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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mao II who wrote (15903)	7/8/2004 4:10:00 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 173976

Today, President Bush took a shot at John Edwards, suggesting the U.S. senator was ill-prepared to be vice president of the United States. The attack was a cheap shot: John Edwards has served the same amount of time in the Senate as George W. Bush served as governor of Texas when he was elected president. The Texas legislature only meets every other year and the governorship of the Lone Star State has long been considered one of the weakest positions of its kind in America. Add to it that Edwards has sat on the intelligence committee through the days before and after September 11th. You could argue that Edwards has more experience in key areas than George W. Bush did when he ran in 2000. Other vice presidents, like Harry Truman, were dismissed as political hacks and lightweights, too, because of their relative lack of experience. But when the Senator from Missouri replaced one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman exceeded all expectations and ended up being one of our country's strongest leaders. The White House will score no political points attacking John Edwards. This campaign is a referendum on their performance and they have a great story to tell. It’s the strongest economic recovery in 20 years, there has been no follow up to the 9/11 attacks on America and the war in Iraq will reshape the Middle East every bit as much as Ronald Reagan’s war with the Soviets liberated Eastern Europe. Presidents need to avoid pettiness — especially when leading America through its most important war since a former haberdasher from Independence, Missouri led America through the final days of World War II. and just remember...BUSH HAD NEVER EVEN BEEN TO ANOTHER COUNTRY!!!!!!...IN THIS CENTURY THAT ALONE SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO BAN HIM FROM THE WHITE HOUSE>>>>>>he's a little ratdog hiding from his OWN RECORD CC

To: Mao II who wrote (15903)	7/8/2004 11:09:59 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

These your boys? They seem to be engaging in a little SUPPRESSION of the truth. Exposé of Peasants' Plight Is Suppressed by China By JOSEPH KAHN Published: July 9, 2004 HEFEI, China, July 5 - In their muckraking best seller about abuses against Chinese peasants, the husband-and-wife authors, Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, told the stories of farmers who fought the system and lost. The book, "An Investigation of China's Peasantry," describes how one farmer's long struggle against illegal taxes ended only when the police beat him to death with a mulberry club. It profiles a village activist who was jailed on a charge of instigating riots after he accused a local Communist Party boss of corruption. Now, Mr. Chen and Ms. Wu say, it is their turn to be silenced. Though their tautly written defense of China's 750 million peasants has become a sensation, their names have stopped appearing in the news media. Their publisher was ordered to cease printing at the peak of the book's popularity this spring, leaving the market to pirates who subsequently churned out millions of copies in violation of the copyright. A ranking official sued sued the authors, accusing them of libel, in his home county court. In a country that does not protect a right to criticize those holding power, it is a case they say they are sure to lose. Top Beijing leaders acknowledge that China's surging urban economy has done relatively little to benefit the two-thirds of the population living in rural areas. They have put forward new programs to reduce the widening gap between urban and rural living standards. But the effort to quiet Mr. Chen and Ms. Wu makes it clear that officials will not tolerate writers who portray China's vast peasantry as an underclass or who assign blame for peasants' enduring poverty. "We spoke up for powerless people, but we ourselves are powerless before these officials," Mr. Chen said in an interview near his home in Anhui Province. "The authorities will not allow peasants to have a voice." Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has ordered the government to address, in the latest slogan, "three peasant problems": farmers, villages and agriculture. But he and other officials rarely emphasize what many rural experts consider the biggest peasant problems: corruption and abuse of power. "An Investigation of China's Peasantry" deals with little else. It praises the spirit of central government efforts to reduce the rural tax burden and raise farm incomes. But it shows how such policies are sooner or later undone by local party bosses determined to line their own pockets. It also details how local officials deceive China's top leaders, including Jiang Zemin, the retired party chief who still leads the military, and Zhu Rongji, the retired prime minister. Even Mr. Wen, whom the authors credit with understanding rural problems better than other leaders, is portrayed as being unable to penetrate the local officials' Potemkin displays of fealty. Mr. Chen and Ms. Wu shocked many urban readers with their tales of rural backwardness. But they appear to have misjudged how much shock the one-party system would accept. "We had hoped that there would be some support for our work among central government officials," Mr. Chen said. "But it is really sensitive when you write that the general secretary of the Communist Party does not know what's happening in the country." Mr. Chen, 61, and Ms. Wu, 41, were both born to peasant families. But they escaped the countryside at an early age and, like many professional writers in China, treated the hinterland as an abstraction. An earlier essay by Ms. Wu, titled "Cherishing a Faraway Place," recalled her rural upbringing and struck a bucolic tone about the simple, honest values of the peasantry. She said her attitude changed in 2000. That year, when she gave birth to her son, she read that a peasant mother in rural Anhui had bled to death after delivering a child. A hospital had demanded a $360 cash advance to treat her, a sum far beyond her family's means. Mr. Chen had written environmental tracts and novels about social upheaval. He and Ms. Wu agreed to work together to understand why rural policies had failed. Their book, which includes four extended tales of abuse, differed from other studies because it identified cases of malfeasance and named the political figures involved instead of blaming bad policies or generic corruption. < continued > nytimes.com