China

AP Headline: 'One-child policy a surprising boon for China girls'
By Tom Blumer | August 14, 2011 | 4:08 PM EDT

Sunday, Alexa Olesen at the Associated Press wrote an item headlined "One-child policy a surprising boon for China girls." My immediate comeback: "43-60 million Chinese girls aborted because they were of the 'wrong' gender or would have violated the one-child policy were not available for comment."

While nowhere near as odious as Nick Kristof's "Mao Tse-tung wasn't all that bad; look what he did for Chinese women" conclusion at the end of a book review on Mao's murderous legacy almost six years ago, Olesen gets into the neighborhood.

Here are the first seven and two later paragraphs from her report:

NBC Wonders: Can America 'Afford Not to' Spend Billions on High-Speed Rail?
By Kyle Drennen | July 1, 2011 | 4:43 PM EDT

On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams praised China's high-speed rail system and lamented that United States had not done the same: "China is rocketing ahead of the U.S. with high-speed rail. And it has a lot of people wondering how long we can keep chugging along the same old track."

Touting the completion of a new rail line between Beijing and Shanghai, Williams proclaimed: "Which raises again the question, when it comes to trains, why is America, home of the iron horse and the golden spike, still on the slow track?" Correspondent Adrienne Mong filed a report riding the rails across China, touting the high-speed system as "smoother, sleeker, greener than a jet plane."

NBC Notes Bob Dylan Criticized for Letting China Censor His Concert
By Brad Wilmouth | April 11, 2011 | 7:37 AM EDT

 On Sunday’s NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt informed viewers that Human Rights Watch recently aimed criticism at singer and former anti-war activist Bob Dylan, charging that he "should be ashamed of himself for letting" the Chinese government "tell him what to sing."

After recounting the irony of Dylan performing a concert in Vietnam after opposing the Vietnam War in the 1960s, Holt noted that he was criticized for "submitting his song list to Chinese authorities."

Below is a complete transcript of the item as read by Lester Holt from the Sunday, April 10, NBC Nightly News:

MSNBC's Jansing: Donald Trump 'Not About the Little Guy,' Wants 'Tax Breaks for the Rich'
By Alex Fitzsimmons | February 17, 2011 | 12:57 PM EST

Interviewing Donald Trump this morning, MSNBC's Chris Jansing put on her Democratic strategist hat to press the Republican real estate mogul with liberal talking points.

After Trump, responding to Jansing's question about what he would do to fix the economy, suggested cutting taxes to spur economic growth, the host of Jansing & Co. groused: "A lot of people sitting out there, with all due respect, saying spoken like a true businessman but not about the little guy. Tax breaks for the rich, not for the middle class."

Not missing a beat, Trump retorted: "But Chris we're the highest-taxed nation in the world, as it stands right now. And that's a pretty bad statement when you think of it."

CBS's Couric Signs Off 'Evening News' in Chinese
By Kyle Drennen | January 20, 2011 | 4:14 PM EST

Following a segment on American school children learning Chinese as a second language at the end of Wednesday's CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric tried her hand at reciting part of her sign off in Mandarin, telling viewers, "míngtianjiàn wanan," meaning, "See you tomorrow, good night." [Audio available here]

In the prior report, correspondent Terry McCarthy was critical of Americans for not having better foreign language skills: "Americans generally assume everyone speaks English....But Americans do not generally share such multilingual talents." He then cheered efforts in one Los Angeles elementary school to teach Chinese alongside English, starting in Kindergarten: "These kids have been studying Chinese for four years and they're pretty good....the Chinese immersion program is so popular, they have a waiting list."

View video below

MSNBC's Tamron Hall: Part of Business Community Has 'In Some Ways Demonized' Obama Administration
By Matt Hadro | January 19, 2011 | 5:02 PM EST

Tamron Hall was joined by her MSNBC colleague Dylan Ratigan on Wednesday's edition of "News Nation" in condemning some members of corporate America for the way they have "demonized" the Obama administration. That slight of American businesses came during a dicussion of President Hu Jintao's U.S visit, in which Ratigan remarked that President Obama's greatest challenge will not be dealing with China, but American businesses who have invested heavily in China.

Late-Term Forced Abortions Exposed on Chinese 'Twitter'
By Erin R. Brown | November 2, 2010 | 10:38 AM EDT

Last year when Michael Jackson died, average people all over the world knew it within minutes, thanks in part to advances in social media technology such as Facebook and Twitter that make information sharing instantaneous. But maybe these new media have a role in getting out actually important, yet under-reported stories. That may be the case with the horror of violent forced abortions in China.

The enforcement of China’s infamous one-child policy has led family planning authorities to fine women with an illegal second pregnancy for as little as $1 for the poorest citizens, up to $40,000. But in some cases, government actions are far more extreme. Thanks to an Al Jazeera video posted on China’s version of Twitter, the truth of a gruesome, late-term abortion forced upon a mother in the modern city of Xiamen is now receiving more mainstream attention than it might have in a pre-Twitter era.

(Video below the fold)

Ratigan Gets 'Raw': Says America Didn’t End Slavery, Just Outsourced It to China
By Jeff Poor | July 12, 2010 | 5:25 PM EDT

Leave it to Dylan Ratigan, one of the star personalities at MSNBC who seems to be constantly looking for a reason to be angry.

On his July 12 show, Ratigan posed his view on how trade between China and the United States operates. According to Ratigan, importing products where labor costs are significantly lower is akin to slavery. He specifically named Foxconn, a company that manufactures iPhones and iPads for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). (h/t @KenShepherd)

"Do you want to get raw?" Ratigan said. "Let's say that the American people happily, logically apathetic are perfectly happy basically with a slave culture of illegals and outsourced slaves in China making iPhones at Foxconn and that for as much as we talk about the liberation of the slaves and we like to pat ourselves on the back for the Civil War - got a big statue of Abe Lincoln. All we've really done is alter the color of some our slaves and moved them to other countries. Is that too extreme on my part, Matt?"

Former GE CEO Jack Welch: China Overtaking USA in Manufacturing Much Ado about Nothing
By Jeff Poor | June 21, 2010 | 4:35 PM EDT

So you may have seen the headlines - the United States is slipping from its long-time position of economic dominance. Evidence: news that China is on the verge of become the top global manufacturer. 

But to former General Electric CEO Jack Welch such headlines really don't mean much. Welch, appearing on MSNBC's June 21 "Morning Joe," explained that yes China is about to take the manufacturing "crown" from the United States, what's important is the kind of products the Chinese are making.

"If you look at what China's manufacturing - they're manufacturing low value-added stuff and as long as it stays that way and we keep doing the high-end stuff and moving up the food chain, we'll be all right," Welch said. "Now, we have not moved up the food chain as fast as we should and we need more engineers and we need to be doing all that, but we are not going to be paying people $200 a month and beginning these low value-added products. It is not going to happen. I'm not that worried about it."

FNC’s O’Reilly Notes ABC’s Donaldson & Roberts Defending Calderon’s Criticism of Arizona
By Brad Wilmouth | May 27, 2010 | 5:55 AM EDT

On Monday’s The O’Reilly Factor, during the show’s regular "Reality Check" segment, FNC host O’Reilly seemed to pick up on a NewsBusters item which highlighted ABC’s Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts defending Mexican President Felipe Calderon using his speech in Congress as a forum to criticize Arizona’s effort to enforce laws against illegal immigration. In their defense of Calderon on Sunday's This Week show's Roundtable segment, the the two ABC News veterans brought up past American Presidents criticizing communist dictators in China and the Soviet Union.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the "Reality Check" from the Monday, May 24, The O’Reilly Factor on FNC:

Obama Administration Apologizes to 'One-Child China' for Ariz. Illegal Immigration Law; Irony Lost on MSM
By Jill Stanek | May 17, 2010 | 11:10 AM EDT

While the headline of this post is shocking, it will come as no surprise to those of us who know how strongly Obama supports abortion - to the point of infanticide.

Apparently China's reprehensible one-child policy - with its forced abortion, forced sterilization, female feticide, and female infanticide - comes nowhere close to AZ's human rights violations of attempting to enforce federal illegal immigration laws.

From the Associated Press, May 14:

The United States and China reported no major breakthroughs Friday after only their 2nd round of talks about human rights since 2002.

The Obama administration wants to push Beijing to treat its citizens better, but it also needs Chinese support on Iranian and North Korean nuclear standoffs, climate change and other difficult issues...

Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state... said... officials also discussed Chinese complaints about problems with U.S. human rights, which have included crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination.

He said U.S. officials did not whitewash the American record and in fact raised on its own a new immigration law in AZ that requires police to ask about a person's immigration status if there is suspicion the person is in the country illegally....

Pentagon Rescinds Franklin Graham’s Invitation, Al Sharpton is Welcome at White House
By Colleen Raezler | April 23, 2010 | 10:21 AM EDT
The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."