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lena heady butterfly tattoo

lena heady. you might remember her from the excellent short film No Verbal Response (2003) or as Blanche Glover in Possession (2002). She’s currently slated to be in a biopic of the early life of Antonio Vivaldi.

Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn ‘unconscionable’ detention

An American military lawyer and veteran of dozens of secret Guantanamo tribunals has made a devastating attack on the legal process for determining whether Guantanamo prisoners are “enemy combatants”.The whistleblower, an army major inside the military court system which the United States has established at Guantanamo Bay, has described the detention of one prisoner, a hospital administrator from Sudan, as “unconscionable”.His critique will be the centrepiece of a hearing on 5 December before the US Supreme Court when another attempt is made to shut the prison down. So nervous is the Bush administration of the latest attack – and another Supreme Court ruling against it – that it is preparing a whole new system of military courts to deal with those still imprisoned.

fog ville

China’s syndrome of lawless growth

Political and social challenges are mounting. For the CCP, the present transitional period is correctly seen as a period of immense significance in terms of the future of its authoritarian rule in China.The credibility problem for the regime: There is growing evidence that the regime’s authority and capacity to govern are declining (in addition to its legitimacy). This is occurring for two main reasons.First, although it is clear that increasingly allowing the operation of free markets was seen as therapeutic rather than transformative in terms of Chinese politics and society, the authority of the CCP is based on an insecure strategy of inefficiently using resources to fuel a bubble economy. Moreover, the solution - to grant the private sector greater and greater access to this wealth and control of critical sectors of the economy - would accelerate the irrelevance of the party……senior CCP members are increasingly becoming part of the new wealthy elites as a result of their privileged position within a China growing richer. Moreover, as part of the tactic to co-opt the new and emerging urban elites, the senior leadership has neglected the poor and especially rural populations, to their detriment. It is easy to forget that there are still about 900 million rural inhabitants in China (and only 100 million to 150 million in the middle and upper classes).[ ]….Social unrest in China: Officially reported instances of social unrest (involving 15 or more people) have risen from 8700 in 1993 to 87,000 in 2005 (the latest available figures). This is about 240 instances each day.The first important point about the rising instances of social unrest is that it indicates a citizenry that is increasingly defiant or unafraid of the authoritarian coercive apparatus.

It’s great news that the central communist party leadership is losing its power and China is going through its own version of the old Soviet Glasnost, but the void of some strong central stabilizing institutions leaves room for everything from street gangs to organized crime - a worse case scenario would be a Chinese Napoleon stepping up to the plate. This article doesn’t speculate as much as I would have liked on suggestions for the inevitable transition of China to a more open society and how they’re going to maintain their economy and a stable society in the process. The CCP is primarily older men who may be deluding themselves thinking they can have bits of Glasnost while retaining some parts of the old central authoritarianism which they can just wipe out like a Swiss army knife if things get out of hand. That kind of thinking from a nation that owns most of America’s debt ( also goes into why what happens in China effects our everyday finances)would not be a good thing.