News of the Day (February 8)

From the China Freedom Blog Alliance: One Free Korea has moderate praise for comments from South Korea's Ambassador to the U.S. on Stalinist counterfeiting (the moderation due in large part to very different sentiment coming from said Ambassador's bosses - United Press Int'l via Washington Times). OFK is far less happy about the South's treatment of speech.

More on the uprising in Stalinist North Korea: Daily NK has the details, plus a quick analysis of what the local reaction to an anti-Stalinist resistance would be. Kwon Jeong Hyun, also in Daily NK, notes that anti-Stalinist actions go as far back as 2003. Meanwhile, the Stalinists continued to stonewall Japan on the abduction issue (lead, third, and lead items), thus ensuring the failure of SNK-Japan talks (BBC).

Communist China rips Taiwanese President: Chen Shui-bian, the fellow the Taiwanese people elected and re-elected as their President, was dubbed a "troublemaker and saboteur" (BBC) for his affirmation of plans to change the island democracy's outdated constitution, to try to join the United Nations, and to scrap the de facto defunct National Unification Council (sixth item).

Taiwan asks for more U.S. help: Meanwhile, Taiwan "said it needs more US-made Patriot anti-missile systems as Chinese ballistic missiles targeting the island are anticipated to more than double to 1,800 by 2013" (Agence France Presse via Breitbart). Will they get them? World Net Daily's Joseph Farah doesn't think so: "It is increasingly clear that President Bush bought China's 'cooperation' on Iran. What the price tag is, no one is quite sure. But I wouldn't want to be in Taiwan's shoes right now."

Guo Feixiong arrested, beaten, and now missing; Gao Zhisheng starts hunger strike for Guo: Guo Feixiong, best known as the legal advisor for the brave villagers of Taishi, "was secretly arrested by the Chinese Communist regime on Friday night, detained for over ten hours, and beaten," (Epoch Times) according to human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng (sixth, tenth, fifth, lead, third, last, twelfth, eighth, third, second, third, eighth, eleventh, eighth, fourth, fourth, last, fourth, fifth, twelfth, fifth, second, lead, next to last, seventh, ninth, and sixth items). Gao has begun a hunger strike in support of Guo (Epoch Times).

The state of the workers in the workers' state - ecology and health: Elizabeth Economy, author of The River Runs Black, details Communist China's "environmental challenges" to Bloomberg. Xiewang, Radio Free Asia (via Epoch Times) examines the disaster that is Communist China's health care system.

On Communist China and the rest of the world: David Blair, London Telegraph, examines the reasons for the slaughter in Darfur, Sudan, finds Communist China "a key villain in Darfur's tragedy," and wins the Enlightened Comment of the Day. Daniel McKivergan, Worldwide Standard (Weekly Standard blog), can't believe what he hears from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte regarding India and Communist China (seventh item).