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July 23, 2006 (Sunday) － Issue No. 59 |
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Chinese
Woman Addicted To Eating Pesticide |
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Trying
to Help Will Land You in Jail |
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Three
Hurdles the Chinese Communist Party Cannot Cross |
| Paternity
Testing On the Rise in China Nowadays however, paternity testing is quite common. The Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences performed genetic testing of 3,000 fathers and their children and found non-paternity in 680 cases....…Full Article |
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Who is North Korea Really Trying to Impress With Its Missiles? North Korea chose America's Independence Day, Bush's 60th birthday, and the date when the U.S. launched its Discovery space shuttle, to test-fire at least seven missiles, including the improved Taepodong-II which is thought to be capable of reaching the U.S......…Full Article |
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Benzene hexachloride (HCH) is a lethal pesticide. If eaten it will damage the human body or even cause death. But a rural Chinese woman enjoys eating HCH. She has been addicted to this pesticide for four or five years. HCH is not the only lethal item on her menu. This incredible woman also likes drinking gasoline and diesel, which are normally deadly to people. Amazingly all these virulent "foods" have not harmed her at all. According to the Heilongjiang Daily, this 46 year old woman, Cheng Shumei, lives in Datong Village of Honggang District, Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province. Every villager there knows Cheng for her astonishing eating habits. Cheng Shumei said that she has been fond of pungent odors since she was a child. She used to work for the village by spraying pesticide. That was when she found she liked the smell of pesticide. She also liked to smell gasoline and diesel. Whenever she had the chance, she would sniff gasoline or diesel cans and enjoy the odors. One day in 1995, a neighbor went to her home by motorcycle. The strong gasoline odor gave Cheng Shumei a strong craving. She could not refrain herself from smelling the odor, so she obtained a can for herself and kept it at home. Later, when simply smelling the gasoline was not satiating enough, she could not help but take a drink. Thus Cheng began a habit that she cannot stop. Cheng says, "The smell of the gasoline is simply aromatic to me, much like alcohol is to men." Cheng told the reporter that at the beginning she drank gasoline on the sly. At that time she had to find excuses to ask her neighbors for gasoline, and hid the bottle in the corner of her house. Later, when gasoline became more difficult to obtain, she switched to diesel which was easier to get as her family had purchased a tractor for farming. Surprisingly, Cheng has developed a refined taste for diesel. She can tell the quality of the diesel by the taste. "I can tell if the diesel is purified once I taste it," Chen said. Cheng said that she has to eat HCH 20-30 times a day, a mouthful at a time. Often times, she carries a pack of powder with her so that she can eat it whenever she feels like it. Knowing that it is lethal pesticide, Cheng tried to quit. But if she lives without it for even a single day, her chronic hiccups return. "In the past
few years, I have been poisoned five or six times, with the most recent
time only a few days ago," Cheng Shumei said. On that particular
night, her craving for HCH was extremely strong. She sneaked into
the storage room to satiate her craving, and ingested a lot of HCH
powder. Soon she became dizzy and feverish, and her head felt heavy.
But she recovered after getting some sleep.. Back CHINA – Qiao Songju was the first person to report a bird flu outbreak to authorities in China. He was recently sentenced to three years and six months in prison and fined 30,000 yuan (approximately US$3,623) on charges of fraud and blackmail. On July 7, Qiao said in court, "The Gaoyou court judgment is unjust!" He also said that he would appeal to a higher court. Qiao notified the Gaoyou City Agricultural Department in Jiangsu Province about the bird flu case last October. The Chinese Communist Party's Central TV selected him as the 2005 newsmaker of the year because he was the first person to report bird flu. However, he was detained by the Gaoyou police in November and formally arrested in early December. On March 29, 2006, he was charged with fraud and extortion. According to Xinmin Evening News, Qiao's sister, who accompanied him to court, stated that what the witnesses said was all rumors and hearsay. They had no specific evidence. She said she would appeal to a higher court for her brother and she also planned to appeal to the central government in Beijing. She suspected that the sentence was unjust because of her brother's report on the bird flu outbreak last October. Public Outrage When Qiao was first detained on November 24, 2005, many people commented on the internet that local authorities were seeking revenge on Qiao because he reported the bird flu outbreak. There have been more than one thousand comments posted on Net Yi, a popular internet BBS site. Some internet users said that the charge was completely fabricated. They criticized the Chinese communist authorities, saying their aim is "warning people not to report [politically sensitive information]. It is said, 'to execute one is a warning to one hundred.' In China, people
who expose unfavorable information to authorities or media are often
mistreated. One example is that of military doctor Jiang Yanyong,
who revealed Beijing's SARS outbreak in 2003 to Time Magazine. He
was put under house arrest for eight months and still has travel restrictions.
Back Mr. Zhang Tianlian promotes Attorney Gao Zhisheng's new book God is Fighting Shoulder to Shoulder with Us. (The Epoch Times) Recently, numerous major breaking news stories on Chinese politics have been in the headlines. On surface they seem quite complicated, but they are connected deeply through a common background. Zhang Tianliang, an Epoch Times columnist and well-known commentator, believes that only from the perspectives of Falun Gong, the publication of the editorial series The Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, and the increasing wave of resignations from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), can we see through the maze of China's politics. In this article, Zhang Tianliang uses these three threads to show us how to untangle some of these diverse events: 1. Falun Gong
is the Key to the Power Struggle within the CCP 2. Hu Jintao Consolidates
Power The biggest counterpunch from Jiang's side was to launch a new anti-Falun Gong website in a rush before July 1. There is no middle road for Hu Jintao. He either chooses to be like Emperor Constantine was to the Christians or Jiang Zemin when it comes to the saving of the Chinese people. This insightful
interview is worth reading in its entirety. Back "Have you quit from the communist party?" This is now a popular "greeting" in China. Of all the irritants that bother the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), three are viewed as potentially deadly both by the regime itself and the general public: 1) the Nine Commentaries; 2) the movement to renounce the CCP, and 3) organ harvesting from live bodies. At present voices are raised high in exposing and condemning the CCP's human rights abuses. There are wide spread reports telling of rights advocacy, the truth about the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989, and the persecution against Falun Gong and other religious groups. But before such protests inside and outside China evolve into a united, strong, and overwhelming force, the CCP is still able to dodge them by assuming the posture of "a dead hog is not afraid of boiling water" or "I am the thug, so who am I afraid of." Nonetheless, no matter how much the CCP has invested in creating a smoke screen and silencing public opinion, the Nine Commentaries, renouncing the CCP, and organ harvesting from live bodies are high hurdles that it will never be able to overcome. These three hurdles, about which there is no room for bargaining, directly threaten to destroy all foundations, both inside and outside of China, for the CCP's survival. Three Events Join Forces While the Nine Commentaries lay bare the nature of CCP as an evil cult, renouncing the CCP redresses the human heart. The continuous spread of the Nine Commentaries and over 11 million withdrawals from communist organizations represent a spontaneous shaking of what people had previously believed as they make a clean break from the communist regime. The Nine Commentaries and the renunciations are thus most feared by the CCP. Now, the Canadian International Independent Investigation Group has formally applied for permission to enter China and conduct their own investigation into the organ harvesting allegations. It is thus not possible for the CCP to keep silent in China. Since the CCP sought to focus people's attention on Sujiatun where the CCP has cleaned up all the evidence, it felt that revealing limited information about Sujiatun to the Chinese people should be within its control. It has avoided the existence of the request. Since that time, This report has been issued...It is true!...These atrocities have been documented from various interviews with doctors and other hospital personnel. The noose is tightening
around the neck of the CCP, and all who do its bidding would do far
better by coming clean than putting their faith in flimsy lies that
will never save them from the inevitable consequences of their crimes.
Back In the past, it only happened in the movies that a husband, thinking his wife had been unfaithful, would resort to paternity testing to prove his suspicions. Nowadays however, paternity testing is quite common. The Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences performed genetic testing of 3,000 fathers and their children and found non-paternity in 680 cases. This is an exclusion rate of 22.6 percent – 7.6 percent higher than last year. According to the Beijing Morning Post, the number of paternity tests is increasing by 20 percent each year. In more populated areas like Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces, the number of people requesting DNA testing increases by 40 to 50 percent yearly. The exclusion rate is also high – it was 30 percent in Guangzhou city alone. Deng Yajun, Director of the Judiciary Evidence Verification Center in BGI, said that the majority of people who request such testing are those in white-collar jobs and with high incomes. If paternity testing was made available in rural areas, it is predicted that the exclusion rate could be nearly 50 percent, based on past test results of people from rural areas. On June 30, 2006, Mr. Zhao broke down and cried bitterly in the Verification Center in BGI when he learned that he wasn't the father of his 8-year-old son. Deng said such a scene is not unusual. "Suspicion is the number one reason husbands want to have such tests," according to Deng. In over 75 percent of the cases Deng handled, it was the husband who brought the children in. Most of their wives didn't know about the testing. Some of the wives agreed to the testing but "never showed up." Deng also said that most of the husbands did not have any evidence to prove that their wives had cheated on them. They just had suspicions. In cases where wives brought children in for testing, they mostly wanted to prove their innocence. Increasingly, mothers arrive with samples of their children's and husband's hair for DNA testing. An expert from the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences explained this phenomenon. Paternity testing is conducted because of suspicion and distrust. For a woman, even if the testing proved that the child was her husband's, she would always be under the shadow of distrust. A person's loyalty cannot be determined by a one-time test. The fundamental solution is for society to demonstrate restraint and for morality to increase. Back Who
is North Korea Really Trying to Impress With Its Missiles? Back North Korea chose America's Independence Day, Bush's 60th birthday, and the date when the U.S. launched its Discovery space shuttle, to test-fire at least seven missiles, including the improved Taepodong-II which is thought to be capable of reaching the United States. The event caused immediate anger around the world and may lead to dramatic changes in international situations, especially United States-China relationships. In defiance of warnings from the U.S., including the significant military exercise on and off Guam, Kim's selection of the U.S. Independence Day and Bush's 60th birthday to fire a long-range missile with the capability to reach the U.S. was a way to flex its military muscles at the U.S. and at the same time impress Beijing and thereby build up credit in Beijing's eyes. Kim received two billion dollars from Hu Jintao last year, so his actions are squandering Chinese taxpayers' money. Kim, however, didn't fail Beijing's expectations. Along with Iran, a guest of honor at the Conference of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, North Korea confronted the U.S. in an effort to please Beijing. Now the communist regime on the Korean Peninsula has accumulated enough credits to claim reimbursement and ask for more aid in the future. China has been a long-time supporter of North Korea. On the surface, the six-party talks stalled because Pyongyang has been playing tricks. In fact, Pyongyang has always been Beijing's pawn in its game with the U.S. Through nearly six years of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program, Beijing scored four diplomatic points. First, it accumulated its political capital for its long-term game with the U.S. by openly aiding and supporting North Korea in the name of promoting six-party talks. Second, it eased its domestic crisis by pressuring the U.S to compromise on issues of human rights. Third, it strengthened its strategic position and influence in East Asia by playing host to the six-party talks, a gathering that involves important nations in that region. Fourth, it has so far succeeded in threatening peace in East Asia and the U.S. by employing delaying tactics—allowing for neither conclusion nor failure in the efforts to end nuclear crisis in North Korea. Not long ago, at the Conference of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Beijing extended an invitation to the Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who had claimed that he would erase Israel from the map. Beijing honored this madman as a guest in a scheme to play the East against the West. North Korea's missile tests encouraged and colluded with Iran, a state that has refused to stop its uranium-enrichment program for nuclear weapons. Washington should see through Beijing's intention to confront the U.S. on two fronts. The repeated failures of North Korea's missile tests highlight the technical problems the state still faces, especially the inaccuracies in its medium-and long-range missiles. At the same time, they also provide an opportunity for other states to reassess their stance and adjust their alliances. Back |
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