Boy, you've got to have a vindictive streak twenty miles wide to even consider that punishment as fitting the crime. What's so insidiously rotten about the system is the sham of having a "jury." A jury of one's peers exists under the Anglo-Saxon legal system to protect the rights of the accused. It's always been that way. A bunch of army officers are in no way an impartial jury. First, they tend to see this whole thing as a war, and they are trained to ignore, bend, or break rules in order to win such things. Second, many have friends and colleagues who have fought, been wounded, or killed in Iraq, and way too many of these guys cannot or will not differentiate between our invasion of Iraq and the "Global War on Terrorism." So thier impartiality is questionable at best. And third, if they overcome issues one and two raised above, they are still career military men, and subject to retaliation by those who are above them in the chain of command and don't like how they voted. Such incidents have already been documented (historically minded folks need only look at what happened to the few officers who had the guts to vote Not Guilty in the Dreyfus Case).

What is needed, if you insist on this military tribunal system, is a senior officer from the JAG Corps acting as a sole judge of the case. Such a person will still face pressure, but they have some understanding of what law and custom actually are under our system of justice, and cannot be as easily coerced into handing down an "acceptable" verdict.

I am not for giving China a pass. What I didn't like was quoting some Brit criticizing China and then thinking you've done something valuable. King is usually a good reporter. This was lazy and sloppy. If the average American demands that his or her country be represented as something more than the sum of its more miserable actions, China is entitled to the same courtesy. It's easy for some British dude to throw stones at China. It's even easier to pick up his words, cut and paste them, and think you yourself have said something important about China and the Olympics. What's hard is to contextualize a serious problem.

China wants to manage great change and a huge economic upheaval without the same kinds of troubles that Europe and America had dealing with "The Great Transformation" (as Polanyi called it). Remember, our deadly Civil War was in part a reaction to the rise of a new kind of economy and society in the North and the friction this caused with the South. Europe had 1789, 1848, and 1917/18. China wants the new economy and consumer society, all without social and political upheaval. The cost is a massive dose of oppression (but comparatively fewer deaths than in the European/America cases).

This is not a choice I endorse. In fact, I think it's a lousy tradeoff: surrender your freedom, gain economically. But I think the same is true with our "security vs. freedom" tradeoffs since 9/11. In all this, I may be wrong, but I am consistent. But wagging my finger self-rightously at the Chinese doesn't help much. Saying to all the world that freedom is a good thing, and then practicing what we preach may prove a damn sight more effective, because when foreigners point their fingers at us, we don't reform our actions, we circle the wagons and condemn anyone who "sides" with the foreigners.

Your point is valid. However, is the games were being held in Los Angeles this summer, and a British guy wrote an article in The Guardian and all he could talk about was post-9/11 detentions, the No Fly List, Falluja, Bagram, Guantanamo, Abu Graib, Jose Padilla, redition, secret CIA prisons, and the NSA pissing on the FISA law, and our world-leading prison-industrial complex and fondness for the death penalty, the average American would NOT be amused. In fact, most Americans would be irate and tell that foreign gentleman to fuck off.

I'm not even remotely saying that living in China doesn't suck, or that it is in any way better than living in the US. But, you know, that old saying about glass houses may apply at least a little to George Bush's America.

I'll give you serious. First, you need to explain why the Republicans who ran the House, Senate, and White House in the 2000s failed to check this problem. Once answered, you can then pontificate.

As for the crisis, I say this: everyone MUST stop trying to reflate this thing. That means no money for the people who will be foreclosed; that mdeans no money to bail out the stockholders of the finacial institutions. Cold Turkey, my friend. You got the guts to suggest that your country club buddies bight the bullet and lose out like the schmucks who took out mortages they couldn't pay for? I say, let it slide.

The banks and the homeowners should be offered this stark alternative to going down the tubes: houses will immediately be reassessed at 10% below the current market value. Then, the bank will right down the value of the mortgages they hold to those real numbers. Finally, the banks will be offered liquidity if they refinance the mortages at these new lower prices. The homeowners will then have to restart their payments from zero, lose all they have paid in already, and accept a fixed-rate 30 year mortgage on the government's terms, or vacate the premisiss. Thus, the homeowners and the lenders will have to eat it. Instead of socializing the costs, we privatize them. Now, all you free marketeers, tell me how this is a worse solution than the one on agreed to?