Apology

[Rick Horowitz <ri...@yahoo.com>]

At 02:19 PM 4/26/01 -1000, you wrote:
>Hey - politics and struts don't mix.

I agree.  I sent this msg to the Struts list totally by accident. Thanks 
for your tame reply.

Regards,

Rick

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Rick Horowitz [mailto:rickhoro@yahoo.com]
>Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 12:22 PM
>To: Horowitz
>Subject: Boycott China - please read - your life may depend on it
>
>
>Hello Everyone,
>
>The following speech, reprinted from www.newsmax.com, was made this Tuesday
>night by U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California. I urge you all to
>read every word of this speech. I have been aware of much of the budding
>catastrophe we face regarding China, yet have not seen the issues
>articulated with anything near the clarity that Mr. Rohrabacher does in
>this speech.
>
>My wife and I began boycotting Chinese-made goods about a year ago in
>recognition of the reasons outlined here. I urge every one of you to
>forward this message to everyone in your email list, and begin boycotting
>Chinese goods immediately.
>
>My own brief summary of the issues:
>
>1. Our extreme trade deficit vs. China (nearly $100B per year now) has been
>used for a massive military buildup, with the U.S. as the ultimate target.
>2. Russia is selling their most advanced arms to China, capable of
>destroying our aircraft carriers, including a supersonic torpedo technology
>that is far beyond anything that we have and for which we have no defense.
>3. Our leading defense contractors, including Loral, Boeing, Hughes,
>Motorola, and others have sold advanced military technology to China over
>the past few years, including technology that now enables Chinese
>nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles to accurately hit
>American cities, something they were not able to do prior to this transfer
>of technology.
>4. The majority of the "partner" companies of U.S. ventures in China are in
>fact owned and operated by the PLA (the People's Liberation Army - the
>Chinese army). These are not commercial interests.
>5. The U.S. government (read you and I) have been providing tax breaks to
>American companies to close up factories in the U.S. and reopen them in
>China. These factories transfer advanced technology in many cases, put
>Americans out of work, and provide cash to the Chinese to further their
>military expansion.
>
>I hope these points and the following reprinted speech make you think long
>and hard about our position regarding China, and that you:
>
>1. Start boycotting Chinese-made goods immediately
>2. Send this message to everyone on your email list. Please don't be
>embarrassed to take a stand on this. I assure you, it is not my imagination
>that China poses a significant threat to our safety and future, and we are
>giving them the money, technology, and weaponry to carry out their many
>threats already made against our country.
>
>Here's one informational link...I'm sure you can find may others yourself.
>
>PLEASE read Mr. Rohrabacher's speech, below:
>
>http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/chinamissiles_990409.html
>....includes, "A Chinese official hinted at launching a nuclear weapon
>at Los Angeles in 1996, when U.S. warships confronted
>China over missile firings near Taiwan."
>
>Make no mistake about it. The Chinese government is a dictatorship, and is
>very dangerous.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Rick Horowitz
>
>Rohrabacher Slams U.S. Aid to China
>
>Rep. Dana Rohrabacher
>Thursday, April 26, 2001
>
>Editor's note: This is the text of a speech on the House floor by
>U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., Tuesday night.
>
>Mr. Speaker, one month ago, the Communist regime that controls
>the mainland of China attacked an American surveillance aircraft
>while it was in international waters. After being knocked out of the
>sky, 24 American military personnel, the crew of the surveillance
>craft, were held hostage for nearly 2 weeks. The Communist
>Chinese blamed us and would not return the crew until the United
>States was humiliated before the world.
>
>Wake up, America. What is going on here? Large financial interests
>in our country whose only goal is exploiting the cheap, near-slave
>labor of China have been leading our country down the path to
>catastrophe. How much more proof do we need that the so-called
>engagement theory is a total failure?
>
>Our massive investment in China, pushed and promoted by
>American billionaires and multinational corporations, has created
>not a more peaceful, democratic China, but an aggressive
>nuclear-armed bully that now threatens the world with its hostile acts
>and proliferation. Do the Communist Chinese have to murder
>American personnel or attack the United States or our allies with
>their missiles before those who blithesomely pontificate about the
>civilizing benefits of building the Chinese economy will admit that
>China for a decade has been going in the opposite direction than
>predicted by the so-called ``free traders.''
>
>'We Have Made a Monstrous Mistake'
>
>We have made a monstrous mistake, and if we do not face reality
>and change our fundamental policies, instead of peace, there will be
>conflict. Instead of democratic reform, we will see a further
>retrenchment of a regime that is run by gangsters and thugs, the
>world's worst human rights abusers.
>
>Let us go back to basics. The mainland of China is controlled by a
>rigid, Stalinistic Communist party. The regime is committing
>genocide in Tibet. It is holding as a captive the designated
>successor of the Dalai Lama, who is the spiritual leader of the
>Tibetan people. By the way, this person, the designated new leader,
>is a little boy. They are holding hostage a little boy in order to
>terrorize the Tibetan people. The regime is now, at this moment,
>arresting thousands of members of the Falun Gong, which is nothing
>more threatening than a meditation and yoga society. Christians of
>all denominations are being brutalized unless they register with the
>state and attend controlled churches. Just in the last few days, there
>has been a round-up of Catholics who were practicing their faith
>outside of state control. Now they are in a Chinese prison.
>
>There are no opposition parties in China. There is no free press in
>China. China is not a free society under anyone's definition. More
>importantly, it is not a society that is evolving toward freedom.
>
>President Richard Nixon first established our ties with the
>Communist Chinese in 1972 at the height of the Cold War. That was
>a brilliant move. At that particular moment, it was a brilliant move. It
>enabled us to play the power of one dictatorship off the power of
>another dictatorship. We played one against the other at a time
>when we had been weakened by the Vietnam War and at a time
>when Soviet Russia was on the offensive.
>
>During the Reagan years, we dramatically expanded our ties to
>China, but do not miss the essential fact that justified that
>relationship and made it different than what has been going on
>these last 10 years. China was at that time, during the Reagan
>administration, evolving toward a freer, more open society, a
>growing democratic movement was evident, and the United States,
>our government and our people, fostered this movement. Under
>President Reagan, we brought tens of thousands of students here,
>and we sent teams from our National Endowment for Democracy
>there. We were working with them to build a more democratic
>society, and it looked like that was what was going to happen. All of
>this ended, of course, in Tiananmen Square over 10 years ago.
>
>'Tanks to Wipe Out the Opposition'
>
>Thousands of Chinese gathered there in Tiananmen Square in
>Beijing to demand a more open and democratic government. For a
>moment, it appeared like there had been an historic breakthrough.
>Then, from out of the darkness came battle-hardened troops and
>tanks to wipe out the opposition. The people who ordered that
>attack are still holding the reins of power in China today and, like all
>other criminals who get away with scurrilous deeds, they have
>become emboldened and arrogant.
>
>My only lament is that had Ronald Reagan been president during
>that time of Tiananmen Square, things, I think, would have been
>different; but he was not. Since that turn of events about 12 years
>ago, things have been progressively worse. The repression is more
>evident than ever. The belligerence and hostility of Beijing is even
>more open. Underscoring the insanity of it all, the Communist
>Chinese have been using their huge trade surplus with the United
>States to upgrade their military and expand its warfighting
>capabilities.
>
>Communist China's arsenal of jets, its ballistic missiles, its naval
>forces have all been modernized and reinforced. In the last 2 years,
>they have purchased destroyers from the former Soviet Union.
>These destroyers are armed with Sunburn missiles. These were
>systems that were designed during the Cold War by the Russians to
>destroy American aircraft carriers.
>
>Yes, the Communist Chinese are arming themselves to sink
>American aircraft carriers, to kill thousands upon thousands of
>American sailors. Make no mistake about it, China's military might
>now threatens America and world peace. If there is a crisis in that
>part of the world again, which there will be, we can predict that some
>day, unlike the last crisis when American aircraft carriers were able
>to become a peaceful element to bring moderation of judgment
>among the players who were in conflict, instead, American aircraft
>carriers will find themselves vulnerable, and an American President
>will have to face the choice of risking the lives of all of those sailors
>on those aircraft carriers.
>
>Mr. Speaker, how is it, then, that a relatively poor country can afford
>to enlarge its military in such a way, to the point that it can threaten a
>superpower such as the United States of America?
>
>Even as China's slide into tyranny and militarism continued in these
>last 12 years, the United States government has permitted a totally
>indefensible economic rules of engagement to guide our
>commercial ties with the mainland of China.
>
>While China was going in the right direction, permitting that country
>to have a large trade advantage and thus providing a large reserve
>of hard currency may or may not have made sense, as long as
>China was going in the right direction and going towards
>democracy. Maybe we would like to build up a freer China that way.
>
>It 'Makes No Sense' to Help Arm China
>
>But it made no sense, and it still makes no sense, for the United
>States to permit a country that is sinking even deeper into tyranny
>and into anti-Western hostility to have a huge trade surplus as a
>resource to call upon to meet their military needs.
>
>In effect, the Communist Chinese have been using the tens of
>billions of dollars of trade surplus with the United States each year to
>build their military power and military might so some day the
>Communist Chinese might be able to kill millions of our people, or at
>least to threaten us to do that in order to back us down into defeat
>without ever coming to a fight.
>
>We have essentially been arming and equipping our worst potential
>enemy and financing our own destruction. How could we let such a
>crime against the security of our country happen? Well, it was
>argued by some very sincere people that free trade would bring
>positive change to China, and that engagement would civilize the
>Communist regime.
>
>Even as evidence stacked upon more evidence indicated that
>China was not liberalizing, that just the opposite was happening, the
>barkers for open markets kept singing their song:
>``Most-favored-nation status, just give us this and things will get
>better.'' It was nonsense then and it is nonsense today. But after all
>that has happened, one would think that the shame factor would
>silence these eternal optimists.
>
>Perhaps I am a bit sensitive because, first and foremost, let me
>state unequivocally that I consider myself a free trader. Yes, I believe
>in free trade between free people. What we should strive for is to
>have more and more open trade with all free and democratic
>countries, or countries that are heading in the right direction.
>
>I am thus positively inclined towards President Bush's efforts to
>establish a free trade zone among the democratic countries in this
>hemisphere. I will read the fine print, but my inclination is to facilitate
>trade between democracies.
>
>When I say, ``I will read the fine print,'' I will be especially concerned
>with a free trade agreement, and I will be looking to that free trade
>agreement to make sure that we have protection that our sensitive
>technologies, which can be used for military purposes, will not be
>transferred from the countries in our hemisphere, democratic
>countries in our hemisphere, to China or to any other countries that
>are potential enemies of the United States. This will have to be in
>that free trade agreement.
>
>There will have to be protections against the transfer of our
>technology to our enemies. This is more of a concern following new
>science and technology agreements that were signed by China and
>countries like Brazil and Venezuela recently. Dictatorships are
>always going to try to gain in any agreement that they have with us,
>and they are always going to try to manipulate other agreements
>and the rules of the game so they can stay in power.
>
>When one applies the rules of free trade to a controlled society, as
>we have been told over and over again, more trade, and let us have
>free trade with China, that is going to make them more dependent
>on us and they will be freer and more prosperous, more likely to be
>peaceful people, well, if we apply the rules of free trade to a
>dictatorship, ultimately what happens is that it is only free trade in
>one direction.
>
>On one end we have free people, a democratic people who are not
>controlled by their government, and thus are basically unregulated
>and are moving forward for their own benefit. But on the other end,
>the trade will be controlled and manipulated to ensure that the
>current establishment of that country stays in power.
>
>Never has that been more evident than in America's dealing with
>Communist China. In this case, it is so very blatant.
>
>Those advocating most-favored-nation status, or as it is called now,
>normal trade relations, have always based their case on the boon to
>our country represented by the sale of American goods to ``the
>world's largest market.'' That is their argument. Here on this floor
>over and over and over again we heard people say, ``We have to
>have these normal trade relations because we have to sell our
>products, the products made by the American people, to the world's
>largest market.''
>
>This Is Free Trade?
>
>That is a great pitch. The only problem is, it is not true. The sale of
>U.S.-produced vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, autos, you name the
>commercial item, are almost a non-factor in the trade relationship
>between our countries. They are a minuscule amount of what is
>considered the trade analysis of these two countries.
>
>During these many years that we have given China
>most-favored-nation status or normal trade relations, the power elite
>there never lowered China's tariffs, and in fact increased the tariffs
>in some areas, and erected barriers to prevent the sale of all but a
>few U.S.-made products.
>
>So while we had low tariffs, and intentionally brought our tariffs down
>by most-favored-nation, for over a decade, even as China was
>slipping more into tyranny, they were permitted to have high tariffs
>and block our goods from coming in.
>
>Beijing would not permit its own people to buy American-made
>consumer items. They were not looking for a trade relationship with
>the United States for their people to be able to buy American
>products. That is not what they were looking for. That is not what it
>was all about. They knew it, but yet our people were told over and
>over and over and over and over again, ``Oh, we have to have
>most-favored-nation status and normal trade relations in order to sell
>American products to the world's largest market.''
>
>That is not what was going on. It is not what the reality was. Instead,
>the Communist Chinese were out to get American money, lots of it,
>and American money to build factories, and they wanted the
>Americans to build the factories with our technology and our money
>in their country.
>
>By the way, many of the factories that were built there were not built
>in order to sell products to the Chinese people. Those factories
>were built to export products to the United States.
>
>The system that developed with the acquiescence of our
>government, and this is no secret, what I am talking about tonight is
>no secret to anyone except to the American people, our government
>acquiesced to this for years, this policy put the American people, the
>American working people, on the losing end of the transformational
>action in the long run and sometimes even in the medium run.
>
>The Chinese, because of our low tariffs, flooded our market with
>their products, and blocked our goods from entering China, and all
>the while we were hearing over and over again, ``We must have
>most-favored-nation status in order to sell American products in the
>world's largest market.''
>
>They droned on year after year that most-favored-nation status was
>so important to selling our products in the world's largest market. I
>will just repeat that four or five times, because we must have heard it
>a thousand times on this floor, and every time said, I am sure, in
>complete sincerity by the people who were expressing it, but were
>totally wrong. A very quick look into the statistics could have
>indicated that.
>
>Taiwan a Better Customer
>
>By the way, just to let members know, the people of Taiwan,
>numbering 22 million people, buy more from us annually than the 1.2
>Chinese on the mainland. The Taiwanese, with 22 million people,
>buy more consumer products from us than do 1.2 billion Chinese in
>the mainland.
>
>What has happened? What has happened as a result of these
>nonsensical counterproductive policies, anti-American policies to
>some degree, even though our own government has acquiesced in
>them? It has resulted in a decline in domestic manufacturing
>facilities in the United States. In other words, we have been closing
>down our factories and putting our people out of work.
>
>By the way, that does not mean the company is put out of business.
>Those factories spring up someplace else. There is this flood of
>Chinese products, the factory closes down, and guess where it
>reopens? It reopens, yes, in Communist China, using our modern
>technology and our capital, which is what the Chinese want to have
>invested in their country.
>
>Taxing Americans to Help Communism
>
>Adding insult to injury, our working people, some of them, whose
>jobs are being threatened by imports, our working people are being
>taxed in order to provide taxpayer-subsidized loans and loan
>guarantees for those corporate leaders wishing to close down their
>operations in the United States and set up on the mainland of China.
>
>Even if China was a free country, that would not be a good idea. I do
>not believe we should be doing that even for democratic countries.
>But for us to do that to a Communist dictatorship or any kind of
>dictatorship, to have the American taxpayer subsidize these
>investments, taking the risks on the shoulders of the American
>taxpayer in order to build the economy of a vicious dictatorship, this
>is insane. This is an insane policy. This is not free trade between
>free people. It has nothing to do with free trade. It is subsidized trade
>with subjugated people.
>
>Companies that were permitted to sell their product to the Chinese
>in these last 10 years, and there have been a few, companies like
>Boeing who have attempted to sell airplanes to China, have found
>themselves in a very bad predicament. As part of the deal enabling
>them to sell planes now to Communist China, they have had to set
>up manufacturing facilities in China to build the parts, or at least
>some of the parts for the airplane.
>
>Thus, over a period of time, what the Chinese have managed to do
>is to have the United States just build factories and pay for them. Or,
>as part of an agreement to sell the airplane, we have set up an
>aerospace industry in China that will compete with our own
>aerospace industry.
>
>I come from California. I come from a district in which aerospace is
>a mighty important part of our economy. I just want to thank all the
>people who have permitted this policy, this blackmail of American
>companies, to go on under the name, under the guise of free trade.
>It is going to sell out our own national interest 10 years down the
>road when these people will have a modern aerospace industry
>building weapons and being able to undercut our own people. Gee,
>thanks.
>
>Making matters worse, many of the so-called companies in China
>that are partnering with American industrialists, and American
>industrialists, when they are going to build in China, are often
>required to have a Chinese company as their partner as a
>prerequisite to them investing in China, in short order these
>so-called partners end up taking over the company. So many of
>American companies have been there and have been burned.
>
>Guess what, we look at these private Chinese companies that were
>partners with our American firms, we look at them, and what do we
>find out? They are not private companies at all. Many of them are
>subsidiaries of the People's Liberation Army. That is right, the
>Communist Chinese army owns these companies. These are
>nothing more than military people in civilian clothing. Their profits
>end up paying for weapons targeting America, and we are paying
>them to build the companies that make those profits.
>
>'Alarming Betrayal of American Security'
>
>Perhaps the most alarming betrayal of American national security
>interests surfaced about 5 years ago when some of America's
>biggest aerospace firms went into China hoping to use Chinese
>rockets to launch American satellites. They were trying to make a
>fast buck. It did not cost them a lot more to launch satellites here.
>
>Yes, the Chinese were insisting that any satellites we put up for them
>be put up on their rockets. I personally thought that, as long as we
>made sure there was no technology transfer, that was an okay
>policy. As long as we just launched our American satellite which
>helped them set up a telephone system or something in China, that
>is fine if they never got ahold of it, and that would be okay.
>
>I was guaranteed, along with the other Members of this body, there
>would be incredible safeguards. The last administration briefed us
>on the safeguards. Then as soon as we approved of letting these
>satellite deals go through and our satellites be launched on Chinese
>rockets, the administration trash canned all of the safeguards. I do
>not understand it. I do not understand why people did this.
>
>But when all was said and done, the Communist Chinese rocket
>arsenal was filled with more reliable and more capable rockets,
>thanks to Loral, Hughes and other aerospace firms. Communist
>Chinese rockets, which were a joke 10 years ago, when Bill Clinton
>became President of the United States, they were a joke, one out of
>10 failed, exploded before they could get into space. Today they are
>dramatically more likely to hit their targets, and they even carry
>multiple warheads. Where before they had one warhead and nine
>out of 10 would explode, now about 9 out of 10 get to their target,
>and some of them are carrying multiple warheads.
>
>The Cox Report
>
>The Cox report detailed this travesty. We should not forget the Cox
>report. Unfortunately, there has been innuendo after innuendo as if
>the Cox report has in some way been proven wrong. There are no
>reports that indicate that what the gentleman from California (Mr.
>COX) and his task force proved has in some way been discredited.
>In fact, there was a transfer of technology to the Communist Chinese
>that did great damage to our national security and put millions of
>American lives at risk that did not have to be put at risk.
>
>Yet, even with all this staring Congress in the face, we have
>continued to give Most Favored Nations status to China and even
>now vote to make them part of the World Trade Organization. Why?
>One explanation, well just bad theory. Expanding trade, of course,
>they believe will make things better. But expanding trade did not
>make things better. Expanding trade with a dictatorship, as I have
>mentioned, just expands the power base and solidifies the bad guys
>in power.
>
>Of course the other explanation of why all this is going on, why we
>end up seeing our national security trashed is pure greed on some
>individuals' parts.
>
>Our businessmen have been blinded, not by the dream of selling
>U.S.-made products to China as they would have you believe in the
>debates here on the floor of the House, but rather blinded by the
>vision of using virtually slave labor for quick profits on the mainland
>of China.
>
>With little or no competition, no negotiators, no lawyers, no
>environmental restrictions, no unions, no public consent, it sounds
>like a businessman's dream to me. Yes, it is a businessman's
>dream if you just blot out the picture of a grinding tyranny and the
>human rights abuses that are going on and the horrible threat to the
>United States of America that is emerging because of the things
>that are going on and the things that are being done.
>
>Because you are a businessman, because you are engaged in
>making a profit as we are free to do in the United States does not
>exempt you from being a patriot or being loyal to the security
>interests of the United States of America.
>
>Today's American overseas businessman quite often is a far cry
>from the Yankee clipper captains of days gone by. In those days, our
>Yankee clipper ships sailed the ocean, cut through those seas, the
>Seven Seas. They were full going over, and they were full coming
>back. They waived our flag. Our flag was flying from those clipper
>ships, and our flag stood for freedom and justice. Those Yankee
>clipper captains and those business entrepreneurs were proud to
>be Americans.
>
>Today, America's tycoons often see nationalism, read that loyalty to
>the United States, as an antiquated notion. They are players in the
>global economy now, they feel. Patriotism they believe is old think.
>
>Well, we cannot rely on the decisions of people like this to
>determine what the interests of the United States of America is to
>be. Yet, the influence of these billionaires and these tycoons, these
>people who would be willing to invest in a dictatorship or a
>democracy, they could care less which one, they do not care if there
>is blood dripping off the hand that hands them the dollar bills, those
>individuals influence our government. Their influence on this elected
>body is monumental, if not insurmountable at times.
>
>'People Must Be Free'
>
>I believe in capitalism. I am a capitalist. I am someone who believes
>in the free enterprise system, make no mistake about it. But free is
>the ultimate word. People must be free to be involved in enterprise.
>We must respect the basic tenets of liberty and justice that have
>provided us a country in which people are free to uplift themselves
>through hard work and through enterprise.
>
>Today, more often than not, we are talking about how people are
>trying to find out ways of manipulating government on how to make a
>profit, not how to build a better product that will enrich everyone's life
>and make a profit by doing that, which is the essence of the free
>enterprise system.
>
>More and more people are not even looking again to this great
>country and considering this great country for the role that it is
>playing in this world and how important it is and how we should
>never sacrifice the security of this country. Because if this country
>falls, the hope for freedom and justice everywhere in the world falls.
>No, instead they have put their baskets, not in the United States of
>America, put their eggs in the basket of globalism. Well, globalism
>will not work without democratic reform.
>
>China will corrupt the WTO, the World Trade Organization, just as it
>has corrupted the election processes in the United States of
>America. You can see it now 20 years from now, maybe 10 years
>from now, the panels of the WTO, you know, made up of countries
>from all over the world, Latin America, Africa, Middle East. There
>are members of those panels making these decisions, they will not
>have ever been elected by anybody, much less the people of the
>United States of America, yet we will be expected to follow their
>dictates. Communist China, they will pay those people off in a
>heartbeat. Why not? They did it to our people.
>
>The Clinton-Gore Scandals
>
>Remember the campaign contributions given to Vice President
>Gore at the Buddhist Temple? Remember the money delivered to
>the Clinton's by Johnny Chung? Where did that money come from?
>We are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where did it
>come from? It originated with Chinese military officers.
>
>These military officers were wearing civilian clothes. They were top
>officers in that part of the People's Liberation Army that produces
>missiles. That is where the money came from, all this while our most
>deadly missile technology was being transferred to Communist
>China. One wonders why the Communist Chinese leaders are
>arrogant and think that American leaders are cowards and corrupt
>when we let this happen.
>
>Our country has, in short, had a disastrously counterproductive
>policy. We have, over the last 10 years, built our worst potential
>enemy from a weak, introverted power into a powerful economic
>military force, a force that is looking to dominate all of Asia. When I
>say worst potential enemy, that is not just my assessment. That is
>what the Communist Chinese leaders themselves believe and are
>planning for.
>
>Why do you think Communist Chinese boss Jiang Zemin recently
>visited Cuba? He was in Cuba with Fidel Castro who hates our guts
>when he released the hostages, the American military personnel
>that he was holding hostage. What do you think that was all about?
>He was telling the whole world we are standing up to the United
>States of America, and they are our enemy. He was involved with an
>activity that was declaring to the world his hostility towards the
>United States.
>
>Why, when you have a country like this who are professing hostility
>to the United States and doing such as this, why are we permitting
>them to buy up ports that will effectively give them control of the
>Panama Canal, which is what they did a year and a half ago.
>
>Giving China the Panama Canal
>
>The Panama Canal, the last administration let the Chinese, the
>Communist Chinese, through bribery, tremendously expand its
>power in Panama and, through bribery, let it get control of the port
>facilities at both ends of the Panama Canal. Why would we let such
>a thing happen?
>
>In many ways, we are repeating history. In the 1920s, Japanese
>militarists wiped out Japan's fledgling democratic movement. That it
>did. In doing so, it set a course for Japan. Japan then was a racist
>power which believed it, too, had a right to dominate Asia.
>Japanese militarists also knew that only the United States of
>America stood in their way. This is deja vu all over again as Yogi
>Berra once said.
>
>The Communist Chinese, too, are militarists who seek to dominate
>Asia. They think they are racially superior to everyone. They are
>unlike their Japanese predecessors, however, willing to go slow,
>and they have been going slow. But make no mistake about it, they
>intend to dominate Asia, all of it. And even know, their maps claim
>Siberia, Mongolia and huge chunks of the South China Sea.
>
>The confrontation with our surveillance plane must be reviewed in
>this perspective if the damage to the United States and the
>imprudence and arrogance on the part of the communist Chinese
>are to be understood.
>
>China's claim on the South China Sea includes the Spratley Islands.
>I have a map of the South China Sea with me tonight. Hainan Island.
>Our airplane was intercepted, knocked out of the sky somewhere in
>here. But what we are not told about and what the media is not
>focusing on and no one has been talking about is this plane was
>precisely in the waters between Hainan Island and the Spratley
>Islands.
>
>For those who do not know what the Spratley Islands are, they are
>just a series of reefs that are under water at high tide and at low tide
>above water. They are just a short distance, as you can see, this is
>here, this is the Philippines; and right about 100 miles offshore, the
>Spratley Islands. Yet they are several hundred miles from China. Yet
>the Chinese are trying to claim these islands. That is what this was
>all about. Not only are these islands, the Spratley Islands, the home
>of natural gas and oil deposits, but they are also in a strategic
>location. The Spratly Islands, having them in China's power, having
>them being recognized as part of China, would, of course, be a
>disaster to the Philippines whose oil and gas that belongs to, but
>also it would give the Communist Chinese sovereignty rights which
>would permit them to bracket the South China Sea. China, Hainan
>Island, the Spratlys would bracket the South China Sea, from this
>land point to this land point. Thus, we have a situation where when
>China claims, which it does, a 200-mile zone, that would leave
>China with a stranglehold on the South China Sea which is one of
>the most important commercial areas on this planet. It would have a
>stranglehold on Japan and Korea.
>
>What do you think our friends in the Persian Gulf, for example, would
>think about it if they understood that this was a power play, that what
>we had with the surveillance aircraft was a power play? The reason
>why the Communist Chinese were demanding an apology then, they
>were demanding an apology because supposedly we were in their
>airspace. If we apologized, that was a recognition of their
>sovereignty in bracketing with the Spratly Islands on one side and
>Hainan Island on the other side, bracketing the South China Sea. If
>we ended up apologizing to the Communist regime, it would have
>been taken as a legal recognition, a small one, of their sovereignty
>and their 200-mile limit. That is what this was all about. That is why
>they were playing hardball with us.
>
>The American people and our allies are not being told that that is
>what the stakes were. This is a long-term effort on the part of the
>Communist Chinese to dominate the South China Sea and expand
>their power so they could call it maybe the Communist China Sea
>rather than the South China Sea. It behooves us to face these facts.
>That is what it was all about. That is why they wanted an apology and
>that is why they should not have gotten an apology.
>
>I applaud this administration for wording its letter in a way that was
>not and could not in any way be interpreted as a recognition of the
>Chinese sovereignty over that airspace. An accommodationist
>policy toward Communist China, ignoring this type of aggression,
>ignoring human rights and democracy concerns while stressing
>expanded trade, and even through all this you have a bunch of
>people saying, ``Oh, isn't it lucky we have trade relations or we
>would really be in trouble with the Communist Chinese.'' Give me a
>break. But ignoring those other elements and just stressing trade as
>part of a so-called engagement theory has not worked.
>
>The regime in China is more powerful, more belligerent to the
>United States and more repressive than ever before. President
>Bush's decision in the wake of this incident at Hainan Island to sell
>an arms package to Taiwan including destroyers, submarines and
>an antiaircraft upgrade was good. At least it shows more moxie than
>what the last administration did.
>
>I would have preferred to see the Aegis system be provided to our
>Taiwanese friends. But at least we have gone forward with a
>respectable arms deal that will help Taiwan defend itself and thus
>deter military action in that area.
>
>Cancel 'All U.S. Military Exchanges' With China
>
>But after the Hainan Island incident, the very least we should be
>doing is canceling all U.S. military exchanges with Communist
>China. I mean, I do not know if they are still delivering us those
>berets or not, but that is just ridiculous to think that we are getting our
>military berets from Communist China. We should cancel all military
>exchanges.
>
>The American people should be put on alert that they are in danger
>if they travel to the mainland of China. And we should quit using our
>tax dollars through the Export-Import Bank, the IMF and the World
>Bank to subsidize big business when they want to build a factory in
>China or in any other dictatorship.
>
>Why are we helping Vietnam and China? Why are we helping those
>dictatorships when nearby people, the people of the Philippines,
>whom I just mentioned, who are on the front line against this
>Communist aggression, who China is trying to flood drugs into their
>country. The Chinese army itself is involved in the drug trade going
>into the Philippines.
>
>The Philippines are struggling to have a democracy. They have just
>had to remove a president who is being bribed. Bribed by whom?
>Bribed by organized crime figures from the mainland of China.
>When those people in the Philippines are struggling, why are we not
>trying to help them?
>
>Let us not encourage American businesses to go to Vietnam or to
>Communist China, when you have got people right close by who are
>struggling to have a democratic government and love the United
>States of America. The people of the Philippines are strong and
>they love their freedom and their liberty, but they feel like they have
>been abandoned by the United States. And when we help factories
>to be set up in China rather than sending work to the Philippines,
>and they do not even have the money to buy the weapons to defend
>themselves in the Philippines. That is why it is important for us to
>stand tall, so they know they can count on us. But they can only count
>on us if we do what is right and have the courage to stand up.
>
>The same with China and India. India is not my favorite country in the
>world, but I will tell you this much, the Indians are struggling to have a
>free and democratic society. They have democratic institutions, and
>it is a struggle because they have so many varied people that live in
>India. But they are struggling to make their country better and to
>have a democratic system and to have rights and have a court
>system that functions, to have opposition newspapers. They do not
>have any of that in China. Yet instead of helping the Indian people,
>we are helping the Communist Chinese people? This is misplaced
>priorities at best.
>
>Finally, in this atmosphere of turmoil and confrontation, let us never
>forget who are our greatest allies, and that is the Chinese people
>themselves. Let no mistake in the wording that I have used tonight
>indicate that I hold the Chinese people accountable or synonymous
>with the Chinese government or with Beijing or with the Communist
>Party in China. The people of China are as freedom-loving and as
>pro-American as any people of the world.
>
>The people of China are not separated from the rest of humanity.
>They too want freedom and honest government. They want to
>improve their lives. They do not want a corrupt dictatorship over
>them. And any struggle for peace and prosperity, any plan for our
>country to try to bring peace to the world and to bring a better life
>and to support the cause of freedom must include the people of
>China.
>
>We do not want war. We want the people of China to be free. Then
>we could have free and open trade because it would be a free
>country and it would be free trade between free people instead of
>this travesty that we have today, which is a trade policy that
>strengthens the dictatorship.
>
>When the young people of China rose up and gathered together at
>Tiananmen Square, they used our Statue of Liberty as a model for
>their own goddess of liberty. That was the statue that they held forth.
>That was their dream. They dreamed that her torch, the goddess of
>liberty, would enlighten all China and they dreamed of a China
>democratic, prosperous and free. Our shortsighted policy of
>subsidized one-way trade crushes that goddess of liberty every bit
>as much as those Red Army tanks did 12 years ago.
>
>'Re-examine Our Souls'
>
>Let us re-examine our souls. Let us re-examine our policies. Let us
>reach out to the people of China and claim together that we are all
>people of this planet, as our forefathers said, we are the ones, we
>are the people who have been given by God the rights of life, liberty
>and the pursuit of happiness. That is not just for Americans. That is
>for all the people of the world.
>
>And when we recognize that and reach out with honesty and not for
>a quick buck, not just to make a quick buck and then get out, but
>instead to reach over to those people and help them build their
>country, then we will have a future of peace and prosperity.
>
>It will not happen if we sell out our own national security interests. It
>will not happen if we are only siding with the ruling elite in China. We
>want to share a world with the people of China. We are on their side.
>
>Let me say this. That includes those soldiers in the People's
>Liberation Army. The people in the People's Liberation Army come
>from the population of China. They and those other forces at work in
>China should rise up and join with all the other people in the world,
>especially the American people, who believe in justice and truth; and
>we will wipe away those people at the negotiating table today that
>represent both sides of this negotiation, and we will sit face-to-face
>with all the people in the world who love justice and freedom and
>democracy, just as our forefathers thought was America's rightful
>role, and we will build a better world that way.
>
>We will not do it through a World Trade Organization. We will do it
>by respecting our own rights and respecting the rights of every other
>country and every other people on this planet.
>
>I hope that tonight the American people have heard these words.
>The course is not unalterable. This is a new administration. And in
>this new administration, I would hope that we reverse these horrible
>mistakes that have compromised our national security and
>undermined the cause of liberty and justice.
>
>I look forward to working with this administration to doing what is
>right for our country and right for the cause of peace and freedom.
>
>
>
>--------------------
>Rick Horowitz
>
>  _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!?
>Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

--------------------
Rick Horowitz


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com