News of the Day (January 3)

The Canada file - Communists smearing Falun Gong practitioners: Friendly Blog Between Heaven and Earth reveals the latest Communist plot against practitioners abroad: "it appears like the CCP is posing as Falun Gong practitioners . . . (and) says crazy stuff . . . in an attempt to portray Falun Gong as insane people." The calls have hit practitioners in Ontario and Prince Edward Island so far.

Russia delivers naval vessels to Communist China: Communist China's largest arms supplier - Putinist Russia - delivered "a brand new Kilo diesel-electric submarine and a Sovremenny missile destroyer to the Chinese navy during December 2005" (Newsmax). The latter includes SS-N-22 "Sunburn" missiles (thirteenth item). The Newsmax link also contains more info on the Japanese diplomat who committed suicide rather than spy for Communist China (see also eighth item).

Top academic cadre stole ideas from jailed dissident: Wuhan University Professor Zhou Ye Zhong is believed to be the father of Hu Jintao's "harmonious society" pablum. However, the real author of the term - jailed dissident Wang Tiancheng - has come forward denouncing Zhou for "word for word" (Guardian, UK) plagiarism. Of course, given that Zhou is a Communist, he has been using the words of Wang, but not for Wang's goals of freedom for the Chinese people. Wang himself described Zhou thusly: "He's risen to the top by repackaging fashionable terms - human rights, democracy, rule of law - for the party's ends. But he reflects the emptiness of the party's ideology. They've got nothing and so he needs to raid the opposition camp for any new ideas." To get an idea of how Hu Jintao et al have been trying to mouth the words of dissidents and liberals without actually following through on them, read Willy Lam's recent column in China Brief.

Communist China claims economic growth of almost 10% for 2005: The cadres are now claiming the Communist economy "grew an estimated 9.8% in 2005, much faster than expected" (BBC). How much of that figure comes from inflated statistics or useless industrial construction was, naturally, not revealed (fifteenth, twenty-ninth, thirtieth, tenth, sixth, last, last, and seventh items).

Communists looking to boost power production to stop shortages: Communist China "projects it will reduce power shortages this year" (United Press International via Washington Times) to at worst "less than 9 million kilowatts." Communist China's power shortage in the eastern provinces alone neared 17 million kilowatts last winter (next to last item).

On Communist China and the rest of the world: Yitzhak Shichor, Professor of East Asian Studies and Political Science at the University of Haifa, examines Communist China's attempt to reach out to Iraq's Kurds, in part to use as leverage against Turkey to force the latter to crackdown on East Turkestani groups, and how, if the Communists aren't careful, it could come back to haunt them, in China Brief. Also in China Brief, William R. Hawkins, U.S. Business and Industry Council, details how the current World Trade Organization talks have been good for the Communists.

On Stalinist North Korea: Oddly enough, it is the Communists' would-be colony that inspires today's Ignorant Comment of the Day, in this case from Marc S. Ellenbogen, who touts his Global Panel Foundation plan for talking with the Stalinists as "bold in its simplicity" (UPI via Washington Times); "breathtaking in its naivete" would be more apt. Meanwhile, China Freedom Blog Alliance Member One Free Korea finds and brilliantly dissects similar nonsense coming from Philip Dorsey Iglauer. Austin Ramzy, Time Asia, reviews Ryu Yohan's The Guest, and finds that the all-of-Korea's-problems-are-the-foreigners'-fault message falls flat. As for the Stalinists themselves, they demanded, again, that the U.S. end its penalties against their counterfeiting (last item) before they return to the nuclear talks debacle (Washington Times).