china : Duthie On...

There's so much wrong with this story that it's hard to know where to begin:

A powerful federal arts commission is urging that the sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. proposed for a memorial on the Tidal Basin be reworked because it is too "confrontational" and reminiscent of political art in totalitarian states.

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts thinks "the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries," commission secretary Thomas Luebke said in a letter in April.

By law, no project like the memorial can go forward without approval from the commission, the federal agency that advises the government on public design and aesthetics in the capital.

A model of the statue has been built in China. The project's chief architect, Ed Jackson Jr., huddled with advisers this week in Ann Arbor, Mich., to discuss ways to address the commission's objections before sculpting of the granite statue begins.

One question I have is why we need a "U.S. Commisson of Fine Arts" in the first place. But more shocking and important is the question of what on earth the foundation building the King memorial is thinking by having the statue built in China by a sculptor with a lifelong stipend from the Chinese Communist government. Should it be surprising to anyone that such a sculpture done by a man living on the payroll of a totalitarian government would be "reminiscent of political art in totalitarian states?" Well, duh!

The issue, however, should be less about the aesthetics of the design, and more about the message that is sent when you have a monument to a man who was dedicated to freedom being created in a place that is one of the least free places on earth, by a man in the employ of a totalitarian government. Sculptor Lei Yixin may be a fine artist, and perhaps he secretly yearns for a free China as I'm sure many Chinese do. But according to the story he's "known for his monumental works of figures such as Mao Zedong..." To me, that should've been a red flag, so to speak.

Perhaps this commission is trying to remedy that situation through the only tools they have. But it seems to me that the Chinese communist government has already been handed a propaganda victory here. They can claim with great pride that their house sculptor was chosen to memorialize King, and that there's no way that would happen if the lies others keep telling about their human rights record were true.

Really sad...and where are the donors who put up the money for this memorial? Why aren't they outraged?

Unhappy With 'Confrontational' Image, U.S. Panel Wants King Statue Reworked

OK, it was bad enough when the threat was lead paint in kids' toys...now this: 

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Beijing factory recycled used chopsticks and sold up to 100,000 pairs a day without any form of disinfection, a newspaper said on Wednesday, the latest is a string of food and product safety scares.

Counterfeit, shoddy and dangerous products are widespread in China, whose exports have been rocked in recent months by a spate of safety scandals, ranging from pet food to medicine, tires, toothpaste and toys.

Officials raided the factory and seized about half a million pairs of recycled disposable bamboo chopsticks and a packaging machine, the Beijing News said.

As I've said before...it's not that this comes as a shock to me, though you can be sure I'll stick with my own utensils from now on...it's that I'm surprised that it's taking us so long to realize just how problematic Chinese goods are.

And it's worse than just potentially contaminated chopsticks, lead-coated toys, or poisoned toothpaste. Part of every dollar spent on Chinese goods ends up in the hands of the Communist government, which is busy building up its military to confront...well, it's not as though they have any major adversaries in Asia, so I wonder who they are preparing to confront.

Since geopolitical reasons haven't been enough to convince most Americans to avoid Chinese goods, I wonder if a wave of product recalls will be. My guess is that these will soon be forgotten, in the pursuit of cheaper goods.

Now dirty chopsticks picked up in China scare - washingtonpost.com

More disturbing news about the wanna-be superpower in the east: 

China arming terrorists
    New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.
    U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.
    Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms.

How long are we going to pretend that China is not an enemy? Well, I suppose if we're not willing to confront Iran, despite the fact that they're arming and training insurgents to kill Americans in Iraq, we're hardly going to do so for a nation with a much larger army, that already has nukes.

But could we not at least be open about the fact that they are not our allies? And I'm not talking about either the Chinese or Iranian people...I'm talking about the governments whose policies are explicitly and tacitly anti-American.

Source: Inside the Ring - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

As if we needed more reason to be concerned about imports from China:

Consumers were advised yesterday to discard all toothpaste made in China after federal health officials said they found Chinese-made toothpaste containing a poison used in some antifreeze in three locations: Miami, the Port of Los Angeles and Puerto Rico.

Although there are no reports of anyone being harmed by the toothpaste, the Food and Drug Administration warned that the Chinese products had a “low but meaningful risk of toxicity and injury” to children and people with kidney or liver disease.

The United States is the seventh country to find tainted Chinese toothpaste within its borders in recent weeks.

First dog food, now toothpaste. I'm a big supporter of free trade...but consumers need to be cautious about Chinese imports for a variety of reasons, not least being that clearly some Chinese manufacturers are not close to meeting U.S. standards of quality and safety. Caveat Emptor, indeed.

Source: Toxic Toothpaste Made in China Is Found in U.S. - New York Times (link requires registration)