Q: What happens when freak snowstorms strand hundreds of thousands of angry Chinese in railway stations on a major holiday?

A: This—

(Hat tip: Tim Johnson) 

We've heard a lot about how folks around the world are tuning in eagerly to the '08 campaign in the United States. But what about China? "Sufei" from Sexy Beijing wanted to know what the Chinese "man on the street" thinks about the U.S. elections. The answer? Not much:

Judging from the video, Chuck Norris is not exactly a household name in China, either.

Fox News sent the police sirens after FP in this substantial segment from The Fox Report with Shepard Smith. Check out the interview with Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Drug Policy Alliance and author of "Think Again: Drugs" in our current issue.

In the piece, Nadelmann argues that the so-called "war on drugs" has been a costly failure that has only bolstered the fortunes of drug lords and created narcostates like Afghanistan. Legalization just might be the answer, he says, and it's more politically realistic than you might think. But Fox is having none of it:

Don't worry, Ethan. We're good for the bail money.

Please, block traffic. Tie up intersections. Drive down the wrong side of the street. No, those weren't my prized rose bushes—and they were clearly in your way. I know you were in a hurry. Do whatever you like. Be my guest.

Behold, the presidential SUV:

I don't know what's scarier, the 4,000 rounds-per-minute machine gun, or the Miami Vice background music.

(Hat tip: Gizmodo)

Since the 2004 campaign, more and more U.S. politicians have latched on to YouTube as a way to "go viral" and reach the increasingly powerful "netroots". Witness Democratic presidential long shot Bill Richardson's clever new job interview ad, which has already been viewed over 50,000 times since Tuesday. And as Kevin Drum cynically observed yesterday, the real prize for the attention-starved New Mexico governor will be when the New York Times writes "another thumbsucker about the power of new media, complete with chin scratching quotes from [new media gurus] Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis."

Well, here's something altogether new for the gurus to ponder: politicians who wish to be journalists. Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey recently debuted his own YouTube channel, where he has so far advertised not himself, but ... YouTube. Here's Markey's interview with YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley:

Andy Richter sure gets around. Two weeks ago, Passport noted the late-night comedian's eerie resemblance to Swedish Defense Minister Mikael Odenberg. But Richter may have had a prior second job—as first president of the Russian Federation. Take a look at the video tribute to Yeltsin below, this week's Thursday Video: 

Could Andy Richter have actually secretly ended the Cold War?

On August 5, 1966, Bian Zhongyun was brutally attacked and tortured by 10th-grade students at her own school in Beijing, where she was a vice-principal. At the age of fifty, she was an early casualty in China's Cultural Revolution. A documentary film about her murder, "Though I am Gone," has reportedly caused the suspension of the Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, which was scheduled to begin tomorrow.

In yet another demonstration of the YouTube Effect, someone has posted the entire film on YouTube, broken up into ten parts. Below is the graphic first section of the movie, this week's Thursday Video:

In case you missed it, here's Richard Holbrooke, former FP managing editor and mastermind of the Dayton Peace Accords, brokering a truce between Stephen Colbert and Willie Nelson on the Colbert Report last week:

In January 2004, Reem Riyashi blew herself up at a Gaza border crossing. She killed four Israelis. The 22-year-old also left her two children, aged 18 months and three years, motherless.

Yesterday, al-Aqsa TV, the television mouthpiece of Hamas, broadcast an imagined song from one of Riyashi's children to her dead mother as a music video during a children's program. Palestinian Media Watch has posted the clip, this week's Thursday Video, online. The video ends with the kid finding her mom's stash of explosives and vowing to follow her:

Send greetings to our Messenger [Muhammad] and tell him:
'Duha loves you.'
My love will not be [merely] words.
I am following Mommy in her steps.

Hamas, incidentally, runs the Palestinian education ministry.

China is not known for its moderation. From mammoth construction projects to extreme public health measures, the government's reaction to perceived problems or obstacles is usually big, fast, and mildly frightening to outside observers. So, it should come as no surprise that official concern about overly-enthusiastic Internet use by teenagers has come to its logical conclusion in teen bootcamps. This week's Thursday Video, via China Digital Times, is a look inside one of the camps: 

There are two possible interpretations here. One is that this is a classic overreaction to a small-scale social problem. The Chinese government reflexively distrusts the chaos and independent nature of the Internet, and it's a small step from there to equating the medium with dangerously substances like alcohol and heroin. (On Monday, Passport noted a host of other ways China is showing its fear of the online world.)

A more menacing possibility lurks, however. China has recently proclaimed a new military doctrine dubbed "informationalization," which basically means dragging the military into the Internet age. It is also actively seeking ways to counter U.S. technological superiority. What better way to do this than to recruit obsessive and accomplished online gamers? The military will give these kids purpose, discipline, and exposure to sunlight for the first time. In return, they may be able to draw on their talents in a future cyber conflict.

Turkey has again put itself in the news in an unflattering light and inadvertently demonstrated the absurdity of its censorship laws. For some reason, a Turkish court found it necessary to intervene in a video feud, of sorts, between Turkish and Greek posters on YouTube, by banning access to the site. The Greeks alleged that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic, harbored homosexual proclivities. Patriotic Turks retorted that this was untrue, and that in fact the Greek nation itself bore these characteristics. Of course, they didn't use such high-falutin' language. The debate would be pretty familiar to any twelve-year-old, though.

YouTube has bowed to Turkish pressure and removed the original inflammatory post. What remains are a large number of strangely overwrought Turkish defenses of their hero—one of the less offensive of which is this week's Thursday Video:

Ordinarily, a ridiculous exchange like this stays in the schoolyard. Those posting may actually still be in grade school, for all that anyone knows. With the global commons that is emerging online, however, governments prone to meddling with free speech no longer know what to leave on the kiddie table and what to treat as dangerous. Which just serves to illustrate how ridiculous government concern over "insulting Turkishness," as the law phrases it, are. Adults in a free society should not be so delicate as to require government protection from juvenile insults to their nationality or religion. Taking these taunts so seriously only brings them greater attention and dramatizes a deep insecurity in those who feel so insulted.

A song about a Boer general from the turn of the 20th century is provoking a pretty heated controversy in South Africa. "De la Rey," a catchy rock ballad by solo artist Bok Van Blerk, and this week's Thursday Video, portrays the travails of a young Boer soldier fighting the British and yearning for his general's leadership:

South Africa's Afrikaner minority has seized on the song as a statement of pride and identity. Others are troubled by the divisiveness that it implies. They have a point. It's understandable that a group feeling its loss of status would want to reach back for icons and moments in history to be proud of. But, aside from the fact that chanting a general's name is a strange habit in a democracy, the cause that De la Rey fought for was less than commendable. Sure, the Boers were resisting British imperialism, but it was for the sake of their own right to marginalize and exploit the African population without British interference. 

Striking a balance between pride in one's people and acknowledgment of historical crimes is always difficult; Americans still struggle with how to evaluate slave-holding founders and populist crusaders against the Indian population. South Africa's sins are more recent; the amount of feeling this little ditty has called forth is just the latest in a number of signs that the divisions they created might still be deeper than it seems on the surface.

Lyrics (translated by Mail and Guardian newspaper) below the fold:

We're always hearing terrible news about the Middle East—bombings, sectarian violence, religious intolerance, government repression. But what about all the good news that doesn't get covered?

That's what Comedy Central's Maz Jobrani wants to know in today's Thursday Video:

When not busy developing nuclear weapons or purchasing oversized garden animals, Kim Jong Il uses his spare time to cultivate a "robust" animation industry in North Korea. It ain't exactly Warner Bros.—the cartoons are designed to "implant into the minds of children warm patriotism and towering hatred for the enemy," according to official news agency KCNA. I'm not sure if that's also the underlying message in today's Thursday Video, episode 27 of the hit series A Squirrel and a Hedgehog. Politics aside, the technical and artistic skill is pretty impressive for a country that can't even feed itself:

The skill of North Korean animators is so well-regarded, in fact, that South Korean studios often farm out work to them. The industry is one of the few legitimate sources of foreign currency for Kim Jong Il's rogue regime.

Even more advanced computer animation is sometimes done in the hermit kingdom. As early as 2002 North Korea was producing episodes of the popular Lazy Cat Dinga, a Korean series evidently inspired by the American Garfield. The cat's taste for delivery pizza and lazy indulgence mean the show hasn't been broadcast in the North, which of course has neither of those things. But in South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia, Dinga has been the smiling face of one of the few exports of a very unsmiling government:

Need a crash course on Web 2.0 and why it's changing the world? Look no further.

(Hat tip: BoingBoing)

Bill Gates visited Romania yesterday to hold a joint press conference with Romanian President Traian Basescu, marking the opening of a new Microsoft global technical centre. 

But Gates was apparently left speechless when Basescu explained how Romania's IT sector was built on a foundation of pirated software. 

"Piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania. It helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world ... Ten years ago, it was an investment in Romania's friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates."

Apparently Basescu hasn't seen Microsoft's latest anti-piracy cartoon, "Genuine Fact Files."

Yesterday, President Putin used a wide-ranging and lengthy press conference to forcefully rebut growing criticism of his country's energy policies. Supply cut-offs and price increases, he argued, aren't an attempt to batter states in the near-abroad into toeing Russia's line; they're merely the rational application of market principles. It's actually a little more complicated than that, writes French energy banker Jérôme Guillet in a new Web exclusive for FP, but the big picture is that Europeans are unfairly blaming Putin for their own mistakes.

Energy isn't the only area in which Russia is causing concern. The Bond-esque intrigue surrounding the poisoning of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko got a little deeper this week when word leaked that the British government might point the finger at a former KGB officer. But during the press conference, Putin dismissed concerns about possible Russian state involvement in the affair:

He was not privy to any secrets, he had been convicted in the Russian Federation for abuse of office, specifically, for beating people when arresting them when he was a security man and for stealing explosives," Mr Putin said. "All the negative things he could have said about his previous employer, he had already said a long time ago."

Which makes our Thursday Video this week all the more intriguing. In it, Litvinenko makes an appearance from beyond the grave—as a shooting target for Russian special forces:

If he was so insignificant, why did someone feel strongly enough to use his face for target practice?

Maybe the war on terrorism is just provoking nostalgia for the clear-cut lines of the Cold War. But, with journalists turning up dead in Moscow, KGB hands running everything, and Red Army surplus missiles making their way to a certain U.S. adversary, it certainly seems like a resurgent Russia is getting back its old swagger:

(Video hat tip: Russia Blog) 

Was it just us, or was Dick Cheney texting during the big speech? What was so important?

Our guess:

Cheney: U R soooo lucky.

Gonzalez: Tell me about it.

Cheney: I 4got, no red wine. Furniture @ [undisclosed location] isn't scotch-guarded.

Gonzalez: n/p. btw, I tried on your power ties... So where do you keep the launch codes?

Cheney: Check next to the Wii.

Gonzalez: I still haven't spotted Hastert.

Cheney: Denny, where R U?

HouseSpeaker4Eva: I can't see. I'm sitting behind Dikembe Mutombo.

Cheney: Yo, we miss U up here big guy.

Powered by Chinese engines and firing Chinese precision−guided missiles, the locally built Jian−10 has "allowed China to become the fourth country in the world" to have developed such a capability, "narrowing the gap with advanced nations," boasted Geng Ruguang, deputy general manager of the plane's manufacturer, Avic−I.

The latest fruit of a military modernization drive that has produced an indigenous Chinese nuclear attack submarine, early warning aircraft, frigates and destroyers, cruise missiles, and computerized command and control systems, the Jian−10 is "a decisive step by China toward becoming an aviation power," the official Xinhua news agency declared.

As the world's eyes focus on Baghdad, problems in other parts of the world have a stubborn way of plodding along, whether or not anyone takes notice. In Bangladesh, a fragile democracy of nearly 150 million souls, caretaker president Iajuddin Ahmed has just resigned as "chief adviser" in the face of a general strike and growing protests.  Our Thursday Video takes you to the streets of Dhaka, where violence between police and protesters is getting increasingly out of control:

Demonstrations by the opposition Awami League have thrown much of the country into chaos; the League claims that the outgoing government of the Bangladesh National Party has rigged a general election due in two weeks. The UN and the EU have both left, claiming that the deteriorating situation make it impossible to hold a free and fair vote as scheduled. A state of emergency had been declared by President Ahmed last night. 

Why does this matter? As a country made up of mostly moderate Muslims, Bangladesh is an important counterweight to more politically repressive regimes elsewhere in the Islamic world. Countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Turkey, when their political systems work, show that democracy and Islam are not mutually exclusive. They also preclude the emergence of religiously-based terrorist groups by better channeling dissent. The success or failure of democracy in places like Bangladesh could reverberate in other countries, like nearby Pakistan and distant Iraq, that occupy more real estate on newspaper front pages.