We bomb Iraq and send our jobs to these thugs

The Guardian has published a most disturbing piece in their Monday edition.  I think it's fair to speculate that, if the Chinese authorities would  so brazenly murder a dissident, rural activist Lu Banglie, in front of a Western reporter, they must be killing many more outside the feeble light of the world's attention.

 More below.

The men outside shouted among themselves and those in uniform suddenly left. Those remaining started pushing on the car, screaming at us to get out. They pointed flashlights at us, and when the light hit Mr Lu's face, it was as if a bomb had gone off. They completely lost it. They pulled him out and bashed him to the ground, kicked him, pulverised him, stomped on his head over and over again. The beating was loud, like the crack of a wooden board, and he was unconscious within 30 seconds.

They continued for 10 minutes. The body of this skinny little man turned to putty between the kicking legs of the rancorous men. This was not about teaching a man a lesson, about scaring me, about preventing access to the village; this was about vengeance - retribution for teaching villagers their legal rights, for agitating, for daring to hide.

Not only have they countenanced the export of good manufacturing jobs to China, but at least three US presidents have turned a blind eye to the mortgaging of our future to this brutal regime.  And who, pray, will benefit most richly from our blundering in the Middle East?  How many yuans will a barrel of oil be going for in 20 years?

But for now a moment of silence for a brave man.

Mr Lu was a very soft-spoken man, one of those skinny guys who looked like he might start tearing at any moment. Born as a peasant in Baoyuesi village of Bailizhou town in Zhijiang city in Hubei province, he was a people's representative and had been in the village of Taishi since the start of a democratic movement in the area.

That movement, deeply unpopular with the local authorities, has come to be seen as a weather vane for China's tentative steps toward a more representative society. It has led to beatings and mass arrests among its population as well as for observers who ventured into its environs.