When Judges Make Foreign Policy By NOAH FELDMAN, New York Times.

谈及国内的奶粉事件，温家宝说，中央政府在得知奶粉问题后，第一时间迅速向国内公开，向世界卫生组织公开，向港澳台地区公开，向有关国家公开，这是一个负责任政府的表现。

 http://news.sohu.com/20080925/n259744973…

说凤凰自行车质量不好就是攻击文化大革命

1976 社会生活真相揭查

1970年1月14日，《人民日报》上刊登的河南岳县天然油石厂的“天然油石”广告成为“文革” 中最后一个广告，“文革”期间再无广告出现，一直到 1979年，广告才在媒体上恢复刊登。但是凤凰自行车不用广告，整个70年代，它是当时所有家庭 的 “大件”梦想，中国最出名的自行车名牌肯定是“凤凰”，“文革”前的评比中它已经连续多届获得第一名。

已经70多岁的沈德出总觉得，自己一生中最辉煌的经历就是在上海第三自行车工作，而最复杂的经历也是那段——1976年的凤凰自行车厂反复出现“大事件”，而随着大事件，他也一会儿上天，一会儿入地。

“ 那时候走在家门口的弄堂里，我穿着最时兴的灰色的确良衬衫，连里弄主任都热情地招呼我。邻居们更是尊敬地叫我沈家伯伯，其实那时候我也就40多岁——目的 还不是看看我有没有办法搞到自行车票。”30年过去了，他还住在老弄堂里，家中家具显得陈旧，头发却还是梳得油亮。周围的新邻居早就不认识当年这个弄堂里 最辉煌的人，昔日荣光一去不复返。

1976年，当时在第三自行车厂工作的沈德出印象最深的是“换货”风波。“当时凤凰的质量已经靠不住了。整天搞运动，全厂基本上没心情提高质量。” (more…)

China’s Guerrilla War for the Web

by David Bandurski

They have been called the “Fifty Cent Party,” the “red vests” and the “red vanguard.” But China’s growing armies of Web commentators—instigated, trained and financed by party organizations—have just one mission: to safeguard the interests of the Communist Party by infiltrating and policing a rapidly growing Chinese Internet. They set out to neutralize undesirable public opinion by pushing pro-Party views through chat rooms and Web forums, reporting dangerous content to authorities.
(more…)

承诺总是美好的，也是最不靠谱的事情。今天新闻里说，中国有二十多家奶粉企业递交了“质量安全承诺书”，看着我就想笑，这就像小学生对老师说“我今天一定 要放学回家写作业”、运动员对教练员说“我一定要好好比赛”……如果这句话要是经常挂在嘴边，只能说你不懂事，不守规矩，总犯错误。作为一个生产食品的企 业，保证质量安全是最基本的前提，在这个前提下你才能去想如何提高企业效率、利益。但是我们的企业好像把次序颠倒过来了，把追求利益最大化放在了首位，现 在出事了，又开始玩理想主义色彩的承诺游戏，除了让我看到一而再再而三地愚弄公众的智商，看不到别的，而且还特低级。

谢晓东出场——
咱老百姓今儿真啊么真高兴，
承诺书一下，以后吃啥喝啥都不怕。

–王小峰

China: Media Manipulation on the Poisonous Milk Powder Scandal

《经济学家》组织来自全球的读者投票美国大选，目前看起来绝大多数国际“选民”钟情奥巴马。见经济学家网站。

What China’s tainted milk may not bring: lawsuits

Beijing – Li Fangping, a prominent human rights lawyer, is busy organizing victims of the poisoned infant formula scandal rocking China and offering pro bono help. But he is not planning to sue Sanlu, the formula manufacturer – not yet.

A case that in the United States would attract swarms of lawyers eyeing the prospect of millions of dollars in damages is primarily a political, not legal, issue in China.

For reasons to do with China’s still-developing law and its authoritarian political system, lawyers are treading carefully around the Sanlu incident, in which four babies have died and nearly 53,000 suffered kidney problems after drinking adulterated powdered milk.

The government is seeking to forestall legal repercussions by pledging free medical care for all babies affected by the tainted milk. Mr. Li is holding his fire until he sees how fully that pledge is kept.

“We are still waiting to see how the government’s compensation policy works,” he says. “If consumers accept it there will be no need for a lawsuit” against Sanlu.

“Going to court is not the most obvious thing to do in China” to seek remedy, says Jerry Cohen, a top US scholar of Chinese law and professor at New York University.

Instead, Li and more than 70 other lawyers offering their help gratis are concentrating on cases where hospitals are not abiding by the Health Ministry’s public promise that treatment will be free. They are advising the parents of victims about the practicalities of claiming compensation from the government for the expenses they incur in treating their babies.

More than 1,000 parents have called Li and his colleagues, he says, complaining that hospitals around the country are charging to treat babies whose milk-induced kidney stones are below a certain size, or offering only a free scan but not free treatment, or denying babies treatment unless parents pay for a bed.

The central government has promised to pay all the medical costs arising from the scandal, the extent of which is still being discovered: On Sunday a Hong Kong hospital reported the first case outside mainland China of a child found with kidney stones after drinking tainted milk.

But it is unclear whether the authorities intend to reclaim the money they spend from Sanlu. For the time being, Sanlu and 21 other companies whose baby formula was found to include the toxic chemical melamine are offering victims no more than reimbursement for the money they spent on their poisoned product.

“If their children recover, and the government has paid for their healthcare, how can they sue Sanlu?” asks Liu Renwen, a legal scholar at the China Academy of Social Sciences. “I don’t think many will try.”

The 1986 principles of Chinese tort law do not allow citizens to claim damages for moral or spiritual suffering – what US lawyers call “pain and suffering” – only material damages to compensate for medical bills, for example.

That is changing, however, and Chinese courts are increasingly granting moral damages. Four years ago two families from the province of Anhui won damages from another infant formula manufacturer whose substandard milk powder was blamed for their babies’ malnutrition.

Neither won more than $4,300 for their pain and suffering, however, which is hardly a large sum for major milk producers such as Sanlu.

“Damages are so low in China that companies can get away with it,” says Dan Harris, partner in the Seattle law firm HarrisMoure, which specializes in Chinese business law. “Why bother to recall if only 20 people are going to sue you and win $20,000 each?”

At the same time, the Chinese government is nervous about the political impact of legal cases where plaintiffs might air their grievances openly. In the Sanlu case, victims’ parents might ask why the company had been exempted from government inspection of its baby formula, for example.

When parents of children killed by their collapsing schools in the Sichuan earthquake tried to sue the local authorities, courts refused to hear the cases, and officials pressured families to accept out-of-court settlements as compensation for their children’s lives.

“To the extent that they believe this could ventilate well-grounded frustrations with the [ruling Communist] party, the government will not be too eager to allow access to the courts,” says Professor Cohen, the scholar of Chinese law.

“The record so far suggests that the Chinese government may be cautious in limiting access to the courts” in this case, Cohen continues. “Cases in very controversial areas and cases likely to cause class action litigation have not been allowed to proceed.”

Li, as he contemplates the possibility of a lawsuit against Sanlu, says that because “this case has become politicized, it is unclear whether it can be resolved through a legal process.

“The government is trying to ensure social stability, and they do not want to see all the victims’ parents to gather together, so they probably will not allow a class action suit,” he expects.

“Individuals should be able to sue companies,” Li argues, but in the interest of social stability “the government just takes money out of the national budget” to compensate victims of scandals such as the Sanlu incident.

“This kind of remedy will last for quite a while,” he says.

缘何主要在低端？“毒奶”价格玄机

“只要喝的是贵的奶粉，肯定没问题。”这是国内主力奶粉品牌生产企业内部人士告诉本报的结论。

事实似乎正如此：所有被公布的含三聚氰胺奶粉中，七成是400克的普通袋装产品。最新的液态奶抽查中，市场占有率达七成以上的蒙牛、伊利、光明，均被抽查出旗下产品含有三聚氰胺。不过，这些企业的高档液态奶产品都不在黑榜上。 (more…)

WHEN Warren Buffett said that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction”, this was just the kind of crisis the investment seer had in mind. Part of the reason investors are so nervous about the health of financial companies is that they do not know how exposed they are to the derivatives market. It is doubly troubling that the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of American International Group (AIG) came before such useful reforms as a central clearing house for derivatives were in place.

A bankruptcy the size of Lehman’s has three potential impacts on the $62 trillion credit-default swaps (CDS) market, where investors buy insurance against corporate default. All of them would have been multiplied many times had AIG failed too. The insurer has $441 billion in exposure to credit derivatives. A lot of this was provided to banks, which would have taken a hit to their capital had AIG failed. Small wonder the Federal Reserve had to intervene.

–Economist，Derivatives: A nuclear winter?