Chinese workers get a good dose of capitalism more poisonous than the lead Mattel sells for children eat.
Trouble in Toyland: U.S. recession jolts China
Dwindling demand hastens closure of at least 3,600 factories, stirs unrest
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28037960/
By Kari Huus and Adrienne Mong
msnbc.com and NBC News
Fri., Dec. 12, 2008
For American parents, bargain prices for toys this holiday season qualify
as good news: A Barbie fan who rose before dawn for Wal-Mart’s Black
Friday sale could secure the coquettish “Barbie Diamond Castle Princess
Liana Doll” for $5 — royally marked down from its regular retail price.
At Target, a 10-pack of die-cast Hot Wheels cars also went for just $5,
while a radio-controlled helicopter cost a mere $15. The price wars were
enough to draw consumers out of their bunkers for their first shopping
spree in months.
But wrapped up with those cheap toys are ominous economic omens for both
sides of the Pacific. The rock-bottom prices show how desperate U.S.
retailers are to plump up weak consumer demand — a symptom of the ailing
U.S. economy and a serious problem for China, which makes nine of every 10
toys sold in American stores.
Declining U.S. orders already have contributed to the closure of at least
3,600 toy factories since the beginning of 2008, according to the Chinese
government, leaving hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers suddenly out
of work in this sector alone. Some of the shutdowns have triggered violent
protests, a situation that could worsen if the Western recession drags on
through 2009, as many economists are predicting.
“Unemployment in China could deprive a lot of people of their
lifeline,” says Hu Xindou, an economics professor at the Beijing
Institute of Technology. “So it could trigger social instability or even
shake the rule of the Communist party.”
Millions of jobs at stake
The toy industry has played a major role in China’s economic surge over
the past 30 years. Exports account for as much as 40 percent of China’s
gross domestic product, and labor-intensive industries making things like
toys, shoes and clothing generate millions of jobs for its rapidly growing
workforce.
But Chinese toy makers began feeling the economic squeeze well before the
U.S. recession was made official in late November.
U.S. retailers trimmed orders after suffering weak sales in the 2007
holiday season — made worse by recalls of dangerous toys.
The volume of Chinese toys passing through eight major U.S. ports was down
5.9 percent in the first nine months of this year, compared to the same
period in 2007, according to economic forecaster IHS Global Insight, which
tracks the information for the National Federation of Retailers. Toy
traffic through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., which
typically handle more than half of Santa’s incoming booty, declined 10.2
percent, as measured by tonnage.
The draw-down isn’t readily apparent at U.S. shopping malls, where toy
shelves appear as packed as ever. And the limited inventories on hand
likely won’t become obvious unless a toy emerges as a must-have item —
like the Tickle-me-Elmo and Cabbage Patch dolls of past shopping seasons.
Slowdown makes tough time tougher
Behind the scenes, though, the decreased orders are sending shock waves
through the Chinese economy.
“A lot of what is happening in China, particularly with respect to toys,
is demand driven,” says Erik Autor, international trade counsel for the
retailers federation. “Toy (buyers) are ratcheting back orders,
reflecting a drop in consumer demand.”
Slowing orders have added to other pressures on China’s toy makers.
China’s new labor contract law, which imposed stricter conditions and
compensation for layoffs of temporary workers, took effect in 2007,
increasing costs for manufacturers that rely heavily on migrants on
production lines, including toy makers and other labor-intensive
manufacturers based mainly in southern Guangdong province. The province has
become the core of China’s manufacturing sector based on the flow of
cheap and abundant labor temporary workers from the country's poor
interior. By some estimates there are 150 million migrant workers in
Guangdong alone.
Toy makers also were hard hit by the rising price of oil, which surged to
more than $140 a barrel in June, and in turn sharply increased the price of
plastic.
Industry sources say the toy makers saw profits squeezed to the point where
many tried to renegotiate contracts with buyers — especially major U.S.
players, such as Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us. When they discovered the buyers
wouldn’t budge on the purchase agreements, many simply decided to close
their factories. Some locked the gates and vanished in the dead of night,
leaving workers to discover they had no job when they arrived in the
morning.
“Over half (of the factories) that have closed had negotiated a price,
then when they couldn’t get the retailer to move (on the price), they
wouldn’t make it at a loss and closed down,” said Britt Beemer, a
retail strategist and founder of Charleston-based America’s Research
Group.
Others found ways to cut corners, which is cited as one reason that the
problem of Chinese toy safety came to a head last year. Among other things,
some Chinese factories started using lead-based paint on their products
because it dries faster and thereby speeds production time.
“They were either closing their eyes or closing their doors,” said
Michael Zakkour, managing director of China BrightStar, a manufacturing and
sourcing consultancy.
To be sure, some of the factories that were shuttered were small shops that
employed only a few dozen workers. And the contraction is to some degree a
natural consolidation process in an industry that is overbuilt. But big
players have clearly been affected as well.
One of the most publicized cases was the abrupt closure of the Smart Union
toy company in October in the city of Dongguan, the center of the toy
industry. When the factory managers disappeared overnight, leaving 7,000
workers without paychecks or severance, protests erupted, targeting both
the government and the publicly traded Hong Kong company. The Dongguan
government finally doled out 24 million yuan ($3.5 million) to pay what was
owed to the workers and settle the conflict.
“All local officials recognize that they are judged on the basis of their
ability to control social unrest,” said Nicholas Lardy, a China expert
and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“It’s in their interest to make sure factories don’t leave town and
abscond with back wages.”
In November, toy workers rioted after the Hong Kong-based Kaida
Manufacturing Co. laid off 600 employees from its factories in Dongguan and
tried to avoid paying compensation required by the new contract law. Local
media reported that approximately 1,000 police and security guards were
called in to disperse the angry crowd, but company offices were ransacked,
cars overturned and at least five people were injured before order was
restored. Kaida ultimately agreed to renew contracts with senior employees
and offered compensation packages to others.
Reverse migration
The closures have left many migrants with no work, including 23-year-old Wu
Yang, who worked at a Taiwanese-owned factory in Dongguan for three years
before being laid off four months ago when the operation was shut down. Wu
is considering returning to his home in central Henan province, but for now
he’s killing time in local bookshops and hoping the situation will turn
around.
"Maybe I will go home, but it’s boring there,” Wu said. “And I’ll
just gamble all my money away."
Each day, thousands of other migrants in Guangdong and other coastal
provinces board trains and buses for their home villages, leaving earlier
than normal for the Chinese New Year, which begins Jan. 26. When and if
they will return is anyone’s guess.
In the short term, the exodus of unemployed workers eases pressure in
Guangdong and other manufacturing centers. Longer term, however, it hurts
families living in the poorest parts of China, who receive money from
migrant workers. That raises the prospect that the protests and violence in
the manufacturing regions could spread to the interior, many China experts
say.
“It’s a potentially scary scenario,” said Lawrence Delson, who
teaches China business courses at New York University. “If many of these
migrant workers go home, what happens to the flow of money back to the
inland provinces? … There is a deepening division between the haves and
the have-nots … raising the specter of social unrest.”
Mixed message
The Chinese government appears well aware of the threat and has taken
action aimed at stimulating its sagging economy.
In November, Beijing announced a massive $586 billion stimulus package.
Economists and world leaders praised China for putting together the most
ambitious rescue package in the world, worth about 3 percent of its GDP.
Chinese leaders did not provide many details of the package, but indicated
that it would include spending on infrastructure, health and education. The
central purpose of the package, they said, was to spur consumption in China
rather than rely so heavily on exports for growth. At a G20 meeting later
that month, China also agreed with other major economies that in grappling
with the crisis, all nations should avoid protectionism.
But with pressure mounting to protect jobs in its export sector, Beijing
also has instituted policy that is contrary to the spirit of the G20
meeting by increasing tax rebates on thousands of export products — from
toys to toasters. The rebates, and an artificially low valuation of
China’s currency, essentially give its exports a competitive edge in the
world marketplace, threatening to increase trade imbalances that have long
caused tension.
Even Chinese officials have expressed concern that the rebate policy, which
experts say covers at least 50 percent of China’s exports, could spark
retaliation from trade partners, including the United States. Some trade
experts warn that could spark a trade war, similar to what happened when
the United States put in place high protectionist tariffs in 1930, thereby
fueling the Great Depression.
“At the moment, China is the gold standard on the stimulus,” said
Lardy, of the Peterson Institute of International Economics. “But I would
give them very low marks for this (tax policy.) They are … basically
promoting exports at the expense of the rest of the world.”
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
U.S. has plundered world wealth with dollar- China paper
http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSPEK466920081024?sp=true
From Reuters---
Fri Oct 24, 2008 1:59am EDT
BEIJING, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The United States has plundered global wealth by exploiting the dollar's dominance, and the world urgently needs other currencies to take its place, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Friday.
The front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said that Asian and European countries should banish the U.S. dollar from their direct trade relations for a start, relying only on their own currencies.
A meeting between Asian and European leaders, starting on Friday in Beijing, presented the perfect opportunity to begin building a new international financial order, the newspaper said.
The People's Daily is the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party. The Chinese-language overseas edition is a small circulation offshoot of the main paper.
Its pronouncements do not necessarily directly voice leadership views. But the commentary, as well as recent comments, amount to a growing chorus of Chinese disdain for Washington's economic policies and global financial dominance in the wake of the credit crisis.
"The grim reality has led people, amidst the panic, to realise that the United States has used the U.S. dollar's hegemony to plunder the world's wealth," said the commentator, Shi Jianxun, a professor at Shanghai's Tongji University.
Shi, who has before been strident in his criticism of the U.S., said other countries had lost vast amounts of wealth because of the financial crisis, while Washington's sole concern had been protecting its own interests.
"The U.S. dollar is losing people's confidence. The world, acting democratically and lawfully through a global financial organisation, urgently needs to change the international monetary system based on U.S. global economic leadership and U.S. dollar dominance," he wrote.
Shi suggested that all trade between Europe and Asia should be settled in euros, pounds, yen and yuan, though he did not explain how the Chinese currency could play such a role since it is not convertible on the capital account.
A two-day Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) of 27 EU member states and 16 Asian countries was set to open on Friday. Though few analysts expect much in the way of concrete agreements, Shi said it could prove momentous.
"How can Europe and Asia grasp each other's hands and together confront the once-in-a-century global financial crisis sparked by the U.S.; how can they construct a new equitable and safe international financial order?" he said.
"The world is waiting for this Asian-European meeting to achieve big results in financial cooperation." (Reporting by Simon Rabinovitch; Editing by Ken Wills)
Monday, September 29, 2008
Yummy, yummy... melamine in your tummy... "Mommy, is there a capitalist connection to me dying?"
Cadbury pulls melamine-laced chocolate from China
September 29, 2008
By MIN LEE
HONG KONG (AP) - British candy maker Cadbury said Monday it is recalling 11 types of Chinese-made chocolates found to contain melamine, as police in northern China raided a network accused of adding the banned chemical to milk.
A Cadbury spokesman said it was too early to say how much of the chemical was in the chocolates made at its Beijing plant.
"It's too early to say where the source was or the extent of it," said the spokesman, who declined to be identified because of company policy.
The company said its dairy suppliers were cleared by government testing.
But American candy companies Mars and Hershey say their candy is safe to eat.
The Hershey Co. (HSY) said Monday it has never purchased milk ingredients, including powdered milk, from China.
Mars North America said in a statement that its operations in China do not get any ingredients from companies found to be selling melamine-contaminated dairy products. It says the Chinese food-safety agency tested samples of Mars China's milk powder suppliers and found them to be free of melamine.
Mars makes Snickers and M&Ms. Hershey makes Hershey's Kisses and Reese's brands.
Meanwhile, police in Hebei province arrested 22 people and seized more than 480 pounds of the industrial chemical in the raids, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The report said the melamine was produced in illicit plants and sold to breeding farms and purchasing stations.
Xinhua said 19 of the 22 detainees were managers of pastures, breeding farms and purchasing stations. It did not say when the raids took place.
The scandal broke this month when authorities said infant formula produced by Sanlu was causing kidney stones in babies and young children. Four infants have died and some 54,000 have become ill after drinking the contaminated baby formula.
Subsequent tests revealed melamine contamination in products ranging from yogurt to candy to pastries.
Authorities believe suppliers added melamine, which is rich in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to deceive quality tests for protein.
Cadbury said the 11 recalled chocolate products were distributed in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia.
U.S. companies Kraft Foods Inc. (KFT) and Mars Inc. said they would adhere to a recall order of Chinese-made Oreos, M&Ms and Snickers in Indonesia, but said they wanted to conduct their own tests with outside experts.
So far only a local agency has checked the products for melamine, but the levels found were considered very high.
"We have asked our trade partners and retailers to suspend the sales of our products in accordance to the agency's order," Mars Indonesia spokesman Bondan Ardi said.
Hong Kong supermarket chain PARKnSHOP also pulled its Chinese-made Oreo, M&M and Snickers products as a precaution, spokeswoman Pinky Chan said.
Countries around the world have removed items containing Chinese milk ingredients from store shelves or banned them outright.
Authorities in China had previously arrested at least 18 people and detained more than two dozen suspects in connection with the scandal.
September 29, 2008
By MIN LEE
HONG KONG (AP) - British candy maker Cadbury said Monday it is recalling 11 types of Chinese-made chocolates found to contain melamine, as police in northern China raided a network accused of adding the banned chemical to milk.
A Cadbury spokesman said it was too early to say how much of the chemical was in the chocolates made at its Beijing plant.
"It's too early to say where the source was or the extent of it," said the spokesman, who declined to be identified because of company policy.
The company said its dairy suppliers were cleared by government testing.
But American candy companies Mars and Hershey say their candy is safe to eat.
The Hershey Co. (HSY) said Monday it has never purchased milk ingredients, including powdered milk, from China.
Mars North America said in a statement that its operations in China do not get any ingredients from companies found to be selling melamine-contaminated dairy products. It says the Chinese food-safety agency tested samples of Mars China's milk powder suppliers and found them to be free of melamine.
Mars makes Snickers and M&Ms. Hershey makes Hershey's Kisses and Reese's brands.
Meanwhile, police in Hebei province arrested 22 people and seized more than 480 pounds of the industrial chemical in the raids, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The report said the melamine was produced in illicit plants and sold to breeding farms and purchasing stations.
Xinhua said 19 of the 22 detainees were managers of pastures, breeding farms and purchasing stations. It did not say when the raids took place.
The scandal broke this month when authorities said infant formula produced by Sanlu was causing kidney stones in babies and young children. Four infants have died and some 54,000 have become ill after drinking the contaminated baby formula.
Subsequent tests revealed melamine contamination in products ranging from yogurt to candy to pastries.
Authorities believe suppliers added melamine, which is rich in nitrogen, to watered-down milk to deceive quality tests for protein.
Cadbury said the 11 recalled chocolate products were distributed in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia.
U.S. companies Kraft Foods Inc. (KFT) and Mars Inc. said they would adhere to a recall order of Chinese-made Oreos, M&Ms and Snickers in Indonesia, but said they wanted to conduct their own tests with outside experts.
So far only a local agency has checked the products for melamine, but the levels found were considered very high.
"We have asked our trade partners and retailers to suspend the sales of our products in accordance to the agency's order," Mars Indonesia spokesman Bondan Ardi said.
Hong Kong supermarket chain PARKnSHOP also pulled its Chinese-made Oreo, M&M and Snickers products as a precaution, spokeswoman Pinky Chan said.
Countries around the world have removed items containing Chinese milk ingredients from store shelves or banned them outright.
Authorities in China had previously arrested at least 18 people and detained more than two dozen suspects in connection with the scandal.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Chinese dairy knew milk fault weeks before recall
Note: Since this was posted a reader suggested a link to the Chinese media be posted... this is from China's Daily English language newspaper:
Link to People's Daily:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6498939.html
Commentary by Alan L. Maki...
Does anyone really believe, that the "market economy" and capitalist thinking introduced and pushed by deviant and corrupt Chinese leaders whose perverted world outlook has been shaped by backroom payoffs in the same manner as received by any American politicians from the Wall Street coupon clippers working in league with the likes of capitalist sooth-sayers such as Alan Greenspan in the name of the wonderfully sounding "harmonious development," which is said to be part of "Chinese culture," as the right-wing, reactionary Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation "educate" a "new generation" of Chinese youth in "business administration," rather than, the Communist Party of China doing its job in educating the working people and peasants in Marxism where socialist humanism is elevated to the highest level, can escape these kinds of atrocious, uncaring and anti-human aspects of a "free market economy" as working people are told, for some unstated reason--- and without any basis or substance to back it up--- that working people will have to wait for twenty to one-hundred years to attain their very basic and fundamental human rights?
It is because the "leaders" of China have pushed down, rather than raised up, the working class and peasantry to suit the interests of the profit gouging capitalist corporations of the West, that China now finds itself entangled in the same web of corruption and working class repression as any capitalist country... including the most corrupt and repressive of them all--- the United States of America.
This problem of contaminated milk powder went on for weeks making hundreds of babies sick simply because working people and peasants in China have been removed from the decision making process and no longer feel free to bring forward and report this kind of wrong-doing... no different than the more than two-million casino workers employed here in the United States in the Indian Gaming Industry who--- working without ANY rights--- have even less rights than Chinese workers and peasants; who, too, like Chinese workers, are now too intimidated and bullied to tell law enforcement agencies about prostitution, drug dealing, loan-sharking, and the illegal gambling operations that are now bringing corruption even to the youth in American high schools as these illegal betting rings operating out of the casinos make pay-offs to high school quarterbacks and pitchers to throw the games and manipulate point spreads for these bookies to make profits.
As both socialist Minnesota Governors, Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson, repeatedly pointed out, it is the epitome of naivete, to think or suggest, that the corruption which permeates every facet of our lives--- from the church to the schoolroom to the corporate boardrooms to the offices of mayors and the Sate Houses and Halls of Congress--- can be eliminated as long as capitalist greed is the dominant force and motivator of any society.
Both Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson were very clear on this point: For humanity to rise above the corruption and decadence of capitalist society, a new system of cooperative socialism would have to be brought into existence by working people and farmers, united, who were sincere in desiring real change... the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party, like the Chinese Communist Party tried to make the needed change--- both met stiff opposition from the same very powerful capitalist class of Wall Street coupon clippers.
One would think that working class Communists and peasants in China would have come forward already and said the same thing Barack Obama is saying about the situation here regarding eight long years of the Bush-Cheney Administration--- the most corrupt in American history: ENOUGH.
Simply taking these crooked and corrupt culprits in the management of this Chinese dairy enterprise out in a cow pasture and putting a bullet in their heads is not enough... because those who do the bribing and foster the corruption are being placed on a pedestal and elevated to positions of high power and influence.
Chinese workers--- like workers, peasants and farmers everywhere--- need to get rid of capitalism rather than give in to the perversions of "market socialism" and "new thinking," which are nothing more than code-words for allowing capitalism and all forms of exploitation and corruption to thrive.
Again, as Barack Obama has pointed out, "You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap up an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough."
The same thing can be said of "harmonious development" and "market socialism" which is nothing more than putting lipstick on someone like Sarah Palin... call it what you will, capitalism is still capitalism... capitalism is the same corrupt, rotten system no matter what pretty words are used to try to disguise it... no different than a pretty face with lipstick intended to hide what comes out of the mouth as the most backward and reactionary ideas of warmongers and the Wall Street coupon clippers of the military-financial-industrial complex who have built state-monopoly capitalism into a vast web of imperialism now infecting even socialist China with its poisonous corruption.
Certainly, if the American people "have had enough," the Chinese people don't want more of what we want to get rid of.
Alan L. Maki
Link to People's Daily:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6498939.html
From Associated Press---
Chinese dairy knew milk fault weeks before recall
Sep 13, 7:22 AM (ET)
By JOE McDONALD
BEIJING (AP) - A Chinese dairy that sold milk powder linked to kidney stones in infants and one death knew weeks before it ordered a recall that the product contained a banned chemical, the Health Ministry said Saturday.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday that the dairy, Sanlu Group Col, was ordered to stop production as the number of sick babies rose to 432.
A Health Ministry statement gave no indication why Sanlu Group Co., China's biggest milk powder producer, failed to warn consumers immediately. Employees who answered the phone Saturday at the ministry's news office and at China's product safety agency said they had no more information.
In August, Sanlu's testing revealed melamine in the milk powder, a ministry statement said. Melamine is a toxic chemical used in plastics that contaminated pet food last year.
The ministry did not say when Sanlu alerted authorities about its findings but the dairy ordered a recall Thursday of 700 tons of formula made before Aug. 6.
A New Zealand dairy cooperative that owns part of Sanlu said Friday it believed none of the tainted powder was exported.
Kidney problems in infants were reported as early as mid-July but authorities failed to launch a food safety investigation, Xinhua said in a separate report. Another news report said the dairy received complaints as early as March.
Investigators are questioning 78 people about the contamination, which occurred when dairy farmers added melamine to the milk, possibly to make its protein content appear higher, Xinhua said. Melamine is rich in nitrogen and standard tests for protein in bulk food ingredients measure nitrogen levels.
The incident reflects China's enduring problems with product safety despite a shake up of its regulatory system following a spate of warnings and recalls about tainted toothpaste, faulty tires and other goods.
The biggest group of victims is in China itself, where shoddy or counterfeit products are common. Infants, hospital patients and others have been killed or injured by tainted or fake milk, medicines, liquor and other products.
The number of infants suffering kidney stones after being fed Sanlu formula has risen to 432, Xinhua said. It did not give a breakdown of where in China the cases were.
Xinhua cited a Gansu provincial health department spokesman as saying he received reports on July 16 that 16 infants under a year old, all of whom drank Sanlu milk, were suffering a rare kidney ailment. He said the Health Ministry launched an epidemic survey.
"However, there seemed no food and safety survey had been done. Otherwise, the health, and even lives, of many infants could have been saved," Xinhua said.
A Sanlu manager quoted by the newspaper Beijing News said the dairy received complaints in March and June but could not track down the problem.
Another Sanlu manager quoted Friday on the Web site of a leading Chinese business magazine, Caijing, said it refrained from making an announcement because some grocers refused to return tainted powder. The report did not say why that prevented a warning.
Sanlu buys milk from a nationwide network of suppliers that includes 60,000 family farms, according to the company's Web site.
In Taiwan, officials said they had seized thousands of pounds of milk powder produced by Sanlu after Beijing authorities notified them the product was tainted.
Liu Fang-ming of the Taoyuan county government said the shipment, which arrived in June, contained 55,115 pounds of milk powder, but only 21,660 pounds have been recovered so far.
Officials did not say whether any of the milk powder, which is used in baby milk formula and baked goods, had been consumed in Taiwan.
Taiwan has not reported any illnesses from the powder.
It was China's second high-profile case in four years involving harmful baby formula.
In 2004, more than 200 infants suffered malnutrition and at least 12 died after being fed phony formula that contained no nutrients. Some 40 companies were found to be making phony formula and 47 people were arrested.
---
Associated Press researcher Bonnie Cao in Beijing contributed to this report.
Link to People's Daily:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6498939.html
Commentary by Alan L. Maki...
Does anyone really believe, that the "market economy" and capitalist thinking introduced and pushed by deviant and corrupt Chinese leaders whose perverted world outlook has been shaped by backroom payoffs in the same manner as received by any American politicians from the Wall Street coupon clippers working in league with the likes of capitalist sooth-sayers such as Alan Greenspan in the name of the wonderfully sounding "harmonious development," which is said to be part of "Chinese culture," as the right-wing, reactionary Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation "educate" a "new generation" of Chinese youth in "business administration," rather than, the Communist Party of China doing its job in educating the working people and peasants in Marxism where socialist humanism is elevated to the highest level, can escape these kinds of atrocious, uncaring and anti-human aspects of a "free market economy" as working people are told, for some unstated reason--- and without any basis or substance to back it up--- that working people will have to wait for twenty to one-hundred years to attain their very basic and fundamental human rights?
It is because the "leaders" of China have pushed down, rather than raised up, the working class and peasantry to suit the interests of the profit gouging capitalist corporations of the West, that China now finds itself entangled in the same web of corruption and working class repression as any capitalist country... including the most corrupt and repressive of them all--- the United States of America.
This problem of contaminated milk powder went on for weeks making hundreds of babies sick simply because working people and peasants in China have been removed from the decision making process and no longer feel free to bring forward and report this kind of wrong-doing... no different than the more than two-million casino workers employed here in the United States in the Indian Gaming Industry who--- working without ANY rights--- have even less rights than Chinese workers and peasants; who, too, like Chinese workers, are now too intimidated and bullied to tell law enforcement agencies about prostitution, drug dealing, loan-sharking, and the illegal gambling operations that are now bringing corruption even to the youth in American high schools as these illegal betting rings operating out of the casinos make pay-offs to high school quarterbacks and pitchers to throw the games and manipulate point spreads for these bookies to make profits.
As both socialist Minnesota Governors, Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson, repeatedly pointed out, it is the epitome of naivete, to think or suggest, that the corruption which permeates every facet of our lives--- from the church to the schoolroom to the corporate boardrooms to the offices of mayors and the Sate Houses and Halls of Congress--- can be eliminated as long as capitalist greed is the dominant force and motivator of any society.
Both Floyd B. Olson and Elmer A. Benson were very clear on this point: For humanity to rise above the corruption and decadence of capitalist society, a new system of cooperative socialism would have to be brought into existence by working people and farmers, united, who were sincere in desiring real change... the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party, like the Chinese Communist Party tried to make the needed change--- both met stiff opposition from the same very powerful capitalist class of Wall Street coupon clippers.
One would think that working class Communists and peasants in China would have come forward already and said the same thing Barack Obama is saying about the situation here regarding eight long years of the Bush-Cheney Administration--- the most corrupt in American history: ENOUGH.
Simply taking these crooked and corrupt culprits in the management of this Chinese dairy enterprise out in a cow pasture and putting a bullet in their heads is not enough... because those who do the bribing and foster the corruption are being placed on a pedestal and elevated to positions of high power and influence.
Chinese workers--- like workers, peasants and farmers everywhere--- need to get rid of capitalism rather than give in to the perversions of "market socialism" and "new thinking," which are nothing more than code-words for allowing capitalism and all forms of exploitation and corruption to thrive.
Again, as Barack Obama has pointed out, "You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap up an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It's still going to stink after eight years. We've had enough."
The same thing can be said of "harmonious development" and "market socialism" which is nothing more than putting lipstick on someone like Sarah Palin... call it what you will, capitalism is still capitalism... capitalism is the same corrupt, rotten system no matter what pretty words are used to try to disguise it... no different than a pretty face with lipstick intended to hide what comes out of the mouth as the most backward and reactionary ideas of warmongers and the Wall Street coupon clippers of the military-financial-industrial complex who have built state-monopoly capitalism into a vast web of imperialism now infecting even socialist China with its poisonous corruption.
Certainly, if the American people "have had enough," the Chinese people don't want more of what we want to get rid of.
Alan L. Maki
Link to People's Daily:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/6498939.html
From Associated Press---
Chinese dairy knew milk fault weeks before recall
Sep 13, 7:22 AM (ET)
By JOE McDONALD
BEIJING (AP) - A Chinese dairy that sold milk powder linked to kidney stones in infants and one death knew weeks before it ordered a recall that the product contained a banned chemical, the Health Ministry said Saturday.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday that the dairy, Sanlu Group Col, was ordered to stop production as the number of sick babies rose to 432.
A Health Ministry statement gave no indication why Sanlu Group Co., China's biggest milk powder producer, failed to warn consumers immediately. Employees who answered the phone Saturday at the ministry's news office and at China's product safety agency said they had no more information.
In August, Sanlu's testing revealed melamine in the milk powder, a ministry statement said. Melamine is a toxic chemical used in plastics that contaminated pet food last year.
The ministry did not say when Sanlu alerted authorities about its findings but the dairy ordered a recall Thursday of 700 tons of formula made before Aug. 6.
A New Zealand dairy cooperative that owns part of Sanlu said Friday it believed none of the tainted powder was exported.
Kidney problems in infants were reported as early as mid-July but authorities failed to launch a food safety investigation, Xinhua said in a separate report. Another news report said the dairy received complaints as early as March.
Investigators are questioning 78 people about the contamination, which occurred when dairy farmers added melamine to the milk, possibly to make its protein content appear higher, Xinhua said. Melamine is rich in nitrogen and standard tests for protein in bulk food ingredients measure nitrogen levels.
The incident reflects China's enduring problems with product safety despite a shake up of its regulatory system following a spate of warnings and recalls about tainted toothpaste, faulty tires and other goods.
The biggest group of victims is in China itself, where shoddy or counterfeit products are common. Infants, hospital patients and others have been killed or injured by tainted or fake milk, medicines, liquor and other products.
The number of infants suffering kidney stones after being fed Sanlu formula has risen to 432, Xinhua said. It did not give a breakdown of where in China the cases were.
Xinhua cited a Gansu provincial health department spokesman as saying he received reports on July 16 that 16 infants under a year old, all of whom drank Sanlu milk, were suffering a rare kidney ailment. He said the Health Ministry launched an epidemic survey.
"However, there seemed no food and safety survey had been done. Otherwise, the health, and even lives, of many infants could have been saved," Xinhua said.
A Sanlu manager quoted by the newspaper Beijing News said the dairy received complaints in March and June but could not track down the problem.
Another Sanlu manager quoted Friday on the Web site of a leading Chinese business magazine, Caijing, said it refrained from making an announcement because some grocers refused to return tainted powder. The report did not say why that prevented a warning.
Sanlu buys milk from a nationwide network of suppliers that includes 60,000 family farms, according to the company's Web site.
In Taiwan, officials said they had seized thousands of pounds of milk powder produced by Sanlu after Beijing authorities notified them the product was tainted.
Liu Fang-ming of the Taoyuan county government said the shipment, which arrived in June, contained 55,115 pounds of milk powder, but only 21,660 pounds have been recovered so far.
Officials did not say whether any of the milk powder, which is used in baby milk formula and baked goods, had been consumed in Taiwan.
Taiwan has not reported any illnesses from the powder.
It was China's second high-profile case in four years involving harmful baby formula.
In 2004, more than 200 infants suffered malnutrition and at least 12 died after being fed phony formula that contained no nutrients. Some 40 companies were found to be making phony formula and 47 people were arrested.
---
Associated Press researcher Bonnie Cao in Beijing contributed to this report.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Corporate complicity with the Great Firewall
Question: Does anyone really believe this is not happening in the United States, too?
Comment: Alan Greenspan, the "guru" of "free markets," says free markets work best without government interference; but, it seems that these "free markets" fear the people whether in China or the United States and it takes massive government involvement to protect these "free markets" from being replaced with the planned economy of socialism. It seems the only time the "free marketeers" don't complain about government interference and involvement is when it takes government to protect the "free market" from the wrath of the people who are fed up with "free markets."
Corporate complicity with the Great Firewall
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/china.censorship
China is strongly criticised for its internet censorship – but it is western technology firms that have provided the tools for the job
Dmitri Vitaliev guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday August 13 2008 11:00
Like its precursor, the Great Wall of China, the Great Firewall was constructed to guard China from waves of foreign influence and information intrusion. With the world's spotlight on China and widespread criticism of its repressive actions, one should not forget that the knowledge and technology used to create the world's most prominent Big Brother society was designed in the west, often by the very same corporations whose advertisements on TV take up the time between the relay race and the javelin competition.
Much more than your standard internet filtering gateway, the Great Firewall comprises an administrative collaboration of seven government ministries, unrestricted access to numerous public record databases, closed circuit television footage with built-in facial recognition systems, as well as the more well-known information surveillance and censorship technology. Software and hardware purchased from around the world continue to tighten the screws of a digital information society. Network control and optimisation, intrusion detection and other security features promised in the product brochures of western IT firms are put to use against the rights to privacy and freedom of an entire populace. This is a brief survey of the surveillance scene:
A recent (non-intrusive) scan through the website of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security revealed a number of documents listing an inventory of various security technologies. One spreadsheet details software and hardware implemented for network surveillance, packet scanning and user detection. A closer inspection reveals that the Chinese internet infrastructure employs a huge array of security products, procured from companies all around the world. An example of four tools, chosen from the several hundred found in the inventory:
XSGuard Management System: purchased from the Els Shield (Shanghai) Information Technology Co Ltd, network management software developed in the Netherlands. It allows for monitoring of network packets and performing digital forensics.
Cisco 4125 Intrusion Detection System: purchased from Cisco China and used for monitoring activity on the T1 subnet. Other items sold include the ASA 5505, which "provides intelligent threat defense and secure communications services that stop attacks before they impact business continuity."
YangNet Police Network Intrusion Detection System: purchased from the Bright Oceans Corporation in China. According to their (badly translated) website, the product "acts in a transparent based on a URL filtering and text content filtering, shielding bad, illegal site, on the conduct of fine-grained web content filtering and the precise control and prevent all internal net users to browse the cult, pornography and other undesirable foreign websites and webpages. This feature is suitable for primary and secondary schools, tertiary institutions, government, business and professional applications."
Radware DefensePro 2000: an Israeli technology organisation; in this case, the product offers an "Adaptive Decision Engine: behaviour-based, self-learning mechanism proactively scans for anomalous network, server and client traffic patterns ... and is designed for enterprise core and perimeter deployment, data centers, university campuses and carrier backbones."
A popular acronym in government, big business and the military for today's centralised surveillance technologies is "C4I" (Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence). The top shelf of the technology market offers solutions that integrate closed circuit television with criminal records databases, national health insurance with biometric ID cards, holiday travel bookings with international terrorist lists and so on.
Security China 2000, the largest national security exhibition, attended by the world's most renowned IT corporations, marked a beginning of Chinese endeavours to create the world's most sophisticated surveillance infrastructure. It was sponsored by the Chinese Public Security Bureau, the ministry in charge of policing the internet. The meeting was attended by US-based Lucent, Sun Microsystems and Cisco, European wireless giants Nokia and Ericsson, and Canada's Nortel Networks, among many others. The main event was China's Golden Shield Project – an ambitious plan to link China's national and internet surveillance networks, public record databases, CCTV cameras, speech and face recognition databases, smart cards, credit records and a myriad of regional and national ministries. Their mission was to make the network "see, hear and think" in the continuing effort to solidify state control.
Nortel Networks continues to work with the Chinese Tsinghua University on developing speech recognition software, often used in surveillance of telephone conversations, allowing the network to hear. It has also widely distributed its "personal internet suite" to providers in Shanghai, Beijing and other major Chinese cities. The software allows IPs not only to monitor what their subscribers are doing online, but to control what information is delivered to them.
Content requested from a home computer for topics deemed undesirable will be stored against that person's personal file in numerous databases. The network rolled out with product and knowledge support from western IT firms is designed to think – that is, to identify individual subscribers when they log on, matching names to IP addresses, and learning, over time, what interests them.
The Golden Shield Project also integrates a facial recognition system (FRS), partly developed by Acsys Biometrics, a Canadian company. Rolled out across closed-circuit video surveillance networks in Chinese cities, it allows the Golden Shield to see. Rick Collins, senior manager of Nortel's advanced research laboratory, ProtoNet, said of the Acsys system: "Layering Acsys' face recognition's capabilities within Nortel Networks' solutions will make communication networks more personal. I envision a network that knows who you are, where you are and can reach you whether you're on your mobile phone or at your desktop."
An enthusiastic business partner of the Chinese state apparatus has been Cisco. Notorious for its several appearances before the US House of Representatives to explain their role in supplying virtually the entire hardware on which the Golden Shield Project operates, as well as multiple systems to assist Chinese ministries responsible for catching political and social dissidents and censoring the internet. In 1997, Cisco won the contract to supply internet "firewall boxes" and, by 2006, they supplied 60% of the Chinese market for routers, switches and other sophisticated networking gear. Its estimated annual revenue from China is $500m.
In 2003, Cisco's "Policenet" software was rolled out as the backbone of the Chinese state security system. This software, in conjunction with Intel's fingerprint technology, is compatible with the Chinese surveillance systems and allows a policeman stopping a person on the street to scan that person's ID card and access instantly the individual's past political and social behaviour, family history and recent internet activity.
Terry Alberstein, director of corporate affairs for Cisco Systems (Asia Pacific), confirmed in 2005 that Cisco does indeed sell networking and telecommunications equipment directly to the Public Security Bureau and other law enforcement offices throughout China. Cisco recently stated that it also provides service and training to Chinese police officials. Unlike other IT companies, Cisco has signed contracts directly with Chinese public security authorities.
It is futile to argue whether western corporations are directly responsible for the uses to which China puts their technologies. Following basic free-trade principles, products are most likely sold "as is" to (rather than customised for) the Chinese government or third-party resellers. However, just as in the arms trade, these practices have led to the creation of a hostile digital environment, inhabited by Da Ge (pinyin for Big Brother). Whenever we pause to discuss or protest China's decision to filter websites or jail Yahoo email account holders, we must bear in mind that the technology that has made this possible was built in our own backyard.
Comment: Alan Greenspan, the "guru" of "free markets," says free markets work best without government interference; but, it seems that these "free markets" fear the people whether in China or the United States and it takes massive government involvement to protect these "free markets" from being replaced with the planned economy of socialism. It seems the only time the "free marketeers" don't complain about government interference and involvement is when it takes government to protect the "free market" from the wrath of the people who are fed up with "free markets."
Corporate complicity with the Great Firewall
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/china.censorship
China is strongly criticised for its internet censorship – but it is western technology firms that have provided the tools for the job
Dmitri Vitaliev guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday August 13 2008 11:00
Like its precursor, the Great Wall of China, the Great Firewall was constructed to guard China from waves of foreign influence and information intrusion. With the world's spotlight on China and widespread criticism of its repressive actions, one should not forget that the knowledge and technology used to create the world's most prominent Big Brother society was designed in the west, often by the very same corporations whose advertisements on TV take up the time between the relay race and the javelin competition.
Much more than your standard internet filtering gateway, the Great Firewall comprises an administrative collaboration of seven government ministries, unrestricted access to numerous public record databases, closed circuit television footage with built-in facial recognition systems, as well as the more well-known information surveillance and censorship technology. Software and hardware purchased from around the world continue to tighten the screws of a digital information society. Network control and optimisation, intrusion detection and other security features promised in the product brochures of western IT firms are put to use against the rights to privacy and freedom of an entire populace. This is a brief survey of the surveillance scene:
A recent (non-intrusive) scan through the website of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security revealed a number of documents listing an inventory of various security technologies. One spreadsheet details software and hardware implemented for network surveillance, packet scanning and user detection. A closer inspection reveals that the Chinese internet infrastructure employs a huge array of security products, procured from companies all around the world. An example of four tools, chosen from the several hundred found in the inventory:
XSGuard Management System: purchased from the Els Shield (Shanghai) Information Technology Co Ltd, network management software developed in the Netherlands. It allows for monitoring of network packets and performing digital forensics.
Cisco 4125 Intrusion Detection System: purchased from Cisco China and used for monitoring activity on the T1 subnet. Other items sold include the ASA 5505, which "provides intelligent threat defense and secure communications services that stop attacks before they impact business continuity."
YangNet Police Network Intrusion Detection System: purchased from the Bright Oceans Corporation in China. According to their (badly translated) website, the product "acts in a transparent based on a URL filtering and text content filtering, shielding bad, illegal site, on the conduct of fine-grained web content filtering and the precise control and prevent all internal net users to browse the cult, pornography and other undesirable foreign websites and webpages. This feature is suitable for primary and secondary schools, tertiary institutions, government, business and professional applications."
Radware DefensePro 2000: an Israeli technology organisation; in this case, the product offers an "Adaptive Decision Engine: behaviour-based, self-learning mechanism proactively scans for anomalous network, server and client traffic patterns ... and is designed for enterprise core and perimeter deployment, data centers, university campuses and carrier backbones."
A popular acronym in government, big business and the military for today's centralised surveillance technologies is "C4I" (Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence). The top shelf of the technology market offers solutions that integrate closed circuit television with criminal records databases, national health insurance with biometric ID cards, holiday travel bookings with international terrorist lists and so on.
Security China 2000, the largest national security exhibition, attended by the world's most renowned IT corporations, marked a beginning of Chinese endeavours to create the world's most sophisticated surveillance infrastructure. It was sponsored by the Chinese Public Security Bureau, the ministry in charge of policing the internet. The meeting was attended by US-based Lucent, Sun Microsystems and Cisco, European wireless giants Nokia and Ericsson, and Canada's Nortel Networks, among many others. The main event was China's Golden Shield Project – an ambitious plan to link China's national and internet surveillance networks, public record databases, CCTV cameras, speech and face recognition databases, smart cards, credit records and a myriad of regional and national ministries. Their mission was to make the network "see, hear and think" in the continuing effort to solidify state control.
Nortel Networks continues to work with the Chinese Tsinghua University on developing speech recognition software, often used in surveillance of telephone conversations, allowing the network to hear. It has also widely distributed its "personal internet suite" to providers in Shanghai, Beijing and other major Chinese cities. The software allows IPs not only to monitor what their subscribers are doing online, but to control what information is delivered to them.
Content requested from a home computer for topics deemed undesirable will be stored against that person's personal file in numerous databases. The network rolled out with product and knowledge support from western IT firms is designed to think – that is, to identify individual subscribers when they log on, matching names to IP addresses, and learning, over time, what interests them.
The Golden Shield Project also integrates a facial recognition system (FRS), partly developed by Acsys Biometrics, a Canadian company. Rolled out across closed-circuit video surveillance networks in Chinese cities, it allows the Golden Shield to see. Rick Collins, senior manager of Nortel's advanced research laboratory, ProtoNet, said of the Acsys system: "Layering Acsys' face recognition's capabilities within Nortel Networks' solutions will make communication networks more personal. I envision a network that knows who you are, where you are and can reach you whether you're on your mobile phone or at your desktop."
An enthusiastic business partner of the Chinese state apparatus has been Cisco. Notorious for its several appearances before the US House of Representatives to explain their role in supplying virtually the entire hardware on which the Golden Shield Project operates, as well as multiple systems to assist Chinese ministries responsible for catching political and social dissidents and censoring the internet. In 1997, Cisco won the contract to supply internet "firewall boxes" and, by 2006, they supplied 60% of the Chinese market for routers, switches and other sophisticated networking gear. Its estimated annual revenue from China is $500m.
In 2003, Cisco's "Policenet" software was rolled out as the backbone of the Chinese state security system. This software, in conjunction with Intel's fingerprint technology, is compatible with the Chinese surveillance systems and allows a policeman stopping a person on the street to scan that person's ID card and access instantly the individual's past political and social behaviour, family history and recent internet activity.
Terry Alberstein, director of corporate affairs for Cisco Systems (Asia Pacific), confirmed in 2005 that Cisco does indeed sell networking and telecommunications equipment directly to the Public Security Bureau and other law enforcement offices throughout China. Cisco recently stated that it also provides service and training to Chinese police officials. Unlike other IT companies, Cisco has signed contracts directly with Chinese public security authorities.
It is futile to argue whether western corporations are directly responsible for the uses to which China puts their technologies. Following basic free-trade principles, products are most likely sold "as is" to (rather than customised for) the Chinese government or third-party resellers. However, just as in the arms trade, these practices have led to the creation of a hostile digital environment, inhabited by Da Ge (pinyin for Big Brother). Whenever we pause to discuss or protest China's decision to filter websites or jail Yahoo email account holders, we must bear in mind that the technology that has made this possible was built in our own backyard.
Monday, August 11, 2008
One in Five German Firms Leaving China
SPIEGEL ONLINEInternational
WHEN OUTSOURCING FAILS
One in Five German Firms Leaving China
China lost its status as the world's cheapest country for manufacturing some time ago. The momentum now seems to be shifting away from outsourcing to the Far East, with one in five Germany companies pulling production out of the country. Chinese workers, they say, are getting too expensive.
Despite massive training efforts, German premium stuffed animal-maker Steiff was unable to yield the quality it demanded from its Chinese plant.
Citing fast-climbing labor costs and pesky production quality problems, a growing number of German companies are doing an about face and pulling their manufacturing operations out of China. Some are searching for countries with lower wages (more...) while others are returning production to Germany.
The Association of German Engineers (VDI) estimates that one in five of the approximately 1,600 German companies with presences in China is planning to pull out of the market, the Tagesspiegel am Sonntag newspaper reported. "Many, many firms are naïve when they enter into the Chinese market and don't even think about the fact that wages are increasing there," VDI spokesman Sven Renkel told the newspaper.
Rising energy costs, stricter environmental rules, the elimination of many tax incentives, a dearth of skilled workers and the increasing strength of the yuan against the dollar have all pushed production costs up in China. In addition, the country's 8-percent inflation rate has also driven up wages in the past year by as much as 20 percent, Harald Kayer, a partner at the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), told the paper. For some companies and industries, China is already getting to be too expensive. They're now looking to other lower-wage countries, like Bangladesh, India or Kazakhstan, where production is cheaper, or they're bringing manufacturing back to Germany, he said.
Chinese companies, too, are increasingly outsourcing production abroad, Eddy Henning, the head of corporate banking at Deutsche Bank in Beijing, told the newspaper. "Someone who just wants to produce T-shirts is more likely to go to Vietnam or Africa," he said. For investors from Europe, Romania and Bulgaria are also competitive with China when it comes to production.
According to Hans Röhm of the consulting firm Deloitte, the companies that are most likely to return to Germany are those that outsourced production out of cost considerations -- including the consumer goods industry and textiles, which both produce in mass quantities.
But manufacturers of high-quality goods are also looking at China with a more critical eye -- at least in the longterm. A dip in quality for these companies could damage their reputation. "That's why we're advising a lot of our customers to consider production in Germany," Röhm told the paper.
Four years ago, Steiff, a world-famous German company that makes high-quality teddy bears, moved part of its production to China. In early July, though, the company announced it would return all manufacturing to Germany.
"For premium products, China is just incalculable," Steiff CEO Martin Frenchen told the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper in July. He said it took six months to train workers to produce the teddy bears' complicated stitching and to meet the company's standards for quality. "By then you might have already lost them to an automobile factory next door that pays more," he added. Despite the company's arduous efforts to produce high quality products in China, Steiff executives weren't satisfied with the end result, Frechen said.
The company also complained of the length of delivery times. Sometimes the ships carrying the company's stuffed animals would take up to three months to get to Germany. For sales successes like the company's stuffed Knut polar bear, of which 80,000 were sold, that waiting period was just too long.
Following a major scandal last year in which researchers discovered that some toys made in China were coated in toxic lead paint, the public's faith in production in the country was shaken, and Steiff decided to end its production in Asia.
Commentary:
WHEN OUTSOURCING FAILS
One in Five German Firms Leaving China
China lost its status as the world's cheapest country for manufacturing some time ago. The momentum now seems to be shifting away from outsourcing to the Far East, with one in five Germany companies pulling production out of the country. Chinese workers, they say, are getting too expensive.
Despite massive training efforts, German premium stuffed animal-maker Steiff was unable to yield the quality it demanded from its Chinese plant.
Citing fast-climbing labor costs and pesky production quality problems, a growing number of German companies are doing an about face and pulling their manufacturing operations out of China. Some are searching for countries with lower wages (more...) while others are returning production to Germany.
The Association of German Engineers (VDI) estimates that one in five of the approximately 1,600 German companies with presences in China is planning to pull out of the market, the Tagesspiegel am Sonntag newspaper reported. "Many, many firms are naïve when they enter into the Chinese market and don't even think about the fact that wages are increasing there," VDI spokesman Sven Renkel told the newspaper.
Rising energy costs, stricter environmental rules, the elimination of many tax incentives, a dearth of skilled workers and the increasing strength of the yuan against the dollar have all pushed production costs up in China. In addition, the country's 8-percent inflation rate has also driven up wages in the past year by as much as 20 percent, Harald Kayer, a partner at the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), told the paper. For some companies and industries, China is already getting to be too expensive. They're now looking to other lower-wage countries, like Bangladesh, India or Kazakhstan, where production is cheaper, or they're bringing manufacturing back to Germany, he said.
Chinese companies, too, are increasingly outsourcing production abroad, Eddy Henning, the head of corporate banking at Deutsche Bank in Beijing, told the newspaper. "Someone who just wants to produce T-shirts is more likely to go to Vietnam or Africa," he said. For investors from Europe, Romania and Bulgaria are also competitive with China when it comes to production.
According to Hans Röhm of the consulting firm Deloitte, the companies that are most likely to return to Germany are those that outsourced production out of cost considerations -- including the consumer goods industry and textiles, which both produce in mass quantities.
But manufacturers of high-quality goods are also looking at China with a more critical eye -- at least in the longterm. A dip in quality for these companies could damage their reputation. "That's why we're advising a lot of our customers to consider production in Germany," Röhm told the paper.
Four years ago, Steiff, a world-famous German company that makes high-quality teddy bears, moved part of its production to China. In early July, though, the company announced it would return all manufacturing to Germany.
"For premium products, China is just incalculable," Steiff CEO Martin Frenchen told the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper in July. He said it took six months to train workers to produce the teddy bears' complicated stitching and to meet the company's standards for quality. "By then you might have already lost them to an automobile factory next door that pays more," he added. Despite the company's arduous efforts to produce high quality products in China, Steiff executives weren't satisfied with the end result, Frechen said.
The company also complained of the length of delivery times. Sometimes the ships carrying the company's stuffed animals would take up to three months to get to Germany. For sales successes like the company's stuffed Knut polar bear, of which 80,000 were sold, that waiting period was just too long.
Following a major scandal last year in which researchers discovered that some toys made in China were coated in toxic lead paint, the public's faith in production in the country was shaken, and Steiff decided to end its production in Asia.
Commentary:
This headline in Spiegel says it all:
Vietnam is the New China: Globalization's Victors Hunt for the Next Low-Wage Country (05/14/2008)
Through it all, the working class creates the wealth and the capitalists steal this wealth.
The question remains: What is to be done?
With one in five German firms now leaving China for cheaper labor and better quality production standards what will happen as firms from other countries follow in quest of cheaper labor markets?
Is China really on the path of "harmonious development?" Or, is this "harmonious development" just a sop--- or mere words and platitudes in the form concessions--- thrown out to pacify billions of working class people and the peasantry who are growing tired of living in poverty?
The creation of millions of capitalists has been tolerated by the capitalist moles who have tunneled their way into the Communist Party of China; these capitalist moles are out to restore capitalism in China under the guise of harmonious development.
These capitalist moles who have infiltrated the Communist Party of China are seeking to buy time to finish consolidating the return of capitalism to full power by suggesting that working people will only be able to look forward to reforms twenty to one-hundred years from now.
The facts simply do not correspond to reality in China. China has in fact become a tremendously wealthy nation... in spite of claims of being on the road to "harmonious development" the only ones living "harmonious" lives are the new Chinese capitalists.
No working class Communist Party would tolerate this tremendous accumulation by capitalists who flaunt their wealth in front of the poor and then tell workers and peasants they will have to wait twenty to one-hundred years to have all of this benefit their lives.
At a bare minimum, if there was any sincerity at all about working toward "harmonious development," all previously cut universal social programs would have been restored by now in China. For sure there is enough wealth in the hands of Chinese and foreign capitalists to finance socialized health care and free education through university along with a very substantial housing program amounting to more than the "dormitory" housing for which working people have to pay exorbitant rents.
Going back-wards for another twenty to one-hundred years as capitalists amass ever greater profits through the suffering of the working class and rural peasantry is not my idea of what socialism is about.
Already, the very capitalists who have amassed very significant wealth in China are doing just what capitalists in any other countries have done... they are taking this wealth and running to cheap labor markets where they can make even more. This is not "harmonious development" no matter what anyone claims.
Working people have a right to ask if the wealth they have created amounts to enough for them to live better lives.
Commentary by Alan L. Maki
Monday, July 7, 2008
New Times, New Opportunities
Note: Sam Webb has refused to respond to concerns raised by any of those posting their opinions and concerns... so we are moving on. There is no use trying to conduct a dialogue and discussion with someone who thinks their views are beyond challenge. Alan L. Maki
Dear Friends,
I would like to share with you an article “New Times, New Opportunities” by Sam Webb, Chair of the CPUSA, which appeared in their monthly magazine Political Affairs.
In my opinion, this marks a profound change in the approach of a Leftist organization in advancing democracy.
It is a recognition that Socialism is achieved through incremental victories in the struggle to overcome the inability of the Capitalist system to eliminate the cancers of poverty and unemployment.
Most of you know that I have taught Classical Marxism for over 50 years at various institutions, not the least was 20 years at the New School for Social Research in New York. I believe that objectivity and recognition of economic and social conflicts contained in this article are worth studying whether one is an advocate of Socialism or not. It deals with the complexity of Social change in our country.
I welcome comments and questions, especially from those who disagree and any additional information from those who agree.
Sidney J. Gluck
SJGluck@aol.com
Note: Sidney J. Gluck has obtained permission to reprint this article.
New Times, New Opportunities
By Sam Webb
Note: Sam Webb Chairs the Communist Party USA.
Excerpted from Communist Party USA National Committee report, March 2008.
The political upsurge ricocheting across the country has no counterpart in recent decades. Its breadth and depth are remarkable. Its politics are progressive. It is framing the nation’s political conversation. It rejects the old racist and sexist stereotypes. It is a mass rebellion against the policies of the Bush administration. It is seeking a political leader – one who gives priority to “lunch pail” issues, appeals to our better angels and visualizes a country that is decent, just, united and at peace with the rest of the world. And it’s the necessary groundswell and kinetic energy for a smashing victory in November.
The setting of this upheaval is the Democratic presidential primaries. So far, the turnout has been far beyond anybody’s expectations. Records are being broken in nearly every state primary. Every sector of the people is marching to the polls. Young voters are grabbing the electoral bull by the horns. Twice as many Democrats have voted as Republicans, an ominous sign for the GOP this fall.
The high octane of this upsurge is simply breathtaking. In every place where people gather, the candidates, the primaries and the issues are the subject of animated conversations. If anyone thinks that issues are getting short shrift or that it is all about personalities, I can only guess that they are just watching, but not feeling and listening to the whirlwind that is blowing across the country.
Aren’t the most pressing concerns of the American people structuring the “give and take” of candidates as well as voters? This is anything but an issueless campaign. It contrasts sharply with the last presidential elections when the “War on Terror” took up nearly all the oxygen in the room.
Thanks to this surge, a woman or an African American is on track to become the presidential nominee. This reflects the growing political maturity of the American people. It should be celebrated as a great democratic achievement. Anything that is done to diminish this fact should be vigorously challenged.
In short, tens of millions of voters have turned the Democratic primaries and the November general elections, into the main, if not the singular, terrain on which millions hope to draw down the final curtain on the whole right-wing project and set the country on a new course. No matter whether voters support Obama or Clinton in the Democratic primaries, the political intent of their votes is clear: people want change and not any kind of change, but change that puts people’s needs before war-making, division, sleaze and corporate profits.
Struggles in other arenas will continue to be sure, but all of them should find their part in the great drama that is now unfolding on the stage of electoral politics. While an ending to this drama is still to be written, it is fair to say that a decisive people’s victory will reconfigure every arena of struggle to the advantage of the people’s movement. Any mass organizations or movements that don’t insert themselves in a full-blooded and practical way into this very dynamic process will be left behind by their own constituencies and by events. They will miss an opportunity that comes along rarely in political life.
Thus, every communist should become an active participant in this electoral upsurge, if he or she hasn’t already done so. The avenues are many and the possibilities are nearly limitless.
Let’s seize the moment.
Spontaneous factor
While the working class and every other section of the people’s movement are engaged in this upheaval, it reaches well beyond their organized structures and constituencies. That it is more spontaneous than organized should startle no one.
Any upheaval of this magnitude is a work in progress and has a large element of spontaneity. The entry of people in their millions, and especially many who have been passive and disillusioned with politics up to now, cannot be explained solely or even mainly by the actions of the existing network of people’s organizations. Any mass upsurge has its own independent dynamic.
Triggering this one are a slow buildup of combustible feelings of injustice and insecurity and a deeply felt perception by millions that the 2008 elections could change their life prospects in deep-going ways. Like everything else in nature and society, a mass upsurge should be viewed dynamically, that is, in its contradictory motion. Life, to paraphrase Lenin, is always much more complicated and multifaceted than we can ever imagine. Theory, as necessary as it is, is only a guide to action.
Unfortunately, this lesson has yet to be fully learned by some on the left. Seeing little, if any, progressive potential in electoral politics or the Democratic Party, they have a difficult time taking proper measure of and responding to unfamiliar political patterns, such as the current upsurge in the Democratic Party primaries. It doesn’t fit, nor can it be easily shoehorned to fit, their political model of social change. Needless to say, we don’t share such views. In fact, this upsurge in the electoral
arena is the main political vector of struggle for the year ahead.
To our credit, we said two years ago that the midterm elections and their results were a dress rehearsal for the 2008 elections. And at our National Committee meeting last fall we went further, saying that this year’s elections could set in motion a process leading to a new era of class and democratic struggle on much higher ground.
At the same time, we have to admit that we underestimated the fury and the scope of this surge. Nor did we anticipate the Obama phenomenon.
Youth and independents
One of the most hopeful aspects of this people’s surge is the entry of young people who either were not of voting age in the last election or were old enough to vote but chose not to do so. In injecting themselves en masse into the Democratic primary process, today’s younger generation is becoming an agent of change. Not since the sixties have we seen young people bring their energy and idealism to the political process on such a scale.
The beginnings of this change were evident in recent years. More young people participated in the 2004 elections and the majority of youth voted for Kerry. Furthermore, young people were a sizeable part of the anti-war movement as well as participants in other social movements. But what we are seeing today is on an entirely different scale and level of intensity.
The reasons for this qualitative change seem clear enough. Young people are saddled with enormous debt, horrified by the Iraq war and the pervasiveness of violence, alienated from the policies of division and intolerance of the Bush administration, and turned off by a political culture that is opaque, money driven and seemingly empty of higher ideals and aims. Sensing something different in Obama’s candidacy, they are flocking into the Democratic Party primaries in record numbers as organizers and voters.
Unlike some older people, the pressures and grind of everyday life haven’t yet worn them down. “Keep on keeping on” is not a slogan they embrace. “Yes we can” better captures their mood. They eagerly desire and embrace change. They not only imagine the possibility of another world; they imagine its realization in their lifetime.
Befitting their youth, they take inspiration from yesterday’s struggles but they are not prisoners to them. The Sixties, even the Reagan years, are history, not lived or vivid experiences for them.
Finally, the young are less inclined to be cynical. This election might not begin the world anew, but for millions of young people it is a first step.
Independents are entering this upheaval, too. For many of them the Democratic presidential primaries are where the action and fresh ideas are. The politics of yesteryear no longer resonate for them; they are looking for answers to stubborn problems such as the impossible costs of health care that weigh heavily on the quality of their lives. Not least, the working class, the nationally and racially oppressed and women are leaping into this upsurge in a way not seen for many years. Each of these constituencies went to the polls in record numbers.
Voting patterns
What do voting patterns reveal? First, working people divided their vote largely between Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich and Richardson. To say that Clinton has garnered nearly all of the working class vote is simply wrong. For one thing, Black people are overwhelmingly working class and cast their vote for Obama. For another thing, Obama received the lion’s share of the working-class vote, understanding working class broadly, in many primaries and overall. At the same time, it appears that Clinton polled well among trade unionists, women workers and Latino workers.
Second, the African American people gave their overwhelming support to Obama. In nearly every primary, roughly nine of 10 African American voters cast their ballot for him. This is explained not only because of understandable pride in the possibility of electing an African American to the presidency for the first time, but also because Obama would represent their interests, unite our country and usher in a new era of fairness, justice and peace for all.
Third, most women voters supported Clinton, although younger women and African American women of all ages tended to vote for Obama. But what is really notable is the massive turnout of women of all nationalities, races and social circumstances. If one obvious reason was their deeply felt opposition to the Bush administration, the other was their excitement over the possibility of electing a woman president. No doubt both desires energized women to go to the polls and assure that women as organizers and voters will be a powerful force against the right in the fall.
Fourth, many white people, male and female, cast their votes for an African American. This might be the most notable feature of the vote so far, as quiet as it is kept by the mass media. In fact, from media reports it seems as if Obama has become the front-runner on the basis of the Black vote alone. But anyone who thinks about it for a moment knows this is ludicrous. Obama carried several states with small African American populations, and did well in the southern states and especially Virginia, where a majority of white voters supported him.
Furthermore, the millions of white people, the majority of whom were workers, who voted for Obama did so because they liked him – his manner, his style, his opposition to the war, his concern about lunch pail issues, his ability to unify our country along racial and other lines, his fresh appeal, his youthfulness and so forth.
Were some white men (not to mention other men) motivated to vote for Obama because they would never vote for a woman? Of course, but I suspect when voting patterns are studied more closely, greater explanatory weight will be given to the first set of reasons – that is, they cast their vote for Obama because they liked him.
Fifth, the Latino vote in its majority went to Clinton. But what is most striking is the increase of the Latino vote in the 2008 Democratic primaries. So far the Latino percentage of the overall primary vote is over 10 percent, whereas in the 2004 general election the percentage was 6.7 percent. In California, the Latino percentage of the Democratic Party 2008 primary vote was 30 percent compared to 16 percent in 2004; in Texas, 32 percent this year compared to 24 percent in 2004. Similar changes have occurred in other southwest states.
Equally striking is that in the primaries Latinos have voted Democratic over Republican 78 percent to 22 percent, while in the 2004 general election, the spread was much less, roughly 63 to 37 percent. With nearly five million Latinos voting in the primaries, it is becoming more likely that the Latino vote in November could reach 10 million or more and thus provide a cushion of four to five million votes for the Democrats over Republicans compared to less than two million in 2004.
The implications are obvious: the Latino vote is an essential and growing part of a larger effort to win a landslide victory over the right wing in the presidential and congressional races in November. One would never get this impression, however, from the mass media’s reportage of the primaries so far. Instead, the media spin is that Latinos flinched at the option of voting for Obama, because of anti-Black feeling. I can’t go into this in great detail, other than to say that we should take
issue with this interpretation. The vast majority of Latinos voted for Clinton to be sure, but it doesn’t follow that they are anti-Obama, anti-Black. Most did because they liked her concern about economic issues, her experience, her familiarity and her connections with the Mexican American community and its leadership. Many have positive feelings toward Bill Clinton’s administration.
To bring more evidence to bear on this point, in recent decades Mexican Americans and Latinos have given support to African American big city mayors by clear and in some cases overwhelming majorities. Look at the facts: Harold Washington won 80 percent of the Latino vote in Chicago in his successful mayoral run in 1983; David Dinkins 73 percent in New York in 1989; Wellington Webb more than 70 percent in Denver in 1991; Ron Kirk big majorities in Dallas in 1995, 1997 and 1999. In Los Angeles, Tom Bradley got a good share in his first run in 1973 and clear majorities the next four times he ran. In addition, African American members of Congress in heavily Latino districts in Los Angeles and elsewhere get significant Latino support. And in Illinois, where Obama is a known entity, he has received strong support from Latino voters.Thus this divisive media spin should be vigorously contested.
Sixth, the youth and senior votes swung in different directions, with young people enthusiastically supporting Obama and senior citizens, except for Black seniors, casting their vote for Clinton. This is not too hard to explain. Older voters prefer a candidate who is a known quantity, which Clinton is. Obama, by contrast, is new on the scene. He doesn’t have the long-standing ties to the Democratic Party. His promise of change is appealing for many to be sure, and especially the young. But for others living on the edge, change can be unnerving. In hard times, we sometimes assume that working people are eager to roll the dice and say, “Come what may.”
As appealing and as seductive as that idea is to left-minded people, I am not sure the factual evidence for it exists. There are moments when ruptures occur and people embrace a radical path of action, but it is also true that in response to deteriorating conditions of life, some sections of working people have sought incremental, protective and less ambitious courses of action, some of which have taken a negative form. Instead of manning the barricades, they built fortresses to protect themselves in stormy times. This dynamic is something to consider.
My breakdown of the vote makes no claim to be comprehensive or in depth. Many categories of voters, for example, were left out who will surely have an impact on the election’s outcome – other nationally and racially oppressed people, Jews, and peace and environmental activists to name a few. Nor did I make a precise estimate of the degree to which or how sexist and racist attitudes influenced voting patterns. That still is to be done.
Nevertheless, voting patterns bode well for the general election. The turnout was far more than anyone predicted and never before on a national level have so many crossed racial and gender boundaries to cast their vote, boundaries that a few years ago seemed impenetrable. Moreover, where voters didn’t do so – say, white workers voting for Clinton, men voting for Obama, women voting for Clinton or Black people voting for Obama – their motivations can be explained more easily in a positive than a negative way.
The Obama phenomenon
The clearest expression of this developing movement pivots around the candidacy of Barack Obama, whose inspirational message and politics have captured the imagination of millions. So much so that many commentators and politicians use the words “transformational” or “transforming” to describe his candidacy – that is, a candidacy capable of assembling a broad people’s majority to reconfigure the terms and terrain of politics in this country in a fundamental way. The Obama campaign has not only brought new forces into the political process, it has also catalyzed new organizational forms.
The surge around Obama’s candidacy, much like the larger surge in the Democratic presidential primary, has a large spontaneous quality. But what makes it different is that it has the feel of “a movement.” Its supporters see in Obama someone who is without the baggage of an older generation of politicians, and who speaks to their desires.
I have heard political commentators say that Obama mania has no spelled-out political program, lacks organizational coherence and offers no guarantees it will continue after Election Day. Hearing such observations, I ask myself why on earth anyone would think this developing movement whose life span can be measured in months would be a well-oiled machine?
Anybody with any historical sense knows that movements in their early, and sometimes later, stages aren’t neat and tidy. Ideal types never find concrete representation in real life.
While this movement has its own dynamic, it is inseparable from the personality and politics of Barak Obama. While he is not a candidate of the left or someone we would endorse – since we don’t endorse candidates of either party – he is, nonetheless, a fresh voice on the political scene. His strategic and tactical concepts are broad in their sweep and his politics are forward looking. His appeal for change resonates with millions who are fed up with things as they are. And his desire to overcome divisions between Black and white, Black and brown, white and non-white, red state and blue state, immigrant and native born, Christian and Muslim, Muslim and Jew, blue collar and white collar, male and female, gay and straight, urban and rural strikes a deep responsive chord among Americans. After three decades of acrimonious rancor and division, people yearn for a kinder, gentler and more just country.
While much has been said about his own personal journey and its formative impact on his values and outlook, what has been greatly understated is that the struggles of the African American people and the larger movement against the right also have left their mark on his sensibilities and politics. Not since Bobby Kennedy has a leader stepped on the stage with as much promise to reconfigure politics and the underlying assumptions that inform debate and policy choices. His ability to articulate a vision, give voice to people’s hopes, and use the platform of politics to educate millions is extraordinary. On paper, it’s true that some of Clinton’s positions, not to mention those of Edwards and Kucinich, are better than Obama’s. But in many ways policy statements and party platforms are not the main things that should shape judgments about a presidential candidate’s potential or the prospects for change.
This is looking at politics too narrowly. It doesn’t take into account who can inspire and unite this massive upsurge, or who can articulate a moral and political vision to tens of millions, or who has the capacity to assemble political majorities in the post election period, or who has the ability to win a landslide victory against McCain and the Republicans in November.
On these counts, advantage goes to Obama in the eyes of many voters. That isn’t to say that Clinton wouldn’t be a worthy adversary to McCain. She would. Nor is it to suggest that she couldn’t win in a landslide. She can. But it would be much more difficult.
I also suspect that she would govern to the left of Bill Clinton’s administration, in large measure because the conditions and expectations are so different now. But I have heard it asked, isn’t Obama a bourgeois politician? Hasn’t he raised a lot of money from Wall St.? And isn’t he is a centrist and a creature of the Democratic Party? All of these assertions are worth discussing, but none of them can be easily answered with a yes or no reply. And even if they could, these questions by themselves wouldn’t necessarily tell us who Obama is, what his presidency would look like and how he would interact with the broader labor led people’s movement.
Class categories
We don’t want to dispense with the categories of class and class struggle for sure, but we don’t want to turn them into frozen, lifeless categories either. Class and class struggle should be understood as dynamic processes and open-ended categories and not simply as a fixed relation to the means of production that inexorably gives rise to class struggle and consciousness.
Employed properly, class categories give us clues to attitudes, tendencies, predispositions and behaviors of political actors, whether one individual or a social group. But they don’t inscribe on these same actors a mental mindset and an irrevocable course of action. To claim they do leaves out the larger political, economic and cultural processes in which class formation takes place and turns Marxism into a dogma.
To illuminate this point further, let me mention three examples. If Frederick Douglass, the great African American abolitionist leader, posed more or less the same set of questions to Lincoln in the late 1850s and early 1860s and ignored the wider political environment and the interaction between that environment and Lincoln’s shifting views, he might well have remained with the wing of the Abolitionist movement that refrained from electoral politics, was deeply suspicious of the Republican Party, and attached little significance to Lincoln’s victory in 1860.
Or if William Z. Foster posed more or less the same questions to the “Blue Blood” aristocrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt just prior to the 1936 elections and disregarded the new dynamics of struggle taking shape at the time, including Roosevelt’s understanding of these dynamics from his own class viewpoint, he might have argued against our participation in the massive coalition to reelect Roosevelt and New Deal Congressional candidates.
Or if Martin Luther King posed more or less the same questions to Lyndon Johnson and overlooked the convulsions going on in the country and Johnson’s capacity to change, he might not have supported his election bid in 1964 – a landslide victory that undeniably and significantly contributed to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, immigration reform and the War on Poverty.
In asking only narrowly constructed questions and in not considering the fluidity of the political terrain, the overall logic of struggle and the facility of the individual to change in each of these periods, the people’s movement would have cut itself off from openings and opportunities to secure historic victories in each instance. To employ a similar methodology today with regard to Obama runs the same danger.
Struggle for unity
For some time supporters of both Clinton and Obama have said unambiguously that they would rally around the eventual nominee. Assuming for the moment that this happens, it is easy to imagine the formation of an electoral movement that in its scope and depth has no equal in the 20th century. Moreover, such a broad-based political formation has the potential to inflict an overwhelming defeat on McCain and the Republican Party at the polls and to journey down a new highway.
Whether or not that happens, however, isn’t a foregone conclusion. Setting aside for now the divisive role of the right, tensions have cropped up in the Democratic primary contest making it far less certain that supporters of each candidate will seamlessly migrate to the other’s opponent in the event their candidate isn’t the standard bearer. To a large extent, the tensions did not arise spontaneously nor are they the inevitable product of the rough and tumble of the primary process.
How then do we explain them? Earlier I said it is a great tribute to the democratic spirit and sense of decency of the often-maligned American people that a woman and an African American man are contesting for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. At the same time, racial and gender prejudice have not been absent from the presidential primaries. This should be acknowledged and vigorously opposed as having no place at this uplifting moment in our nation’s political life.
All democratic minded people should have no truck with debasing images, double standards, demeaning words, small slights and false opposition of one form of oppression to another or, worse still, the privileging of one over the other.
All of them impede the struggle for equality and unity and weaken the struggle against the right by the whole people.
We should never forget that the struggle for equality and against racism and male supremacy in its ideological and material forms is as much in the interests of white and male workers as it is in the interests of nationally and racially oppressed and women workers. As Marx wrote, “Labor in the white skin can never be free, as long as labor in the Black skin is branded.” Much the same could be said about the struggle against gender oppression.
It is precisely this that the ruling class goes to great lengths to obscure. Working class advance is always portrayed as a zero sum game, meaning the advancement of nationally and racially oppressed workers comes at the expense of white workers or the advancement of women workers comes at the cost of male workers or the securing of rights of immigrant workers comes at the expense of native born workers, and so on.
That your political adversaries on the right would exacerbate racial and gender tensions is to be expected. It has been, after all, the main way along with narrow nationalism that the extreme right has exploited white people’s feelings and resentments in order to mobilize them around their ruling class goals.
But what is unexpected is when someone you thought was on your side employs similar if not identical tactics, which is what the Clinton campaign is doing in the primaries. So that there is no misunderstanding, I’m not talking about her wider ring of labor, women, Latino and other supporters, nearly all of whom, I’m sure, object to such tactics as harmful.
The racialization of the campaign began with former President Bill Clinton in New Hampshire and South Carolina. In both primaries his assignment was to be the bad cop, no small part of which was to introduce a racial subtext in the charged atmosphere of the primaries.
After that episode it seemed to subside momentarily, in part because of the negative reaction to it. But the pause was only temporary. Going into Super Tuesday and since then, Clinton and her campaign have acted as if nothing matters except her nomination in August. Concerns about unity seem to have been cast aside.
There is a racial subtext to remarks such as only Clinton and McCain have the experience to be commander-in-chief, or “as far as she knows” Obama isn’t a Muslim, or when she offered Obama the vice presidency on her ticket, or when her TV ads show a blond young girl next to the phone ringing at 3 a.m., or when her campaign circulated tapes of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the media, or when Bill Clinton said how good it would be if two candidates running for the presidency were both patriotic and loved their country – all of this panders to the American people’s worst fears and stirs the embers of racial feelings at a moment when tens of millions of white people are showing their willingness to transcend them.
The Clinton campaign doesn’t seem to realize what the stakes are in this election. They are playing a dangerous game. Supporters of both candidates should strongly insist that it cease its increasingly transparent attempt to polarize the electorate along racial lines. Unless resisted, this could turn a moment of opportunity and victory into a bitter defeat with all the demoralization, division, and name calling that would inevitably follow such an outcome. Thus, we cannot be silent.
Accommodation to racial and gender disunity in the name of unity is not a communist approach. Our strategic policy is to defeat the right decisively in this election. Only a united movement can do that.
Please note: All discussion of "New Times, New Opportunities" by Sam Webb can be found at this link: Discussion of New Times, New Opportunities... you are invited to submit postings as often as you want. Send all postings to: amaki000@centurytel.net
Dear Friends,
I would like to share with you an article “New Times, New Opportunities” by Sam Webb, Chair of the CPUSA, which appeared in their monthly magazine Political Affairs.
In my opinion, this marks a profound change in the approach of a Leftist organization in advancing democracy.
It is a recognition that Socialism is achieved through incremental victories in the struggle to overcome the inability of the Capitalist system to eliminate the cancers of poverty and unemployment.
Most of you know that I have taught Classical Marxism for over 50 years at various institutions, not the least was 20 years at the New School for Social Research in New York. I believe that objectivity and recognition of economic and social conflicts contained in this article are worth studying whether one is an advocate of Socialism or not. It deals with the complexity of Social change in our country.
I welcome comments and questions, especially from those who disagree and any additional information from those who agree.
Sidney J. Gluck
SJGluck@aol.com
Note: Sidney J. Gluck has obtained permission to reprint this article.
New Times, New Opportunities
By Sam Webb
Note: Sam Webb Chairs the Communist Party USA.
Excerpted from Communist Party USA National Committee report, March 2008.
The political upsurge ricocheting across the country has no counterpart in recent decades. Its breadth and depth are remarkable. Its politics are progressive. It is framing the nation’s political conversation. It rejects the old racist and sexist stereotypes. It is a mass rebellion against the policies of the Bush administration. It is seeking a political leader – one who gives priority to “lunch pail” issues, appeals to our better angels and visualizes a country that is decent, just, united and at peace with the rest of the world. And it’s the necessary groundswell and kinetic energy for a smashing victory in November.
The setting of this upheaval is the Democratic presidential primaries. So far, the turnout has been far beyond anybody’s expectations. Records are being broken in nearly every state primary. Every sector of the people is marching to the polls. Young voters are grabbing the electoral bull by the horns. Twice as many Democrats have voted as Republicans, an ominous sign for the GOP this fall.
The high octane of this upsurge is simply breathtaking. In every place where people gather, the candidates, the primaries and the issues are the subject of animated conversations. If anyone thinks that issues are getting short shrift or that it is all about personalities, I can only guess that they are just watching, but not feeling and listening to the whirlwind that is blowing across the country.
Aren’t the most pressing concerns of the American people structuring the “give and take” of candidates as well as voters? This is anything but an issueless campaign. It contrasts sharply with the last presidential elections when the “War on Terror” took up nearly all the oxygen in the room.
Thanks to this surge, a woman or an African American is on track to become the presidential nominee. This reflects the growing political maturity of the American people. It should be celebrated as a great democratic achievement. Anything that is done to diminish this fact should be vigorously challenged.
In short, tens of millions of voters have turned the Democratic primaries and the November general elections, into the main, if not the singular, terrain on which millions hope to draw down the final curtain on the whole right-wing project and set the country on a new course. No matter whether voters support Obama or Clinton in the Democratic primaries, the political intent of their votes is clear: people want change and not any kind of change, but change that puts people’s needs before war-making, division, sleaze and corporate profits.
Struggles in other arenas will continue to be sure, but all of them should find their part in the great drama that is now unfolding on the stage of electoral politics. While an ending to this drama is still to be written, it is fair to say that a decisive people’s victory will reconfigure every arena of struggle to the advantage of the people’s movement. Any mass organizations or movements that don’t insert themselves in a full-blooded and practical way into this very dynamic process will be left behind by their own constituencies and by events. They will miss an opportunity that comes along rarely in political life.
Thus, every communist should become an active participant in this electoral upsurge, if he or she hasn’t already done so. The avenues are many and the possibilities are nearly limitless.
Let’s seize the moment.
Spontaneous factor
While the working class and every other section of the people’s movement are engaged in this upheaval, it reaches well beyond their organized structures and constituencies. That it is more spontaneous than organized should startle no one.
Any upheaval of this magnitude is a work in progress and has a large element of spontaneity. The entry of people in their millions, and especially many who have been passive and disillusioned with politics up to now, cannot be explained solely or even mainly by the actions of the existing network of people’s organizations. Any mass upsurge has its own independent dynamic.
Triggering this one are a slow buildup of combustible feelings of injustice and insecurity and a deeply felt perception by millions that the 2008 elections could change their life prospects in deep-going ways. Like everything else in nature and society, a mass upsurge should be viewed dynamically, that is, in its contradictory motion. Life, to paraphrase Lenin, is always much more complicated and multifaceted than we can ever imagine. Theory, as necessary as it is, is only a guide to action.
Unfortunately, this lesson has yet to be fully learned by some on the left. Seeing little, if any, progressive potential in electoral politics or the Democratic Party, they have a difficult time taking proper measure of and responding to unfamiliar political patterns, such as the current upsurge in the Democratic Party primaries. It doesn’t fit, nor can it be easily shoehorned to fit, their political model of social change. Needless to say, we don’t share such views. In fact, this upsurge in the electoral
arena is the main political vector of struggle for the year ahead.
To our credit, we said two years ago that the midterm elections and their results were a dress rehearsal for the 2008 elections. And at our National Committee meeting last fall we went further, saying that this year’s elections could set in motion a process leading to a new era of class and democratic struggle on much higher ground.
At the same time, we have to admit that we underestimated the fury and the scope of this surge. Nor did we anticipate the Obama phenomenon.
Youth and independents
One of the most hopeful aspects of this people’s surge is the entry of young people who either were not of voting age in the last election or were old enough to vote but chose not to do so. In injecting themselves en masse into the Democratic primary process, today’s younger generation is becoming an agent of change. Not since the sixties have we seen young people bring their energy and idealism to the political process on such a scale.
The beginnings of this change were evident in recent years. More young people participated in the 2004 elections and the majority of youth voted for Kerry. Furthermore, young people were a sizeable part of the anti-war movement as well as participants in other social movements. But what we are seeing today is on an entirely different scale and level of intensity.
The reasons for this qualitative change seem clear enough. Young people are saddled with enormous debt, horrified by the Iraq war and the pervasiveness of violence, alienated from the policies of division and intolerance of the Bush administration, and turned off by a political culture that is opaque, money driven and seemingly empty of higher ideals and aims. Sensing something different in Obama’s candidacy, they are flocking into the Democratic Party primaries in record numbers as organizers and voters.
Unlike some older people, the pressures and grind of everyday life haven’t yet worn them down. “Keep on keeping on” is not a slogan they embrace. “Yes we can” better captures their mood. They eagerly desire and embrace change. They not only imagine the possibility of another world; they imagine its realization in their lifetime.
Befitting their youth, they take inspiration from yesterday’s struggles but they are not prisoners to them. The Sixties, even the Reagan years, are history, not lived or vivid experiences for them.
Finally, the young are less inclined to be cynical. This election might not begin the world anew, but for millions of young people it is a first step.
Independents are entering this upheaval, too. For many of them the Democratic presidential primaries are where the action and fresh ideas are. The politics of yesteryear no longer resonate for them; they are looking for answers to stubborn problems such as the impossible costs of health care that weigh heavily on the quality of their lives. Not least, the working class, the nationally and racially oppressed and women are leaping into this upsurge in a way not seen for many years. Each of these constituencies went to the polls in record numbers.
Voting patterns
What do voting patterns reveal? First, working people divided their vote largely between Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich and Richardson. To say that Clinton has garnered nearly all of the working class vote is simply wrong. For one thing, Black people are overwhelmingly working class and cast their vote for Obama. For another thing, Obama received the lion’s share of the working-class vote, understanding working class broadly, in many primaries and overall. At the same time, it appears that Clinton polled well among trade unionists, women workers and Latino workers.
Second, the African American people gave their overwhelming support to Obama. In nearly every primary, roughly nine of 10 African American voters cast their ballot for him. This is explained not only because of understandable pride in the possibility of electing an African American to the presidency for the first time, but also because Obama would represent their interests, unite our country and usher in a new era of fairness, justice and peace for all.
Third, most women voters supported Clinton, although younger women and African American women of all ages tended to vote for Obama. But what is really notable is the massive turnout of women of all nationalities, races and social circumstances. If one obvious reason was their deeply felt opposition to the Bush administration, the other was their excitement over the possibility of electing a woman president. No doubt both desires energized women to go to the polls and assure that women as organizers and voters will be a powerful force against the right in the fall.
Fourth, many white people, male and female, cast their votes for an African American. This might be the most notable feature of the vote so far, as quiet as it is kept by the mass media. In fact, from media reports it seems as if Obama has become the front-runner on the basis of the Black vote alone. But anyone who thinks about it for a moment knows this is ludicrous. Obama carried several states with small African American populations, and did well in the southern states and especially Virginia, where a majority of white voters supported him.
Furthermore, the millions of white people, the majority of whom were workers, who voted for Obama did so because they liked him – his manner, his style, his opposition to the war, his concern about lunch pail issues, his ability to unify our country along racial and other lines, his fresh appeal, his youthfulness and so forth.
Were some white men (not to mention other men) motivated to vote for Obama because they would never vote for a woman? Of course, but I suspect when voting patterns are studied more closely, greater explanatory weight will be given to the first set of reasons – that is, they cast their vote for Obama because they liked him.
Fifth, the Latino vote in its majority went to Clinton. But what is most striking is the increase of the Latino vote in the 2008 Democratic primaries. So far the Latino percentage of the overall primary vote is over 10 percent, whereas in the 2004 general election the percentage was 6.7 percent. In California, the Latino percentage of the Democratic Party 2008 primary vote was 30 percent compared to 16 percent in 2004; in Texas, 32 percent this year compared to 24 percent in 2004. Similar changes have occurred in other southwest states.
Equally striking is that in the primaries Latinos have voted Democratic over Republican 78 percent to 22 percent, while in the 2004 general election, the spread was much less, roughly 63 to 37 percent. With nearly five million Latinos voting in the primaries, it is becoming more likely that the Latino vote in November could reach 10 million or more and thus provide a cushion of four to five million votes for the Democrats over Republicans compared to less than two million in 2004.
The implications are obvious: the Latino vote is an essential and growing part of a larger effort to win a landslide victory over the right wing in the presidential and congressional races in November. One would never get this impression, however, from the mass media’s reportage of the primaries so far. Instead, the media spin is that Latinos flinched at the option of voting for Obama, because of anti-Black feeling. I can’t go into this in great detail, other than to say that we should take
issue with this interpretation. The vast majority of Latinos voted for Clinton to be sure, but it doesn’t follow that they are anti-Obama, anti-Black. Most did because they liked her concern about economic issues, her experience, her familiarity and her connections with the Mexican American community and its leadership. Many have positive feelings toward Bill Clinton’s administration.
To bring more evidence to bear on this point, in recent decades Mexican Americans and Latinos have given support to African American big city mayors by clear and in some cases overwhelming majorities. Look at the facts: Harold Washington won 80 percent of the Latino vote in Chicago in his successful mayoral run in 1983; David Dinkins 73 percent in New York in 1989; Wellington Webb more than 70 percent in Denver in 1991; Ron Kirk big majorities in Dallas in 1995, 1997 and 1999. In Los Angeles, Tom Bradley got a good share in his first run in 1973 and clear majorities the next four times he ran. In addition, African American members of Congress in heavily Latino districts in Los Angeles and elsewhere get significant Latino support. And in Illinois, where Obama is a known entity, he has received strong support from Latino voters.Thus this divisive media spin should be vigorously contested.
Sixth, the youth and senior votes swung in different directions, with young people enthusiastically supporting Obama and senior citizens, except for Black seniors, casting their vote for Clinton. This is not too hard to explain. Older voters prefer a candidate who is a known quantity, which Clinton is. Obama, by contrast, is new on the scene. He doesn’t have the long-standing ties to the Democratic Party. His promise of change is appealing for many to be sure, and especially the young. But for others living on the edge, change can be unnerving. In hard times, we sometimes assume that working people are eager to roll the dice and say, “Come what may.”
As appealing and as seductive as that idea is to left-minded people, I am not sure the factual evidence for it exists. There are moments when ruptures occur and people embrace a radical path of action, but it is also true that in response to deteriorating conditions of life, some sections of working people have sought incremental, protective and less ambitious courses of action, some of which have taken a negative form. Instead of manning the barricades, they built fortresses to protect themselves in stormy times. This dynamic is something to consider.
My breakdown of the vote makes no claim to be comprehensive or in depth. Many categories of voters, for example, were left out who will surely have an impact on the election’s outcome – other nationally and racially oppressed people, Jews, and peace and environmental activists to name a few. Nor did I make a precise estimate of the degree to which or how sexist and racist attitudes influenced voting patterns. That still is to be done.
Nevertheless, voting patterns bode well for the general election. The turnout was far more than anyone predicted and never before on a national level have so many crossed racial and gender boundaries to cast their vote, boundaries that a few years ago seemed impenetrable. Moreover, where voters didn’t do so – say, white workers voting for Clinton, men voting for Obama, women voting for Clinton or Black people voting for Obama – their motivations can be explained more easily in a positive than a negative way.
The Obama phenomenon
The clearest expression of this developing movement pivots around the candidacy of Barack Obama, whose inspirational message and politics have captured the imagination of millions. So much so that many commentators and politicians use the words “transformational” or “transforming” to describe his candidacy – that is, a candidacy capable of assembling a broad people’s majority to reconfigure the terms and terrain of politics in this country in a fundamental way. The Obama campaign has not only brought new forces into the political process, it has also catalyzed new organizational forms.
The surge around Obama’s candidacy, much like the larger surge in the Democratic presidential primary, has a large spontaneous quality. But what makes it different is that it has the feel of “a movement.” Its supporters see in Obama someone who is without the baggage of an older generation of politicians, and who speaks to their desires.
I have heard political commentators say that Obama mania has no spelled-out political program, lacks organizational coherence and offers no guarantees it will continue after Election Day. Hearing such observations, I ask myself why on earth anyone would think this developing movement whose life span can be measured in months would be a well-oiled machine?
Anybody with any historical sense knows that movements in their early, and sometimes later, stages aren’t neat and tidy. Ideal types never find concrete representation in real life.
While this movement has its own dynamic, it is inseparable from the personality and politics of Barak Obama. While he is not a candidate of the left or someone we would endorse – since we don’t endorse candidates of either party – he is, nonetheless, a fresh voice on the political scene. His strategic and tactical concepts are broad in their sweep and his politics are forward looking. His appeal for change resonates with millions who are fed up with things as they are. And his desire to overcome divisions between Black and white, Black and brown, white and non-white, red state and blue state, immigrant and native born, Christian and Muslim, Muslim and Jew, blue collar and white collar, male and female, gay and straight, urban and rural strikes a deep responsive chord among Americans. After three decades of acrimonious rancor and division, people yearn for a kinder, gentler and more just country.
While much has been said about his own personal journey and its formative impact on his values and outlook, what has been greatly understated is that the struggles of the African American people and the larger movement against the right also have left their mark on his sensibilities and politics. Not since Bobby Kennedy has a leader stepped on the stage with as much promise to reconfigure politics and the underlying assumptions that inform debate and policy choices. His ability to articulate a vision, give voice to people’s hopes, and use the platform of politics to educate millions is extraordinary. On paper, it’s true that some of Clinton’s positions, not to mention those of Edwards and Kucinich, are better than Obama’s. But in many ways policy statements and party platforms are not the main things that should shape judgments about a presidential candidate’s potential or the prospects for change.
This is looking at politics too narrowly. It doesn’t take into account who can inspire and unite this massive upsurge, or who can articulate a moral and political vision to tens of millions, or who has the capacity to assemble political majorities in the post election period, or who has the ability to win a landslide victory against McCain and the Republicans in November.
On these counts, advantage goes to Obama in the eyes of many voters. That isn’t to say that Clinton wouldn’t be a worthy adversary to McCain. She would. Nor is it to suggest that she couldn’t win in a landslide. She can. But it would be much more difficult.
I also suspect that she would govern to the left of Bill Clinton’s administration, in large measure because the conditions and expectations are so different now. But I have heard it asked, isn’t Obama a bourgeois politician? Hasn’t he raised a lot of money from Wall St.? And isn’t he is a centrist and a creature of the Democratic Party? All of these assertions are worth discussing, but none of them can be easily answered with a yes or no reply. And even if they could, these questions by themselves wouldn’t necessarily tell us who Obama is, what his presidency would look like and how he would interact with the broader labor led people’s movement.
Class categories
We don’t want to dispense with the categories of class and class struggle for sure, but we don’t want to turn them into frozen, lifeless categories either. Class and class struggle should be understood as dynamic processes and open-ended categories and not simply as a fixed relation to the means of production that inexorably gives rise to class struggle and consciousness.
Employed properly, class categories give us clues to attitudes, tendencies, predispositions and behaviors of political actors, whether one individual or a social group. But they don’t inscribe on these same actors a mental mindset and an irrevocable course of action. To claim they do leaves out the larger political, economic and cultural processes in which class formation takes place and turns Marxism into a dogma.
To illuminate this point further, let me mention three examples. If Frederick Douglass, the great African American abolitionist leader, posed more or less the same set of questions to Lincoln in the late 1850s and early 1860s and ignored the wider political environment and the interaction between that environment and Lincoln’s shifting views, he might well have remained with the wing of the Abolitionist movement that refrained from electoral politics, was deeply suspicious of the Republican Party, and attached little significance to Lincoln’s victory in 1860.
Or if William Z. Foster posed more or less the same questions to the “Blue Blood” aristocrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt just prior to the 1936 elections and disregarded the new dynamics of struggle taking shape at the time, including Roosevelt’s understanding of these dynamics from his own class viewpoint, he might have argued against our participation in the massive coalition to reelect Roosevelt and New Deal Congressional candidates.
Or if Martin Luther King posed more or less the same questions to Lyndon Johnson and overlooked the convulsions going on in the country and Johnson’s capacity to change, he might not have supported his election bid in 1964 – a landslide victory that undeniably and significantly contributed to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, immigration reform and the War on Poverty.
In asking only narrowly constructed questions and in not considering the fluidity of the political terrain, the overall logic of struggle and the facility of the individual to change in each of these periods, the people’s movement would have cut itself off from openings and opportunities to secure historic victories in each instance. To employ a similar methodology today with regard to Obama runs the same danger.
Struggle for unity
For some time supporters of both Clinton and Obama have said unambiguously that they would rally around the eventual nominee. Assuming for the moment that this happens, it is easy to imagine the formation of an electoral movement that in its scope and depth has no equal in the 20th century. Moreover, such a broad-based political formation has the potential to inflict an overwhelming defeat on McCain and the Republican Party at the polls and to journey down a new highway.
Whether or not that happens, however, isn’t a foregone conclusion. Setting aside for now the divisive role of the right, tensions have cropped up in the Democratic primary contest making it far less certain that supporters of each candidate will seamlessly migrate to the other’s opponent in the event their candidate isn’t the standard bearer. To a large extent, the tensions did not arise spontaneously nor are they the inevitable product of the rough and tumble of the primary process.
How then do we explain them? Earlier I said it is a great tribute to the democratic spirit and sense of decency of the often-maligned American people that a woman and an African American man are contesting for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. At the same time, racial and gender prejudice have not been absent from the presidential primaries. This should be acknowledged and vigorously opposed as having no place at this uplifting moment in our nation’s political life.
All democratic minded people should have no truck with debasing images, double standards, demeaning words, small slights and false opposition of one form of oppression to another or, worse still, the privileging of one over the other.
All of them impede the struggle for equality and unity and weaken the struggle against the right by the whole people.
We should never forget that the struggle for equality and against racism and male supremacy in its ideological and material forms is as much in the interests of white and male workers as it is in the interests of nationally and racially oppressed and women workers. As Marx wrote, “Labor in the white skin can never be free, as long as labor in the Black skin is branded.” Much the same could be said about the struggle against gender oppression.
It is precisely this that the ruling class goes to great lengths to obscure. Working class advance is always portrayed as a zero sum game, meaning the advancement of nationally and racially oppressed workers comes at the expense of white workers or the advancement of women workers comes at the cost of male workers or the securing of rights of immigrant workers comes at the expense of native born workers, and so on.
That your political adversaries on the right would exacerbate racial and gender tensions is to be expected. It has been, after all, the main way along with narrow nationalism that the extreme right has exploited white people’s feelings and resentments in order to mobilize them around their ruling class goals.
But what is unexpected is when someone you thought was on your side employs similar if not identical tactics, which is what the Clinton campaign is doing in the primaries. So that there is no misunderstanding, I’m not talking about her wider ring of labor, women, Latino and other supporters, nearly all of whom, I’m sure, object to such tactics as harmful.
The racialization of the campaign began with former President Bill Clinton in New Hampshire and South Carolina. In both primaries his assignment was to be the bad cop, no small part of which was to introduce a racial subtext in the charged atmosphere of the primaries.
After that episode it seemed to subside momentarily, in part because of the negative reaction to it. But the pause was only temporary. Going into Super Tuesday and since then, Clinton and her campaign have acted as if nothing matters except her nomination in August. Concerns about unity seem to have been cast aside.
There is a racial subtext to remarks such as only Clinton and McCain have the experience to be commander-in-chief, or “as far as she knows” Obama isn’t a Muslim, or when she offered Obama the vice presidency on her ticket, or when her TV ads show a blond young girl next to the phone ringing at 3 a.m., or when her campaign circulated tapes of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the media, or when Bill Clinton said how good it would be if two candidates running for the presidency were both patriotic and loved their country – all of this panders to the American people’s worst fears and stirs the embers of racial feelings at a moment when tens of millions of white people are showing their willingness to transcend them.
The Clinton campaign doesn’t seem to realize what the stakes are in this election. They are playing a dangerous game. Supporters of both candidates should strongly insist that it cease its increasingly transparent attempt to polarize the electorate along racial lines. Unless resisted, this could turn a moment of opportunity and victory into a bitter defeat with all the demoralization, division, and name calling that would inevitably follow such an outcome. Thus, we cannot be silent.
Accommodation to racial and gender disunity in the name of unity is not a communist approach. Our strategic policy is to defeat the right decisively in this election. Only a united movement can do that.
A comment from Alan Maki:
It is unfortunate that Sam Webb has not extended the same courtesy and opportunity to comment on this article on the CPUSA website to what he has written here as what is now being extended to him.
I will be providing my comments; and, I know others will, too.
We welcome the opportunity to finally have an official dialogue with Sam Webb and we invite Sam Webb to respond to all comments which arise; it is a courtesy Webb should should take full advantage of since he has encouraged discussion of his "new" ideas.
It is very difficult to have a discussion of ideas if the author will not respond to criticisms; we are sure Webb understands this.
I can be reached via e-mail: amaki000@centurtel.net
We are looking forward to lively, thought-provoking dialogue, discussion and debate.
All views and opinions will be published with a title the author requests and a link to the response as part of this blog.
Discussion:
Marxist-Leninist ideology is not some dogmatic out of date babble; by Mick Gardiner
Not a single solution advanced by Sam Webb; by Ruby Magnusson
Some good some bad. I appreciate the opportunity to comment. by Janice Galatz
We can reach our goals working in the Democratic Party. Mike Younge
We have never discussed limitless possibilities; Annonymous
I am confused; by Herold Roth
I can't pay my bills in increments; by Rosalie Puchalski
Lots of discussion is coming in; I will get links posted as quickly as possible. For now just click here to go to all postings.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Shoddy journalism and shoddy construction... is there a path of corruption paved with dollars from the China to the United States?
In the story below, this is the kind of shoddy journalism we get here in the United States where chauvinism is passed off as "journalism from our great "free media."
First: Where is the photograph supporting this story?
It is not here, why?
Second: Many, many American scientists, architects, engineers, contractors, and construction workers have often been involved in these Chinese construction projects--- and manufacturing rebar--- in China, and the profits they have derived from construction have been fabulous.
When was the last time you ever read a news report in the Wall Street Journal with these money-grubbing capitalists proclaiming they were concerned about any "shoddy" construction they were involved in? Never.
There is no end to the most disgusting anti-communist, chauvinist and outright hate-mongering being spewed by the big-business corporate apologists passing themselves off as "journalists."
The snob actress and "movie star," Sharon Stone, whose claim to fame is giving everyone a peek at her little boobs in the movies and crying for a bunch of parasitic monks who need a numb-skull like the Dali Lama to do their thinking for them, rushed to the "aid" of the earthquake victims saying, "The Chinese people are being punished for the mistreatment of monks and the Dali Lama." These parasitic monks are worthless; their contribution to society is sitting around praying all day as servants wait on them hand and foot as if they are God's gift to the human race when all they are is a burden on society as the rest of the people are supposed to supply them with food while other servants feed them and even wipe their butts and push the gold-plated toilet handles and bathe them.
This has been the history of what passes for "journalism" whenever it comes to writing about human tragedy in socialist countries, be it the former Soviet Union, Cuba or people suffering hunger from drought in North Korea.
These "journalists" and their publishers find a way to gloat with glee at every opportunity no matter how catastrophic and tragic the suffering--- be the suffering due to drought, hurricane, volcanoes or earthquakes when tragedy and natural disaster strikes in a socialist country.
The manner in which these journalists report stories of flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa or hurricane damage in New Orleans is quite the opposite. Then it isn't about attaching blame, it becomes about praying for the victims.
These same "journalists" never question why our military doesn't put as much effort into helping people in our own country who are victims of natural disasters with the eagerness and rapidity they launched "Campaign Iraqi Freedom."
As someone who has worked construction in this country as both a roofer and carpenter on large and small projects, I could take "journalists" on a tour of some real "shoddy" construction projects if this is truly their concern.
Not once has our great "free media" had the courage to address the problems resulting in the deadly I-35W bridge collapse or question how it is that United States Congressman James Oberstar receives huge campaign contributions from some of the construction firms involved.
If our great "free media" were truly concerned with what might be "shoddy construction" in China these "journalists" should start to investigate the path of corruption paved with dollars from China back to the United States.
Some "journalist" might want to ask Sharon Stone why God is punishing our own victims of floods, hurricanes and tornadoes.
I wonder if a story has ever appeared in a Chinese newspaper asking why in the most advanced country in the world there is such shoddy construction that an improperly maintained levy broke causing flooding of an entire city; the result of one minor hurricane.
I would be willing to bet that in China, unlike here in the United States, there will be many full-fledged investigations to determine if in fact there was a problem with "shoddy construction" practices or the materials used in construction; perhaps there will even be an investigation to see if the rebar used was up to specs.
If these investigations find someone to be at fault I am sure there will be severe punishments meted out to those found guilty. If any form of corruption is found involving shoddy construction methods or materials I think I know what the punishment will be... unfortunately, those responsible for the collapse of the the I-35W Bridge spanning the mighty Mississippi River and those who allowed the levies in New Orleans to go without proper maintenance and repair will not receive the same ten-cent punishment.
Alan L. Maki
First: Where is the photograph supporting this story?
It is not here, why?
Second: Many, many American scientists, architects, engineers, contractors, and construction workers have often been involved in these Chinese construction projects--- and manufacturing rebar--- in China, and the profits they have derived from construction have been fabulous.
When was the last time you ever read a news report in the Wall Street Journal with these money-grubbing capitalists proclaiming they were concerned about any "shoddy" construction they were involved in? Never.
There is no end to the most disgusting anti-communist, chauvinist and outright hate-mongering being spewed by the big-business corporate apologists passing themselves off as "journalists."
The snob actress and "movie star," Sharon Stone, whose claim to fame is giving everyone a peek at her little boobs in the movies and crying for a bunch of parasitic monks who need a numb-skull like the Dali Lama to do their thinking for them, rushed to the "aid" of the earthquake victims saying, "The Chinese people are being punished for the mistreatment of monks and the Dali Lama." These parasitic monks are worthless; their contribution to society is sitting around praying all day as servants wait on them hand and foot as if they are God's gift to the human race when all they are is a burden on society as the rest of the people are supposed to supply them with food while other servants feed them and even wipe their butts and push the gold-plated toilet handles and bathe them.
This has been the history of what passes for "journalism" whenever it comes to writing about human tragedy in socialist countries, be it the former Soviet Union, Cuba or people suffering hunger from drought in North Korea.
These "journalists" and their publishers find a way to gloat with glee at every opportunity no matter how catastrophic and tragic the suffering--- be the suffering due to drought, hurricane, volcanoes or earthquakes when tragedy and natural disaster strikes in a socialist country.
The manner in which these journalists report stories of flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa or hurricane damage in New Orleans is quite the opposite. Then it isn't about attaching blame, it becomes about praying for the victims.
These same "journalists" never question why our military doesn't put as much effort into helping people in our own country who are victims of natural disasters with the eagerness and rapidity they launched "Campaign Iraqi Freedom."
As someone who has worked construction in this country as both a roofer and carpenter on large and small projects, I could take "journalists" on a tour of some real "shoddy" construction projects if this is truly their concern.
Not once has our great "free media" had the courage to address the problems resulting in the deadly I-35W bridge collapse or question how it is that United States Congressman James Oberstar receives huge campaign contributions from some of the construction firms involved.
If our great "free media" were truly concerned with what might be "shoddy construction" in China these "journalists" should start to investigate the path of corruption paved with dollars from China back to the United States.
Some "journalist" might want to ask Sharon Stone why God is punishing our own victims of floods, hurricanes and tornadoes.
I wonder if a story has ever appeared in a Chinese newspaper asking why in the most advanced country in the world there is such shoddy construction that an improperly maintained levy broke causing flooding of an entire city; the result of one minor hurricane.
I would be willing to bet that in China, unlike here in the United States, there will be many full-fledged investigations to determine if in fact there was a problem with "shoddy construction" practices or the materials used in construction; perhaps there will even be an investigation to see if the rebar used was up to specs.
If these investigations find someone to be at fault I am sure there will be severe punishments meted out to those found guilty. If any form of corruption is found involving shoddy construction methods or materials I think I know what the punishment will be... unfortunately, those responsible for the collapse of the the I-35W Bridge spanning the mighty Mississippi River and those who allowed the levies in New Orleans to go without proper maintenance and repair will not receive the same ten-cent punishment.
Alan L. Maki
Sensitive China quake photo removed
Jun 15, 6:20 AM (ET)
By CARA ANNA
JUYUAN, China (AP) - A photograph hinting at shoddy school construction was pulled from an exhibition about last month's devastating earthquake, an apparent indication of rising government sensitivity over an issue that has already prompted angry protests from parents of children killed.
The photo showed a hand clutching a twisted piece of steel rebar that looked no thicker than a pencil, taken from the ruins of the middle school in the town of Juyuan that was one of 40 that collapsed in the May 12 quake.
The picture featured prominently among a collection of quake artifacts when it opened to the public last week. By the weekend, though, it was gone. Organizers were reluctant to say exactly why.
"We don't know if we were told to remove the photo," said Wu Zhiwei, assistant to the general manager of Museum Cluster Jianchuan, the organizer of the exhibit and the largest privately run museum in China. "And if we were told to remove the photo, we're not sure we could tell you."
School collapses have become one of the most charged issues in the quake recovery process, and one that local communist leaders seem anxious to suppress.
The entire state-controlled media have almost completely ignored the issue, apparently under the instructions of the propaganda bureau. Parents and volunteers helping them who have questioned authorities about the issue have been rounded up, detained, and threatened.
Juyuan has become a center of the collapsed schools issue, with police pulling grieving parents away from a courthouse where they knelt this month in an attempt to submit a lawsuit.
On Sunday, police cordoned off the area surrounding the town's collapsed middle school where nearly 300 students died, angering parents who had come to observe the 35th day of mourning, a key date in local tradition.
"It's as if we're bad people now," said a man who said he was the father of a dead student.
"This is our last chance to burn incense and they don't let us in," said the man, who declined to give his name, underscoring a growing reluctance to be publicly identified and possibly targeted by authorities.
Engineers hired to inspect the school rubble say many of the schools, including the one in Juyuan, were poorly sited and badly built. The government has promised to submit a report on the schools by June 20, possibly opening the door to charges or lawsuits.
Authorities are always suspicious of independent activism, however, and the possibility of being implicated in school problems offers officials a strong incentive to suppress information about such cases.
Despite the removal of the photo from Juyuan, the quake exhibit on a sprawling campus about an hour's drive from the provincial capital of Chengdu still offered potent reminders of the school tragedies, including schoolbook bags, smashed desks and children's shoes.
Identification cards, crushed appliances and hundreds of other personal items were pulled from the rubble and donated by military rescuers and volunteers. They were displayed alongside hundreds of photos of victims, relief workers and quake devastation.
The collection even included a megaphone said to have been used by Premier Wen Jiabao as he toured the ruins soon after the quake.
The exhibit ends with a wall of photos of about 2,000 people killed in the quake, China's worst natural disaster in a generation.
Visitors on Saturday said they found the exhibit both open and moving.
"It reflects the reality," said Hou Mincu, a retired professor from Sichuan's capital, Chengdu.
Zheng Chengzhi, a 42-year-old worker, was also from Chengdu.
"The earthquake isn't finished yet," said Zeng. "Construction and other issues, we need to talk about these things."
Friday, June 6, 2008
China appears to be heading towards democracy
Dear Colleagues,
We wish to share a beautifully written article on the development of democracy of China which appeared in the Irish Times on May 26, 2008 titled "China appears to be heading towards democracy." It is a moving presentation of people's attitudes towards the current government under Hu Jintao and Wen Jibao as reflected in the massive response to help in the aftermath of the earthquake. He describes the earthquake and its results in a heartbreaking manner with human content and without controversial political innuendoes. I believe you will share my feelings when you have an opportunity to read it.
You will note his quoting Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times from his May 29th article titled "Terrorism and the Olympics." Kristoff begins with a compendium and critical history (though we do not challenge those facts) of China's exercise of police power. He then follows with his personal experience which shows SOME understanding of changes which are taking place in the growing openness and appreciation of the government's efforts to build the country while finding new forms of expression for the public attitude towards government.
Nonetheless, Tony Kinsella notes the changing attitude of Kristoff in support of his own more sensitive approach. We have included a copy of Kristoff's piece for your own evaluation.
Sincerely,
Sidney Gluck
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 29, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Terrorism and the Olympics
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KASHGAR, China
The reports of terror plots emanating this year from this Muslim region in the far west of China might seem fanciful: A foiled plot to blow up a plane; a cache of TNT to bomb the Summer Olympics; even a “violent terrorist gang” that planned to kidnap Olympic athletes.
But these aren’t whispers on the Internet. They’re reports coming from the Chinese government. So I flew out here to Kashgar — an oasis on the ancient Silk Road, where the minarets and camels and carpets provide a Middle Eastern ambience — to look for terrorists.
Instead, China’s State Security Ministry found me. I had been in Kashgar just a few hours when my videographer, who is ethnically Chinese, called to say that two plainclothes officials were interrogating him. They asked him not to tell me since American journalists tend to be touchy about such things.
The interrogation was a sign of the authorities’ anxiety about stability in China’s Muslim west. Separatists here in the Xinjiang region aim to create the nation of “East Turkestan” and have periodically blown up police stations — even bombed three public buses in 1997.
The Chinese government has claimed that 162 people were killed in such terror attacks by Uighur separatists between 1990 and 2001. Meanwhile, China has sentenced more than 200 people to death since 1997 for engaging in such separatist crimes.
Last year, Chinese officials said that 18 people had been killed when police raided a Uighur terrorist training camp with ties to Al Qaeda. The raid netted 1,500 grenades.
Then in March, China announced that it had foiled a plot “to create an air crash,” in a passenger plane shortly after it took off from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi. In April, the authorities said that they had confiscated explosives from Uighurs who were planning suicide bomb attacks.
“This violent terrorist gang secretly plotted to kidnap journalists, visitors and athletes during the Beijing Olympics,” The Associated Press quoted Wu Heping, a spokesman for the Public Security Ministry, as saying.
Then just this month, a crowded bus blew up in Shanghai, killing three people and injuring many more. No one publicly claimed responsibility, but it recalled the 1997 Uighur bus bombings.
Ronald Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, cited these incidents — and also reports of a separatist plot to disrupt the Olympic Games with poison gas — and told a press conference that a terror attack at the Olympics was “a real possibility.”
It’s not entirely clear what to make of all this, for as I strolled around Kashgar I found the situation remarkably calm. I wasn’t expecting to uncover a terrorist cell, but I had anticipated more hostility toward the government. Ordinary Uighurs I spoke with offered measured complaints, but they weren’t seething as Tibetans are.
“Nobody likes it when the Chinese all move in here,” said a Uighur shop-keeper. “Of course, we’re all upset. But what can we do?”
One young woman offered a different take. “When I was a little kid, my mom would tell me, ‘Don’t wander or the Han Chinese will steal you away. They eat human flesh.’ ” She laughed and added: “But now we see more Han, and we’re not afraid of them. Relations are O.K.”
Some young Uighurs criticized the Beijing Olympics, saying the Games will drain local budgets. But I could have found stronger anti-government sedition on any street corner of Manhattan.
The only excitement I found in Kashgar was playing pied piper to State Security officers who tailed me whenever I left the hotel.
Normally, the Chinese government downplays security risks, but human rights groups argue persuasively that China is using concerns about Uighurs as an excuse to crack down on peaceful Uighur dissidents. After 9/11, China declared its own war on terror in Xinjiang, but Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented that this often has targeted Uighurs who are completely nonviolent.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration has largely backed this Chinese version of the war on terror. Indeed, a Department of Justice report this month suggests that American troops softened up Uighur prisoners in Guantánamo Bay on behalf of visiting Chinese interrogators. The American troops starved the Uighurs and prevented them from sleeping, just before inviting in the Chinese interrogators.
That was disgraceful; we shouldn’t do China’s dirty work. It was one more example of the Bush administration allowing the war on terror to corrode our moral clarity.
We should encourage China to tolerate peaceful protesters even as it prosecutes terrorists. But instead of clarifying that distinction, in recent years we have helped China blur it. The risk of terrorism during the Olympics is real, but that shouldn’t force us to do violence to our principles.
Op-Ed Columnist - Terrorism and the Olympics - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
We wish to share a beautifully written article on the development of democracy of China which appeared in the Irish Times on May 26, 2008 titled "China appears to be heading towards democracy." It is a moving presentation of people's attitudes towards the current government under Hu Jintao and Wen Jibao as reflected in the massive response to help in the aftermath of the earthquake. He describes the earthquake and its results in a heartbreaking manner with human content and without controversial political innuendoes. I believe you will share my feelings when you have an opportunity to read it.
You will note his quoting Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times from his May 29th article titled "Terrorism and the Olympics." Kristoff begins with a compendium and critical history (though we do not challenge those facts) of China's exercise of police power. He then follows with his personal experience which shows SOME understanding of changes which are taking place in the growing openness and appreciation of the government's efforts to build the country while finding new forms of expression for the public attitude towards government.
Nonetheless, Tony Kinsella notes the changing attitude of Kristoff in support of his own more sensitive approach. We have included a copy of Kristoff's piece for your own evaluation.
Sincerely,
Sidney Gluck
Irish Times (5/26/08)
China appears to be heading towards democracy
By: Tony Kinsella
Four important indicators suggest China is starting to move away from authoritarianism, writes Tony Kinsella
IN THE early afternoon of May 12th last a massive earthquake devastated Sichuan. Its sheer scale - 90,000 dead and missing, 240,000 injured, five million homeless - pierced our human consciousness, affecting us on several registers.
Bertolt Brecht in his 1943 play The Good Person of Sichuan challenges the audience to find a workable balance between good and evil. Sichuan today poses a related challenge to us all. What has been crushed, and what has been born?
The tragic, heroic, images from Sichuan have been striking in their portrayal of a society sufficiently similar to our own as to be instantly recognisable - the constant media coverage, the heroic efforts of the emergency services, the army, NGOs and over 55,000 volunteers from all over China. The tragedies, the small heartening victories as survivors were disinterred, the exhorting presence of political leaders atop heaps of rubble that had until recently been homes, offices, and most poignantly of all, schools, are the familiar horrific normality of catastrophes.
The very existence of those images speaks eloquently of our planet's political evolution, and is thrown into stark contrast by the uncaring paranoia of the Burmese junta. If Naypyitaw is the heartless face of dictatorship, has Beijing begun to assemble a democratic profile?
Four important indicators are certainly pointing in that direction: transparency, rule of law, media independence, and the development of civil society.
Natural disasters were state secrets in the bad old days of Helmsman Mao, like the 250,000-plus who perished in the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. The official New China News Agency was reporting the Sichuan earthquake less than 15 minutes after it happened. That afternoon the state CCTV dropped its schedule to deliver live coverage.
Prime minister Wen Jiabao, followed by president Hu Jinta, flew to Sichuan, inspected, encouraged, exhorted, apologised and threatened - live on television. CCTV news anchor Zhao Pu failed to contain his tears as he described the earthquake. A remarkable transition from the Tangshan statement of Mao's widow, Jiang Qing: "There were merely several hundred thousand deaths. So what? Denouncing Deng Xiaoping concerns 800 million people."
Beijing businessman Zhao Shuangying (48) walked into the headquarters of the Red Cross Society of China on May 15th to donate EUR 10,000. "It's very simple," Mr Shuangying said, "I cannot go to Sichuan, so I came here to help." If he, and hundreds of thousands like him across China, did not have confidence in their country's legal system, they would not be propelling their country's economy forward at about 10 per cent a year.
Two days after the earthquake, bureaucrats at the central committee's propaganda department ordered Chinese media not to deploy any more journalists to Sichuan. This was likely more of a reflex action as Chinese and foreign journalists streamed into Chengdu and beyond. Obedience to such edicts used to be the norm.
One local editor advised his journalists: "If everybody pays no attention to this, then it won't really be a ban," and how right he was.
The Shanghai Securities News, a service of the state Xinhua Agency, wrote of the need to respect seismic building codes and called for an end to corrupt building practices - a courageous demand for political reform. Prof Min Dahong of the Chinese academy of social sciences observed: "This is a good opportunity to establish a system that will encourage the press to report in a timely and open manner."
Alexis de Tocqueville, impressed by the then activism of US public life, said in 1856 that "the health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens".
More than 55,000 volunteers have rushed, at their own expense, to Sichuan. Hao Lin, a psychologist, told his wife he was going to Guangzhou (Canton) before hopping on a plane for Chengdu and cycling into the disaster zone to offer counselling.
Li Xiaotang and 14 other young professionals from Shanghai met on the internet to organise their seven-hour journey to Feishui. She and her friends took a week's unpaid leave, and spent a month's salary each to fund their travel and purchases of food, medicines and mobile phones. Private citizens queued across China to donate blood, blankets, food, tents and more than EUR 400 million. Dubliner Peter Goff has helped ship 16 tons of donated material through his Chengdu Bookworm café.
By de Tocqueville's measure, Chinese democratic society is in very bonny health.
The Peoples' Republic of China is far from full democracy, and its communist party still clings to political power with a firm, if increasingly flexible, and probably quite frightened, fist.
China seems embarked on its own version of the long, awkward and occasionally brutal road away from authoritarianism towards something more democratic. Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Pakistan, Mongolia and other Asian countries have already travelled further along similar routes.
New York Times columnist, Nicholas D Kristof wrote on Thursday last that he could see the Chinese Communist Party ". . . becoming a social democratic party that dominates the country but that grudgingly allows opposition victories and a free press".
Will the new China have a unicameral parliament like Sweden, or an appointed upper house like the UK? Will it be federal like Germany or the US? Or will it reach back into its three millennia of political history to develop something new?
In a reversal Brecht would have loved, it will be up to the good people of Sichuan to judge.
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May 29, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Terrorism and the Olympics
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KASHGAR, China
The reports of terror plots emanating this year from this Muslim region in the far west of China might seem fanciful: A foiled plot to blow up a plane; a cache of TNT to bomb the Summer Olympics; even a “violent terrorist gang” that planned to kidnap Olympic athletes.
But these aren’t whispers on the Internet. They’re reports coming from the Chinese government. So I flew out here to Kashgar — an oasis on the ancient Silk Road, where the minarets and camels and carpets provide a Middle Eastern ambience — to look for terrorists.
Instead, China’s State Security Ministry found me. I had been in Kashgar just a few hours when my videographer, who is ethnically Chinese, called to say that two plainclothes officials were interrogating him. They asked him not to tell me since American journalists tend to be touchy about such things.
The interrogation was a sign of the authorities’ anxiety about stability in China’s Muslim west. Separatists here in the Xinjiang region aim to create the nation of “East Turkestan” and have periodically blown up police stations — even bombed three public buses in 1997.
The Chinese government has claimed that 162 people were killed in such terror attacks by Uighur separatists between 1990 and 2001. Meanwhile, China has sentenced more than 200 people to death since 1997 for engaging in such separatist crimes.
Last year, Chinese officials said that 18 people had been killed when police raided a Uighur terrorist training camp with ties to Al Qaeda. The raid netted 1,500 grenades.
Then in March, China announced that it had foiled a plot “to create an air crash,” in a passenger plane shortly after it took off from the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi. In April, the authorities said that they had confiscated explosives from Uighurs who were planning suicide bomb attacks.
“This violent terrorist gang secretly plotted to kidnap journalists, visitors and athletes during the Beijing Olympics,” The Associated Press quoted Wu Heping, a spokesman for the Public Security Ministry, as saying.
Then just this month, a crowded bus blew up in Shanghai, killing three people and injuring many more. No one publicly claimed responsibility, but it recalled the 1997 Uighur bus bombings.
Ronald Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, cited these incidents — and also reports of a separatist plot to disrupt the Olympic Games with poison gas — and told a press conference that a terror attack at the Olympics was “a real possibility.”
It’s not entirely clear what to make of all this, for as I strolled around Kashgar I found the situation remarkably calm. I wasn’t expecting to uncover a terrorist cell, but I had anticipated more hostility toward the government. Ordinary Uighurs I spoke with offered measured complaints, but they weren’t seething as Tibetans are.
“Nobody likes it when the Chinese all move in here,” said a Uighur shop-keeper. “Of course, we’re all upset. But what can we do?”
One young woman offered a different take. “When I was a little kid, my mom would tell me, ‘Don’t wander or the Han Chinese will steal you away. They eat human flesh.’ ” She laughed and added: “But now we see more Han, and we’re not afraid of them. Relations are O.K.”
Some young Uighurs criticized the Beijing Olympics, saying the Games will drain local budgets. But I could have found stronger anti-government sedition on any street corner of Manhattan.
The only excitement I found in Kashgar was playing pied piper to State Security officers who tailed me whenever I left the hotel.
Normally, the Chinese government downplays security risks, but human rights groups argue persuasively that China is using concerns about Uighurs as an excuse to crack down on peaceful Uighur dissidents. After 9/11, China declared its own war on terror in Xinjiang, but Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented that this often has targeted Uighurs who are completely nonviolent.
Unfortunately, the Bush administration has largely backed this Chinese version of the war on terror. Indeed, a Department of Justice report this month suggests that American troops softened up Uighur prisoners in Guantánamo Bay on behalf of visiting Chinese interrogators. The American troops starved the Uighurs and prevented them from sleeping, just before inviting in the Chinese interrogators.
That was disgraceful; we shouldn’t do China’s dirty work. It was one more example of the Bush administration allowing the war on terror to corrode our moral clarity.
We should encourage China to tolerate peaceful protesters even as it prosecutes terrorists. But instead of clarifying that distinction, in recent years we have helped China blur it. The risk of terrorism during the Olympics is real, but that shouldn’t force us to do violence to our principles.
Op-Ed Columnist - Terrorism and the Olympics - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
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