Madame Sun Yat-Sen, wife of China's founder, got him a UN relief job. He later joined the Communist Party, became a top cadre, translated Mao, rose in the broadcast department, married twice, played politics on the far left. Twice he was thrown in prison, once by Stalin and once by Mao - getting out only when those men died.

Rittenberg left China after 35 years, in 1980, battered and bruised, sadder and wiser, but with his spirit intact - still delighting in the language and people of China.

Today, the man who urged on Page 1 of the People's Daily to fight "until the international workers revolution proceeds to its conclusion!" is a business consultant in Seattle and Beijing.

China today is no longer the same country, of course, Rittenberg says. The days of no hot water or stoves, and of community baths are over. Chinese are proud that their rising position and voice is gaining its due respect.

But China's spectacular rise carries hidden dangers, mainly for itself, he says. The nation is "at a crossroads, a life-and-death juncture, 70 years after the Long March." The top problem is a lack of imparted moral and spiritual values, one reason for leader Hu Jintao's "harmonious society" program.

"There are a lot of unhappy intellectuals, old party members, young people with high ideals, peasants, and farmers.... They hate the new corruption and the vice ... making money as No. 1.," he says. "They don't have power, are docile and patient - but beware the anger of the patient man. I have to ask about China, 'What does it mean to build a strong economy, but to lose your soul?' " he asks, paraphrasing the New Testament.

Rittenberg's own soul has been extensively searched since leaving China. He admits to mistakes, naivete, and blindness - particularly his zeal in backing the Cultural Revolution, the terror and fear between 1965 and 1975. It was a time of "insane ideology" when people "hardened their hearts and blocked out all human feeling in the name of doing good."

"I didn't see what Mao was doing," he says. "Mao betrayed his own promises. He unleashed the students to destroy his enemies, all in the name of democracy.... I didn't see it then, what 'class struggle' really meant."

Rittenberg's story is that of a man who "loved not wisely, but too well," he suggests. He is no longer a party member.

Rittenberg grew up a lawyer's son at a time when, he says, "No white man in South Carolina had ever been convicted of rape or murder of a black person - they weren't considered human. I felt the world as it was, was not acceptable. When I came to China, I thought they had the answer.... During the Cultural Revolution, I thought, 'Wow, this is the real real new world!'

"If you asked me [then] about Libya, say, I could ... tick off every answer in terms of class analysis. But now I've lost all those answers. I just have questions."

China will develop a democracy, Rittenberg says, but probably in its own time and way. The party's failure in delivering on its promises after 1949 - land for peasants, democracy, and fairness - was inherent in the ideology of Chinese communism.

"I feel it wasn't just Mao, or good or bad people in charge ... but in using dictatorship to achieve democracy, you turn out not to get democracy, just more dictatorship."

Today, he has come to feel that the American revolution was uniquely successful."When you read Washington and Jefferson, it's clear America came much closer to achieving its ideals than France, Russia, or China."

I have just received the grave and deeply dispiriting news from Dr. Saad Eskander that he has closed the Iraq National Library and Archive for the time being as of last Tuesday. On 15 November, he informed me that his institution had been bombed thrice in three weeks, and subjected to sniper fire, including directly into his own office. Another young librarian was recently murdered, and the building had been shelled several times in the few days previous to the closing (by which I assume he meant mortar fire).

Dr. Eskander has been a model of progressive action, has increased his staff substantially, and has striven very hard to gain them training on several fronts, and otherwise restore functioning to an institution that was twice set on fire during the initial period of American occupation. Prompted by a question from me concerning how he was managing to keep such a large staff coming to work under such perilous circumstances, he informed me last spring that he was dedicating 30% of his budget to bussing them all back and forth each day, although three of his drivers had been murdered in the process. However necessary, this was financially untenable as a long-term accommodation to the exigencies of the times. As we all know, the situation has only grown worse since then, and the repeated direct attacks on his institution made it a place he could no longer ask his staff to serve. The forces of intolerance are thriving, and those institutions and persons representing a progressive and hopeful future for Iraq are under assault and in retreat.

The indictment came after Pinochet's 91st birthday Saturday, which he marked by issuing a statement for the first time taking full political responsibility for abuses committed by his regime.

Monday's indictment was the fifth time Pinochet has been put under house arrest on charges stemming from human rights violations during his 1973-90 dictatorship. The document was issued by Judge Victor Montiglio, the Supreme Court press office said.

Blair's comments come in advance of the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, the much fought-over piece of legislation that, in 1807, finally made it illegal for British subjects to capture and transport slaves (although not to physically own them).

"It is hard to believe that what would now be a crime against humanity was legal at the time," Blair says in his statement.

"I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was, how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition, but also to express our deep sorrow that it could ever have happened and rejoice at the better times we live in today."

Britain was certainly not the only country to be involved in, and to benefit from the pernicious trans-Atlantic trade in human lives, nor was it by any means the first (the word "slave", incidentally, comes from the Byzantine Greek "sklabos.")

From the 15th to the 17th centuries, Portugal had a near-monopoly on the export of slaves from Africa, and by the time it eventually abolished slavery -- in 1869, one of the last European countries to do so -- had been responsible for the transportation of an estimated 4.5 million people into servitude in the colonies of the New World, some 40 percent of an estimated total of 10-12 million (some put the overall figure as high as 17 million.)

Spain, the Netherlands, France, Denmark and North America were all significant players in the trans-Atlantic slavery machine, as were the native rulers of the 170-odd city-states and kingdoms of West Africa from which the slaves were actually abducted.

On the other side of the continent, meanwhile, Arab traders were responsible for the enslavement of some 14-20 million Africans (figures in this case are even harder to estimate since the East African Arab slave trade started much earlier than the West African European one, going right the way back to the 8th Century AD).

If Britain is not unique in its guilt and responsibility, however, it was certainly the worst transgressor during the 18th century, when slave trading was at its peak and British ships and merchants accounted for some 2.5 million of the estimated 6 million Africans carried in chains across the Atlantic.

"The transatlantic slave trade stands as one of the most inhuman enterprises in history," says Blair in his article.

"It is only right that we recognize the active role that Britain played in this trade. British industry and ports were intimately intertwined with it. Britain's rise to global pre-eminence was partially dependent on a system of colonial slave labor and, as we recall its abolition, we should also recall our place in its practice."

While Britain led the way in bringing to an end the trans-Atlantic slave trade from which it had so profited, its government has to date refused to offer any sort of official and unequivocal word of apology for that trade, although in 1999 Liverpool City Council did pass a formal motion of apology for the city's involvement in slaving (the Church of England did likewise in February 2006).

Britain is certainly not alone in its refusal to say sorry. Of the other major slaving nations only France has really grasped the slavery nettle, passing the so-called Taubira Law in 2001 -- named after its proposer, politician Christiane Taubira -- which declared the trans-Atlantic slave-trade a crime against humanity.

In 2001 Britain was actually one of four nations -- along with Spain, the Netherlands and Portugal -- who opposed the issuing of a blanket EU apology for slavery.

Outright apologies of this sort can raise complicated legal issues of redress and compensation, which is why they are so rare in politics (the Australian government, for instance, has steadfastly refused to apologize for its past treatment of native aborigines).

Although in his Monday article Tony Blair stops short of issuing the full and unequivocal mea culpa for which some campaigners were pushing, his words have been generally welcomed as a bold act and a step in the right direction (especially since they were allied to UK sponsorship of a special UN resolution calling on members to hold special commemorative events to mark the bicentenary of the 1807 abolition).

"It's pretty much as close to an apology as he can give taking into account the advice he has been getting from the Foreign Office in terms of the threat of legal action," Michael Eboda, editor of The New Nation, was quoted as saying in The Times newspaper. "I am pleased with it."

Whether any of the many other countries involved in the trans-Atlantic slave-trade will follow Britain's lead, as they did two centuries ago in abolishing that trade, remains to be seen.

Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential “mega” donors and are pressing for a formal site announcement - now expected early in the new year.

The legacy-polishing centerpiece is an institute, which several Bush insiders called the Institute for Democracy. Patterned after Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Bush’s institute will hire conservative scholars and “give them money to write papers and books favorable to the President’s policies,” one Bush insider said.