8 minutes ago, Arauna said:

here is another one for you - but I guess this is also American propaganda:

Amnesty International has been caught in promoting much more American propaganda than Human Rights Watch, for example, but this does not mean that any one story is either true or untrue.

For example, the YouTube video you just showed about Agenda 21/2030 relied partly on Sputnik/ANI for presentation of sources that fit the agenda of the interview. One can find all kinds of claims that Russia's Sputnik news, for example, is full of fake news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_(news_agency)

Lee Stranahan was hired by Sputnik News after his departure from Breitbart News and, according to The Washington Post, he is Sputnik's most visible Trump supporter".^{[37][38][39][40]} In early 2020, at the time of the Impeachment of President Trump, Stanahan stated "the entire impeachment is a lie.”^[25] The Washington Post stated that "many Sputnik hosts profess skepticism that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election," in contradiction to the assessment of the US intelligence community.^[37]

But that doesn't mean every article is false. It doesn't mean that every article that Falun Gong prints is false. In fact, Falun Gong (Epoch News) must also print many good, true, reasonable articles that the public will agree with, in order for its false and mostly-false articles to be believed. One mistake that Falun Gong made was to once brag about their strong media presence through the Epoch News, and then later decide to be quiet about that connection so it could seem to be quoted as independent. It's the same way that Epoch News personnel have set up a presentation at the UN, and NGO meetings and sites and then called them "independent."

That's similar to the way that you see Adrian Zenz quote articles that were reports that came from Adrian Zenz. He has been caught writing mistranslations to produce fake additions to Chinese reports about Uyghurs and Chinese policy, and then, when those fake reports get picked up by other news media, he will quote those sources to bolster his "conclusions" based on his own fake reports.  People who read Chinese, or even users of Google translate, can see what he has often done. But by mixing it up with bits of truth, and tickling the ears of his listeners, he gets away with it.

BTW, your Agenda 21/2030 video is a well orchestrated interview that might have a lot of things right, and is based on telling us to fear things that we really should fear. But it also pretends that the original UN documents say things that just simply aren't there in those original documents. And those documents are in English!! Almost anyone can detect the fear-mongering agenda.

10 minutes ago, Arauna said:

This is an article based on a report by a human rights group called Safeguard Defenders.

Actually, it's an article by Falun Gong, through one of their primary media arms, The Epoch Times. They started an NGO in 2016 called the Safeguard Defenders to make it look as though independent organizations were making the same claims. Of course, there will be many persons who are adding this claim to the agenda of their own human rights organizations. 

Of course, Hebrew is read from Right to Left instead of Left to Right, so another way to look at this could be:

1 hour ago, 4Jah2me said:

I thought @JW Insider had given us many points to show how wrong 1914 is.

I planned to just let this sit because it reminded me of typical trolling behavior, and I've said all I want to say about 1914 for a while. But I have to agree with this part of what @Arauna said about you:

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

Is it because you tend to go against anything written by the GB that you agree with his assumptions? 

You already know that you will disagree with anything I say in support of the current teachings of the GB, and when I present the opinion that the GB are wrong about something, all of a sudden you treat me like I'm some important teacher of truth.

We all have opinions, and when it comes to interpretation, it doesn't matter how strongly we believe them or present them: they're still opinions.

2 hours ago, 4Jah2me said:

A hundred years ?  It took One hundred years to be able to understand a simple scripture. 

Not quite 100 years. It's not so much a determination about the understanding as it is a decision based on one possible understanding of Exodus 32:15. This came up back in the 1970's, when I worked for the Art Dept at Bethel, and I had an idea about it that was considered acceptable at the time.  It was typical for "Christendom" to depict them as 5 on each tablet, and there was another brother, about my age, who suggested this same (current) change based on the "both sides" idea.

But I suggested that we could still leave them as they were. Here's why:

What if each tablet were a full tablet of the testimony written on both sides? Then the two copies could be held up or displayed so that people in front and people in back could all see the 10 commandments in order:

2 hours ago, Arauna said:

I see headlines like this every day - how come you do not see them?

For all I know, I've seen many more of them than you have. But I will happily assume that you have seen more. But very often these stories appear to be a part of an ongoing story that has already been discussed elsewhere. It's just another outcropping of an ongoing feud. And you can't always tell who started it. Even If a story follows a typical line of propaganda that has already been satisfactorily refuted or bolstered elsewhere, then all I can do is assume it is either right, wrong, or in between. (Until I have some time to look further into it.)

Here's how I see that recent version of the newspaper headline discussing the mistreatment of journalists.

I start it with a consideration of a February 2020 story found here https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/19/china-bars-wall-street-journal-reporters-over-derogatory-column

• China to expel WSJ journalists over 'malicious’ coronavirus column

• Three journalists told to leave within five days after paper declined to apologise for opinion piece
• China is expelling three Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporters from the country, a move with no recent precedent, marking a sharp escalation in pressure on foreign media in the country.

Obviously, some look at this and see: "a sharp escalation" so it sounds very bad and typical of Western media. But I also see the admission that it has no recent precedent. In fact, the article admits:

It has been more than two decades since China directly expelled foreign reporters . . .

That admission is helpful, because they are admitting that I don't need to go back and find a back and forth for years and years like a Hatfield and McCoy feud. Perhaps I can even start from this point in February 2020, just a few months ago. But I also notice that the article admits something else:

• The expulsions come . . . the day after Washington announced it would tighten controls on Chinese state-owned media operations in America.

So something happened the day before to Chinese media operations in the United States, and China apparently fights back by kicking out 3 journalists. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/18/us-chinese-media-propaganda-state-department

https://m1.finance/K_CKPHDiqxU5

15 minutes ago, Arauna said:

China is already using digital algorithms and surveillance, DNA and medical technology to suppress their people and they are doing this with the help of Google and large western corporations.

Or, one could argue that China is already using digital algorithms and surveillance, DNA and medical technology to help their people. Whenever I looked into claims that China was already overusing surveillance, it turned out that these were small-scale experimental attempts to test for useful surveillance technology -- and nothing like the larger-scale use by law-enforcement in Western countries, like the United States. And, I'm not saying that it has not or will not be abused in China. I just found it funny that so many people were anxious to create a fear-mongering scare out of something that was implemented at a much smaller scale than the USA.

And I have not seen evidence for the use of DNA and medical technology to suppress. I suspect this comes from more racist sources who argue that: "Well, they're using medical technology AND they are Chinese, therefore it must be to suppress their people."

On several of your more general points about the ominous direction of technocracy, I agree fully. I have long agreed with the dangers of billionaire charities and philanthropy. This one is harder to explain to most people since "philanthropy" always sounds like such a good thing.

44 minutes ago, Arauna said:

The communistic subversion is part of the plan to create chaos to bring a much tighter control on everyone.  We are already moving in this direction with Corona measures and the destruction of most small businesses - so people lose their independence and become dependent.

Anytime there are big mistakes made and chaos comes to the fore, there will always be people who say, this is Maoist, Marxist, Stalinist, etc. It's the idea of not letting any good crisis go to waste. Besides, Corona was handled very swiftly and efficiently in China so that it did not result in the destruction of most small businesses, or so that people lost their economic independence. If it happens that more Western countries will take advantage of the circumstances and force a trend in that direction, it will not be a reflection of "communistic" suberversion, but should be identified for what it is, instead.

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

The subversion is clear and china atrocities are on-going and a blind eye is turned because this is the mindset of the new leaders to be...... time will show up what is in store.

I can give you excellent examples of how the Western media, and Western readers are turning a blind eye to false claims regarding these "ongoing atrocities." I see that you tend to take any defense with respect to the excesses and exaggeration of claims as a complete denial of problems in China. Or that I am saying that China must therefore be dealing with their issues in the most humane way possible. I'm not. What I'm saying is that there is plenty of evidence that the exaggerations are always in the direction of existing propaganda, and that revealing this can bring us to a more reasonable and more probable account of what is going on.

In another post, I'll give you some good examples of this based on the reporting in the Times and recently in FP (ForeignPolicy.com) on the Uyghur situation. By their own words and mistranslations of source material they condemn themselves. As you say about journalists, it's very true . . . and good journalism is being ruined on purpose by the former sources of good journalism.

2 hours ago, Arauna said:

Their moral values and research capacity is diminished.  There are very few good investigative journalists out there.

What Yuri Bezmenov said about "subversion" being the primary activity of KGB rather than "cloak and dagger" cliche spying fits exactly into the claims about the CIA and KGB in those books by Noam Chomsky and others, that make extended use of official government documents released after so many years of being classified, based of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. "Leaks" are a new source that can bring these ideas more up to date, and checked against claims from other sources, often fringe sources, or otherwise suppressed sources. But even old State Department documents are not to fully trusted, nor are leaks for that matter.

I also noticed that he said that subversion destructive aggressive aimed to destroy the nation or geographical location of your enemy. This is why where there are any conflicts at the borders of a nation, a country like the United States or USSR would take advantage of those conflicts, exaggerate them, try to foment civil unrest or even civil war in those areas where possible, and pump weapons and intelligence to the side that keeps the war most "even" resulting in ongoing deaths on both sides. When the unrest and economic collapse is great enough, the US can sweep in like a white knight and get away with a regime change more suitable to US "interests." A lot of people think that the chaos created around the world is because the US makes so many mistakes with unexpected consequences. In reality, chaos and destruction is the exact goal and the plans are working perfectly.

The fact that a "subverter" can be a journalist (Bezmnenov) or "exchange student" (or even a humanitarian aid organization) is well known on all sides. Chomsky, for example, also speaks of methods of demoralization through taking advantage of the nation's mistakes in education, religion, social life, power structure, labor and employee relations, law and order. Although Chomsky shows how Western powers have also used these goals not just on other nations, but also on their own people, historically and to a greater and greater extent since Kennedy and Reagan. It is quite observable, even though methods have become more sophisticated in some areas, and more blatantly obvious in other areas. The ability of the US government to keep secrets from most people, once so tight and successful up through Kennedy's time, has become nearly impossible after Johnson and Reagan due to the ideological divides among lawmakers, and between elites and the other 95% of the US population. Similar changes have shown up in other Western countries and, we'd have to assume, in many non-Western countries, too.

We could get into the details in another topic, but the most interesting movements in recent decades have been in the areas of American socialism vs privatization.

• The USA is "socialist" in its education systems for example, so the current head of education must be for school privatization so that more profits can go to individual corporations, textbook makers, etc. (Subversion is easy here because overburdened public schools will attempt experiments that will often result in mistakes, and the higher tax burdens will be felt by poorer neighborhoods, due to the divide between rich neighborhoods who overwhelmingly use private schools, and the poorer ones that depend on thinly stretched tax dollars to cover all their children in public schools.)
• The post office was "socialist" but moves to take away funding for further privatization to take over have been going on for years. (A generation of subversion by removing funding so that USPS prices go up.)
• Even the USA's "socialist" armies have turned to privatization for more profits to go to various lobbying corporations and private contractors.
• The US corporations have successfully lobbied lawmakers to weaken labor unions, using subversion by taking advantage of the mistakes and corruption in some of these unions' leadership. And, as the video shows, the mistakes of strikers and inability to get effective leverage, anyway.
• The strong push in this country to socialize medicine is fought against by subversion, not just lobbying dollars to subvert the lawmakers, but also by highlighting mistakes and weaknesses of countries with socialized medicine.
• Socialist "social media" platforms like Facebook and Twitter (and the Internet itself) have been subverted by the controls put into place by elites who wish to use such platforms to collect potential sales data, and even governments who wish to collect personal data for whatever other reasons under the guise of anti-terrorism, crime-fighting, etc.
• The list goes on and on, including private companies exploiting major network media/news, national parks, preserves, highway toll collection & cleanup, special tax benefits to private companies, etc. Who knows, someday they may even names of private companies on sports arenas!

His views on religion are interesting and might even reveal a bit as to why Russia (China, Korea) and a few smaller nations have looked at proselytizing religions as if they are subversive American political operations, with some even branded as extremist. It's also fairly clear that his views that started out as incrimination of foreign subverters, especially of morals, are really local subversions without much help from the outside. KGB says their only push here was pushing literature and propaganda for "equality." People are not born equal, he says. Not a single word about equality in the Bible he says. Speaking of equality builds a house on sand and creates collapse. This appealed to his [mostly] white, 1984's audience (laughter), and he was able to do some standup comedy.

Funny that he thought these tactics would only work on the USA, and not on the USSR, but by 1989 had fully worked on the USSR to an even greater extent. Just a few short years or so after this speech.

I notice he uses Japan as an example of worker participation in corporate decisions and says it's the opposite in the United States. This is mostly true. Although it was not true of most Japanese companies, in China this is written into the law, and there are punishments for those companies that try to subvert it or defraud workers. In China, there have been several high-profile and low-profile cases of punishments for corruption that defrauds workers.

Anyway, thanks for this video. I had never seen it before. I have some comments on the second half that I may include later.

I may have mentioned it before, but there is a subtext that the "West" has worked into this type of conversation more often than most people seem to notice. Even in reading some articles while looking for some information on Wikipedia, I noticed a bias in the rejection of footnotes on a couple related topics. I thought, OK, they want better footnotes on a topic about Mao which is fine. And another one on Stalin which is fine, too. But then I noticed that a more blatantly incendiary footnote was right there among them without any question or hint of rejection:

• Who Killed More: Hitler, Stalin, or Mao? by Ian Johnson

It's not the first time I've seen this injected into conversations. As if the "West" would just love to re-invent Hitler as only the lesser of three evils. The "maidan" and other Nazis in Ukraine have promoted this thinking for years. And under Shinzo Abe in Japan, there has been an obvious push for the complete erasure of the Rape of Nanking, and some of these same history re-writers are apt to push the same Nazi holocaust denial.

But there is also a definite subtext of holocaust denial in the United States that pops up among the same people who promote that Stalin and Mao and Xi are behind actual genocides. In fact if you type in "China surpasses" in Google while removing the economic standings and coronavirus reports, you will start to see "China surpasses Hitler" (regarding extermination of Uyghurs vs Jews).

For that matter, based on a similar "us-vs-them" theme, the US had many media outlets for a while that claimed that China was over-reporting Covid-19 numbers as a scare tactic to get other countries to overspend and overreact, I guess. Then when the US surpassed their numbers, suddenly China became a villain that had vastly under-reported their numbers.

1 hour ago, César Chávez said:

The question shouldn’t be, China VS West but how accurate the reports are about organ farms in China or any other country that doesn’t value human life as God intended.

This is a good point. The real issue here is whether reports are accurate or not. To me it never was a question of China vs the West, in a sense of deciding whose side one should take.

It's about recognizing how a propaganda war is the real context of MANY questions about accuracy. Currently, it seems that the people on the offensive are mostly in the West, and the people on the defensive are mostly in China. And it really is about a barrage of questions, not a single one like "organ farms." If the question of Uyghurs wasn't there, it would be about Covid19, or currency manipulation, or theft of corporate secrets, or Tibet, or Tiananmen Square, or South China Sea fishing rights, or murderous famines under Mao Zedong. This will invariably morph into Russia and the USSR and opinions about Communism/Marxism/Socialism. Therefore, the idea that ties all these together, imo, is the usual war of words between China and the West. (Of course, this also allows for a certain slipperiness for those who might not wish to deal with problems of propaganda; if one topic gets muddy, one can just throw out another bit, and another bit, and another bit. The effect is supposed to be additive, even if individual bits don't hold up to evidence.)

Another biased source I've quoted from before is the Gray Zone. The primary journalist here is Max Blumenthal, an American living in Washington DC. Typically, we believe that we can look at two biased sides and end up somewhere in the middle. Since we've dealt so much with the anti-China side of the bias, we can deal with a defensive side too. But it is not true that we should always end up somewhere in the middle. It's similar to the disagreement about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. One side said yes, one side said no, so a lot of people think: "Well, there must have been some at least."

Here is a very large portion of the interview that Blumenthal gave to the Global Times (GT): https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1186693.shtml I am providing larger than usual portions of quotes from resources, because it gives a bigger and better context for evaluating the truthfulness or lack thereof.

I should add that, in spite of claims to the contrary, I don't accept any of the claims by either side as true, nor by those who take a middle approach. Nothing about this debate is necessarily all true or all false. It's just that the more we learn about the motives of all sides, the better able we are to evaluate and make up our own minds. Nobody is completely truthful, and even when people defend the side with more truth than falsehood, they are apt to be frustrated enough to want to make up exaggerations to make their own side look better.

You can read 1,000 pages of argumentation, and not learn the truth about a matter. But it's still better to have read those thousand pages with an open mind, than to just spend the same amount of time, without looking into a matter at all, or feeding on only a single side of an argument.

---------------------------------

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1197187.shtml

As I said, the source is biased, but the most important parts can be verified, by Zenz himself.

-----------------------------

Editor's Note:

A German "scholar" named Adrian Zenz has recently stood out on the anti-China stage. With his "reports" accusing China of "detaining" Uygurs and other minority groups or imposing "sterilization" on ethnic minorities in its Xinjiang region, Zenz has been welcomed by US and Western media as "a leading expert" on Xinjiang. However, Chinese scholars from a Xinjiang-based think tank, Xinjiang Development Research Center, found the so-called expert on Xinjiang is a far-right Christian, who is fabricating unfounded reports to slander China's policies in Xinjiang and cater to the US and some Western countries' aim of attacking China. Zenz's "reports" that have been cited and hyped by some Western media are full of lies, farfetched assumptions, and baseless accusations. 

Who is Adrian Zenz?

Adrian Zenz, an evangelical "scholar," has recently been making so-called reports on Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, aiming to slander China's policies in the region. 

Who is Adrian Zenz? What did he do to make the US and Western countries tout him as one of the "leading" experts studying China's Xinjiang and Tibet Autonomous Region?

Zenz, born in 1974, is a German. He gives himself a Chinese name as Zheng Guoen. He used to work for the European School of Culture and Theology and went to China's Xinjiang in 2007 as a visitor. 

Starting in 2016, Zenz began commenting on China's Xinjiang, and wantonly slandering and distorting China's policies in the region. He made up more than 10 reports relating to Xinjiang, including one published in February titled The Karakax List: Dissecting the Anatomy of Beijing's Internment Drive in Xinjiang and another in July titled Sterilizations, IUDs, and Coercive Birth Prevention: The CCP's Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birth Rates in Xinjiang. 

He also kept making sensational and unfounded accusations against China, including that around "1 million Uygurs are illegally detained in Xinjiang," "Xinjiang imposes birth control measures on Uygurs and minorities," and "Xinjiang is having culture genocide on minorities."   

Under the vehement support of the Western media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, Zenz gained infamy on the anti-China stage and has been welcomed as "an expert on Xinjiang." He has received enthusiastic approval from anti-China politicians from the US and become a focal member of a research group on Xinjiang's vocational training and education center that was set up and controlled by a US intelligence agency.

In recent years, Zenz has been busy in shuttling between the US Congress, European Parliament and Canadian Parliament, making groundless accusations against China's Xinjiang policies to incite attacks and pressure on China by using the so-called "human rights problems of Uygurs." In March, together with many US politicians and members of the "East Turkistan" separatists, Zenz attended an event themed "China's Systematic Persecution of Uygurs" at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, stirring up anti-China discourse in the international community to contain China by distorting Xinjiang topics. 

Only within two years, Zenz, who started as a scholar on theology, turned himself into an "authoritative expert" on Xinjiang. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Zenz said his work against China is inspired by this biblical worldview. "I feel very clearly led by God to do this," he said.

A 'scholar' fishes for personal gain with fabricated reports

A closer look at Zenz's so-called "academic reports" reveals he uses academic research to disguise anti-China purposes.

Previously, when Zenz saw the US and Western countries using Tibet issues to interfere with China's domestic affairs, he made up a series of articles on Tibet and intentionally offered them to politicians and media to hype. And now, when the US and the West turn to target Xinjiang, Zenz leapt to take the helm - without any academic researches and studies, he batted out shoddy reports on Xinjiang - to get public attention and fish for personal gain. 

These so-called reports about Xinjiang are full of lies and fabrications and have no credibility. For example, in the report on "forced birth control in Xinjiang" he cited proven liars, including Zumrat Dawut, Mihrigul Tursun, and Tursunay Ziyawudun, to support his conclusions. These figures emerged in 80 percent of the current stories about Xinjiang hyped by Western media - they are puppets manipulated by anti-China forces and made lies abiding by manipulators' instructions.

Zumrat was cited by Zenz as saying she was forced to be sterilized after returning from a training center. According to information from relevant authorities, Zumrat has never been to any training centers in Xinjiang. She applied to have a contraceptive operation after giving birth to her third child at the maternal and child health care hospital in Urumqi in March 2013.

As for Mihrigul, she was detained by the public security bureau in Qiemo on April 21, 2017 for inciting ethnic hatred and discrimination. She was found having syphilis and other infectious diseases and out of humanitarian concern, she was released on May 10, 2017. She has never been to any training centers and was never forced to take any medicine. Mihrigul also claimed her brother was tortured to death in the training center in Xinjiang but this was later debunked by her brother. Tursunay was divorced due to infertility and has never had a UID or contraceptive operation. The "daughter" she has in Kazakhstan is actually the daughter of her current husband's niece. 

Aside from citing liars, Zenz's reports are full of imagination based on bias. He assumed Xinjiang's regular recruitment of police officers is to prepare for "detaining" Uygurs and other minority groups, described Xinjiang's boarding schools as a guarantee for massive "detention," and slandered local residents' voluntary employment outside Xinjiang as "forced labor" organized by the local government. 

Zenz's reports are also full of assumptions; words like "may" or "estimated" are usually seen. He also presets conclusions and seeks "evidence" to support them. He initially asserted that Xinjiang is having "birth control" on Uygurs by listing the free physical check to all residents in Xinjiang as evidence, saying the move is to find violators of "birth control" measures. He claimed Xinjiang is "restricting" the freedom of ethnic groups and used Xinjiang's CCTV facilities which serve for transportation management and social security as "evidence."

Colluding with anti-China forces and separatists

Zenz has never been a so-called "Xinjiang expert" but can be more appropriately described as an academic swindler and an attack dog of anti-China forces.

In his "Karakax List," Zenz described himself as a senior fellow in China studies at the far-right Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. 

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation was established by the US government in 1983. It was described by journalist Joe Conason as "the organizational haven for neo-Nazis, fascists, and anti-Semitic extremists from two dozen countries," according to US media outlet The Grayzone. 

Zenz claimed to have provided some statistics for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). ASPI has been exposed as a "right-wing, militaristic" think tank funded by US and Western governments, mega-corporations and weapons manufacturers.

Aside from working with overseas anti-China forces and warmongers, Zenz has colluded with separatists from Xinjiang and overseas. In September 2018, together with Dolkun Isa, a separatist from Xinjiang and also head of the World Uyghur Congress, a US-backed network seeking the fall of the China, Zenz attended the 39th UN Human Rights Council. In 2019, together with the head of Uyghur American Association, a project affiliated to the WUC and its members, Zenz attended a hearing organized by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and made an anti-China speech. In February, working with members of another WUC project the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), Zenz made the "Karakax list" and hyped the topic via a CNN report.  

"We lie, We cheat, We steal," the remarks made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have become the best annotation of Zenz's shoddy moves.

As Xinjiang people enjoy social stability, economic development, and harmony among ethnic groups, Zenz's wretched interventions should be despised by Chinese people and the international community.

6 hours ago, Arauna said:

UN is now accusing China....of Corona. lol.

I'm suspicious of this kind of statement. Because the term "accusing China of Corona" is such a nebulous phrase. What's your source?

The rhetoric that most anti-Chinese propagandists push goes like this:

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/rising-coronavirus-death-toll-proves-communism-kills-marion-smith

https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810

The people in the "LOL" crowd who love this rhetoric can even buy the T-shirt:

6 hours ago, Arauna said:

I guess this doctor in the link below is also lying.... or the reporter is twisting facts.

You probably didn't realize that the Vice story reeks of Adrian Zenz, who I mentioned earlier at the start of the Uyghur topic. Also, Vice itself is merely jumping on the bandwagon here. They built up an entire network by picking false narratives that the Western media loved to hear. If we get a chance, we can go into the ways they lied about Syria, Russia, Ukraine, and other stories from China. It's almost their entire raison d'etre.

For that matter, SerpentZA and laowhy86, mentioned earlier, inadvertently provide a ton of evidence that they play the same game on a smaller scale, realizing that all the money pours into their Patreon accounts when they hype up the anti-China propaganda.

But, back to the story. Interviewing people who make a certain claim is not the same as evidence. You or I could write a script for just such an interview to make it sound even more believable. The giveaway is often in the specifics of the claims, and wondering why they don't know certain types of evidence or why they leave it out.

In the case of Uyghurs, do they mention reports that their population has continued to increase? That the so-called "concentration camps" were mostly run by fellow Uyghurs? That most Muslim countries expressed approval of the training as a more humane way of dealing with Muslim radicalization and terrorism? That minorities were not under the one-child policy? That most minorities, including Uyghurs, actually approve of the job that the CCP is doing? That the one-child policy was not enforced with abortions, but with education about the reasons for it, and a higher tax on those Han Chinese who had more children. (Minorities and rural Chinese were exempt from the one-child policy.)

The vice link includes this:

• The woman, who performed these operations for 20 years before fleeing to Turkey, said at the time she felt it was “part of her job.” Now, she says she feels “such regret” and recognizes the damage caused to the Uighur population, whose birth rates have reportedly plummeted over the past few years.

Marco Rubio, the Senate co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said this: https://www.cecc.gov/publications/commission-analysis/xinjiang-reports-high-rate-of-population-increase

• The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) has one of the highest rates of population increase among Chinese provinces, according to information from a January 23 work meeting on the population and environment reported January 24 on Tianshan Net. While the birth rate and natural rate of increase have held steady in the past five years, the population continues to grow by about 300,000 people annually, the article reported. The article noted that the floating and migrant populations, among other groups, will maintain a relatively fast rate of increase. . . .The 2000 census listed the Han population at 40.57 percent and Uighurs at 45.21 percent of a total population of 18.46 million.

Currently the best estimates put it in the same range that Wikipedia is reporting:

• Official figures released by Chinese authorities place the population of Uyghurs within the Xinjiang region to be just over 12 million, comprising approximately half of the total regional population.^[99] . . . As early as 2003, however, some Uyghur groups wrote that their population was being vastly undercounted by Chinese authorities, claiming that their population actually exceeded 20 million.^[102] Population disputes have continued into the present, with some activists and groups such as the Uyghur Congress and Uyghur American Association claiming that the Uyghur population ranges between 20 to 30 million.^{[103][104][105][106]} Some have even claimed that the real number of Uyghurs is actually 35 million.^[107][108] Scholars, however, have generally rejected these claims, with Professor Dru C. Gladney writing in the 2004 book Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland that there is "scant evidence" to support Uyghur claims that their population within China exceeds 20 million.^[109]

It should raise some red flags that the most official sources, even from anti-China Senator Rubio, would indicate a high percentage growth in their population (8 million to be over 12 million) and possibly a rise from 45% to nearly 50% of the population. How well does that jibe with headlines like this?

• China forces birth control on Uighurs to curb Muslim population growth...

• www.france24.com › France 24 › Asia-pacific

A musician (orchestra) for Shen Yun, Falun Gong's traveling ballet company, says in this video  starting at 7m:30s:

• "So [Li] Hongzhi was kicked out of China, and supposedly the religion was persecuted in China and they spread these stories of organ harvesting. so they will take Falun Dafa practitioners from China --the Chinese government will-- and they'll harvest their organs and sell them on the black market which, it's China, maybe that happens, but knowing what I know about the religious beliefs, uh, I'm just extremely skeptical of anything that this organization has to say."

One of the comments to the video was also interesting:

• Thank you Aarvoll. I got involved in Falun Gong after getting out of some very toxic 'love and light' communities. It caught my attention because I wanted something pure and clean. Lol, looking back the texts actually catch you right at the start, talking about how your Buddha self comes forward to draw you to Falun Dafa. Inconsistencies to the truth, compassion and tolerance fundamentals are really glaring in much of the text, and in what is considered 'proper' cultivator behaviour. The first time I really put on the brakes though was a couple of months in when I met a couple of the kids and tried to share chocolate with them. They were terrified to take it. And the parents were appalled that I'd offered. Like you said, these are really nice people, but the aura of fear is as thick as soup. That's not healthy spiritually or mentally by my reckoning. Just recently I've heard about a YouTube channel started up by EpochTimes, a Falun Dafa publication, who are in the thick of the disclosure/cultist spiritual community swallowing up social media right now. And they are on the nasty side of the fence, really pushing and supporting some twisted psychopathic behaviour and individuals. That was the last straw for me. Meditation is good. Conducting yourself through your life with the best of the cultivators characteristics is good. But extreme anything and handing over your capacity to think independently to group think.... That's not going anywhere good. Thank you for this video.

13 hours ago, Arauna said:

Why did they not allow UN to investigate Corona?  UN was not allowed to go to the facility where is was "alleged " to have started... were they affriad they would make stuff up?

You should look at the timeline again. Perhaps you saw the one shared on this forum back in mid-February:

China DID allow the UN to investigate the coronavirus by sharing information to the WHO about it almost immediately. About FIVE days after the first suspected case. This is even before it was identified as a new coronavirus. By December 31, the UN (WHO) was already investigating it and made its first announcement the very next day, on January 1. As more information was investigated, and more was learned, more announcements came over the next few days, and it was less than 3 weeks later that the WHO went to the facility where it was "alleged" have started.

This is MONTHS earlier than SARS was dealt with, and faster than any other novel coronavirus, ever. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19

SARS was first detected as an atypical pneumonia on November 16, 2002, and the UN (WHO) may not have been notified until February 10, 2003 after 100 people had already died. https://www.who.int/csr/don/2003_07_04/en/

The WHO issued a global alert for a severe form of pneumonia of unknown origin on March 12, 2003, and by March 24, the CDC laboratory analysis suggested a new coronavirus may be the cause of SARS. https://www.cdc.gov/about/history/sars/timeline.htm

In the case of the COVID19 coronavirus, the response and reporting to the WHO was almost immediate, and the facility was visited by the WHO within 3 weeks of China's December 31st announcement. (January 20/21).

The very first patient(s) had started coming in to hospitals on December 21st, but there were not enough similar cases to look into a source until multiple cases could be compared.

It was on December 26th that a doctor in China (Zhang Xixian) saw that FOUR patients were suffering from a pneumonia of an unknown cause. But it was not yet known at this time that ONE of those patients had been at a large Wuhan open food market.

The doctor reported this to the hospital and the hospital reported it to the District CDC, the next day on December 27th.

The next day, December 28th, it is reported to the health authorities of the entire province, and by now there are THREE more cases, and all three were found to have been at the same food market.

An investigation began by the CDC the very next day, the 29th, while the number of patients could still be counted on two hands. Some patients were moved to quarantining on this same day (December 29th). 

And now those local health authorities were sure enough about what they were dealing with to report it to national health authorities on December 30th. That was also the day that the local hospital warnings began leaking to the press and being reported on, and also the same day that Doctor Li Wenilang began telling his friends in his WeChat group to only tell their own friends about it to warn them. A nurse is likely infected by this same date (December 30th) and Doctor Li himself will soon be known to also have been infected.

And on December 31st all of China is informed on national TV and the CCP sends help down to Wuhan.

A more recent investigation published this year in Australia is reported here:

https://www.abc.net.au/foreign/the-power-of-falun-gong/12492696

Plenty of politics, but nothing about organ harvesting. Here's a portion:

---------------------------

The movement first gained global attention when its members became the target of ruthless persecution by the Chinese Communist Party, triggering widespread sympathy and support in the West.

The Falun Gong’s creed is Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance, but former practitioners now speaking out are accusing it of practising dangerous and divisive teachings.

This joint ABC Foreign Correspondent-Background Briefing investigation shines a spotlight on this global movement, revealing how Falun Gong has morphed from a fringe quasi-religious group into a powerful player in America’s conservative media landscape, working to ensure another term for Trump so he can continue his war of words with China.

Background Briefing’s podcast series also investigates the movement’s Australian operations, uncovering powerful political collaborators closer to home.

From Australia, to Taiwan, to Los Angeles and the movement’s “Dragon Springs” headquarters in upstate New York, Foreign Correspondent’s Eric Campbell and Background Briefing’s Hagar Cohen explore the opaque world of the Falun Gong and its mysterious leader Master Li Hongzhi.

This investigation reveals how the group has harnessed social media, spending millions through made-up groups and fake identities to promote Donald Trump and his anti-Beijing policies.

“This is a matter of cosmic importance to them that Trump gets re-elected”, says one member of nearly ten years, who has now left the Falun Gong.

Another former insider says the movement promotes intolerant teachings which are racist and homophobic.

“I’m mixed race. I am quite possibly just homosexual. And those are the two kinds of people that are purportedly causing the end of the world,” says ex-devotee Anna, now in her 20s and living on the US west coast. 

As a child, “Anna” was taken by her mother to Falun Gong’s US headquarters, ‘Dragon Springs’, a sprawling but secretive 160-hectare compound in New York State.

It was, she says, a world of strange beliefs and intolerance.

“The leader of Falun Gong claims that race-mixing in humans is part of an alien plot to drive humanity further from the gods.”

Background Briefing follows Sydney resident Shani May as she tries to find out the truth about her mother’s relationship with the Falun Gong.  

Following the death of her famous jazz singer father Ricky May, her mother Colleen sought solace with the group. Soon Colleen stopped taking her blood pressure tablets, putting her faith in Falun Gong to cure her. Three years ago, Colleen died, aged 75.

“If it wasn’t for Falun Gong, she’d still be with us”, declares Shani.

Former followers allege there’s a cult-like abhorrence of modern medicine that’s claimed lives.

“In Falun Gong the teachings are, you don’t acknowledge illnesses”, says one ex-devotee.

According to Shani May, whose mother Colleen became so deeply involved with her beliefs that she lost touch with family and friends, “They're manipulating and they do it slowly…And as time goes on, you get further and further down the rabbit hole and they don't let you come back out.”

Here is a supposed ex-Falun Gong experience that has about ZERO credibility, and seems to be written by a person who has no knowledge of the appeal of religion at all. Probably a CCP attempt:

http://www.facts.org.cn/c/2020-07-02/1224591.shtml

It's so bad, it reminds me of the Onion. I won't print it out here.

On that same Chinese site, however, there is a fairly good rebuttal to a BMC article that claimed organ harvesting in China:

http://www.facts.org.cn/c/2019-12-15/1036896.shtml

It's written with an obvious bias, and imperfect English. But it still appears to be correct. Here is a portion taking up the rest of the post:

-----------------------------

Wang also demonstrated to more than 100 specialists from over 30 countries, including Germany, Vatican, the US and Australia, how the system works, in order to show its transparency and equity in organ donation and allocation. Once a donor's name is typed into the system, his/her personal information, ID number, consent of organ donation and other information would pump up. And the allocation process of the system were real-time and supervised by multiple institutes, such as transplant hospital and the Red Cross.

He warned that all specialists and scientists should be aware of the trend that political intention is gradually permeating into academic circles.

Huang Jiefu, head of the China National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee and chairman of the China Organ Transplantation Development Foundation, said that he felt sorry for Lavee, because he could have spent more time on organ transplantation to save people in his country.

"I was invited by the Israeli ambassador in China several times to introduce China's experience on organ donation and transplantation reform, which I believe is the best rebuttal for Lavee," said Huang.

http://www.facts.org.cn/Facts/201912/15/W020200321479383227187.jpg

Foreign specialists at the Symposium on Development of Organ Donation and Transplantation held in Kunming, capital of Southwest China’s Yunnan Province on Saturday. Photo: Courtesy of the organizer

Jose Núñez, WHO officer in charge of global organ transplantation, told the Global Times that they received the report produced by Lavee, and it was sent to them repeatedly twice a week. "But we didn't respond," said Núñez, noting that China has already provided efficient data with Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation.

Núñez said there's nothing to cast doubt on China's data, those data are efficient. "So anything that comes from the magazine or the scientific journal is just his or her opinion," he said.

Bjorn Nashan, former president of German Transplantation Society and now working at First Affiliated Hospital, University of Science and Technology of China in East China's Anhui Province, referred to Lavee's paper as "scientific misconduct," saying that if the authors have questions about Chinese data, they should first of all ask China to provide such data, but they did not. 

But working here in China since 2016, Nashan said his Chinese patients have various ways of getting advise on organ transplantation. But he was never aware there are secret Chinese hospitals performing illegal forced organ retriaval; and such rumors were being circulated only outside China by those who never visited China.

Except from fabricating rumors about China's organ donation and transplantation achievements, anti-China forces also tried to harass foreign experts; for instance, they tries to stop them from visiting China, and prevented them from voicing support for China in this field.

Campbell Fraser, a professor with Griffith University, told the Global Times that anti-China forces "tried three times to stop me from coming to China, they made representations to my university to stop me. But all they did just made me want to come to China more." 

Fraser said that China's organ donation and transplantation work aims at saving lives, a deity duty that people of the anti-China forces don't really care about. He also urged transplantation specialists worldwide to pluck up and resist anti-China forces, so international cooperation on organ donation and transplantation could be enhanced.

"Chinese model" praised worldwide

Huang said that those malicious attacks also proved that China's organ donation and transplantation work is achieving great success worldwide; otherwise, no one would bother to attack it. 

According to the latest data, from 2015 to 2018, the number of organ donations completed in China each year was 2766、4080、5146、6302 each year, with a rapid growth, and the number of organ donations in 2018 ranked second in the world.

Since the establishment of the green channel for organ transportation three years ago, the transfer time of organs has been shortened by an average of 1 to 1.5 hours, the overall organ sharing rate in China has increased by 7.3%. The utilization rate of organs has increased by 6.7%. The sharing distance of donated organs has been greatly expanded, and thousands of patients with end-stage organ failure have been cured.

The Chinese express was praised by participants during the conference. Núñez, WHO Representative, told the meeting: "China's organ transplant reform has achieved remarkable results in a short period of time, and China's experience can serve as a model for the entire Asian region and the world."

"The biggest feature of the Chinese experience in organ transplantation is the strong support from the Chinese government, which is an example that many countries should follow." These words were from Francis Delmonico, Chairman of organ transplantation task force of WHO.

Huang vowed that in 2021, China will became one of the biggest countries on organ donation and transplantation. To achieve that goal, there's yet something to be done, said Huang.

He noted that it is important to raise people's awareness on organ donation and transplantation. Because China's reform in this field still remain unknown for many people.

Huang also said that China is completing its legal system on organ donation and transplantation; and hopefully a revised law will come out next year.

He also said that at the key point of our organ donation and transplantation development, government departments should form better coordination to enhance law-enforcement, consolidate our efforts and dismiss outside rumors.

After seeing so many FG reenactments on NYC sidewalks, I can't help it when I look at pictures like this one, to wonder if this is really two policemen taking down an FG member in Tianmanmen Square in 2000. Or is it completely staged by FG members, with a couple of them grinning in the background (and one woman on the right going off to buy groceries?).

https://www.businessinsider.com/dragon-springs-falun-gong-upstate-new-york-compound-photos-2019-9#according-to-the-dragon-springs-website-many-of-those-living-in-the-compound-escaped-from-china-4

I'm sure there were arrests, and I'm sure that there was violence. Policing tends to invite persons who try to get away with brutality and torture, and that can't just be in the United States. Perhaps these are "secret police" above. But I can't help but notice that none of the pictures of those who look more police-like depict the level of violence shown above:

Thanks @Anna. Long, but worth the read. It reads like a lot of ex-cult writings, but with a lot of clarity and insight, and leaves me with the impression that it is real. You always should wonder if it can be coming from a CCP member to discredit Falun Gong, for example, but it wouldn't make sense to hurt the reputation of the CCP at the same time. Also, it takes a long time to grow out of a cult, and this has all the earmarks of a true experience in that regard. (I once had several months of studies with a "Moonie" and got nowhere, and to get some of their hard-to-get publications, I once played along with the Scientologists in NYC who wanted to "study" with me. The mindset is clearly spelled out here.)

This person might even believe the organ harvesting happens, but it's odd that he would mention other specifics and "forget" this one which has been the standard narrative for several years before the above was written.

Without saying so directly, I think he does provide several credible reasons why Falun Gong might have felt justified in using that narrative dishonestly. Also, I notice that he implies that it is tied to the way people are converted. If he didn't believe it was true in China, then this was his opportunity to say so:

1 hour ago, Anna said:

The Chinese government then went on to launch a whole range of more dubious accusations about self-immolation, murder and terrorism to justify its brutal campaign against the group — a campaign that continues to this day and has killed thousands. Falun Gong practitioners have continually countered that these claims are nothing but Communist Party propaganda. They have come up with ways to explain away Master Li Hongzhi’s very clear teachings against taking medicine. In fact, the Party was right about this phenomenon although I wouldn’t trust their numbers. Even in a more recent lecture, published on Falun Gong website Clearwisdom.net in May 2015, Master Li acknowledges the “many” deaths in the group and lays the blame squarely on those practitioners’ thoughts:

He admits that Falun Gong members lie to themselves and to others about their own beliefs that probably kill thousands of them. Teaching its members that the CCP itself kills thousands is a counter to this potential cognitive dissonance.

Also, why would Master Li be concerned with persons still having the "sin" of thinking good thoughts about the CCP? Who could have good thoughts about them if they had already bought into the narrative of organ harvesting?

1 hour ago, Anna said:

A lot of medical professionals actually know about this, but for some reason it has escaped wider public scrutiny in the Western world.

To overcome the danger of being scrutinized, they would need to try to find medical professionals who will join them in promoting the organ harvesting narrative. The human rights narrative is necessary and useful for converting new practitioners.

1 hour ago, Anna said:

This article is in no way an attempt to justify the Chinese government’s ridiculous and violent campaign against Falun Gong. The many outright lies the Chinese government has told about the group have in some ways helped Falun Gong by giving the organisation a human rights narrative that allows it to not focus too closely on its own practices and beliefs.

I do believe the CCP campaign against FG is violent in that it probably jails proselytizing members and my guess is that hundreds or thousands have ended up in jail in China. Claiming that the government is the equivalent of Satan surely doesn't help their cause. This persecution creates the initial us/them narrative that is very useful to keep the group "tight-knit" and well controlled by a spiritual leaders. When the CCP lies about them, which invariably happens when local authorities don't quite understand the religious or psychological nature of the group, then the FG leadership (Master Li, living in the United States) now has supposed justification for fighting back with escalated lies. To a degree, it's happened with Moonies and Scientologists, too, as far as I can tell.

1 hour ago, Arauna said:

Did you know that all mention of Teniaman Square is removed from all websites in china  and it has been erased everywhere?    (1984 - speech control)

Perhaps, we can even discuss the Tiananmen Square protests under this topic, too.

22 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Alright, you’d better not be planning a putsch here.

I added this here because we all need a primer or refresher now and then. At least I do. It's so easy to be pushed into topics like Trotskyism vs Leninsm, Hegelian Dialectic, Frankfurt School of Marxism, or to hear claims that BLM is Maoist, etc., without having first had a chance to understant even the basics. 

I once even heard a person say: Well, Hitler was socialist, right?

Hitler used the term National Socialist because he was trying for popular appeal, even though he never planned to allow even a bit of socialism into his plans. They were nearly the opposite. A very fascist, totalitarian, dictatorial regime that hated socialist policies.

Some of the recent topics here have touched upon the political systems of communism and socialism. I found a good write-up on those topics here. Later we can discuss its source, accuracy, any critiques, etc.:

----------------------------------

• Socialism: a social system advocating State ownership and control of the means of production that communists view as an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism; Communism: a social system advocating the absence of classes, the common ownership of the means of production and subsistence, and the equitable distribution of economic goods.

GREEK mythology tells of a Greek deity named Cronus, during whose reign Greece enjoyed a golden age. “All shared equally in the common lot, private property was unknown, and peace and harmony reigned undisturbed,” explains the Dictionary of the History of Ideas. The same source adds: “The first traces of socialism appear in the lament for a lost ‘Golden Age.’”

Not until the early and middle decades of the 19th century, however, did socialism make its appearance as a modern political movement. It found ready acceptance, especially in France, where the French Revolution had severely shaken conventional ideas. There, as in other European countries, the Industrial Revolution created harsh social problems. People were ripe for the idea that public rather than private ownership of resources would better enable the masses to share equally in the fruits of combined labor.

Socialism is not a new idea. Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato wrote about it. Later, during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, Thomas Müntzer, a radical German Catholic priest, demanded a classless society. But his views were controversial, especially his call for revolution, if necessary, in order to achieve this goal. In the 19th century, Welshman Robert Owen, Frenchmen Étienne Cabet and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and a number of other social reformers, among them prominent clergymen, taught that socialism was simply Christianity by another name.

The Utopias of Marx and More

But “none of these spokesmen for socialism,” says the above-mentioned reference work, “had an impact comparable to that exerted by Karl Marx, whose writings became the touchstone of socialist thinking and action.” Marx taught that by means of class struggle, history progresses step-by-step; once the ideal political system has been found, history in that sense will end. This ideal system will resolve the problems of previous societies. Everyone will live in peace, freedom, and prosperity, with no need for governments or military forces.

This sounds remarkably similar to what British statesman Sir Thomas More in 1516 described in his book Utopia. The word, a Greek name of More’s coining, means “no place” (ou-topos), and was possibly meant as a pun on the similar expression eu-topos, meaning “good place.” The Utopia about which More wrote was an imaginary country (no place) that was, nonetheless, an ideal country (good place). Thus, “Utopia” has come to mean “a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions.” More’s book was a clear indictment of the less than ideal economic and social conditions that prevailed during his time in Europe, especially in England, and that contributed later to the development of socialism.

Marx’s theories also mirrored the views of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. According to the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, “the apocalyptic, quasi-religious character of Marxian socialism was shaped by Hegel’s philosophical restatement of radical Christian theology.” Against this backdrop of “radical Christian theology,” explains author Georg Sabine, Marx developed “an exceedingly powerful moral appeal, backed by a quasi-religious conviction. It was nothing less than an appeal to join the march of civilization and right.” Socialism was the wave of the future; perhaps, some thought, it really was Christianity marching to victory under a new name!

The Road From Capitalism to Utopia

Marx lived to publish only the first volume of his work Das Kapital. The last two were edited and published in 1885 and 1894 respectively by his closest collaborator, Friedrich Engels, a German socialist philosopher. Das Kapital undertook to explain the historical background of capitalism, the economic system characteristic of Western-style representative democracy. Based on unregulated trade and competition without State control, capitalism as explained by Marx concentrates ownership of the means of production and distribution in private and corporate hands. According to Marx, capitalism produces a middle class and a working class, provoking antagonism between the two and leading to oppression of the latter. Using the works of orthodox economists to back up his views, Marx argued that capitalism is in reality undemocratic, and that socialism is the ultimate in democracy, benefiting the people by promoting human equality and freedom.

Utopia would be reached once the proletariat rose up in revolution and threw off the oppression of the bourgeoisie, setting up what Marx called a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” (See box, page 21.) His views, however, mellowed with time. He began allowing for two different concepts of revolution, one of a violent kind and the other of a more permanent, gradual kind. This raised an interesting question.

Utopia by Way of Revolution or Evolution?

“Communism” is derived from the Latin word communis, which means “common, belonging to all.” Like socialism, communism claims that free enterprise leads to unemployment, poverty, business cycles, and labor-management conflicts. The solution to these problems is to distribute the nation’s wealth more equally and justly.

But by the end of the last century, Marxists were already at odds about how to achieve these agreed-upon ends. In the early 1900’s, that part of the socialist movement that rejected violent revolution and advocated working within the parliamentary democratic system gained in strength, developing into what is now called democratic socialism. This is the socialism found today in democracies like the Federal Republic of Germany, France, and Britain. For all intents and purposes, these parties have rejected genuine Marxist thinking and are simply interested in creating a welfare state for their citizens.

One dedicated Marxist, however, who strongly believed that a communist Utopia could be achieved only by violent revolution was Lenin. His teachings, along with Marxism, serve as the basis for contemporary orthodox communism. Lenin, a pseudonym of Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, was born in 1870 in what is now the Soviet Union. In 1889 he converted to Marxism. After 1900, following a term of Siberian exile, he lived mostly in Western Europe. When the czarist regime was overthrown, he returned to Russia, founded the Russian Communist Party, and led the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Thereafter he served as the first head of the Soviet Union until his death in 1924. He saw the Communist Party as a highly disciplined, centralized group of revolutionists serving as the vanguard of the proletariat. The Mensheviks disagreed.—See box, page 21.

The line of demarcation between revolution and evolution is no longer so well-defined. In 1978 the book Comparing Political Systems: Power and Policy in Three Worlds observed: “Communism has become more ambivalent about how to achieve Socialist goals. . . . Differences between Communism and Democratic Socialism have been considerably lessened.” Now, in 1990, these words take on added meaning as communism undergoes drastic changes in Eastern Europe.

Communism Reintroduces Religion

“We need spiritual values . . . The moral values that religion generated and embodied for centuries can help in the work of renewal in our country, too.” Few people thought they would ever hear these words from the mouth of a general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. But on November 30, 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev announced this dramatic about-face toward religion during his visit to Italy.

. . .

“Glasnost” and “Perestroika”

Since the waning months of 1989, the Soviet Union and its fellow Communist governments in Eastern Europe have been experiencing mind-boggling political shakeups. Thanks to the policy of glasnost, or openness, these changes have been seen by all. East Europeans have demanded far-reaching reforms that, to a degree, have been granted. Communist leaders have admitted the need for a more humane and compassionate system and have called for a “rebirth of socialism in a different, more enlightened and efficient form,” as one Polish economist put it.

Chief among these leaders has been Gorbachev, who, shortly after coming to power in 1985, introduced the idea of perestroika (restructuring). During a visit to Italy, he defended perestroika as being necessary to meet the challenges of the 1990’s. He said: “Having embarked upon the road of radical reform, the socialist countries are crossing the line beyond which there is no return to the past. Nevertheless, it is wrong to insist, as many in the West do, that this is the collapse of socialism. On the contrary, it means that the socialist process in the world will pursue its further development in a multiplicity of forms.”

Communist leaders are therefore not ready to agree with the assessment made last year by columnist Charles Krauthammer, who wrote: “The perennial question that has preoccupied every political philosopher since Plato—what is the best form of governance?—has been answered. After a few millennia of trying every form of political system, we close this millennium with the sure knowledge that in liberal, pluralist capitalist democracy we have found what we have been looking for.”

However, the German newspaper Die Zeit candidly admits the sad picture Western-style democracy presents, calling attention to its “unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, prostitution, curtailment of social programs, tax reduction and budget deficits,” and then asks: “Is this really the perfect society that has forever triumphed over socialism?”

A familiar proverb says that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. What form of imperfect human government can afford to criticize the weaknesses of another? The facts show that the perfect human government—a Utopia—does not exist. Politicians are still looking for the “good place.” It is still “no place” to be found.

SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST TERMINOLOGY

BOLSHEVIKS/MENSHEVIKS: The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party founded in 1898 split into two groups in 1903; Bolsheviks, literally “members of the majority,” under Lenin, favored keeping the party small, with a limited number of disciplined revolutionaries; Mensheviks, meaning “members of the minority,” favored a larger party membership employing democratic methods.

BOURGEOISIE/PROLETARIAT: Marx taught that the proletariat (the working class) would overthrow the bourgeoisie (the middle class, including factory owners), establishing a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” thereby producing a classless society.

COMINTERN: Short for Communist International (or, Third International), an organization set up by Lenin in 1919 to promote communism; dissolved in 1943, it was preceded by the First International (1864-76), which gave birth to many European socialist groups, and the Second International (1889-1919), an international parliament of socialist parties.

COMMUNIST MANIFESTO: An 1848 statement by Marx and Engels of the principal tenets of scientific socialism that long served as a basis for European Socialist and Communist parties.

EUROCOMMUNISM: The communism of Western European Communist parties; independent of Soviet leadership and willing to serve in coalition governments, it argues that a “dictatorship of the proletariat” is no longer necessary.

SCIENTIFIC/UTOPIAN SOCIALISM: Terms used by Marx to distinguish between his teachings, supposedly based on a scientific examination of history and the workings of capitalism and the purely Utopian socialist teachings of his forerunners.

I have moved some of this "organ harvesting" stuff over to a new topic so that it is easier to follow. Might also get a chance there to pick up some additional subjects that came up under this current topic before it got so overloaded.

https://www.theworldnewsmedia.org/topic/88011-organ-harvesting-falun-gong-tibet-etc-the-west-vs-china/

Just now, Arauna said:

So if you report anything negative it is making up stuff....up . lol.

Yikes. I just pointed out that people report legitimate complaints about the Chinese government, even protests in mainland China, and this is what you get from that?