Wednesday, March 26, 2008

News of the Day (March 26)

Polish PM to skip Olympic Opening; French President may join him: Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland, announced that he would not attend the opening ceremonies to the Communist Olympiad (Phayul). He may not be alone - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has left the door open to a similar snub due to the continuing bloodshed in Tibet (BBC, Below the Beltway, and Times of London).

Enlightened Comment of the Day: Step forward, editors of the Washington Post, for your terrific column on what the Beijing Olympics has not delivered: "it looks increasingly likely that the Olympics will serve to remind the world not of China's emerging greatness but of its continuing denial of freedom to its citizens, its repression of minorities and its amoral alliances with rogue states" (emphasis added). Honorable mention goes to Guy Walters of the British Daily Mail (courtesy CFBA member Makina of Boycott 2008).

Other Olympics news: Australia insists that the People's Liberation Army will not set foot on Aussie soil, Olympic torch or no Olympic torch (AAP via Epoch Times).

More Tibet news and commentary: Communist China claims that hundreds of Tibetans have given themselves up to police (BBC and the Washington Post). Nepal gets in the repression act (Fox News). A leading cadre calls for more "patriotic education" in Tibet (Washington Post). France's Foreign Minister praises the Dalai Lama (Newsmax) as does Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star.

Whoops! U.S. ships nuclear triggers to Taiwan by mistake: Naturally, Communist China was not happy with this snfau (CNN and Washington Post); then again, as Below the Beltway notes, that alone means this wasn't a complete disaster.

More on Taiwan: William R. Hawkins, of the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, calls for the U.S. to be a better friend and ally to Taiwan in Front Page Magazine.

On the state of the workers in the workers' state: Dangerous coal-mines which had been shut down for safety reasons are up and running again (Radio Free Asia via Epoch Times), while the water situation is so bad the cadres are actually going to the UN for help (Epoch Times).

Winds of change blowing in South Korea? Newly inaugrated President Lee Myung-bak publicly called on the Stalinist North to send home abductees from the South (One Free Korea), and for the first time in years, the democratic South "is set to vote for a draft UN resolution expressing deep concern over the rights violations in the North" (BBC). Even South Korea's Human Rights Commission is promsing to take a serious look at the Stalinist regime's abuses (OFK).

More news on "another Chinese province": The food situation in northern Korea is now so bad that "even in Pyongyang," theere is no food, "except for the city center, where they have been reduced to 40% or less of the normal ration" - according to sources who talked to OFK.

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