I have no idea if the claims are correct or not, but the billboards and signs were effective at getting my son to want to overthrown the government of China. I told him he could try only after he finished college.
The Chinese woman in my old lab became very disturbed by the Falun Gong propaganda. I tried to take a middle road with her, agreeing that they were nutty but saying it didn't make sense how China was treating Tibet and Xinjiang. She got disturbed by that as well, and said traditional Tibetan society was brutal, subjugating women, punishing people by amputations, things like that. It made me realize the similarities between the US in the Old West with the Indians, and China in Tibet now.
Also, I don't know why Falun Gong decided on making a big push in Pittsburgh. For about a week, I couldn't walk to the main part of campus without somebody offering me a flyer and they had at least two moving billboards (signs on trailers pulled through the streets) going for what seemed like most of the day.
Interview with the official in charge who explains that reliance on executed prisoners has been recognized as a problem. Legislation was suggested in 2006, and passed in 2007! He helpfully points out that it took the west decades to set up ethical sourcing of organs when asked when the PRC will stop stripping convicts for parts.
FWIW, Fa/un Dafa is a wacky cult with a charismatic and wealthy founder who now lives in the US.
Leaving the cult out, I think that angle does not shed much light, here's the story of blood donation in China in the 90s. Harmful policy instituted by government quietly changed after years of harm, but no wrongdoing admitted, no officials shamed, much less punished.
FWIW, Fa/un Dafa is a wacky cult
For a wacky cult, they are very polite. Nobody shoves a flower at you while asking for a donation or screams about teh gay to the college kids or makes strange movies with Travolta.
Jamie Kenny, who tends to be my go to commentator on things Chinese (because he reads all the stuff I'm too idle to) reckons the Falun Gong organ theft stuff is pure propaganda, and he's no apologist for the regime. You could tweet him and ask why he's of that opinion. I'm sure he'd be happy to explain it.
6: Well that's interesting. The idea that FG is basically Chinese Scientology shifts my perspective considerably.
Interview with the official in charge
In charge of harvesting FG bodies for organs? It's like they're not even trying to cover it up!
They are not as greedy for money as the scientologists, but followers definitely are fed an us vs everybody else mindset. I do not think that ties with outsiders (like family members) are forbidden though.
Recordkeeping in China is made complicated by having people arrested for being in Falun dafa give some weird "I am spartacus" pseudonym, so counting prison deaths is tricky because many are effectively anonymous.
Doesn't Kieran at CT always argue that it would be more ethical to harvest the organs of executed cultists than the current American system? I'm sure it's something like that.
Again, the Falun Gong angle is IMO pointless. Chinese organ sourcing is via executed convicts, demand is growing. I do not see that it matters much which charges are used to generate large numbers of executions.
Re the interview in 4: I never thought of the brain death issue as a factor; interesting.
There are a fair number of nonchinese falun gong, or at least I know two.
I saw a great piece on Chinese real estate ghost towns last night -- hard to escape the impression that much of modern China is a house of cards.
3: Was this three or four weeks ago? They were handing out flyers downtown as well.
9: I was just writing a comment along those lines. It's the execution that's barbaric, and once that Rubicon is crossed you might as well try to help people with organ donation.
9: I'm holding out for Yggls to write that different countries have different criteria for whose organs can be harvested and under what circumstances, and that's OK.
modern China is a house of cards
And five of them are aces. Huge property bubble, but measured by CO2 emissions or steel production, PRC is the world's biggest economy.
13: I think so. Certainly it was this spring. I didn't know you were local also.
10: Well, a couple things. First of all, if the charges were literally true, that would be shocking on just a scale basis (depending, of course, on how long that 30k is spread over, but figure ~10 years max). China is execution happy, but presumably some significant number of the currently executed are actual criminals, killed for their crimes, not for their organs. But if the claims were true, then the majority of executees would be being executed for their organs, no different from cattle.
And second of all, if the bulk of Chinese executions really were of non-criminal FG members, that would be remarkable repression, no?
I don't think I articulated any of that well.
10: Is somebody with decision making authority regarding executions making money off the donated organs? I wouldn't put it beyond the weirdly corrupt Chinese government to let something like that happen.
I don't think I articulated any of that well.
I'm not sure FG is articulating things well either. My first thought on seeing their stuff was, "So you don't have a problem with the executions themselves, just the organ harvesting." That reaction might be more "me" than "them."
The important thing to remember is that just because you are being unfairly repressed doesn't mean you aren't also a wacky and potentially dangerous cult.
I do not see that it matters much which charges are used to generate large numbers of executions.
Setting aside the precise justness of the Chinese justice system, surely it makes a difference whether the Chinese set a low bar for execution - you'd hope it's at least felonies - or whether they simply choose an outgroup and start killing them for their organs, again, like cattle.
21: And just because you're a wacky and potentially dangerous cult doesn't mean that someday you won't become a respectable, mainstream religion.
China has had a fifth of the world's people for at least two thousand years. If somebody from there was going to start a respectable, mainstream religion, they'd have probably managed it by now.
to 19: Yes, of course. To 22: The number of executions matters very much, the point is that the current system creates a literal market with profit motives for executing more people.
It is in my mind a distraction to ask how many were executed as drug runners vs theives vs cultists.
There are a bunch of interesting questions about why Falun Dafa is so popular in China, but in my mind these are pretty much distinct from the organ problem. I do not believe that a majority of the executed are cultists, though for the pseudonym reason above, getting a count from lists of names is as far as I know complicated. I'm not an expert, maybe there are good sources, IMO this is digging in the weeds. All that matters in my mind is the total count. For the PRC style of health management, see either the blood story above, or the interministry squabbles in respons to SARS (Agriculture vs Health).
And five of them are aces. Huge property bubble, but measured by CO2 emissions or steel production, PRC is the world's biggest economy.
Measured by spice production, Grenada is the biggest economy. And ou know what they say about controlling the spice.
Making lots of crimes capital is very bad, but I do think executing political prisoners, not just regular criminals, is a qualitative step up in badness - a further Rubicon.
Mostly we kill cattle for their muscles, I thought.
Most people who kill cattle are in it for the money.
Or on a research mission from the Supreme Commander back on their home planet.
On Falun Gong generally, while I'm sure that terrible things are happening in China execution/organ-harvesting-wise, their demonstrations in NY impressed me as nutty enough to disregard them as a source of information on anything. If they're being particularly persecuted, I'm going to have to find out about it from a third-party source.
respectable, mainstream religion
Submitted without comment.with obvious, implied comment.
17: Yeah, Squirrel Hill to dawntawn commute.
The "we're going to kill them anyway, so it'd be more moral to harvest their organs" seems wrong to me. The number of people executed is variable so good side-effects are just incentives to do it more. Which is the Falun Gong line, but it isn't wrong. Still, the number of people seems like it'd be minuscule compared to the potential organ receivers in China, even limiting that set to the rich and powerful.
Is there any chance that there'll be a public outcry in China over political executions in the near future? The outcry over and reduction of Wu Ying's sentence leads me to believe we'll see fewer executions for financial crimes (at least those by non-cadres).
Reading chris y's link has made me realize the world population of British commenters on politics blogs consists of Alex, ajay, dsquared, and chris y himself.
It's like watching British sitcoms, and realizing that there are about a dozen actors who just keep on cycling through. The whole population of England is probably in the low four figures.
I think I've seen claims of 30,000 Falun Gong adherents killed for their organs... How true is this?
Is the claim meant to be per annum, or cumulative? 30K per annum would approximate the rate of death sentences pronounced by the German Volksgerichtshof at the height of WWII, so not even close to plausible. Cumulatively over 15-20 years? Who knows.
Maybe they actually are all British actors. Chris y is Stephen Fry, Alex is John Barrowman, ajay is Hugh Laurie, and dsquared is Alex Kingston.
I thought John Barrowman was the one American actor in Britain.
I seriously doubt that is the case, and if it were, it would be all over weibo. Also, how does China's execution rate stack up vs. the US's? I know we incarcerate more people that China does, which is pretty impressive given that they have 4 times the population, and an authoritarian government. Falun gong is also extremely nutty, and they play on anti-China biases/fears in the US, which are pretty rampant.* My understanding is that China applies the death penalty slightly more 'liberally' than we do, so that high level corruption, heinous sexual crimes, and some drug trafficking crimes can get a capital sentence, but that the bigger issue that upsets people, at least in China, is of political prisoners dying of 'natural causes' in captivity.
*I find western media to be quite biased in its coverage of China.
Most people who kill cattle are in it for the money.
ANTI-SEMITE!
36
It's like watching British sitcoms, and realizing that there are about a dozen actors who just keep on cycling through. The whole population of England is probably in the low four figures.
It's also fun to watch them age, e.g. Penelope Keith in 'To the Manor Born' vs. in 'Next of Kin.'
39: I guess Matt McG gets to be David Tennant.
38: 30,000 per 1.3 billion is about 23 per million, or about 600 people per the population of Texas. Agreed that 40 times Texas's rate is unreasonable, and surely they execute non-FLG people on occasion. Over 15-20 years, that certainly seems in the realm of possibility.
41: What do you mean by "natural causes"? Actual natural causes (so people are presumably upset that prisoners live so long) or something nefarious that's whitewashed by state media?
39: Can someone be John Simm? I like John Simm.
Amnesty counts 1719 PRC executions in 2009. Exact number is a secret, 2005 estimate of 10,000. 30k is afaik a made-up number for the total, not per annum, not impossible, but would be a pretty big proportion of all executions.
When I lived in Beijing, I met a guy who was a secret practitioner of Falun Gong. He only told me about this after we'd known each other for a while, and I think he told me because he needed to tell someone and a foreigner was unlikely to be invested enough in the situation to spread the news around.
Both the language barrier (he spoke some English; I spoke some Mandarin) and my own youthful social incompetence prevented me from finding out much. He said that it was a spiritual and martial arts practice and that it gave him the ability to withstand the cold. He actually did run around in the dead of winter in only a sportcoat and tee shirt when everyone else was hugely bundled up. He was a decent and level-headed guy. We didn't talk about organ donation, but he certainly seemed to be under the impression that he would have been pretty actively repressed by the government if he'd been found out.
I had assumed prior to this (this was in 2001) that the whole thing was nonsense from top to bottom, but I knew this guy well enough to feel that he wasn't lying to me and that if he took the practice seriously it had at least enough worthwhile content that someone could get something out of it, even if the basic architecture of it was new age nonsense.
(In further information about how I can't recognize anyone, ever, googling to figure out who Alex Kingston revealed to me that I had failed to notice that the woman from Dr. Who was the same actress as the woman from E.R. It's not as if she changed much between the two shows, I just didn't see it. May I issue a blanket apology, now, to everyone who shows up at this thing in DC for not recognizing you? Because I'm not going to.)
Ttam and asilon don't comment at chris y's link, so I can only assume they're imposters. Ttam probably lives in San Diego, and asilon in Hamilton, Ontario.
45
It means that some prisoners are dying under suspicious circumstances which are whitewashed or covered up by the authorities.* In China this generates far more outrage than people getting the death penalty, which AFAIK is generally for fairly serious crimes, although not necessarily ones which would get the death penalty in the US. Few people are upset that people selling poisoned rat meat as lamb, or making fake 'milk' out of melamine are getting executed. Clearly using executed prisoners as organ donors is problematic, but I haven't heard yet of people being executed for their organs who otherwise would not have been. If this were the case, it would be a big scandal in China.
*I kind of hate using terms like this because it implies that the government is one single actor. One major misperception of the CCP/Chinese government outside China is that it's a tightly run Big Brother type operation. It's actually quite the opposite. In reality, most levels of government have quite a lot of autonomy and situations vary greatly from place to place, at least as long as no one higher up is paying attention to them. One reason why many crimes are punished harshly is it's a form of "to kill the chicken to frighten the monkey." That is, one unlucky person is made an example of in hopes that everyone else will follow the law.
May I issue a blanket apology, now, to everyone who shows up at this thing in DC for not recognizing you?
This is my situation. I've met a few people once before and I expect to be completely befuddled when I meet them again. Plus keeping real name/pseud straight is going to be tricky. Everyone should just wear a badge that says "Hi, my pseud is _____" for the convenience of folks like us.
to kill the chicken to frighten the monkey
That reminds me of the joke about the woman who put her parrot in the freezer to stop it from swearing.
David Tennant? Pfft. 1960-ish Sean Connery, naturally.
Still in Paris.
Everyone should just wear a badge that says "Hi, my pseud is _____"
That's how it was done last time. I expect with FB this time around I'll bat better than 0.000 at matching names with faces.
I, personally, look exactly like my FB picture.
40: Barrowman is actually Scottish-born, though he's a US citizen as well.
51: Thanks for the clarification. I think the perception of a monolithic CCP is crumbling; Bo Xilai's fall got a lot of play in Western media last year.
56- I'll see you at the museum of natural history then.
Is this article trustworthy?
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/bitter-harvest-china's-'organ-donation'-nightmare
We could dress as our pseuds. I will be the giant walking stick of cream cheese.
Anyone have a death's-head swordstick I could borrow?
The last person who borrowed it returned it with peanut butter on the blade.
Ttam and asilon don't comment at chris y's link, so I can only assume they're imposters.
On the other hand Barry Freed does, and AFAIK he lives on Long Island. That's the internet for you.
||
I have to figure out some stuff about the internet and how much I care about anonymity. Is there a job title "anonymity consultant"? Maybe that's what I can do next.
|>
Great Britain is pretty long as islands go. I'm not buying it.
67: I realized years ago that I'd hopelessly screwed up serious anonymity, and have been relying on the fact that my secret internet identity is almost as dull as my real life identity for making that screwup completely unimportant in any practical sense. I don't know whether this helps you, but honestly I don't see how it could.
64: What kind of anarchist would I be if I didn't? Actually, no, just a death's head cane, no sword.
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You know, it has to be said that if you're scheduled to pick up a very large check, say 5% of your annual income, that the person you contracted with is being ever so nice as to get to you as soon as they possibly could, it would be a mark of gentility not to be half an hour later than the latest time you said you would be by to pick it up.
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Well, speak of the Devil! Lunchtime!
I, personally, look exactly like my FB picture.
I was really pleased with my new FB picture, and then within minutes of my having posted it, a friend commented to point out that I appear to be humping a large rock in the photo.
Oh. Huh. Yes. Yes, I do.
Even though I still don't acknowledge the legitimacy of the state, it is nice to see my State Rep. Karen Clark get some good news:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/openly-gay-lawmaker-in-the-us-can-now-marry-her-parter-in-minnesota.php
OT: Hey, Smearcase, check your email.
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Hooray, the dude who puked in the waiting area and tried to play it off like nobody noticed seems not to have gotten on the plane.
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I mean, not to perpetuate (probably overblown?) stereotypes about pilots.
79: Did he, like, puke in a fast food cup and then discreetly throw the cup away? 'Cause I can see doing that. I mean, what else are you going to do?
If, on the other hand, he just hurled on the carpet, I suppose he'd really be obligated to ask for someone to get him a wheelchair and a cab home.
78 -- With her fencing team, I bet.
(probably overblown?) stereotypes about pilots
Tapping on his mic
The pilot's drunk
67: Is there a job title "anonymity consultant"?
If there is the sender of my latest favorite 419 e-mail could use some help.
Goh, Qingnian < first.last>@rockets.toledo.edu
5:08 AM (3 hours ago)
to undisclosed recipients
Mr. & Mrs Large family have donate us$500-000 to you, write them now on:<live.com address>
85: Speaking of videos that shouldn't be linked while anyone is flying. (I semi-restrained myself when VW was in the air the other evening.)
On the other hand Barry Freed does, and AFAIK he lives on Long Island. That's the internet for you.
Say what now? Formerly on Long Island, living in Astoria, Queens as of last fall (I moved right around when Sandy hit).
*Reads up thread*
39, 40 As the token Yank commenter that I suppose that makes me the John Barrowman of Blood and Treasure. And what chris y said at 6.
Oh, residents of Kings and Queens Counties! It's so cute how you deny basic geography to deny living on Long Island.
89: Just had this discussion during the recent hockey series when we noticed that the map of "Long Island" on the Islanders logo did not include Brooklyn or Queens.
I semi-restrained myself
Yup. He couldn't see it while he was up there. BTW, thanks for it then and now. I had forgotten about that cut.
Was it alcohol-puking, food-puking, or other?
I'm not one to be left hanging on ontological questions about vomit.
Despite appearances to the contrary.
"Jewish demoniacs in early modern Europe tended to be taken over not by devils but by the disembodied spirits of their ancestors. [...] Calvinists were almost impervious to demonic penetration: a paltry 11 cases were recorded in early modern Scotland"...
I realized years ago that I'd hopelessly screwed up serious anonymity, and have been relying on the fact that my secret internet identity is almost as dull as my real life identity for making that screwup completely unimportant in any practical sense.
I've also relied on this strategy for a long time, but I haven't actually done a very good job of it. Now my strategy is to hope that all the embarrassing stuff is hidden by the vast sea of inanity that is my overall online footprint.
Chris y is Stephen Fry, Alex is John Barrowman, ajay is Hugh Laurie, and dsquared is Alex Kingston.
This is disturbing because, due to a lack of photos of myself, my profile pic on FB is, in fact, a photo of Hugh Laurie. (As Lieutenant George.)
98: Oh, that last episode is so perfect and gives me the creeps and makes me cry.
When do we get the Trinity Tiddlers prequel spin-off series?
97: Leaving aside the inanity (not entirely, but momentarily), you should consider writing popular non-fiction about the southwest. I mean, in a book or something. I've never seen a good book on that and get your blog looks like the chapter sketches for a good one.
The thing that bugs me about the Internet is that there's a lot of stuff out there about me - or rather, by me - that I'd be happy for people to find, but it's all been pushed off the first page of Google hits by pointless stuff. The newspaper I used to work at shows up, but its online presence is so badly managed that it only shows three of my articles. Almost worse than nothing. Other than that, there are three different Facebook links, one Google+ link, three things that seem genealogy-related (including one called [my name] Death Records, which is a bit weird, and yes, the summary makes it clear that death metal is not the topic), and two things I couldn't figure out with just a glance. On checking, one is surprisingly open above selling e-mails to spammers, and the other seems like some kind of directory but I'm not sure.
This is partially my own fault, because I haven't generated anything I'd want people to find in a while, but still. At least it's another data point in support of teo's strategy.
When do we get the Trinity Tiddlers prequel spin-off series?
Downton Abbey, series 4.
I've said too much.
98: Your essential Hugh-ness just shines through in everything you do. You can't hide it.
78: I worked in Shanghai in the late nineties and in Beijing in the early 2000s. I was teaching English with a specialty in composition. (Most foreign teachers hate teaching composition because you have to grade papers, but I'm not very good at teaching conversation and reasonably decent at teaching basic writing.) The good times were extremely good; the bad times were profoundly terrible. I wouldn't mind going back, but China has changed so much in the last fifteen years or so that it seems like my old-school-foreign-teacher bike-riding lifestyle is only possible in the provinces.
Leaving aside the inanity (not entirely, but momentarily), you should consider writing popular non-fiction about the southwest. I mean, in a book or something. I've never seen a good book on that and get your blog looks like the chapter sketches for a good one.
This is in fact something I have been considering for a while, with increasing seriousness lately, so thanks for the vote of confidence.
It's not just a vote of confidence. It's a fucking order. Hop to it.
If you want. No pressure or anything.
But I think it would work well for you.
Thanks, and it really is something I'm considering. The main obstacle at this point is finding the time; I haven't even had time to keep up with the blog very often, and a book would be a much bigger undertaking.
The main obstacle at this point is finding the time...
Give me your boss's email, a recent photo of him/her, and your favorite My Little Pony.
I don't think that would be nearly enough to get me fired, if that's your plan.
I dunno; probably not. She just seems to like me enough to excuse a lot.
I wouldn't mind going back, but China has changed so much in the last fifteen years or so that it seems like my old-school-foreign-teacher bike-riding lifestyle is only possible in the provinces.
Yeah, China feels a little bit like Narnia in that way. Even in the provinces you have to get really out in the middle of nowhere before bike riding isn't courting certain death. Even there, most people are on scooters. Shanghainese probably haven't seen a bicycle on the street in almost 10 years. I haven't been to Shanghai since 2006, but in Beijing even scooters are disappearing rapidly.
110: ask emerson to hassle you about it.
teo, I also think it would be something you'd do really well and something I'd enjoy. But I'll let Moby do the hassling.
She just seems to like me enough to excuse a lot.
Do go on.
She just seems to like me enough to excuse a lot.
In fact, one morning she turned up outside his door.
...and now you know the rest of the story.
117: Another vote for teo's book!
Also, if she likes you so much, maybe you could request a leave of absence, so that you can write your book.
I would certain read a teobook.
You write a book. Maybe one about how everything we've learned about muons was previously revealed in the architecture of the Assyrian Empire.
Been waiting for the teobook. Thought something might come of 1692, but still hoping.
If you write a book, and you feel lucky, I'll review it.
What Moby said, in the way Moby said it. Do it motherfucker! I'd write my own book but I'm too busy sketching out the plans for the Halfordismo regime.
I like making people's lives just a little bit more unsettled.
I would read a teobook! I haven't actually read all the way to the end of a book in years, mind you. So I'd probably only read 2/3 of a teobook. But I would buy it, which is all that should matter to the author.
Ditto. I read some of teo's old blog posts about Alaska and they were fascinating.
The best part of teo's books will be the sex scenes.
That or the 18 chapters of self-loathing that follow. Hard to say in advance.
Aw, thanks guys. This is really quite encouraging.
You're writing a history of the pre-contact Southwest, not a Hallmark card. Get to it.
Even if I didn't read a teobook, I'd buy a teobook. And let's face it, that's where the money is. (Frankly, I'd read the book. You blog posts are very good.)