News of the Day (February 9)

From the China Freedom Blog Alliance: Between Heaven and Earth rips the British Columbia Institute of Technology for doing Communist China's bidding and keeping the Epoch Times away from Education Minister Chen Zhili, one of the leading persecutors of Falun Gong (fifteenth and eleventh items). One Free Korea notes the latest on the U.S.-South Korea free trade talks, and searches for the proper reaction to the possibility of an armed uprising in northern Korea (lead and second items).

Epoch Times staffer assaulted in the United States: Yuan Li, the technical officer for the Epoch Times (which, full disclosure, runs a number of yours truly's blogs as columns), was beaten savagely by thugs who held him at gunpoint and left every valuable in his apartment behind - except his two laptops.

Yahoo helps Communist China find another cyberdissident: Reporters Without Borders has found that Yahoo - the accomplices in the jailing of Shi Tao (fourteenth, fifth, lead, third, eighth, seventh, third, fifth, eighth, last, third, fourth, and fourth items) - also helped the cadres find and nab internet writer Li Zhi (BBC). Yahoo's behavior is all-too-typical of American technology companies, as Ethan Gutmann explained in his Enlightened Comment of the Day interview with Jamie Glazov of Front Page Magazine.

Reporters Without Borders (via Boxun) want Wu Xianghu's killers brought to trial: The media activist group wants justice for the late Taizhou Evening News deputy editor (third item).

Gao hunger-strike group expands: As the hunger strikes (ninth and sixth items) sponsored by 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, and seventh items) enter their third day (Epoch Times), support for them has spread outside of to Hong Kong (Epoch Times) and around the world. In fact, a District of Columbia/suburban area hunger strike team announcement is coming on this site later today or early tomorrow.

Communists admit to $6 billion in ill-gotten gains in regime-run enterprises: An audit of "32 top central government organs, including ministries, committees, and offices" (Trend via Epoch Times) found "50 billion yuan (approximately US$6.17 billion) of related illicit financial operations in 2004." Among the agencies corrupted were the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, and (oh, the irony) National Department of Reform Commission.

Canada file - Tibetan resources plundered: Continental Minerals Corporation put out a press release highlighting the "positive results of an initial mineral resource estimate for the recently discovered Xietongmen copper-gold deposit, located 240 kilometers from the city of Lhasa in Tibet" (Advice for Investors). Odds are neither CMC, owned by the Canadian resource firm Hunter Dickinson, nor its Communist partner, Great China Mining, thought to run this by Tibet's government-in-exile.

On the satellite states (besides the OFK info above): Stalinist North Korea wants 450,000 tons of fertilizer from the dovish South Korean government (United Press International via Washington Times). There has been no reaction yet from the Roh Administration; it's too busy running interference for the Stalinists by shutting down an anti-Stalinist musical (Daily NK). Meanwhile, the Cato Institute's Ted Galen Carpenter writes on Iran in Fox News, and by ignoring completely Communist China's role in the mullahcracy and its nuclear ambitions, he runs away with the dubios Ignorant Comment of the Day award.

Is Benedict XVI trying to make me a Protestant? OK, yours truly is still a badly lapsed Catholic, and as Melinda Liu and Duncan Hewitt (Newsweek International via MSNBC) have noted, the Holy Father has not yet to abandoned Taiwan - although it's something "Vatican representatives have said they're willing to do 'immediately.'" However, upon reading this piece on how the Vatican and Zhongnanhai have conducted their own version of reunification in Shanghai, I can't help thinking he has, in effect, taken Shanghai's "underground" Church - loyal to Rome for decades despite horrifying persecution - and thrown it under the bus.