“To achieve Olympic glory for the motherland is the sacred mission assigned by the Communist Party central.” – Liu Peng, Chinese Sports Minister

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hina, a country that doesn’t offer its citizens health care, job safety, environmental protection or retirement benefits anywhere near those of advanced nations, spent $41 billion on the Olympics, netting 51 gold medals for its efforts.

While the US won the most medals, China won more gold – a glorious accomplishment, but one that came at a huge price to the athletes. In an article that is anything but full of surprises, the LA Times tells us:

The only mother on China’s team, Xian Dongmei, told reporters after she won her gold medal in judo that she had not seen her 18-month-old daughter in one year, monitoring the girl’s growth only by webcam. Another gold medalist, weightlifter Cao Lei, was kept in such seclusion training for the Olympics that she wasn’t told her mother was dying. She found out only after she had missed the funeral.

Chen Ruolin, a 15-year-old diver, was ordered to skip dinner for one year to keep her body sharp as a razor slicing into the water. The girl weighs 66 pounds. …

“You have no control over your own life. Coaches are with you all the time. People are always watching you, the doctors, even the chefs in the cafeteria. You have no choice but to train so as not to let the others down,” gymnast Chen Yibing told Chinese reporters last week after winning a gold medal on the rings. He said he could count the amount of time he’d spent with his parents “by hours . . . very few hours.”

There are certainly more stories like these, that show China for what it is: A land where 1.3 billion people are all servants to the will of the state. The American athletes who come from a country where the state is (miraculously) still the servant of the people had a very different Olympic experience.

The contrast couldn’t be greater than between the Chinese and U.S. athletes. In their post-match interviews, the Americans rambled on about their parents, their siblings, their pets, their hobbies. They repeatedly used the word fun.

Behind the visual glory of the Olympics, the real China showed through. Proud, powerful, for sure – but with a massive population used to being forced to do whatever the state asks of them, and ready to sacrifice for the Party’s glory.

Thank God the goal here was merely Olympic gold. Think what they could do if the goal were something more globally significant. Like, oh, California.

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espite myself, despite Tibet, despite their spying for our military secrets, despite NBC’s blatant favoritism in the campaign, despite so much, I turned on the high-def opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics last night, and for the next several hours, my family watched, transfixed. And frightened.

The transfixion came from the creative scope of the ceremony and the technology necessary to carry it out. Looking at the genius of the show, I found myself thinking, “The Russians couldn’t do that. It’s not in their culture.” Then I had to ask myself if we could. Sure, culturally we’ve got what it takes, but do we have the know-how and precision? I just don’t know.

The fear came first when Chinese soldiers took the nation’s flag from a group of 56 colorfully dressed children, each representing one of China’s ethnic groups (but woe be to the 55 who aren’t ethnic Chinese Han), and goose-stepped it with heartless precision to the flag pole.

I thought, are these the same soldiers who shoot tax-cheaters in the back of the head? Who arrived in Lhasa and Tiananmen Square to squelch freedom? Who pound on the doors of the home churches, ready to interrogate the Christians within?

Ready to go to war with us?

Of course the Chinese wanted to show the world that they’re friendly, welcoming and advanced. We all noted that, and thanks for the comfort it brings, really. But those frozen-faced, goose-stepping soldiers and the big red flag. My fear was primordial, Cold War going hot, and with every micro-element of the show carefully programmed, I had to wonder from what dark recess those few moments came.

The second fear overcame me at the end of what was the most beautiful segment of the show, when Confucians in exquisite flowing robes right out of Star Wars surrounded a field of moving Chinese type (the Chinese, not Guttenburg, invented moving type, we were told by the all-knowing Bob Costas). The geometric movements of the type were on so a vast scale – at least 500 separate type pieces by my calculation from the photo – and of such precision, as the pieces rose and fell to form moving ripples, the Great Wall, ocean waves, that I convinced myself and Incredible Wife that they just had to be mechanical and computer programmed.

But in the end, the caps of the type columns opened, and out popped the smiling heads of hundreds of young Chinese men. How did they do that? They couldn’t see each other, each within his own column, so how did they stay so precise?*

That’s when the second chill overcame me. Who are these guys? How is it they can do what we seemingly can’t? If you ever combined the fearful, rigid power of the goose-stepping soldiers (oh, and their gold medal-winning marksmanship … and knife-wielding skills] with the mystifying precision of the typeface dancers, you would have a force the world would have difficulty reckoning with.

And last night, the Chinese did just that.

* I figured it out the box trick, and it is neither hard nor frightening.  My take:  Headsets that directed an audio command 1, 2, 3, corresponding to crouch, flex knee, stand up.  Reader Roy Lofquist got it better – three lights inside the box.  Still, China’s put on a beautiful, intimidating show.

Photos: Top two and bottom from a beautiful NYT spread; third from China News

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ike Twoface from Batman, China is showing the sunny, progressive side of its face to the world this week as the Olympics near. But it just can’t help itself, so its dark, despotic face is being shown to the world as well:

Olympic gold medalist and outspoken Darfur activist Joey Cheek has had his visa revoked by the Chinese embassy, hours before the speedskating champion was set to fly to China. And he wasn’t even planning on wearing a mask when he got there.

Chinese officials don’t need a reason to revoke anyone’s visa but, in their eyes, they had plenty of reasons to snatch Cheek’s. He is the founder of Team Darfur, a group of 70 athletes whose goal it is to raise global awareness of the human-rights violations taking part in the Darfur region of Sudan. China’s military, economic and diplomatic ties to Sudan have been well-publicized in the lead-up to the Games. …

Cheek was going to China to support the athletes on Team Darfur — including soccer player Abby Wambach — and to promote the cause, one that he has championed for years. After winning gold in the Torino Games, Cheek announced he was donating his $25,000 USOC bonus to Darfur and implored his sponsors to do the same. (Yahoo Sports)

News of China’s action is no doubt spreading through Beijing’s Olympic Village this morning and hopefully will encourage athletes to take advantage of the games’ global audience to embarrass China about its behavior in Darfur … and Tibet … and Zimbabwe … and Bolivia … and the list goes on.

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“The Chinese have haughtily ignored our warnings. The Turkestan Islamic Party volunteers… have started urgent actions.”

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o said Commander Seyfullah, head of the Turkestan Islamic Party, a Uighur separatist/Islamist group in China’s Muslim-dominated XinJiang province, in a recently released tape, “Our Blessed Jihad in Yunnan.” The tape arrived along with bombs – bus attacks that killed five in Shanghai and Yunnan last week, and today – four days before the start of the Olympic Games:

Sixteen Chinese policemen have been killed in an attack on a border post in the restive Muslim region of Xinjiang, state media say.

Two attackers reportedly drove up to the post in a rubbish truck and threw two grenades, before moving in to attack the policemen with knives. …

Both attackers were captured during the raid near the city of Kashgar, Xinhua state news agency reported. (BBC)

Another much less violent demonstration occurred in Beijing, in which people who had homes destroyed in order to build Olympic facilities clashed with police.

Which is more troubling to Beijing: violent jihad in the far-flung west, or demonstrations almost under the nose of Olympic visitors? Certainly Jihad poses a greater risk, but hometown demonstrations pose the potential for greater loss of face.

The Turkestan terrorists get no sympathy from me, but it’s interesting to watch and compare China’s response to homegrown Jihad with that of the West. Multiculturalism and deeply entrenched and fair judicial systems define our response; a heavy fist clamping down from on high defines that of the Chinese.

I’m rooting for the West. It would be great if a good society, reacting firmly but fairly, is able to squelch Jihad. But just in case the Chinese approach works better, let’s pay attention and learn lessons.

Art: The Smallest Minority

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he Chinese are hobbling the Internet for the Olympics – not a surprise. The surprise is how the left is reacting.

A couple examples of hobbling. First, BBC reports on the restrictions journalists will face when they log on in the People’s Republic:

Journalists covering the Beijing Olympic Games will not have completely uncensored access to the internet, Chinese and Olympic officials say.

Sites related to spiritual group Falun Gong would be blocked, officials said. Journalists also found they could not see some news or human rights websites.

The timing of the blockade was interesting. As the first of an anticipated 20,000 journalists descended on Beijing to cover the games, Amnesty International issued a report on how China’s miserable human rights record has gotten even worse with the Olympics. Journalists visiting China couldn’t access it, but the Beijingoists couldn’t stop people elsewhere around the globe from accessing the report, however, so the ban is comically inadequate.

Another example, from AP, is China’s forcing of foreign owned hotels to comply with China’s Public Security Service demand that they install software blocking their guests’ access to the sites of human rights, Falun Gong, Tibetan activists and others. (Chinese owned hotels don’t need any forcing by the way; they know the drill.) Senator Sam Brownback said of this:

“These hotels are justifiably outraged by this order, which puts them in the awkward position of having to craft pop-up messages explaining to their customers that their Web history, communications, searches and key strokes are being spied on by the Chinese government.”

The purpose of China’s efforts is not to protect the Chinese people from any threat, it is merely to spare the nation’s Communist rulers embarrassment on their home court. Behind the heavy-handed Olympic efforts is a much more sinister and far-flung machinery that monitors all Chinese communications from the Internet to the backyard fence that results in the arrest, imprisonment and frequent execution of anyone deemed to be an enemy of the state.

The difference between China’s use of electronic surveillance and America’s use seems to be lost on the left. In his Salon column today, Glenn Greenwald leaps effortlessly and brainlessly from the Chinese pressure on hotels to U.S. cooperation with telcom companies to monitor terrorists’ calls.

The precise financial dynamic which Sen. Brownback is impotently protesting in China — that corporations are highly incentivized to assent to and enable all government spying lest they lose extremely lucrative government contracts (and, conversely, that they’re eager to cooperate with the Government in order to receive more contracts and become further integrated in government activities) — is exactly the dynamic that drives America’s surveillance state. …

[T]o watch U.S. Senators like Sam Brownback actually maintain a straight face while protesting China’s warrantless spying on the email and telephone communications of foreigners, and lamenting that private companies feel unfairly pressured to cooperate with China’s government spying out of fear of losing lucrative business opportunities, is so surreal that it’s actually hard to believe one is seeing it.

Surreal? Exactly the dynamic? This is exactly why the left is so dangerous: It cannot make rational evaluations based on good and evil, so it ends up supporting evil.

China’s government is motivated by its will to stay in power by suppressing political resistance and keeping a tight reign on the rights and freedom of its citizens. America’s government, the Bush administration, knows it will relinquish power peacefully and democratically in January 2009 just as it remembers the attacks that occurred in September 2001, so its motivation is wholly different: to protect America, so its citizens can continue to enjoy safety, rights and freedom.

Further, the Chinese government can do whatever it wants to do because it is authoritarian, lacking all checks and balances. Grrenwald may have missed the fact that the entire matter of electronic surveillance has been vetted thoroughly by our courts and our elected representatives, so this isn’t, as Greenwald characterizes it, simply the Bush administration running renegade again.

That point is completely lost on Greenwald and his readers, as this comment makes clear:

Brownback keeps a straight face because the US does its spying in secret. The Chinese are evil because they say right in the Guest Information that they are watching. Americans would never do that.

Mere parity is not enough for these loons. The left will not stop until they succeed at placing the globe’s repressors on a pedestal and submitting America to mockery.

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he Beijingoists are taking no chances as the countdown to next week’s Olympics races towards the opening ceremony … and possible protests.

According to AP, rallied to action to suppress any protests are 110,000 police, riot squads and special forces, and another 300,000 Olympic volunteers and neighborhood watch members. The figure apparently does not include the Chinese military, which also will be out in force.

Gosh, I just don’t remember security being quite that tight during the ’84 Olympics here in LA …

Last week saw four bomb blasts in Western China, with an Islamist group taking responsibility. And this statement came today from a militant identified by the DC-based monitoring group IntelCenteras as Seyfullah:

“Our aim is to target the most critical points related to the Olympics. We will try to attack Chinese central cities severely using the tactics that have never been employed,” he said.

China discounts such threats and said the recent bombings were not the work of terrorists. Exploding space heaters … meteorites … or something … don’t know for sure.

I despise the regime in Beijing and wish them nothing by ill will. But I also despise Islamists and their similarly totalitarian cruelty. So in this odd case, I’m hoping there’s no violence during the games – but that there are plenty of hitches, little shows of resistance for the cameras, a thousand cuts against the pride of those that crushed the spirit of freedom in Tienanmen Square.

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Let’s Hear It For Sharia Law!

Here’s the beauty of Islam and its perverted justice system in a nutshell: Keep women uneducated, so they don’t know how to defend themselves, and discourage men from defending them, then you can stone a whole lot of women to death without having to stone too many men! What’s not to love!?

In theory the penalty of stoning to death applies to both men and women.

But the lawyers say that in practice, many more women than men receive the sentence because they are less well educated and often poorly represented in court. (BBC)

And it’s happening again in Iran – that showplace of Islamic rule – as eight women and one man face imminent stoning for sexual sinning. The women were found guilty of adultery or prostitution, the man was found guilty of having sex with one of his students.

One imam, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, supposedly suspended stoning in 2002, but it hasn’t stopped the practice, and lawyers for the eight say they fear the sentences will be carried out at any time.

And what goes on at Guantanamo is cruel and unusual? Continue Reading »

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A nation finally rolled out a red carpet … albeit, a thread-bear, ratty looking one … for the Olympic torch today, giving the Beijingoists a welcome relief from demonstrations that marred the torch’s progress around the globe.

What country?

Here’s a hint: Celebretory crowds were waving artificial bunches of the national flower, kimjongilia.

As in Kim Jong-Il-ia.

Yes, NoKo’s torch relay started off with a leg run by Pak Du-Ik, who symbolized North Korea’s greatest international sports triumph: their 1966 World Cup soccer team, which advanced to the quarter-finals. As in, here’s a nation that’s gone 42 years since falling far short of winning.

Of course, there would have been protests in NoKo, too, if people were free to protest. China routinely sends North Koreans who flee Li’l Kim’s cesspool nation back to NoKo, where they face imprisonment if they’re lucky, death if they’re not.

But if they’d protested the torch, they’d face imprisonment if they’re lucky, death if their not. So, hey! Welcome China! Cool torch!

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The Chinese Olympic torch ran into more trouble today as it passed through the Japanese city of Nagano.

BBC has a good video here. It’s impressive to watch because it shows the level of security needed to protect the torch — a phalanx of runners that look like it’s out of 300 encircle the runner, with a row of policemen outside that, and motorcycle police scattered here and there.

Here’s BBC’s print report:

The Olympic torch has met with more protests and scuffles on the latest leg of its troubled relay in the Japanese city of Nagano.

With security tight along the route, two demonstrators tried to seize the torch and a third threw eggs at the flame. All were arrested.

But correspondents say the relay passed off without serious disruption.

The streets were lined with thousands of Chinese supporters, as well as dozens of protesters. …

More than 3,000 police officers were brought in to guard the event after demonstrations had plagued the flame in some other cities on its route.

In a last-minute change, the Nagano leg of the relay began in a parking lot rather than a 1,400-year-old Buddhist temple.

The temple was withdrawn as the starting point after objections over China’s crackdown in Tibet.

It’s obvious from the video that most of the crowd was out for a good time to see an Olympic torch go by, and that the protesters were the minority. Still, it was another international embarrassment for the Beijingoists, and hurrah for that.

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Happy Passover

Passover started with the Sabbath yesterday, so my best wishes to all my Jewish friends on this remarkable and holy holiday.

And my thanks to Ask.com for illustrating its home page this morning with the artwork above. And what about Google? Nothing of course. Why do they so fear religion? Ask has honored religion for as long as I’ve used it, and so far, the Secularists have not rebelled against it.

Neither has God’s wrath poured down on Google, but I know that if the Googleites were living in Egypt back in the times of Passover, a plague would fall upon it.

Giving Greenies The Sack

Knee-jerk central — that’s the Bay Area, home of ill-thought out political actions and decisions made on the emotion of the moment, like last year’s action by Oakland to ban plastic bags in retail stores with annual sales of $1 million or more.

Nexis sent me to a June 2007 SF Wrongicle article heralding the passage of the ban:

Under the measure sponsored by Councilwomen Nancy Nadel and Jean Quan, any retailer grossing more than $1 million a year would be banned from using the nonbiodegradable plastic bags. Nadel said that 10 percent of petroleum is used to create plastic so that reducing the use of bags will help the environment in multiple ways.

“Californians use 19 billion plastic disposable bags each year, and throw away 600 every second,” Nadel said. “These bags are made from oil, so reducing their use will serve the mission of the ‘Oil Independent Oakland by 2020′ ” task force established last year.

Them’s some mighty fine knee-jerk stats. But now, as a judge temporarily suspends the order, we find that once again environmentalists are fueled more by emotion than fact. Here’s the Oakland Trib:

A Superior Court judge issued a tentative ruling Thursday placing an injunction on Oakland’s plastic-bag ban, saying the city should have more adequately studied the environmental impact of the ban before passing it into law.

Judge Frank Roesch’s ruling came after a plastic-bag industry group called the Coalition to Support Plastic Bag Recycling sued Oakland last summer shortly after the City Council approved a ban on single-use plastic bags at retail stores doing more than $1 million a year in business. The judge heard arguments in the case in January.

The ban was billed as an environmentally friendly ordinance. But at the crux of the case was a question on whether the increased use of paper bags could harm the environment as well.

Paper bags take more energy to create and fill up more landfill space, the plastic-bag industry argued.

“The court … finds that substantial evidence in the record supports at least a fair argument that single-use paper bags are more damaging than single-use plastic bags,” Roesch wrote.

To go on with their ban, the Oakland City Council would now have to authorize a full-blown Environmental Impact Report to study the environmental effects of the ban — at a cost of at last $100,000 in a down economy. It is quite possible the knee-jerkers will win, and $100,000 that could be used for something useful will be sacrificed on to the Greenie Gods.

A High Rate Of Cynicism

The always-interesting Stats delivered this a.m.:

The three-
component Maslach Burnout Inventory-
General Survey was implemented to examine burnout among newspaper journalists (N = 770). With a moderate rate of exhaustion, a high rate of cynicism and a moderate rate of professional efficacy, burnout among journalists demonstrate higher rates of burnout than previous work. Additionally, journalists expressing intentions to leave the profession (n = 173) demonstrated high rates of exhaustion and cynicism, and moderate rates of professional efficacy, making them “at-risk” for burnout. (Read more)

Sounds like me when I left journalism … except that my “high rate of cynicism” was directed at how cynical my editors and colleagues were, not at the world in general.

What’s illuminating here is that the burned-out journalists don’t leave to become fig growers or car salesmen; they just keep reporting, delivering us news through a cynical, exhausted filter.

Sequestered Carbon News

Kudos to the Bush Admin for keeping Warmie hysteria in check during international talks that are a precursor to the next big UN global warming inititives.

There are plenty of nations there that want to set a goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, including the EU nations, Japan and Canada (which most any way you slice it would benefit from global warming). But the US is only “seriously considering” the goal under Bush, and by refusing to endorse it, effectively is preventing the establishment of such a destructive goal.

Meanwhile, buried 12 paragraphs deep in the Reuters story was this:

France said that South Africa presented studies suggesting it would cost the world up to $200 billion a year to curb greenhouse gases and between $30 and $60 billion a year to adapt to effects such as droughts or rising seas.

No further discussion merited, apparently — including no question about why France would bring up the South African study and still support a 50% greenhouse gas reduction target.

China 1: It’s Not Just Tibet

China is becoming the global leader in thuggery, not just suppressing freedom in Tibet, but lending its hand to ruthless, blood-soak dictators across the globe.

Here’s the latest unsurprising update, from The (UK) Independent:

Chinese troops have been seen on the streets of Zimbabwe’s third largest city, Mutare, according to local witnesses. They were seen patrolling with Zimbabwean soldiers before and during Tuesday’s ill-fated general strike called by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Earlier, 10 Chinese soldiers armed with pistols checked in at the city’s Holiday Inn along with 70 Zimbabwean troops.

One eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said: “We’ve never seen Chinese soldiers in full regalia on our streets before. The entire delegation took 80 rooms from the hotel, 10 for the Chinese and 70 for Zimbabwean soldiers.”

So the next time you’re all sympatico with some left-wing acquaintance because your positions over China and Tibet align, raise this one: “Have you spoken out against China’s involvement in Zimbabwe and Venezuela?” And watch the blank stare.

China 2: Fixing The Weather

One of the biggest challenges facing the Beijing Olympics — besides cerain human rights issues — is the weather. Why? Well, here’s Beijing weather in a nutshell:

Winter is marked by howling Siberian winds; summer, by sweltering monsoon heat. In lieu of showers, springtime is best known for seasonal dust storms that sweep down from Central Asia. Fall is parched and gusty too, but the dust settles down.

Overlay on all this industrial pollution the likes of which we haven’t seen since the English midlands at the peak of the industrial revolution, then factor in the 50% chance of rain expected for the opening ceremonies, and you get the picture.

China is responding by stepping up its long-term, large-scale (52,998 employees) programs of industrial weather alteration. It’s a troubling, wild, 5-clicker of a story at Plenty that makes a good Sunday read.

China 3: Wei, Way Out

Blogger secret revealed: I sometimes right about stuff I don’t understand at all. Like the work of Chinese artist Li Wei (should we give him a little leeway?), which is described at Hemmy.net as as:

Chinese artist Li Wei from Beijing started off his performance series ‘Mirroring’ and later on took off attention with his ‘Falls’ series which shows the artist with his head and chest embedded into the ground. His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. Li Wei states that these images are not computer montages and works with the help of props such as mirror, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.

Got that? Not a computer montage, just some props, mirrors, wires and acrobatics. Then how do you explain this:

More images here.

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