Jeremiah offers a quick fix solution.

Meanwhile, I can’t access any typepad sites here in Beijing, though I could last week. Wikipedia, too, has been on and off. A constant game of cat and mouse….

It’s a brilliant strategy. I’m sure all the reporters who flock to Beijing for the Olympics will be enchanted to discover how many sites they can’t access.

Still too deep in work to come up with a killer post. I’m working on one now, but can’t say when it’ll be ready.

Update: I see Sam has already reported on the blocking of his typepad site.

Just read it.

Ah, the sweet scent of reform.

This is, quite simply, the scariest article yet about the poisonous products being exported from China to your supermarket shelves. It’s about the willful efforts of Chinese companies to block the FDA’s frantic attempts to trace the source of the poison and cut it off. You have to read it to believe it. No wonder it’s featured as the No. 1 leading story in today’s Sunday Times. It’s a story of dogged detective work, cover-ups, corruption and death. Tremendous kudos to the Times for having the fortitude to pin this amazing story down in such detail. Again, it is simply unbelievable. Don’t miss the part about Sinochem refusing to give the investigators the phone number for the company it knew was poisoning people. Is this the best the world’s next great superpower can do? Yes, it’s a developing country, but these are rich, educated businessmen and party officials indulging in outright sleaze. And, in effect, murder.

This is what good journalism should be. It’s thorough, step by step and backed up with lots of names and quotes. And it reads like a thriller. Amazing.

No excerpts – you have to read it.

This isn’t the only China-focused site where threads magically transform into circuses. Check that thread.

Via eswn.

No other journalist has done more to bang the drum for the “China threat” meme than Bill Gertz of the Moonie Times. Today he’s outdone himself in a story that would make any serious journalist blush. China, he states matter-of-factly, is arming the world’s terrorists and the US knows it but doesn’t say a word because China is good for big business. Of course, no one will go on the record about it, and he doesn’t seem to have asked anyone in the administration whether it’s true or not.

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.

The Washington Times reported June 5 that Chinese-made HN-5 anti-aircraft missiles were being used by the Taliban.

According to the officials, the Iranians, in buying the arms, asked Chinese state-run suppliers to expedite the transfers and to remove serial numbers to prevent tracing their origin. China, for its part, offered to transport the weapons in order to prevent the weapons from being interdicted.
…
The Bush administration has been trying to hide or downplay the intelligence reports to protect its pro-business policies toward China, and to continue to claim that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism. U.S. officials have openly criticized Iran for the arms transfers but so far there has been no mention that China is a main supplier.

Just look at the first sentence. He doesn’t say that unnamed sources are alleging there’s new intelligence proving China’s ties to the terrorists. No, he simply states that it’s a fact that new intelligence proves it is so. That settles that.

Is it true? I s China arming the Taliban and the Iraqi insurgents? It may be true, but nowhere does Gertz seriously explore the question the way a real journalist would. It’s written from a thoroughly ideological standpoint and, as usual, its goal is clearly to rally the neocon nutcases. Gertz was clearly successful, as the story was promptly picked up by Free Republic and other wingnut blogs.

Gertz does quote an ex-State Department official now at the Heritage Foundation, John Tkacik, but if you look carefully, nowhere does Tkacik say that China is arming terrorists. No one from the government is asked whether there is any truth to the allegation. It’s pure innuendo and speculation.

In the most vile example of journamalistic abuse, Gertz boldly states the following:

Iran is adding Chinese-made small boats armed with anti-ship cruise missiles to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps navy that can be used in attacks on shipping in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, according to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).

Reading this, you are led to believe the ONI spokesperson had made some reference to China. Only he never did. Here’s the actual words:

“Iran still states that the [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps navy] will employ swarming tactics in a conflict,” ONI analyst Robert Althage said in an e-mail, noting that the paramilitary organization “continues to add boats armed with anti-ship cruise missiles, such as the FL-10, to its inventory.”

Gertz then says the FL-10’s are made and supplied by China. So you see, it’s Gertz who is referencing China, not Althage. He has misled readers into believing ONI singled out China when it never happened. Gertz is using a cheap journamalistic trick to make it seem that way. This is gutter journalism and proves all my worst fears about Gertz.

It amazes me that Gertz can get away with this. Whenever you hear him cited as a source, be very suspicious Every word he says must be taken with a huge grain of sea salt.

Thanks to commenter Keir for bringing this shocking story to my attention. I’d heard for years about slave labor in many parts of China but never saw much solid evidence. I did know of people who basically were paid only with food and lodging and who had nowhere else to go, and who were, for all intents and purposes, slaves. But today’s breaking news is about the real thing, and it’s made uglier by the involvement of a son of a party official. Some of the slaves were beaten to death, the article says.

It’s past 10 at night and I’m still in the office and can’t give this more than a moment. But it’s one of the worst stories I’ve read about massive, pre-meditated abuse here in a longtime.

Tens of thousands of police raided brick kilns across central China this week in a hunt for more than 1,000 children kidnapped and sold into slave labour in a revival of abuses associated with the poverty of the 1930s and 1940s.

The scandal involving negligent law enforcement and even collusion between government officials and slave masters burst into the open only after the domestic media ran a series of hard-hitting investigative reports.

The children, as well as many adult workers, were guarded by fierce dogs and thugs who beat their prisoners at will and were forced to work 16 hours a day with little food. They lived in squalid conditions, sleeping on filthy quilts on layers of bricks inside brickworks working at full pace to keep up with the demands of China’s construction boom.

The doors were sealed from the outside with padlocks and the windows barred with pieces of wood to prevent their escape. Some had festering wounds on their black feet and around their waists, apparently from burns in the kilns.

Some were even beaten to death. Zhao Yanbing, the foreman who fled a brickworks where 31 men were rescued a few days ago, described on state television how he had beaten a man in his late 50s for not working hard enough. “His performance was so bad, so I thought that I would frighten him a bit. When I raised the shovel over him I never thought that he would get up and confront me, so I slammed the shovel down on his head.” The man never got up again.

And now some will say you can’t believe it because it’s in the Western media. Sorry, but it’s being told in the Chinese media as well. It’s true, and it’s revolting.

Check it out.

You might want to rush to blame this all on the questionable source, as some tried to do recently with the NY Times report on Chinese toothpaste. Only this time the source is…China.

Since this story is blocked in China, I’ll paste it all. (By the way, Peking Duck is currently partially blocked in China due to some keyword in the Kristof thread below. Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out what word is causing the trouble and fix it.)

Chinese investigators say nearly 60 hospitals and pharmacies in north-eastern China have been using fake blood protein in patients’ drips. Albumin, or plasma protein, is used to treat patients suffering from shock and burns and during open-heart surgery.

Experts suggest that the fake product could be life-threatening for those already in a serious condition. The scandal is the latest to expose weaknesses in China ‘s regulation of food and drug standards. The food and drug administration in the north-eastern state of Jilin found 18 hospitals and more than 30 pharmacies sold or were selling false batches of the albumin.

“There was no element of protein, so it could not perform its intended function,” said the administration’s deputy director, Xu Fei. “These were out-and-out fakes,” he added.

Officials did not say whether anyone had died or fallen ill through using the false protein, though one Chinese newspaper said it had led to one death. China Central Television cited an official saying those making the false albumin were making a 300% profit, assisted by shortages of the genuine product.

The administration said its investigations had “effectively cleaned up the market”. China has launched a nationwide clampdown on counterfeit products after a series of scandals. In one of the worst cases 13 babies died from malnutrition after being fed fake baby milk.

Last month the country’s top food and drug regulator was sentenced to death for taking bribes to approve medicines not properly tested for safety. Toothpaste, anti-malarial drugs and pet food have also been found to contain contaminated or fake ingredients. The tainted toothpaste has been blamed for dozens of deaths in Panama.

The US and EU have expressed concern over food and drug imports from China , and have pressed Beijing to improve its oversight.

I realize the US has been named for selling salmonella-tainted fish or whatever. It really doesn’t compare to companies getting together to plot the sale of fake health products to rake in faster, easier profits, knowing their greed can kill people. The tainted infant formula was the crowning example – 40 separate businesses connived to boost profits by, in effect, endangering the lives of babies. I guess you have to admire their sheer chutzpah, as you also damn them to hell.

A column by Nicholas Kristof [Word file] that is directly relevant to some of our recent threads which have, one after another disintegrated into a back and forth – “China did something bad” countered by “Your government did bad things, too, so it’s hypocritical to point a finger at China.” And on and on and on.

Kristof is consistently my least favorite Times columnist. (Though Dowd is a close second nowadays.) Still, this column is well worth reading. The comparison between the plight of a Chinese woman fighting for fairness and an Al Jazeera journalist rotting in Guantanamo is chilling.

Bush has deprived America of what was – after we stopped exterminating the Indians and ended slavery and Jim Crow, and after the Tuskegee Experiment and Kent State, etc., etc. – our moral high ground. Can we ever gain it back? Can we ever talk about human rights in China without having Guantanamo shoved down our throats? And not without some justification, I might add. (Don’t believe me? Read the Kristof article.) What a f*cking shame.

Sinosplice hacked and unavailable. [Update: fixed]

Sinocidal blocked in China. [Update: Still blocked]

What next?

Update: Well, the answer didn’t take too long to materialize. Another of my favorite sites hacked. [Update: I removed the hyperlink because a commenter said when she clicked it a virsu tried to infect her computer. It’s Bokane.org. UPDATE: fixed] Shit, what’s going on?