Welcome to 201k.com - A Commonwealth Perspective.

Both on the front page of today's NY Times.

Story 1:

China Sentences Former Drug Regulator to Death

May 29, 2007

By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI, May 29 -- The former head of China's top food and drug safety agency was sentenced to death today after pleading guilty to charges of corruption and accepting bribes, according to the state-controlled news media.

Zheng Xiaoyu, who served as commissioner of China's Food and Drug Administration from its founding in 1998 until the middle of 2005, was detained last February as part of a government investigation into corruption at the agency, which is supposed to be the nation's food and drug watchdog.

The unusually harsh sentence handed down today for Mr. Xiaoyu, 62, comes at a time of heightened concerns about the quality and safety of China's food and drug system.

Two Chinese companies were accused earlier this year of shipping contaminated pet food ingredients to the United States, touching off one of the largest pet food recalls in American history and leading to pressure on China to overhaul its food export controls.

The Chinese government is also investigating how diethylene glycol, a toxic chemical sometimes used in antifreeze, ended up in cough medicine and toothpaste sold in Latin America.

In Panama, more than 100 people died last year after consuming cough medicine laced with diethylene glycol, which had been shipped from China mislabeled as harmless syrup.

Last week, Chinese-made toothpaste tainted with the chemical was pulled off store shelves in Panama, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.

The pet food and toothpaste recalls are beginning to pose a serious threat to China's growing food and drug exports, and have already led to international calls for new testing and screening methods for Chinese-made goods.

Story 2:

US to Meatpackers: Don't Do Mad Cow Test

May 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal -- effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.

Take that all in now.

China is executing the person responsible for letting tainted products through their regulatory process.

The Bush Administration is fighting to stop an American beef company from testing its own meat.

When your right-wing nuttiness is too far out for John Ashcroft you've got a problem.

Andrew Card -- shame on you. Shame.

Ok, that's it. First it was melanine...

Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China

April 30, 2007

By DAVID BARBOZA and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

ZHANGQIU, China, April 28 -- As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.

For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.

The pet food case is also putting China's agricultural exports under greater scrutiny because the country has had a terrible food safety record.

In recent years, for instance, China's food safety scandals have involved everything from fake baby milk formulas and soy sauce made from human hair to instances where cuttlefish were soaked in calligraphy ink to improve their color and eels were fed contraceptive pills to make them grow long and slim.

Here at the Shandong Mingshui Great Chemical Group factory, huge boiler vats are turning coal into melamine, which is then used to create plastics and fertilizer.

But the leftover melamine scrap, golf ball-size chunks of white rock, is sometimes being sold to local agricultural entrepreneurs, who say they mix a powdered form of the scrap into animal feed to deceive those who raise animals into thinking they are buying feed that is high in protein.

"It just saves money if you add melamine scrap," said the manager of an animal feed factory here.

Then it was cyanuric acid...

Another Chemical Emerges in Pet Food Case

By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: May 9, 2007

SHANGHAI, May 8 -- A second industrial chemical that American regulators have identified as a pet food contaminant may have been intentionally added to animal feed by producers seeking larger profits, according to interviews Tuesday with chemical industry officials.

Three chemical makers said Chinese animal feed producers often came to purchase cyanuric acid to blend into their feed because it was cheaper and helped increase protein content. In the United States, cyanuric acid is often used as a chemical stabilizer in swimming pools, though it is not thought to be highly toxic on its own.

Then it was diethylene glycol in cough medicine....

Chinese Company Linked to Deaths Wasn't Licensed

By JAKE HOOKER

BEIJING, May 8 -- China's drug regulation agency has confirmed that the company linked to counterfeit medicine that caused at least 100 deaths in Panama was not licensed to be engaged in the pharmaceutical business, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said the agency, the State Food and Drug Administration, conducted an investigation last year in response to a request by officials at the United States Food and Drug Administration.

Ms. Jiang's comments, made in a regular Tuesday briefing, were prompted by an article on Sunday in The New York Times that described how cough medicine in Panama was tainted with a poisonous industrial solvent, diethylene glycol, that was traced to a factory in eastern China.

The article reported that the solvent -- which passed through brokers in China, Spain and Panama -- was falsely identified as glycerin, a sweet-tasting syrup that is a common ingredient in medicine.

It's time to draw the line. It's time for American regulators to give China a stern talking to -- a real tongue-lashing. It's time to let them know in no uncertain terms that, here in America, we value lives over profit.

And when they stop laughing, we can maybe do another deal for some cheap plastic crap made by nine-year-old girls in a locked factory.

So, you think it's only at hockey games?

Shoving match disrupts opening night of Boston Pops

By Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

Opening night of the Boston Pops still ended with a standing ovation, despite a shoving matched in a balcony at Symphony Hall that briefly interrupted the performance by conductor Keith Lockhart and musical guest Ben Folds.

"House security and Boston police stopped the fight, and the audience members were escorted out of the hall," according to a statement issued today by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. "The concert resumed and ended with cheers and a standing ovation."

Two men got in an argument at about 7 p.m. that became physical, culminating when one of the men had his button-down shirt ripped open. Television video showed a security guard pulling one man off of the other man.

Both men were ejected from the auditorium, according to a Boston police spokesman. Police did not release the men's names because neither was arrested or charged with crimes. One man was in his 20s and the other was in his 40s. No one was injured and it was not clear if either of the men threw a punch.

...we paid for them.

Chevron Seen Settling Case on Iraq Oil

May 8, 2007

Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, is preparing to acknowledge that it should have known kickbacks were being paid to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of a defunct United Nations program, according to investigators.

The $64 billion program was set up in 1996 by the Security Council to help ease the effects of United Nations sanctions on Iraqi civilians after the first gulf war. Until the American invasion in 2003, the program allowed Saddam's government to export oil to pay for food, medicine and humanitarian goods.

Using an elaborate system of secret surcharges and extra fees, however, the Iraqi regime received at least $1.8 billion in kickbacks from companies in the program, according to an investigation completed in 2005 by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve.

According to the Volcker report, surcharges on Iraqi oil exports were introduced in August 2000 by the Iraqi state oil company, the State Oil Marketing Organization. At the time, Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, was a member of ChevronÕs board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company.

Ms. Rice resigned from Chevron's board on Jan. 16, 2001, after being named national security advisor by President Bush.

"...a previously neglected or unimportant tension will unexpectedly return, creating pointless conflict and leading to the brutal and shocking murder of a meaningless peripheral character..."

Comments from a previous post, transplanted here.

Anonymous said...

Regarding Miller's letter to the editor and your litany of possibilities: you've apparently based your comment on a wildly broad definition of "inalienable rights" --which makes your derision a cheap-shot.

Why shouldn't fathers have the inalienable right to marry their daughters? Why not permit man-boy marriages? Where do the "inalienable rights" end? That's the issue.

10:04 AM, May 07, 2007

Editor - 201k.com said...

Pretending that society has no way of determining between proper and improper behavior -- between behavior that is proscribed for definable reasons and behavior that's proscribed because some people don't like it -- is only a means for substituting mob rule for legal judgment. We haven't descended that far in this country for a while, Rick Santorum notwithstanding.

Thankfully, neither proper legal judgment nor "inalienable rights" are up for popular vote. That's what the words "inalienable rights" mean, and why they were written down on the document that forms the basis of our liberty.

It's why we have a document in the first place: so that justice, and not the whimsy of men, rules. "Inalienable rights" aren't subject to a popularity contest.

This is pretty basic stuff.

Of course, we take freedom pretty seriously here at 201k, so we reserve the right to take shots, cheap or otherwise, at whoever would presume to cast it aside in pursuit of a myopic personal agenda.

Why? Because those willing to limit someone else's freedom must surely realize the same mechanism could be turned against them; they must either foolishly believe themselves above risk, or be so driven by personal animosity that they're willing to gamble everyone's freedom to actualize it. That's a pretty despicable mindset -- don't you agree?

The NY Times has revised its op-ed columnist schedule to accommodate the return of Gail Collins:

A Note to Readers: Change to Columnist Schedule

Starting Sunday, May 6, the Op-Ed columnists will appear on the following schedule.

David L. Brooks: Tuesday, Friday
Gail Collins: Thursday, Saturday
Maureen Dowd: Sunday, Wednesday
Thomas L. Friedman: Sunday, Wednesday
Bob Herbert: Tuesday, Saturday
Nicholas D. Kristof: Monday, Thursday
Paul Krugman: Monday, Friday
Frank Rich: Sunday

Punch-me-faced-prep David Brooks and Nicholas "I agree with everyone" Kristof and Maureen Antoinette Dowd on Sunday? What are they thinking? Is the idea to balance as much nonsense as possible against Frank Rich?

201k is psyched, to use the technical term, that Gail Collins is coming back; she was always one of our favorite columnists. But the new schedule reflects an acceptance of mediocrity at best, and a determined watering-down of reality at worst. It's as if the paper that brought you Judith "It's True Because Ahmed Told Me So Over Cocktails Last Night" Miller wasn't so much removing her mindset -- finally -- as institutionalizing it on the Sunday page.

Here's what we think the schedule should be:

Paul Krugman & Frank Rich: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday. We'll call those days "Truth Days."

Gail Collins & Bob Herbert: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. The "Insight Days."

Maureen Dowd: Saturday. That will be "Let's Blame Everyone But Bush So I'll Still Get Invited To Kennebunkport" Day. Just for a little light reading.

David L. Brooks & Thomas L. Friedman: Tuesday. "Unintentionally Comedic Talking-Point Rationalization Day" aka "Sorry About All Your Dead Kids, But Really, It Was A Good Idea" Day.

Nicholas D. Kristof: Arbor Day.

The Times Names Public Editor

The New York Times today named its next public editor, Clark Hoyt, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor who oversaw the Knight Ridder newspaper chain's coverage that questioned the Bush administration's case for the Iraq war.

In the prelude to the Iraq war and the early days of the war, Knight-Ridder stood apart from most of the mainstream news media in consistently raising doubts about the Bush administration's claims, later discredited, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said that record contributed to his selection of Mr. Hoyt.

Mr. Hoyt said that in 2002 and 2003 he had fielded a great deal of criticism "from angry readers who believed that we weren't being patriotic, from government officials who said that what we were doing was wrong."

[...O]ver the last year, he has spoken publicly about his concerns about the future of the newspaper industry, arguing that weakening finances, a toxic partisan atmosphere and coziness with government officials threaten to undermine journalistic courage and integrity. He also spoke before a Congressional committee, arguing for a stronger Freedom of Information Act.

At Knight-Ridder, he was part of group of journalists that fought successfully for greater access to military combat units.

...maybe the Rangers will win two. But that's it.