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China's gold medals came at a high price
Los Angeles Times ^ | August 25, 2008 | Barbara Demick

Posted on 08/25/2008 8:01:48 PM PDT by george76

Athletes sacrificed dearly -- one was separated from her toddler, one was banned from eating dinner, one missed a parent's funeral. While Americans spoke of fun, the Chinese were on a 'sacred mission.'

If anybody feels a pang of jealousy over China's haul of Olympic gold medals, they need only pause to consider what the athletes went through to get them.

The only mother on China's team, Xian Dongmei, told reporters after she won her gold medal in judo that she had not seen her 18-month-old daughter in one year, monitoring the girl's growth only by webcam. Another gold medalist, weightlifter Cao Lei, was kept in such seclusion training for the Olympics that she wasn't told her mother was dying. She found out only after she had missed the funeral.

Chen Ruolin, a 15-year-old diver, was ordered to skip dinner for one year to keep her body sharp as a razor slicing into the water. The girl weighs 66 pounds.

"To achieve Olympic glory for the motherland is the sacred mission assigned by the Communist Party central," is how Chinese Sports Minister Liu Peng put it at the beginning of the Games.

The contrast couldn't be greater than between the Chinese and U.S. athletes. In their post-match interviews, the Americans rambled on about their parents, their siblings, their pets, their hobbies. They repeatedly used the word fun.

The Chinese athletes generally don't have pets, hobbies, brothers or sisters (since most are products of China's one-child policy).

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: 2008olympics; beijing; boycottchina; china; chinese; communist; communistparty; olympics; reality
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1 posted on 08/25/2008 8:18:01 PM PDT by george76
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To: george76

What a sick, pathetic communist culture.


2 posted on 08/25/2008 8:21:36 PM PDT by vladimir998 (Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. St. Jerome)
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To: george76

Can you say “Pyrrhic Victory?”


3 posted on 08/25/2008 8:25:28 PM PDT by dfwgator ( This tag blank until football season.)
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To: TigersEye

Sick monsters to treat children like this.


4 posted on 08/25/2008 8:25:47 PM PDT by pandoraou812 (Don't play leapfrog with a unicorn! ...........^............)
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To: george76

Yup, that’s what the olympics is about....slaves sacrificing to make the state look good.
Sheesh.
susie


5 posted on 08/25/2008 8:32:58 PM PDT by brytlea (Obama--Jimmy Carter's Second Term)
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To: george76
China communist regime is pure evil. For sixty years they have deprived the Chinese people from their humanity and took their freedom away. They have used them as slaves to the state and put the vast majority of them in a shocking abject poverty that we cannot even comprehend here in the US.

The Beijing Olympics showed us how an evil dictatorship use their own people as machines to achieve a goal including the human abuse of their athletes.

PS: We won more total medal than China, 110 USA versus 100 China. We achieved a better record in Beijing than in Athens or Sydney both in Gold and total medals. At least 20 gold medals won by the Chinese are in very insignificant sports games that we will not compete in to start with.

6 posted on 08/25/2008 8:33:48 PM PDT by jveritas (God Bless President Bush and our brave troops)
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To: vladimir998

This what V.I. Lenin, Stalin, Marx intended. Pliable people working for the Party’s goals. No family, personal or religious interferences. There are plenty of people meeting in Denver this week thinking of the wonders a single party can do..


7 posted on 08/25/2008 8:36:07 PM PDT by oyez (Justa' another high minded lowlife.)
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To: george76

Great call by the IOC. This sure changed a lot in China awarding them the games. I’m sure Jacque Rogge is pating himself on the back.


8 posted on 08/25/2008 8:40:46 PM PDT by Proud_USA_Republican (We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. - Hillary Clinton)
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To: george76

How the heck did this get published in the LA Times?


9 posted on 08/25/2008 8:41:00 PM PDT by Interesting Times (Swiftboating, you say? Check out ToSetTheRecordStraight.com)
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To: george76

That’s real courage...wait until the games are over, and your reporters are safely on a plane outside of Chinese airspace...and then run the report.

Let’s hear it for the MSM.


10 posted on 08/25/2008 8:41:43 PM PDT by BobL (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/blog/4556 (here is where the real Europe is going))
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To: oyez
Objective Sports - Goals, Quickness, Accuracy (eg Basketball, Track, Shooting)
USA 33 Gold, China 25 Gold
Judged Sports (Gymnastics, Diving, Boxing, etc)
China 26 Gold, USA 3 Gold.
pliable officiating, and loose rules regarding age help too....
11 posted on 08/25/2008 8:42:13 PM PDT by BigEdLB (BigEd)
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To: george76

I actually felt sorry for the Chinese athletes. If they won gold or did poorly, I couldn’t help but wonder how it would affect them and their families. They paid a very high price just so their glorious leaders could gloat.


12 posted on 08/25/2008 8:44:06 PM PDT by ChocChipCookie (Homeschool like your kids' lives depend on it.)
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To: george76
The Chinese athletes generally don't have pets, hobbies, brothers or sisters (since most are products of China's one-child policy).

And the next generation, in addition to having no brothers and sisters, will also have no cousins, no aunts, no uncles, no nephews, and no nieces.

13 posted on 08/25/2008 8:46:02 PM PDT by Lizavetta
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To: george76
Whenever I want to find out who won gold medals, I have to look it up on Wikipedia or consult an Almanac of some sort.

This is because I do not remember stuff like that for very long. There are maybe three or four gold medal winners that I can think of from years past. Mark Spitz in 1972, U.S. hockey Team in 1980, Katrina Navritolova in 1976 and Mary Lou Retton doing that tumbling thing back around 1984. Oh yeah, and who can forget Tonya Harding "stealing" that figure skating medal from that stuck-up woman who married some rich guy and never said very much - Nancy something-or-other.

But that's about it for Olympic memories. All the rest, I have to look up.

And so it will be the same for this year's Olympics. I think I will always remember that swimming dude who got something like 12 gold medals and of course, those scantily clad women playing that beach volleyball thing. Don't remember if they got a gold medal or not but damn, they were pretty good.

So there you go. As far as Chinese athletes, I can't remember the name of a single one. They all pretty much look the same to me and all of them seem to have names that I can't pronounce anyhow.

So anyway, that's the Olympics so far as I'm concerned. Now it's back to watching re-runs of COPS and getting caught up on that Mad Men show that everybody keeps yapping about.

14 posted on 08/25/2008 8:51:09 PM PDT by SamAdams76 (I am 4 days away from outliving Kirby Puckett)
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To: Lizavetta

...and no wives, for many of the men, as their one-child policy has led to a 6:5 (or more) ratio of boys to girls (abortion and infanticide...lucky our presidential candidates don’t support that...but then again...)

Anyway, unless they can get a Amsterdam-style flaming gay movement started (which they don’t seem dumb enough to do), there will be a lot of Chinese guys looking elsewhere for love (not good if you’re their neighbors).


15 posted on 08/25/2008 8:55:10 PM PDT by BobL (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/blog/4556 (here is where the real Europe is going))
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To: george76

The monetary cost was about $100m of Chinese taxpayer funds per gold medal over the last four years. That’s on top of the $60b spent on sports-related infrastructure for the Olympics. I don’t begrudge them their medals. If China’s rulers are this desperate to bask in reflected glory, who am I to object? Let them build more expensive (and useless) monuments to their vanity.


16 posted on 08/25/2008 8:55:33 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
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To: SamAdams76

Excellent summation of the u-limpics.


17 posted on 08/25/2008 8:56:35 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Jimmy Carter is the skidmark in the panties of American History)
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To: george76
"Chen Ruolin, a 15-year-old diver, was ordered to skip dinner for one year to keep her body sharp as a razor slicing into the water. The girl weighs 66 pounds." This is what I have been saying from the beginning. This girl looked anorexic. My son and I both noticed her butt was nothing but bones.

If this happened in the USA, people would be in jail for child abuse. The IOC has no business giving out medals to these abusers. And shame on NBC for talking about how "wonderful" they are. They are young people abused by the state.


18 posted on 08/25/2008 8:57:44 PM PDT by I still care ("Remember... for it is the doom of men that they forget" - Merlin, from Excalibur)
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To: george76
Like the shirts say... Slavery... Gets $#!+ Done!
19 posted on 08/25/2008 8:59:55 PM PDT by pnh102 (Save America - Ban Ethanol Now!)
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To: SamAdams76
china probably doesnt care what you think. heck, im with you. i dont keep up with the olympics.
this is probably a pretty effective propaganda tool to beat the rest of the chinese folks with however. "see how superior communist china crushed the imperialist american a-holes"
its the lazy person's way of thinking. if you can best the greatest nation that has ever existed, it makes for an easy way to gloat about something.
20 posted on 08/25/2008 9:00:54 PM PDT by wafflehouse (RE-ELECT NO ONE !)
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To: brytlea
Yup, that’s what the olympics is about....slaves sacrificing to make the state look good.

They're not slaves. If they get *any* medals, they will end up multi-millionaires (in dollars) via government rewards and endorsement deals. It's a good deal for the athletes who make it and are willing to make the personal sacrifices - not such a wonderful one for the Chinese taxpayer, who has to foot the bill for tens of thousands of salaries for has-beens and never-wuzzers.

Americans get track and field athletes who work full-time stateside and train part-time, and still beat the Chinese team without any cost to the American taxpayer. The Chinese losers are paid nice salaries to train all the time. Slaves they are not. The correct term - whether they win or lose - is leeches. Based on Chinese government spending on its sports machine over the past four years (including government-paid trainers and athletes), the Olympics cost Chinese taxpayers $100m per gold medal.

21 posted on 08/25/2008 9:07:58 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
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To: SunkenCiv; rlmorel; indcons; JACKRUSSELL; Army Air Corps; AmericanInTokyo; LucyT

The girl weighs 66 pounds


22 posted on 08/25/2008 9:08:07 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: SamAdams76; Zhang Fei; BIGLOOK; Fred Nerks

Lots of little emperors.


23 posted on 08/25/2008 9:09:31 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: BigEdLB

That says it all, I think. Anywhere that objectivity mattered, we won. Wherever the results depended on human (lack of) judgement, the host country won. I’ve been wondering for sometime whether the Chinese Govt might have pressured the judging cohort in some way. This only strengthens that idea.

The score looks even more lopsided if you eliminate the obscure events that we didn’t even bother to enter athletes for (and neither did most other major countries); those sports were basically “gimmes” for the well-supported Chinese; it’s easy to win when your next closest challenger comes from a tiny banana republic and has next to no training facilities. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that China entered athletes in those events solely because they knew they could inflate their medal total that way.


24 posted on 08/25/2008 9:10:10 PM PDT by Little Pig (Is it time for "Cowboys and Muslims" yet?)
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To: vladimir998

Communists cheat all the time. Sometimes others and sometimes themselves.


25 posted on 08/25/2008 9:12:51 PM PDT by Big Horn (Foreigners do not tread on me.)
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To: Interesting Times

“How the heck did this get published in the LA Times?”

Good question. This is the first objective and well reported article I have read in the LA Times in years. The writer likely will be fired in the morning.


26 posted on 08/25/2008 9:12:52 PM PDT by CdMGuy
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To: pandoraou812
"Sick monsters to treat children like this."

And they have the nerve to say we torture people?

27 posted on 08/25/2008 9:16:03 PM PDT by mass55th (Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway...John Wayne)
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To: BigEdLB

Now with baseball and softball eliminated from Olympics in 2012, I won’t even find it worth watching the games. IOC is anti-American and biased so why should I give them my support?


28 posted on 08/25/2008 9:18:41 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
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To: oyez
And Obama thinks China is great too:
Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you’re starting to think, “Beijing looks like a pretty good option.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2066203/posts


29 posted on 08/25/2008 9:23:27 PM PDT by CedarDave (Rat party platform: Socialist, pro-abortion, tax everyone, surrender to anyone, sex with anything)
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To: george76

I was talking to my fiance about this. If China thinks there record haul of gold medals is going to impress many people, they miscalculated again.

If anything, most Japanese probably feel pity for the Chinese medal winners because four years from now, they are going to be completely forgotten there will be another shipment of medal seekers out of the sport concentration camps.


30 posted on 08/25/2008 9:31:27 PM PDT by Ronin (Is there some rule that says that when an evil man gets sick, we must pretend he was a saint?)
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To: Zhang Fei
the Olympics cost Chinese taxpayers $100m per gold medal.

Suits me, Mao. That leaves them less to spend on trying to take us out.

31 posted on 08/25/2008 9:34:26 PM PDT by buccaneer81 (Bob Taft has soiled the family name for the next century.)
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To: george76
Aloha George!

Where have you been?

As to the article. the social structure of China and a command economy, people are puppets. Not at all surprised at the callousness of the PRC regime.
32 posted on 08/25/2008 9:35:40 PM PDT by BIGLOOK (Keelhaul Congress! It's the sensible solution to restore Command to the People.)
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To: BobL
...and no wives, for many of the men, as their one-child policy has led to a 6:5 (or more) ratio of boys to girls

And for the girls, there are plenty of non-Chinese suitors that they can go for.

33 posted on 08/25/2008 9:36:10 PM PDT by dfwgator ( This tag blank until football season.)
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To: george76

She needs some of those North Korean super noodles.


34 posted on 08/25/2008 9:39:00 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_______Profile hasn't been updated since Friday, May 30, 2008)
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To: Zhang Fei
the Olympics cost Chinese taxpayers $100m per gold medal.

The irony is that the US is considered "individualist", while China is "collectivist". Yet who did better at the team sports? The US, while China cleaned up in the individual events (Team gymnastics doesn't count).

35 posted on 08/25/2008 9:39:45 PM PDT by dfwgator ( This tag blank until football season.)
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To: buccaneer81

Meanwhile the US has Gold Medal winners who make $100 Million, like Kobe Bryant.


36 posted on 08/25/2008 9:41:02 PM PDT by dfwgator ( This tag blank until football season.)
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To: mass55th; TigersEye
I have no use for China. I boycott them as much as I can. Look at what they do to the people of Tibet... And they say we torture people??? Shaking my head at China again!
37 posted on 08/25/2008 9:43:17 PM PDT by pandoraou812 (Don't play leapfrog with a unicorn! ...........^............)
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To: dfwgator

No kidding. I’d post a pic of the one I found (not an olympian, but still beautiful), but I wouldn’t want to dazzle y’all.


38 posted on 08/25/2008 9:56:37 PM PDT by Little Pig (Is it time for "Cowboys and Muslims" yet?)
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To: george76

Hate those bastards!


39 posted on 08/25/2008 9:58:57 PM PDT by diamond6 (Everyone who is for abortion has been born. Ronald Reagan)
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To: I still care

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klj12Z_ARow

Here some more evidence of child abuse by the vaunted Chinese sports training program.


40 posted on 08/25/2008 10:03:20 PM PDT by Truthsearcher
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To: SunkenCiv
She needs some of those North Korean super noodles.

The noodles that consist of lots of calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, basalt, some organic matter....and little gluten. They do wonders for slimming down while providing all the necessary minerals without the risk of a higher BMI .

보다 더 아무것도 없어! Yum!
41 posted on 08/25/2008 10:18:57 PM PDT by BIGLOOK (Keelhaul Congress! It's the sensible solution to restore Command to the People.)
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To: george76
Since there are rules against Olympic cheating, but there is no rule against TRYING TOO HARD, no boundaries to speak of, the Reds are bound to whip us again and again and again.

Unless, we want to win more than they do.

I suppose it is our choice if we want to level the playing field, even the score, and kick their asses.

Either that, or we suck it up and don't whine.

Them's the cold hard facts of dealing with Asia in a competitive sense.

If it is not worth it (and who in their right mind wants to pay this high of a price!?) dont we just fold our cards and go home.

There is only victory (or trying as hard as we can for it) on the one hand, or giving up and not being a player.

No whining allowed. Not much middle ground to speak of.

The Japanese were reflecting on this point all this morning on the radio. "To beat the barbarous, bastard Chinese, we (the Japanese, they said), will ourselves have to become barbarous and bastardly." Most here in Japan I talk to, do not want to. (Sentiment to do so may have been there 60 years ago, though. Talk about self-sacrifice for the nation!)

42 posted on 08/25/2008 10:21:44 PM PDT by AmericanInTokyo ("Conservatives" Pimping 4McCain Are Irresponsible If They've No Plan To Counter Him If/When He RINOs)
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To: Truthsearcher

That is really horrible.

Some, I’m sure would say that is “spliced” but I’ve no doubt that is really what goes on. And just think, we try to compete against these people fairly.

This is also how they probably produce their soldiers. Why do I think of Ancient Sparta looking at this?


43 posted on 08/25/2008 10:28:24 PM PDT by I still care ("Remember... for it is the doom of men that they forget" - Merlin, from Excalibur)
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To: CedarDave
The irony is, that in fact may be the only thing that idiot Obama has right.

That Chinese infrastructure is coming up fast and hard on the heels of the USA, and eventually they are going to eat our lunch--if we don't watch out, despite great deprivation to their own people.

People who have been to the China in the last three or four years and see the ascendency, and then compared it to the shoddy infrastructure crumbling in the US in more and more places and sectors of the economy, will know what I am talking about.

Japan knows it. Most others I have talked to who have been to Minneapolis and Beijing, Houston and Shanghai, Philadelphia and Guangzhou, know exactly what I speak of.

44 posted on 08/25/2008 10:29:43 PM PDT by AmericanInTokyo ("Conservatives" Pimping 4McCain Are Irresponsible If They've No Plan To Counter Him If/When He RINOs)
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To: george76

By the way, lately I’ve noticed some more honest articles coming out from the LA Times, some that I would actually give the time of day. Is there a change going on there?


45 posted on 08/25/2008 10:32:20 PM PDT by I still care ("Remember... for it is the doom of men that they forget" - Merlin, from Excalibur)
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To: BigEdLB

....”Objective Sports - Goals, Quickness, Accuracy (eg Basketball, Track, Shooting)
USA 33 Gold, China 25 Gold
Judged Sports (Gymnastics, Diving, Boxing, etc)
China 26 Gold, USA 3 Gold.
pliable officiating, and loose rules regarding age help too.... “

This was a point I was trying to make all the way through the olympics. Look at the difference in gold medals (for the ChiComs) between “judged” sports and real head to head sports.

(I have long argued that no “judged” sports should be in the olmpics because they will NEVER be fairly judged. Darn. We would have to rid of gymastics AND, in the winter, fagureskating.)

I guess if the host country get’s this kind of favoritism, the UK can look forward to a boatload of “judged” medals in 2012.

The ChiComs “gold medal total” is laughable when you sit back and look at it in perspective....


46 posted on 08/25/2008 11:01:16 PM PDT by Mtner77
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To: george76; All

Slavery built the pyramids, too, but there’s NOTHING to admire in achievements that do not come from free people freely choosing to discipline themselves for noble ends!!

The PRC is a slave state and nothing that they can force people to do is worthy of admiration, no matter how initially impressive it might seem.......


47 posted on 08/25/2008 11:03:55 PM PDT by Enchante (Obama-cons: Trying to fool America, one media dupe at a time!)
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To: george76
"To achieve Olympic glory for the motherland is the sacred mission assigned by the Communist Party central," is how Chinese Sports Minister Liu Peng put it at the beginning of the Games.

Yes, of course, and last year I had some really smart Freeper, oh so educated and familiar with the Russian way, much smarter than I, explain to me how Communism is an ideology, not a religion.

Uh huh.

48 posted on 08/25/2008 11:06:30 PM PDT by FlyVet
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To: george76
Damn! Olympic slave laborers are all they are.
49 posted on 08/26/2008 12:28:32 AM PDT by AmericaUnited
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To: george76; jahp; LilAngel; metmom; EggsAckley; Battle Axe; SweetCaroline; Grizzled Bear; ...
MADE IN CHINA POTTERY STAMP

A ping list dedicated to exposing the quality, safety and security issues of anything “Made in China”.


Please FReepmail me if you would like to be on or off of the list.

(This can be a high volume ping list.)

50 posted on 08/26/2008 5:37:54 AM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
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