Adam over at PRC News tells us (toward the end of the post) “…China has just begun accepting people with AIDS as regular people. Very telling.”

Very telling indeed. Tell it to the villagers referred to in the post below — the ones whose skulls were cracked open by the increasingly tolerant and magnanimoius CCP and its hired thugs.

I guess nothing can shock me about China anymore, particularly in regard to its psychotic approach to AIDS. As Conrad once posted, the government first infected its populace (via contaminated blood and no controls), then blamed them, then beat them to a pulp, literally.

The latest article from the WaPo shows just how depraved conditions in China truly are, and I choose the adjective carefully.

Here are the opening paragraphs, but read it all; it only gets worse:

XIONGQIAO, China — Xiong Jinglun was lying in bed on the night of the raid, resting his frail, AIDS-weakened body when the shouting outside jarred him awake. The 51-year-old farmer struggled to his feet and shuffled out of his shack to investigate, but someone had cut off the electricity in the village, and it was difficult to see in the pitch dark.

Suddenly, several men wearing riot gear and military fatigues surrounded him, struck his head with a nightstick and knocked him to the ground, he recalled. Xiong begged them to stop hitting him, crying out that he was an old man, that he had AIDS. But he heard one of the assailants shout: “Beat them! Beat them even if they have AIDS!”

A few days earlier, residents of this AIDS-stricken Chinese village had staged a protest demanding better medical care, rolling two government vehicles into a ditch to vent their frustration. Now, local authorities here in central Henan province, about 425 miles northwest of Shanghai, were answering their appeal for help. But instead of doctors, they sent the police.

More than 500 officers, local officials and hired thugs stormed the muddy hamlet of 600 residents on the night of June 21, shouting threats, smashing windows and randomly pummeling people who got in their way, witnesses said. Police jailed 18 villagers and injured more than a dozen others, including an 8-year-old boy who tried to defend his sick mother.

I really savor the posts I read now and then from idealistic dilettantes (something I can be at times myself) who defend the CCP at any cost, no matter what they do. I’d love to hear them defend this. Of course, they’ll say as usual that it is isolated and atypical and they “need more information” before they can comment.

The key to understanding the depravity of the CCP on the AIDS scandal comes mid-way down:

The leadership is reluctant to allow an open discussion about AIDS in part because it fears it would be blamed for the epidemic. Hundreds of thousands of poor farmers like Xiong contracted the virus by selling blood in the early 1990s at state hospitals and private clinics run by local officials and their friends. These programs often used unsanitary collection methods, including a process in which blood was mixed in a centrifuge to remove plasma and then reinjected into donors

Can everyone get that? Can the defenders of the CCP process this? Can anyone at all find a reason to defend what is happening?

I want the non-believers to visualize what happened, to see themselves protesting a gross injustice from the government, and for that being beaten and arrested and treated like animals — all because that very same government helped them contract AIDS.

After several days without a response, five villagers went to the provincial capital, Zhengzhou. But officials there would not see them and instead contacted local authorities, who had the men arrested. Police beat them, tied them up and hauled them back to a local jail, said Xiong Changmin, 31, one of the representatives.

That night, police launched the raid on Xiongqiao. A senior county police official, who asked to be identified only by his surname, Jia, confirmed that about 500 men participated in the raid and that they arrested 13 villagers. He said those detained had attacked a local official. But asked whether his men beat up people in Xiongqiao, he replied, “I’m not clear about that.”

I have referred to China as “the other Evil Empire,” and I stick to it. If we are imposing trade sanctions against Cuba, we should be doing 10 times more when it comes to China. Two years ago I was the government’s biggest sympathizer, and now I am and always will be a very harsh critic. Those of you who remain dazzled by the pyrotechnic display of China’s miraculous growth and prosperity, be forewarned — when the foundation is rotten, the collapse of the entire structure is inevitable. Just pray you’re not around when that day comes.

The Singapore headlines are a bit more intense than usual today:

Singaporeans’ miss the smiles of the late Iranian Siamese twins

Lee Kuan Yew’s son is being groomed to be the next Prime Minister (no surprise there)

The Singapore junior college debate team won great scores

Some mobile customers are unhappy with their phone numbers

Parents should choose primary schools close to their homes

And that’s the way it is here in Singapore, where it sometimes gets so deathly dull that even the little flies on the wall tuck in their wings and go to sleep. I think I’ll go home and watch some paint dry.

What’s with the Asia Pacific bloggers lately? Preston has literally evaporated, Conrad’s been silent for three days, Phil for 5 days (!), and my own posting has been sporadic at best. At least BWG is still at it, but who wants to read about Tai Chi all the time?

What will it take to rekindle our passion and restore our lost lustre? God, what a tragedy…. Taxi, can you drop me off at Beijing please? Yes, that’s what I said — Beijing. At least there’s stuff to write about over there!

Actually, a few things:

1. Apparently the Something Awful site has been around a long time, but I just stumbled onto it during lunch today and for half an hour I was fighting to suppress my laughs as colleagues wondered what I’d been smoking. It’s right up there with the funniest things of all time.

2. Also well circulated is news of the George W. Bush Aviator Doll. I really thought it was a joke at first. It’s not. And that’s not funny. In fact, it’s reallly, really scary.

I went to Google and typed aviator + “george w. bush” and was overwhelmed by all the linksl some of which are among the funniest I’ve ever seen. Like this and this. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.

Browsing once again through Richard Webster’s great site, I was directed to another site, one of the most indispensable I’ve found, The Memory Hole.

The Memory Hole specializes in keeping track of the government’s Orwellian practice of very quietly removing information from the Internet and elsewhere. It is also in a league of its own when it comes to looking at arcane government reports and spotting the enormous story hiding in an obscue footnote that has gone totally unnoticed by the mass media.

You can browse this site for hours. It’s not only the government that’s called to account, but the media as well. Further evidence that as more and more information becomes available, it only becomes more and more difficult to ascertain what is true.

Interesting article on areas in China where people live well into their 90s, as did their parents and grandparents before them, with many living past 100.

It seems the key trick is avoiding fat and protein and eating lots of savory things like bitter gourds and soy beans. Somehow I can’t see many Americans going for that….

Can anyone, ever, believe anything that Bush says, has said and will say? Everyday we hear of new duplicities, half-truths and outright lies, including this latest report that his much-touted working of “miracles” (“No Child Left Behind”)for the Texas educational system was a lot of malarkey.

Via Mark Kleiman — don’t miss his scathing analysis of the story.

I was shocked to find a right-wing message board that is enjoying a veritable orgy of glee as it mocks the French in the horrors of death by heatwave.

Sample:

Wow. Only 98 degrees and 3,000 people die. That’s not very indicative of a robust gene pool. No wonder the French didn’t want to get involved in Iraq – they’d wither in the sun.

Ha ha ha. And we wonder why everybody outside the USA hates Americans?

[Via Silt]

It appears Idi Amin (for those of us who remember who he is) is having trouble finding a kidney donor. If you think you might be compatible with him (kidney-wise), he’s hanging out in a hospital in Saudi Arabia.