Mar 21 2008
(Not Such An) Ancient Chinese Secret…
Although I am disgusted at the recent violent and deadly attacks against the Chinese living in Tibet, I sympathize with Tibetans and wonder when the world powers will have the moral strength to call on China to end its oppression of this resolute nation (the US is at least trying to look like the have a bit of a conscience).
Of course, the only thing China is worried about is bad publicity before/during the 2008 Olympics. And the very fact that China was granted this opportunity proves the ignorance, incompetence, irrelevance, and utter lack of morals of the IOC, the extremely corrupt heads of the Olympics who have done everything possible to rob this once noble athletic tradition of everything it is supposed to represent.
And of course, as long as China continues to pump out more and more consumers to whom the immoral/corrupt/greedy multinational companies can sell their products, and more and more workers to be exploited directly and indirectly by these same companies (as well as Chinese companies), these multinationals’ bed-mates–various governments around the world–will continue to turn a blind eye to the horrible crimes China commits against its own citizens and the planet. Was anyone naive enough to think any of this would change following the brief spurts of anger and concern over the wave of deadly products exported from China last year?
And how many people truly understand that what we’ve witnessed since last year is only the tip of the iceberg? When millions of young children (and adults) work for slave wages in toxic environments that are killing their bodies and the earth’s air, soil and water, how can you not expect the products they create and ship to be deadly on so many levels?
I agree China’s got a lot of things to fix, but lets agree on one thing, Mattel Inc. clearly had poor quality control if it did not bother testing the toys before it entered the U.S.. It put all its trust in a Chinese company, and we all know we can’t trust anything that’s Made In China, right?
Oh, I agree completely. Mattel is not an innocent party by any means, and there was apparently some confusion over who was ultimately to blame with respect to at least one of the incidents. I don’t know if you’re being facetious about not trusting anything made in China, but my family has certainly become even more vigilant about whence our products originate, based on the international news reports–and China has been especially guilty in being nailed recently by other countries such as Japan for exporting toxic food, toys, etc. (and we’ll put aside for now claims of possible bias against certain countries by other historically unfriendly countries).
But my original message is not one against China only. Many countries and companies have been complicit or actively horrendous in the rape and abuse of the planet and her inhabitants. China is one of the worst culprits, that’s all.
There’s a lot of debate about the Tibetan protesters disturbing the Olympic torch relay, just curious of what your opinion is on the matter?
Also, I found this video, it supposedly shows the bias in the media that we see here in North America. I’m not sure if they are all true, but I CAN confirm the uniform part, those are NOT Chinese police officers, not in uniform, not in genetics either (you can tell from their looks they are not Chinese).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQnK5FcKas
Sorry for the delay in responding, vitasoy. I have posted two threads that deal with the excellent points you raise. They are here:
http://rationalradical.com/2008/04/13/the-only-spirit-left-in-the-olympics-is-the-ghost-of-what-it-once-was/
and
http://rationalradical.com/2008/04/13/black-and-white-and-yellow-in-china-and-tibet/
To be clear, I’m not accusing you of Black and White thinking. I think your comment was intended to highlight the fact that the story is not as simple, one-sided or cut and dried as the western media are reporting. And I believe that people do need to keep that in mind, as long as they don’t dismiss the horrible conditions and treatment of people that is well documented inside of China.