News of the Day (November 2)

U.S. companies ripped for making Communist internet crackdown easier: Cisco and Yahoo came uinder withering criticism from a Heritage Foundation panel for their roles in aiding Communist China’s internet crackdown. Among the specifics sited were the Shi Tao outrage (fourteenth, fifth, lead, third, eighth, seventh, third, fifth, and eighth items) and Cisco’s supplying of “several special firewall boxes” (Washington Times) that can “help the Chinese government search for, identify and intercept transmissions from its citizens involved in democracy activism” to the Communists.

Communists want private investment in 863 projects: Communist China is actually looking for “investment in more than 700 projects falling within Program 863” (United Press Int’l via Washington Times). Program 863 includes several military projects in high-technology “post-nuclear” weapons, including nanotechnology. Will Wall Street fall all over itself to finance the building of America’s nooses?

Communists seize U.S. businessman, then take his firm: David Ji “built a billion-dollar business importing dirt-cheap DVD players from a booming China, where he was born, and selling them at Wal-Mart and Circuit City stores in the U.S., his adopted home for two decades” (Forbes). Ji flew to Communist Chia last year to resolve a dispute with his regime-owned supplier Sichuan Changhong Electric. He was promplty detained by the cadres, and was never seen again until he handed over his entire company to SCE – a “senior executive” with the Communist-owned supplier helpfully reminded him: “I decide whether you live or die” just before the deal was done. Ji is still missing, having spent “nearly a year in custody in China without being charged with a crime.”

Ridge in Communist China: Meanwhile, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge met with Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang for talks on what the cadre-controlled news called “China's peaceful development strategy and its scientific concept for development” (UPI via Washington Times).

Venezuela hints it may give F-16s to Communist China: Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chavez, apparently upset that the U.S. “is making it difficult for his country to obtain spare parts” (Washington Post, third item) for his American-made F-16s, is threatening to “share” the planes with Communist China and Fidel Castro.

Exile in Sydney launches anti-Communist tribunal: Professor Yuan Hongbing, a former Communist law professor who defected to Australia, “recently presided over what he and his associates are calling the . . . ‘The Sydney International Criminal Tribunal to bring the CCP’s Crimes Against Humanity’” (Law Society Journal via Epoch Times).

Economist predicts Communist economy will “collapse”: Robert Wescott, former economic advisor to Bill Clinton, told Jornal de Negocios (Portugal) that Communist China “is saving too much and is investing too much in factories which the world does not need” (Agence France Presse via Turkish Press), and is prime for a “collapse.”

Communist China “steps up bird flu fight,” but coverup of girl’s death continues: The cadres continued to talk a good game: “seeking a licence to make the drug Tamiflu” (BBC) and “gearing up its cooperation with the United States to counter bird flu.” However, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Daily News interviewed the father of the twelve-year-old girl the Communists insist “tested negative for bird flu” (Epoch Times). In fact, “his daughter was cremated the same day health officials took her body. When asked if an autopsy was conducted at the hospital before the cremation, He Tieguang said, ‘I don’t think so.’” Meanwhile, the girls younger brother, He Junyao, “is still being quarantined at a children’s hospital . . . He Tieguang questioned why health officials have not released his son when they have clearly ruled out bird flu.” Those who remember the SARS debacle already know the answer to that one.

More appellants take their case to Tiananmen Square: For the second time in a month (fifth item), hundreds of appellants – citizens who come in vain to Beijing for relief in their disputes with local cadres – “dashed toward the central flagpole on Tiananmen Square” (Epoch Times) to protest the Communists’ abysmal treatment of them.

Communists may ditch rural migration rules: Communist China “is considering ending a controversial residency permit system that makes a legal distinction between urban and rural residents” (BBC). In other words, under the plan currently being exmained migrant workers will have “access to services which are an automatic right to native city dwellers.” However, Shanghai and Beijing would be excepted from the plan.

Head of Communist tourism bureau in Taiwan: A delegation from Communist China, lead by the head of the regime’s tourism board, is in Taiwan for a visit that may “lead to the lifting of a ban on Chinese tourists visiting the island” (BBC). This may explain why the normally stout government of President Chen Shui-bian wilted upon reports of anti-Communist demostrators greeting the delegation in Kaohsiung.