Passing the Torch

Finally, a San Francisco protest that’s meaningful. Well, sort-of. Given the protests in London and Paris, Chinese officials and SF Mayor Gavin Newsom (D) conspired to mislead the crowds and run a secret torch route somewhere in San Francisco, while fans of the Olympics and protestors lined the parade route to object to China’s abyssmal human rights record.

The Olympics has always been a ceremony of the individuals of countries that are expressing peaceful competition for the sake of unity. The best athletes represent their countries, and we’ve seen some of the best of the nations give remarkable statements in their triumph.

But now enter China, which routinely stifles free speech, and even stifles the lives of those grasping for freedom. Such was the case recently in Tibet. Is China truly a forum that promotes the Olympian ideal? Or is it merely a money/publicity stunt for a brutal regime?

I think we all know what the answer to that is. We should all also recognize that the mayor of San Francisco, the place of my birth, willingly conspired with Communist officials to safeguard their interests as well as deny fans and protesters alike meaningful discourse. When the torch is diverted in a clandestine manner, it really smacks of a “government that knows better than the rabble”.

But such is the nature of the spineless weasel that was elected in San Francisco. At least the mayors of London and Paris let the masses show their distaste for the Olympic games in China with a direct embarrassment of the Chinese. Mayor Newsom is too interested in appeasing the Communists than to let freedom-loving people show their abject disgust with the oppressive Chinese government.

Children Are Killing the Planet

The latest in environmentalism– don’t have kids.

It’s a “logical” jump. If humanity is destroying the planet, then it’s only reasonable to end humanity, and that means stop having kids.

Get your tubes tied. Get your vasectomy. Remove your testicles. Remove your ovaries. That prevents you from having an abortion, too! Solve that ethical problem. Now you can have as much sex as you want while trying to get everyone else to stop consuming to save the world from catastrophic warming.

China’s already suggested their abortion policies are helping to curb global warming. Too bad all those new coal-burning power plants aren’t helping. I guess if you abort 10 babies, it offsets the carbon released by one plant for one year!

Of course, this is the extreme extreme of the pro-abortion movement (note this has nothing to do with choice– if we don’t start killing the children, we’re all going to die!).

What’s next? Soylent green? Start putting caps on the maximum age of people? (Because those old fogies don’t contribute to society, so it’s best to just kill them at age 70.)

But, in all, I don’t care if the environmentalists want to sterilize themselves for a better tomorrow. Go ahead. But we know where this kind of thinking goes. How long before Dennis Kucinich recommends the government control just how many kids a family can have and to have a “maximum age” for non-contributing members of society? All to save the planet, of course.

Do You Have Your Reincarnation Permit?

You’re going to need one if you’re planning on reincarnating in China.

But not in America! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Communism is Great!

The AP, AFP, Reuters all agree. They want us to be just like China.

Eat the Rice!

Seems that a staple in the diet of most of the world is causing global warming.

But the good news? Methane emissions are steadying, but are projected to increase again. But don’t worry. The big gun, CO2, is still out there, destroying the planet and approaching dangerous levels of 400 ppm (0.04%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

So the goal is to get nearly 1/3 of the world’s population (India and China) to not eat rice, and instead switch to something else. But what?

All plants decay and release CO2. Animals exhale CO2. So anything we feed people will eventually become CO2 and methane. Quite a conundrum, right?

Well, China’s got the answer: abortion!

“China is already doing a lot,” said Hu Tao, of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration.

He said China’s one-child per couple policy introduced in the early 1980s, for instance, had a side-effect of braking global warming by limiting the population to 1.3 billion against a projected 1.6 billion without the policy.

“This has reduced greenhouse gas emissions,” he told a conference in Oslo last month. China is the number two emitter of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, behind the United States and ahead of Russia.

I really wish I was making this up. China’s solution to global warming? Rigid population control and abortion of excess children.

I think in the next 5 years they’ll suggest that nuclear war will put so much debris into the atmosphere it’ll help counteract global warming, too. See, a positive side to everything monstrous!

The Guests Who Never Leave

Code Pinko dropped by the office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen, senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, who doesn’t plan on defunding the Iraq war.

My dad, who was a rather prominent attorney, told me that you knew it was going to be a bad day when you got to work and “60 Minutes” was camped out in your lobby.

I can only imagine this is far worse.

The irony– Code Pinko is a front group for the anti-capitalist (communist) Global Exchange. If they get their way and turn the US into a communist oligarchy, their little “occupation” stunts would land them in the gulag, or worse, get them “disappeared”. And they’re fighting deployment of the very soldiers who protect their freedoms to organize to push a neo-communist agenda.

Got all that?

China not persecuting underground Catholics!

Well, that’s what they say. I’ll point out this particular glaring passage:

“It would be impossible for our association to crack down on illegal or underground churches,” Liu [Bainian, vice-chairman of the Catholic Patriotic Association] said. “China has always provided education and assistance for underground priests.”

“All we do is send them to facilities (prisons) where they can fully appreciate the assistance (torture) and education (brainwashing) the CPA offers. How can you argue with that?”

Dying To Be a Model

There’s a guest column in today’s Seattle PI by my brother, Matthew Ruane. He’s railing against the artsy exhibition “Bodies“. Here’s a quote from the Op-Ed:

The exploitation of the poor by the rich no longer ends with death. Once, the poor believed that all were equal in the eyes of the Grim Reaper. Thanks to “Bodies — The Exhibit,” which runs through Dec. 31, the poor need worry that their remains (that they foolishly donated to better mankind) can be procured by entertainers and propped up in lifelike poses for the amusement of the rich.

One disadvantage to an Op-Ed, however, is that you cannot link to your sources. (Ha! Internet PWNs the print media again!)

Here’s an excerpt from National Geographic online talking about the sources of the cadavers used for the exhibit:

The bodies in question are unclaimed or unidentified individuals from China. As such, neither the deceased nor their families consented to the use of the corpses in the exhibit.

Now proponents of the expo are arguing that this is akin to cadavers used in medical schools to teach people about anatomy. In fact, the “Bodies” website states:

All of the bodies were obtained through the Dailan Medical Plastination Laboratories in the People’s Republic of China. Asia possesses the largest and most highly competent group of dissectors in the world, and and they are highly skilled in preparing the bodies for educational and scientific purposes. Currently, human specimens in medical schools in China and the US and other countries throughout the world are donated or unidentified bodies.

What a bunch of spin. “The China and the US do the same thing– what could possibly be wrong with that?”

Well, does the US gather up the homeless, skin them, then pose them playing badminton? The difference between the US and China is most human cadavers are donated. Some who want to help through organ donation cannot (by cancer, disease, or other damage) and instead donate their body to science. This is voluntary and part of a last request, so there is no ethical dilemma. China, on the other hand, gathers up the bodies of the dead (homeless, prisoners, the recently executed) and harvests what they can. Those they can’t steal organs from to sell across the globe, they “donate to science”. Nice of the state to think for the dead.

There’s an issue here, brought up by Mr. Ruane, that hits the nail on the head– respect. Whenever medical science deals with the dead, they respect the dead. Medical students pay homage to their cadavers all the time, a last “thank you” before they are relegated to burial or cremation. But where is the respect in sealing the bodies in plastic and then posing them for amusement? It doesn’t really advance medical science– we know what the muscles do when we kick or throw a ball. But posing a body playing volleyball– is that “science”? Or splitting a body mostly down the middle, just connecting it by just the stomach how is that respectful? It’s grotesque.

What’s worse is people are paying $25 a head to see the bodies displayed in such a fashion. And it’s not just adult cadavers. It’s children and even that of an aborted fetus.

Do we really want to be teaching our children how little value we place on human life? There’s not respect in gathering those neglected by society, preserving them, then posing them is “stances”. There’s no education value. Just a morbid display of how little life is worth in China, and how a lack of any kind of moral substance by a society will cheapen life so it becomes entertainment instead of treasure.

Lil Kimbargo

The US was critical of China’s softening of the UN resolution denouncing the NorK Nuke Test (which has been “confirmed”– but it may have been a far smaller blast than they had hoped for).

Well, don’t fret, US. China may be inching towards sanctions after all.

(Why do I feel dirty when I link to the NY Times?)

Which is good. Think they’ll start opening up those boxes once Japan tests one of their own?

The Chinese aren’t stupid. They should also know that a nuclear Japan is their worst-case scenario. One) it means the economic giant to their east will be a military giant, and two) it’s sure to awake the giant monsters!

Giant Monsters aside, the Chinese have to act faster to pull on Lil’ Kim’s leash. He’s bit the neighbors far too many times as it is, and now it’s time to whack him with a rolled-up scroll of rice-paper.

So, my question, once the US and French start searching North Korean vessels, how long before the NorKs fire a missile at an allied ship only to have it hit Japan?

Little Conventional Kimplosion

Over at AP, they’ve got a story about the air in North Korea and how there’s no increase in the background radiation that would signal the aftermath of a nuclear test.

Either that, or they’re trying to hype North Korea as a great place to live because there is no background radiation there.

Headline:

N. Korea Air Sample Has No Radioactivity

That’s amusing in the extreme.