china

Eighteen years ago, when CNN really was a great news station, I watched events unfold on live TV at Tiananmen Square.

It started in hope...

(photo from Asianamericans.com)

But ended in the kind of massacre one would expect from a dictatorship like China...

(Photo from CBC news, Canada)

Eighteen years ago today.

I am not an expert on China. Far from it. But I know hatred of the body when I see it. And it is just as ugly in China, or Afghanistan, or Iran, as it is in the United States.

This photo will give me nightmares. Because sometimes, I think that we, as a nation, are about 15 minutes away from this type of bullshit ourselves.

SHANGHAI, Dec. 12 - For people who saw the event on television earlier this month, the scene was like a chilling blast from a past that is 30 years distant: social outcasts and supposed criminals - in this case 100 or so prostitutes and a few pimps - paraded in front of a jeering crowd, their names revealed, and then driven away to jail without trial.

The police kept watch over the public shaming. Suspects were allowed to partly hide their faces with masks.

The act of public shaming was intended as the first step in a two-month campaign by the authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen to crack down on prostitution.

Imagine. Rounded-up prostitutes--but not their johns--paraded before a crowd in order to be humiliated and shamed. So what? So they'll never be forced to resort to prostitution to put food on their table again?

Many bloggers think of Lou Dobbs as a wanker. I have always thought of him as a markets journalist with more than a few interesting things to say.

Can I hear a witness for "faith-based free trade"? Oh yeah, baby, preach it! :

Eye-glazing stuff, international trade. But the consequences of faith-based free-trade will be eye-popping in the disaster it wreaks on our economy and working Americans. The facts are anything but dull: For 30 consecutive years the United States has run a trade deficit, and our trade deficit has surged to record highs in each of the past four years. Our monthly deficits have reached record levels in two of the past three months.

Our current account deficit -- the broadest measure of international trade -- is on track to approach $1 trillion this year. And our current account deficit is almost 7 percent of our nation's gross domestic product, considerably above the threshold at which Federal Reserve studies have acknowledged our economy must make policy adjustments or face major financial crisis. We're borrowing about $3 billion a day just to pay for our imports, and our trade debt now stands at $5 trillion.

We will no longer have to be patient to see the impact of these faith-based policies in free trade. Signs are already beginning to mount that a reckoning is nearing. Our trading partners in Europe are counseling "vigilance" in the currency markets, as their anxiety rises with the value of the Euro against the dollar. For the first time, the Chinese government is publicly expressing its concern about the more than $1 trillion it holds in reserves.

But most disturbing of all are the comments of new Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who said in London Tuesday, "A strong dollar is clearly in our nation's interest and I feel very good today about the strength of the U.S. economy," as the U.S. dollar hit a 20-month low against the Euro. Treasury secretaries are not paid for their candor, but Paulson's rejection of our current reality won't bolster his credibility with either our trading partners or the new Democratic-led Congress.

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When I travelled earlier this year to Amsterdam and walked into an H&M store, I was hit by the painful realization that having dollars in my pocket didn't and couldn't get me far in the European city. A sweater that costs me 39 dollars in the US costs me 39 euros in Holland. Fair trade for a bargain seeker? Of course not.