Philip Cunningham Returns From Exile! The American Solzhenitsyn Is Allowed Back Into His Country!

This is great news for all Human Rights activists who have been concerned about the fate of Philip Cunningham, an American citizen who was recently in exile from America, according to an article he published in the Bangkok Post on September 3, 2005:

Philip J Cunningham, Chairman of America Watch (a non-existent, non-profit human rights group founded by American citizens in China in exile from the current US regime).

But now he has returned safe and sound to America, where he is a visiting fellow at Cornell University in New York.

Oh, Philip!    How and why did the “current US regime” let you back into the country?  After the Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn was forcibly deported from his country in 1974 and then charged with treason, he was not allowed to return from exile until 20 years later, after the Soviet regime had ended.  But the Bush administration under which Cunningham went into “exile” is still in office.  Philip, what did you do to change the American regime’s mind, to persuade them to let you back into the country?

A Guest Post by Ivan, for Red Army Day

Last night I received another drunken phone call from Ivan.   He has asked me to post this song on 23 February, Russia’s “Defender of the Fatherland Day”, the anniversary of the founding of the Red Army:

And for good measure,

Judas at the Beijing Olympics

Judas Iscariot was an expert in “public relations”.

“And while yet he spake, behold a multitude, and he that was called Judas, one of the twelve, went before them, and drew near unto Jesus to kiss him.   But Jesus said unto him,  Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?”

Gospel of Luke,  22:47-48

And now I wonder, how many Western expats-in-China who have venal business interests in the Beijing 2008 Olympics, are betraying China with a kiss?

 

 

A Light in the Darkness: Charles Fawcett, Exemplar of Moral Courage

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.  Gospel of John, 1:5

Maybe it’s time to demonstrate that Ned Kelly’s Pub is not only concerned with bashing liars, dissemblers and moral cowards (aka, most Western journalists and “public relations” agents.) The reason why Catherine and I fight a kind of “guerilla war” on our blog, against such vermin, is because she and I believe in the reality of Positive Good even more than we believe in the reality of Evil – because Evil’s power is limited only to negating, denying or corrupting Positive Good. (All you fellow Tolkien fans out there, take heed! The Orcs were Elves who became corrupted, and Gollum-Smeagol began his life as a Hobbit who took a wrong turn but kept his Hobbit-nature even including his love of fishing and riddles, and Saruman was a White Wizard who kept his God-given nature even beyond his willful corruption. Evil is real, but its reality is parasitical upon Positive Good.)

Catherine and I love Positive Good more than we hate its corruptions into Evil, and I’m delighted to say I’ve found a beautiful example of Positive Good, which I’d like to share with our audience.

I discovered this news – this obituary of a good and great man – through the blog of Professor Deborah Lipstadt, an American historian who has been doing a Yeoman’s job of refuting the growing “Holocaust-Denial” industry, and of exposing the recrudescence of racism and other kinds of hate-mongering in America and Europe. She writes about her pleasure in blogging about Charles Fernley Fawcett – about whom more, momentarily:

Chinalco’s Dawn Raid on Rio Tinto Shares – More than a Business Deal

Over the next few months, the Australian Financial Investment Review Board (FIRB) will have a tough job deciding whether it is in Australia’s best interest to approve Chinalco’s acquisition of more than 14.9% of Rio Tinto shares.  A crucial task for the Australian regulator is to determine whether or not this share acquisition is a genuine business decision.  So far no one is convinced that this Chinese Aluminium Group is just after some aluminium asset.  There is strong evidence to suggest that the bid is designed to influence the outcome of a possible BHP and Rio Tinto merger.

Yang Ray’s Fair and Balanced Dialogue

YANG RAY: Good ev-uh-ning. Welcome to CCCTV’s (Culled Chinese Communists’ TV) weekly program, “Epilogue”, where the frustrated fag-ends among the elite Communist Party Princelings clip our coupons while we practice our English with our equally frustrated peers among the Anglophone Foreigners whom failed CCP Princelings like me hate all the more because I’d rather be on the fast track to the Politburo, but here I am, stuck doing this ludicrous TV show on CCCTV’s international channel (CCCTV-99), interviewing Foreigners who make more money than I. They have hair on their arms, you know, and that proves that they are less evolved than the children of the Yellow Emperor. And they smell bad. But still I have to interview them on this TV program, and I have to pretend to listen to them, at least in the clips that aren’t censored. But I didn’t have to do this. I could have been a writer, or a film-maker. I ought to be banging Zhang Ziyi on my casting couch right now. (Well, yes, she’s not a great beauty and she has legs like a chicken, but at least she has guanxi, and I have more guanxi than she has, and I wouldn’t mind shagging her for more guanxi “in an all around way” as the CCP say.) But no, no, my father owed a favour to Li Bang-Bang’s father at Big-Da University. So now here I am, marking time in my sinecure, interviewing smelly Foreigners. My only consolation is that they’re all grateful to have an audience with me, just like the smelly Foreigners from (X parts of Asia) in olden days, used to be grateful just to be invited to Beijing. I only wish more White Foreigners would be as grateful as the ones I interview are. Like my guest today, an American “China Hand”, an American journalist-blogger-lawyer, Mr Philip Ricardo Harrison White Monkey! Mr Harrison, welcome to Epilogue!

Orientalism

This is just to prove that Catherine and I are real “China Hands” who have an exquisite and snobbish understanding and appreciation of “Oriental” cultures:

Here you go!