Pillars of salt and pillars of sand

I was driving home from the Hampton Roads area about two weeks ago when a radio station (the name eludes me) managed to play (just once) the title track from Coldplay's Viva la Vida. It was one of the most beautiful and haunting songs I've ever heard. Now that it's in the regular radio repertoire, I'll hear it more often, but one lyric has stayed with me:

And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

That lyric continually ran through my head as I saw the flurry of news from over the weekend on Communist China and its cronies.

Since my last post, we discovered that Communist China is the undisputed leader in greenhouse gas emissions (International Herald Tribune), while the regime is continuing to hide the truth about its role in making the Sichuan quake as deadly as it was (Epoch Times and Washington Times) - and, perhaps, will still be (Human Rights Torch via Boycott 2008). Meanwhile, its Korean colony lost two walking prisoners to escape (Washington Times), and that may be the least of its problems (Washington Times).

By themselves, these events mean little, but knitted together with the rest of the the regime's myriad problems, they reveal a "government" that has yet to resolve the lack of legitimacy that has at least nineteen years with no end in sight - and this is prior to the great Olympic propaganda event that could blow up in the cadres' faces the minute it ends.

Indeed, the entire edifice that is the Chinese Communist Party rests on "pillars of salt and pillars of sand."

Naturally, the cadres who make up the regime have no plans to "sweep the streets (they) used to own" (yes, that's another lyric from the song). Instead, they are doing their best to make sure no one notices the weak foundation, be they in China proper (Epoch Times and Washington Times), occupied East Turkestan (Epoch Times), New York City (Epoch Times, Epoch Times again, and more Epoch Times), or anywhere else (Guardian, UK, via Boycott 2008).

If that were all the cadres were doing to preserve their power, that would be bad enough, but they are also determined to ensure any examples dissidents and others can use against them either knuckle under or are destroyed. Thus their satellites (North Korea and Iran) manage to leap ahead on their nuclear ambitions with the help of longtime Communist ally Pakistan (Washington Post), while the democratic nations of the world lack the courage of their convictions (Japan being the latest example - Washington Times).

The CCP knows it is vulnerable; the free world should recognize it, too. American and her democratic allies will never be secure until China is free - and whenever a cadre says otherwise, it's "never an honest word."