The writer is Peter Hesler, one of the better journalists writing about China today.

It would seem to make sense that Michael Brown could offer useful advice, given his past experience. Perhaps he is not a particularly good leader, but he probably knows the system and its challenges better than anyone else in a disaster situation.

And hasn't the Sierra Club morphed into some sort of rightist, Libertarian, anti-immigrant organization?

There are probably more bloggers writing meaningless drivel than there are farmers.

Meh. 'US government has totalitarian tendencies: news at 11.'

I wonder why anyone buys her books at all. You can cherry-pick any number of 'ten steps' you like to prove that your country is moving toward fascism. Nothing new, and nothing that hasn't been said before.

It ain't journalism, babe.

The article doesn't say *which* two decades. Anyway, Orwell was anti-Stalinist (which is why he ratted out several Stalinist intellectuals, etc, in the late forties)and anti-fascist. I really wonder if he himself in later years aligned with any "ism" or political movement.