Monday, March 27, 2006
Oh babee you, got what I need
From Silvio Berlusconi comes the fascinating news that Chinese Communists boiled babies and used them for fertilizer. Before the 2001 election he promised, ""I can organise a conference in which I will prove communists have really eaten babies and done even worse things."
Don't exercise too much, you'll get stringy (poster from Stefan Landsberger)
Just imagine the agenda:
8:30-9:00am - Registration, coffee, doughnuts and babies
9:00 - 11:30am - Opening Plenary "Infant Nitrogen Fixing as Solution to One-Child-Policy Violations"
12:00 - 1:00pm - Free-range lunch at the daycare
1:30 - 4:30pm - Strategy Session I: "Albanian, Chinese & North Korean Babies and Crop Yields - A Comparative Perspective"
1:30 - 4:30pm - Strategy Session II: "Western Imperialist Babies Contain Fewer Nutrients: the Necessity of Import Substitutionism"
5:00 - 6:30pm - Special Buffet Working Dinner: Culinary Comparisons Between Baby and Non-Baby Fertilized Crops
7:00 - 9:00pm - Evening Plenary: 'Put Your Children To Work' - Career Planning for the Orientalist Despot
I told you you'd grow more!
Yes Chairman! And with less mouths to feed, there's enough for everyone!
Marx wrote that history is repeated, first as tragedy, then as farce; it appears that farce is also repeated as tragedy. Does Berlusconi know he's rehashing an old satire as racist anti-communism, the mysterious barbarians of the east with their cannibal collectivism? Jonathan Swift would have something to say about it, I'm sure.
[Police]: Oh where could Hannibal be?
[Lecter] This cop is already dead -- -it's me! From Silence! Silence of the Lambs: The Musical
Procrastinating papers has its benefits. I was flipping through the latest issue of the Epoch Times, and discovered Berlusconi's outburst was fueled by my old friends Falun Gong (whom I've previously blogged about.) In their hysterical, anti-Communist Nine Commentaries, they claim the Cultural Revolution was simply an excuse for cannibals to ply their trade. Sorry, this is gory, but it's fascinating:
After all, isn't there a little Uter in all of us?
They base this on the book Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China, by Zheng Yi. Zheng purports to have documentary evidence of cover-ups of cannibalism during the cultural revolution.
In fact, as one reviewer notes, these documents were more likely forged as part of a power struggle, reliant on Han Chinese prejudice against the Zhuang, a local minority group, whom they claim are cannibals. One doesn't need orientalism to understand this; it's plain old racism. Jews eat babies, the Zhuang of Guangxi province eat class traitors. The other source Falun Gong list is by Father Raymond J. De Jaegher, in his single-edition, out of print, 1952 book Enemy Within, lauded by paranoid anti-Communist J. Edgar Hoover, who "would recommend it to anyone who was willing to understand such an evil force in this world." Whatever events these texts refer to, they're hardly unbiased sources.
I don't defend Mao, as recent scholarship emphasizes his terroristic rule. However, he can't be reduced to cartoonish evil; for the political roots of famine and cultural revolution, check out Nigel Harris' The Mandate of Heaven.
As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. It is well known that we have the problem relatively under control, and that it is the RAF who now suffer the largest casualties in this area. And what do you think the Argylls ate in Aden. Arabs? Yours etc. Captain B.J. Smethwick in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic.
There was indeed cannibalism during China's famines, before and after the Communists took power. There was cannibalism in Russia during the Civil War; the Donner party did it; the Swiss did it. Famine imposes its own logic, and capitalism and Maoist dictatorship are not always efficient means of food distribution. But since Falun Gong have to blame Communism, they adopt the position that, "In the most serious famines in China's history prior to the CCP, there were cases in which families exchanged one another's children to eat, but nobody ever ate his own children. Under the CCP's reign, however, people were driven to... even kill and eat their own children." I know my moral revulsion to cannibalism rests on eating my own kids - though, since I don't have any, all of yours are fair game. Luckily I've never told my comrades I'm a vegetarian - they'd eat me alive.
My point is that gruesome sensationalism has its uses. A right-wing religious sect popularizes myths about Communism, and Italy's premier, fighting a losing election campaign, gets to tar Communists as baby-eaters. All to discredit a set of ideas dedicated to human freedom and liberation from an oppressive system. The stakes in this ideological war are still high.
I'll be having your first-born - what are you having?
Don't exercise too much, you'll get stringy (poster from Stefan Landsberger)Just imagine the agenda:
8:30-9:00am - Registration, coffee, doughnuts and babies
9:00 - 11:30am - Opening Plenary "Infant Nitrogen Fixing as Solution to One-Child-Policy Violations"
12:00 - 1:00pm - Free-range lunch at the daycare
1:30 - 4:30pm - Strategy Session I: "Albanian, Chinese & North Korean Babies and Crop Yields - A Comparative Perspective"
1:30 - 4:30pm - Strategy Session II: "Western Imperialist Babies Contain Fewer Nutrients: the Necessity of Import Substitutionism"
5:00 - 6:30pm - Special Buffet Working Dinner: Culinary Comparisons Between Baby and Non-Baby Fertilized Crops
7:00 - 9:00pm - Evening Plenary: 'Put Your Children To Work' - Career Planning for the Orientalist Despot
I told you you'd grow more!Yes Chairman! And with less mouths to feed, there's enough for everyone!
Marx wrote that history is repeated, first as tragedy, then as farce; it appears that farce is also repeated as tragedy. Does Berlusconi know he's rehashing an old satire as racist anti-communism, the mysterious barbarians of the east with their cannibal collectivism? Jonathan Swift would have something to say about it, I'm sure.
[Police]: Oh where could Hannibal be?
[Lecter] This cop is already dead -- -it's me! From Silence! Silence of the Lambs: The Musical
Procrastinating papers has its benefits. I was flipping through the latest issue of the Epoch Times, and discovered Berlusconi's outburst was fueled by my old friends Falun Gong (whom I've previously blogged about.) In their hysterical, anti-Communist Nine Commentaries, they claim the Cultural Revolution was simply an excuse for cannibals to ply their trade. Sorry, this is gory, but it's fascinating:
The hurricane of "class struggle" blew away any sense of sin and human nature from people's minds. Cannibalism spread like an epidemic and people enjoyed cannibalistic feasts.... During the peak of this movement, even the cafeteria of the highest government organization, Wuxuan County Revolutionary Committee, offered human dishes.
After all, isn't there a little Uter in all of us?They base this on the book Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China, by Zheng Yi. Zheng purports to have documentary evidence of cover-ups of cannibalism during the cultural revolution.
In fact, as one reviewer notes, these documents were more likely forged as part of a power struggle, reliant on Han Chinese prejudice against the Zhuang, a local minority group, whom they claim are cannibals. One doesn't need orientalism to understand this; it's plain old racism. Jews eat babies, the Zhuang of Guangxi province eat class traitors. The other source Falun Gong list is by Father Raymond J. De Jaegher, in his single-edition, out of print, 1952 book Enemy Within, lauded by paranoid anti-Communist J. Edgar Hoover, who "would recommend it to anyone who was willing to understand such an evil force in this world." Whatever events these texts refer to, they're hardly unbiased sources.
I don't defend Mao, as recent scholarship emphasizes his terroristic rule. However, he can't be reduced to cartoonish evil; for the political roots of famine and cultural revolution, check out Nigel Harris' The Mandate of Heaven.
As a naval officer I abhor the implication that the Royal Navy is a haven for cannibalism. It is well known that we have the problem relatively under control, and that it is the RAF who now suffer the largest casualties in this area. And what do you think the Argylls ate in Aden. Arabs? Yours etc. Captain B.J. Smethwick in a white wine sauce with shallots, mushrooms and garlic.
There was indeed cannibalism during China's famines, before and after the Communists took power. There was cannibalism in Russia during the Civil War; the Donner party did it; the Swiss did it. Famine imposes its own logic, and capitalism and Maoist dictatorship are not always efficient means of food distribution. But since Falun Gong have to blame Communism, they adopt the position that, "In the most serious famines in China's history prior to the CCP, there were cases in which families exchanged one another's children to eat, but nobody ever ate his own children. Under the CCP's reign, however, people were driven to... even kill and eat their own children." I know my moral revulsion to cannibalism rests on eating my own kids - though, since I don't have any, all of yours are fair game. Luckily I've never told my comrades I'm a vegetarian - they'd eat me alive.
My point is that gruesome sensationalism has its uses. A right-wing religious sect popularizes myths about Communism, and Italy's premier, fighting a losing election campaign, gets to tar Communists as baby-eaters. All to discredit a set of ideas dedicated to human freedom and liberation from an oppressive system. The stakes in this ideological war are still high.
I'll be having your first-born - what are you having?
