Attempts to Remove Shen Yun Ads in Brussels Rebuffed

Effort at censorship becomes opportunity for publicity

By Joshua Philipp, Epoch Times | March 31, 2014

Last Updated: March 31, 2014 7:09 am

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A poster for Shen Yun Performing Arts is posted in front of a Sheraton hotel in Brussels, Belgium. Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping is scheduled to stay at the hotel, and the Chinese consulate has asked for the posters to be removed. (Xiaoran / The Epoch Times)

Chinese authorities are pressuring Belgium to cover or remove posters advertising a show of classical Chinese dance, during the visit of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s this week.

Shen Yun Performing Arts is scheduled to perform at the National Theater in Brussels April 2–6. Shen Yun, which performs in around 20 countries and 100 cities around the world each year, has set out to revive China’s divinely inspired culture, yet cannot perform in mainland China.

Xi is staying at the Sheraton hotel in Brussels, which is near the National Theater. A Shen Yun billboard can be seen on a less than 15 feet from the entrance to the hotel. From April 2 to 6, Shen Yun Performing Arts is scheduled for six performances at the theater. 

The performances will take place as world leaders, including President Barack Obama, are in Brussels for a summit. Belgium is home to the European Union, European Parliament, and NATO.

The poster campaign for Shen Yun is being run by BHS Promotion, an ad agency, which did not immediately respond to questions sent by email.

A BHS Promotion representative told the EU Observer it had been called by the Brussels central police department and asked to remove posters advertising Shen Yun, saying they posed “problems for diplomacy.”

The police later canceled the request.

Meanwhile, the central police department had also sent a letter to the Belgian Falun Gong Association, which is organizing the performance in Belgium. It was asked to cover or remove all the Shen Yun posters.

Nicolas Schols, the Falun Gong Association volunteer spokesman, told reporters in Belgium that police told him a “crisis cell of internal affairs is being pressured by the Chinese Consulate,” according to the EU Observer.  

Schols said the police had later canceled their request, just as they had canceled the request to the ad agency.

Despite the pressure from the Chinese Consulate, however, the upcoming performance by Shen Yun has won support from European leaders.

Edward McMillan-Scott, vice president of European Parliament, sent a letter to the mayor of Brussels, stating that the CCP issues similar threats to theaters every year, and said it is good news that the problem has been resolved.

The CCP regularly tries to pressure countries and theaters to cancel Shen Yun performances.

The CCP’s pressure for the April performance marks the third time Chinese authorities tried to cause trouble for a Shen Yun performance in Brussels.

In March 2013, the National Theater temporarily stopped selling Shen Yun tickets due to what was revealed to be pressure from Chinese authorities. According to the Minghui website, the National Theater later resumed normal operations and issued a statement saying, “We have a contract. Belgium is a free society. The theater respects the right to freedom of expression.”

Two years before that, the CCP had also tried unsuccessfully to cancel a Shen Yun performance in Brussels at the same theater. According to Minghui, it was found that staff from the Chinese Embassy had contacted the manager of the theater and asked him to cancel the performance.

The manager rejected the request.

In what was almost certainly an unintended consequence of the Communist Party’s meddling, the Belgian Falun Dafa Association, which is presenting Shen Yun, organized a press conference on March 28, calling on the Belgian Government and media to investigate the efforts to remove advertising for Shen Yun, and maintain cultural freedom.

This attracted a great deal of media attention by a number of Belgian news outlets. 

RTBF, Belgium’s largest French-language television broadcaster, covered the incident in its prime-time bulletin.

Schols, the Falun Gong spokesperson, was quoted discussing the Communist Party’s destruction of Chinese culture, and the persecution of the practice of Falun Gong.

“The Belgian government has come under pressure, which it resisted,” he said.

L’Avenir, a local newspaper, and La Libre Belgique, both covered the fracas. “Why might a picture of an elegant Chinese dancer make President Xi unhappy?” an article in the latter publication asked. 

“This performance depicts not only China’s 5,000-year traditions, but also the Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners,” the article said.

The Flemish Green Party also called on Brussels police to “prevent China from exporting cultural censorship.”

Defense lawyers: Did FBI pressure push Boston bomber over the edge?

Defense lawyers: Did FBI pressure push Boston bomber over the edge? (+video)

Lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, say contact with the FBI may have been a 'precipitating event' to the bombings last April.

By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / March 29, 2014

• 

Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, charged with using a weapon of mass destruction in the bombings on April 15, 2013 near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The federal government is seeking the death penalty in the case against Tsarnaev.

Federal Bureau of Investigation/AP

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ATHENS, GA.

Three days after an FBI agent was cleared of wrongdoing in the bizarre killing of an associate of slain Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the only surviving bombing suspect, alleged that the FBI attempted to recruit the elder Tsarnaev as an informant.

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In court filings on Friday, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team said that new information suggests the FBI interviewed Tamerlan on several occasions before the attack, and even pressured him to surreptitiously report on the Chechen underworld. Lawyers are seeking more information from the agency in order to formulate a death penalty defense that points to Tamerlan as the ideological ringleader of the attack.

“We do not suggest that these contacts are to be blamed and have no evidence to suggest that they were improper, but rather view them as an important part of the story of Tamerlan’s decline,” defense attorney David Bruck wrote. “Since Tamerlan is dead, the government is the source of corroboration that these visits did in fact occur and of what was said during them.”

Mr. Bruck suggested that Tamerlan Tsarnaev could have misread the agency’s intentions, which may have “increased his paranoia and distress.”

RECOMMENDED: Learning from the Boston Marathon bombings

Dzhokhar, who is now 20, was injured and captured and his brother killed following a four-day manhunt after the twin explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon almost a year ago. He has pleaded not guilty to a 30-count indictment for his alleged role in an event that killed three people and injured more than 260. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty if he is convicted at a trial now set for November.

Given those stakes, defense attorneys say they want any evidence the FBI has that could show the elder Tsarnaev “supplied the motivation, planning and ideology” behind the attack, and that his younger brother “acted under his domination and control.”

The evidence, he argued, will be used “as building blocks of the defendant’s affirmative case for life.”

The FBI has not yet responded to the request.

Meanwhile, the Bureau has continued to emphatically state that it didn’t know the identities of the two suspected bombers until they were fingerprinted, and have denied any involvement with the brothers aside from following up on a tip from a Russian emissary that the elder Tsarnaev may have been seeking jihad.

“To be absolutely clear: No one was surveilling the Tsarnaevs, and they were not identified until after the shootout,” the FBI said in an Oct. 23 press release, following news reports suggesting agents had actually kept close tabs on the brothers. “Any claims to the contrary are false.”

But such denials, critics say, are complicated by the agency’s famously insular and secretive culture. The New York Times reported last year, for example, that out of 150 cases where suspects have been killed or injured by FBI agents since 1993, no agent has ever been charged with wrongdoing. Such statistics “raise red flags” about the Bureau’s integrity, says David Rudovsky at the University of Philadelphia Law School, coauthor of “Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation.”

In the case of Ibragim Todashev, who allegedly took part with Tamerlan in a robbery turned triple-homicide in Waltham, in 2011, family members have also stated that FBI pressure may have pushed the 20-something ethnic Chechen and mixed martial arts fighter to the brink of violence.

According to a Florida state prosecutor’s report that cleared an FBI agent of wrongdoing, Mr. Todashev was killed by the agent after a five hour interview in a hot Orlando apartment, and after Todashev attacked the agent and a police officer with a “pole of some kind.”

It’s not clear whether Todashev was in official FBI custody at the time of his death, but he had begun to write a confession to his role in the triple homicide and was not handcuffed. The report on the shooting, however, suggests that Todashev became agitated as it became clear that he may be facing arrest and prison time. The report also said Todashev had a chance to flee the apartment, but instead chose to fight.

Todashev’s father, meanwhile, says he believes the FBI tortured and killed his son in order to cover up the agency’s involvement. Todashev’s friends have told reports that FBI agents hounded Todashev constantly after the marathon bombing.

Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Bureau has stepped up surveillance of specific racial, ethnic and religious communities, including the use of informants. The tactics have led to dozens of foiled attacks, but has also left the Bureau open to charges of entrapment, not to mention assorted Internet conspiracy theories.

Part of those post-9/11 tactics are the use of “voluntary interviews … often encouraging interviewees to serve as informants in their communities,” writes the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a report last week, the House Committee on Homeland Security suggested that missed leads and failures to connect dots may have kept agents from foiling the marathon attack. But Congress did not assign any specific blame or fault to any of the country’s intelligence agencies, including the FBI, for failure to stop the bombings.

Google’s Business Up by 250% After China Exit

By Ram Srinivasan, Epoch Times Contributor | March 2, 2014

Last Updated: March 2, 2014 6:14 pm

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After exiting China in 2010, Google's revenue and income have grown almost 250% over four years. (Graphics: Epoch Times)

The company made just shy of $60 billion in total revenue and $14 billion in operating income for 2013.

Current business wisdom seems to dictate that any company seeking to do international business must target China. Industry analysts might stretch it a bit further to hint that the only way to make money doing business in China is to bow to the Chinese regime’s dictates and turn a blind eye to its human rights violations, the persecution of its people, and its rampant Internet censorship.
So why does Google Inc., whose revenues and income have grown almost 250 percent since it exited the majority of its Chinese business, stand out as a stark contrast to conventional wisdom?
Google left the Chinese search market in 2010 after a very public spat with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over its alleged hacking of Google’s servers. The company had previously offered self-censored results to mainland Chinese starting in 2006. Today, Google’s market capitalization stands at slightly over $400 billion as of Feb. 21, making it the second most valuable technology company by that measure after Apple Inc.
The company recently reported its fourth quarter 2013 and full-year 2013 revenues and income, and the company made just shy of $60 billion in total revenue and $14 billion in operating income for 2013.
We went back nine years to evaluate Google’s financial performance since 2005. Over a four-year period from 2006 to 2009 (during which Google self-censored in China), the company made a total of $72.6 billion in revenue and $18 billion in income. Over a similar four-year span from 2010 to 2013 (after Google left China), the company made $177.2 billion in revenue and $41.2 billion in income, a 243 percent and 228.8 percent increase in revenue and income respectively.

Chinese Hacking

In January 2006, two years after the company went public, the search engine announced a censored version of its search engine for mainland China. The move drew condemnation from human rights groups who said the self-censorship went against Google’s own motto of “Don’t Be Evil.” Google explained it as the cost of doing business. The censored version continued operating for four years, during which Google competed with Baidu for the Chinese search market.
But the company found itself under ever-increasing pressure from the Chinese regime. Upset that the California-based company would not completely comply with the regime’s dictates, the CCP’s top brass made life difficult for Google. The Epoch Times reported that Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang, who have now been purged from leadership positions in the Party, were exerting increasing pressure on Google in an attempt to drive it out of China or at least make it difficult for the company to do business there.
The last straw came in 2010 when Google uncovered a massive hacking scheme that targeted some of its most secure login and password systems, which could only be accessed by Google employees. The attack was apparently made by machines belonging to Google China employees. According to “In The Plex” by Wired magazine editor Steven Levy, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who escaped from communist Russia with his family during his childhood, took China’s hacking attacks and targeting of dissidents especially hard. He made the call to pull out of China. Co-founder Larry Page was reported as initially neutral but eventually agreed, and Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt accepted the decision to exit China.
Business experts were ambivalent about Google’s fate after its China exit. Google stated that China only accounted for 5 percent of its entire revenue, but some experts wondered whether the company was leaving a potentially lucrative market, and predicted that with increasing competition from Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, the company would have a hard time competing globally. Google’s stock had its share of ups and downs that year.

Breakthrough

But what has happened since then would take everyone by surprise. Instead of focusing on the Chinese search business, Google has spent its energies since then to develop Android and expand its digital marketing.
In 2010, Google’s fledging open-source Android operating system took the world by storm. It went from an also-ran in the mobile industry to becoming the most popular smartphone operating system. That year, Android went from a single-digit market share to achieving more than 50 percent of the global smartphone market. Looking at the company’s revenues and income, Google’s earnings haven’t missed a beat either, and have kept rising through the strength of its online advertising reach and other smaller income sources such as the Google Play store and its online cloud services.
The company continues to compete in diverse areas such as operating systems (through Android and Chrome OS), Internet browsers (Chrome), social media offerings (Google+), enterprise platforms (Google Apps for end users and Google Cloud Platform for developers), and its core strength of search and online advertising.
While Google may be no angel—like many other online service providers, the company has always been under fire for its privacy policies—and reportedly continues to operate in China on a smaller scale, it goes on to prove that it is still possible for large international companies to operate without a large China presence and still grow its business successfully by focusing organically in other areas.
Perhaps the best proof that a company can still be admired in China despite standing up to the regime is the fact that within hours of announcing its China exit, hundreds of Beijing residents made their way to Google China’s headquarters and laid flowers and wreaths bemoaning the government’s censorship and Google’s exit.
It goes on to prove that even Chinese citizens support a company that can stand up to their government, and perhaps the best way for a company to actually do business is to follow moral standards and not the dictates of a regime intent on persecuting its own people.

not a victim

oh yeah, by the way I am not a victim.   you were so lacking a core you could not avoid going with the wind direction of the room.  Whatever it is I feel sorry for you. It sucks not being able to be what you want to be.  So go look up Falun Dafa.  Truth Compassion, Tolerance, qi gong excersises, Banned in China. 

Lessons From Iraq invasion

Lessons From 20th Century

What should the West do in the face of yet another gross violation of the peace of Europe? 

First of all, it must admit that many of the arguments and precedents Vladimir Putin is using to justify his military invasion were taken from Western arguments in the run up to its own illegal invasions of Granada, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The West has lost the moral high ground, and after the blatant lies in 2003—remember the weapons of mass destruction?—has only itself to blame for the loss of integrity of international law. 

War is not policy. tell that to Iraq.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl on Wednesday gave a statement to Bild, the country’s biggest-circulation newspaper, saying that “great omissions” had been made in policy toward Ukraine. “The mood of revolt in Ukraine was not intelligently followed. Equally there was a lack of sensitivity in the dealings with our Russian neighbor, especially President Putin,” he said.

CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY

“We cannot forget: war is not policy,” he added.

Russia "is too big to fail"

In the view of Western societies, including the U.S. and Europe,  Russia is "too big to fail".  In their pursuit of money, they have let the rattlesnake in the room,  did business with it and now wonder why it is biting them. 

They won't shoot first. even under provocation

'Why aren't they shooting?'

'They just aren't.”

'But how do you behave? Do you provoke them?'

'Yes, we provoke them'

'Do you remain defiant?'

'Yes, we are defiant, but they aren't shooting.'

'Why aren't they shooting?'

'I don't know why, but they don't'