Great Moments in Olympic History

Holiday time

Catherine and I will post less frequently for the next couple of weeks, because we’ve gone on holiday. But meanwhile, our friend Ivan will keep you company as our guest blogger.

About pundits

As afriend of mine, a wise, elderly historian, has said:

“Only in America, can someone become a famous journalist and a pundit despite how most of his predictions turn out to be wrong.”

Hmmmm.

“It is undeniable that China is shaking the world! China is a rising power!”

 

Postmodern post disappears!

Yesterday Catherine and I posted a very postmodern post here.

For the sake of postmodern thoroughness, we have decided to make it disappear.   We have however saved a copy on our hard drives and will be happy to give one to MAJ in the future.

The sacred torch, the cross and the earthquake

First, Catherine and I want to make it clear that we are not gloating over the suffering caused by the earthquake in China.   We will ask our local Catholic Priest to offer a special prayer for the earthquake victims at mass next Sunday.

But that throws all the recent babble about the “sacred” Olympic torch and Jin Jing the “angel” into clearer perspective, doesn’t it.

For all of the Chinese PR babble about the “sacred” torch and Jin Jing the “angel”, how many victims of the earthquake are now taking the slightest bit of comfort, consolation or spiritual sustenance from contemplating the Olympic Torch?

All it takes is a reminder of the essential human conditions of vulernability, suffering and death, for false idols like the Olympic Torch to be revealed as deaf, dumb, mute and impotent gods, powerless to inspire faith, hope or charity.

Meanwhile the truly sacred symbols of the Buddha, the Koran and the Cross of Christ continue to inspire those three “great things that last” - faith, hope, and charity - among the Chinese believers in those true faiths, in ways the Communist Party is revealed, once again, to be impotent to do.

True, neither the Buddha nor the Koran nor the Cross of Christ could prevent the earthquake.    But the spiritual power in those truly sacred symbols is the power to inspire transcendence of suffering and death, a power which does not reside in the “sacred” torch or in its corporate sponsors.    Call the Christian eucharist (the consecrated bread and wine, the “body and blood” of Christ) a superstition if you will, but those who believe in it are sustained mentally, spiritually - and thereby even medically, to some extent - by its symbolism of transcendence of suffering and mortality.    The same will never be true of Coca Cola, and Lenovo’s computers will never inspire righteous moral struggle in the way the Holy Koran does.

 

Zippy the Pinhead’s Gone China

Portrait of a Pinhead with a PhD in “China” or something like that.   Who needs to write accurate translations when slurred paraphrases of what you don’t really know how to translate can be made to sound intentionally funny?   Solipsistic musings are smart!  Zippy likes the packaging!

 UPDATE:   You can listen to a free mp3 of the entire song, “I’m Zippy, Who Are You?” at this link.

Ping pong, panda and China’s not so harmonious diplomatic symphony

I can understand why John Pomfret,  a senior China correspondent from the Washington Post, would strive desperately  to convince his readers that China’s international reputation has remained largely unscathed despite the recent ugly displays of racial nationalism in China and among Chinese nationals overseas.  After all, his job would be on the line, should international condemnation trigger a Boxer-Rebellion-style anti-foreign campaign in China.  I am sure many US investors and American expatriates in China will share John Pomfret’s anxieties.  However, one might ask if Mr Pomfret is still sufficiently sentient  to acknowledge the interests of his readers to know the true conditions of damages, not to mention the potentially dangerous consequences, of the current recrudescence of nationalism in China.

I really doubted whether Pomfret’s ethics would be so charitable or even be subordinated to any kind of uncynical integrity,  after I read his latest blog post titled “China’s Harmonious Diplomatic Symphony“.  Of course Pomfret’s admirers might argue that Pomfret has lived among the Chinese for such a long time that he has finally learnt the art of double-speaking.   I will let you read the following excerpts from his post and judge it for yourselves:

Long term expats-in-China: “Gooble gobble, one of us!”

What happens to Western expats-in-China after they’ve been there for a few years or so and become long-termers?  “Gooble gobble, gooble gobble, we accept her, one of us!”

From the nightmare movie, “Freaks”, an allegory for long-term expats-in-China:

 

Jin Jing, Batman, Zhang Ziyi and the Three Stooges

Food for thought from Tom Legg:

No one could have possibly dreamed up a story line about attacking a lady in a wheelchair to tug at the audience’s heart strings. That would be unpossible, right?

Go take a look at the video Tom links to in that post, of a woman being thrown out of a wheelchair in a fake “professional wrestling” stunt.

That got us thinking about other kinds of staged acts of apparent violence.   It should get the rest of you thinking too.   Beijing’s Western PR whores have been asking you to believe what your eyes tell you about the apparent “attack” on Jin Jing.   They have asked you, rhetorically, “how could it have been staged?   Don’t you believe your own eyes?   Isn’t it obvious?”

Well actually, no, it’s not obvious.   No more obvious than the staged stunts in Batman, or Zhang Ziyi’s ability to fly, or any stunts performed by the Three Stooges.   Did you know that the sounds of violence in all the Three Stooges movies were artificially produced, on machines?   That’s called “special effects”.   Please - Roland, Richard and Dave - please teach your children the difference between special effects and reality.   The real Three Stooges understood the difference, and expected their audiences to do so as well, unlike those PR machines who have nothing but contempt for their audiences.

Dramatis personae:

Moe, the alpha stooge = Roland Soong

Larry, the mumbling fair and balanced stooge = Richard Panda

Curly = could only be the incoherent, petulant, prolix Dave

The Visitors

The international legs of the Olympic Torch relay are over.   What has the world learned about China and the Chinese, in the past few weeks?

Something like this.    An allegory from Monty Python’s, “The Visitors”:

Setting:     House = The Torch’s “host” countries of Britain, France, America, Australia, Japan, South Korea, et al

Dramatis Personae:    “The Visitors” = the embassies and mobs of students from the People’s Republic of China

Stalinist style “disappearances” begin in Hong Kong

More thanks today to Tom Legg in Hong Kong for alerting us to yet another escalation in Beijing’s worldwide campaign of terror beyond the PRC’s borders:

The Hong Kong Journalists Association was scheduled to hold a press discussion on freedom of speech and the press in Hong Kong today or tomorrow and Zhao Yan was supposed to be there to give a talk. Zhao Yan, if you remember, was the NY Times researcher in Beijing who helped the Times spill the beans on Jiang Zemin stepping down from his post as the head of the Central Military Commission a week in advance. Went to jail for three years on a trumped up fraud charge. Did his time and was free to come to Hong Kong to speak.

It’s just that sometime between his arrival here in Hong Kong and his scheduled speaking slot, he disappeared. There are rumours that he went back to Beijing, but none of those concerned about him have been able to contact him since he went missing.

Does anyone see a pattern here, of an escalating and spreading worldwide menace?   China’s thugs are terrorising and beating up - and in some instances threatening to kill - foreigners in countries outside of China, far beyond the PRC’s jurisdiction.    Now the Chinese thugs, evidently, have begun a campaign of extraterritorial kidnapping.    Today it’s Hong Kong.   Will YOUR country - America, Australia, France - be the next one in which Chinese thugs commit Gestapo/KGB style “disappearances” like the one depicted in this classic Russian movie clip ?

Udpate:   Fight back at Beijing’s bullies.   A good place to start is at this link.

 

Amnesty International ad on “Torch-ure”

Thanks to Tom Legg for finding this.  We are unable to embed the cartoon.  But you can visit Tom’s blog and watch it there.   And please spread it around.

More from Amnesty’s own site, about the inspiration behind the cartoon:

Amnesty is campaigning for Ye Guozhu, imprisoned and reportedly tortured with electro-shock batons after he protested at forced evictions in Beijing. Ye Guozhu’s home and family restaurant had been bulldozed to make way for Olympics construction.

 Will “China Law Blog” link to this video?   I mean it does raise concerns about “China Law”, doesn’t it?

 

“China Law Blog” deletes an operative phrase

 

The American “lawyers” who call themselves “China Law Blog” - implying that their law firm of Harris and Moure are experts in “China Law” (a term which remains oxymoronic) - recently published a misleading post about a warning the US State Department has recenty posted to warn all Americans in China:

Any large-scale public event such as the upcoming Olympic Games may present an attractive target for terrorists. There is a heightened risk that extremist groups will conduct terrorist acts within China in the near future. In light of these security concerns, U.S. citizens traveling in China are advised to use caution and to be alert to their surroundings at all times, including at hotels, in restaurants, on public transportation and where there are demonstrations and other large-scale public gatherings. Consistent with our standard advice, American citizens are urged to avoid the areas of demonstrations.

…ah, BUT, if you read “China Law Blog”, then you will NOT see the FIRST SENTENCE which relates the US State Deparments concerns to the Olympics: “Any large-scale public event such as the upcoming Olympic Games may present an attractive target for terrorists.”

China Law Stooges, part one

From Human Rights Watch, via China Digital Times:

One fine fall afternoon last year, Li Heping was making his way towards a newspaper kiosk not far from his office when a man approached, grabbed him by the arm and said sternly, “Come with me.”

“I said, `I don’t even know who you are’,” Li recalls. “But he said, `If your name is Li Heping, you’d better come with me.’”

In a matter of seconds, Li had a cloth sack pulled over his head, he was wrestled into a car and driven to the outskirts of town where he was brought down into a basement and beaten.

Li is a lawyer – a partner in the respected Beijing Globe Law Firm.

He’s among a select group of lawyers in China who dare to take on politically sensitive cases.

Dramatis Personae in the following clip of the inner workings of China’s legal system:

Curly (in derby hat) =  “China Law Blog” (CLB).    Don’t expect his blog to link to this Human Rights Watch report anytime soon, at least not with the slightest hint of approbation for the good work of Human Rights Watch.

Beijing’s neo-pagans, please learn your Runelore

Further evidence that the developed world, including Beijing, is on the threshold of a New Dark Age. From (Australian) ABC:

Anger in South Korea is growing over violence during Sunday’s torch relay, recorded on widely circulated video clips, in which Chinese students attacked Koreans staging protests against Beijing’s rights record.

“Some Chinese students came out to safeguard the dignity of the torch. I believe that’s natural,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said when asked to comment on the clashes.

The “dignity of the torch”? And they’ve also been calling it the “Sacred Torch”. So now the Communist Party has begun to worship fetishes and idols.

Here at the Jacaranda Tree we have posted several pieces regarding the neo-pagan Nazi origins of the Olympic Torch, and our friend MAJ has contributed several passages of ample and incisive commentary on the torch and the Olympics as “hyper-real” (or as I say, “hypo-real”) fetishes of vulgar commercialization – which is really another kind of paganism. Jesus was killed because he scourged the moneychangers in the Temple. Yet even the radical materialist, Marx, despised the fetishisation of material objects; how much more would he be outraged by China’s current fetishisation of Lenovo and Coca Cola?

Inside the mind of the man who planned the torch route

Exclusive from Under the Jacaranda Tree, here is a look inside the mind of the defective individual who came up with the idea of taking the Olympic Torch to Mount Everest.

He likes fire, that much we can tell you.

Lenovo exploits a racist smear. Whose yak is gored?

Does anyone out there remember the infamous Willie Horton tv ad of George Bush’s 1988 Presidential campaign?    Here it is again, to refresh your memory.    It’s only 28 seconds.

Now you might recall that rightly or wrongly, the American Left widely perceived the Willie Horton ad to have been a racist smear upon Black Americans, because Willie Horton was, after all, Black.

So now I wonder where are all those same self-described “liberal”, “multicultural”, “anti-racist” American voices now that the propaganda campaign surrounding Olympic Torch-bearer Jin Jing has relied just as cynically upon racial stereotyping as did the Bush campaign’s Willie Horton ad.    Or has anyone even noticed?   The grimacing face of her putative Tibetan “attacker” - whose name and nationality conveniently remain unidentified - has been published all over China, playing upon Han Chinese racial fears of Tibetans.

Serving China’s PR organs = loss of US citizenship, part two

Just in case this needs an illustration,

Dramatis Personae:

Ren (the penetrator)  = the PLA

Stimpy (the penetrated) = American PR whores in Beijing

Serving China’s PR organs = loss of US citizenship, part one

American PR whores serving China’s propaganda machine, beware.

US Code Title 8, Chapter 12….section 1481:

A person who is a national of the United States…shall lose his nationality by…entering, or serving in, the armed forces of a foreign state if…such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States

China is an ally of North Korea.   To this day, the armed forces of North Korea are still engaged in hostilities against the United States.   (The cease-fire in 1953 did not end the Korean War; it merely suspended the fighting indefinitely.)    In this light, the armed forces of China are engaged in hostilities against the United States.   (And they are so engaged, de facto, in any case.)

China’s PR organs, most especially those who have organised the Torch Relay, directly serve the interests of the PLA.    The Torch Relay is an instrument of PLA intervention in other countries, most especially Nepal.

In light of the above, it seems reasonable to argue that for a US citizen to contract with a Chinese corporation to serve the Olympic Torch’s PR campaign, is a de facto act of service for the armed forces of China, resulting in loss of US citizenship. 

Unintended Consequences 102

Now as a supplement to Catherine’s post about unintended consequences, here is an illustration.