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Three points before we begin: 1. I quit smoking more than 20 years ago and would not encourage anybody to smoke. 2. I am no more prone to Canada bashing than to China bashing. 3. I am currently encouraged to write a 1000 page book on hypocrisy and duplicity...

Now the news. It so happened that a good Canadian friend of mine just sent me the following:

"Pork industry in panic as pigs catch the flu -- PATRICK WHITE, Toronto Globe and Mail, May 4, 2009:

“We're heading for a wreck,” said Simon Goodwin, a pig farmer in Alberta, where a herd infected with the new influenza AH1N1 strain was recently quarantined. “We've already seen 20 dollars knocked off our price, and that was before we heard about it spreading to hogs in Alberta.”

(...)

Hanging over the entire hog industry is the grim spectre of mad-cow disease. A single Alberta calf was found to have the brain-wasting disease in 2003, prompting many countries to ban Canadian beef imports for a year. ... Only a strong campaign encouraging Canadians to eat more beef kept many ranchers afloat.

“They ate their way out of a problem,” said Mr. Preugschas (an Alberta hog farmer and president of the Canadian Pork Council.. ) “And we may see a similar thing here. If Canadians could eat two extra meals of pork, that would certainly help our producer through these very difficult times.”

One wonders whether those two instances of heroic patriotism were ever reported in China. Reading John Pomfret, I believe they should be.

Readers are invited to help me with my book by posting here other instances of the same type of reaction from public authorities, in other "developed" countries.

Just for you, honorable sceptics, here is the link:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090503.wflupork04/BNStory/National/

No wonder Hollywood's production now worse than Bollywood now.

China should legalize marijuana, Same sex marraige, and abortion, so this way all US citizens may come to China to obtain their basic Human Rights and Freedom.

Too sad. Can you imagine the US people have to sneak out the class room and privately enjoy a smoke?

siht!

What kind of life is that?!:)
Unbelievably Outrageous!

The local Chinese official who pushed the sale of cigarettes should receive a public spank! Shame that Chinese official if he ever forgets that China has suffered huge humiliations and lost its sovereignty at the hands of Western Imperials during those two past Opium wars. The only silver lining of this story is that it shows how Chinese-style Democracy working in China today. Public outrage in China does count for something. We had our public outrage against those huge bonus handled out to those high executives of companies bailed out by our tax money. But where is the ending? Do we have any published news account on whether those bonuses have ever been returned yet? I’m still waiting …