Saturday, July 19, 2008

The Olympic Crisis of 2008

Op/Ed Diary Entry by John Kusumi

They can't hide in August.

America's mainstream news media is in a pickle. As the Olympics approach and attention goes more and more to Communist China, the situation will serve to "blow their cover." Today marks nine years since Communist China began its crackdown of persecution against those Chinese who practice Falun Gong. Observant Americans will remember that mainstream news provided coverage at the beginning of the crackdown -- and, have never followed up in the nine years since then.

When anything is given a name, it takes on a life of its own. Some names make it into the news, but then seem to be one-hit wonders. That's an illusion -- there is always more follow up that they could do about newsworthy names and related events. It should be remarkable how often a story arises and a television anchorman promises, "We'll continue to follow that story..." but then it drops out of the news. I suppose that "follow that story" is a social pleasantry, something like "I am fine," said when somebody asks "How are you?"

If we scratched the surface, I believe that plenty of Americans are not "fine," but they always say they are. That is a white lie that is necessarily said in order to get along with other people. Similarly, anchormen act like they are very concerned about the various stories which cross their desks -- but, they're really just saying that because it's their job. I was making the point that the Falun Gong crackdown was a name in the news, and it will be again.

However, in surfacing again it may leave America's mainstream news media mortified. Why? Because nine years of inattention have served to hide or cover up a genocide, a crime against humanity, and a modern day holocaust. For nine years, news organizations have conducted "business as usual" with genocide folded into baseline expectations as something unremarkable.

Could America's newsrooms get any more bent, craven, and depraved? No! --Here is the true location of the "corrupt cabal" that pulls the strings in America. Some would say that the national network anchormen are merely sock puppets and managed by a corrupt cabal, but we should remember that the star anchorman usually *is* the managing editor of the news broadcast. It may be that when Americans turn on their TVs, that instead of watching sock puppets we are really watching the puppet masters. If we are looking for corruption, why suspect only invisible people? Network anchormen are both visible and profoundly corrupt, sick, and twisted people.

They think that any crisis is merely business as usual, and that they can be chipper, cheerful, and appear unflappable while the collapse of civilization occurs. "Don't worry, be happy" has got to be their motto, along with "protect the status quo," even when the status quo has deteriorated into death, destruction, madness, and mayhem. In that cirucmstance, what is really meant by "protect the status quo?" --Clearly, we can perform word substitution and arrive at the sentence, "protect the death, destruction, madness, and mayhem."

We could wonder what is so attractive about death, destruction, madness and mayhem. --Ah, but there is another open secret at work. Behind the scenes, there is also looting, profiteering, and opportunism that occurs on the part of corporate crooks, white collar criminals, defense contractors, and the like. Because that is also a part of the status quo, then "protect the status quo" also means "protect the looting and the gravy train."

So, in the interest of keeping a gravy train rolling, they have avoided looking deeply into news about the human rights abuses of Communist China. To expose all of that persecution, and harvesting of human organs from prisoners of conscience -- a practice that ranks right up there with Nazi medical experiments performed on prisoners -- well, that exposure seems threatening to two groups: Chinese Communists, and network anchormen.

It really exposes the modus operandi of the American news media, to note that it has overlooked genocide routinely. And yet, the Olympics are about to happen in Communist China, and it is time to draw back the curtain and to show what is really happening there.

A true expose will certainly vindicate my organization, the China Support Network, and others who have been documenting the tragedy and the travesty of human rights abuse in China. "They can't hide in August," is what I have begun to say about the American MSM (mainstream media).

At OpEd News where I commonly publish, I am making this a "diary entry" rather than an "article," as a way of softening the blow for American anchormen. In a diary entry, I feel at leave to "get cute," although I want to share my story of Friday, July 18 2008. First, for the sake of cuteness, let's make a list (suitable for office water coolers, or home refrigerator magnets) of the seven priorities of American anchormen.

The Seven Priorities of US Network News Anchors
-----------------------------------------------
1.) Death
2.) Destruction
3.) Madness
4.) Mayhem
5.) Looting
6.) The Gravy Train
7.) News
====================================

Perhaps I am too optimistic. Perhaps priority #7 is Britney Spears or "white chicks in trouble." Perhaps news comes in at priority #8. However, let me leave behind my list unedited. Reflecting my innate optimism, news is priority #7 there.

I am not the only one who is aligned with the Chinese pro-democracy movement, and sympathetic to Falun Gong, who is expressing concerns about the news media in public. On Friday, July 18, there was a gathering before the Washington Monument. It should have been newsworthy, and not simply because I gave a speech.

The program included many notable speakers and Canadian human rights lawyer Dr. Clive Ansley was among them. His eloquent speech included remarks that range from important to precious. First, the important ones:

"We have been witnessing a full scale genocide perpetrated by the Communist Party of China over the last nine years against Falun Gong and all Falun Gong practitioners in China. What's going on in China, the genocide in China today includes the maintenance of herds of human beings made available for killing on demand as the need for transplant organs arises. And so, Falun gong practitioners arrested in China are routinely tested for their blood type, their tissue type, and so forth. And when a computer match occurs, they are simply selected; put on the operating table; their heart, their lungs, their kidneys, their livers, their corneas, and even their skin are harvested.

"Mia Farrow focused the world's attention on the Darfur genocide by referring to the upcoming Olympics as the 'Genocide Olympics.' This was, as I say, an indirect genocide being supported by China. Richard Gere has focused the attention of the world on the brutal suppression of Tibetans."

--And now, I transcribe the remarks that I find precious:

"But the pathetic and derelict North American media have systematically ignored the direct genocide that China has been perpetrating for the last nine years -- genocide directed against a component group in its own society."

--There you have it. "Pathetic and derelict" is the description for the news media, rendered by this attorney who runs the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong. It's nice that I was preceded by such a warm up speaker; it meant that I didn't have to kick the news media as hard in my own speech. Within his remarks, did he also call them "willfully blind, morally bankrupt, and profoundly ignorant"? --You can decide for yourself if he applied those words to the media. Here is more transcript from Clive Ansley:

"We would certainly hope that Western leaders would not attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Sadly, it appears that several prominent Western leaders don't seem to care very much about the company they keep in public. And in the face of the opportunity to have a photograph taken standing shoulder to shoulder with the butchers of Beijing, the people responsible for the Tiananmen massacre as well as for this genocide; some of these leaders seem to think that little things like genocide and forced organ harvesting pale into insignificance.

"As perhaps 100,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been murdered on the operating tables in China, there has been hardly a murmur in the North American media. Over the past nine years, the most barbaric atrocity in modern history has been systematically carried out in China, and it has provoked a thunderous silence in the media and among most North American politicians. This is the holocaust all over again. The Beijing Olympics is the Berlin Olympics of 1936 all over again.

"Those who do not recognize this parallel are limited to the willfully blind; the morally bankrupt; and the profoundly ignorant."

[...]

"And I want to end by coming back to this report -- 'Bloody Harvest' -- by David Matas and David Kilgour. And, I submit to you that this report MUST be addressed seriously and extensively by the North American media.

"The credibility of the authors of this report is simply not in question -- David Matas is perhaps the leading human rights lawyer in Canada; David Kilgour is a former Secretary of State for far eastern affairs in Canada; both are lawyers; and they have impeccable credentials.

"This is not coming from the National Enquirer or Fox News; this is coming from sources that are simply unimpeachable. And given the horrendous nature of the allegations -- and the impeccable sources which have produced the report -- this cannot be legitimately ignored by legitimate journalists. It must be debated.

"The journalists are entitled to dispute the methods of the Kilgour-Matas research; they have not done so.

"[The journalists are] entitled to criticize the nature of the evidence; they have not done so.

"[The journalists are] entitled to produce contrary evidence; they have not done so.

"But the legitimate media is not entitled to leave their readers and viewers uninformed of credible and compelling evidence of a new holocaust."

--While it's an excellent prospective stopping point in my tract, Clive Ansley became my warm up speaker. Soon enough it was my turn to take the podium, and here I go--

Kusumi remarks of July 18 2008, transcribed:

=================================

Well, thank you for the introduction -- I'm very happy to be here with you; it's the occasion to celebrate that the tuidang [Quit the Party campaign] has reached 40 million people -- responding to the call to quit from the Communist Party. And I will say that I have stood with --not only Falun Gong practitioners-- but others who are persecuted from Communist China.

And that my organization has done so since 1989, when it was the occasion of the "June 4" massacre. --At that time, there was an uprising in progress. The people of China had already decided that it was time to come out to the streets; and to insist upon reform; and to have change for China.

And now in this year, we have --in America-- a presidential candidate, Barack Obama, who always speaks about change. But I can tell you some things that perhaps he will not, now. --Namely that change is coming to China.

There is this enormous wave of revulsion -- of moral outrage -- as we look at the tyranny; at the abuses; at the criminal record of the Communist Party in China. And that moral outrage has been growing as Chinese citizens have read the jiuping [Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party] and as they have responded, by going to tuidang, either on the web or through one of the volunteer centers. And now, the counter has reached 40 million!

And this is an interesting phenomenon, but it's also one that cannot continue forever. In other words, a change is coming -- because, now it's 40 million, and then what is it to become? 80 million? 120 million? --You cannot have more resignations than the actual number of people in the party. So, as this process continues, you are disintegrating the Communist Party. You are taking the party down.

And so, China has change that is in the wind; and, the sounds of that change include the sounds of our rally here today.

The forthcoming change is basically inevitable; the leadership does not know how to talk about it; and even in the United States, the news media does not know how to talk about it.

--And yet, they will be very challenged next month because the Olympics are supposed to go off smoothly in Beijing. It may turn out that the occasion is not as smooth; and, not as unobstructed; as the top Communists would like.

But we know that they have their occasion; they will present to the world this sort of propaganda festival at the Olympics. And yet, it means that the focus is on China, and it is time to talk about the persecuted and the persecution in China.

How will they talk their way through the Olympics and not speak about the Falun Gong? They must! They must do so! We have heard it today from other speakers: the American news media is derelict to be ignoring the Falun Gong persecution.

But they cannot -- in good conscience, they cannot do an upright job of coverage of the Olympics without speaking of Falun Gong. And so, I think that change is coming even in our campaigning! In the way that we work in this issue -- I think that next month in August is the month when the mainstream national news media of America must present the Falun Gong persecution; must face the facts; square with the audiences; and tell people what has been happening in China.

I'm looking forward to that; the truth will have its day. And, you and I together in this campaign, we have been pushing -- we have been insisting that the truth must have its day. I believe there is cause for optimism. I believe that now it will. So, thank you very much; I appreciate it; and

change is coming to China!


The first Generation X presidential candidate, John Kusumi was the 18-year-old for U.S. President in 1984 (Independent / Practical Idealist). He is the founder and Director Emeritus of the China Support Network, formed with fellow Americans in 1989 to respond to the tragedy of China's Tiananmen Square massacre. He is also a leader of the Freedom First, Olympics Second Coalition -- a combination of many groups that are opposed to Beijing's Olympic Games unless China first is free. He is also a columnist, podcaster, public speaker and advisor to leading Chinese dissidents, with material at Kusumi.com.

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

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