Yes, argues blogger Matt Dupuis; it’s high time that Pyongyang was pressured to adopt the Beijing model.

While at WORLDMEETS.US, we have seen a good deal of support for John McCain in the Portuguese-speaking countries ofBrazil and Portugal, chiefly due to McCain’s promise to include Brazil in the G8 and his relatively liberal trade policies, this op-ed from Portugal’s Jornal de Negicios is decidedly concerned about what might happen under a McCain presidency.

After examining some of the specifics of McCain’s foreign policy plans, including his plans to create a “League of Democracies,” “expand NATO to include all democratic states,” exclude Russia from the G-8 and include Brazil and India, João Carlos Barradas writes for Jornal de Negocios:

“McCain’s plans are frightening in their incoherence, total lack of realism and underestimation of economic and financial constraints. … Even before Beijing or Moscow put the heat on the eventual Republican president, the apprehension of allies in Berlin, Tokyo and Riyadh would be such that either McCain will have to change course or he will condemn the United States to a proactive interventionism capable of bringing even greater misfortune.

Barradas concludes:

“It is a worrying state of the mind that animates McCain in his desire to reform the world.”

Read the rest of this entry »

China, meaning those men and women at the top of all things, has sent out a country-wide alert to try to get Chinese citizens to wash their hands more often and to spray disinfectant

– all in order to deal with a disease called Entero-virus 71, described as a hand, mouth and foot virus. (not the same as hoof and mouth disease in cattle)

In one city alone, Entero-virus 71 has killed 22 children in the last week. Tens of thousands are said to be hospitalized across China, and in one city , over 3000 cases are reported. The disease is passed by effluvia: spittle, feces, blister fluids, nasal and throat discharges.

The Chinese nationwide order about this epidemic remarks:

–EV-17 shows signs of spreading further.

–”Health bureaus at all levels must recognize the importance and urgency of preventing the spread of infectious diseases.”

–Preventing the spread of infectious diseases was necessary “to guarantee the smooth staging of the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics and to practically preserve social stability.”

–The order said any person or agency who tried to cover-up or delay disclosure of outbreaks, would be punished.
(During a SARS pneumonia outbreak in 2003, the government at Beijing tried to cover it up, delaying intervention, causing the deaths of many more people, and finally under pressure from world voices, took severe measures.)

–In the same order, China acknowledged that they have many more cases this year of EV-71, and that also the people need to take steps to prevent epidemics of hepatitis A, measles and other infectious diseases commonly spread in warm weather.

–And peak for infectious disease transmission would come in June and July, the government said.

One must hand it to the Beijing authorities. It takes tremendous gall for a regime that outlaws press freedom or open criticism of any kind, to liken the failure of Western reporters to parrot the Communist Party line to a lapse of journalistic ethics.

According to Shen Xinggeng, senior Desk Editor at the strictly state-controlled People’s Daily:

“If news reporters don’t respect basic facts, how can they talk so glibly about ‘objectivity and fairness’? Read the rest of this entry »

This is my favorite quote of the year so far: “Would we have allowed Nazi Germany to host the Olympics?”

This awesome statement was found on a protest sign in San Francisco. German Joys and Andrew Sullivan have a picture.

This statement is fascinating on so many levels. Not just because the author has not heard about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. And not just because of his/her comparison between Nazi Germany and China. I find the statement revealing because the author apparently thinks that it is the United States as Master of the Universe that gets to decide who is allowed to host the Olympics.

Apparently it is not just US presidents and senators (and plenty of slightly megalomaniac “experts” without any military experience) who boldly declare stuff like “we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon” or similar phrases along the lines of “We must not allow evil doers doing evil stuff.” Apparently even the usually pretty left-leaning protesters in San Francisco consider the United States to be a hyperpower.

Actually, right now President Bush is not making any bold statements regarding China. All of a sudden, he prefers quiet diplomacy. What a change from this second inauguration speech three years ago.

Cross-posted from Atlantic Review

Does a dictatorship that has outlawed freedom of the press have the standing to criticize the ‘journalistic ethics’ of American reporters? That is the question one must grapple with when reading through Beijing’s latest blistering attack against CNN host Jack Cafferty ‘and his ilk’ for referring to the Chinese regime as ‘goons and thugs’ and calling Chinese goods ‘junk.’ Paradoxically, now the Chinese authorities appear to be criticizing Washington Read the rest of this entry »

The presidential election was held in Zimbabwe more than three weeks ago. While it’s widely rumored that strongman Robert Mugabe was ousted by voters, we don’t know for sure. That’s because his government has refused to reveal the results.

Mugabe apparently intends to cling to power, continuing to exercise his reign of terror (and error), thuggishly intimidating opposition, and killing off the Zimbabwean economy, while claiming that all the bad stuff in his country is Britain’s fault.

How is Mugabe holding on?

He has help, first from the South African government which, in spite of pious protestations to the contrary, has been Mugabe’s most stalwart backer.

Next, he gets help from the government in China.

A few days ago, dockworkers in South Africa refused to allow a shipment of arms they feared, rightly I think, will be used on Zimbabwean dissidents. (Read: Ordinary citizens who want their country to be a functioning democracy.) The shipment comes from China, whose government will do anything to feed the economic engine of their country, all designed to placate the Chinese populace while maintaining its own iron fisted hegemony on power.

It’s shocking to me that in this year’s presidential race, we continue to have almost no discussion about the greatest national security and economic threat confronting world stability generally and US interests specifically, the government in China.

We ignore the Chinese government’s increasing danger at the peril of the world and the US.

[This is being cross-posted at my personal blog.]

There are certainly valid issues here, but I doubt that the protests are doing Tibet, China, or the Olympics any good whatsoever. Imagine if all that energy were directed in constructive channels.

NPR: Tibet Protests Stir Chinese Nationalism

Audio for this story will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET

All Things Considered, April 18, 2008 · Internet death threats and attacks on property greeted at least one person’s efforts to mediate between protesters on opposite sides of the China-Tibet issue. The official Xinhua News Agency is urging Chinese to harness their nationalistic fervor for constructive ends.

Has CNN host Jack Cafferty and others criticizing China over Tibet and its human right record betrayed a “sense of superiority” and an often dormant “anti-Chinese racism?” Such is the conclusion of this article penned by Ding Gang, senior desk editor at China’s strictly-controlled state run People’s Daily.

Dang writes, “Harboring hatred for China’s development, the Caffertys of the world have assaulted, slandered, framed and spread rumors over recent years, and now they have finally - nakedly - come to the fore.” Beijing’s assault on the Western media shows no sign of abating.

By Ding Gang*

April 17, 2008

People’s Republic of China - People’s Daily - Original Article (English)

On April 9, when CNN broadcast the news on the Olympic torch relay in San Francisco, its host Jack Catterty remarked that Chinese products are “junk” Read the rest of this entry »

Have sports organizations like the International Olympic Committed become “illegitimate transnational powers” that are like “laws unto themselves?”

Columnist Henrique Montiero for Portugal’s Expresso asks, “Is the Chinese regime less brutal today than the Russian regime of 1980? Or, quite simply, is it that the world can no longer live without China, whose capital insures American banks? … a total boycott is dismissed. Read the rest of this entry »

In terms of being the target of Beijing’s vitriol, House Speaker Pelosi has now joined such luminaries as the Dalai Lama and Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian. According to this ‘commentary’ published by the strictly-controlled state run Xinhua news service:

“If an Internet opinion poll were to be carried out in China to choose the most disgusting figure, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would probably be on top of the list. … How can such an irresponsible political figure not be detested by all Chinese?”

The commentary goes on to say, “Underneath her double standards lay a stubborn anti-China sentiment and uneasiness about China’s peaceful rise. Read the rest of this entry »

Nepal, home to Mt. Everest and situated between India and China (Tibet), is witnessing a different kind of “surge”. The armed rebels who fought a decade-long bloody war to end monarchy are now poised to come into power — not through the barrel of a gun but through the ballot box.

The seal over the conduct of free and fair election has been put by none other than former US president Jimmy Carter, co-founder of Carter Center who heads a 60-member international election observer mission to Nepal.

“The election also means Nepal’s 239-year-old monarchy will be abolished. Although the palace massacre of 2001 – which left nine of the royal family dead – and parliament’s dismissal by the new king in 2005 cost the monarchy public support, there are still those who would wish to keep a constitutional monarchy,” reports The Independent.

“The latest results from last week’s vote to select a new national assembly give the Maoists 101 out of the 178 seats counted so far. With the first scheduled task of the new assembly to draft a new constitution and abolish the country’s monarchy, it appears Prachanda will become the first president of a republican Nepal.”

Prachanda who? “When Pushpa Kamal Dahal was a schoolteacher in the mountains of Nepal he was nicknamed ‘Lotus Flower’ as a result of his soft and gentle manners. Not surprisingly, when he gave up teaching to lead a rebel army he adopted the more martial nom de guerre of Prachanda, or ‘the Fierce One’.

“Now, as the Maoist party he leads surges towards a landslide election victory, the 52-year-old is preparing to adopt yet another new title, that of president. He says it is a position he is ready for ‘if the masses want to give me the responsibility’.

“Indeed, where once he talked the rhetoric of Marx, Prachanda now talks of turning Nepal into ‘the Switzerland of Asia’. He says globalisation is unavoidable and he wants to encourage millions of tourists to his impoverished country.”

More here….

Has U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ‘defied law and discipline,’ and ‘challenged U.S. government’ protection’ of the Olympic torch relay? These are just some of the latest charges being leveled against Pelosi by the Beijing regime. In this article, published in the strictly-controlled state run People’s Daily, her recent efforts to have legislation passed denying U.S. officials the use of public funds to attend the Beijing Olympics, “have left people amazed and speechless.’ The author, a scholar at Shanghai’s Fudan University, concludes, “This American stateswoman repeatedly asks other nations to abide by the law, but she herself interferes when her government makes security commitments. … Ms. Pelosi will only discredit herself and her own image if she persists in embarrassing China.”

By Shen Dingli*

April 14, 2008

People’s Republic of China - People’s Daily - Original Article (English)

The ongoing Olympic torch relay has drawn tremendous attention and the enthusiastic welcome of countries and peoples around the world. But there has also been a number of discordant voices, among which is the noisome U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dalai Lama is a holy person first and a politician second. It is worth remembering this during his visits to Seattle and elsewhere in America, in the current emotionally charged atmosphere over China’s Olympic Games.

When I met him in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama said his mind was on “Shoonya”, a Sanskrit word for emptiness experienced as profound serenity. It was in 1990 and he was coming to terms with China’s suppression of uprisings in which several hundred people died.

He subsequently spoke of the cultural destruction of his beloved nation. This year, he formally called it cultural genocide.

He spoke of Shoonya to build everyone’s inner strength to live through the repeated tragedies of his people. For him, Shoonya is emptiness so full that it operates like a seed containing all the unexpressed possibilities of hope, peace, success and happiness.

In 2008, this understanding gives him the courage to tell his people not to shed blood for freedom. Instead, he wants all of us to sow such strong seeds in the Shoonya of our own hearts that China will lose the will to subjugate Tibetans by force.

I empathised because my mother had described the innate dignity of destitute Tibetan refugees escaping from Chinese occupation through the Himalayan town of Shimla in the 1950s. She took their misery to heart partly because her own family had arrived in Shimla as refugees from Pakistan just a few years earlier.

The Dalai Lama is trying to perpetuate a brave tradition of non-violent acceptance and dignity in today’s harsh world. In despair hides the sapling of hope, if the path is one of non-violent “Satyagrah”, another Sanskrit word meaning “Insistence on truth.”

China is trying to draw a veil by switching off the Internet and stopping foreign journalists from reporting freely on the spot. It is vilifying the Dalai Lama, but he alone has the moral authority to revive cultural resurgence in Tibet and grant the domestic peace to China that guns and repression can never bring.

He is telling his people as well as their outraged friends in all countries that the way to pacify the bigoted rulers of Beijing is to insist repeatedly on the truth. That truth is Tibet’s priceless contribution to human spirituality, including its struggle to keep alive traditions of belief, language and culture against the rising tsunami of modern Chinese materialism.

Determined insistence on this truth will do more to save Tibetans than humiliating Beijing through boycotts. The Beijing government has indoctrinated its people to hate the Dalai Lama and Tibetans as evil forces trying to dismember the nation. The people will see any successful boycott as a public humiliation of Han Chinese and will blame Tibetans not the Beijing regime.

The challenge for the rest of the world is to ensure that the Chinese person-in-the-street does not react with disproportionate violence towards innocent Tibetans. Beijing does not care to be loved by the world. It wants to perpetuate its domestic power and be feared by its people.

It will deal with the Tibetans on its own terms behind opaque curtains after the Olympics. The angrier the Han Chinese, the more face Beijing will gain through brutality against Tibetans when the time comes for revenge. The regime’s domestic opponents will also get a clear message.

All of us may come to bitterly regret the Dalai Lama’s moderation, if China bears down with full force on the Tibetans later this year. But it is only realistic to recognize that neither the US government nor anyone else has the power or political will to protect Tibetans against a combination of Han Chinese anger and the regime’s cruelty.

Beijing is unlikely ever to leave Tibetans at peace since greater Tibet equals nearly 25% of China’s territory and contains wealth like oil, gas, uranium and lithium, all of which are very valuable currently. These are hard to extract but investing in them is coming closer each day with rising prices. China has the necessary know how and the money.

Above all, Tibet is probably the world’s richest reservoir of fresh water and the starting point of major Asian rivers. A few decades from now, when world powers fight over water instead of oil, Tibet will be a global El Dorado.

Perhaps, the only way to prevent Chinese punishment for Tibetans later this year is to find a means of protest that does not damage the Olympics while making foreign disapproval very clear. All foreign athletes competing in Beijing should agree to sit on the ground in silence for three minutes at the opening ceremonies during their parade, and before each event throughout the Olympics.

Beijing will not be able to blame foreign governments because the athletes do not answer to those governments. It will blame the International Olympic Committee but insisting on the athletes’ expulsion would simply ruin the Games. The IOC may also benefit by recognizing that it can no longer interpret the sporting spirit to include coercing athletes to ignore intense human suffering.

The impact on the people in China through TV and the media would be huge. They will see athletes using a non-violent and dignified method of expressing their disapproval of cultural genocide without disrupting the Games.

No government in Beijing could disregard this bad publicity in the eyes of its own people. Above all, it will hesitate to impose vengeance upon Tibetans afterwards because ordinary Chinese will be forced to think again about its propaganda.

After the failure of the 1980 U.S.-sponsored Olympic boycott, hadn’t the world learned its lesson about the ineffectiveness of such actions? According to this editorial from the Nederlands Dagblad, things have changed since then - not the least of which is the fact that unlike South Korea, which rapidly democratized in the run-up to the 1988 Games, Beijing has taken a different tack.

The Dutch newspaper opines, “Such wishful thinking has now given way to the harsh reality. Over the past decade, Chinese leaders have decided that capitalism and dictatorship make an excellent pair … The IOC’s pseudo religious rhetoric about the brotherhood of nations doesn’t work anymore, because that now equates with siding with the Beijing regime.”

And like the other editorial WORLDMEETS.US has translated from the Dutch, this one prominently mentions the Berlin Olympics in 1936 - perhaps evidence of some raw emotion that remains over that war, during which The Netherlands was invaded and occupied by the Nazis.
Read the rest of this entry »

Not all the global commentary about the Olympic torch relay is serious. Le Monde’s Robert Sole writes in this tongue-in-cheek op-ed, “Yes, clouds are threatening the Olympics in Beijing. But Chinese authorities have just given us some reassuring news: an arsenal is being prepared to make sure that it doesn’t rain during the opening ceremonies on August 8. Twenty-one teams are spread around the capital to watch the heavens and if necessary, launch rockets containing silver iodide into the upper atmosphere to trigger rainfall before it can reach the stadium … After all, you never know what kind of storm the anti-China “clique” might cause. Has it not already tried - by spitting - to extinguish the flame in London, Paris or San Francisco?”

Read the rest of this entry »

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune

After Pakistan and Bhutan, it is now the turn of Nepal (sandwiched between India and China) to savour the sweet flavour of democracy. It is a powerful rebuff to a certain section of the politicians and “experts” in the world who believe that the “war on terror”, etc., can be fought by merely propping up (and bribing) dictators.

Sudeshna Sarkar of IANS reports: “A deep yearning for change, anger at corrupt politicians and the presence of a large number of youngsters and women among the voters began propelling the Communist Party of Nepal, once a terrorist organisation with a bounty on the heads of its leaders, into an astounding victory belying public anticipation.

“On the second day of counting Saturday, the former guerrillas, who had waged a ruthless 10-year war trying to abolish Nepal’s once-omnipotent line of kings, had captured 23 of the 36 seats whose results were declared so far and were leading in 65 of 120 constituencies where counting was in progress.

“Former American president Jimmy Carter, who was monitoring the election as head of a delegation from his Carter Center, put the seal of approval on the former rebels, saying Washington, that had still kept the Maoists on its list of terrorist organisations, should now start to ‘do business’ with them.

” ‘It serves no purpose for the US government to continue to boycott the Maoists after they laid down arms and began to participate (in the peace process) on an equal basis with the other parties,’ the Nobel laureate said.”

The leader to watch out for is Prachanda.

China seems to be coming under heavy pressure with the world leaders threatening to keep away from the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics this summer. The latest on the list is Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations. The Independent newspaper describes this “as capping an extraordinary week of public relations disasters for the Chinese government as it struggles to contain international anger over its policies towards Tibet and Sudan.”

“Yesterday, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing lashed out at the United States Congress for passing a resolution on Wednesday urging China to open dialogue with the Dalai Lama. ‘It is confusing black with white and is vicious-minded of certain members of the US House of Representatives to not only fail to condemn the attacks, smashing, looting and arson in Lhasa … but rather to point the spear at the Chinese government and people.’

“Mr Brown (British PM) would be among world leaders not attending the opening ceremonies in Beijing. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy is also said to be considering staying away, while Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, had earlier made it clear she would not attend the opening. In the US, all three candidates for the White House, including John McCain, the Republican nominee, have urged President George Bush to decline the invitation.”

More here…

To read the history of Olympics protests…please click here.

Meanwhile Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama does not advocate a boycott of the Beijing Olympics over the Chinese crackdown in his homeland, but says it is for the individual leaders to decide whether to attend the Games. ”I basically wish that their (China’s) world event should take place smoothly.” He said his main message to China was ”We are not against you. And I’m not seeking separation.”

Chinese President Hu Jintao told the visiting Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: “Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem. It is a problem either to safeguard national unification or to split the motherland.”

Mr Hu repeated China’s position that it was ready to meet the Dalai Lama, but only if he met certain pre-conditions, such as desisting from trying to “split the motherland”, “incite violence” and “ruin the Beijing Olympics”.

So if both the Chinese president and the Dalai Lama are “willing to meet” to sort out the problem what’s the hitch? Why don’t the world leaders confront both the Chinese president and the Dalai Lama and decide on the date and venue for the meeting? Why wait?

China has put up an interesting/informative Olympics Games website…click here.

Has the spectacle of the Olympic Torch relay, first introduced by Nazi Germany in 1936, hijacked the Olympic tradition? After the mass protesting in Paris, London and now San Francisco, and due to the ‘dubious’ Nazi origins of the Olympic torch relay, this editorial from the NRC Handelsblad of The Netherlands opines, “Four years ago, the torch, which had to go from Olympia to Athens, traveled 48,466 miles. And this year is no different. … This is megalomania. … IOC Vice President Gosper has called for the trip to be restricted to the direct route between Olympia and the organizing city. This won’t deter future demonstrators, but there is a lot to be said for a relay of more modest dimensions.”
Read the rest of this entry »