Ethanol trap

Sometime in the future oil reserves will be exhausted. It is never too early to find new, clean and renewable energy reserves. Enter ethanol. A so called green alternative. Turn corn, tree bark, soy beans, into fuel that will power our cars. But when Bush has discovered ethanol and says it's the future, something must be wrong.

The choice is: food for the people or food for the cars.

Rising from his sick bed, comrade Fidel Castro, has a very important point to make (Counterpunch: Biofuels and Global Hunger). The U.S. is expanding corn production to turn it into ethanol, Bush is pushing Brazil to do its part. China plans to create a forest the size of England to produce biofuels. In the U.S., there are 114 ethanol plants, with another 80 under construction, expanding total ethanol capacity from 5.4 billion gallons last year to 8.5 billion gallons this year.

Castro is right, if foodstuffs are turned into fuels, millions will go hungry. If Bush touches something, it must be wrong. Stop the ethanol craze! (The Wall Street Journal: Big Corn Crop May Not Curb Prices)

More British lies

The stand-off between Great Britain and Iran over the capture of 15 British sailors is heating up and could still provide the excuse for the U.S. and the U.K. to launch an attack on Iran. London is further spinning the facts.

Considering the history of aggression and meddling in Iran's affairs, Britain would be advised to stay as far away as possible from Iran's borders (The Guardian: A bitter legacy).

Instead, its sailors fished in disputed waters. The sea border between Iraq and Iran is still disputed between both countries. A British map showing a boundary is insufficient evidence to show that the sailors were captured in Iraqi waters. Former U.K. ambassador Craig Murray calls the boundary published by the British “a fake with no legal force”. And he rightly asks: [the sailors] “were looking for smuggled vehicles attempting to evade car duty. What has the evasion of Iranian or Iraqi taxes got to do with the Royal Navy?” (Counterpunch website: A memo on Iran – Brinkmanship in Uncharted Waters)

Exactly what boat did the British board? An Arabian dhow or a cargo vessel? The British showed GPS-coordinates from a helicopter flying over a cargo vessel, while Iranian TV showed the capture of the British sailors after they boarded an Arabian dhow. The cargo vessel on the other hand may have moved between the alleged boarding and the taking of the coordinates. Therefore, Britain has proved nothing at all. And according to Iran, the British entered Iranian waters up to six times.

The British government calls the videos broadcast on TV “cruel, callous, inhuman and unacceptable”. How can a mere video be all that compared to the aggression and war crimes Britain has committed in Iraq and is prepared to commit against Iran? Sure, the 15 will be under pressure, as every captive would be, but all available evidence shows they have been well treated. Compare this to the shackled prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, paraded on TV in orange boiler suits and routinely tortured.

Chancellor Gordon Brown is saying that a “U.N. resolution” is calling for the release of the sailors. There is no such thing at all. There is a verbal statement from the U.N. (in diplo jargon much less weighty than a resolution) expressing grave concern, but refusing to state that Iran was at fault or to “deplore” its actions.

The European Union called for solidarity with Britain. Why should European countries show solidarity with an aggressor and lackey of the U.S. Empire? If Britain would behave as a responsible country, maybe we could show some solidarity next time. While raising a hue and cry about the capture of the 15 British sailors, the prime ministers of E.U. member countries still hold friendly meetings with war criminal Blair. Instead of putting pressure on Iran, it is Britain which should be subject to pressure to stop its aggression or be suspended from membership in the European Union.

Trespassers in the Gulf

The war of words between Great Britain and Iran continues as to where exactly the 15 British sailors were captured by Iranian forces: inside Iraqi or Iranian territorial waters? We are talking about a few kilometers left or right here, in a disputed area at sea without any boundary markers.

What is absolutely without doubt is that the British were in foreign waters, whether in Iraq or Iran, and that they shouldn't have been there. The British committed aggression against Iraq. A mandate from a puppet government in Baghdad or even the U.N. Security Council doesn't change that fact. The British are entitled to protect the mouth of the Thames, not the Shatt al-Arab. If an Iranian warship would have been patrolling to Thames to check on car smuggling between Britain and the Continent, how would the Royal Navy have reacted?

The British should leave Iraq and the Middle East and stop doing the dirty work for their American masters. No doubt, leading seaman (what about leading seawoman?) Faye Turney has a lovely daughter who very much needs her mother to be at her side instead of trying to provoke a war in the Gulf. She will probably be released today to a hero's welcome in Britain. (CNN: UK, Iran stand firm in sailors crisis)

What about the hundreds of thousands of Iranian mothers and daughters who face certain death if Bush and Blair get their way?

Taking the plunge

Being very busy, I never have time to do physical exercises. Besides, I am not really in shape to run the marathon. But I do like swimming. There has been a time when I went swimming three times a week, covering a distance of 1,000 to 1,500 meters each time. Then I dropped this healthy habit.

It's about time to shape up a bit. No, I didn't go swimming in the Water Cube (pictured). We'll reserve that for after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. An Olympic swimming pool ten minutes walk away is fine enough with me. So today I again swam a thousand meters, well, at a leisurely pace. With all the hype about the Olympics becoming ever more louder, it's the right time to do some sports again. Trimming the beer belly and lowering the blood pressure.

Now we'll have to keep a regular schedule, two times a week should be possible. Covering all those laps is also a good time to think, away from the computer screen, the newspapers and the books. And if it becomes too boring, I can always imagine crossing the Yalu River, the Yangtze or the Shatt al Arab...

More useless sanctions

On Saturday, New York time, the United Nations Security Council once again unanimously adopted a resolution imposing additional sanctions on Iran because it refused to halt its uranium enrichment program.

Let's put a few things straight:

1) Under the NPT, Iran has the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Without proof that it is making the bomb, there is no justification to demand that it stops its uranium enrichment program.

2) The proposed sanctions are mild and won't hurt Iran too much. Tougher sanctions could never have been passed unanimously.

3) Still, the sanctions resolution is wrong. The U.N. Security Council is acting more and more as a rubber stamp council for the U.S. administration. China, Russia and France do not object for their own selfish reasons. The non-permanent members are bullied to go along.

4) As a result, resolutions of the Security Council can no longer be considered to be the expression of the will of the international community.

5) Iran will not be swayed by the sanctions, they will have the opposite effect: less cooperation with the IAEA and perhaps, like in the case of North Korea, leaving the NPT.

Meanwhile the stand-off involving the 15 British sailors is continuing. And Blair is threatening a “different phase”. The old gunboat diplomacy once again. The British have only themselves to blame, because they shouldn't have been their, nor in Iranian, neither in Iraqi waters. Again, they claim to have the mandate of the U.N., a mandate manufactured in Washington, not the expression of the will of the peoples of the world.

Tsang re-elected

Hong Kong chief executive Donald Tsang was re-elected Sunday for a new 5-year term at the head of the administration of the Special Administrative Region. He was elected by the Electoral College, by 649 votes, while his only contender Alan Leung only managed to secure 123 votes.

Hong Kong doesn't have a tradition of democratic elections. The British governors of the Crown Colony were appointed by the British government. The British never bothered to ask the opinions of the citizens of Hong Kong. The last governor, Chris Patten, did try to force through democratic procedures, but as Hong Kong was returned to China, the government in Beijing was not going to take any chances.

There could have been many more contenders for the No 1 spot this time, but challengers knew they had next to no chance of winning. A poll even showed that if the people of Hong Kong could vote in a direct election, they would have chosen Donald Tsang.

Comparisons also show that Hong Kong has the freest economy in the world, which shows you don't necessarily need free elections to have a free economy. Hong Kong is the best example to show that parliamentary democracy is not a prerequisite for economic development. That is not to say democracy is no good, it's just a statement of fact.

Mao's last son dies

Mao's last surviving son, 83-year old Mao Anqing, died in Beijing on March 23. He was married to Shao Hua, whose half-sister Liu Siqi was the wife of his brother Mao Anying. Mao Zedong had three sons with his first wife Yang Kaihui, who was murdered by a Hunan warlord in the 30s. The eldest, Mao Anying, died at the front during the Korean War. His demise was a big blow to Mao. Younger brother Mao Anlong died in the thirties in Shanghai, presumably of an illness.

After the dead of their mother, the three Mao brothers were sent to Shanghai, to be taken care off by underground Party members, but there is no doubt they had a hard time. A beating by a policeman led to psychological problems for Mao Anqing, who nevertheless went to Moscow and became a Chinese-Russian translator.

Several obituaries have appeared in the press, but one of the most interesting, containing details not found in the others, appeared in the Shanghai Daily: Mao Zedong's last-surviving son dies.

Mao Anqing and his wife Shao Hua, a major-general in the PLA, have one son, Chairman Mao's grandson, the now 37-year old Mao Xinyu, who strongly resembles his grandfather and is studying his grandfather's writings.

Despite his famous father, Mao Anqing had a difficult life. May he now rest in peace.

Strange bedfellows

Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. paid a four day visit to China and met with his counterpart of the PLA, Liang Guanglie, minister of foreign affairs Li Zhaoxing, minister of defense Cao Gangchuan and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) Guo Boxiong. According to news reports, the visit further improved the good relations between the armies of China and the U.S.

There can never be anything wrong with establishing and improving good relations. If direct links between the armies of two countries can in any way, in the near or distant future, prevent incidents, skirmishes, battles or even war, that is certainly a good thing.

Now, having said that, there is not much that the U.S. and Chinese armies have in common. The U.S. military has more than a hundred bases all over the world, China has none outside its own territory. The military budgets of China and the U.S. are incomparable. The U.S. military has invaded numerous countries in the past century, while China's military is solely focused on defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the People's Republic.

The U.S. army, navy, air force and marines are guilty of war crimes. War crimes to numerous to enumerate. And they are still actively preparing to commit more crimes against humanity. Telling lies, launching provocations and waiting for the day they can launch the next war of aggression, this time against the great and peaceful nation of Iran. Some are already thinking about the next war, maybe against China.

Did the Chinese generals rebuke their American counterparts for their crimes of aggression? Very unlikely... They only want good relations. Would they have want to have good relations with the Japanese Imperial Army, which slaughtered millions of Chinese? Certainly not. But they do want good relations with the U.S. Imperial Army, which has slaughtered millions of innocent civilians around the world from Vietnam to Iraq.

Unfortunately, the Chinese PLA has become unprincipled, no longer standing shoulder to shoulder with the peoples of the world against the American Empire.

Premeditated provocation

Fifteen British sailors have been captured by the Iranian coastguard while conducting espionage in Iranian waters. What were they doing there? Boarding ships to combat smuggling. Where does Britain get the authority to do so? Is it an international policeman? Trying to stop arms smuggling to the insurgents, who have every right to fight the occupation, while the U.S. and Britain are transporting billions of dollars of military hardware to kill the Iraqi people? But, that of course is not called smuggling!

Britain is allowed to defend its coast, but what is Her Majesty's Fleet doing in the Gulf? Why isn't it stopping smuggling vessels off the coast of England, Scotland and Wales? It is an open secret that U.S. special forces are operating inside Iran, why wouldn't the British give it a try in Iran's territorial waters?

The British government is appalled that its boys (and one girl) have been captured, but they were not supposed to be there in the first place. It was an incident waiting to happen, that so far has not spinned out of control to give the U.S. an excuse to launch the long-planned attack on Iran. But the next incident might.

On January 11, U.S. forces stormed the Iranian liaison office in Arbil, Iraq, and seized five Iranian officials, who are still held in captivity. All these incidents are pre-planned to build a case for war. To justify the unjustifyable: another war of aggression, the third in a row, following Afghanistan and Iraq.

Britain claims its 15 soldiers were in Iraqi waters, thereby trying to put the blame on Iran for crossing an international boundary. Considering the blatant lies the British government has told and continues to tell, until further proof, we'd rather believe the Iranians. The British are playing a dirty game in the service of their American patrons to provoke a war with Iran.

They might indeed succeed, but in the end they will be defeated.

Urine or tea?

Journalists in Hangzhou passed off green tea as a urine sample and submitted it to hospitals for analysis. Six out of ten hospitals said they found blood cells in the samples, indicating a urinary tract infection and prescribed expensive drugs or supplementary tests. The journalists decided to pull off the prank after receiving complaints of overcharging in hospitals. Doctors blamed inexperienced lab technicians, but the bottom line is, they want to make money, lots of money, never mind the costs to public health.

The incident proves the total bankruptcy of the medical services in China, which are no longer focused on healing patients, but only on making money. The more the better, never mind how they do it. Fake test results, fake medicine prescriptions, fake doctors...

The Ministry of Health has penalized 58,000 medical institutions for employing unlicensed doctors over the past two years and confiscated 80 million yuan in illicit income.

In Mao's time, barefoot doctors served the people. Today, fake and real doctors alike serve the god of wealth. China's health care system is completely falling apart. The Southern Metropolis News concluded that “patients have become automatic teller machines for the hospitals”. 90% of the rural population has no health insurance and little access to doctors. In 2003, 73% of rural residents, who should have sought medical help, did not do so because they could not afford it.

Premier Wen Jiabao has presented a 5-year blueprint to improve medical services, but it is doubtful whether it will succeed amid the rampant capitalist development in China.

Blogspot blocked

Since starting this blog on October 1, 2006, I have always been able to view my own blog from Beijing. But on Tuesday the Danwei website reported that Blogspot was blocked in China. I could hardly believe it because it hadn't been blocked since I started writing the blog. But, sure enough, on Tuesday Blogspot was blocked. It remains to be seen when it is going to be available again.

The funny thing is, www.blogger.com is still available, so it is still possible to post from Beijing, although you cannot see the result. Considering that several circumventor sites are still working, it is rather useless for the Chinese cdensors to play this blocking game. Wikipedia is also still blocked. I am currently in Shanghai on a reporting trip, and also from Shanghai Blogspot and Wikipedia are blocked.

Maybe someone said something offensive on Blogspot, but why would the whole site be blocked? The reasons why the censors block or unblock a site are still a mystery.

Four years after...

Exactly four years ago, Bush ordered his bombers to bomb the shit out of Baghdad to prepare the situation to put American boots on the ground. The Iraqi military, which was supposed to be such an imminent threat to the peace and security of American empire, vanished like butter in the springtime sun. Even the redoubtable Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezar brigades were nowhere to be seen to defend the Iraqi capital against the Marines, the 101st Airborne and the 3rd Infantry. Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled and a new era was about to begin.

Democracy, peace and understanding, prosperity...? Heaven on earth, thanks to the Yankees?

No, Baghdad and Iraq were about to start their descend into Hell. A Hell stoked to steak-well-done status in Washington and London. (The Independent: Iraq: A country drenched in blood) The dispatches of Patrick Cockburn, reporting from Iraq, are filled with words such as: “full of fear”, “half-suppressed panic”, “violent death”, “pools of drying blood”, “tortured to death”, “millions fleeing”, “the slaughter house the country has become”, “ever-escalating violence”, “worse than ever”, “ferocious battle”, “too dangerous to do”, “heavily armed Sunni and Shia fortresses”, “the failure of the occupation”. Those are the words that describe the fake liberty and democracy the U.S. has brought to Iraq.

“Mission accomplished”, crowed Bush on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Four years later, more than 3,000 American and 650,000 Iraqi deaths later, and more than several troop surges later, Bush's mission will never be accomplished. He is still sticking to his guns, leading the U.S. to total and ignominious defeat. Iraq is a hell, breading fanatics, resistance fighters or terrorists or whatever you care to call them, people who lost all hope except to inflict the most possible damage on the U.S., the source of their misery.

Bush's invasion of Iraq will come to hound America. And still, Bush is not impeached and they still call the U.S. system a democracy. Is there no justice in this world? When will Bush the “tyrant be held to account for his crimes by his own people”, in the same words Bush talked about Saddam?

Shanghai surprise

It has been ages since I last set foot in Shanghai, well, actually about three years. But three years is like a quarter century in China, due to its break-neck speed of development. If you haven't been to a place in China for a couple of years, you run the risk of not recognizing the surroundings. Old, familiar quarters will have been demolished to make way for new developments: shopping centers, restaurants, hotels, ring roads, subways...

Shanghai was a completely different place when I first visited the city in January 1986. The best hotel in town was the venerable Jinjiang. But you couldn't just book a room. Even if they happened to have an empty room, they were not going to give it to you unless somne friend or acquaintance could put in a word or two at the reception.

On my second visit to Shanghai, I stayed in the room of a Japanese friend of a friend, who happened to be on holiday in Japan. That was the only way to get a hotel room. Dinner was served in – well, you couldn't call it a restaurant, rather a cantine – between 6 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. Arrive at 6.45 p.m. and the cook would have gone home and the kitchen was closed. Outside the Hengshan Hotel, Shanghai was completely dark. Shanghai had already gone to bed.

How times have changed. But nothing, not even Shanghai, can continue to change at the speed of light. Change it will, but at a slower pace. So I will probably not have a “Shanghai surprise” when I touch down at Hongqiao Airport on Wednesday.

'300' to invade Iran?

The film 300 seems to break box office records in the U.S. It relates the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC between the Spartans and the Persians. But it is not just a depiction of a historical event. Not surprisingly the Persians are depicted as the bad guys. The movie is based on the book by Frank Miller, a radical Zionist. And the U.S. is preparing to bomb Iran.

It is a bit dangerous to criticize a movie if you haven't seen it. But from what I have read in the press (The Times: 2,500 years on, 300 Spartans get Iran in their sights again) it seems '300' has been made to demonize Iran and thereby prepare the way for a 21st century battle in which the U.S. is supposedly playing the role of the Spartans. That's maybe the biggest mistake: the Spartans won the battle, the U.S. is certainly going to lose the war in an even more catastrophic fashion compared to how they lost the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the coming days I'll try to find a pirated copy on the streets of Beijing, which shouldn't be too difficult as NRC correspondent in Teheran Thomas Erdbrink bought an illegal copy at Teheran's Enghelab Square. His blog (in Dutch) Onze Man in Teheran is highly recommended to better understand the situation in Iran.

Chinese private property

On Friday, China's National People's Congress approved the Property Law with an overwhelming majority of 2,799 of the 2,899 delegates. In some press reports abroad it was announced that China was for the first time protecting private property. Those who wrote this don't know what they are talking about... The Chinese Constitution says that private property is inviolable, although public property still has a higher status.

Promulgation of the law is important for peasants and peddlers who in theory should receive better protection of their property. Peasants who are chased of their land to build an industrial park can now turn to the law. Although they don't own the land, they should receive compensation because they held the right to work on the land. Street peddlers who illegally sell stuff without a proper license may still be fined, but their goods may no longer be confiscated. Also city dwellers whose homes are demolished to make way for a property development should receive better protection.

Therefore, the law does not only protect private enterprises, but can also be used by citizens against illegal expropriation of their possessions. The claim that the law is the last nail in the coffin of Chinese socialism is besides the point. The Chinese Communist Party has decided to allow private property of the means of production. That is a political decision. Enacting a law to protect this and other kinds of private property is only codifying an existing situation. Laws follow societal changes, they can never force them to happen.

Of course it remains to be seen how courts across the land will implement the property law and if it is not properly applied, how plaintiffs will receive redress.

A useless question

It has become a tradition that China's premier meets the Chinese and foreign press following the closing session of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress. The questions reporters are allowed to ask are vetted beforehand, perhaps with a few exceptions when a final question is granted at the end of the press conference and a reporter is chosen who may reasonably be expected not to pose a question which might turn out controversial.

The first part of the question posed by Bruno Philip of Le Monde was certainly pre-arranged, seeking clarification of an article premier Wen had written for the People's Daily about the long period the initial stage of socialism would last. That, however, was only the intro for the ambush he had prepared to be aired on live TV. A book has been published in Hong Kong, entitled “Zhao Ziyang: Captive Conversations”, written by the 87-year old Zong Fengming, who had more than a hundred casual conversations with Zhao between 1991 and 2004. (Asia Sentinel: What China Might Have Been)

The former premier and general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party regretted that he hadn't pushed political reform more vigorously. What did premier Wen had to say about this, Bruno Philip inquired.

Well, of course nothing at all. This kind of ambush-questioning never works. It may achieve either of two things: get the person to whom the question is directed to lose his or her temper and thereby lose face. This is very unlikely to happen to premier Wen. Or, cause embarrassment all around, which is not going to get your question answered. And so it happened: “your question about the book has no relation whatsoever with my article in the People's Daily and I haven't read the book”, was Wen's short reply.

The only thing Bruno Philip achieved, was to utter the name of Zhao Ziyang in the Great Hall of the People during a live broadcast and to have all references to his question and Wen's answer purged from transcripts of the press conference. His ambush-question was utterly futile and ensures that it will be a long time before he will be allowed to ask another question on live TV, if ever... The bottom line is: be sensible and don't play stupid games...

Britain's disgrace

The British parliament has voted 409-161 to renew the country's Trident nuclear deterrent. The number of Britain's nuclear bombs would be reduced by 20% to fewer than 160 and the number of its submarines carrying the bombs reduced from 3 to 4. Nevertheless, giving the green light to build new submarines, signals a determination to continue nuclear blackmail and a refusal to honor Britain's commitment under the Non-proliferation Treaty to ultimately destroy its nuclear weapons. Britain has decided to increase the accuracy of its atom bombs and its ability to attack a wider range of targets, while at the same time voting at the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on North Korea and Iran. Double standards...

(The Independent: Government left divided as Trident rebels defeated and The voters have good reason to feel let down; The New York Times: British Lawmakers Approve New Nuke Subs; The Times: Trident given go-ahead but party revolt damages Blair and Brown)

War criminal Tony Blair faced an unprecedented revolt inside his own party and only managed to have his nuclear blackmail approved with the support of the Tories.

The Times' commentator Alice Miles has one of the most decent remarks I have read in a long time (The Times: Has no one got the guts to ditch Trident?):

“I would never, ever, ever want a British leader to fire a nuclear weapon. Ever. In any circumstances. Even if someone fired one at us. Even if a country fired more than one at us. I do not believe that responding with equal terror and carnage against other citizens, other families, would ever be the right thing to do.”

Unilateral nuclear disarmament might set a beautiful example, but it is simply not enough. All nuclear powers should be forced to disarm, starting with the one with the largest number of atom bombs and the only power to have ever used nuclear weapons. It will no doubt be a difficult thing to do, but not an impossible thing to do. Kick out all American government officials wherever they may hide until Washington dismantles all its military bases abroad and destroys all its nuclear arms. The same goes for the British.

No victory...

... for the U.S. in Iraq. Today CNN reports on its website (CNN: Poll: Less than half of Americans think U.S. can win in Iraq): “Less than half of Americans believe the United States can win the war in Iraq. The results mark the first time since the war began four years ago that a majority did not say the United States can win.”

Finally, the obvious becomes clear to almost everybody, except of course George W. Well, he still has the company of 29% of Americans who are convinced things are going well in Iraq. Yeah..., anyway, that's an "all-time low"... Perhaps the gringos are moving in the right direction... Nearly six in ten want to see U.S. troops leave Iraq, immediately or within a year. And a majority wants Congress to run the war instead of Bush, bye-bye Commander-in-Chief...

And the Democrats, they also still don't get it. They should ask the question Lenin asked himself in the beginning of the 20th century: What to do? And the answer is clear: get the U.S. aggressor troops out of Iraq, shut down all funding for the war or to sum it all up: Gringo, get out! But the Democrats are not doing anything remotely appropriate to solve the problem. They even didn't block Bush's perceived authority to launch an aggressive war against Iran. They want to get the votes of the peace camp, but are doing nothing to earn them.

"Somehow this madness must cease, we must stop now", Martin Luther King Jr. said 40 years ago.

To get any decent voice coming out of the U.S. these days, one has to turn to the website of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States of America. Thanks [fill in the blank] there are still some Americans who know right from wrong...

Softer approach to justice

While in the West, many are clamoring for harsher punishments for all kinds of crimes, China is moving in the opposite direction. At a plenary meeting of the National People's Congress, president of the Supreme People's Court, Xiao Yang and procurator-general of the Supreme People's Procuratorate Jia Chunwang said one should not be too strict on all kinds of crimes and judges should hand down shorter sentences within the bounds of the law. In the past, many judges were quick to hand down the longest sentence possible to show that they were fighting crime. No longer. Punishment should fit the criminal, China's two top judicial officials said.

China will also limit the death penalty to “an extremely small number of cases” to be reviewed by the Supreme People's Court. The number of executions carried out every year remains however a state secret. Guesstimates are wildly divergent, between 1,200 and over 10,000. But the direction is clear: less death sentences.

Last year, nine provincial- and ministerial level officials were convicted of embezzlement, bribery or dereliction of duty. That doesn't include the highest profile case of the former Shanghai party secretary Chen Liangyu, who is still referred to as “comrade”, signaling he is still a member of the party and his case has not been transferred to the procuratorate. Criminals don't belong in the communist party, so they are first expelled before criminal charges are filed.

Who is the colonialist?

Some in the West accuse China of acting as a new colonialist in Africa. At a press conference in Beijing, Minister of commerce Bo Xilai had this to say: “The main criticism is that China is taking oil from Africa, but according to statistics, last year, of Africa's total oil exports, China took 8.7%. Europe took 36% and the U.S. 33%. If importing 8.7% means exploitation, how about 36% and 33%?” (People's Daily Online: African people don't welcome colonialists: Chinese minister)

The old colonial powers of Europe (and the U.S.) are angry because they are becoming more and more irrelevant in Africa. Therefore they are quick to accuse the new kid on the block, China. But it is advisable to base arguments on facts. The days of colonialism in Africa are over. If China would act in a colonialist way (and this is not to be excluded in the future), the African people will oppose China as it opposed old colonialism.

But minister Bo pointed out: “... things have changed now in Africa because the Chinese are there doing some normal and rational deals and offering reasonable market prices”. China is setting up a CNY5 billion development fund to encourage Chinese companies to invest in Africa. The Western countries have taken more resources and raw materials out of Africa than they have ever invested and to add insult to injury they accuse the Africans of being too stupid to develop their economies. With a little help from China, they will succeed. And so far the People's Republic of China has never colonized any African country. When admiral Zheng He sailed to Africa in the period 1405~1433, he only brought back one giraffe.

NPC media frenzy

It seams there is only one topic in the news these days in China: the meetings of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). Chinese journalists are falling over each other trying to get a scoop out of one of the delegates, or of each other, or from a foreign colleague. And they are becoming ever more aggressive.

It is progress that it has become easier to interview the delegates, but as journalists we should still behave in a polite way.

Chinese journalists are especially eager to interview Chinese- speaking foreign colleagues, so they don't have to dub over the interview, although they usually put on sub-titles. This year I gave a half-an-hour interview to CCTV, which broadcast a few decent clips.

In the world outside China however, there is a lot less interest in the two meetings. China's economic course for the coming year, outlined in the premier's work report, is reported, but the press conferences organized in the framework of the NPC yield very little to satisfy editors abroad. Since they are broadcast live on national TV, all questions are vetted beforehand and the ministers have their answers neatly typed-out to read. All spontaneity is gone, and the result is clear: pre-arranged news bytes, vetted to contain as little news as possible.

Cut-and-paste journalism

Editorial offices around the world rely more and more on cut-and-paste journalism. Well, everybody does and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. There's no need to reinvent hot water. Provided you know what you are doing.
If you cut the head and cut the tail and paste the tail where the head should be, well... you get the picture.

If I go to the plenary meeting of the National People's Congress or to a press conference, grab a bite and a beer (or two) afterwards and then jump in a taxi or head to the subway, in the meantime the story has already been put on the web by Reuters, AP, CNN, BBC World and a hundred plus other media. Editors in Brussels or Timbuktu don't have to wait for their local correspondent to file his story. Its all on the web! Just cut and paste! The only problem is: editors in Brussels or Timbuktu don't know what they are cutting and pasting. The result is disgusting, disinformation at best and a travesty of “quality journalism”.

The TV equivalent of cut and paste is the 10-second sound bite. At a press conference at the Great Hall I was almost literally jumped upon by a female CCTV journalist the moment she discovered I could speak Chinese. In another setting she could have got away with it :-) But she only had one question. I don't answer one question, because I don't want to be turned into a 10-second sound bite.

There is a time for play, a time for booze and a time for serious reporting. You can even mix it in a cocktail. But in the paper or on TV, the outcome should be worth reading or watching, providing accurate information, not cut-and-paste tails on the shoulders.

Tit-for-tat

Whenever the U.S. publishes its annual human rights report, China retaliates with is own report on the state of human rights in the U.S. It has become a tradition. While the U.S. is lambasting the human rights situation in more than 190 countries around the world, pretending to know what is right or wrong, Washington doesn't even have one word to say about what could possibly be improved in the human rights situation in the U.S. itself.

That makes the U.S. an easy prey for China's scribes. (The People's Daily Online: The Human Rights Record of the US in 2006 and China's HUman Rights). The indictment is blisteringly hot:

+ rampant violent crimes
+ the largest number of privately owned guns in the world
+ common violations of human rights by law enforcement and judicial departments
+ robberies, kidnappings and false arrest by the Chicago police
+ thousands of innocent people jailed
+ three quarters opf terrorism suspects seized after September 11, 2001 haven't made it to trila because of lack of evidence
+ the world's largest number of prisoners (2.2 million)
+ the use of dogs to terrify and attack prisoners
+ the use of chemical agents against prisoners
+ at least 13% of inmates in U.S. prisons suffered from sexual assaults
+ illegal surveillance as part of anti-terrorism investigations
+ the gathering of information on antiwar and environmental protesters
+ the U.S. democracy is one in which money talks
+ in 2005, 12.6% of the U.S. population was living in poverty.
+ there are 600,000 homeless people
+ the U.S., together with Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea does not guarantee paid maternity leave
+ racial discrimination remains rampant: white people's income was 64% more than the income of blacks and 40% more than hispanics
+ only around 15% of the seats in the U.S. Congress are occupied by women
+ 20% of children under 6 live in poverty
+ the U.S. is one of the few countries that sentences child offenders to death
+ the U.S. violates human rights in other countries: 655,000 Iraqis have died since the war started
+ the U.S. is violating the Geneva Conventions by systematically abusing prisoners
+ people are illegally detained at Guantanamo Bay

The U.S. is guilty of the worst violations of human rights: genocide, aggression, occupation and torture.

Private property

China's National People Congress is deliberating the Property Law to be voted on at its closing session on March 16. Private and public property will be equally protected by law, although according to China's constitution, public property still enjoys a higher status and role in China's economy.

Reporting on the new law in the international media has been ruefully inadequate. Some journalists say China will for the first time protect private property, which of course is nonsense. Private property has had some form of protection since 1988. Moreover it is wrong to talk about “private property” without any distinction. Even during the Cultural Revolution people had private property. The little Red Book of Mao's Quotations for example, or their Mao jackets. Some commentators are still distorting communism's view of private property. From a communist point of view, private property of the means of production is to be abolished, not private property of a book or a jacket. Although in the final communist society, everybody will be able to acquire anything he or she may need because of the extreme high level of production and therefore you could say private property will no longer exist, but that society is still a long way of.

Back to China. Opponents of the property law say it will facilitate the plundering of state property by bureaucrats and oligarchs, who will usurp it and turn it into their private property. Proponents say the law will protect the interests of ordinary people against expropriations without compensation, such as people who are driven out of their homes to make way for new real estate developments without receiving the necessary funds to buy a new apartment.

While how you look at the property law from an ideological point of view remains an interesting topic, how the law will be implemented by the courts will also be worth watching. How will the courts rule and will their rulings be enforceable? That remains a big question mark. Without implementation, the property law remains just a piece of recyclable paper.

Liar in the White House

Let's interrupt our reporting on China's NPC session today for an interesting development in Washington. One of the most disgusting neocons, Scooter Libby, has been convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury and lying under oath. (Washington Post: For an Opaque White House, A Reflection of New Scrutiny)

Let's add immediately that, yes, he is a scapegoat. Cheney and Bush himself should be in the dock, convicted and dragged away in chains to the nearest maximum security prison. (I'm in a good mood today, so I won't bring up the death penalty here).

Finally some of the perpetrators of the lies and false intelligence that led to the invasion of Iraq are being brought to justice. The big question is: will Bush grant Libby clemency? The Democrats all say: don't! After more than 70% of voters at an online CNN poll said Libby deserved the verdict, the poll was quickly taken off-line by the neocons at CNN. VP Cheney felt oh so sorry for Libby and his family. Did he ever felt sorry for the 650,000 Iraqis who were murdered as a result of the U.S. invasion?

Pardoning Libby is political suicide, but Bush is stupid enough to do it anyway. And no, even convicted, Libby is not the biggest liar in the White House.

Avoiding controversy

I didn't make it in time to the press conference of foreign minister Li Zhaoxing, because I was interviewed by CCTV in may favorite Beijing restaurant Morel's. Well, I knew in advance I would not miss anything important, so I watched the press conference on TV at home. The foreign minister is never saying anything newsworthy anyway, just rehashing China's well-known foreign policy. There's nothing wrong with that, but it becomes boring very quickly.

All questions are vetted beforehand, the answers nicely written up for the foreign minister to read of a piece of paper. Why can't he take the chance of answering a question not communicated in advance? It can't be that difficult, he knows China's foreign policy better than anyone.

Anyway, finally, our colleague of Al-Jazeera had the courage to pose a question on Palestine, Iraq and Iran. Which foreign minister Li didn't answer at all. He couldn't even make himself denounce America's war of aggression against Iraq and its upcoming nuclear attack against Iran. Only preserving the best possible relations with Washington seems to count. He even deplored the death of 3,100 American soldiers without even mentioning the murder of 650,000 Iraqis. How can there ever be peace in the Middle East or the world at large without defeating the partners-in-war-crimes, Israel and the U.S.? Li Zhaoxing must no doubt have read reports about Washington's preparations to provoke a war against the great nation of Iran. He didn't even utter one word to dissuade the U.S. from attacking Iran. This is a disgrace for China's foreign policy of peace. How can you promote peace without fighting imperialism?

China's social program

As usual, on March 5, the National People's Congress started its annual session in Beijing. Following the heavy snowfall on Sunday, it was bitterly cold on this Monday morning. Traveling by subway to the Great Hall of the People on the West side of Tiananmen Square, I was squeezed like a sardine, swept up by the giant tide of the commuting masses onto the Loop line subway car. Between Dongzhimen and Jianguomen you could hardly breath or move, but most people got off at Jianguomen so I got some breathing room before arriving a Qianmen station.

My press card was checked no less than 7 times between the outer perimeter of the cordoned-off area and the entrance to the main meeting hall within the Great Hall of the People. Nobody without the right credentials could have slipped past, but besides that, the security people seemed to be a little more relaxed than in previous years.

The cold outside contrasted sharply with the warm hart Premier Wen Jiabao offered to China's poor and disadvantaged. In his “Report on the Work of the Government” he presented a vigorous social program: guaranteed minimum income for all, no school fees for pupils in the Western regions, free tuition for students at six teachers' colleges, the building of a comprehensive network of health clinics, stringent environmental protection rules and finally the objective to build a harmonious society in China in a harmonious world.

While I was diligently reading the English version of the report on the first available row of seats on the third floor of the hall, many delegates two floors below were sleeping according to pictures published in several media. They seemed to be so used to sleeping through meetings that they even can't manage to stay awake to listen to the most important report of the year. How can they deliberate on it if they haven't read it or listened to Wen's speech?

One disappointing note in the report was the lack of attention to diplomacy and the world situation. China is welcoming ever more foreign investment, and as a member of the U.N. Security Council is involved in deliberating many international issues, but this was not reflected in Premier Wen's report. How can you hope to build a harmonious world without denouncing and opposing American imperialism?

No threat to any country

Answering a NHK correspondent's queation, spokesman for the upcoming session of China's National People's Congress, Jiang Enzhu revealed that China's defense budget would rise 17.8% this year. Jiang answered 10 questions during the press conference, but only the increase in the defense budget was widely reported, by CNN, BBC, Reuters, AP, Al-Jazeera,...

The salaries of Chinese soldiers are a pittance, and even a colonel earns less than a secretary at a foreign company in China. Low salaries are an encouragement for corruption. How is a PLA Colonel supposed to pay for his child's education, not to mention anybody lower in the hierarchy? To build up a professional army China needs to spend more. What's so terrible about that? China does not have one base abroad, not one soldier in foreign lands, except in the framework of U.N. peacekeeping missions. China does not take part in any arms race and does not pose a threat to any country in the world.

Most of the budget increase will pay for higher salaries and better training, a little to improve the equipment, so the PLA's capacity to deter potential aggressors is kept at a plausible level.

The 2007 defense budget stands at 7.5% of the total budget, about the same level as in the past few years. In 2005 it accounted for 1.35% of GDP, compared to the 4.03% for the United States. China's defense expenditure accounts for only 6.19% of the military budget of the U.S., although China has a larger population and territory than the U.S.

Compare China's increase in its defense budget with George Bush's additional spending on the lost war in Iraq. Which budget increase is killing innocent civilians?

Dumped among the rats

Those who returned from Afghanistan and Iraq to the U.S. in body bags were kind of lucky. They didn't have to suffer any longer, they already paid the highest price for their crime of aggression. Those who returned maimed or wounded were less lucky. Many were dumped in rat and cockroach infested rooms at Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Center. They were no longer useful for America's next aggressive war and so they were left to rot.

They should have been cared for, convicted and put in prison for their war crimes. Following orders, the orders of War-Criminal-in-Chief George W. Bush, is no excuse. They made a grave mistake, they committed a crime, but they are still to be treated with human dignity so they may come to the conclusion they were wrong, henceforth oppose the Bush dictatorship and work for world peace.

To the leaders in the Pentagon, they were only discarded rubbish, locked up in rodent-infested rooms, left to die because they are no longer useful to the Empire. That's how the Empire treats its useless Stormtroopers.

The commander of Walter Reed resigned, the secretary of the army resigned and Bush is shedding crocodile tears. What an appalling tragedy...

The Comfort Women

The Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe shamelessly denied that Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Dutch women and women from a few other countries were forced into sexual slavery during World War II by the Japanese army. He claimed the women offered their sexual services willingly to Japanese soldiers. (Washington Post: Prime Minister Denies Women Were Forced Into WWII Brothels)

To say this is at least as criminal as denying that the Holocaust ever took place. But while Holocaust deniers are facing prison terms, the Japanese prime minister will still be received around the world as a respected statesman.

There can be no doubt about what took place during the Second World War. Young girls were kidnapped by Japanese soldiers and forced to work in brothels to “comfort” the Japanese aggressor troops. They were raped tens of times a day on the orders of the Japanese government. Abe says there is “no evidence”. The story of those estimated 200,000 women is told in “The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War” by George Hicks. Abe should perhaps read the book, instead of repeating the words of Japanese fascists.

In 1993, then Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono apologized to the victims and even former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi repeated the apology. Now Shinzo Abe is again denying that it took place.

If those comfort women were really “professional prostitutes”, they could certainly have found better paying and less cruel customers than the Japan's sadistic soldiers. Abe's denial is ridiculous and criminal. He should be forced to resign. Denying that comfort women existed and were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese government shows that Japan is trying to become once more an imperialist aggressor. This is a threat to international peace and security, therefore the United Nations Security Council should act to force the Japanese government to behave. Since Japan is a ally of the U.S., of course this won't happen...

Uranium hoax

The past five years, the Bush administration has accused North Korea of pursuing an uranium enrichment program, in addition to harvesting plutonium from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor. (The New York Times: U.S. Had Doubts on North Korean Uranium Drive)

It was the uranium claim which led to the nuclear crisis, to North Korea retreating from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to making a bomb and testing it. The accusation now turns out to be false. Without the accusation, IEAI-inspectors would still be in North Korea and it would not have a bomb. This is to say that North Korea's bomb was actually manufactured in the White House.

Read what Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post has to say about this: “It now appears that the White House in 2002 used dubious claims of North Korean uranium enrichment as an excuse to break a Clinton-brokered deal, thereby allowing North Korea's poisonous dictator to build up a stockpile of plutonium, which in turn led to the building of as many as a dozen nuclear weapons, one of which he exploded in a nuclear test last year.”

The claim of an uranium program was sexed up by the Bush administration to engineer a pretext for war. Now they have to admit they lied, because thanks to the Six party talks, inspectors will soon return to North Korea and find out there is no uranium enrichment program.

This once more proves that the gravest threat to international security is the Bush administration.