索引擎和电子邮件； 其二，询问网民上网做的第一件事，有39.7%的人选择了IM，是互联网第一落脚点中网民人数最多的一项。（均引自p.41） 参照国美国，即时通信使用率的情况是？ 39%！

The Worst Case Scenario, in which all the following happens:1) Tibetan monks or the FLG self-immolate during the opening ceremonies.2) Foreign tourists complain about secondhand smoke, "massage" phone calls to their hotel rooms, spitting, lack of queues and price gouging.3) Domestic tourists complain about even worse price gouging. Indignant domestic visitors get mad when their tickets are revealed to be fakes.4) Wiseacre tourists pose in front of the Olympics logo re-enacting this picture. Hilarity ensues when Chinese citizens/officials get wind of it.5) Athletes complain of racial profiling and repressive security measures at the Olympic Village, though in fairness its the Chinese security apparatus trying to do their best.6) A phalanx of visitors with protest t-shirts are detained.7) Japanese athletes get harassed.8) Triathletes succumb to pollution, or controversy erupts over the US and other teams sporting breathing masks.9) Nasty poor sportsmanship rears its head when Liu Xiang doesn't win the gold.10) Afghanistan's only competing athlete misses his event due to traffic.11) African athletes get harassed in Sanlitun.12) Al Qaeda or some other nutjobs pull a Munich.

然 而，从更严肃的层面上说，我们看“艳照门”，不是要做意淫的看客，而是应该努力透过这个事件讨论一些对网络社会的发展起到重大作用的东西，比如言论自由， 比如隐私权，比如互联网的监管，这些东西全部都是极为复杂的，其解决之道应该通过一个充分的沟通过程来达成。关于如何监管，我的观点很鲜明：第一，应该尽 可能使用现有的法律，而不是匆忙通过新法律，因为法律面对新技术的发展存在一个致命的滞后期；第二，政 府如果犯错误的话，也应该犯规范过少的错误，相信互联网会逐渐更清晰地成形。在互联网提出了那么多难以解答的问题的情况下，政府未见得有最好的解决办法， 即使有，也不见得是最好的解决办法。最终，互联网也许会催生出一种新的规范方式，不那么具有强制性，而更多地相信市场的力量。

乔治·华盛顿大学(George Washington University)国家安全档案馆(National Security Archive)首席法律顾问梅雷迪思·富克斯(Meredith Fuchs)

设在华盛顿的美国科学家联合会(Federation of American Scientists)的高级研究员史蒂文·阿夫特古德(Steven Aftergood)

The most interesting thesis is the idea that China could use international law as a weapon, or “lawfare” for short. The authors argue that citizens of democracies increasingly demand that their countries uphold international rules, particularly ones that govern human rights and the conduct of war. Governments are, therefore, constrained by regional or worldwide organizations, such as the European Union, ASEAN, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the WTO and the United Nations. The authors argue that China should copy the European model of using international law to pin down the USA: “there are far-sighted big powers which have clearly already begun to borrow the power of supra-national, multinational, and non-state players to redouble and expand their own influence.” They think that China could turn the United Nations and regional organizations into an amplifier of the Chinese worldview – discouraging the USA from using its might in campaigns like the Iraq War.

Beijing has been willing to allow the Organization of Islamic States to take the lead in weakening the new Human Rights Council. This subtle diplomacy has been devastatingly effective – contributing to a massive fall in US influence: in 1995 the USA won 50.6 percent of the votes in the United Nations general assembly; by 2006, the figure had fallen to just 23.6 percent. On human rights, the results are even more dramatic: China’s win-rate has rocketed from 43 percent to 82 percent, while the USA’s has tumbled from 57 per cent to 22 percent. The New York Times’ UN correspondent James Traub has detected a paradigm shift in the United Nations’ operations: “it’s a truism that the Security Council can function only insofar as the United States lets it. The adage may soon be applied to China as well.” Traub may be right. China’s capacity to influence the United Nations is increasing, and soon we may be complaining about Chinese behavior on big policy issues

human rights "can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate crisis and the security crises," Clinton said.

Can you imagine what the press coverage in the US would be if, in the run up to and during the early parts of a US hosted Olympics there had been three separate , successful terrorist attacks in, say, Utah or California? Would we the press not be going pretty much nuts covering that?

In a statement to the (Party controlled) Xinjiang Daily , he said Chinese security forces must “stick to strategy of seizing the initiative to strike preemptively.” But his statement barely made a dent in China’s news coverage, which remains resolutely focused on China kicking the rest of the world’s butts in the almighty race for Gold.

As a key element of the revival of Chairman Mao Zedong's "people's warfare," Beijing and a number of other cities have revived the vigilante and spying functions of neighborhood committees. Municipal administrations along the coast -- and in the autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang -- have recently earmarked additional budget to maintain the "spying" functions of neighborhood committees and similar vigilante outfits after the Olympics. Moreover, the Politburo's Central Political and Legal Commission, China's highest law-enforcement agency, has urged the courts and prosecutors to do more in fulfilling the party's priority task of thwarting anti-Beijing conspiracies and upholding sociopolitical stability. That the courts will comply in this is evident from a just-released article by the President of the Supreme People's Court, Wang Shengjun. Writing in this week's edition of the official Seeking Truth journal, Mr. Wang said: "We must pay more attention to maintaining state security and social stability. . . We must boost our consciousness of [safeguarding] the power of the regime . . . and fully develop our functions as a department for [proletarian] dictatorship."

　　经审计，审计署共移送上述九家金融机构涉嫌各类犯罪案件线索43件，涉案金额141.62亿元，涉案责任人144名。其中，国开行被查出近60亿元贷款被挪用进入股票市场、房地产市场等。

The spy tactics include copying information contained in laptop computers at airport checkpoints or hotel rooms, wirelessly inserting spyware on BlackBerry devices, and a new technique dubbed "slurping" that uses Bluetooth technology to steal data from electronic devices. In addition to cybersecurity threats in other countries, "so many people are going to the Olympics and are going to get electronically undressed," said Joel Brenner, the government's top counterintelligence officer. He tells of one computer-security expert who powered up a new Treo hand-held computer when his plane landed in China. By the time he got to his hotel, a handful of software programs had been wirelessly inserted.

Reportedly, volunteers will come prepared with large stickers to keep naughty T-shirts under wraps.

Here was a report that really delivered a blow to the BBC’s solar plexus. Peacock began to foresee the possibility of digital diversity on an unimagined scale, it also put forward the ideas of a consumer-led, market driven broadcasting world, one in which the very principles of a licence fee funded public service broadcasting system would naturally be seen as obsolete. This suited the tenor of the times: deregulation, privatisation and a rigorous dismantling of the frontiers of the state – it was happening in the city and in industry and the utilities, why not broadcasting? The BBC, long seen as harbouring tendencies and personnel that were socialistic at best, Marxist at worst, was suddenly no longer a secure and unassailable acropolis. It was no secret that Norman Tebbit and some of the more fundamentalist free-marketeers and red-baiters of the administration would have been very happy indeed to dismantle the entire structure of the BBC. Peacock prevaricated and the charter appeared safe, but at a great price. Nothing would ever be the same again, the old certainties were dead and the harsh realities of capitalism arrived at Wood Lane and Portland Place. Whole departments were razed and working practices abolished, and something called an internal market was put in place. Radio Times was outsourced, the permanent make-up staff went, engineers, editors and set-designers were suddenly out of a job. Twenty-five percent of the BBC’s output was commanded to be produced from outside sources and a whole new independent sector was born. Companies like Hat Trick and Talk Back achieved almost instant success.

蒙古草原上无数的敖包是如何建起来的呢？我们容易以为是某个权势巨大的统治者下令建起来的。在如此地广人稀的土地上，把一个个行踪不定的游牧部落组织起来进行这样一个浩大的工程是不可能的。事实上，所有的敖包都是千百年来，人们自发建成的。在蒙古民族中有一种民间信仰：如果你看到了石头（在草原上石头是很稀少的），就是看到了你的“福气”，如果你拿着石头绕着别的石头走一圈，然后把它与别的石头放在一起，你就是在为自己增添福气。人人都愿意自己的福气尽可能地多，所以当一个人看到一块石头时就会捡起来，等看到别的石头时就把它放在那儿。这种信仰代代相传，草原上的石头堆（即敖包）就越来越多，每个敖包也越垒越高。就在一代又一代人为各自“谋福利”的过程中，一个服务于所有人（包括后代子孙）的导航系统就在广亵的蒙古草原上建成了。

在《国富论》中他这样写道：“每个个体既不打算促进公共利益，也不知道提升多少公共利益。他只在乎他自己的保障，自己的收益。个体被一只看不见的手所引导，最终达到的结果并非他自己的意图。个体通过追求自身的利益来促进社会收益，往往比他真正打算促进社会收益时更有效率。” “我们每天所需的食料和饮料，不是出自屠户、酿酒家或烙面师的恩惠，而是出于他们自利的打算。我们不说唤起他们利他心的话，而说唤起他们利己心的话。我们不说自己需要，而说对他们有利。”

The Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure made it into the U.S. Constitution precisely because its drafters understood that the power to snoop is addictive. Even if we happen to trust in the good intentions of the snoopers, the nature of any government can change rapidly — which is why the Constitution places limits on the tools available to any regime. But the drafters could never have imagined the commercial pressures at play today. The global homeland-security business is now worth an estimated $200 billion — more than Hollywood and the music industry combined. Any sector of that size inevitably takes on its own momentum. New markets must be found — which, in the Big Brother business, means an endless procession of new enemies and new emergencies: crime, immigration, terrorism.

here is a large and powerful country that, when it comes to human rights and democracy, is so much worse than Bush's America. But during my time in Shenzhen, China's youngest and most modern city, I often have the feeling that I am witnessing not some rogue police state but a global middle ground, the place where more and more countries are converging. China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale).

印度昨日戒备森严，采取了大规模的安保措施，以确保奥运火炬安全通过新德里(New Delhi)。印度沿着缩短后的火炬传递路线，部署了逾1.5万名保安人员。火炬传递路线没有对公众开放。

尽管新德里火炬传递最终没有发生严重事件，但高度的安全措施突显出，对中国而言，奥运火炬接力成了一联串的公关灾难，并使许多人怀疑主要赞助商能从中获取多少益处。

可口可乐(Coca-Cola)印度高层管理人士为该公司赞助火炬接力进行辩护，并否认该公司后悔参与此项活动。本周三，可口可乐首席执行官内维尔•艾斯戴尔(Neville Isdell)在集团年会上也表达了类似观点。

中国外交部发言人姜瑜告诉记者：“这些护跑手是志愿者，他们不是执法人员，但是他们的职责是非常明确和神圣的，那就是要保护奥运火炬的安全、神圣和尊严。我们希望有关国家对此能够予以充分理解和积极配合。”

昨日仍不清楚日本是否将向中国“护跑手”发放入境签证。日本一名政府官员表示，其它国家允许中国安保人员入境，让日方感到诧异。

这一危机昨日有所加深，原计划在日本长野市举办的一场庆祝奥运火炬到访的活动被取消，尽管官员们表示，火炬传递路线本身没有变化。“我们希望专注于奥运火炬传递本身，”传递委员会表示。

We hear that Tibetans suffer “demographic aggression” and “cultural genocide”. But we do not hear those terms applied to Spanish and French policies toward the Basque minority. We do not hear those terms applied to the US annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1898. And Diego Garcia? In 1973, not so long ago, the UK forcibly deported the entire native Chagossian population from the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. People were allowed one suitcase of clothing. Nothing else. Family pets were gassed, then cremated. Complete ethnic cleansing. Complete cultural destruction. Why? In order to build a big US air base. It has been used to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon maybe to bomb Iran and Pakistan. Diego Garcia, with nobody there but Brits and Americans, is also a perfect place for rendition, torture and other illegal actions.

The Chinese Context The Chinese government is responsible for the well-being and security of one-fourth of humanity. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated, not even when done by Buddhist monks. Chinese Civilization was already old when the Egyptians began building pyramids. But the last 200 years have not gone well, what with two Opium Wars forcing China to import drugs, and Europeans seizing coastal ports as a step to complete colonial control, then the Boxer Rebellion, the collapse of the Manchu Dynasty, civil war, a brutal invasion and occupation by Japan, more civil war, then Communist consolidation and transformation of society, then Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Such events caused tens of millions of people to die. Thus, China’s recent history has good reasons why social order is a higher priority than individual rights. Race riots and rebellion cannot be tolerated. Considering this context, China’s treatment of its minorities has been exemplary compared to what the Western world has done to its minorities. After thousands of years of Chinese dominance, there still are more than 50 minorities in China. After a few hundred years of European dominance in North and South America, the original minority cultures have been exterminated, damaged, or diminished.

China’s one-child-policy seems oppressive to Westerners, but it has not applied to minorities, only to the Han Chinese. Tibetans can have as many children as they choose. If Han people have more than one child, they are punished. There is a similar preference given to minorities when it comes to admission to universities. For example, Tibetan students enter China’s elite Peking University with lower exam scores than Han Chinese students. China is not a perfect nation, but on matters of minority rights, it has been better than most Western nations. And China achieved this in the historical context of restoring itself and recovering from 200 years of continual crisis and foreign invasion.

人民币汇率上周五报收7.017元人民币兑1美元，大有突破7元大关的势头——这是继去年10月下旬人民币加速升值之后一个具有象征意义的时刻。

安信证券(Essence Securities)驻北京的经济学家高善文表示：“来自美国的压力只是一个较小的因素。很大的原因在于中国国内的通胀压力。”

人民币汇率走高，有助于降低大豆等进口商品的成本。在中国，80%的大豆用于饲养生猪。中国通胀的主要驱动因素是食品价格上涨，尤其是主要食用肉猪肉的涨价。人民币升值还有助于抑制膨胀的贸易顺差，而对于中国与其它大型贸易伙伴的关系来说，这也一直是一个政治问题。