Better than Nixon saying (as Vice President) “you won’t have Dick Nixon around anymore” Of course he lied. Later he said “I am not a crook!” Again, he perjured.
Trump was very succinct. To the point. “I’m fucked” … actually, he’s sodomized with a shovel, sideways so it would hurt more.
US Navy brass are upset that a Chinese vessel pulled a US unmanned submarine drone from the South China Sea and kept it. That’s against the rules apparently, Admiralty, whatever. They point out the drone belongs to the National Oceanographic Office, the information it gathers is unclassified, and it’s piloted by civilians. Sorry but “civilian” is synonymous with “contractor” and the Navy needs to rename its underwater glider drones if it wants to pretend their function is oceanic research. The drone fished out by the Chinese is called a “littoral battlespace sensing” vehicle. It may be unarmed, but there’s nothing environmental, humanitarian, collegiate, or goodwill-tourish about BATTLESPACE. China has been asserting territorial claims in the South China Sea, so whose “battlespace” is it?
China and Russia might have both been turned backwards towards capitalism by their own ‘communist parties’, but that is no reason today to let them remain undefended while under constant threats of direct military attack by Western Imperialism led by the Pentagon and Nato.
And YES, they of the huge Chinese population, are under constant threat from ‘us’! Everybody knows that the rabble made up by almost all of our US neighbors could be whipped into a blood frenzy in seconds flat in support of yet more wars. Who is even opposing the wars the US government and its military are currently waging? The ‘liberals’? PLEASE— DON”T MAKE US LAUGH UNCONTROLLABLY!
So that all being said, check out this commentary from Counterpunch- The Irrational, Racist Fear of China —Nice to see the plain truth spoken so clearly.
Russia and China are fed up with Pentagon manipulations all around the globe and have boycotted the meeting set up by the US to implement attacks on both Iran and Syria and threaten both with war and regime changes. China joins Russia in staying away from Syria talks.
See that hole in the middle of the dove of PEACE above Pentagon Hillary? That’s big enough to fly a drone straight through it, I do believe. And how did she get to become a ‘friend of Syria’ anyway? She is completely monolingual and can only speak pigLatin it seems. Funny, since she goes around lecturing others, in that language, ALL AROUND the globe all the time. One would expect a ‘friend of Syria’ to at be able to speak some Arabic I would think. What would happen if all those that were monolingual in Chinese and Russian were suddenly to declare themselves to be ‘Friends of the USA’, and set up plans to deliver their ‘friendship’ through roses and nuclear weapons and all? Hillary? What would happen?
‘Earlier, China’s visiting President Hu Jintao swore in businessman CY Leung as the territory’s new leader. One of the main complaints was that the system used to choose Hong Kong’s leader is designed to install Beijing’s choice. A so-called electoral college of 1,200 business leaders and other influential citizens, mostly loyal to Beijing, selects the leader.’ …See Mass protests as Hong Kong marks 15 years under China. What would Mao Zedong do? It’s a fair guess that he would not call upon the capitalist class to choose the representative of the people of Hong Kong as Hu has done. What would Jesus do? It’s a fair guess that he would have been at the protest march. …lol… Now let us pray.
Gosh how sickening the ‘Christian’ propaganda does get inside the USA! One would think, listening to the constant propaganda, that US Christians are battling persecution and inhumanity everywhere instead of solidly funding and supporting US war, imperialism, occupation, torture and war crimes through their beloved Pentagon and their beloved ‘troops’.
The current campaign of the day centers around one US sponsored evangelical, Chen Guangcheng, Activists: Abuses exposed by escaped Chinese dissident continue, who is campaigning against China’s one birth per family policy, because ..egads!… abortion is involved! The storyline goes in the press, that he is being persecuted by evil Chinese communists and is now all of a sudden holed up inside the US embassy there in China! Poor blind guy! It tears one’s heart apart to hear how this poor Chinese Christian is supposedly being persecuted for his faith and blah, blah, blah.
But just who is this Chen Guangcheng, and who are his big sponsors? ChinaAid is one big sponsor for Guangcheng, and they are connected with the Southern Baptists, who want US Christians to intervene and try to stop China’s control over their previously exploding birth rate. See ChinaAid Founder Bob Fu at Launch of George W. Bush Presidential Center’s Freedom Collection to get an idea of how little these jerks really care about human rights anywhere, let alone in China. How many people in foreign countries did ‘Dubya’ Bush kill during his 8 years as US president? Quite a few we think. And most US Christians hardly blinked an eye about all ‘Dubya’s killings.
It just goes to show that very little is as it looks while briefly glimpsing headlines from the US propaganda machine. What looks at first glance like concern about a human rights activist, in reality can just be part of a long line of US political propaganda in fvor of militarism, pushing for more conflict and potential hot wars with Russia, China, Iran and Syria. And instead of really being a campaign for human rights in China, what we really have is a campaign to roll back world wide access to birth control and abortion services. See Chinese Human Rights Defenders Calls for End to One-child Policy
One really doubts that it is ‘force’ against Chinese women they are concerned with, but rather the fact that abortion is legal in China and widely used to keep in check any continued population explosion? One also doubts that these Chinese ‘activists’ would support China if it was assaulted by the US government in a violent war for control over the narrowing amount of natural resources available to the world? What do you think?
Is the US really a giant repository for all Human Rights, and even more explicitly asked, is it a safe area for Workers Rights and model of workers rights for the rest of the world? After all, most Chinese and most Americans earn their income through working for their wages. How does our respective situations compare when it comes to defending Workers Rights?
To think that the US is somehow the center of world workers rights simply defies the reality on the ground here for Americans trying to survive as the corporate state tries to bash them further down. Here is an article that catches our interest, as it compares the worker Chinese situation with the situation of working class Americans… A Time for Honest Self-Reflection- The US Labor Movement and China.
Advertizing creatives Doug Nichol and John Benet made a wonderful behind-the-scenes “making-of” as they filmed two commercial spots for McDonalds China, and neither their client nor their employers are pleased. The title SUNSHINE works on several levels and hopefully this will be the social engineering industry bridge-burner to jailbreak their every[ad]man inner artist.
Mother Jones is next to discredit Playwright Mike Daisey for his dramatization of Apple’s supply line abuses in China, right in the byline of Andy Kroll’s piece on Walmart’s shadow factory system in China, which they call their, haha, “fiction-free investigation”. THEN THEY FALL FOR A GREEN INDUSTRY-STRENGTH CLEANER! MoJo asks: Are Walmart’s Chinese Factories as Bad as Apple’s? and never really answers. Instead it’s a behind the greenwash exposé, and what else is new. AND Kroll falls for a Walmart PR contractor who adversaries of sustainability hacks recognize as the archetypal intelligence fiend, the federal witness protection program hair club for men, biker, treehugger alias. This time in the persona of “Terry Foecke (pronounced FAKE-ee), a consultant spearheading Walmart’s factory energy efficiency program in China. In a lobby full of Westerners, Foecke cut an unmistakable figure—thickly bearded, 6-foot-3, with a broad belly and hip square-framed glasses. He was an unlikely Walmart ally: a soft-spoken, almost professorial progressive who quoted George Bernard Shaw and told me he spoke out against runaway consumerism at his Unitarian church back home in Minnesota.” Um, yeah Andy. Fake-ee.
This American Life host Ira Glass tried to pull an Oprah on playwright Mike Daisey, to dress him down on creative license Daisey took with an excerpt of a monolog aired on TAL titled Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory. The debunking came courtesy of American Public Media’s laughable “Marketplace” Wall Street PR engine, which Glass pretended were reliable experts on the subject of China’s apparently resolved labor abuses. That’s not even funny. This “retraction” reeks even upwind, and Apple’s having become the most highly valued corporation probably explains Glass’s uncharacteristically virulent condemnation. Shameful is what it was, and I hold it unforgivable, for the pretend-affable Glass, so-called folk archivist, to scuttle someone else’s too successful artistic quest for fundamental truth.
Let’s be clear. Mike Daisey was “debunked” based on his Chinese translator contradicting his version of events, and Marketplace finding Hong Kong based activists ready to give Chinese labor problems the all-clear signal. Both sources no longer protected by anonymity are under duress in China, and it’s not mentioned under whose employ they are now.
The Apple Factory story was the first best thing TAL had aired since pioneering post-sardonic navel gazing, but this week Glass issued a full retraction, removed the episode from the archive, and aired a blistering character assassination complete with manipulatively edited confrontations with Daisey, loaded with the expectation he’d buckle like fictional-confession memoir author James Frey. Except Frey’s lies unraveled because they contrived to propagate untruth. Daisey’s truths were undisputed, but the liberties he took to weave a personal narrative were “debunked” to cast doubt on his every word. It was a shameful moment for This American Life, and I’m hoping this time Glass has overestimated the vapidity of his listeners.
For example, when Mike Daisey explained his rationale for not wanting to “unpack the complexity” of his narrative, Ira Glass responded that he didn’t know what that meant. To what kind of reporter, editor, producer, or storyteller would that concept be foreign?
APM’s Marketplace
This was not the first collaboration between Marketplace and TAL. As the Occupy Wall Street protests grew, Ira Glass commissioned folksy research pieces from a Marketplace team to explain world banking and derivatives trading in terms sufficiently lazy to not disturb the usual NPR stupor. It was bunk coiffed in TAL’s typical carefree je ne care pas.
So this time, Marketplace’s man in China was consulted to fact-check Mike Daisey’s account. ACTUALLY, Glass reveals that he was approached by Marketplace AFTER they’d looked into Daisey’s sources. Glass thanked Marketplace for offering the story to TAL, instead of exploiting the exposé themselves. That’s Glass pretending he doesn’t know PR is about getting someone else to say it for you. Absolving Apple required more than one media property criticizing another. Somebody probably wanted a full retraction.
To foul Mike Daisey’s story required one phone call to the translator and guide he’d used in China, whose contact information he tried hide from Glass and co. No mention that this might have been to protect her from angry Chinese authorities, or from Apple and its supplier Foxconn and the inevitable underworld that rides herd on its victim laborers.
Marketplace’s feat consisted of tracking down his translator, breaking her cover, and putting her on the spot for the harsh criticisms which Daisey laid on Apple, Foxconn and their Chinese hosts. Especially as the popularity of Mike Daisey’s performance piece grew, and after its airing on TAL and his many media interviews, the anonymity of his Chinese translator would remain of paramount concern, but once exposed by Marketplace, what choice might she have had but to denounce Daisey’s heresies?
Could Apple’s being the world’s most high valued company have had anything to do with this kill-the-messenger hit piece? Apple has scheduled a press conference Monday morning to announce what it plans to do with its now famous $100 Billion cash holdings.
Storytelling
Isn’t it rich that TAL suddenly wants to hold its stories to journalistic standards? Imagine if someone had called them on the Christmas elven adventures of David Sedaris. Was that fact-checked? Or what of the elementary Christmas play Sedaris so gloriously skewered? IF YOU Criticize TAL for its too-often neglect of difficult subjects and you’re scolded that the show is about culture and storytelling.
Mike Daisey’s TAL recording is now offline, although the transcript remains. In it you’ll find an indictment that Ira Glass perhaps lacks the temerity to redact as well. It’s his introduction to the segment, and I’ll reprint it here, because Glass praises exactly Daisey’s storytelling technique, separate from the facts he recounts.
A couple weeks ago I saw this one-man show where this guy did something on stage I thought was really kind of amazing. He took this fact that we all already know, right, this fact that our stuff is made overseas in maybe not the greatest working conditions, and he made the audience actually feel something about that fact. Which is really quite a trick. You really have to know how to tell a story to be able to pull something like that off.
In his own words, Glass concedes what his show’s retraction is all about. He’s not retracting the facts, these “we all already know”. Glass and Apple are trying to retract Mike Daisey’s effect, that “he made the audience actually feel something about that fact.”
TO BE CONTINUED
James Petras, a Left Wing professor, has written an excellent analysis that looks at China’s world situation both yesterday and today… China: Rise, Fall and Re-Emergence as a Global Power.
And why Kung Fu or any other martial art comes out ahead.
If you pick any one thing that’s external to you, something that’s not built into your body and mind as your means of self defense, you set up a cycle of dependence. With knives, staves, swords, and such it’s the same story, only not as quick. With those you have to be trained to get enough proficiency to kill somebody. And the training actually makes you more proficient at fighting without reliance on the object.
The Gun gives you a feeling of helplessness under a veneer of a power rush, you start to consider how it gives you one simple power, to kill. Not to defend, to kill. You begin to think of it as your only means of resolving great conflicts, then, quickly, as you descend into the mental Hell of slavery to an object, as your only means of resolving ANY conflicts. The Gun does your thinking for you, only, it’s stupid. Literally without intellect.
And why did you buy the Gun in the first place? Because you felt so afraid and inferior. “Self Defense” is the number one claim for “Why do you keep or carry a gun?”
And, admit it, at least to yourself, YOU asked yourself that question. If you NEED Mr. Gun to defend yourself, what then will you do if you don’t have Mr. Gun handy and something goes down?
Most intentional homicides aren’t done in self defense. The vast majority of unintended homicides are pure accidents, accidents happen all the time.
I moved my bed last night and dropped the frame onto my foot. People die in swimming accidents, in fact Gun Fanatics like to point that out. A LOT.
I’ll go out on a stacistical limb here and suggest that probably most of the people who drowned last year weren’t actually carrying a swimming pool around in their pockets nor were they basing their entire self defense or conflict resolution plans on being able to pull a swiming pool on somebody.
Putting a gun in your hands, your car or your pocket (let’s get the word-play out of the way here, a holster IS a pocket specially designed to hold only one thing)
Being so afraid that you believe a gun is the only thing that can save your life, makes it more likely that you’ll believe your life is in constant danger and more likely to try to stave off that danger through the use of The Gun. Likewise depending on Armies, a million or so guns, not even in YOUR hands, to “defend” you or more accurately, to force people in other countries to negotiate business deals on YOUR terms and against the best interests of Their People. Think not? Consider this:
In Red China everybody is a de-facto member of the military either of the regular army or the militia. The admittedly Right Wing American estimate is that China has the ability to field two hundred million people within a day. Same in North Korea but with a lower number. Same in Iraq before the invasion.
Beijing is scared white of their own people, but not the ones who carry arms everywhere everyday. They’re scared of a Martial Arts religion, the current one being Falun Gong. A “Confucian” cult, Confucius being the European name of (I’ll draw the simplest line here) Kung Fu Tse.
Other Kung Fu religious groups include The Fists of Harmonious Righteousness, aka The Boxers. Who almost took down not only the (fire)armed Imperial troops but also the Germans, French, Portuguese, English and Americans whose armies had “Negotiated” a permanent presence in China, much like our “permanent” presence in the Arabian Peninsula, Indian Subcontinent and Persian Gulf.
Simple Score Card For People With ADHD: Euro-American and Imperial troops = Armed with guns.
Boxers = Not Armed With Guns.
The Boxers lost that round. Not forever though.
The John Birch Society says and might be entirely accurate on this one point, the Communist government coopted a people’s revolution.
But the people are there, and now have that government scared of people who do exercises in the parks.
The Heavily Armed government.
They’re reporting the mine collapse in China as being a failure of the Communist economic system, and just not pointing out that it’s CAPITALIST deregulation that caused it, just like the mine collapses in New Zealand, Chile, Peru, West Virginia…. and the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf Oil spill Massive Petroleum Hemorrhage were caused by the POP principle. Profits Over People. The difference is that in China the Death Penalty applies to murder by Corporation.
The CEO of the Chinese mine is likely to become an unwilling organ donor. Don L Blankenship, the Retired CEO of Massey Energy, who created 29 job openings with one (predictable AND predicted) reaction to defiance of existing regulations, will continue to be a multi-millionaire and will continue to donate to Right Wing Causes like, loosening regulations even further… so he can KILL more miners, Oil workers, factory workers, construction workers, farm workers, unlike himself REAL workers, and feast on the proceeds of their life and death.
Those who like myself are merely crippled by their policies will be discarded, jailed, treated as psychotics and criminals and, if the plans of Blankenship and his allies, and their political appointees, to buy the entire governance of the world for their own profit, if those plans come to fruit then I and ever other like me will also die of our injuries.
It’s a big issue in the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Main Street movement. The Chinese had an epiphany more than a century ago when the Emperor Pu Yi demonstrated his willingness to sell China to the same Corporate Interests who are running Wall Street and Washington DC and Denver and Colorado Springs today.
And FOX News celebrates and promotes Corporate Fascism and promotes Blankenship as a Hero.
Recap: Don Blankenship, Political Donor, Chinese Mine Owner following his Political “leadership”: Organ Donor.
That Blankenship, Massey Energy, British Petroleum etc are directly subsidized in every aspect of their attainment of riches, from acquiring the “rights” to mine or drill in any land mass or ocean of their choice through TAXPAYER funded Military Action, and the police and courts shielding the Rich from the consequences of their MURDERS and thefts, is nothing short of Fascism in every classic definition of the term. Their use of the Tea Party and Minutemen as Brownshirt (Germany) or Blackshirt (Spain, Portugal, Italy, France) Stormtrooper Militia seals the definition tightly onto their foreheads. The Security Chief at Upper Big Branch was recently “sacrificed” by Great Big Hero Blankenship and his pals, even though he, like Hermann Goehring and Josef Goebels and Heinrich Himmler, was “only following orders”.
Yeah, I DID compare Corporate Amerika to the Nazis. Bite me.
That and I pointed out the TeaParty, Fox News, and the Minutemen as being Nazi oriented if not directly affiliated.
Activist Bruce Gagnon reports that Jeju Island villagers face eminent attack today from US and South Korean navy who’ve been determined to seize the Jeju coast for an Aegis destroyer base in the American bid for a militarized encirclement of China. Local antiwar ally Sung-Hee Choi is among the peaceful resisters anticipating today’s crackdown under cover of Korean tensions over another disputed island, and facing the usual western media blackout.
12/27 UPDATE
A couple of linked together “patriot” and “minutemen” websites said “Mexicans launch missile off California coast.”
Nice racist touch, there, Bubbas!
They weren’t accusing the government of Mexico, either, just “mexicans” as in “anybody with swarthy skin and a Spanish surname/accent” This mirrors Lou Dobbs preposterous statements on the same websites and similar ones, that “mexicans” had shot his house while he wasn’t home, no witnesses, and no suspects. If they don’t know who if anybody did it, how would he know it was “mexicans”? There’s a lot of people who don’t like his racist bullshit. Cops aren’t investigating it as a shooting, just a “report”.
Then there’s the notion that Obama rigged the missile launch “accident” as part of a Socialist plot to disarm. Yeah, right.
First, O Stupid ones, Obama couldn’t pass for Socialist even compared to Republicans. Or some hippie peacenik, I mean, come the hell on, military spending and hostilities have INCREASED, which should delight the ChickenHawk squadron no end, but apparently not.
The only accurate observation they’ve made so far is that he’s darker skinned than Bush. Gee, nothing racist about that.
Then, there’s the “North Korean Submarine” angle, which would make sense, American warships have been test firing missiles in “international” waters just off the coasts of China and N. Korea, but only in a non-provocative way. If it WAS then what the Hell special right do the DumFoxer chumps have to get their knickers in a knot about some other Sovereign Nation running a missile test in international waters.
And why don’t they have their panties in a wad over Mr Bush and his demon-spawn extended family still spending blood money made when Grandpa Prescott Bush made a Faustian deal with the Nazi Regime, financing them and smuggling arms for them, even AFTER they sank the Reuben James in American Territorial waters?
Back to the non-existent Socialism, what, didn’t the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics also have a missile program? Aren’t they forgetting a few tiny details in their racist dumbass propaganda there?
The good news: The War industry is bankrupt
The Bad news: due to the way their Corporate Welfare was funded, so is the rest of America.
The Good news: The foreclosure on the War Loan will shut down the war, thus freeing up manpower and whatever monetary resources are left to rebuild America.
The Bad news, All the War Contractor Profiteers who have absolutely NO experience with real work will be on the streets, unemployed and a drag on those Monetary Resources until they DIE.
The Worse news: The monetary resources no longer exist. Welcome to the Third World. Ethiopia, Greece and Egypt used to be mighty empires.
So they matched our Corporate Mining Accidents-waiting-to-happen-and-guess-what-they-do with similar ones by similar causes and similar results, and using Imported American industry analysts who also work for BP, Exxon Mobil, Massey Energy, The Peabody, etc…
Now, they’ve got a BP-esque Oil Spill in the Yellow Sea. Is it caused by their “socialist” supposedly publicly owned Nationalized Oil industry, now brought to its dying knees by the New Economy Capitalist Oil industry? Either one, of course, run under the supervision of the American and British Oil well, refinery and shipping Industry Experts who also work for BP, Exxon-Mobil, Massey Energy…
The Rule of Three seems to have been pretty damned consistent in all of these lately, too, so maybe we can expect the Fully Capitalized Russian Oil Slick on the (deepwater) horizon?
But not only are the Oil and Mineral extraction scams “safe as safe can be” they’re also supposed to be vital for the survival of our economy.
I always considered the massive food shortages that would be caused by the destruction of the ecology either directly through toxic pollution or “indirectly” through Carbon Dioxide, and artificially manipulated Ecologies using chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides… I always thought that was kind of sort of like, you know, similar to NON Survival. I would muse and wonder who writes the Energy Company propaganda but then, it’s an in-house thing. They might farm out the spewing of such propaganda to Fox and AP and CNN etc… but the in-house writers produce the scripts the “independent” media are paid to mouth for them.
Actually in French it would be jeu du jour which is kind of a really bad pun.
But, in China, a day care center/preschool was the scene of a knife attack.
I didn’t read past the headline, sue me. 28 people stabbed, no word in the headline how many died, no word how many were kids.
The motive isn’t given either, but if it were, it would sound like gnarblsgnashsnarlwhipframdoodle.
In short, it wouldn’t make any sense to an actual sentient person anyway.
I know the standard arguments this will arouse, I bet if I turned on Bile O’Liely or whatever twit is holding forth on Hate-TV and Hate-Radio right now I’d hear “See, if one of the kids had a gun it would never have happened”
News Flash, China has Universal Conscription, meaning everybody in the whole damned country learns how to use guns at one point in his life. They also make quite a few guns, so many in fact that they sell them on the export market. Those SkS machine guns that are ever so popular up on Rampart Range, for instance.
“See, even a knife can be used as a weapon of mass murder”. Well, sure. And if the guy had taken in one of those readily available black-market firearms and some spare magazines he probably would have killed quite a few little kids. And they probably wouldn’t have stopped his shooting spree as readily as they stopped his Stabbing Spree.
OR, maybe it could have been stopped. The Gun Lobby Morons don’t make much mention of this, but when GoofBall Adkisson decided to go all Elmer Fudd (be vewwy vewwy quiet, I’m hunting Wibewwals heh heh heh heh heh) on a church in Tennessee he was the ONLY one in the church with a gun. An Alley Sweeper. Automatic 12guage shotgun wit magazine feeds.
He, too, was targeting the kiddoes. Killed to adults who were an order of magnitude more MAN than he could even fantasize about being, unarmed, Liberals, one of them a retired Marine. Stepped in front of the muzzle which was aimed at the children of the church.
The “upshot” (don’t you just love it when appropriate words exist?) of the deal was the Same Gun Freaks who say that More Guns in schools would prevent crime, filled his nasty pointed little head with the notion that Liberals were Pussies and if he pointed a gun at them they would fold up like laundry, beg and plead with him not to shoot them….
Marvelous things, those Shooter’s Manifesto devices.
And who did he get the idea from? Right Wing Hate Speech shows on Television and Radio (newspapers don’t count, it would mean having to actually read something besides the television schedule for next sunday)
AAAAAANNNNNNDDDD… in China there’s a death penalty. And another fellow was executed recently for killing 8 children in a stabbing spree. Unlike Texas, for instance, where they NEVER execute people who are obviously insane or mentally retarded. Just ask them, they’ll tell you.
So apparently, none of the things the Wreligious Wrong tell us here in the States that would “Make America Safer”, all of which are implemented in China, would do one hell of a lot of good.
The British had a term for the type of “insanity” caused by rapid total immersion into a foreign culture, “gone native”. By WW2 it was often called “going Asiatic” because supposedly the Chinese and other Asian cultures were so completely foreign to a Western Mind that the westerner would be driven mad.
That IS one reason cited for the violence in China. That the people have been uprooted from their own culture and force-fed Ours.
Maybe they’re right, and it won’t be too long now there will be incidents of somebody driving an SUV into a Luby’s Restaurant window and jumping out, and spraying bullets all over the place. Like was done in Killeen Texas.
Then, and ONLY then, will they have reached Our Sacred Level of culture and sophistication.
Does the USA begrudge China a Pacific possession of its own? Taiwan lies just 155 miles off their coast. By contrast, Guam and Hawaii lie outside the US 200 mile nautical boundary by sundry thousand miles.
Taiwan is eight times closer to China than Puerto Rico is to the US continent, and half again as close as Alaska.
China does not recognize the sovereignty of Taiwan. It was to the Island of Formosa that the forces of Chiang Kai-Shek retreated from the Communist advance. They took with them China’s royal treasures and China’s aristocrats, who with the protection of foreign diplomatic circles, could thumb their noses at Mao’s revolution. The People’s Republic of China has always vowed to recover the renegade region.
Is the US in any position to say that China should not have its Formosa? Imagine if China were to offer to arm Catalina Island.
Yes, it’s a live fish. The Youtube video upsetting PETA depicts Chinese diners poking at the still gasping mouth of what’s for dinner. The plate isn’t hot, but watch your fingers! The meat is blackened to a crisp, while from the neck up the fish is kept wet with towels to ensure it doesn’t expire before the last bite. My, what a playful presentation with the red sauce!
I do wonder about the Chinese obsession with keeping food alive as long as possible. In the video the diners are laughing at the fish’s sudden reactions, which leaves the impression they are as surprised as we about this live novelty. But I doubt it is so rare an event among those who can afford it. I remember at outdoor markets in China, watching customers buy slices of fish meat cut directly from the sides of live fish. Does live fish keep longer than dead? Certainly it does.
Westerners won’t eat a lobster or crab that’s killed before it’s cooked. No doubt some Chinese think we are fools for believing dead fish is an acceptable substitute for live. Americans are already ridiculed for pretending frozen orange juice is any match for fresh squeezed. Who are Americans to opine on taste? For years we’ve eaten chickens fed on fishmeal, without realizing what Europeans could tell us from a table’s length away, American chicken smells fishy!
Now ask an American farmer about sweet corn and he’ll brag that it’s best boiled while still on the stalk. So there is consensus on a preference for fresh.
What constitutes fresh when we’re talking meat? If you ask a reptile or spider, it means live. Mammal predators kept at the zoo have to accustom themselves to eating pieces of steak where their nature is to grab from what’s on the run. What looks like Steak Tartar to us is what they usually leave to scavengers.
Has the human predator diet been converted to scavenger for the sake of convenience and civility?
In our contemporary quest for reclaiming nutrition, I’ll be curious to know if there’s a forbidden energy gone missing from our scavenged meals.
I’ll let the clip speak for itself about the inhumanity of devouring a meal as it looks on. And I’m really glad that no worse videos have emerged from China. As yet there are no Youtube videos of diners eating monkey brains straight from the skull of a live monkey strapped to the table, nor of the infamous “three squeals” delicacy of live rat fetuses.
Can someone please explain to me what it means to fly this flag? The POW-MIA flag is ubiquitous these days around veterans. Our town hall flies this black flag halfway below the Stars and Stripes. When the latter is at half mast, the former hangs indecorously low. Which reminds me of a pirate ship stalking a wavering Old Glory.
I understand POW and MIA, and “you are not forgotten.” But there is no flag for the veterans, the dead or wounded, to whom does this lone flag speak and why?
Since the Gulf War, the US military maintains that it loses track of none of its soldiers. We’ve had POWs but they’ve been returned, and we’ve had MIAs whose bodies have been found. One was recovered even recently, though it was the body of a pilot lost over Iraq, understood to have died. Casualties at sea are still sometimes unrecoverable, but at least something about American war-making proficiency now permits us to confirm deaths even sans corpus. Supposedly.
US military engagements between those wars, and later, have been kept outside public scrutiny, or not officially admitted. As a result, they’ve added no POWs or MIAs for the home front to worry over.
Which leaves Vietnam, from whose era comes the dark silhouette of a bent inmate in the shadow of a prison guard tower. According to the last report, there remain 1728 American soldiers missing in action in Indochina. They are unaccounted for — it might be more fair to say–not missing persons, expected to turn up.
During the Vietnam War, the MIA list gave hope that your soldier wasn’t among the fallen. It was a hope that loved ones could cling to for even years after the fall of Siagon. On the radio, a Dick Curless hit from 1965 continued to resonate even as the war receded from memory. “Six Times a Day” told of a bride in post-WWII Germany who met the trains every day, awaiting the return of her German soldier, held by the Soviets in war-reparation labor camps until the Russians considered them to have atoned. Was this what we expected Vietnam was doing?
Six times a day the trains came down from Frankfort
The night he came ten years were almost through
She held him close and said I knew you’d be here
He said I had no doubt you’d be here too
American wives were determined to wait even longer, except evidence of post-war prisoners never came. There was speculation of a cover-up, suspicions which politicians like John Kerry and John McCain do little to assuage. After the war, some believe that prisoner GIs were left behind, whom the North Vietnamese hoped to exchange for war reparations. Instead of paying, it’s conjectured that the US government chose to deny the existence of those men. No American diplomat has ever confirmed the scenario, and no surviving GI has ever surfaced.
The closest we’ve come to rescuing POWs was at the movies, when Rambo went back for a jailbreak and to do-over America’s lost war.
Even as the rumor persisted, the fate of the abandoned POWs is assumed to have been execution at the hands of their former foe, presumed so exasperated and bitter. The general consensus today, no matter the theory, is that no veteran is anticipated to step alive from the sad lists of the Vietnam MIA.
If they are presumed dead, then what separates an MIA from the dead, who we honor together with all veterans? The Vietnam MIA have been added to the Vietnam Memorial. How now is their memory any different?
Even recently I’ve seen relatives of those MIA conduct special ceremonies on Memorial Day, with the empty place setting, the chair, the vase and rose, etc. It looks to me as though the family members have even passed the ritual down to grandchildren who would not even have know the missing soldier. But this ceremony isn’t conducted for the regular dead, who are also missing from the family table, it’s reserved for the missing dead. And so I wonder at the distinction.
MIAs represent casualties who fell off the books. If a soldier’s capture is confirmed, his status changes to POW, otherwise soldiers come up missing through desertion, treason, malfeasance, or physical obliteration. Mother nature can dispose of bodies, but the most common cause of disappearance is owed to the inhuman scale of mechanized war. As weapons grew more powerful, physical bodies more frequently disintegrated. Missing bodies today, even looking back retrospectively, are the result of human beings eclipsed by machine violence. In the engagements America has chosen from Vietnam onward, usually the technology for the big violence is our side’s alone. Which is not to implicate friendly fire. Often USAF air strikes are called in over battlefields strewn already with GI fatalities.
At first the act of flying a POW flag was aimed at the Vietnamese, to remind all around us, with a sideways glance at our enemies, of our concern for our soldiers. Perhaps the MIA component was an urging to Vietnam as well, after the war, to put effort into recovering US soldier remains. Over the decades, I’m not sure that Vietnam could have shown itself more cooperative. If archeological digs are today able to unearth more evidence, it’s not because the Vietnamese weren’t trying.
Who today are we addressing with the POW-MIA flags? I see these flags usually paired with the Red, White and Blue. But those are directed at our foes.
If a soldier’s relation has question to suspect their soldier is an MIA, isn’t that a beef to take up with the US military? The POW-MIA flag seems to say, we don’t trust you, don’t lie to us about our boys in uniform. We don’t want you smashing their bodies to smithereens, or leaving them behind and not telling us. The POW-MIA flag is a renegade message which says: we support the troops, but not their mission. Give them back.
Flying the POW-MIA flag is so unpatriotic, it’s patriotic.
Found this on the web, will try to retrace provenance, worth a read: The United States have a well known history of providing military support to countries in need. But from time to time, the US Government has provided secret forces. While many are successful, there have also been a number of failures. This is a list of the ten top secret armies of the CIA.
1. Ukrainian Partisans
From 1945 to 1952 the CIA trained and aerially supplied Ukranian partisan units which had originally been organised by he Germans to fight the Soviets during WWII. For seven years, the partisans, operating in the Carpathian Mountains, made sporadic attacks. Finally in 1952, a massive Soviet military force wiped them out.2. Chinese Brigade in Burma
After the Communist victory in China, Nationalist Chinese soldiers fled into northern Burma. During the early 1950s, the CIA used these soldiers to create a 12,000 man brigade which made raids into Red China. However, the Nationalist soldiers found it more profitable to monopolise the local opium trade.3. Guatemalan Rebel Army
After Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz legalised that country’s communist party and expropriated 400,000 acres of United Fruit banana plantations, the CIA decided to overthrow his government. Guatemalan rebels were trained in Honduras and backed up with a CIA air contingent of bombers and fighter planes. This army invaded Guatemala in 1954, promptly toppling Arbenz’s regine.4. Sumatran Rebels
In an attempt to overthrow Indonesian president Sukarno in 1958, the CIA sent paramilitary experts and radio operators to the island of Sumatra to organise a revolt. With CIA air support, the rebel army attacked but was quickly defeated. The American government denied involvement even after a CIA b-26 was shot down and its CIA pilot, Allen Pope, was captured.5. Khamba Horsemen
After the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet, the CIA began recruiting Khamba horsemen – fierce warriors who supported Tibet’s religious leader, the Dalai Lama – as they escaped into India in 1959. These Khambas were trained in modern warfare at Camp Hale, high in the rocky mountains near Leadville, Colorado. Transported back to Tibet by the CIA operated Air American, the Khambas organised an army number at its peak some 14,000. By the mid-1960s the Khambas had been abandoned by the CIA but they fought on alone until 1970.6. Bay of Pigs Invasion Force
In 1960, CIA operatives recruited 1,500 Cuban refugees living in Miami and staged a surprise attack on Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Trained at a base in Guatemala, this small army – complete with an air force consisting of B-26 bombers – landed at the Bay of Pigs on April 19, 1961. The ill-conceived, poorly planned operation ended in disaster, since all but 150 men of the force were either killed or captured within three days.7. L’armee Clandestine
In 1962, CIA agents recruited Meo tribesmen living in the mountains of Laos to fight as guerrillas against Communist Pathet Lao forces. Called l’armee Clandestine, this unit – paid, trained, and supplied by the CIA – grew into a 30,000 man force. By 1975 the Meos – who had numbers a quarter million in 1962 – had been reduced to 10,000 refugees fleeing into Thailand.8. Nung Mercenaries
A Chinese hill people living in Vietname, the Nungs were hired and organised by the CIA as a mercenary force, during the Vietnam war. Fearsome and brutal fighters, the Nungs were employed throughout Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Nungs proved costly since they refused to fight unless constantly supplied with beer and prostitutes.9. Peruvian Regiment
Unable to quell guerrilla forces in its eastern Amazonian provinces, Peru called on the US for help in the mid-1960s. The CIA responded by establishing a fortified camp in the area and hiring local Peruvians who were trained by Green Beret personnel on loan from the US army. After crushing the guerrillas, the elite unit was disbanded because of fears it might stage a coup against the government.10. Congo Mercenary Force
In 1964, during the Congolese Civil War, the CIA established an army in the Congo to back pro-Western leaders Cyril Adoula and Joseph Mobutu. The CIA imported European mercenaries and Cuban pilots – exiles from Cuba – to pilot the CIA air force, composed of transports and B-26 Bombers.11. The Cambodian Coup
For over 15 years, the CIA had tried various unsuccessful means of deposing Cambodia’s left-leaning Prince Norodom Sihanouk, including assassination attempts. However, in March, 1970, a CIA-backed coup finally did the job. Funded by US tax dollars, armed with US weapons, and trained by American Green Berets, anti-Sihanouk forces called Kampuchea Khmer Krom (KKK) overran the capital of Phnom Penh and took control of the government. With the blessing of the CIA and the Nixon administration, control of Cambodia was placed in the hands of Lon Nol, who would later distinguish himself by dispatching soldiers to butcher tens of thousands of civilians.12. Kurd Rebels
During the early 1970s the CIA moved into eastern Iraq to organize and supply the Kurds of that area, who were rebelling against the pro-Soviet Iraqi government. The real purpose behind this action was to help the shah of Iran settle a border dispute with Iraq favourably. After an Iranian-Iraq settlement was reached, the CIA withdrew its support from the Kurds, who were then crushed by the Iraqi Army.13. Angola Mercenary Force
In 1975, after years of bloody fighting and civil unrest in Angola, Portugal resolved to relinquish its hold on the last of its African colonies. The transition was to take place on November 11, with control of the country going to whichever political faction controlled the capital city of Luanda on that date. In the months preceding the change, three groups vied for power: the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). By July 1975, the Marxist MPLA had ousted the moderate FNLA and UNITA from Luanda, so the CIA decided to intervene covertly. Over $30 million was spent on the Angolan operation, the bulk of the money going to buy arms and pay French and South African mercenaries, who aided the FNLA and UNITA in their fight. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, US officials categorically denied any involvement in the Angolan conflict. In the end, it was a fruitless military adventure, for the MPLA assumed power and controls Angola to this day.14. Afghan Mujaheedin
Covert support for the groups fighting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began under President Jimmy Carter in 1979, and was stepped up during the administration of Ronald Reagan. The operation succeeded in its initial goal, as the Soviets were forced to begin withdrawing their forces in 1987. Unfortunately, once the Soviets left, the US essentially ignored Afghanistan as it collapsed into a five-year civil war followed by the rise of the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban. The Taliban provided a haven for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.15. Salvadoran Death Squads
As far back as 1964, the CIA helped form ORDEN and ANSESAL, two paramilitary intelligence networks that developed into the Salvadoran death squads. The CIA trained ORDEN leaders in the use of automatic weapons and surveillance techniques, and placed several leaders on the CIA payroll. The CIA also provided detailed intelligence on Salvadoran individuals later murdered by the death squads. During the civil war in El Salvador from 1980 to 1992, the death squads were responsible for 40,000 killings. Even after a public outcry forced President Reagan to denounce the death squads in 1984, CIA support continued.16. Nicaraguan Contras
On November 23, 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed a top secret National Security Directive authorising the CIA to spend $19 million to recruit and support the Contras, opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. In supporting the Contras, the CIA carried out several acts of sabotage without the Congressional intelligence committees giving consent – or even being informed beforehand. In response, Congress passed the Boland Amendment, prohibiting the CIA from providing aid to the Contras. Attempts to find alternate sources of funds led to the Iran-Contra scandal. It may also have led the CIA and the Contras to become actively involved in drug smuggling. In 1988, the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism, and International Operations concluded that individuals in the Contra movement engaged in drug trafficking; that known drug traffickers provided assistance to the Contras; and that ‘there are some serious questions as to whether or not US officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war effort against Nicaragua’.17. Haitian Coup
In 1988, the CIA attempted to intervene in Haiti’s elections with a ‘covert action program’ to undermine the campaign of the eventual winner, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Three years later, Aristide was overthrown in a bloody coup that killed more than 4,000 civilians. Many of the leaders of the coup had been on the CIA payroll since the mid-1980s. For example, Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant, the head of FRAPH, a brutal gang of thugs known for murder, torture, and beatings, admitted to being a paid agent of the CIA. Similarly, the CIA-created Haitian National Intelligence Service (NIS), supposedly created to combat drugs, functioned during the coup as a ‘political intimidation and assassination squad.’ In 1994, an American force of 20,000 was sent to Haiti to allow Aristide to return. Ironically, even after this, the CIA continued working with FRAPH and the NIS. In 2004, Aristide was overthrown once again, with Aristide claiming that US forces had kidnapped him.18. Venezuelan Coup Attempt
On April 11, 2002, Venezuelan military leaders attempted to overthrow the country’s democratically-elected left-wing president, Hugo Chavez. The coup collapsed after two days as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets and as units of the military joined with the protestors. The administration of George W. Bush was the only democracy in the Western Hemisphere not to condemn the coup attempt. According to intelligence analyst Wayne Madsen, the CIA had actively organised the coup: ‘The CIA provided Special Operations Group personnel, headed by a lieutenant colonel on loan from the US Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to help organise the coup against Chavez.
From Fake Warrior ChickenHawk Norris! Yes, for about $80 bucks you can buy a Made in China WalMart Flag with tea spilled on it.
This from a Martial Arts Professional Athlete who got out of the Draft on a Rich Kid Technicality, just like Bush, Cheney, Rove, Bill O’Reilly, the entire cast and crew of the FORMER Terror Regime… then proceeded to make a Propaganda Movie Career supporting War and glorifying the VietNam War in particular. Just like John Wayne did.
Make money off Human Suffering and Shed Human Blood. Just, you know, as long as it’s not THEIR suffering or THEIR blood.
Now he’s making money promoting Murdering Americans for your fun and HIS fun and Profit.
That and his party lost and there’s now a Black president.
Make-a-Buck Norris once again promoting KILLING in the name of God and the name of Patriotism, like his portrayal and glorification on TV of the Murderous Racist Texas Rangers.
Promoting the MURDER by Corporate Death Panel of even such Americans who can afford Health “insurance”.
Promoting the MURDER by Klan/Minutemen Lynching such as what happened in Kentucky, MURDER of AMERICAN CHILDREN by his fellow Hate Freak Extremists such as Adkisson trying to Murder the children in the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, von Brunn attempting to shoot up a museum, the RACIST killings in Aravaca Arizona, by his Minuteman Fellow Travelers.
Typical Tea Party Minuteman BITCH.
By the way, the Tea Party nationwide, and that includes Colorado Springs, are equally as Guilty of those Murders.
They stirred up the Hatred against their Fellow Americans.
And they’re still doing it.
This is an excerpt from the WWII training manual “HOW TO SPOT A JAP.” Can you doubt our military blimpnecks aren’t giving the same xenophobic advice about how American servicemen should be sizing up their robe-clad insurgent adversaries in Iraq and Afghanistan?
