China's Latest Scapegoat

I don't find anyone much discussing the latest example of China's unique approach to dealing with individual and national misdeeds (let's call them both "greed") and face saving in the eyes of the International community (let's call this propaganda).

In the past, we've heard described capitalism with Chinese characteristics (i.e. "the marriage between unchecked power and ill-gotten wealth" [1]), Christianity with Chinese characteristics (i.e. the Three-Self Church), and the Internet with Chinese characteristics (Lenovo and Dell hardware running a lot of pirated software, with Free-World based companies Yahoo and Google teaming with China's own Baidu, etc. to spy on Chinese netizens and censor Internet content that the dictators in Beijing consider a threat to their grip on power).

Recently we have been reminded of justice with Chinese characteristics (i.e. when the world is questioning the safety of your exports, find a scape goat and execute him. Yeah, that'll show 'em who's boss and just how serious you take the matter AND by the way, remember Tienanmen). Blogger John E. Carey calls the latest example of justice with Chinese characteristics (though he does not use that phrase) cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, in the People's Republic of China, though cruel, it is not unusual.

[1] The dark side of China's dazzling economic boom, by Minxin Pei, Commentary, SF Chronicle

China: Guilty Again of Cruel and Unusual Punishment

By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
July 10, 2007

China’s state television and the official Xinhua News Agency said that China had executed Zheng Xiaoyu the former State Food and Drug Administration director.

Zheng Xiaoyu managed China’s operation to review and approve food and drugs from 1998 until 2005.

During Zheng’s tenure his agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and the drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to previous state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.

Photo courtesy of Xinhua.

Zheng, 63, was convicted of taking cash and gifts worth $832,000 when he was in charge of the State Food and Drug Administration.

At the time of his conviction, nearly all China watchers predicted that his sentence would be downgraded to life imprisonment, which is frequently the practice in such cases. In fact, in recent memory, there are no known senior officials that actually met their executioners even after a death sentence.

This execution was a needless act of cruelty to assuage the fears of the west about Chinese-made products and to “save face” for the Chinese leadership.

Listen to how China’s government spokesman characterized the execution.

“The few corrupt officials of the SFDA are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems,” agency spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China’s track record on food and drug safety.

SFDA stands for the State Food and Drug Administration.

So China, to lesson its own shame and to regain its market share, heartlessly executed a bureaucrat whose crime was looking the other way for less than a million dollars.

We deplore this killing as a needless and wonton abuse of human rights. This one man is not the cause or source of China’s massive breakdown of proper procedures, checks and balances. His death adds nothing to China’s reputation and does nothing to restore western confidence in China’s products.

Related:

China Planning a Surreal Facade for Summer Olympic Games: Beijing 2008

The Peaceful Majority - by Wm Haynes

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War Two owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

"Very few people were true Nazis "he said," but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories."

We are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.

Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this
moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march.
It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide.
It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave.
It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill.
It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque.
It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals.
The hard quantifiable fact is that the "peaceful majority," the "silent majority" is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population, it was peaceful as well, but Chinese

Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet.

And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving"?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Author and Speaker Steve Wohlberg on Harry Potter and Wiccan

This story is published on the Canada Free Press website

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/christian062507.htm

Author Contends Harry Potter Fuels Wiccan Growth Among Teens and that Witchcraft 'Spells Trouble' for Society

By Christian Newswire
Monday, June 25, 2007

FRESNO, Calif., June 25 /Christian Newswire/ -- Pottermania will sweep the globe with the July 2007 release of both J.K. Rowling's seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and the fifth Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. With millions of copies poised to fly off bookshelves ("Accelerato!"), forecasts are that the latest book will become the fastest selling title in history. Global interest in the boy wizard will soar higher than Quidditch players seeking Golden Snitches.

While most consider all anti-Potterism to be downright Mugglish, concerns remain among many parents, especially in light of today's surging interest in "Wicca" (witchcraft) among teens. While millions devour Harry Potter novels, increasing numbers also frequent Wicca websites, cast "Love and Money Spells," and practice "white magic." Is it all just fun and fiction, or is something truly supernatural going on? Something dangerous?

Steve Wohlberg, bestselling author of Exposing Harry Potter and Witchcraft: The Menace Beneath the Magic (Destiny Image, 2007) has read all the Harry Potter books. He also understands that Wiccans love nature, don't believe in a "Christian devil," and wouldn't hurt a fly (or owl). He is no rabid witch basher, but believes in religious freedom. Nevertheless, Wohlberg is concerned about both Hogwarts and the Craft.

"There's plenty of real occultism embedded in Rowling's fantasy works," Wohlberg contends, "and in spite of naïve popular opinion, Pottermania is aiding Wicca's growth." Even the founder of a major Witchcraft school agrees (his online training center is called a "Cyber Hogwarts"). Wohlberg warns that when Wiccans summon "nature spirits" in their rituals, they are entering dangerous territory. "Occultism has a dark side," he warns, "and practitioners can easily become trapped like a fly in a spider web." Ex-witches themselves share riveting testimonies in Wohlberg's book.

Steve Wohlberg is the Speaker/Director of White Horse Media (Fresno, CA). TV producer (Amazing Discoveries, Israel in Prophecy, Hour of the Witch), radio host (World News and the Bible), and the author of 14 books, he's been a guest on over 500 radio and TV shows, including CNN Radio, USA Radio, American Family Radio, Cable Radio Network, Information Radio Network, Focus 4, and The Harvest Show.

For interviews, contact Steve Wohlberg at (559) 977-9744 (cell) or at steve@whitehorsemedia.com. Visit www.avoidharrypotter.com

"China, tear down this gate!" - a Dan Bloom essay

China, tear down this gate!

by Dan Bloom, in Taiwan
reporter.bloom@gmail.com

Longtime observers of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have said, "The China question is open as long as the CCP rules China." And as long as the gate of freedom in China remains closed, as long as this scar of a gate is permitted to stand, it is not the China question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all humankind. Yet, today there is a message of hope inside China, a message of triumph, where slowly people are trying to take matters into their own hands and set up a democratic movement inside the country that can finally replace the CCP. It can happen and it will happen.

Leaders of democratic countries around the world understood the practical importance of liberty -- that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. China will learn that soon enough.

In fact, even now, in a limited way, the current leaders of China may be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Beijing about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts and
Internet sites are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.

Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the CCP? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Chinese system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Chinese communists can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.

President Hu Jintao, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for China and Hong Kong and Macao and Taiwan, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate of tyranny, and replace it with a gate of freedom! Mr. Hu, replace this gate! Mr. Hu, let freedom ring!

I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict the leaders of China today -- and I know that my country will use all its efforts to help overcome these burdens. When freedom finally comes to the Chinese people, they and their leaders will be surprised how
wonderful it feels.

Today represents a moment of hope. We in the West stand ready to cooperate with China to promote true openness, to break down barriers that separate people, to create a safe, freer world. The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront.

As one looks at China today, from across the sea, one can perhaps catch a glimpse of some words crudely spray-painted upon the gate, perhaps by a young Bejinger: "This gate will fall. Beliefs become reality." Yes, across China, this gate will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The gate cannot withstand freedom.

Update on China's Poisoning of the Food Supply

As reported on

US inspection records are showing that imports from China are unfit for human consumption.The US Food and Drug Administration has detained more than one thousand shipments at ports containing tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic cosmetics and counterfeit medicines. Consumer activists and politicians, upset about contaminated food products, are demanding action. With the numerous pet deaths and tainted food, they would like to slow food imports from China, but such a move would be next to impossible. Because of its low costs and wages, China has become virtually the only source for certain food products, including wheat gluten and ascorbic acid, reports this article in “The Washington Post.” Politicians are in no hurry to enact regulations to keep food costs low. Many US firms have factories in China and actively pursue that market, and thus do not want any disruptions in the growing flow of trade. Likewise, China wants to gain a foothold in the US meat market, so US regulations are slowly easing. For now, the US prohibits meat products from China, but some meat products, labeled as vegetables, slip by the inspectors. Also, in 2006, the US hurriedly changed rules, before a visit by the Chinese president, allowing firms to send chickens raised in the US on a round trip to China for processing, then returned for sale in US markets. Increasingly aware about their food, consumers ultimately control the market, and with every purchase can make a choice on saving money or demanding safety. – YaleGlobal

Click on the words below to access the full YaleGlobal article on this topic.

Tainted Chinese Imports Common

See also:

Right Wing Dog on "Tainted Chinese Imports Common"

More Chinese roulette

Epoch Times - "Tainted Products Continue to Flow out of China"

Isaac Asimov's "All Four Stanzas"

All Four Stanzas
By Isaac Asimov

Introductory Note. Unless you're already well acquainted with our "national anthem," this interesting piece by the late Isaac Asimov will be an eye-opener. It was for me. It's especially appropriate at a time when there is much talk of tossing out this difficult-to-sing and difficult-to-comprehend old song in favor of something that better suits Ray Charles' voice. You'll understand the song much better after you read Mr. Asimov's explanation.--Hardly Waite, Gazette Senior Editor.

I have a weakness--I am crazy, absolutely nuts, about our national anthem.

The words are difficult and the tune is almost impossible, but frequently when I'm taking a shower I sing it with as much power and emotion as I can. It shakes me up every time.

I was once asked to speak at a luncheon. Taking my life in my hands, I announced I was going to sing our national anthem--all four stanzas.

This was greeted with loud groans. One man closed the door to the kitchen, where the noise of dishes and cutlery was loud and distracting. "Thanks, Herb," I said.

"That's all right," he said. "It was at the request of the kitchen staff."

I explained the background of the anthem and then sang all four stanzas.

Let me tell you, those people had never heard it before--or had never really listened. I got a standing ovation. But it was not me; it was the anthem.

More recently, while conducting a seminar, I told my students the story of the anthem and sang all four stanzas. Again there was a wild ovation and prolonged applause. And again, it was the anthem and not me.

So now let me tell you how it came to be written.

In 1812, the United States went to war with Great Britain, primarily over freedom of the seas. We were in the right. For two years, we held off the British, even though we were still a rather weak country. Great Britain was in a life and death struggle with Napoleon. In fact, just as the United States declared war, Napoleon marched off to invade Russia. If he won, as everyone expected, he would control Europe, and Great Britain would be isolated. It was no time for her to be involved in an American war.

At first, our seamen proved better than the British. After we won a battle on Lake Erie in 1813, the American commander, Oliver Hazard Perry, sent the message "We have met the enemy and they are ours." However, the weight of the British navy beat down our ships eventually. New England, hard-hit by a tightening blockade, threatened secession.

Meanwhile, Napoleon was beaten in Russia and in 1814 was forced to abdicate. Great Britain now turned its attention to the United States, launching a three-pronged attack. The northern prong was to come down Lake Champlain toward New York and seize parts of New England. The southern prong was to go up the Mississippi, take New Orleans and paralyze the west. The central prong was to head for the mid-Atlantic states and then attack Baltimore, the greatest port south of New York. If Baltimore was taken, the nation, which still hugged the Atlantic coast, could be split in two. The fate of the United States, then, rested to a large extent on the success or failure of the central prong.

The British reached the American coast, and on August 24, 1814, took Washington, D. C. Then they moved up the Chesapeake Bay toward Baltimore. On September 12, they arrived and found 1000 men in Fort McHenry, whose guns controlled the harbor. If the British wished to take Baltimore, they would have to take the fort.

On one of the British ships was an aged physician, William Beanes, who had been arrested in Maryland and brought along as a prisoner. Francis Scott Key, a lawyer and friend of the physician, had come to the ship to negotiate his release. The British captain was willing, but the two Americans would have to wait. It was now the night of September 13, and the bombardment of Fort McHenry was about to start.

As twilight deepened, Key and Beanes saw the American flag flying over Fort McHenry. Through the night, they heard bombs bursting and saw the red glare of rockets. They knew the fort was resisting and the American flag was still flying. But toward morning the bombardment ceased, and a dread silence fell. Either Fort McHenry had surrendered and the British flag flew above it, or the bombardment had failed and the American flag still flew.

As dawn began to brighten the eastern sky, Key and Beanes stared out at the fort, trying to see which flag flew over it. He and the physician must have asked each other over and over, "Can you see the flag?"

After it was all finished, Key wrote a four stanza poem telling the events of the night. Called "The Defence of Fort M'Henry," it was published in newspapers and swept the nation. Someone noted that the words fit an old English tune called "To Anacreon in Heaven" --a difficult melody with an uncomfortably large vocal range. For obvious reasons, Key's work became known as "The Star Spangled Banner," and in 1931 Congress declared it the official anthem of the United States.

Now that you know the story, here are the words. Presumably, the old doctor is speaking. This is what he asks Key

Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?


"Ramparts," in case you don't know, are the protective walls or other elevations that surround a fort. The first stanza asks a question. The second gives an answer

On the shore, dimly seen thro' the mist of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep.
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream
'Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

"The towering steep" is again, the ramparts. The bombardment has failed, and the British can do nothing more but sail away, their mission a failure.

In the third stanza, I feel Key allows himself to gloat over the American triumph. In the aftermath of the bombardment, Key probably was in no mood to act otherwise.

During World War II, when the British were our staunchest allies, this third stanza was not sung. However, I know it, so here it is

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footstep's pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The fourth stanza, a pious hope for the future, should be sung more slowly than the other three and with even deeper feeling.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation,
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n - rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, for our cause is just,
And this be our motto--"In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I hope you will look at the national anthem with new eyes. Listen to it, the next time you have a chance, with new ears.

And don't let them ever take it away.

--Isaac Asimov, March 1991

For first time, US officials admit that a key document used to claim that Taiwan is a part of China had no legal basis

Key document on Taiwan is non-binding, says FAPA

By Max Hirsch
Staff Reporter
Sunday, June 17, 2007
TAIPEI TIMES

A key document used by Beijing and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to justify their claims that Taiwan is a part of China never had any legal binding power, the Formosan Association for Public Affairs (FAPA) said, citing a letter from a senior official at the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Founded in 1982 by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chai Trong-rong, FAPA is a Washington-based interest group that seeks to build up support in the US for Taiwan independence.

The association said in a statement last week that the 1943 Cairo Declaration, signed by US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Republic of China (ROC) dictator Chiang Kai-shek at the end of WWII, is merely a "communique" and thus non-binding, according to NARA.

Among other provisions, the communique states that Japan shall "return Formosa," or Taiwan, to "the Chinese."

"The document is merely a moment in time," FAPA president CT Lee said in the statement. "[It's] a declaration of intention regarding world affairs among three leaders."

"Although important at the time," Lee added, "it does not have any legal binding power almost 65 years later enabling either the KMT or [China] to derive territorial claims from."

In response to a FAPA letter of inquiry as to the declaration's status, NARA Assistant Archivist for Records Services, Michael Kurtz, wrote in a letter dated June 5 that "the declaration [is] a communique, and does not have treaty series or executive agreement series numbers."

According to FAPA, the document's archival status as a "communique" and neither an official agreement nor a treaty, negates any legal claims based on the declaration by China or the KMT that Taiwan is a part of China.

"This marks the first time the US government has officially gone on record to elaborate the lack of legal binding power of the Cairo Declaration, and thus voids the basis of both the KMT's and Beijing's mythic 'One China Principle' claims," the association said in the statement.

Despite its status in the US National Archives as a communique, however, the declaration is included in a US State Department publication titled, "Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America," Kurtz wrote, without explaining the apparent contradiction.

The KMT has long cited the declaration as the legal basis for ROC's claim on Taiwan; Beijing has also referred to it to augment its claim that Taiwan is a part of China, the statement said.

The Cost of Freedom

This blog is about freedom, specifically the cost of freedom and why we should never, never, never, never stop paying the cost.

The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance
-Thomas Jefferson