Recently in China Category

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Why should any American buy any food made in China?

We don’t know what’s in it; it goes mostly unscreened by anyone. We know that a number of producers spike it with poisons and antibiotics to make it more profitable. This has been going on for years and when they were caught spiking food with urea and food began to be screened for that poison, they simply switched to a new one; melamine.

So far, poisoned foods we have discovered through the deaths of possibly thousands of our pets include wheat gluten and rice protein. We have found catfish imported from China to be illegally contaminated with antibiotics. Dried fruit laden with cancer causing chemicals, mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides and seafood coated with putrefying bacteria.

As it turns out, it is standard procedure for Chinese food manufacturers to put poison in our food and, if caught, find another way to get those poisoned foods into US markets.

Did you know that nearly all vitamins sold in the United States are made in China (they priced domestic manufacturers out of the business)? Did you know that they go virtually untested for their contents in the US?

The FDA has no means to solve this problem through inspections and testing and the US government has little pressure to bring to bear on the Chinese since, thanks to Republican fiscal policy, the Chinese essentially own the US government. The Bush administration is actually deregulating the importation of Chinese poultry products, possibly increasing the risk of avian flu.

Industry, the much-vaunted free market, won’t protect you from toxic products because there’s a lot of money to be made in Chinese markets. And, besides, when has the health or safety of consumers been much of an obstacle when it comes to making a buck?

However, there is one remedy for US consumers in the power of the marketplace: stop buying Chinese made food. First, you won’t have to worry about whether you are feeding your family toxic substances. Second, the economic effect of a significant boycott will quickly force the Chinese to find ways to guarantee the safety of their exports. One thing is certain: if you do nothing, nothing will be done to protect the safety of imported food.

As much as is practical, buy locally – it’s also better for the environment. Buy domestically produced seafood and meat. In processed foods that contain wheat, rice or corn gluten, ask the grocer and/or manufacturer if it was purchased from China – if they can’t tell you or the answer is “yes”, tell them you’ll buy something else. For a while, at least, stop buying vitamins – they are of dubious value anyway if you have a well-balanced diet.

Find your local farmer’s markets. Buy organic. Whenever you can, when it comes to what you put in your body and feed to your loved ones, buy American.

If you don’t take action to protect yourself and your families, don’t expect government or industry to do it for you. At least, until it’s too late.

by Mark Adams

Via: Bob Cesca at HuffPost

AP: WASHINGTON - In a surprise outburst that cast a diplomatic shadow, a screaming protester confronted President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao and interrupted the welcoming ceremony on the White House lawn Thursday. Bush later apologized to the Chinese leader.

"President Bush, stop him from killing," the woman shouted, to the surprise of hundreds of guests spread across the lawn on a sunny, warm day. "President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong" — a banned religious movement in China.

* * *

The Secret Service identified the protester as Wenyi Wang, 47. Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin said she had been charged with disorderly conduct and that a charge of intimidating or disrupting foreign officials also was being considered.

When the government supresses speech, arrests someone for speaking up, that's a First Amendment question.  It's not a "federal case" everytime some blogger does something boneheaded and gets called on it.  Censorship is not the same as self-restraint.   Uncivilized discourse is not necessarily illegal even though it should be universally condemned. 

I know this for a fact because not only does Rosemary agree with me on this point, but so does Wince:

Mark was right, and I was wrong.

Freedom of Speech kicks in when you get charged with a crime for shouting at a communist dictator, in America, right after your President just told the Chinese President:

"China has become successful because the Chinese people are experience the freedom to buy, and to sell, and to produce -- and China can grow even more successful by allowing the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely, and to worship."

Now let me get this straight.  The Commander In Chief of the world's most lethal military machine, the leader of the planet's most dominant economy, the President of the most successful democracy in history tells you to lighten up on the oppression thingy, and you aren't supposed to be intimidated.

A lady in the crowd "Gluckerts" a press pass and yells at the leader of a billion people, and she's going to be charged with intimidation?

Okay.  That's a great lesson for the kids.  It was just as sad seeing her news organization turn their back on her.  Maybe, since she must have known she'd be in jeopardy for her actions, it would have been better if she had shouted in the form of a question.


See?  That would have made her sound like a friendly Foxpert and not some crazed protester.  Now she'll be lucky not to end up in Club Gitmo.

If you watch this and you're not tapping your toe within moments, well, you have no pulse.

Here's Xeni's take on it:

In the "MP3s" section of Baidu and Yahoo China, I stumbled on  Taiwanese pop star Jay Chow (aka Zhou Jie Lun)'s  theme song for Fearless (Huo Yuan Jia), the new Jet Li action movie about 19th-century martial arts hero Huo Yuan Jia. Here's one ripped MP3 of the song, here's another -- it's wicked catchy. Sort of hiphop meets backstreetboys meets chinese opera (sung in falsetto by a dude). After I listened about forty times, I found the movie's official site (gah, no US release dates! I'd gladly pay to see it!), and the music video: high, low.

I like the part in the music video where the dude is being such a hard-ass rapper and he punctuates the end of a line with the FAN. Like, "BLAYUMM--how you like me now, with my figgidy-FAN?!" I give Jay-Z like five minutes to rip this off cover this.

You have got to listen to the mp3 and watch the video, like, now. It'll make your day.

Try it yourself at Google.com and at Google.cn.

Of course, the results that come back are different, but I was mildly surprised to find that the third URL listed at the Chinese site was about the massacres.

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I've seen this presentation -- it's pretty good. You should watch it. I think it may be showing tonight on your local PBS station. Check your local listings...

... or just watch the full program online (WMP and Real Player).