Musicians, Cats, Dogs and Other Criminals

McCartney attacks China over fur (abridged)
Adrian Addison

BBC Six O'clock News

... Sir Paul McCartney has vowed never to perform in China after seeing horrific undercover footage of dogs and cats being killed for their fur.
The former Beatle also said he would boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics after viewing the footage taken in a fur market in Guangzhou, southern China.

The film shows animals being thrown from a bus, and into boiling water.

In the film, dogs and cats packed by the dozen into wire cages little bigger than lobster pots are pictured being thrown from the top deck of a converted bus onto concrete pavements.

The screaming animals, many with their paws now smashed from the fall, are then lifted out with long metal tongs and thrown over a seven foot fence.

Some are senselessly beaten by laughing and smiling workers. All are then killed and skinned for their fur - many are believed still to be alive as their skins are peeled away.

"This is barbaric. Horrific," said Sir Paul.

"It's like something out of the dark ages. And they seem to get a kick out it. They're just sick, sick people.

"I wouldn't even dream of going over there to play, in the same way I wouldn't go to a country that supported apartheid. This is just disgusting. It's just against every rule of humanity. I couldn't go there."

The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners (abridged)
Ian Cobain and Adam Luck
The Guardian (Tuesday September 13, 2005)

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company's products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is "traditional" and nothing to "make such a big fuss about".

With European regulations to control cosmetic treatments such as collagen not expected for several years, doctors and politicians say the discovery highlights the dangers faced by the increasing number of Britons seeking to improve their looks. Apart from the ethical concerns, there is also the potential risk of infection.

[The agent] suggested that the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon. "In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that western countries can make such a big fuss about this," he said. Speaking from his office in northern China, he added: "The government has put some pressure on all the medical facilities to keep this type of work in low profile."

Skin from prisoners used to be even less expensive, he said. "Nowadays there is a certain fee that has to be paid to the court."

In China, authorities deny that prisoners' body parts are harvested without their consent.

However, there is some evidence to suggest it may be happening.

In June 2001, Wang Guoqi, a Chinese former military physician, told US congressmen he had worked at execution grounds helping surgeons to harvest the organs of more than 100 executed prisoners, without prior consent. The surgeons used converted vans parked near the execution grounds to begin dissecting the bodies, he told the house international relations committee's human rights panel.

Skin was said to be highly valued for the treatment of burn victims, and Dr Wang said that in 1995 he skinned a shot convict's body while the man's heart was still beating. Dr Wang, who was seeking asylum in the US, also alleged that corneas and other body tissue were removed for transplant, and said his hospital, the Tianjin paramilitary police general brigade hospital, sold body parts for profit.

Although the exact number of people facing the death penalty in China is an official secret, Amnesty International believes around 3,400 were executed last year, with a further 6,000 on death row.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, Mo

A standing ovation given to Mo Mowlam during a key Labour party conference speech by Tony Blair led to a campaign against her, her husband has said. ....

Her husband Jon Norton told BBC One's Sunday AM programme the problems started after the PM's speech at Labour's 1998 party conference. ....

Speaking of the ovation, Mr Norton said: "It was certainly the beginning of adverse stories in the paper after that.

He added: "I remember we had [US Secretary of State] Madeline Albright visit us just after that and she was warning Mo that that was probably the most dangerous thing that had ever happened in her political career."

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4454072.stm]

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But, above all things, he most eagerly coveted popularity, being the rival of every man who obtained the applause of the people for any thing he did.

[Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Nero (VI).liii]

An Investment in Politics

CNN advises that the Republican US Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham is resigning from Congress after pleading guilty to taking around $2.4 million in bribes in "a criminal conspiracy involving at least three defense contractors".

Both CNN and the Washington Post, have named one Mitchell Wade, majority owner of MZM Inc., as being involved these activities. Cunningham has admitted,

that he had helped MZM win contracts, as he said he has helped other firms. Government contracts for the company, whose Web site describes it as helping solve "enigmatic problems . . . in the areas of intelligence collection and analysis," grew from $41 million in 2003 to $66 million in 2004, according to Washington Technology magazine. (WP)

But that is not the half of it. This June California's North County Times reported that,

In September 2002, MZM signed a broad deal with the Pentagon, called a "blanket purchase agreement." The agreement allowed the company to negotiate defense contracts with branches of the armed forces totaling as much as $250 million over a five-year period.

Since then, the company has used the agreement, which it received without competitive bidding, to secure contracts with different branches of the armed forces for $163 million, according to Pentagon sources. ...

According to an official with Washington budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, of 90 contracts that MZM received through the blanket purchase agreement, 85 involved no competitive bidding.

When MZM was awarded the blanket agreement, it was the only bidder for the deal, Pentagon officials said in their Tuesday statement. In November 2002, one month after the MZM agreement was signed, Congress voted to change the rules on federal contracts to make them more competitive. ...

Despite the Pentagon's statement that the contract's cancellation is unrelated to the current federal investigation of Cunningham's ties to Wade, the timing of the Pentagon decision is highly suspect, said Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy for Taxpayers for Common Sense.

"It makes it look like the Pentagon was giving this contractor a sweetheart deal, and now (because of the controversy), they are trying to limit their losses by cutting MZM off at the knees," Ashdown said.

More recently Washington Technology reported that MZM has just been bought by private equity firm Veritas Capital which "has formed a new company, Athena Innovative Solutions Inc., which will take over the employees, assets and contracts from MZM.... In an apparent nod to Wade’s legal woes, Veritas said it was only assuming 'specific liabilities associated with the ongoing operations.'"

But MZM is only one of CNN's reportedly three dirty contractors. What about the other two?

"In a written statement, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said the case "is just the latest example of the culture of corruption that pervades the Republican-controlled Congress, which ignores the needs of the American people to serve wealthy special interests and their cronies." (CNN)

As they say in Italy, "a fish always rots from the head".