By Andrew L. Jaffee

Reuters reported today that, “Some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive websites despite promises of unrestricted access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday.” Now, why is it that so many people with consciences resent “international” organizations like the United Nations (UN) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC)? This moral relativism, this treating tyrannies like China and Iran as equals with democracies like Canada and Denmark, is downright repulsive. But the IOC is helping China erase human rights.

And it’s not just “international organizations,” but businesses like networking giant Cisco Systems, who’ve helped dictatorships like China repress their own people (also click on this link to read more on how China uses technology to strangle Internet access).

Here’s more distasteful news on the Beijing Olympics from Reuters:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The Washington Post reported on “Obama’s penchant while serving in the Illinois legislature for merely voting ‘present’ when faced with some tough issues.” He shows no sign of clarifying what he stands for, most recently regarding Tibet and the Olympics:

… Sen. Barack Obama has said he is torn in his views on the issue.

“I’m of two minds about this,” said the Illinois senator in a CBS interview last week. “On the one hand, I think that what’s happened in Tibet, [and] China’s support of the Sudanese government in Darfur, is a real problem.”

But, he added, “I’m hesitant to make the Olympics a site of political protest because I think it’s partly about bringing the world together.” …

A definite maybe for U.S. foreign policy?

By Andrew L. Jaffee

Dennis Prager wrote a great piece for FrontPageMagazine.com, in which he explains that in “a more moral world, however, public opinion would be far more preoccupied with Tibetans than with Palestinians, would be as harsh on China as it is on Israel, and would be as fawning on Israel as it now is on China.” You should read his excellent article, but here’s my simple-minded, pablum, politically-correct (retarded) explanation:

Israel (the Little Satan, aka the cowboys) is BAD because it is capitalist and democratic (evil/classist), allied with the U.S. (the Great Satan, also the cowboys), and lives next door to “indigenous” peoples (Palestinians, aka the Indians).¹ Note that these “indigenous” people cannot tolerate the thought of a small group of successful Jews existing while their “indigenous” societies are mired in a corrupt Stone Age.

China (the Peoples’ Paradise) is GOOD because it is communist,² is fighting the cowboys, is allied with Sudan and Iran³ (also oppressed “indigenous” peoples, aka Indians), and those trouble-makers in Tibet are psycho, religious culturally-aware folk in need of re-education.

(Minor) Footnotes
¹ Never mind 3000+ years of Jewish history and continuous presence in Israel.
² Never mind that Mao et al built “communism” by killing 80 million Chinese; never mind that China is no longer communist, but in fact capitalist (except for centralized control).
³ Never mind that Sudan and Iran are two of the worlds’ worst human rights abusers.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The worst economic/political experiment in human history — communism and Nazism (National Socialist German Workers Party) — was great at killing millions of poor souls. Now the Chinese version of the über-nanny-state wishes to extend its control to… life after death:

A SENIOR Tibetan lama and Chinese government advisers have defended contentious rules banning reincarnations of “living Buddhas” without approval.

The rules are apparently aimed at empowering China to name the next Dalai Lama when the 14th and current Dalai Lama dies.

Last July, China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs issued regulations banning reincarnations of living Buddhas, or holy monks, who failed to seek government approval, ostensibly to manipulate the centuries-old practice and legitimise future appointments by the atheist Communist Party. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

“The making of profits is impossible,” wrote Eleanor Marx, summarizing one of her father’s key economic concepts as set forth in his rather long-winded Das Kapital. I then wonder how my left-wing friends would explain the fact that, “China will soon overtake Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy behind the US and Japan.” We’re talking 100’s of billions in “communist” profits; so much so that the politburo has had to “curb the pace of growth” with “five interest rate increases in 2007 and limits on spending on factories and property:”

China’s economy grew at an annual pace of 11.5% in the three months to the end of September, official figures show.

The figure was ahead of economists’ predictions but slightly slower than the 11.9% seen in the previous quarter. …

Growth slowed to 11.5%! Still no contradictions? China is the “world’s second largest emitter” of carbon and, “Every week to 10 days, another coal-fired power plant opens somewhere in China that is big enough to serve all the households in Dallas or San Diego.” And these left-wingers still think of China as some kind of nirvana…

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

“We are furious. If the Dalai Lama can receive such an award [the Congressional Gold Medal], there must be no justice or good people in the world.”

- Zhang Qingli, Chinese Communist Party secretary for Tibet

What a world the Chinese Communist Party lives in… Maura Moynihan explains why China is so afraid of the humble Dalai Lama:

…True, the Dalai Lama is no ordinary scholar and teacher; he is the living symbol of the Buddhist faith. It seems that Beijing’s cadres fear his moral authority and do not want the international community to examine their record in Tibet, because they have a lot to hide.

It has been 48 years since the Dalai Lama eluded capture by the People’s Liberation Army and escaped to India, whereupon Chairman Mao Zedong began to plunder Tibet’s wealth and murdered more than 1 million of its people.

In the mid-1990s, the Chinese politburo implemented the “Strike Hard Campaign” that declared Buddhism “a disease to be eradicated.” News of major protests in Tibet has not been widely disseminated in recent years, and now the survival of Tibetan civilization has reached a tipping point.

In 2000, China launched a vast infrastructure campaign called “Opening and Development of the Western Regions” and embarked on a new phase of subjugation and control. Construction of rail and road links to Tibet, such as the Qingzang railway that opened last year, has accelerated Beijing’s surveillance of Tibetans and has advanced the Sinofication of the Himalayan and Turkic peoples who inhabit China’s western territories.

Exploiting Tibet’s resources for the mainland’s industrial base is a strategic and economic priority for China’s government, which suppresses manifestations of Tibetan identity or nationalism with blunt force. …

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by Michael Rubin*

Last week, the United States turned to the United Nations in an attempt to increase pressure on Iran. The U.S. wanted to expand sanctions against the budding nuclear power.

Neither China nor Russia would go along. And faced with the prospect of one or the other vetoing sanctions at the U.N. Security Council, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice punted. She put off further action against Iran until at least November.

It’s hard to see how much will change in a month. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is firm in his opposition to sanctions. “Interference by way of new sanctions would mean undermining” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as it puts pressure on Iran, he said.

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By Canadian Coalition for Democracies

Ottawa, Canada - August 15, 2007 - India celebrates 60 years of independence. This occasion offers Canada an opportunity to reevaluate its relationship with one of history’s oldest continuing civilizations, a nation that is the world’s largest pluralistic democracy, and a major Asian military and economic power.

Like Canada, India inherited its parliamentary democracy, common law, civic administration and knowledge of English from its period as a British dependency. Despite having much in common with India, Canada has been slow to expand relations with the country, focusing more on its relations with China. This emphasis is reflected in the disproportionate extent of Canadian Government programs, civic engagement, trade, bilateral agreements and ministerial visits aimed at China, and a blinkered approach toward India.

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Chutzpah = killing one’s parents and asking the court for mercy because one is an orphan

by Bill Levinson

We came across this glaring example of chutzpah from the country that murders political prisoners to sell their organs, and that recently sold us poisoned pet food, in the Wall Street Journal. Wei Xin, Press Attache, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, will probably be dragged home for “reeducation” once his masters realize that he made his country look ridiculous with this letter. After all, he is talking to educated Wall Street Journal readers, not Chinese peasants who know only what their masters choose to tell them.

This is a good lead-in for the chutzpah of prominent Democrats who are blaming George Bush for involving us in Iraq, when they themselves bayed for Saddam Hussein’s blood as loudly as any Republican ever did. This underscores their total lack of character, maturity, ethics, and judgment, plus their obvious contempt for the American people whom they expect to believe their line of taqqiya.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Did the blind contractor’s bridge even make it across the river? If so, how would he have known — for sure, not second-hand? The blind leading the blind? Idiots leading the blind or vice versa? How could a blind man update a draftsman’s blueprint? I guess this is what you get when billionaire communist/capitalists bid work out to private contractors (would Marx even understand this sentence?). From Reuters:

A Chinese court has jailed two officials after they let a blind contractor build a bridge which collapsed during construction and injured 12 people, the official Xinhua news agency said Monday. …

“After the blind contractor changed the blueprint, he carried out the work only using a roughly drawn draft of the plan, which caused the bridge to collapse,” the report said.

Xinhua did not explain how the contractor was able to run the project considering his inability to see.

Ah… yeah…

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A personal, historical vignette

By Cainnech Ó Sullibhain

Every day in our lives we hear of the men who fight battles for their country and become heroes, but we never hear of the unsung heroes that are never even mentioned in the news media. They are of course both men and women who are put into a position where their loyalty and bravery go well beyond that of a soldier on the battlefield. This story is one that no one ever got wind of. I speak as one of those who risked his life, maybe out of loyalty or common sense, who partook in such an operation.

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By Canadian Coalition for Democracies

Ottawa, Canada - The Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD) is concerned about the entry into Canada of China’s Commerce Minister, Bo Xilai on Monday May 28th, 2007. There are serious allegations about Bo Xilai regarding torture and crimes against humanity. These concerns have been brought to the attention of Canadian government officials, the RCMP and the Department of Justice’s Interdepartmental Operations Group of Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity & War Crimes Program.

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A personal, historical vignette

By Cainnech Ó Sullibhain

In late October 1964 the M/V Kohinur (London Registry), fully loaded with general cargo, left Dunkerque, France headed for the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and Shanghai, China. When we reached Shanghai, it was respite and a time to relax. I got in the small ferry that took me from the anchorage in the Yang-Tse River to Shanghai. There, I went to visit the People’s Friendship Store not far from the old Ellie Cadoorie Building, which was the tallest building in Shanghai then. It was built by Sir Ellie Cadoorie, a businessman and self-made millionaire, in the days of the British Concession in China.

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By RA Sprinkle

A synopsis of world history paints a dark picture of humanity, or rather, of mankind’s inhumanity. The weak have never been secure, insomuch, that survival in the animal kingdom is a suitable allegory to that of the kingdom of men.

On the other hand, strength alone does not ensure peace. To the contrary, more often than not strength has been used as an oppressive force to conquer and subdue, to kill, spoil and plunder.

Whatever peace the world will know will only come by way of strength with principles, not by an equilibrium of shared power among nations, nor by agreement upon common interests, but by the power of a greater power, which, guided by principles and values exerts the proper degree of force as a counter weight to arrest hostile and aggressive forces.

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by Kenneth T. Tellis

This is the story of Chinese Admiral Zheng He (or his Chinese title of Cheng Ho), his birth name being Ma Sanbao, and his Muslim name of Hajji Mahmud, who traveled the China Seas, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, long before the time of the European explorers and colonizers.

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