Chinese state co wants Unocal

Story here and here.  See my previous posts on this from Feb. of this year: here and here.

Did Aussies clinch deal to send defector back to China?

Story here.

Chen Yonglin at the media conference in Sydney.
Photo:The Epoch Times

Also see this on Chinese spy networks:  http://theepochtimes.com/news/5-6-21/29682.html 

I'm on the radio tomorrow

I'll be on Greg Allen's The Right Balance tomorrow at 10:33. You can listen online here. Or go to the Accent Radio Network to find a station near you.

Magnequench has patent policing troubles

For those who remember the Magnequench brouhaha, AMR Technologies has announced it will combine w/ Magnequench Inc. (MQI) of Indianapolis, Indiana though a reverse-takeover share swap that will leave MQI with effective control of the company. The National Post notes that the new company would have had combined revenues of US$138-million in 2004, versus the US$54.3-million AMR reported last year, but AMR will also see its long-term debt mushroom from US$351,000 to more than US$130-million as it assumes Magnequench's debt. Magnequench has been involved in a number of patent lawsuits against US sellers of magnets that use "unauthorized" magnetic powders. Also - their patents are scheduled to run out between 2006-2012.

In 1995, Beijing San Huan New Material High-Tech Inc. and China National Non-Ferrous Metals Import & Export Corporation partnered with investment firm the Sextant Group Inc. (led by Archibald Cox Jr.) to acquire Magnequench and established the new entity as Magnequench International Inc.

Recalling the moves by Bayh and Visclosky, you have to wonder why they waited 8 years -until August 2003 -to make their moves, including sending a letter to the U.S. Department of the Treasury demanding all the facts of its investigation of Magnequench's 1995 sale to a consortium that included Chinese interests and Magnequench's 2000 acquisition of the Valparaiso facility. The 1995 sale required approval from the Committee on Foreign Investments in the U.S., or CFIUS. The CFIUS is an inter-agency committee chaired by the secretary of treasury, tasked with conducting reviews of foreign acquisitions that might threaten national security.

Magnequench, a high-tech company created in 1986 by General Motors, pioneered the development and production of quenched neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets used in the guidance system of "smart bombs." (Neodymium magnets in general have a wide range of commercial uses.) Beijing San Huan New Materials High-Tech Inc. is a holding of the Chinese Academy of Science Business Group and was established in 1985. China National Non-Ferrous Metals – previously described by the Wall Street Journal as a "high-flying state company" – operates under the control of the State Council, one of the major organs of the Chinese government.

In 1998, Magnequench moved on to acquire GA (gas atomization)Powders to capitalize on its breakthrough gas atomization process for making NdFeB powder. The technology was designed to create superior materials at lower costs. At the time, the Ames National Laboratory estimated the $250 million market for these bonded magnets was expected to grow by more than 20 percent annually into the next century.

GA Powders was in fact a spin-off innovation company created by the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, which was managed by Lockheed Martin Idaho Technologies Company. At the time, Ames said, "The new venture will strengthen the economy, create jobs and provide a return on taxpayer investment in government-sponsored research and development." (Uh-huh.)

After acquiring GA Powders, Magnequench opened a new powder plant in Tianjin, China, in June 2000, moving production closer to the source of raw materials and driving down the overall cost of the NdFeB magnets. (The lab retained the patent rights used by GA Powders.) The purchase of Magnequench by Beijing San Huan New Material High-Tech Inc. and China National Non-Ferrous Metals Import & Export Corporation and the Sextant Group Inc, included all the patents used by Magnequench.)

For any US university lab selling its start-up operation to a company which subsequently opens operations in China, it would be theoretically extremely difficult to track and prosecute misuse of American patents. (Okay, let's be frank. You may as well give the patent[s] away.) This is an ongoing and vexing problem currently faced by US labs that go that route. It's is also somewhat ironic and not at all surprising therefore that Magnequench itself is now engaged in lawsuits as part of policing its own patent rights.

Unidentified white powder mailed to indie Chinese newspaper

... to The Epoch Times Office in Sydney -along with letter critical of the "Nine Commentaries."

Police in protective suits go through cleaning procedure after investigating suspicious powder mailed to The Epoch Times office.

-Photo: The Epoch Times

Conyers raps Dana Milbank

Dana Milbank's Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War brings out the circus element of yesterday's Downing hearing, and was followed by the indignation of Conyers. Below the yellow & black "ImpeachBush.org" banner flies in the background behind Conyers. ImpeachBush.org is Ramsey Clark's concoction. (Clark is one of Saddam Hussein's defense attorney's.) That's of course not the only org calling for impeachment. Law professor Francis Boyle and his students have worked hard to create a site and put forth various arguments. Meanwhile, one pro-Reagan Republican sent me an email stating "Marcy Kaptur hit on THE important issue...It is probably an impeachable offense for Bush to have nationalized the National Guard and had sent Guard units to Kuwait-Iraq BEFORE even asking authority to do so."

As I mentioned yesterday, if Conyers thought this was so important why did he turn away from those seeking impeachment in March 2003? (hint: answer starts with an "e") There's also the absurdity of Democrats pretending they were duped when they supported the war and actively pushed the WMD arguments themselves. (Here's Joe Biden circa 2002: "One thing is clear. These weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power.")

Rep. John Conyers Jr., center, and other Democrats held a mock Judiciary Committee hearing as a protest against the war in Iraq.

Photo Credit: By Pablo Martinez Monsivais -- Associated Press

"Scientology: the Cult of Greed"

In stark contrast to the recent light'n'fluffy coverage of Scientology, stands this award-winning and fascinating 1991 story by TIME Magazine: Scientology: the Cult of Greed. Author Richard Behar, now an Associate Editor at TIME, was presented with the Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business and financial journalism, the Worth Bingham Prize, and the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) Conscience-in-Media Award for the story. Paulette Cooper also won the Conscience-in-Media award for her 1971 book The Scandal of Scientology.

About Cooper's book Behar wrote: This led to a Scientology plot (called Operation Freak-Out) whose goal, according to church documents, was "to get P.C. incarcerated in a mental institution or jail." It almost worked: by impersonating Cooper, Scientologists got her indicted in 1973 for threatening to bomb the church. Cooper, who also endured 19 lawsuits by the church, was finally exonerated in 1977 after FBI raids on the church offices in Los Angeles and Washington uncovered documents from the bomb scheme.

Also read these remarks by Behar about "the environment of fear that this litigation happy cult has instilled in the media."

Also see this 1990 series on Scientology by the L.A. Times and the 1980 Pulitzer prize-winning St. Petersburg Times story on the group.

These stories go back 15-25 years. Now, instead of investigative reporting we get fluffy coverage of Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes and their "chic" or "it" religion.

Chinese defectors who fear for lives, rebuffed by US

Story here.  It's being called the best counter-intelligence opportunity since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the U.S. is saying "No thanks." The defector who tells of an extensive spy network in Australia, and a focus on conducting surveillance on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, was denied asylum by both Australia and the U.S. Embassy in Australia. Observers cite economic motivations (kowtowing to China) behind the rebuffing of the defectors. Australia media report Federal Labor and Greens Senators have agreed to support an inquiry into the Government's handling of the defection of the former Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin. Also see Chinese spies targeted Toronto woman. and An Open Letter to President Bush which asks Bush to give Yonglin and fellow defector Hao Fengjun political asylum in the US. The defectors fear for their safety because they have already stated their willingness to expose China's network of overseas spies

Yonglin and Fengjun -an ex-CCP 610 officer.

The John Conyers' Hearing on the 'Downing Street memo'

Wrapping up right now. Conyers has backed away from impeachment before. Perhaps due to looking out for his own career ambitions. A previous story I've written on this is here. My favorite Francis Boyle quote is from an interview I had with him in 2003, where he comments on Conyers:

"I'm very grateful he held the meeting. It was two hours long, and he heard me out and he heard out Ramsey Clark. Then he reached his decision."

Added Boyle: "I respect his decision and have a great deal of admiration for him. He's the ranking member of the House Judiciary, and if the Democrats take back the House, he could become chairman, so he's got a lot of things to consider."

They're on their way over to the White House now.

About the history of the impeachment articles drawn up by Boyle, I wrote the following in 2003:

"Articles 2-6 of the impeachment draft are essentially recycled from a 1991 effort to impeach Bush Sr. Article 1 was added to cover alleged violations of the U.S. Constitution by the enactment of the Patriot Act.

In 1991, Boyle served as counsel for the impeachment issue to Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (deceased). At that time, both Boyle and Clark worked on the language of impeachment. On Jan. 16, 1991, Gonzalez introduced a resolution to impeach former President George H. W. Bush."

Update 6:03 pm

Boyle runs an impeachment website. IMPEACH BUSH NOW at http://www.impeach-bush-now.org/  A lot of the work is done by hard-working, idealistic college students he says.

Another website VOTE TO IMPEACH is here http://www.votetoimpeach.org/  This site is run by Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General, and now, Saddam Hussein's defense attorney. A notice on the site says they're mobilizing for a "massive impeachment contingent" at the "huge" September 24, 2004 anti-war march on Washington.

Public Broadcasting's $20 Billion Pitch

Story here.

Florida's new political blog wars

Story here. Excerpt: " 'In the old days, the agenda-setting and the issue-framing was a closed shop,' said Justin Sayfie, a Fort Lauderdale lobbyist and top Republican fundraiser whose Sayfie Review reaches about 5,000 readers every day. 'You had the big media organizations, and their reporters were basically controlling the issue-framing and agenda-setting. Now that power to frame issues and set agendas is democratized.' "

3 Newsday managers arrested

Story here.  From the Aril/May issue of American Journalism Review, about the circulation controversy at the Dallas Morning News:

"A great deal is known about the circulation fraud at Newsday, because a team of Newsday reporters began an aggressive investigation soon after the story broke. The paper has published high-profile, deeply detailed articles over a period of many months, describing some of the same practices alleged in the Dallas suit--intense pressure to falsify numbers, papers delivered to people who never asked for them, papers thrown in dumpsters and so forth. The stories revealed wrongdoing that went beyond what their company had admitted.

The Morning News has published very little about its circulation practices. As of this writing, for instance, it had not told its readers anything about the allegations in the shareholders suit."

More info on Chinese indie newspaper

Re: today's Media Monitor, here's the link to The Epoch Times newspaper. The Nine Commentaries can be read here.  And here are some ET news stories on those leaving the CCP.

The Epoch Times has a world-wide circulation of 1.2 million according to Ng.

Also of interest is this interview with Hao Fengjun, the Chinese "610" agent in Australia who wants to defect. More ET coverage of 6-10 here.

Plain-cloth police arrest Falun Gong practitioners on Tiananmen Square. [Epoch Times]

French court finds Le Monde guilty of slandering Israel and Jewish people.

From the 6/2 European edition of the Wall St. Journal: story here.

Gallup: Public confidence in news at all-time low

Story here.

I'm on the radio right now...

You can go to www.therightbalance.org to listen online.

In defense of Oriana

Story here.  And in case you missed Kathleen Parker's take, you can read it here. First hearing in the trial is June 12. I can't imagine Ms. Fallaci dignifying the proceedings with her presence, but what a reprehensible thing it will be if the now-AWOL Oriana cannot visit her estate in Tuscany in the future for fear of being locked up by the brainless ones (cicadas as she would say) responsible for The New Inquisition.

Journalist who criticized Syria killed in car bomb

From the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Clifford May: LEBANON: Samir Qassir had been among the most prominent journalists writing about the Cedar Revolution. He was also a sharp critic of the Assad dictatorship in Syria, until recently the occupying power in Lebanon.

Last week he was murdered. His car had been booby-trapped with a bomb. He was 45 years old. As in the assassination of Lebanese nationalist Rafik Hariri, suspicion falls on Damascus which has denied responsibility. [Read More]

Samir Qassir 

History on trial

Check out scholar Deborah Lipstadt's History on Trial blog. It is a online companion to her book History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving. Lipstadt, an expert on the Holocaust, was sued in London (libel capital of the world) for calling Irving a holocaust denier. As the Boston Globe review reminds readers,  Irving has called Auschwitz ''a legend" and once said: ''More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz." Because of the absurd UK laws governing such cases the burden of proof rests on the defendant to prove he/she has not defamed someone. In this case, the legal requirement was tantamount to proving the Holocaust happened, millions died, there were gas chambers and so on, as if it had never been proven before.

An excellent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette here.

So how did it turn out? As the P-G notes,

"David Irving set out to demolish Deborah Lipstadt. One year after the trial, Irving's wife and daughter wept on a curbside as liquidators seized their house, its contents, Irving's library. By the time Irving got home, he discovered that the suit he was wearing was the only one he now owned.

"They took everything. They took my entire research archive of 35 years," Irving said. "I find it increasingly difficult to be good-humored about it."

On separate but related note, I wonder how many people know that playwright Rolf Hochhuth was apparently very good friends with Irving for decades. Hochhuth's play The Representative, or The Deputy (Der Stellvertreter), created a sensation in the early 1960's for its depiction of Pope Pius XII as having done little to help Jews during Hitler's reign. Scholars trace the flurry of anti-Pius books to this play.  Hochhuth was known as a leftwing writer and ironically, former member of the Hitler Youth. (Acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh claims that Hochhuth was “influenced heavily by KGB malignancy towards the pope of the Cold War." For more on a recent discovery of a Vatican document on the issue see my column here. Note: It is not the position of AIM to defend either the 'pro' or 'anti' Vatican position, but to promote a higher standard in the mainstream media. Thus AIM is not assessing every argument made against Pius XII, but is arguing against the idea of presenting an unauthenicated document to the public, then vouching for authenticity by pointing to correlation between the content of the document and views that predated the discovery of the document.)

From Mr. Irving's website: "Hochhuth shares a birthday with David Irving's oldest daughter Josephine, and they are Dutzfreunde. Mr Hochhuth had first approached Mr Irving after reading his 1963 best-seller The Destruction of Dresden; soon after, the German had written his sensational play The Representative (Der Stellvertreter), critical of Pope Pious' WW.II tolerance of Nazi persecution of the Jews. The two writers' friendship began when they met in the Hamburg offices of Der Stern magazine in January 1965; Rolf Hochhuth stayed with the Irvings in their London flat (then in Paddington), and Mr Irving often stayed with the Hochhuths - Rolf, his first wife Marianne and second, Dana, in Switzerland. They remained the closest of friends until circumstances drove them geographically apart - Hochhuth no longer able to travel to Britain, and Mr Irving banned from Germany in 1993 "

Sami al-Arian's university days

With the Sami al-Arian trial underway, let's revisit a statement he made denying he could've known Ramadan Shallah was the head of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad. In 2003 terrorism expert and author Steve Emerson said this about al-Arian's denial:

"When Al-Arian said, `How could I know this person [Shallah] was connected to the Jihad?' he knew exactly what was going on.''

How could Emerson so confidently say that? Well, one clue pops up in the Dayan Center Papers on the subject:

The soon-to-be leader of Islamic Jihad, Fathi al-Shiqaqi, headed for Egypt in 1974 after studying for his BA in sciences and mathematics at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. It was in Egypt that he got to know a group of students who along with Shiqaqi and Sheikh 'Abd al-'Aziz 'Awda became the founders of Islamic Jihad: Sami al-Arian (majoring in computer studies); Nafidh 'Azzam (medicine); Bashir Nafi' (exact sciences); and who? Ramadan Shallah (commerce.).

Note: In 1975 'Awda was expelled from Egypt for holding membership in a "radical Islamic society." That didn't prevent him from coming to the US to speak at conferences like the one in Chicago 1990 where he said, "“Now Allah is bringing the Jews back to Palestine in large groups from all over the world to their big graveyard, where the promise will be realized upon them.”  
 
The Dayan Center Papers are from Tel Aviv University. Ask for Islam and Salvation in Palestine, Meir Hatina. Hatina is a lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. The statements on the founding members of Islamic Jihad are based on Arab-language sources such as interviews with the subjects, books, and other press.