Don't we look foolish enough already?

by Capt. Fogg

I don't think I want to watch the Olympics this year. It's not that this iteration of the games will be any more or less boring or fulsomely nationalistic than the event ever has been, but I'm afraid that some self-appointed ambassadors are going to make damn fools and hypocrites of us.

My first reaction was "tell me it's a joke" when I read the Reuters item telling us that an unspecified group of "human rights activists" have asked George W. Bush to complain to the Chinese government about political prisoners while he is there, and to wear a wristband that declares: "free the North Koreans." They intend to show up under full sail in Beijing wearing their version of the trendy rubber band rhetoric. I can almost hear the jeers.

Tell me it's a joke.

According to White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, Bush will not be taking wristbands with him. I'm glad to hear it. Another thing George will not be taking with him on the trip is moral authority; or indeed anything else that gives him the right to demand that China not expel illegal aliens coming across the Korean Border looking for work, or that they release militant Islamic separatists, much less to extend them anything resembling the right to Habeas Corpus.

It's not that no criticism is due, it's that we are in no position to make it. I can well imagine my own feelings should a Chinese delegation show up here demanding that we free Puerto Rico, close Guantanamo and open the border with Mexico.

I mean, it's really a joke, isn't it?

Cross posted from Human Voices

Let's medal and not meddle

by Capt. Fogg

"Can we really send our athletes to compete in a country that tortures its own citizens merely for expressing political thoughts? That has enabled the Darfur genocide by supplying weapons to Sudan?"

asks an editorial in The New Republic. (10/22/07) The country in question is of course, China, which soon will host the 2008 Olympic Games. It almost makes one nostalgic for a time when the US had enough moral standing to be able to ask that kind of question without risk of seismic damage caused by worldwide jaw dropping.

Yes, as the article points out, political protest is often treated brutally in China. China often supports brutal dictatorships. Those who blow whistles and expose or protest corruption or in one case, started a petition against the Beijing games, are treated brutally; sent to prisons where prisoners have to carry out humiliating tasks and are forced to endure uncomfortable positions. It's called "subverting State Power" and sadly, the US has any number of proponents for the same kind of thing. You can read about it every day in letters to editors, hear it expressed in barber shops and bars and hear it on Fox News. Our human rights are eroding along with the polar ice caps and our record of support for barbaric regimes is well known.

Of course it's worse in China, but "enhanced" interrogation, disappearances, denial of council, denial of Habeas Corpus, domestic surveillance and extended "detention" of people the government is suspicious of are now firmly identified with the US in the mind of the world. Valerie Plame wasn't chained to an iron cot for embarrassing the Bush administration, but official power was used to punish her for that embarrassment and it wasn't an isolated case.

The New Republic would have us use the Olympics for it's primary value; a way for nations to insult and humiliate each other while pretending to be resurrecting an ancient Greek body worship cult. They're advocating more than athletic victory however; their proposal is for our athletes deliberately to be insulting toward their host and overtly support the subversion of China's government.

"Chinese-language banners unfurled by athletes at the opening ceremonies that call for the government to permit free speech, t-shirts slipped on during medal ceremonies that carry messages of solidarity with Chinese dissidents--these gestures could reach tens of thousands of spectators and, through word of mouth, many more."

Right -- and allow the long litany of American offenses: the wars of aggression, the torture, the kidnappings, the destruction of a country that had not attacked us and slaughter of it's citizens to be broadcast throughout the world to a chorus of laughter. Let's allow our athletes to be booed, jeered and shunned. It doesn't matter that we can rationalize our having become the ogre we are because the world does not believe in us any longer even when we are right. Yes, the Olympic games have always been a theater of nationalism and propaganda, but this time perhaps it's better simply to treat it as an athletic event lest we have our noses rubbed in our own mess.


Cross posted from Human Voices

Defective

"It's about your child and it's about your pet and it's about food on the table,"

said Representative Rick Larsen, a Democrat from Washington State.

"You can't get more personal than that for Americans, and so it does need to be addressed."

Larson and Representative Mark Kirk (R-IL) are in China this week as co-chairs of the U.S.-China Working Group. Kirk, who had been pushing hard for more trade with China, recently introduced a bill in congress that would increase fines for defective Chinese products by one hundred times.

China has been cracking down on toy manufacturers, according to China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine and to a degree that will likely never be seen in the US where unscrupulous or careless business practices do not earn the death penalty and sometimes result in government appointments. I don't think anyone at Mattel will go to jail.

It's been less than a week since a defective Boeing 737 owned by China Airlines blew up on the tarmac in Okinawa. You can't get more personal than that for the Chinese, I would imagine; considering the discomfort and inconvenience of being burned alive. I'm sure that before long, some heads will roll at Boeing so that China does not have to embargo any more dangerous and shoddy American goods as they do with American beef, or begin to demand massive fines of the US Government for what Boeing does and so that some Lou Dobbs equivalent at the Xinhua News agency doesn't become apoplectic about The Americans trying to kill them all.

Capt. Fogg

Prices Are Dropping At Wal-Mart. So Are Your Dogs

Yesterday, Wal-Mart quietly pulled dog treats from their shelves that are rumored to be making dogs ill and in one reported case, dead.

They made no announcement, no recall, and no warnings to people who may have the treats at home.
A Wal-Mart spokesman came up with the usual corporate lame response:

“When we took it off shelves at the end of July, we pulled it based on the customer feedback so we could do testing prior to announcing anything publicly,” Galberth said. “That’s why did not make a public announcement — it was still going through the testing process.”

Of course Wal-Marts customers, looking for the lowest price, are getting what they are paying for and have already started field "testing" these products.

Philadelphia television station WPVI reported last week that a woman claimed her 2-year-old Chihuahua died after eating Bestro Chicken Jerky Strips. The station reported that an autopsy found the dog died of an infection caused by toxic bacteria.

Wal-Mart once again showed that the well-being of their customers comes in second to profits even if they have to resort to tainted products cheaply produced in lawless China.

When will the American people realize that no one is looking out for them. The government is not. They have cut food inspectors and are hundreds if not thousands of inspectors short of what is needed to protect America's food supply.

It is boggling to me to think that we are producing food, selling it to China and they are processing it with chemicals and other substances and then reselling it to profit mad companies like Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart wraps itself in the flag, buys off republicans and poisons America's pets and does not say a word.

It is time to hold Wal-Mart responsible. When you pay the lowest price and the product comes from some third world cesspool, then you get what you pay for.

Walmart's spokesman finally, yet unintentionally, tells the truth.

“We are diligently testing this product,” she said.

They are testing their product on us.

Jim Martin

Russian Bear On The Prowl

Yesterday we were once again allowed to stroll down memory lane to the good old days of the Cold War.

Russian bombers are reported to have buzzed an American military base for the first time since the Cold War when they flew over the Pacific island of Guam.
Moscow said that US fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the two Tupolev-95 warplanes as they resumed the Cold War era practice of flying over Western offshore military installations in a mission on Wednesday.

The U.S. Fleet commander disputed the claim.

Today the American fleet commander in the Pacific poured cold water on the claims, however, insisting the Russian bombers never got within 300 miles of Guam.
"US planes went to an orbit point in preparation for an intercept that never occurred because the Bears didn't get close enough," said Admiral Robert F. Willard, employing a slang term for the Russian planes.

Doesn't this sound just like the good old days when we seemed to know who the enemy was and we had leaders who knew how to use diplomacy and alliances to defeat them?

We now have a government who has taken it's eye off of the ball, fighting criminals that are just gangs of terrorists. Our own president has given them standing as an organization equivalent to any of our other enemies or rivals who happen to be countries with populations in the hundreds of millions if not billions.

The Russians are down, but not out, but the Chinese are up and coming on strong. We should not forget that these people are our enemies as Mr. Putin keeps reminding us and that the Chinese have never denied. If they don't poison us with their exports, they may try some other more overt way.

Of course, the Russian news is kind of funny when you lump it with their planting of a Russian flag on the bottom of the ocean at the North Pole. When you think about it, the real risk would be from their old planes crashing into one of our bases and I wonder if the sub that planted the flag got back to the surface. Their subs go down great, it's the coming back up that seems to cause problems.

Jim Martin

Thanks to Stubborn Facts for the link.

The Next Big Thing: The Pigs Are Sick In China

Do you remember the big bird flu epidemic that was going to destroy civilization?You know, H5N1? Don't tell me you've forgotten about it already. Well, as they say, if pigs could fly.....

In an outbreak reminiscent of the early stages of SARS and bird flu, pigs are growing sick and dying across China’s southeastern Guangdong province. Roughly 3,000 pigs have been infected on hundreds of family farms and about 300 have died.

At least we don't have anything else to be worried about right now, right? Remember these letters, PRRS, which stands for Porcine Respiratory and Reproductive Syndrome. Sounds pretty damned serious doesn't it? Well, as bad as that sounds, it may have mutated. What an ugly word, mutated.

Certain symptoms of the current outbreak, including massive hemorrhaging, are not consistent with PRRS, and might indicate that the disease—most likely caused by a virus—has mutated. The outbreak has renewed fears that a viral pandemic is in the making in southern China.

Well, there you have it, the next big thing and you heard it here first.

You know how it is when you think of something ominous and get a chill? I wonder what this will do to the price of bacon.

Jim Martin