"When they suddenly seem short-staffed, absent or disorganized, their subjects can become dangerously emboldened."

China, Burma, the US?

Thank you Gaia. 8)

Pieces of 8.

Don't forget Hurricane Katrina and the damage it did to the Bush Administration. It showed the true colors of the Bush Administration as they tried to limit government assistance while relying on the cronies they had put into positions of power.

from the article:

"nothing terrifies a repressive regime quite like a natural disaster. Authoritarian states rule by fear and by projecting an aura of total control. When they suddenly seem short-staffed, absent or disorganized, their subjects can become dangerously emboldened."

so far, it seems only kanye west was emboldened by the cheney junta's (lack of) response to katrina, and look at the (non) result.

As much as I like Naomi Klein's writings- this seems like a cheap shot at the Burmese and chinese regimes. Which government doesn't wory about public perception when a disaster hits? And speaking of genocide/land grabs etc- how much of the black populace has returned to New Orleans after the flood? How much of the public housing have been permanently demolished and gentrified?

Cheap shot? Please!

Klein has writen and spoken about New orleans and Katrina. The Burmese junta's actions prior to this cyclone are notorious; China's official corruption is too.

This is an article about the effects of criminal wrongdoing on the part of Burmese and Chinese officials. Combined their misdeeds have lead to the deaths of tens of thousands and misery of many times more.

I've read reports that it was foreign reports that alerted the Burmese people of the impending cyclone. The regime's obstruction of relief offers and efforts, ripoffs of aid by low and high level officials will likely double or triple the number killed.

Substandared construction due to corruption in China has entombed perhaps thousands.

As a former emergency worker, I know the difference between having resources and contributing to the death and misery. As a friend who was in Thailand when the tsunami hit the Indian Ocean region reported, despite insufficient resources and internal political issues, their response was much better than the Indonesian.

Bush, Brownie and the lowlifes in the US regime are responsible for their criminal actions and inactions. So are the Burmese and Chinese governments.

Is this a good time to bring up the fact that 90% of the new millionaires in China are children of party officials?

The first thig I thought of, after hoping there would be a lot of survivors found, was I wondered how close to the center of the quake in China may have been to any nuclear power plants or nucler waste storage dumps.

"Humanitarian intervention"? Please, Naomi, you are smarter than that. You want a sprawling US military base in Burma? Right on the Chinese border? Let China and Burma handle their disasters, natural and political, in their own way.

KEM PATRICK

no use worrying about nuclear plants etc. they're gonna get us in the end any way............

bah bah black sheep have you any wool?
no sir, thanks to chernobyl

"A mother in Dujiangyan told the Guardian, "Chinese officials are too corrupt and bad…. They have money for prostitutes and second wives but they don't have money for our children.""

And who says we have nothing in common with the Chinese?

The fascist and/or militaristic society is the acme of MARS RULES. Mars, associated with Aries, the first zodiac sign and utterly masculine, is followed by Taurus, the first feminine sign where Mars' cosmic consort and intended counter-balance rules. Taurus is an earth sign and related to nature and all forms of natural abundance. Gaia might be considered another name for Taurus-Demeter in myth. In Botticelli's huge painting of VENUS and MARS the great female Goddess of all things natural looms over Mars rendered like a small Cupid next to her.

I often joke with my women friends that many men would rather go to war then sit with women and learn about their feelings.

It is true that MARS and the regimes of warriors and their nation-states have much to fear in VENUS for her powers over the great movements of land, wind, and water are awesome and can stop an army in its tracks, or make its claims for security the grotesque mockery that they are!

As has been demonstrated repeatedly in the USA, even access to information does not guarantee that there will be an appropriate response to an event. As a case in point, I offer all of the in-depth information available on the September 11, 2001 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. Without having to censor anything on the Internet or elsewhere, the majority of Americans still believe the officially-sanctioned conspiracy theory (much as many still believe that Saddam was behind the 9/11 attacks). This is true despite the many lines of evidence gathered by researchers such as David Ray Griffin that show the official 9/11 narrative to be ludicrous.

When people are programmed to believe, it seems that all the facts and evidence in the world cannot persuade them to change their minds. If this keeps up, all of humanity may soon qualify for a collective Darwin Award. Death by Terminal Stupidity.

While we are bashing China and thousands are dying, let us remember the miracle modern technological giant with the earthquake-resistant building: Japan. Did anyone--Naomi was old enough then--go into the corruption in the Japanese system? Did anyone question the fact that those in power now are the same who were in power before and during WWII? No. People there were worried about--of all the galling things!--people.

The Chinese, though, are not people, right?

With a little historical and cultural sense--all almost totally missing in the hubris-branded US of A--Naomi Klein might have been able to piece together a constant in Chinese history extending for more than 2000 yrs into the past. If she had read Dream of Red Mansions or Outlaws of the Marsh, she might have gained some insight. The non-fiction publication of The Dragon Syndicates might have helped, too...but it would have struck too near home.

To maintain there is a similarity between a natural disaster destroying homes/businesses in the big, industrial, modern city and the poor farming communities up in the mountains is ludicrous...and really of the most absurd intelligence.

There is little difference between New Orleans/Burma and Sichuan, China. To wit:- the Chinese are taking care of their own.

Most inhabitants of the US and the Western countries are afflicted by nefarious delusions about the nature of their societies and government policy. The public at large is led to believe that their societies are superior, and their governments' policies are noble and generous. Wars were sold on the basis that they were driven by benevolent intent. Since the 1990s, in the lead-up to the wars against former Yugoslavia and Iraq, the primary justification offered to wage war was that it was necessary to safeguard human rights or to improve the humanitarian conditions of the target population. Some humanitarian disasters haven't elicited the same reaction. For human rights crusaders some cases deserve the intervention imperative, yet others are neglected. While they demand intervention in Myanmar, Darfur…, they are mysteriously silent about Congo, Palestine, Somalia…. There was a delayed response from the US to Tsunami. There was little or no response to the cries and sufferings of Katrina victims. The US has rejected outside aid and the aid that arrived was not used. At least Myanmar is receiving aid from countries like Russia, China and India, and rejecting the US and the West's "aid with strings attached" Therefore, the way the US and the West are trying to force their way into Myanmar in the disguise of "humanitarian aid" shows their malicious intent. The appalling conditions of Iraqis under the occupation of the US itself show the "benevolent"(?) intent of the US.

It is appalling to call Myanmar and China as "the most repressive regimes on the planet", while HAPPILY ignoring their own repressive regimes. The difference between countries like Myanmar and China, and the US and the Western countries is the scope of the repression. Whereas in the former countries repression is limited to their own boarders, whereas in the case of the latter, repression is found not only inside their boarders, but also promoted in other countries.

What is the difference between a totalitarian state which controls all the means of production and one where the owners of the means of production control the state? A different brand of totalitarianism but the contempt for the people could not be more deadly. In order to make the control possible, the people have to be drugged, muzzled and rendered powerless. Also, the means of running the show have to be deprived of all transparency. Propaganda, biased or filtered media news coverage, violent punishment of 'disobedient' individuals, all clouded in a web of secrecy.
During the 1960s and 1970s the CIA--in violation of its charter, which limits the agency to acting overseas--cooperated with local police departments across the country to compile a list of 300,000 Americans and organizations suspected of opposing the Vietnam War.
On April 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive No. 52. Reagan targeted 400,000 people for arrest and confinement at concentration camps in mothballed Army bases. The National Security Council's "secret government within a government," as Congressional investigators later described it, planned to cancel the 1984 presidential election so Reagan could remain in office indefinitely.
"Lt. Col. Oliver North, for example, helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad," The Miami Herald reported on July 5, 1987.
In 2006 Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which overturns the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibited the use of combat troops on the soil of the United States. For the first time in 128 years, the president can declare martial law in case of a hurricane, riot or terrorist attack. In May 2007 Bush attached a National Security Presidential and Homeland Directive to the National Defense Authorization Act. In case of a "national emergency"--the president could declare it without consulting anyone--he could suspend the Constitution and appoint an unelected provisional government under a "national continuity coordinator," thereby legalizing a dictatorship in the event of a national emergency.
Bush's Draconian measures range from the suspension of habeas corpus to warrantless eavesdropping to the right of the president to decide what constitutes torture, to prisons where hundreds face indefinite detention without any charges being brought against them, to other even more secret CIA facilities filled with "ghost prisoners" for whom the CIA has never accounted; and, of course, "extraordinary rendition", where detainees are packed off to face torture at the hands of America's less savory allies.. At the same time, American courts are being closed to legal challenges to these outrageous actions.

The killing of Sean Bell in New York with 50 gunshots that the police admitted were shot that day, highlights the police killing spree of African Americans.

The state and the federal response to the cries of the hungry, thirsty and dying at the time of Hurricane Katrina proves the assessment of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) that the US is a two-tier society. When Hurricane Katrina struck, over 6000 human beings were locked up in Orleans Parish Prison. It was announced by the officials that prisoners would not be evacuated. It was a disaster that went unrecognized because few people thought that prisoners deserved to be treated as human beings and as having human rights. And so prisoners were locked in their cells and the flood waters were rising and there was no way to get them out. There was no clean water, they were forced to drink water with feces floating around in it. According to Los Angeles Times report, "Authorities in St. Bernard Parish, to the east, stacked cars to seal roads from the Crescent City." Not only were relief supplies and rescuers kept out of the city, but many who could have rescued themselves or reached outside rescue efforts were forcibly kept in. The Mississippi-straddling Crescent City Connection Bridge was closed to pedestrians by law enforcement from Gretna, the mostly white community across the river. They fired their guns over the heads of women and children seeking to flee the dire conditions of the Superdome and Convention Center, as well as the heat and thirst of the devastated city, driving back thousands attempting to escape their captivity in squalor.

More than a million people were uprooted from their communities after the storm, and over 300,000 from New Orleans alone were still displaced over one year after the levees broke. The storm's survivors were barred by federal, state and local authorities to return to their neighborhoods to participate in the rebuilding process.
"There are instances of officials at all levels of government siding against repairing homes and restoring the lives of displaced people," said Stephen Bradberry, ACORN head organizer in New Orleans. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the internationally approved framework to protect human rights before, during and after being displaced by a humanitarian disaster, include the right to shelter, food, water, due process and equal justice, as well as the right to health, access to information and the right to vote and participate in local decisions about rebuilding. Under the Principles, the final responsibility for the human rights of displaced people in the United States falls to the federal government. It is required to create conditions allowing the displaced to voluntarily return and prevent them from being displaced longer than necessary. Bush administration officials over the summer told the U.N. Human Rights Committee that they do not believe Americans displaced by Katrina, who they evasively re-brand as "evacuees," deserve the rights extended under the Principles. While the United States can be proud of its international leadership improving human rights situations after disasters abroad, it has not helped Americans realize those same human rights standards. Legal scholars with the Institute of Southern Studies have found the federal government in violation of 16 of 30 principles.

Few people realize the federal role in stopping the displaced from receiving the aid necessary to pull their lives back together to return and rebuild. FEMA arbitrarily denied thousands of vulnerable displaced families access to housing aid—until a federal judge ruled against the agency last week, describing FEMA's system for delivering aid as "Kafkaesque." Still, FEMA has refused the judges orders to begin payment. Thousands of families have been permanently evicted from New Orleans public housing by the city's U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development administrator, HANO. The agency plans to use relief funds to bulldoze 5,000 habitable apartments—the majority of the city's subsidized housing—senselessly denying their former tenants their right to return home. Instead, they plan to start building mixed income housing, with room for only 10 percent as many low-income people—further shrinking the city's stock of affordable housing at the same time as rental prices have already risen as much as 70 percent.
Malik Rahim told Greg Palast: "They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain't had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that's just the bottom line."

In this year the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) based in Geneva, Switzerland, after considering the U.S. government's written and oral testimony, said it has found "stark racial disparities" in the U.S. institutions, and called for the George W. Bush administration to take effective actions to end racist practices against minorities in the areas of criminal justice, housing, healthcare and education.

Hi shikejian,

Good post. I'm disturbed by Naomi Klein's focus on China right now. The timing of it, particularly. I'm sure she doesn't intend it, but it feeds into the anti-Chinese bashing that's going on ahead of the Olympics. (Her article yesterday in Common Dreams was so much better - it showed American corporate complicity in developing China's massive surveillance system.)

sigh. Look, I hate capitalism; I loathe it. I'm working in China right now, and I'm disturbed by China's fast "development." Disturbed, because they seem to be following the American model. Sky-scrapers are replacing traditional villages and architecture. It didn't have to be this way.

BUT. The friends I've made here have told me about the poverty and hardships they and everyone endured as children. There's no denying it, the quality of life has increased in many important ways for millions and millions of people here. I know a teacher who told me she was in and out of hospitals when she was a child, because she simply didn't have enough food to eat and there was no medication available for illnesses. It's still a life-and-death struggle here for so many, especially the workers. People still save like crazy, because when they retire or are ill, they are on their own.

There are still not many social safety nets. But this kind of thing cannot happen over night, not when you consider how fast China's economy has grown and how recent is its economic successes.

There are great contradictions in China, as in a great many countries. There is a great difference between Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Sichuan province. The difference is this: the human disaster in New Orleans was entirely preventable, but the US government did nothing, despite warnings from the scientific data that a hurricane would be catastrophic. In Sichuan province, however, poverty is still bad there; China cannot do everything at once. Surely this catastrophe will ensure that earthquakes are taken into account when new buildings are constructed in the region from now on.

As an admitted "Conspiracy Theorist", take what follows with a grain of salt. Those who still think Osamas role in 9/11 was anything more than a figurehead to justify the Crusades against Islam and to enable the global police state to be built under the guise of the GWOT, just skip this and go back to sleep.

Over the last 6-9 months, we have seen Burma(Myanamar) and Tibet in the news, as well as China for unsafe consumer products, and China gets blamed for what goes on in Tibet, and their support for Burma, not to mention countries like Zimbabwe and Sudan. China, for whatever reason, is now a "public' target of the elite. Not sure China is playing along with it, and is now a part of the Conspiracy, or not. China had one of the coldest winters on record this year. Another coincidence maybe.

But Burma and Tibet have long been great prizes of our Anglo-American elite masters. Burma for it's strategic location and rich resources. Tibet for it's water, which supplies much of Asias above ground water. We would love to create conditions for regime change in Burma, as well as Tibet. Destabilizing China might be useful for the coming war on Iran and then Russia. But who knows, it's clear we have an operation or interest in creating some unrest in the region, and I have read where the global elite would like to split China in half separate the Muslim Western provinces, and create a buffer between China and Russia, which might be useful in the next World war against Russia and China, should China wish to take sides with Russia.

Natural disasters as we all know can cause large amounts of damage, and can result in weakening of governments. It is just as effective in destabilizing a regime as a 3 day bombing campaign. It is an effective tool to punish those for not going along with globalization, and to threaten those to do what they are told. For example, the elite are furious with Switzerland for their Iranian gas deal, and now Osama is said to have his eyes on Switzerland and the coming Europe Games. Geophysical terrorism is just as effective.

In the 2004 Tsunamis, Sri Lanka and Indonesia used it to go on the offensive against resistance movements, and the large amounts of foreign aid helped prevent any destabilizing influences in these countries. Burma incidentally should have been one of the most worst affected regions, just look at the map. Yet at the time they claimed only 90 deaths, while a cyclone that hit over the same area is supposed to have claimed over 50,000. At the time, the UN and state department said they could not verify Burmas low casualties, since it was a closed country (duh, what about our satellites), and seemed rather unconcerned. Yet today, we seem to know an awful lot about what is going on and have so much concern. And coming as it did 1 week before "elections" the military junta was holding makes you wonder, why does a military junta even needs elections to change the constitution.

Many in the region were convinced that the earthquake and tsunamis in 2004 were initiated by the US, believing us to have the ability to create earthquakes.

If you are not familiar with the DARPA funded HAARP, read this.

http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Articles/Earthquakes_Natural_or_Man_Made.html

"If HAARP is a TMT [Tesla Magnifying Transmitter], and these researchers correctly understand Tesla's work, we could be in a lot of trouble...... It is quite possible that the scientists working on HAARP do not know what they are playing with… Beyond that their ignorance might be compounded if HAARP is indeed a secretive black-ops military project. The military has devised a way of keeping secrets called 'compartmentalisation' where each unit knows only what it needs to know… Only the control group knows what's going on… If there is a control group familiar with TMTs directing the actions of scientists unschooled in Tesla technology, those lower level operatives could be directed to wreak havoc with created weather or manufactured earthquakes….

Consider also the Airforce publication "2025, Owning the Weather", published in 1996, from which comes:

"Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally... It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog, and storms on earth or to modify space weather, ... and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of technologies which can provide substantial increase in US, or degraded capability in an adversary, to achieve global awareness, reach, and power. (US Air Force, emphasis added. Air University of the US Air Force, AF 2025 Final Report, http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/ emphasis added)"

The document, titled "Owning the Weather" was removed from the DOD web site shortly before Katrina in 2005, making you wonder if we had something to do with that.

So it is likely we may indeed have the means at our disposal to create "natural" disasters like earthquakes and tropical storms.

This does not prove we used them of course, or that we have them, but it's worth watching. A lot of strange geophysical events since the HAARP project began in the 90's. The religous nuts take it as a sign of the End Times. Maybe it is, but the End Times, if it comes, will be a man made event, part of the conspiracy, to fool the religous into helping along their demise.

Perhaps Burma, but when I am making a list of the most repressive regimes on the planet, and even if we just count current ones, my list would include some others, included a number of so-called allies of the US. And repression might just mean what criteria you use and which people you ask. Not that China qualifies as a model of freedom and democracy, but I am currently living in and posting from an SAR, so at least some parts of China are surprisingly open, still... and that is a remarkable contradiction and experience for any country and leadership.

Here are a few of the US allies that would make my list ahead of China. Certainly Egypt would be there, as would Saudi Arabia, and those central Asian "republics" hosting US bases Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. If you were to ask the Palestinians, you would have to put Israel on the list. I have chosen to live in China (sort of) and I wouldn't choose to live in any of the ones I listed above. What about you?

Why is it that when the buildings come falling down way too fast in China, the immediate reaction is "corruption in the construction" and quite likely too. But when the twin towers came falling down too fast, why am I the only one who thinks "corruption in the construction?" To me a much more likely scenario and conspiracy. Are we just so incapable of seeing ourselves, our nation, as being so corrupt on such a petty level that we can't even post such a question? And grand conspiracies become more palatable? (Not to say you couldn't have both.)

China is seen as the emerging superpower, but I don't see it. Sure, they've had great economic growth, but it's built on a shoddy foundation of political repression, rampant corruption and environmental degradation. India is a few steps behind right now, but my money's on the world's largest democracy.

AlexLawyer: Go to India and go to China, and then get back to us on that. India has so far to go, it's not even close.

The "Shock" of the earthquake in China or the "Shock" of the cyclone in Myanmar opens a very fertile field in both nations for further consolidation of the "Disaster Capitalists" in both of those places - - just watch how quickly the disciples of the University of Chicago's graduate School of Economics jump into the fray and work with those Far Eastern Neo-Cons and their distorted brand of economics a la the late Milton Friedman and all of his associates. Based on her research to write "Shock Doctrine", Naomi is in a wonderful position to almost give you a blow-by-blow description of what will happen in those regimes and to their populace over the next 5 - 10 years.

What is the source of this recurrent problem of elite classes who grab and horde the resources? Surely we humans have among us characters with the excessive tendency to do so, but what is it about our civilization that allows them to succeed, that fails to curb them? I submit that it is the dynamic of our growing numbers, whereby we become increasingly unable to organize ourselves as a community or movement. We forfeit cohesiveness. We could restore cohesiveness by stabilizing our numbers.

MIMI

i've been harping on (excuse the pun) about this since 2003. i even wrote to the editor of commondreams. not enough attention is being paid to this little 'experiment'. but here's another link:
www.haarp.net
and the official one:
www.haarp.alaska.edu

BTW, FYI, the official site contains a cautionary statement, that tells us the site is being monitored................

While I usually agree with most of Naomi's writings these last two pieces about China strike me as rather roughshod reports on a country and culture that she clearly has no more than a cursory understanding of. While it is true that China has, to say the least, problems with official corruption (corruption is probably not the right term to apply o the Chinese practice of greasing the wheels..), but we, especially as Westerners (and progressives no less) need to keep in mind the perils of blindly criticizing the PRC. For instance, to title this article "Regime quakes" seems to suggest that the recent Sichuan disaster will unsettle the PRC. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. This disaster will only put the party in higher esteem in the Chinese mind. The rapidity and scale of the official response to this disaster is beyond the wildest imagination of any western government. Just take a look at Katrina and now at Wenchuan, Sichuan. And all political posturing and arguments seem to be unneccesary. The numbers of lives saved should speak volumes, and Wen Jiabao (the vice premier) arriving on scence only a day after the quake (while aftershocks still tremored)...where was Cheney on that fateful day in New Orleans? Let us not fall into the easy trap of China bashing when the plank in our own eye could provide enough timber to the factories in southern china that turn out the cheap furniture us Westerners buy at Walmart...

The vast interstellar distances aside, one possible reason we haven't heard from any other "intelligent" alien species just might be that the very process of evolution results in species remarkably similar to our own in attitude and mien. And looking at how we're hell-bent on destruction of our sole means of survival, our precious and rare earth...it's just possible that all evolved species eventually just kill themselves off with greed and stupidity. I wonder how long it will take us to do it?

I'm worried about the jailed monks in Burma. I have this nightmare-vision of them drowning in dungeons while the guards did nothing except maybe laugh. I hope not, they are the best counterbalance to the police-state there, and the best hope for fomenting radical change.
I wonder if the Chinese government is naming itself, "Compassionate Conservative Communists", or something.

What a jerk article!
Stopping politicsing everything, as far as I saw, the Chinese government is a responsible government
in the Sichuan earthquake.

I totally agree with what jude111's post wrote.
Klein should live in China for at least 1 year and talk here.
She is obviously superficial and full of prejudice.

The China government is not a perfect government, however, historically, it might be the best
government the Chinese people ever have.
I ask everyone reading this article to think about the democratic situation of US and other developed countries in the same society developing stage as the current China.

Where China is concerned Naomi's intelligence obviously took a vacation. Or perhaps she was too intent on trying to 'squeeze' events about China to fit her preconceived theories.

"When they suddenly seem short-staffed, absent or disorganized, their subjects can become dangerously emboldened."

Really? How does this apply to China? The response of the government was prompt and excellent re the latest earthquake. Too bad they weren't running the U.S. when Katrina struck New Orleans.

As for the subjects becoming emboldened, well, yes and no. Emboldened yes, but no, not against the government. If anything the Chinese are more emboldened toward making a stronger China.

Great accomplishments as well as natural disasters do have a tendency of bringing a people together. And that has happened in China. Witness what happened with the free tibet foorahrah, the recent period of mourning that involv4ed the entire country, the ice storm of early this year and the latest earthquake.

Never before have the people in China been so united in recent memory in their support of their government and country. Having lived and taught there for two years I experienced a disturbing trend of 'selfishness' as everyone adopted the capitalist way of 'money first'. That has now subsided and replaced by a more welcoming concern for one another.

Naomi, sweetherat, you really need to brush up on your research before applying your pet theories to a country and culture you obviously do not understand.

The events described above has made 2008 the year that the Chinese all over the world have become united. And then, of course, there's still the forthcoming Olympics to bolster that. Unless, of course, you choose to join the gang who want to blame China for every bad thing in the world and call for an Olympic boycott...

Do that and watch the Chinese become even more united...and disprove your pet theory...at which point you will probably describe them as being 'brainwashed'...

While I, too, abhor tyrannical regimes they are not the only ones with problems that need to be addressed. Ms Klein you speak of the criminal landgrabs and de facto ethnic cleansing in the wake of natural disasters in southern asia. Have you written of the criminal landgrabs that have been happening in Palestine since 1948. I appreciate your insights (sometimes)but it seems far to easy to beat up on the military junta in Burma (Myanmar) and the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat in the PRC (China)while ignoring obvious ethnic cleansing by "Democratic" Zionists in Palestine. If they are elected is it okay? Have you voiced any opinions on that issue? Incidentally, I'm not a propagandist, I find the apologists for China in this comment section rather off-putting...we are slowly learning that bureaucratic mismanagement and cosmetic-only improvements to schools in Sichuan was the major factor resulting in so many minors being among the victims of this unfortunate quake.

You Want to Mesh with Uncle Sham?
Anyone in the mood for another conspiracy theory? Would you believe...

http://www.mediamonitors.net/leonard26.html

amerikkan crass
http://www.countercurrents.org/secor220508.htm