As World marks Tiananmen Protest Anniversary It's Time to Improve Coverage of Human Rights in China

why are we buying anything from this fascist state??//

As World marks Tiananmen Protest Anniversary It's Time to Improve Coverage of Human Rights in China "No Investigation, No Right To Speak"-Chairman MAO by Danny Schechter

Anniversaries are always pretexts for news pegs, and when the 20th year since the Tiananmen protests and massacre in China rolled around, it was not surprising that every media outlet outside of China marked the event with pages of reminiscences and commentary. For the first time in recent memory, Chinese writers took over the New York Times op-ed page.

For many, those events in June 1989 were a sign that the Chinese people were embracing US-style democracy. They had built what looked to us, but wasn't, a replica of the Statue of Liberty in the center of Beijing, and sang songs including We Shall Overcome. Then, articulate English speaking leaders emerged happy to talk to American TV networks soon out in force.

What was not really explained in much detail was that the students were supporting the reform of the Communist Party, not its abolition. They sang patriotic songs including the Internationale, a Communist anthem, and their Goddess of Liberty was a universal symbol, not a pro-American one. That said, when the tanks moved in, and the machine guns came out, and when the clamp-down followed, the workers and other people in the People's Republic became sympathetic to the students and the reformers in the party. That's when the paranoid old line bureaucrats and dogmatists panicked and showed how brutal they could be.

Beijing's rulers were condemned politically by the whole world for their barbarity; the real response: much of that world began to trade and invest in the "new China." After all, business is business. As their system moved from Marxism Leninism to "Market-Leninism" criticisms were blunted in the name of pragmatism and profiteering. The martyrs of the movement were forgotten, except by human rights groups who carried on without much impact. The Chinese government rejected them; the US government avoided them. Most Chinese students moved from trying to make change to making money, from communists to consumers.

At the same time, resistance continues. Dissident and former Party higher-uBao Tong told the Wall Street Journal, "June 4 is still here. Tiananmen is still here. However, it's not a Tiananmen massacre, it's suppression in the style of a 'little Tiananmen.'" ...The 76-year-old holds up four fingers. "Every four minutes there is a protest with more than 100 people."

Repression has been cranked up, not only against Chinese but Tibetans. The Chinese police state grew more sophisticated with spy technology imported from US based companies like Cisco and others. The Great Wall of China became at the same time a Great Mall and a Great Firewall. The internet was censored even as more Chinese students went to school throughout the world and began, in their own way, to challenge the often corrupt commissars and the "Princelings," the sons and sometimes daughters of the ruling elite by the way they lived and thought.

In response to the Party's pervasive presence, many became fiercely nationalistic, not socialistic and then overly materialistic. The same Chinese media that had over-politicized the populations with party line polemics for years now began to depoliticize the population promoting fashion, entertainment and shopping

Our media stopped focusing on the abuses as China started buying up US treasuries and stabilizing our economy. Beijing even bought into subprime loans and was not too happy about their losses which lead to today's threats to dump the dollar and demand "fiscal responsibility. Tim Geithner's trip to China is all about placating them while at the same time looking tough and independent for US eyes. It is all a dance with Beijing playing the music. (The Chinese are not wrong about the lack of US market discipline but they have plenty of corrupt operators themselves.)

As for the US media that is marching down Tianamen's memory lane, their coverage has left lots to be desired from the hyping of the Olympics by NBC which excluded other media outlets to the continuing failure to cover the persecution of Falun Gong with any regularity (with some exceptions) for ten years. The Chinese called them a cult; our media called them a cult. (The word "Cult" is usefully catchy for headline writers!)

Mostly, they were not covered at all by the national press except when something big happened, as in a highly-publicized incident in which practitioners supposedly set themselves on fire in Tiananmen Square. The Washington Post, to its credit, debunked the incident. But that hasn't stopped a stream of misinformation and stereotyping.

Just last month CBS, on the entertainment side, referenced Falun Gong as terrorists in an episode of The UNIT, an international cop and intrigue show. It may be a dramatization, but it reinforces a false impression.

Read this:

Excerpt from THE UNIT, episode 20

Reporter: "So you admit that [your government is] aiding the Chinese?" ..."But you admit they are identifying cult members around the world for the Chinese..."

Man: "Look... We have reason to believe that the Falun Gong is working with Muslim Separatists to perpetrate an attack on Chinese soil. So we are not helping out the Chinese. We're being a good terrorist watchdog."

Reporter: "So how do you know the Falun Gong was planning an attack on Chinese soil?"

Falun Gong is asking that CBS withdraw the episode, run a disclaimer, and encourage its news division to report on the real story of Falun Gong. The program is scheduled to air on TV in England on July 29th. To date, the network has discussed its complaint and promises to fully respond to their appeal.

But not until after Chinese websites sanctioned by the government already plastered the clip all across the web there. Maybe the government will now turn fiction into faction and classify these folks known for their subversive meditating and exercises as dangerous terrorists.

Here you have a mainstream network not just getting it wrong but actually putting people's lives in jeopardy, all for dramatic effect

"When we saw this episode, we were horrified," says Gail Rachlin, spokesperson for the New York- based Falun Dafa Information Center. "We have been reporting for years about Falun Gong adherents being killed by Chinese police, while the Beijing government uses labels like "cult" and "terrorist" to further their persecution of innocent Chinese citizens. Linking us to terrorism puts those in China at greater risk of abuse. This is incredibly serious."

In 2006, Amnesty International reported that the "official campaign of public vilification of Falun Gong...has created a climate of hatred against Falun Gong practitioners in China which may be encouraging acts of violence against them."

A Falun Gong practitioner told me what happened when he followed up with CBS. "I just talked to xxx the "vice Pres" of whatever who put me in contact with xxx the "senior vice pres" of whatever. I felt like both of them don't know what day it is," He said he was told his complaint is in the hands of "Program Practices," the protocol for shows that get complaints." I asked if he expects any action. His response: "All in all the conversation went well, but again I hung up feeling that she is not the one in charge."

No one even tends to be in charge when it comes to an institution admitting they blew it.

It's not just Falun Gong that gets this type of smarmy uninformed media treatment. Perhaps, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen anniversary in which we once again idolize the man who stood up to the tanks, we will look more closely at how we might stand up for justice in China and real information at home, about the good and the bad there and here.

Mediachannel's News Dissector Danny Schechter investigates the origins of the economic crisis in his new book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo Books via Amazon). Comments to snipped-for-privacy@mediachannel.org

Reply to
RealCanadian
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Why do they buy from us? The Canadian arrogant facist state.

Reply to
Canuck57

WE are buying from China because OUR CAPITALlSTS make a fortune by buying cheap and selling high. That is it...that is the ONLY answer. =3D

Reply to
Roy

BS.

Because consumers, including selfish greedy self serving union slugs, like cheaper goods. Me, I shop on quality, cost and need like 99% of us. If it is union made, I normally don't care if it has quality, cost and I need it. But unions usually fail in quality and cost.

But I will add one criteria for GM, GMAC, Chrysler, CAW, UAW and any banks taking bailouts. I don't deal with those that steal from hard working taxpayers for their corruption, incompetance and entitlement attitudes. I say no with my patronage.

In fact, I transfered my 401K at Merrill Lynch last year as it was about to take and get bailouts. I simple don't deal with the morally corrupt. Sooner or later they will screw you too.

Reply to
Canuck57

Consumers don't buy from China...there seem to be a few middlemen involved here...can you spell W A L M A R T? =3D

Reply to
Roy

Consumers don't buy from China...there seem to be a few middlemen involved here...can you spell W A L M A R T?

401K's don't exist in Canada. There are RRSP's though.
Reply to
Gerrald Arnasen

What? what about America if you're talking fascism?

Besides what China does is none of our business. Do we go poking our noses into you affairs

Reply to
labatyd

Consumers don't buy from China...there seem to be a few middlemen involved here...can you spell W A L M A R T?

And who does WalMart sell their products? Ah consumers. I thought so.

=
Reply to
labatyd

Sadly, if any member of this group went through their house, and threw out all that is "Made in China", there'd be damn little left....

In fact it'd be interesting to see the effect if CHINA imposed a trade embargo on the US.

I'm not sure we have the factories, or the worker skills to start making everything from TV sets to tee-shirts.

Reply to
Anonymous

True but I wouldn't consider it sad. Why shouldn't they be able to build and export to us? They need to eat too and that means buying our agricultural products. They also need resources. The world is a better safer place because of trade. Most people either are not aware of that or simply ignore that fact.

Ouch!

Certainly we could. We actually should be able to produce cheaper IF we would stop robbing our industries and workers with onerous taxation. There is no free lunch. We were there first. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

Reply to
labatyd

Sad, because not everyone is born to be a computer whiz, rocket scientist, or college material.

When I was a kid there were small factories spread across the country.

Joe "Hi-school-grad" could get a job at the local shoe-lace factory. There were openings in shipping, machine maintenance, personnel, material handling, etc. etc.

Joe could make a decent semi-skilled wage, his wife could work on the line, or in the office.

Those factories and their jobs are gone. Joe can work ( part-time ) at the local BurgerKing. What's any hi-school grad to do ?

In that respect, we've sold out our lower-middle class.

Reply to
Anonymous

.

Consumers don't have much choice when 90% of the consumer products they require come from stores that IMPORT these products from third world countries including China which seems to dominate the market at present. If I had a choice, I would buy my jeans from Canadian or USA suppliers but nearly all are imported. I guess that you don't wear any clothes and go shoeless or you would know that this is FACT. I see cowboys wearing Chinese-made boots and they don't even know it. Mind you, most of them don't give a hoot as long as the price is right. =3D

Reply to
Roy

Consumers don't have much choice when 90% of the consumer products they require come from stores that IMPORT these products from third world countries including China which seems to dominate the market at present. If I had a choice, I would buy my jeans from Canadian or USA suppliers but nearly all are imported. I guess that you don't wear any clothes and go shoeless or you would know that this is FACT. I see

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't care where the product comes from. If the quality and price is right I buy. I also know that a chinese product is paid for in dollars which are useless to them. They either send them back to buy our products or lend them back to our gov't (treasuries). So all is not lost.

cowboys wearing Chinese-made boots and they don't even know it. Mind

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you, most of them don't give a hoot as long as the price is right.

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There's your answer. All of us have limited budgets. We stretch our dollars as far as they will go. We're just not able to produce as competitively. No if we hadn't taxed our industries and corporations thinking it was painless so that they could reinvest in new and more productive capital, hadn't driven our wages out of line through union organization, hadn't our politicians promised us every social benefit, supposedly free of cost........

Reply to
labatyd

Are you trying to say (with a straight face, none the less) that the US government doesn't 'poke its noses' into other countries affairs? You are an even bigger idiot then I previously thought.

Reply to
80 Knight

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It has NOTHING to do with the amount of taxation of our corporations...the problem is GREED...and lack of government import controls. =3D

Reply to
Roy

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It has NOTHING to do with the amount of taxation of our corporations...the problem is GREED...and lack of government import controls.

In that case we ought to increase corporate taxation. And while we're at it why not increase personal taxation too? There's no harm in taxation.

Reply to
labatyd

Where did I say that? Quote please.

(I've LONG said the US would be wise to mind it's own business. Much like the founding fathers of their constitution. And that goes for us too. Another soldier gone today. 119. What a waste).

Reply to
labatyd

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It has NOTHING to do with the amount of taxation of our corporations...the problem is GREED...and lack of government import controls. ============ No, the problem is GREED and CORRUPTION.

GM gets anotehr $15B.... tell me it went to wages? Just try to do the math.... I say bullshit. It is an oragized crime activity going on and the taxpayer is footing the bill.

Reply to
Canuck57

Depends. Who is paying the taxes? Those that benefit from this corruption or those that will never see any benefit from it?

The reality is that this is whole scale corruption.

Reply to
Canuck57

There are benefits from taxation of course. To those that didn't work for it from those that did. The sum total is still a loss for the economy. The country would be far better off without the transfer of wealth. Each would have to work and only those that are truly incapable could be supported by charity in just as good or better fashion. Charity is much more efficient as there is a direct link between giver and receiver. None of the graft that goes on with self serving politicians who seek the credit with someone else's hard earned efforts.

Reply to
labatyd

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