Especially after what's gone down today. But you should read Chris Hedges latest essay anyway.

Terrific interview in the London Review of Books with British historian Tony Judt.

It's wide ranging--he talks about politics, economics and culture in Europe, Israel and the U.S. He also has an interesting take on the general suckiness of baby boom gen politicians.

...but in place of tea, blood.

What's going on in the streets of Bangkok? A familiar story: Powerful forces with a wealth-sucking agenda manipulate/con the poor masses into serving as their private army. As usual, indy newsmag Asia Times (Bangkok-based) nails what's really going on:

The lines of democratic division are less clear now and Thailand's grinding political conflict is best understood as a power struggle between competing elite camps with divergent visions for the country's post-Bhumibol future. Thaksin's and the UDD's calls for democracy and social justice mask a game of non-ideological power politics that his side is clearly losing to the conservative forces that have coalesced against him.

The blood that the Red Shirt protesters are throwing on the Parliament steps is an arresting image. But don't get distracted: the key character in this play is Thailand's frail, 82 year old King Bhumibol, just released from a 5 month stay in Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital. Everyone knows his son, the Crown Prince, isn't up to the job. And the daughter the princess, who is, can't have it.

Some good resources for following the details of the incredibly Byzantine political events in Bangkok this weekend. Right now, hundreds of thousands of Red Shirts--rural supporters of exiled and corruption convicted former PM Thaksin Shinawatra--are converging on Bangkok.

For a rundown and some general background on the situation, the Asia Sentinel is a good place to start.

The Bangkok Post, one of Thailand's 2 English language dailies, is online with a special "Judgement Day" section.

Quite by coincidence, I find myself in Bangkok just in time for this.

This Friday, the Thai Supreme Court will hand down their judgement on whether Thaksin Shinawatra used political power for illegal financial gain (it's pretty clear he did.) If the verdict is yes--and it's likely it will be--then the Thai government gets to confiscate Thaksin's frozen 76.6 billion bhat in assets. And the streets here, they say, are going to roll.

Well, I'll find out. I'm supposed to be here through "Judgement Day" and over the weekend. Will report back.

If you needed any more evidence (and I know you don't) that the Democratic party is utterly and totally bought and paid for by the banksters, just read this morning's article about the New York Senate primary scuffling between Kirsten Gillibrand and Harold Ford.

Charming. We get to watch each of them out-smarm the other in sucking up and selling out for that bankster dough. Who needs Republicans anymore when you can just buy the other party?

Last Saturday, several thousand protesters surrounded the Hong Kong legislature while it was in session, and your humble correspondent was there.

Picture the scene: inside Hong Kong's "Congress" building, a bunch of non-elected government hacks is shoving through a 67 billion dollar government high speed rail project. The rail project will be the most expensive railway in the world, and is going to cost every Hong Kong citizen $1,270 dollars, while lining the pockets of the construction and property cartels. A plucky opposition minority of united democrats is in its 25th hour of filibuster to stall off the bill's passage.

A joyous moment from a great Haitian band, @1989. How delicious is the sound of Tabou Combo? " When this vinyl got to Port au Prince...We were walking with the sound in our mouth."

My colleague Rebecca MacKinnon explains why that's a good thing.

To be honest, I was shocked that Google decided to get a spine and stop censoring its service into China. (They'd been blocking info that was "sensitive" to the Chinese government, like Tienanmen Square).

Kudos to 'em. In 2005, the guys at Yahoo, as you may recall, actually opened their files to the Chinese government, and gave the Chinese private emails that helped convict a journalist of "divulging state secrets."

They've dubbed themselves the "Post-80s Movement", and while I can't support their choice of music (sappy commercial Chinese pop), I give major kudos to the young Hong Kong protestors for their command of branding, image and propaganda!

But this time it's very, very clear what's happening in Hong Kong--People Power. Yesterday about 10,000 protesters turned up outside the Legislature for a 6 hour marathon. The immediate goal is to stop the government from pushing through legislation for a 67 billion dollar railroad boondoggle--a 26 kilometer link to China's high speed rail network that will cost 2.57 billion per kilometer (that's $10,000 dollars per taxpayer) and destroy Tsoi Yuen, a hamlet with a name almost too perfect for this narrative: "Vegetable Garden village."

I'm lucky to be witnessing the birth of an engaged--and enraged Hong Kong civil society.

What's exciting is that Hong Kong people don't have this in their culture. It's a head down, mind your own business kind of place. Yet people are coming out in numbers to demand that a village be saved, that taxpayers stop being skimmed by the powerful, and that the environment and public space be respected.

May their spirit inspire us to organize creatively so we can take on the devils in our own vegetable garden. (BTW, the "devil" on the poster in that familiar graphic design is Henry Tang, Hong Kong's Chief Secretary.)

There's a good summary of the background issues in the WSJ, and you can find my whole report on the demo and lots more pictures of this Asian version of People's Park over on Learning Cantonese.

I've been involved for some years now with the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Well, it's just started to really heat up here in a way that gives me hope --yeah, yeah, I know--that a similar activism might eventually come together on the other distant shore I call home.

The old guard of HK political activists, who've been pushing for universal suffrage for the last ten years have been joined by a young legion of economic activists, who are angry at the tycoons, banksters and developers.

What's exciting is that the new kids have put the pieces together, and they get that political empowerment, economic equality, and quality of life issues (i.e. big skyscrapers that block air and sunlight, lack of public space, abuse of eminent domain) are all part of the same struggle.

And they're really shaking things up! Until now, the demos in HK have been fairly wussy and overly deferential, even by US standards. But the kids are storming the barricades. (NOTE: I added some pix in the comments after the jump) As one of the old guard leaders said today. "Even the Buddha gets angry." There have been several demonstrations in the last few weeks, and a big one is scheduled for tomorrow.

Most of the linky goodness on this, alas, is behind the pay firewall of the South China Morning Post. But I'll pull and paste some excerpts from today's article in the jump.

Corruption, nepotism and 400 kgs. of fruit.

Meanwhile, old PM Thaksin Shinawatra's popularity is on the downs, and new PM Abhisit Vejjajiva's is soaring.

Chinese academic Liu Xiao Bo believes in democracy, human rights and reforming China's corrupt political system through political change. How bad is that?

In China, bad. Over Christmas, behind closed doors, and with a complete domestic press blackout, the Chinese government convicted Liu Xiao Bo of "inciting subversion" and sent him to prison for 11 years.

From Pravda:

“What we witnessed was truly a perverse form of competition,” said Ronald Congemi, the former chief executive of Star Systems, one of the regional PIN-based networks that has struggled to compete with Visa. “They competed on the basis of raising prices. What other industry do you know that gets away with that?”

....

“A dollar is no longer a dollar in this country,” said Mallory Duncan, senior vice president of the National Retail Federation, a trade association. “It’s a Visa dollar. It’s only worth 99 cents because they take a piece of every one.”

Got this email today from the Freelancer's Union in New York, which is about the only option me and my freelancing colleagues in IT, online and print writing, graphic design, etc. have for affordable health insurance. No surprises here.

What annoys me is that the union took so long to figure this out:

Unfortunately, federal legislation, as drafted, will put freelancers’ options for affordable health insurance at risk by taking away our right to group together the way traditional employees do.

New York’s freelancers will get pushed into the individual market, where we’ll be forced to pay more money for less coverage. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates you’ll be paying 10-13% more for your health coverage with health reform.

No one could ever have predicted! From the NYT :

Drug Makers Raising Prices Before Reform

In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.

And I sure will have a lot of trouble paying for those drugs on my credit card that--thanks to the convenient lag in implementing credit "reform"--now has 29 % interest!

From the U.S. based Iranian scholar Behzad Yahgmaian, some optimistic updates:

The presidential election of June 12, which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared to have won, gave birth to a grassroots movement that has been evolving politically, embracing broader segments of the population, discovering new methods of struggle, and refusing to die despite widespread government violence.

It has bewildered the conservatives, surpassed the political limits of the reformists, and become a wildcard with a potential to change Iran in profound ways.

The Swiss arrest of Roman Polanski on his outstanding California sex charge is most curious. Why now, after 32 years? Presumably Polanski, who's been living in France all this time, has been to Switzerland many times before this. I'm not saying that Polanski deserves to get a pass on his bad behavior. But there are far bigger scoundrels and criminals loose in the world (hello Dick! Donald! Wolfie!).

So I'm suspicious. And wondering what the international politics of this are. Perhaps the Swiss are suddenly going all law-and-order on things related to the U.S. because of the recent UBS investigations.

Theories?

I'm headed back to Hong Kong next week. I just missed Sarah Palin's foreign policy debut, but I'll be getting back in time to catch the "celebrations" for the 60th anniversary of the Chinese revolution. HK should be low key, but in China they are literally moving heaven and earth to make everything perfect.
A friend sent me this music video from a local Hong Kong band called "My Little Airport." They've written a pretty cool birthday song for China:

There's a revival of West Side Story playing on Broadway now. To add a more authentic feel to the Leonard Bernstein/Steven Sondheim classic, the producers had some of the songs translated into Spanish. But now they've decided to put some back into English:

The producers never formally asked audience members about the Spanish lyrics, let alone held a focus group, Mr. Seller and Mr. Laurents said. But Mr. Seller noted that, in postperformance conversations with friends and audience members, he was surprised by how many people had never seen “West Side Story,” with music by Leonard Bernstein, onstage or its film version and lacked a strong grasp of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which was the basis for the plot.

This depresses me on so many levels I almost don't know where to begin. But let me try.

Actually, not so happy--Basque journalist Karlos Zurutuza explains why in his newest dispatch from the stormy province in western Pakistan.

Zurutuza had to sneak into Balochistan, because Pakistan does not allow journalists in there without a permit.

One of the reasons they don't want journalists poking around is that they might investigate what's happened to the Baloch who live in and around the mountain where Pakistan's been testing its nuclear arsenal:

My friend Rebecca MacKinnon has a great post up now on her blog about the Chinese government's persecution and silencing of the liberal lawyers at Gongmeng (China's ACLU). Much linky goodness. A must read for anyone interested in current Chinese affairs. Which, since China kind of owns our #$ss, should be all of us, right?

This very informative article does a nice job of connecting the dots.

WASHINGTON - Despite evidence implicating current Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani in a major military assistance program for Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan over the past few years, senior officials of the Barack Obama administration persuaded the US Congress to extend military assistance to Pakistan for five years without any assurance that the Pakistani assistance to the Taliban had ended.

Follow the easy flow chart:

Last Wednesday morning around 5am, Xu Zhiyong, a Chinese lawyer, legal scholar, legislator and human rights activist was grabbed by public security police at his Beijing apartment and hustled away. He has not been seen or heard from since. His blog's gone silent.