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Commentary Just a few more thoughts about the CCP virus, aka the Wuhan flu or (for people who like scary acronyms) COVID-19. I am not sure we can yet say that the dust has settled, but the building that is our society has assuredly collapsed and the air is thick with hysteria. The news is full of scenes of resistance to the universal one-size-fits-all lockdown that was imposed upon the country in March. Some states are gradually opening back up to the delight of their residents and consternation of the virtue-signaling Left. Perhaps the most egregious example of the latter...

There were no champagne corks popping, no crystal balls dropping in Wang Yi's new year. The pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church was in prison, spending his second January 1st in a dark cell, charged with a crime Americans commit every day: worshipping Jesus. The actual allegations were much more subtle -- things like "illegal business activities" or "inciting subversion of state power." But in China, government officials need no excuse. Christians, like Uyghurs, Falun Gong, and any other men and women of faith, are fair game. "Where are you taking my husband?" a woman pleads on a cell phone...

Facebook and Twitter on Friday removed a network of fake accounts linked to the pro-Trump conspiracy website The Epoch Times. Facebook in a blog post said it had connected the accounts to U.S.-based media company The BL, which in turn has ties to The Epoch Times. That group, with ties to the Chinese spiritual group Falun Gong, has used social media to push for President Trump's reelection, NBC News first reported in August. The hundreds of accounts were operated by individuals in Vietnam and the U.S., many of whom used artificial intelligence to generate profiles to infiltrate groups and dodge...

An epidemic of African Swine Fever is sweeping through China's hog farms, and the effects are rippling across the globe, because China is a superpower of pork. Half of the world's pigs live in China — or at least they did before the epidemic began a year ago. "Every day, we hear of more outbreaks," says Christine McCracken, a senior analyst at RaboResearch, which is affiliated with the global financial firm Rabobank. McCracken and her colleagues now estimate that by the end of 2019, China's production of pork could be cut in half. "That's roughly 300 million to 350 million...

* China is grappling with a widespread African swine flu (ASF) epidemic, a disease fatal to pigs but harmless to humans. * ASF's effects on pigs are gruesome. Symptoms include diarrhea, depression, and miscarriages. * The government is urging farmers to cull infected pigs to prevent the spread of the disease, which is in turn dramatically decreasing the country's pork production. * Dutch bank Rabobank estimates that the country will kill 150 million to 200 million pigs — or one third of the country's supply — this year. * China is the world's largest pork producer and consumer. The steep...

The United Nations Human Rights Council and U.N. member states have been told that they have a “legal obligation” to confront China over its practice of forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong adherents. Addressing the council in Geneva on Sept. 24, London-based lawyer Hamid Sabi presented the findings from a report released in June by the China Tribunal, or the Independent Tribunal Into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China. The tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who previously led the prosecution of former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal, concluded beyond reasonable doubt...

After NBC News published a hit piece on news outlet the Epoch Times and its association with the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement persecuted by China’s government, the Wikipedia page for the outlet was vandalized and filled with attacks sourced to the piece. One editor involved has a history of attacking Falun Gong and defending Chinese communist figures such as Mao Zedong. The editor also contacted an Antifa-supporting socialist editor with a similar history, which included downplaying the oppression of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province. Other Wikipedia articles associated with Falun Gong have also been subject to smears from...

Here are a selection of micro-videos that amply illustrate what is going on in Asia this summer. With that being said, let it be well understood that there is quite a bit going on, let me tell you all. And it is all so very different from what you would find in the West that it becomes noteworthy, though rather difficult to classify individually. Here, the videos depict China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan. I hope that you all will enjoy these micro-videos and visions of Asia as much as I do. Please kindly note that this post has multiple embedded...

Jennifer Zeng grew up admiring the Communist Party of China and adhering to its stringent rules. But her life changed forever when she embraced religion and was swept up in a government crackdown on Falun Gong. Arrested four times as a young adult and held in as a prisoner in a labor camp, she quickly woke up to the horrors of living in a socialist state. After being subject to brutal torture, Zeng managed to escape China and now tells about the evils of socialism and communism. At a time when more Americans are embracing Karl Marx’s teachings, Chris Wright...

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in a talk sponsored by the Falun Dafa Association in Argentina, titled “An Evil Never Before Seen on This Planet”, which addressed a dark secret in today’s China: the forced removal of organs of people living in China, with Yu Zhenjie and Dong Yuhua. Both are survivors of forced labor camps and torture in that nation. The statements of Yu Zhenjie and Dong Yuhua yesterday had me in tears. For those who do not know, Falun Dafa is not a political doctrine, nor an economic theory, nor a militant protest movement. Falun Dafa, also...

At least 260 Chinese lawyers signed an open letter of protest on Friday after a fellow attorney was detained by police for defying a judge by invoking the constitutional rights of free speech and religion in court.Zhang Lei, a lawyer who drafted the open letter condemning the police action in the northeastern province of Jilin, said Zhang Keke was hauled away from the court on Thursday and detained for six hours over his statements in court while defending a member of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong. “How can a lawyer not speak of law in court? We have found...

Cisco Systems, which designed a computer program enabling the Chinese government to inflict human rights abuses on members of the Falun Gong religious sect, apparently won’t be held liable for those abuses because China didn’t bring its victims to the United States to be tortured. Cisco sold a system called “Golden Shield” to the Chinese government, touting its ability to uniquely identify members of Falun Gong and as “the only product capable of recognizing over 90% of Falun Gong pictorial information,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The State Administration for Religious Affairs on Wednesday urged the Vatican to rescind its threats to excommunicate two Chinese bishops, who are to be consecrated without papal approval, and return to the "correct path of dialogue." The threats of excommunication are "extremely unreasonable and rude," a spokesperson said in a statement. Yue Fusheng and Ma Daqin will be consecrated on Friday and Saturday in Heilongjiang Province and Shanghai, respectively. The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association was forced to begin to consecrate elected bishops in the 1950s after the Vatican threatened to impose excommunication. The association has so far consecrated more...

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Falungong members are suing Cisco Systems for custom-building "Golden Shield" Internet technology used by China to track down devotees of the spiritual movement. Cisco dismissed the case Monday as being without basis and vowed to "vigorously defend" itself. Cisco "designed, supplied and helped maintain a censorship and surveillance network known as Golden Shield" used by Chinese officials to identify Falungong practitioners who were detained, tortured and sometimes killed, a lawyer for the group said in court documents filed last week. Cisco established a China Network Technology Corp. subsidiary in Beijing in 1998 that went to work...

China's hidden policy of executing prisoners of the forbidden quasi-Buddhist group Falun Gong and harvesting their organs for worldwide sale has been expanded to include Tibetans, "house church" Christians and Muslim Uighurs, human rights activists said Monday. In a news conference on Capitol Hill, several speakers, including attorney David Matas of B'nai Brith Canada and Ethan Gutmann of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said their investigations have unearthed a grisly trade in which an estimated 9,000 members of Falun Gong have been executed for their corneas, lungs, livers, kidneys and skins. They likened the practice to the Nazi...

China seeks to exorcise ‘evil cult’ it invited in By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing Published: June 9 2009 17:38 | Last updated: June 9 2009 22:48 Zhang Erping first heard about Falun Gong in 1994 at an introductory talk organised by the Chinese consulate in New York. Falun Gong members in Taipei mark the 10th anniversary of the crackdown on the spiritual movement within China At the time, the Chinese Communist party was promoting the nascent spiritual movement abroad, along­side traditional cooking and handicrafts, as part of its “cultural propaganda to the west”. “I still have pictures of me with...

Zhang Erping first heard about Falun Gong in 1994 at an introductory talk organised by the Chinese consulate in New York. At the time, the Chinese Communist party was promoting the nascent spiritual movement abroad, along­side traditional cooking and handicrafts, as part of its “cultural propaganda to the west”. “I still have pictures of me with the Falun Gong masters and government officials in the consulate in New York,” says Mr Zhang, who calls himself a volunteer but is widely regarded as the official spokesman and the second most prominent figure within the movement. On Wednesday, 10 years after Beijing...

Ten years outside the law: How China still fears Falun Gong Jane Macartney, Beijing Evil cult or spiritual sect? The Falun Gong is the most persecuted group in China, even though 10 years have passed since thousands of its activists stunned the leadership by quietly surrounding its headquarters in the heart of Beijing for a day and then melting away. The demonstration was unprecedented. Seemingly out of nowhere 10,000 people appeared who stood silently for hours before walking away into the night, leaving barely a scrap of rubbish behind them. They read and they meditated. Their aim was to demand...

Tragedy of Falun Gong by: Daniel Allen, April 06, 2009 A report by the Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group, entitled “Forget Not the Beijing Olympics’ Victims,” urges readers to remember that despite China’s promises to improve human rights, the Olympics ended up serving as an excuse for the Chinese government to arrest and imprison thousands of people who had shown signs of opposition to the current regime. According to the report, the Chinese government “used the Olympics’ security as a pretext to apprehend, torture, and murder people who had already suffered prolonged human rights violations in China.” It identifies...

For China's ruling circles, the title of heavy metal group Guns N' Roses' new album triggers some memories they would rather forget. After keeping fans waiting for 17 long years, Guns N' Roses released Chinese Democracy for sale this weekend with lyrics and a Web site sure to trigger action by Chinese censors. About two decades ago, Beijing experienced the same commingling of rock music and pro-democracy advocacy, right on its doorstep, in the protests at Tiananmen Square. Beyond the album title, Guns N' Roses, known as "Qiang Hua" in China, did not shy away from pressing Beijing's most sensitive...