Nothing like being jailed under conditions of extreme medical negligence that just might constitute torture. All for publicly disagreeing, and doing so with the panache to bend the ear of Europe. Read the rest of this entry »
Ladies and gentlemen: China is out of effing control.
At first I suspected that it always has been, but that might not be accurate. The original ruling dynasties seemed to keep things in a kind of order – maybe because the country is so large and populous that a unified whirlwind could never be summoned. The Mongol agenda was one of service and submission. My grade-school understanding of that period is that China was poor and ineffective, united more by the greed of a conquering power than anything else. A Chinese ascension prior to Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward must have been impossible. Even during Chairman Mao’s cultural revolution Read the rest of this entry »
Dream of the Dragon 