On horrid news, John Cena, Kevin McCarthy, the GOP, CPAC, Tom Cruise, Max Scherzer, a heroine, and more
On May 31, the Wall Street Journal published a report headed “In China, New Evidence That Surgeons Became Executioners.” The subheading was, “Clinical reports recount scores of cases in which organ donors were alive when operations began.” I have been hearing about this issue for a long time.
In 2006, I interviewed a man named Charles Lee, who had recently been a prisoner in China. He was both a medical doctor and a Falun Gong practitioner. He said he was almost sure that doctors were performing operations on people — killing them, in organ-harvesting.
That year, 2006, I wrote a piece with the heading “A Place Called Sujiatun.” “There is a horrifying story going around the world,” it began. “In the northeast of China, thousands of prisoners are being held, so that they can be killed for their organs.”
I will quote a little more:
The prisoners are practitioners of Falun Gong, the meditation-and-exercise system. The facility at which they are being held — called a “concentration camp” or a “death camp” — is at Sujiatun. Chinese human-rights activists believe that this name should cause the same shudders as Treblinka and the others.
I cannot say whether this story is true; I can say that one ought to pay attention.
Just a little bit more:
Of course, “organ-harvesting” is a very familiar story: The PRC has been doing it, with prisoners, for many years. In 2001, the U.S. Congress held hearings on the matter, which caused a sensation. But the sensation died down, as sensations tend to do.
In 2014, Ethan Gutmann published his explosive book The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem. (My review of the book is here.)
Back in 2006 or so, I talked with Robert Conquest about this matter of organ-harvesting, and the stories going around. Conquest, as you remember, was the great historian of the Soviet Union and of tyranny in general. (A man of parts, he was also a poet and other things.) He told me something that has never left me.
People are very reluctant, for a variety of reasons, to believe human testimony. Witnesses. Oh, they believe them later — after the fact. When everything is well established. But not at the time (when it may matter more).
So, reports of horrors in the early Soviet Union were dismissed as “rumors in Riga.” Reports of the Holocaust were dismissed as Jewish hysterics. When wretched people spilled into Hong Kong from Mao’s China, they were dismissed as “embittered warlords.” When wretched Cubans landed in Florida, they were “Batista stooges.”
And so on and so forth.
Sometimes human testimony is false. But sometimes it is true. And it pays to pay attention, particularly when people are at their most desperate.
• Last year, many of us blasted John Cena. I will quote from my column:
By now, you are probably aware of John Cena — I had never heard of him. According to Wikipedia, he is “an American professional wrestler, actor, and television presenter.” Cena apologized to China — to the Chinese government, I suppose — for having referred to Taiwan as a “country.”
Well, Cena was in the news again a few days ago. I will paste a tweet from Gavan Reilly, an Irish journalist:
Misha, a non-verbal teen with Down’s Syndrome, didn’t understand why his family had to flee Mariupol this year.
To placate him, his mother told him they were travelling to meet John Cena.
Cena heard . . . and went to Amsterdam to oblige.
Just brilliant.
A video accompanies the tweet, here. Bravo, Cena.
• At a press conference last week, a reporter addressed Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the U.S. House: “You’ve said both publicly and privately after January 6 that you thought Trump bore some responsibility for the attack. Do you still feel like he was in any way responsible for January 6?” McCarthy responded, “I’ve answered that many times. I thought everybody in the country beared some responsibility, based upon what has been going on — the riots on the streets, the others.”
I immediately thought of something that Trump said after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Asked who should be held accountable for the murder, the president answered, “Maybe the world should be held accountable, because the world is a vicious place.”
As you know, U.S. intelligence determined that Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, ordered the murder. At the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, agents tortured Khashoggi, then murdered him, then carved him up with a bone saw.
In years past, the GOP prided itself on being “the party of personal responsibility.” (That’s one reason — one of many — I was so attracted to the party, and belonged to it.) Governor George W. Bush, campaigning for president in 2000, said he wanted to be “the responsibility president.” That is a good impulse.
Our country suffers from many things. A lack of personal responsibility is one of them.
Kevin McCarthy says that you and I are responsible for January 6. That everybody is. Well, I’m not, and I bet you’re not either.
• Chris Jacobs is a GOP congressman from New York. He was running for reelection, but then endorsed some gun-control measures, after atrocities in Buffalo and Texas. The reaction against him in his party was swift. He withdrew from the race.
He will apparently be replaced by Carl Paladino, who was endorsed by New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik. She is the No. 3 person in the GOP House leadership. Her candidate, Paladino, is a colorful character. Of Michelle Obama, he said, “I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.” Then there’s this: “Paladino Draws Backlash for Calling Hitler ‘the Kind of Leader We Need.’” People are so picky and judgmental these days.
Stefanik was elected to the GOP House leadership when Liz Cheney was booted from it. Obviously, Stefanik represents the party and Cheney does not. I think fans of both women can agree: There is a world of difference between them. They are nothing alike.
• In Venezuela, Juan Guaidó soldiers on. It is dangerous — very dangerous — to be an opposition politician in a dictatorship. Here is a headline from the Associated Press: “Venezuelan opposition leader attacked during national tour.” That would be physically attacked, not with words. (For the article, go here.)
• Stay in South America for this news:
President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has for months consistently trailed in the polls ahead of the country’s crucial presidential race. And for months, he has consistently questioned its voting systems, warning that if he loses October’s election, it will most likely be thanks to a stolen vote.
Those claims were largely regarded as talk. But now, Mr. Bolsonaro has enlisted a new ally in his fight against the electoral process: the nation’s military.
Uh-huh. Things could get pretty hairy. (For the article, go here.)
• Last September, CPAC held a meeting in Brazil, with Bolsonaro as the presiding star. More recently, it held a meeting in Hungary, with Viktor Orbán as the presiding star. Traditionally, CPAC has held its meetings in Washington, D.C. Ronald Reagan was a hero of the conference. Mitch Daniels gave an important speech to it! (On the subject of federal debt, “the new red menace.”)
Maybe someday CPAC will come home, in more senses than one.
• Have I got an article for you: here. Kevin Sieff, of the Washington Post, on the “gringo hunters” of Mexico. It is a page-turner (figuratively speaking). The reporter ought to get a prize.
• For this obit, I barely have the words. The heading is “Andrée Geulen, Savior of Jewish Children in Wartime, Dies at 100.” The obituarist is Joseph Berger (of the New York Times). I guess I can say only this, for now: Where there is great evil, good can arise, as it did in the person of Andrée Geulen.
• Now for something silly — but at the same time rather serious: “The San Francisco Unified School District will no longer use the word ‘chief’ in job titles because of concerns from Native Americans.” (Article here.) Ay caramba. “Chief” is a very old word, running through Latin, Middle English, and Anglo-French. It relates to “head.” Think of a chef, in a kitchen. And “Hail to the Chief” and a thousand other things.
Native Americans have many greater, and legitimate, concerns, and so does San Francisco, for that matter.
• In journalism, “man bites dog” is a story. “Dog bites man” isn’t — except when it is, right? Check out this news item, headed “Mets’ Max Scherzer suffers dog bite injury on pitching hand.”
• I am amazed, or awed, by Kenichi Horie. In 1962, he became the first person to cross the Pacific in a solo, non-stop voyage. That is impressive enough — worthy of awe on its own. But, you know what? He has done it again, 60 years later (at the age of 83). To read about Mr. Horie, go here. What human beings can achieve . . .
• A little language? I am returning to a subject, but for a reason. About ten, fifteen years ago, almost every young person around me started to exhibit a grammatical error. These fine folk would say, “If I would have known it was going to be cold, I would have worn a sweater.” “If I would have known you were coming, I would have baked a cake.” “I wish I would have known better.”
In English, we say, “If I had known it was going to be cold, I would have worn a sweater,” etc.
Well, I think this battle is pretty much lost. I’m not going to give you a review of the new Top Gun movie. But I am going to report that Maverick, Tom Cruise’s character, says, “I wish I would have done it better.”
Oh, Tom. That is not helping. At all. Please, y’all! Criminy. You want to cut your ears off, hearing this horror.
• Okay, now that that’s off my chest — a little music? Maybe more than a little. For my “New York Chronicle,” in the current New Criterion, go here. For a review of the New York Philharmonic, under Jaap van Zweden, with Beatrice Rana, piano, go here. For a review of The Rake’s Progress (Stravinsky) at the Metropolitan Opera, go here. Anne-Sophie Mutter and her posse: here. Finally, the Cleveland Orchestra, under Franz Welser-Möst, with Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, violin, here.
• What else? Oh, I got news items, comments, pictures, podcasts — but I’ve kept you long enough. Thank you for joining me. Have a good one.
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