I won't be watching the Olympics this summer

For as long as I can remember, I have loved the Olympics. But I won't be watching this year. At all. I am boycotting.

Until China cleans up their act and ceases their extreme repression (I almost struggle to say this, because these days we mimic them in so many ways,) I will never acknowledge Olympic games held on their soil.

For me, this will be an Olympic year that never came.

To those who now languish in Chinese prisons simply for being dissidents; and of course for the Tibetan people, continually abused and dispossessed... the Olympic committee owes an apology for their incredible lapse in ethical standards. A lesson that might have, should have been learned after Hitler's Games.

By the way, I no longer feel that our own government meets Olympic standards either. We've changed. Our border control agents are now apparently claiming the right to seize laptop computers, Ipods - anything they want - and to remove and share the data they find on a whim. This is not the US of A that I remember - and I wouldn't expect anyone to visit us from overseas in this strange, paranoid climate. Its getting just a little... Nazi around here.

So no -- we no longer deserve the Olympics either. The Olympic Games represent a higher standard of ethics, morality and respect for basic human dignity... a standard to which neither China, nor the current United States government will adhere.

Happens every day

We may have won the Cold War, but we're sure as hell losing the trade war.

It appears that tainted food imports from China are actually quite common. As in, it happens all the time.

Who knew? Heh - you can bet the FDA knew, they just didn't bother to tell the sucker American consumers.

Feel safe?

Seriously -- we're supposed to be afraid of isolated terrorist attacks, while every day, American businesses are importing poisoned ingredients from Chinese food suppliers and lacing them indiscriminately throughout our food chain?

I think its high time we picked a new definition of 'terrorism.'

It would seem that our economy is now so dependent on these Chinese imports that we can't do anything about this problem. According to Carol Tucker Foreman, a former assistant secretary of agriculture:

"Our farmers and food processors have drooled for years to be able to sell their food to that massive market," Foreman said. "The Chinese counterfeit. They have a serious piracy problem. But we put up with it because we want to sell to them."

At first glance, it seems rather odd that our government has forgotten that they are dealing with a communist nation governed by brutal dictators: guys that have basically wanted us dead, for generations. How shocking -- they're cheating us! (You should see what they did to Tibet.)

I have nothing at all against Chinese people. I do have some issues with their government.

Once upon a time, we actually disliked communism. Remember all of those foreign wars (via other countries -- Korea, Vietnam?) Most living Americans over the age of 30 were raised to believe that communists can't be trusted to have the same ethics that we do. That communism was bad. Evil, even.

Then someone figured out that we could make a whole lot of money by trading with them. Voila! Suddenly the Cold War was over, and communism was OK! (Well, except for Cuba of course.)

Turns out that our government was right in one respect: the Chinese really aren't any less ethical than our own corporations. Either side will happily sell us out for a yen.

Too bad our government didn't think of this 'trade thing' before all of those people died in the Vietnam war. I guess we were 'fighting them over there, so we wouldn't have to fight them over here.'

Now we're fighting them here - and they're poisoning us, apparently without remorse. This may not be as dramatic as flying airplanes into the World Trade Towers, but nevertheless quite effective. Ask any pet owner if they feel 'terrorized' right now. And we're even paying them to do it to us.

Tainted Chinese Imports Common
In Four Months, FDA Refused 298 Shipments

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2007; A01

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.

Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.

For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught -- many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.

Nice of our FDA to tell us about all of this, don't you think? And now we find out that this has been going on for years.

Should we be wondering if there is asbestos in our styrofoam pots, and cyanide in baby teething rings? My God - nearly everything we buy now is made in China. Just how poisoned are we?

China and the FDA come clean, sorta

China finally admitted that two companies illegally exported contaminated wheat gluten and rice protein to the U.S., supposedly to keep up with demand for higher protein levels in the products.

Meanwhile, the FDA has now admitted that a few more than '16 confirmed deaths' have resulted from tainted pet food.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it has received about 17,000 complaints of sick pets, with about 4,000 deaths reported. Investigations have extended to livestock feed containing tainted pet food that made its way to some 6,000 hogs and as many as 3.1 million chickens.

That's closer to the truth. Its not like the pet owners, desperately checking the web every day for updates, didn't know how high the numbers were climbing. It was past time for the FDA to come clean as well. This is a mess.

China had denied FDA assertions that melamine, a chemical used in plastics and fertilizer, had been added to wheat gluten and rice protein exported from China for pet foods. But Xinhua state news agency reversed the official position.

"The two companies illegally added melamine...in a bid to meet the contractual demand for the amount of protein in the products," Xinhua said, quoting the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

The Administration said the two companies, named by the FDA as Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd. and Binzhou Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd, evaded quality checks by labeling their products as exports not subject to inspection.