Know your BFEE: Olympic Games Show Who뭩 Best Friends Forever with Authoritarians and Dictators

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Fri Aug-08-08 12:29 PM
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Know your BFEE: Olympic Games Show Who뭩 Best Friends Forever with Authoritarians and Dictators

DUers may뭭e noticed the hypocrisy when, from the safety of Thailand,
the little turd from Crawford lectured China on human rights.

There must뭭e been big laughs behind the scenes, as neither America뭩 drunken warmonkey
nor the Chinese leadership have shown a jot of concern for human rights or compassion for human life.

Bush attacks China - from a safe distance

Mary-Anne Toy in Beijing
Sydney Morning Herald, August 8, 2008

EXCERPT�

In a speech delivered from the safer distance of Bangkok, Mr Bush voiced the US뭩 밺eep concerns� about religious freedom and human rights in the world뭩 most populous country. But he also praised China for the enormous strides it had made in the past 30 years.

Mr Bush said: 밃merica stands in firm opposition to China뭩 detention of political dissidents, human rights advocates and religious activists.

밯e speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly and labour rights - not to antagonise China뭩 leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential.

밃nd we press for openness and justice not to impose our beliefs, but to allow the Chinese people to express theirs.�

CONTINUED�

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/08/07/1217702261305.html

Those sentiments are seriously ironic, considering the treatment Bush뭩 Department of Justice afforded Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. I believe Bush뭩 lack of compassion, like his near-zero curiosity level, was likely inherited from his parents. In the example of China, appointed president Jerry Ford appointed Smirko's authoritarian-loving father to serve as head of the the United States� liaison office in Beijing after Nixon re-established diplomatic ties during the early 1970s. Since then, the Chinese leadership has just LOVED Poppy.

Here뭩 what Sen. Ted Kennedy said, back in 1991:

ANNIVERSARY OF THE TIANANMEN CRACKDOWN (Senate - June 04, 1991)

(Page: S6951)

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to commend our majority leader for, really, an excellent statement and a principled stand. This has been his position since the time of that terrible tragedy in Tiananmen Square some 2 years ago. I think this morning in the Senate he has, as on other occasions on our national television, I think, made the strongest possible case for insisting that any most-favored-nation provisions would be conditioned upon important progress in addressing these needs.

I just ask the majority leader if he is familiar with the statement of the Prime Minister, Premier Lee Pung, who only at the time of the anniversary, just recently, insisted that the military crackdown had been an appropriate response to the peaceful student protest, and the Chinese Government would do it again if they were faced with a similar demonstration? I think he has made the case so well in covering a wide variety of areas. But the attitude of the current Chinese Government regime would certainly appear they would be prepared to do it again today if he is not troubled by that attitude as well.

Mr. President, as has been pointed out, 2 years ago today the Government of the People's Republic of China initiated a brutal crackdown on the courageous prodemocracy students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square. By the end of the week, hundreds of peaceful demonstrators had been ruthlessly slaughtered and thousands more had been detained by government authorities.

Now, President Bush has formally announced his intention to renew most-favored-nation trading status with China. His decision, he claims, is the right thing to do with respect to China.
Unfortunately, the facts indicate otherwise. Since the Tiananmen Square massacre, the Chinese Government has intensified its repression of prodemocracy forces.

As this year's anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre approached, the Premier of China, Lee Pung, commented upon that great tragedy. He harshly insisted that the military crackdown had been an appropriate response to the peaceful student protest and that the Chinese Government would do it again if similar demonstrations were attempted in the future.
Today, Tiananmen Square is lined with armed guards to repress even the smallest demonstration of sympathy for the memory of those who died there 2 years ago.
To renew China's MFN status in the face of this brutality would make a mockery of the lives lost at Tiananmen Square and undermine whatever forces of democracy are still struggling for a new China.

President Bush's policy toward China makes no sense. Immediately following the Tiananmen crackdown, he promised to suspend all political-level exchanges with China. Yet within a month, he dispatched National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft to Beijing--a trip that was kept secret from the Congress and the American people and was only acknowledged after it was reported by the press in December.

CONTINUED�

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r102:S04JN1-33:

In fact, they say, 밅ome back anytime, Poppy. You뭨e like Family.� And he certainly has.

Like his Chinese bud leadership, the Bush Family business is business. That뭩 why the founder and longtime head of the U.S. China Chamber of Commerce was Prescott Bush, Jr. It뭩 another shame on America뭩 news media that so few Americans know this history or next-to-nothing of the China-Bush Axis.

The Bush family: Middle Kingdom rainmakers

By Zach Coleman

HONG KONG - George Herbert Walker Bush arrived in Beijing 30 years ago as the official United States representative to China with one goal above all else: expanding his buddy list.

"My hyper-adrenaline, political instincts tell me that the fun of this job is going to be to try to make more contacts," he wrote in his first diary entry. "And it is my hope that I will be able to meet the next generation of China's leaders - whomever they may be. Yet everyone tells me that that is impossible."

Bush Sr, already a champion networker, wasn't to be denied. In a final triumph at the end of his stay, Deng Xiaoping, then vice premier, threw a farewell lunch for Bush Sr and his wife.

"You are our old friends," said Deng, according to a Chinese government website. "You are welcome to come back anytime in the future."

Bush Sr and his relatives have turned that open invitation into a family franchise over the years, setting themselves up as gatekeepers between lucrative business opportunities created by the opening up of China's economy and the US corporate and political establishment. If Iraq is the place where the Bush men fight once they leave the oil fields of Texas, China is where they have made money.

CONTINUED �

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FE21Ad01.html

Of course, there뭩 no hard feelings when tanks and machine guns are used to break up the huge pro-democracy demonstration that filled Tiananmen Square.

Poppy was worried his friends in the Chinese leadership would get the wrong idea about America � Congress and the American people were outraged at the time of Tiananmen. In reality, he had nothing to worry about because, in China, Poppy뭩 crew is 밊amily.�

The Dim Son continues to keep close ties with the Chinese leadership. He certainly has applied in an unknown number of secret prisons and torture chambers around the world how to use what they've learned.

Second largest U.S. Embassy in the world, after Baghdad

Still, I wonder why all those high-paying American manufacturing jobs headed overseas.

President's uncle shares Bush family ties to China

By Debbie Howlett, USA TODAY
02/18/2002 - Updated 10:33 PM ET

EXERPT�

The Bush family's ties to China go back to 1974, when President Nixon named George Bush ambassador to China. The college-age George W. Bush spent two months in China visiting his parents during his father's two-year stint.

Seven years after his brother left the ambassadorial post, Prescott Bush made his first trip to China. He later joined with Japanese partners in 1988 to build a golf course in Shanghai, the first in China. He met Jiang, who was then the mayor of Shanghai.
SNIP�

Prescott Bush, now 79, also developed a close working relationship with Rong Yiren, a former trade minister and vice president, who in 1993 introduced Bush to a group of Chinese business leaders as "an old friend." In 2000, Forbes publications reported that Rong, who has retired from government, was the richest man in China.

SNIP�

Last year, he opened the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce offices in Chicago. The membership roster includes United Airlines, American Express, McDonald's, Ford and Arthur Andersen, the beleaguered company that audited Enron's books.

Bush says opportunities abound now that the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis is in the past: "The Chinese are very much interested in getting foreign capital in. They desperately need the jobs."

CONTINUED�

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2002/02/19/usat-prescott-bush.htm

But, at root, more is shared than a mutual love of Mammon.
Violence, Terror and Repression, for examples.

China's sure to win at least one Silver Medal:

China will execute 374 people during Olympics, Amnesty estimates

Allegra Stratton and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday April 15 2008

An estimated 374 people will be executed in China during this summer's Olympic games in Beijing, Amnesty International has claimed.

A new league table of the world's most frequent executioners showed China officially used capital punishment 470 times last year. But some campaigners believe the true figure may be 8,000.

The human rights group called on Olympic athletes and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to press for greater openness about executions by the host country.

Amnesty's UK director Kate Allen said: "As the world's biggest executioner, China gets the 'gold medal' for global executions.

"According to reliable estimates, on average China secretly executes around 22 prisoners every day - that's 374 people during the Olympic games.

SNIP�

Nearly 70 crimes can carry the death penalty in China, including tax fraud, stealing VAT receipts, damaging electric power facilities, selling counterfeit medicine, embezzlement, accepting bribes and drugs offences.

CONTINUED�

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/15/humanrights.olympicgames2008

Gee. Now under Chinese statute, a lot of the things the BFEE have done would be punishable by capital punishment.

I think Poppy and his Dim Son know that.

I also believe they know, these days, what every Authoritarian, Dictator, Tyrant and Despot
really needs to keep a population in line is affordable high technology.
And they know where to get it.

China's All-Seeing Eye

With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.

NAOMI KLEIN
Rolling Stone
Posted May 29, 2008 3:24 PM

Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn't exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it � thanks to its location close to Hong Kong's port � to be China's first "special economic zone," one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis. The theory behind the experiment was that the "real" China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture � the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded, swallowing not just the surrounding Pearl River Delta, which now houses roughly 100,000 factories, but much of the rest of the country as well. Today, Shenzhen is a city of 12.4 million people, and there is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made here: iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer. Hundreds of luxury condominiums tower over the city; many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses. Newer neighborhoods like Keji Yuan are packed with ostentatiously modern corporate campuses and decadent shopping malls. Rem Koolhaas, Prada's favorite architect, is building a stock exchange in Shenzhen that looks like it floats � a design intended, he says, to "suggest and illustrate the process of the market." A still-under-construction superlight subway will soon connect it all at high speed; every car has multiple TV screens broadcasting over a Wi-Fi network. At night, the entire city lights up like a pimped-out Hummer, with each five-star hotel and office tower competing over who can put on the best light show.

Many of the big American players have set up shop in Shenzhen, but they look singularly unimpressive next to their Chinese competitors. The research complex for China's telecom giant Huawei, for instance, is so large that it has its own highway exit, while its workers ride home on their own bus line. Pressed up against Shenzhen's disco shopping centers, Wal-Mart superstores � of which there are nine in the city � look like dreary corner stores. (China almost seems to be mocking us: "You call that a superstore?") McDonald's and KFC appear every few blocks, but they seem almost retro next to the Real Kung Fu fast-food chain, whose mascot is a stylized Bruce Lee.

American commentators like CNN's Jack Cafferty dismiss the Chinese as "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." But nobody told the people of Shenzhen, who are busily putting on a 24-hour-a-day show called "America" � a pirated version of the original, only with flashier design, higher profits and less complaining. This has not happened by accident. China today, epitomized by Shenzhen's transition from mud to megacity in 30 years, represents a new way to organize society. Sometimes called "market Stalinism," it is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism � central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance � harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism.

Now, as China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range � a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.)

The security cameras are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship program known in China as "Golden Shield." The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology � thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric � to create an airtight consumer cocoon: a place where Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cellphones, McDonald's Happy Meals, Tsingtao beer and UPS delivery (to name just a few of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) can be enjoyed under the unblinking eye of the state, without the threat of democracy breaking out. With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement like the one that grabbed the world's attention at Tiananmen Square.

Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.

SNIP...

What is most disconcerting about China's surveillance state is how familiar it all feels. When I check into the Sheraton in Shenzhen, for instance, it looks like any other high-end hotel chain � only the lobby is a little more modern and the cheerful clerk doesn't just check my passport but takes a scan of it.

"Are you making a copy?" I ask.

"No, no," he responds helpfully. "We're just sending a copy to the police."

CONTINUED...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye/print

Yes, DU Friends: We have a lot to forward to in the coming years.

It뭩 our curse the Chinese have anointed upon the Bush Family:
We do live in 밿nteresting times.�