China Helping Mugabe Crush Opposition

Because I've been writing a lot about China's repression of Tibet lately, I've been getting a fair amount of hate comments from yellow journalists China supporters. I wonder if they support this:

A Chinese ship anchored outside Durban port in South Africa earlier this week with a consignment of arms for Zimbabwe, where a bloody crackdown on the opposition is in full swing.

An investigative magazine, Noseweek, raised the alert Wednesday, saying the An Yue Yiang was waiting for permission to offload 70 tonnes of weapons for transport by road to Zimbabwe.

The shipment comprised millions of rounds of ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, grenade launchers, and mortar bombs and tubes, Noseweek editor Martin Welz, who saw the shipping manifest, said.

Customs officials confirmed that the ship was carrying arms. The ship's captain confirmed to SAPA news agency he had cargo for Zimbabwe.

According to Welz, the shipment was paid for in January, two months before Zimbabwe's disputed elections.

But the timing of the delivery, coming amid mounting reports of 'revenge' attacks by Zanu-PF supporters on supporters of the rival Movement for Democratic Change, has raised fears the weapons, even if part of a routine order, could be used against civilians. (source)

Mugabe should be leaving office, having lost an election fair and square before his party made the results indecisive, unfair and unsquare. Instead, he is clinging to his job, despite having utterly ruined one of Africa's finest countries through his greed and corruption.

And what does China -- the country my commenters would have us believe is the victim of the Tibetans instead of the other way around -- do at this critical juncture? Do they support the people? Of course not!

They support the man who is poised to brutally repress his own people, like an acorn that hasn't fallen far from the China tree.

Commies, Greenies: Listen Up!

Here's the Yeahhhh Baby! follow-up to Monday's story about Silvio Berlusconi's big win in the Italian elections, courtesy of The Corner:

The big news is that the Communists are gone, for the first time since the end of the Second World War. Really gone. They didn't win a single seat in either chamber. A lot of famous faces will vanish from Parliament, and it is even possible, although unlikely, that some of the comrades will be forced to join the working class.

But wait, there's more:

The Greens are also gone.

Italy has been a political basket case for so long it's hard to get one's mind about the concept of an Italian legislature with only six political parties, with the most destabilizing and dangerous of them being shown the door.

What's going on?

All human group behavior is dynamic, a pendulum. While an individual may well be stupid forever, societies cannot be for the reason that the group has memory and intelligence.

The more erratic the group, the shorter the arc of its pendulum swing. The modern Italian Commies lasted about 60 years, the Greens just a couple decades. Both predicted things that didn't come true; both had chances to make effective policy but couldn't, and now they're gone. I'd say "for good," but I'm writing about pendulums here.

There's hope pouring over the transom from Italy tonight. Much of what was making Italy nearly unlivable is gone from Italian politics, and I think that all that is destroying America has already reached the farthest point of its swing, and is now sliding into its own oblivion.

hat-tip: Urgent Agenda

China Attacks The Blogosphere!

The relentless Chinese PR machine rolls on! Now they're attacking blogs like mine, posting hideously translated comments in support of totalitarian repression and opposed to human rights.

Here's one that just posted:

unfair to Chinese people

China will be stronger and stronger thats envied by others, so they insult
it to express their losed moods. All of Chinese people should integrate into one
country with more freedom and wealth. we believe we can do it.

Yeah, and I believe you're headed for a massive humanitarian meltdown because the Chinese approach of integrating into one country is a forced march, not a mixing pot.

I can't help myself; I see these comment-writers in a nasty Chinese prison, forced to work 16 hours a day hunting down anti-Chinese posts in the blogosphere, then using a lousy translating program to put up responses, as armed guards loom threateningly over them.

Here's another fine example:

"Beijing, your slogans thrill but your actions kill.''

Let me offer up an alternative:

"Read History about your own country ! The [sic] Read History about
Tibet!"

I've read the history of my own country -- one not written as a propaganda tool of Chinese Communists, thank you -- and I've studied Tibet under the older brother of the Dalai Lama, and I've studied the techniques of Communism from Stalin to Pol Pot to Hu, so don't mess with me, you running dog lacky of the Red Monster!

Cuba Inching Closer To Freedom?

A few demonstrators are out in Miami's Cuban community, marking the blessed end of the dictatorial rule of Fidel Castro, who announced his resignation early this morning.

The news, thus far, has not been met with large demonstrations, either in Miami or Cuba. Perhaps we have learned not to hope for much with Cuba, especially with Raul Castro taking over the government, promising only "modest" reform -- in a country where the average wage is $18 a month!

Speaking in Rwanda -- a country that knows a thing or two about brutal rule -- President Bush was upbeat, calling on the world to help move Cuba towards democracy:

"The international community should work with the Cuban people to begin to build institutions that are necessary for democracy," he said. "Eventually, this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections — and I mean free, and I mean fair — not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as true democracy."

If that dream turns out to be just a short way off, I'll be surprised. It's been a long time since the Berlin Wall fell overnight. Despots have adapted, figuring out how to hold onto power in a world that no longer welcomes them.

But even so, a world without Fidel Castro is a better world.

Favoritism In Shanxi Sentences

In China today, some of the scummiest scum of the earth faced justice, and the scummiest of them all got off easy.

Zhao Yanbing, wasn't the scummiest. A roughneck hired to keep the Shanxi brick kiln's slave laborers in line, Yanging was convicted of beating a mentally handicapped slave worker to death. Today, he got a death sentence.

Heng Tinghan, foreman of another slave labor kiln wasn't the scummiest. He just enslaved 34 workers, and was convicted of intentional injury and unlawful detention,. His sentence: Life in prison.

The man with the curiously humorous name of Wang Bingbing, a man about whom nothing is funny, is the scummiest of them all. He ran the notorious Shanxi kiln and benefited personally from the kidnapping, beating, inhuman treatment and deaths of slave laborers, including children. He hired the thugs who beat sick, weak workers to death and paid the agents who kidnapped slave laborers for him.

Oh, and he is also the son of the long-time local Communist Party boss, so Wang Bingbing's sentence was a mere nine years in prison.

Of course, prison in China generally means being a slave laborer, so there is some justice yet in these sentences. We can only hope that Tinghan and Bingbing get particularly brutal chain gang bosses and die exhausted, beaten, hungry and broken. (After they have miraculously accepted Christ and saved their eternal souls, of course.)

Other Party officials got similarly cushy treatment, reports the "progressive" (read as "Socialist") blog Oread Daily:

Regretfully, China's actions against Party and government officials who were allegedly involved was not nearly so dramatic. Some were sacked from their Party or government posts. Others were given disciplinary warnings for lax supervision and dereliction of duty. The officials punished, reports CCTV, included 12 county level and six city level officials. In the center of the scandal -- Hongtong -- the head of the county government and deputy party secretary, Sun Yanlin was fired from his Party post. Party secretary Gao Hongyuan, and deputy head of the government, Wang Zhenjun were given a serious warning. The commission also advised dismissal of two township officials in Hongtong. Eight other officials are being investigated by the judicial department.

"Regretfully?" Wake up, Pinko Boy. Exploitation of the workers and protection of the Party is the hallmark of your beloved all-powerful State. "Deliberately," "Not unexpectedly," "Typically" -- all would be better than your sad little surprise that a Communist dictatorship didn't do better in the meting out of justice.

The blog's masthead quotes Marx ("Philosophers only interpret the world; the thing, however, is to change it."). He would be the wiser if he quoted Jefferson, Madison or Reagan instead. Like Marx, they changed the world; unlike Marx, they changed it for the better.

Photo: AP

Being Amoral/Immoral Has Its Advantages

One of the main advantages China has as it races headstrong into world powerdom is the fact that it just doesn't care about anything but the advance of Chinese totalitarianism. Take their quest for oil; one advisor to the Chinese government said this in 2005:

No matter if it's rogue's oil or a friend's oi, we don't care. Human rights? We don't care. We care about oil. Whether Iran would have nuclear weapons or not is not our business. America cares, but Iran is not our neighbor. Anyone who helps China with energy is a friend.

James Kirchick shared that quote with Weekly Standard readers last week in his article, Africa's New Hegemon.

China's growing demand for oil has them cutting deals with Sudan (and fighting UN sanctions) and Iran (fighting UN sanctions) and, before we kicked them out, Iraq (fighting UN sanctions). They sell weapons throughout the continent -- $240 million in 2004 to Robert Mugabe's dispicable regime, including some riot suppression gear that's recently come in handy.

It sold weapons to Eritrea during its recent war with Ethiopia. It sold weapons to Ethiopia in its recent war with Eritrea.

But it's China-first, China-only approach has its drawbacks. It floods Africa with cheap products, puting local businesses out of business. It built a textile factory in Kano, Nigeria that put all the local textile mills out of business -- but it brought in all its raw material from China, buying none locally.

Deaths in Chinese-operated mines are high and workers complain that Chinese bosses are "uniquely bruttal and exploitative." There are even allegations that China imports prison slave labor from China

Whatever happened to the "People" in "People's Republic?"

As Herman Cohen, a former US ambassador to Senegal and Gambia summed it up:

"They tend to be like old fashioned imperialists."