Well back in my blogspot days, I mused that Schapelle Leigh Corby - an Australian now being tried for drug smuggling in Indonesia - was possibly guilty of something worse than smuggling pot. I said she may have been guilty of stupid business practices:

..there seems to be no market rationale for what she allegedly did. According to the United Nations 2004 World Drug Report (large pdf file
pp. 378-380) cannabis costs US$1.10 per gram in Indonesia and US$19.20
per gram in Australia. Effectively, it would lose almost 95% of its
value as soon as it were delivered.

Anyone who would smuggle drugs to Bali is an incredibly large dumbass.

Jakartass, however, seems to think she may have been servicing a niche market:

I surmised on Tuesday that Australians in Bali may prefer their own home grown. Apparently, I was right.

A
Balinese drug dealer who has spent time in jail said he had smoked the
Australian ’skunk’ many times with friends from Italy, Germany and
Australia but had never bought or sold any.

He recognised the marijuana as Australian as it was made up of large
flowers or buds, while the marijuana he sells from Aceh in north
Sumatra or from Malang in East Java has much smaller buds and a lot of
leaf mixed in.

The history of Glutter.org, awaiting a democratic Hong Kong…

From the first link:

SANTA CRUZ — China doesn’t want you to know about Yan Sham-Shackleton.
She’s the 30-something graduate of UC Santa Cruz whose blog has been nominated by Reporters Without Borders for a free speech award.
Yan’s blog, at www.glutter.org, touches on the democratic movement in Hong Kong, human rights violations in China and Taiwan independence.

The Swanker welcomes the planned tsunami early warning system as a way to prevent loss of life, although he sees some hazards emerging from the reconstruction effort:

Initial infrastructure costs are estimated at around US$120 million,
with almost half of the funds coming from Germany.  A small investment
for long-term peace of mind to help ensure that a humanitarian disaster
of the magnitude of December 26 will never again break on Indonesian
shores.
Unfortunately, there seems to be less foresight in the sourcing of materials to rebuild homes for Acehnese survivors:

The timber for the new houses is being logged illegally in the mist-shrouded mountains rising in the distance.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago.
Less than two years ago, some 200 people died when a landslide and
flashflooding struck the famous orang utan resort of Bukit Lawang,
situated in the highlands of Gunung Leuser National Park on the border
between Aceh and North Sumatra provinces.  Rampant deforestation of the
hillsides was blamed as the prime culprit. 

Over at the Old Revolution, a fascinating look at Japan’s new blog-based journalism and its prospects:

News blogs have been the rage of late not only in the U.S. but also around the world. The incursion of blogs into public space, however, has had different impact in different countries.
In Japan, with a relatively closed system of print journalism (a legacy of the wartime propaganda machine), one would expect that blog journalism is taking a different path. (For a good overview on this topic, see Japan Media Review’s article last year on the discussion of ethics among journalist-turned bloggers).
I just encounterd a blog provacatively titled “The-Net-will-Kill-Newspapers Blog” (with the word “kusanone” 草の根, or “grassroots” in its url). Its author, Tsuruaki Yukawa, is a senior journalist at Jiji Press, a major news agency in Japan.
Fed up with the world of Japanese journalism, Yukawa began blogging last year with one simple wish: how to merge “grassroots journalism” with traditional news media.

Discovered through Andrea, a very sharp blog on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations from the Aseanist. Here are his/her thoughts on the embarrassment of Myanmar/Burma’s impending presidency:

I’m starting to wonder, though, whether a Myanmar presidency might be a good thing for ASEAN. First, it will force the member states to internalize fully the costs of carrying the junta. A boycott by its most prominent non-Asian dialogue partners and a possible delay in implementing E.U.-funded regional integration projects would drive home to member states capitals how much of a liability Yangon has become for the region. Second, it could remind the member states that they have to generate their own resources for ASEAN as soon as posssible. The organization remains so dependent on outside funding and support that a Western boycott is a real threat. It shouldn’t be for any self-respecting regional organization. Finally, a boycott could actually be a welcome respite from the diplomatic circus of meetings and fora and dialogues that can be distracting from the task of making tough decisions about integrations.

Of course, all this is a little like putting lipstick on a pig. I don’t think a Myanmar presidency is desirable. But there can be a silver lining.

Don’t shed a tear for South Korean makers of tear gas and other anti-riot gear. While the downturn in protest activity from the heady days of the 80’s and 90’s has cut local sales, Korean companies have always been adept at exporting.

South Korean makers of tear gas and water cannons, used by riot police to quell demonstrations, are turning to foreign police agencies for sale to replace shrinking local demand, police and company officials said Thursday.
“Companies that make police equipment contact us for help in their marketing to foreign police,” said Park Jung-joon from the National Police Agency, who deals with overseas relations.
“They invite foreign police officers over and ask us to demonstrate how to operate the equipment,” he said.

The Communist Party seems to have learned little from its mishandling of information during the 2003 Sars outbreak.

From the Horse’s Mouth:

Yesterday Imagethief mentioned that China’s media had reported on cases of Bird Flu, but failed to say anything about the recent Foot-and-Mouth outbreaks…
Today the Taipei Times has a report that Chinese authorities have locked down access to villages outside of Beijing to halt the spread of Foot-and-Mouth disease…
Apparently the Chinese government didn’t learn a damn thing from SARS, because they still insist on being ignorant rather than warning the public when serious health issues pose a risk to the people.
When will losing "face" to take a backseat to losing lives in China?

Horse’s Mouth may actually be too kind on the CPC. If this report from the Google News-approved Recombinomics is to be believed, China’s media isn’t reporting on the avian flu either:

The report above would seem
to indicate a news blackout of some sort was in place for Qinghai
province.  The sequence of events is cause for significant
concern.  Initial reports
of dead geese at the Qinghai Lake Nature Reserve indicated that 178 bar
headed geese had died, but not of bird flu.  Recent media reports
indicated that the dead geese were H5N1 positive and the OIE report of
May 21 indicated there were 519
dead waterfowl involving five species, including the bar-headed geese.
Official comments from China
indicated the 519 deaths were isolated and there were no deaths in farm
birds or people.  Promed then carried a report
indicating 6 people had died and the Chinese language report
indicated they were tourists and the names and point of origin of 4
fatalities were given.

Rebecca MacKinnon weighs in on Nicholas Kristof’s NYT piece on how blogs may bring down the Chinese communist Party - respectfully and forcefully arguing that the opposite may be true:

The point is, democracy isn’t the only thing that can sprout and grow on the internet. So can intolerance, xenophobia and belligerence.

And those qualities – which are permitted and even encouraged by the government to fester in Chinese cyberspace – may help the Chinese Communist Party stay in power. Last fall I wrote a long rant in response to cyber-utopians (whose ranks Kristof appears to have joined) and connectivity idealists like Thomas Barnett (of The Pentagon’s New Map fame) in which I warned:

Don’t assume that the expansion of freedom of speech in Chinese cyberspace will necessarily strengthen international peace and brotherly love between China and other countries - the opposite is also possible.

Recent anti-Japanese protests certainly make that clear. The fact that Chinese cyberspace was cheering right after the 9/11 attacks (as Kristof himself reported) is another stark example.

Don’t expect the Chinese blogosphere to bring down the Chinese Communist Party any time soon.

EastSouthNorthWest contrasts ‘perp walks’ and media coverage of the accused in China, Hong Kong and the US. If you enjoy privacy, Hong Kong is likely the best place to be arrrested.:

The photo with the hoods came from Hong
Kong.  There are two considerations. First, these individuals are only
suspects who are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty, and they may yet
be acquitted.  The hoods are there to protect their privacy.
Secondly, they may have to go through a police line-up to be
identified by witnesses, and showing their faces may contaminate the
identification process.  These points do not appear to be considered in
mainland China.

The FEER’s Travellers’ tales blog, meanwhile, notes that trials in democratic Northeast Asia have much in common with trials in China.:

If you were falsely accused of a crime, would you prefer the trial be held in:
A. China
B. South Korea, or
C. Japan
Give up? The correct answer is D. None of the above.
That’s because in all three countries, the conviction rate is 99%. You have virtually no chance of being acquitted, because prosecutors have incredible power over the trial process and judges trustingly assume the prosecutors wouldn’t have brought a case if they weren’t sure the accused was guilty.