Monday, August 25, 2008

CNN Caught In Genocidal Correctness


New evidence confirms the story of China's organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience, makes CNN look bad.
by John Kusumi
(Centrist Liberal)
Monday, August 25, 2008

Nolan Chart: Folks, CNN is now caught in its worst nightmare, and I can't even gloat. It's tragic and it may cause lost sleep, the blame game, finger pointing, internal review, infighting, or worse. Congressional hearings may be in order, as an outside investigation.

Ordinarily, I seem to be glib while I kick the news media, as has become my habit in copies of my internet column. (The media? Aren't they the bent, craven, depraved crew of sock puppets, managed by a corrupt cabal? And of course, I work on a book manuscript called Genocidal Correctness....)

Well, something is qualitatively different today, and I take no pleasure in saying "I told you so." The key man who now occasions the disgrace of CNN (and the rest of America's MSM) is an individual named Lu Guoping. And, two more essential names in the story are David Kilgour and David Matas.

The occasion is to the disgrace of the media, because it is proving a central theme in my book: Genocide has been occurring in China, and America's MSM has been sweeping it under the rug. Somehow, I was thinking that my book might be fought off when released, as if it were a proposition simply from the temerity of John Kusumi. However, it now appears that my ringing indictment will also stand as a record of (unfortunately true) history.

The larger matter – that perhaps 40,000 people are dead – will be documented by many historians, and will stand as a black mark against the regime of Communist China, which is the first villain in this case.

As an aside, journalists pride themselves because they file "the first draft of history." What they too often forget is that historians file the later drafts of history, without the pressure to be politically correct in contemporary context. Historians can say things that, apparently, journalists can't.

It's time to review the crime, and the response – or lack of response. The crime is the forced harvesting of vital organs from prisoners of conscience – Falun Gong practitioners – in the gulags and prison system of Mainland China. These people, who shouldn't even be in prison to begin with, lose their lives in a process of organ harvesting, and the organs are transplanted into paying customers.

They may even still be alive as the organs are removed – they are selected, as healthy specimens, for just-in-time execution. It's diabolical. It combines theft with murder with profiteering. Capitalist types could note that it monetizes Falun Gong persecution. This is organized, systematic, machine-like evil through deliberately chosen policies of the Chinese government. The only comparable evil might be Nazi Germany's medical experiments, performed on unwitting prisoners in World War II.

There is plenty of gravity to this matter if it sinks in that this is real – a confirmed crime against humanity that may still be in progress. And, it happens in a context that has also gone unreported – the crackdown against Falun Gong in China. To be fair, it was reported back in 1999 when it began. To be accurate, it dropped out of the news after, late in 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed a "free trade" deal with China.

As an aside, when did Bill Clinton ever say that we should be "trading away" our concern for human rights? He didn't! The deal was ostensibly about trade, and was not about human rights, per se. I believe that news media behavior was decided at the news media level, not the White House. In other words, sociopathic managing editors made their call and took the trade deal "to the next level" of sanitizing China's public image. If it were mine to arrange, I would have Nuremberg-style trials for Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Dan Rather – accessories to genocide, each.

Let's look beyond my aside, so that we can lay out a time table of notable occasions in my narrative.

Before the Organ Harvesting story

  • 1999: Falun Gong persecution begins. Media covers it. Then, White House signs trade deal.
  • 2000: Ted Koppel has three guests for it, and zero against it. Congress passes the trade deal.
  • Each year since: News media dodges many stories emerging from the Falun Gong crackdown.
  • 2003: This author gives a speech and coins the term "genocidal correctness."
  • 2004: Anti-communist Falun Gong related newspaper, the Epoch Times, debuts in English.
  • 2005: People begin quitting the Communist Party in droves. CNN dodges the story.

The Organ Harvesting story

  • March 9, 2006: The Epoch Times breaks the story of forced organ harvesting at a facility called Sujiatun (in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, China).
  • Shortly thereafter: A military doctor of Shenyang military zone corroborates the horror and indicates that a network of 36 facilities participate.
  • April 4, 2006: The Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (CIPFG) is launched.

The heckler on the South Lawn of the White House and CNN's Wolf Blitzer

  • April 20, 2006: With an Epoch Times press pass and on the South Lawn of the White House, Dr. Wenyi Wang becomes the "Rosa Parks" of this cause, by shouting at the U.S. and Chinese Presidents who were meeting together, "Stop the killing!"
  • April 21, 2006: CNN's Wolf Blitzer on The Situation Room has Wenyi Wang as a guest. On the way in during the elevator ride, Blitzer's producer coaches and warns Wang: "Don't talk about organ harvesting!" On TV, Blitzer proceeds to act like a school headmaster, scolding Wang as though the only story was her disruption at the White House. She was there with a message. CNN didn't get the message – although they knew enough to say "shush" about that message just before the on-camera appearance.

The Kilgour-Matas report and CNN's Anderson Cooper

  • May 24, 2006: CIPFG seeks and obtains the help of Canadian public figures, David Kilgour and David Matas, to investigate the allegations of organ harvesting.
  • June 17, 2006: While Kilgour and Matas were investigating, CNN's Anderson Cooper did a report about "organ tourism," about a California man who went to China for an organ transplant. Cooper did raise an eyebrow at China, saying that a prison population was "vulnerable." But, he stopped short of mentioning Falun Gong, so there was no exposure of that persecution / crackdown campaign, and no indication that the organ sources may be prisoners of conscience.
  • July 6, 2006: Kilgour and Matas issue the first edition of their report, later renamed Bloody Harvest. After looking over all available evidence they wrote, "the government of China and its agencies have put to death a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. Their vital organs, including hearts, kidneys, livers and corneas, were virtually simultaneously seized involuntarily for sale at high prices." They concluded "that there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners."

The Kilgour-Matas report is the smoking gun. David Kilgour is a former Member of Parliament in Canada, and was Secretary of State for the Asia Pacific region. David Matas is an international human rights attorney. With their political and legal backgrounds, they would know better than to be casual or inexact with public statements. While they knew the stakes in international relations, and while they knew the enormity of the charges against Communist China, they nonetheless undertook to inform the world of their findings.

The Kilgour-Matas report was never debunked by the news media; however, for their own convenience reporters wrote that the entire organ harvesting story was discredited. Apparently, reporters will manufacture lies to suit their convenience and to preclude further research or writing. The Wall Street Journal printed this falsehood, but stopped before citing any source or basis. It's akin to printing, "They say it's not true." That invites the question, who are "they"? Perhaps, do U.S. reporters have communist masters in Beijing?

What sociopathic reporters were doing was clearly an example of genocidal correctness and of making a choice to err on the side of death, rather than to err on the side of life. Their omission is now exposed, at least to history.

And at CNN? The release of the Kilgour-Matas report did not cause a ripple. The point being that Kilgour and Matas got the story, and CNN didn't. For that matter, the American public was kept in the dark for the next two years.

Around the world, Kilgour and Matas got their points across. At the end of 2006, I analyzed their clip sheet, and I learned interesting things about where their publicity was (and wasn't):

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (8), The Calgary Herald (6), The Globe and Mail (4), National Post (4), Ottawa Citizen (4), Sydney Morning Herald (4), CBC News (3), China Post (3), NZ Scoop (3), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (3), The Christian Science Monitor (3), The Ottawa Citizen (3), The Toronto Sun (3), Abbotsford News (2), AFP (2), Asia News (2), Canadian Christianity (2), Chronicle Herald (2), CounterPunch (2), Cowichan Valley News Leader (2), CTV (2), Free Market News (2), Langley Times (2), South China Morning Post (2), Taipei Times (2), The Halifax Daily News (2), The Leader-Post (2), The Vancouver Sun (2), Times Colonist (2), Victoria News (2).

The single-mention outlets are a wide variety, including the Times of India, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, the Chicago Tribune, the Irish Medical Times, the Guardian, and the Washington Times.

Who is missing from this list? United States opinion leaders are missing — the Associated Press, UPI, New York Times, and Washington Post. ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and CNN. There is no sign of these news outlets in the list. Should we write them off as anti-Falun Gong media? Or as closer to Jiang Zemin than to freedom and democracy?

That's what I wrote at the end of 2006. Later I saw the Wall Street Journal refer, in passing, to the organ harvesting allegation as "discredited."

Far from discredited, there is more to this story. Kilgour and Matas came out with a second edition of their report in January, 2007. And now, on August 22, 2008, they have come out with more highly damning evidence. What they have now is a video admission from Dr. Lu Guoping combined with a prior audio recording from the same doctor.

In the audio, the doctor admits that he and his colleagues went to prison to select Falun Gong practitioners for involuntary organ donations to be used in transplants. In the video, the doctor admits that he was the person interviewed in the audio recording.

The audio is part of a series of recordings, taken by investigators for Kilgour and Matas. They called hospitals throughout China, posing as relatives of patients who needed transplants. They asked the hospitals if they had organs from Falun Gong practitioners for transplant. The callers got recorded admissions throughout China that hospitals did have Falun Gong organs for sale.

The video is a documentary by Phoenix TV. Kilgour and Matas also note, "The video is being distributed by Chinese embassies and consulates; its authenticity is therefore endorsed by the Chinese government."

The audio and video, taken together are "an undeniable, inculpatory admission of the harvesting of Falun Gong practitioner prisoners for profit," according to the investigators.

These investigators hardly needed one more nail in the coffin, but they got it. We may consider it that the Chinese government is "busted" for the practice of Falun Gong organ harvesting.

And, who else is busted is CNN. Yes, Virginia, CNN had this story on April 21, 2006. If the story were well exposed, it would lead to the international community taking action to stop what is akin to a holocaust in progress. (The world swore, "Never again" after the Nazi holocaust….)

Rather than expose the story, CNN left space for the Chinese government to add two more years of killing into the record of history. When my book comes out, the ink will be dry on a true-life, morally reprehensible drama that matches my thesis—genocidal correctness—to a tee.

I take no pleasure in saying "I told you so," but how well did I hit the mark? Yes in fact, they have been bent, craven, depraved, self-serving, shortsighted, and genocidally correct. And that's only in the United States. In China, it's been deadly. At many news outlets beyond CNN, there is a person who has had the job to circular file, or bury, story after story after story from the Falun Gong persecution. If this were the America of the 1990s, they would never have "just let go" the Falun Gong crackdown. But more recently, genocidal correctness became their M.O.; their standard procedure; business as usual in America's hideous newsrooms.

Rather than "I told you so," since I can just about say "checkmate," instead I would prefer to say, "Game over." Each newsroom is challenged to find a shred of integrity, and to do the right thing with this story. (The Kilgour-Matas report is at organharvestinvestigation.net.) Perhaps my prediction (first made in 2006) will come true:

Everyone else knows about China's crimes against humanity; the last to know will be Brian Williams (NBC News anchorman) and Jacques Rogge (IOC President, who cannot be happy as this story tarnishes the Olympics).

OLYMPIC WATCH: Human Rights in China and Beijing 2008

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