Say what you will about the evil cult. One thing that can’t be denied is their understanding of media relations and their ability to catapult controversial and emotionally wrenching stories into the eye of the public around the world.

When news of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China hit the media in Canada last week, it marked yet another victory for the group’s members in bringing attention to an incident the Chinese government denies exists.

The news was relayed to the media through a press conference on Parliament Hill. Two high profile individuals, former MP and cabinet minister David Kilgour, and David Matas, a Winnipeg-based international human rights lawyer, released a gruesome report accusing the Chinese government of illegally harvesting the organs of imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners in China. The report said an estimated 41,500 transplants were performed using organs of Falun Gong members who were killed while in prison between 2000 and 2005.

Not only did the success of getting major media attention highlight the plight of the high-profile Chinese group (the story was covered in all the major news media including the Globe and Mail, National Post and the CBC) but it also showed how savvy Falun Gong members in North America have become in using the media to further their objectives.

Now, whether a word of it is true or not is another story. Whenever the Wheelers make extravagant claims such as this I am automatically skeptical, based purely on their track record of, shall we say, exaggeration – just as I become skeptical when I see dazzling statistics put forward by the CCP, or claims by Bush assuring us for the umpteenth time that the Iraq insurgency has been defeated. But when it comes to PR, the FLG is doing a hell of a job, and one can only marvel at their ability to get respected Canadian officials to help do their marketing and inject their messages into mainstream media around the world.

Our little experiment in shoving democracy down the world’s throat goes up in smoke – literally.

The Kidnapping of Democracy
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: July 14, 2006

When you watch the violence unfolding in the Middle East today it is easy to feel that you’ve been to this movie before and that you know how it ends – badly. But we actually have not seen this movie before. Something new is unfolding, and we’d better understand it.

What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world. This is not a conflict about Palestinian or Lebanese prisoners in Israel. This is a power struggle within Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq over who will call the shots in their newly elected “democratic” governments and whether they will be real democracies.

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True, every word. And astonishing – no one’s noticing what’s really going on here.

Left Behind Economics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 14, 2006

I’d like to say that there’s a real dialogue taking place about the state of the U.S. economy, but the discussion leaves a lot to be desired. In general, the conversation sounds like this:

Bush supporter: “Why doesn’t President Bush get credit for a great economy? I blame liberal media bias.”

Informed economist: “But it’s not a great economy for most Americans. Many families are actually losing ground, and only a very few affluent people are doing really well.”

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Now there can be no denying China’s ascension. This is akin to nothing less than a baptism or ISO9001 certification. China’s greatness is undeniable.

Nearly a century after legendary U.S. showman Richard Ripley first came to China, the firm bearing his name plans to open one of its trademark “Believe It or Not” museums of the bizarre in Asia’s most populous nation.

Ripley visited China many times in the early 20th century, his fascination with the country stemming partly from his belief that he had been Chinese in a previous life, Ripley Entertainment president Bob Masterson said.

“Ripley loved everything about China,” said Masterson of a man whose name became synonymous for Americans with everything from odd-shaped vegetables to strange arts and crafts and weird quirks of timing. “He had a huge collection of Chinese art and a Chinese junk. He dressed in a traditional Chinese robe. And the love of his life was a Chinese woman,” Masterson told Reuters.

…Unlike other markets such as the United States, where people prefer more mundane fare such as strange arts and crafts, Ripley’s Chinese brethren go for the truly bizarre, Masterson said. He cited the firm’s previous experience with a Hong Kong museum.

“The strange and bizarre were more popular there than anything: multi-headed animals, shrunken heads from the Amazon,” he said. “Anything on the extreme side of nature — they enjoy that immensely.”

One of the most unbelievable things about the planned China museum, which the company hopes to build in a second-tier tourist city, would be the price it envisages charging for admission.

Masterson says he believes Chinese may be willing to pay 80 yuan ($10) per ticket to see the bizarre, a princely sum in a country where many still earn less than $100 a month.

80 yuan in a second-tier city?? Now that is ballsy. I guess they’re thinking of a place like Guilin, somewhere that only cash-rich tourists flock to. Whenever you see a Ripoff’s Ripley’s Believe it or Not “museum,” it’s a sure sign you’ve entered a tourist trap where they assume gullible vacationing hicks will cheerfully throw money away for some cheap thrills. (And amazingly, they do!) But after reading about the construction of the world’s biggest ferris wheel going up in Shanghai for the deranged price of $12 a ride (yes, US dollars), I guess Ripley’s knows what it’s doing, and they’ll probably make a killing.

Don’t you just hate it when bloggers put up posts day after day saying they don’t have time to post? (Don’t reply; it’s a rhetorical question.) Okay, I agree, so I won’t put up a post like that today, even though it’s true.

More information on Free Hao Wu.

A good one.

He Let the Dogs Out!
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: July 12, 2006

What better time than the dog days of summer to watch a dog-torture advocate get hounded?

As three female protesters in Abu Ghraib-style orange jumpsuits and black headscarves stood vigil in the back of the Senate Judiciary hearing room, like the supernatural chorus in “Macbeth,� William Haynes was grilled about his worthiness to ascend to the federal bench when his main claim to the promotion is complicity in letting Dick Cheney dance a jig on the Geneva Conventions.

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It looks like the Times has found a young columnist with guts. Quite interesting, if you’ve been following all the recent stories about America’s “boy’s crisis.”

What Girls Ought to Learn From Boys in ‘Crisis’
By JUDITH WARNER
Published: July 12, 2006

More on the “boy crisis�: A new report that came out yesterday from the American Council on Education has confirmed that there is a gender gap on American college campuses. It gapes the widest between African-American men and women. It is increasing, disturbingly, among low- income whites and Hispanics. It phases out as you go up the income ladder, then disappears entirely as you enter the upper middle class. (According to the report’s author, Jacqueline E. King, 52 percent of college students from the top income quartile — families earning $97,500 or more — are male.)

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No, not Iraq – my blog. (Well, Iraq, too, but this is closer to home.) Several of the comments threads are inaccessible, and at times no posts appear on the home page. If you want to discuss an issue and the comments won’t open, please go here and post a thread on the topic. I’ll post an alert on the blog to make sure everyone knows where to find the discussion.

Is there an MT expert in the house who wants to make a little extra cash fixing up my site?

Update: Now the comments appear to be working. Go figure.

Are Jenny and Ken over at Chinese Pod nervous? You can see China’s new learn-Mandarin-online site here. One of it’s first lesson plans is about Beijing Kaoya, so it must have some merit. Here’s what the media’s saying:

China launched a Web site on Saturday offering free Chinese lessons and materials to promote the study and use of the language abroad.

The site, www.linese.com (not working at press time), includes audio-visual presentations, interactive exercises and advice for teachers of Mandarin Chinese, with photographs and descriptions of cultural icons such as the Great Wall, kung fu actor Jackie Chan and basketball star Yao Ming.

Many of the exercises touch on China’s mythical and imperial past, including practice sentences such as “how can you be a hero if you are unarmed” and “I find that Tibetans like worshipping heroes”.

China is keen to expand its cultural influence along with its growing economic power, and is also setting up a network of “Confucius Institutes” around the world to promote its culture.

The site is working now, but several of the links seem temperamental (if not downright broken). I couldn’t get the Beijing duck audio to turn on, but I’ll give them some time. Surfing around the site is interesting, if a little strange (why do they have hanzi blogs listed on a learn-Mandarin site?), and I would have to say that Ken and Jenny (and John) have nothing to worry about, at least not for now.