Rep. Smith Urges Trump to Confront Chinese Leader on Human Rights Record

BY HENRY JOM AND JENNIFER ZENG

November 29, 2018 Updated: November 29, 2018

U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) is urging President Donald Trump to raise the issue of human rights directly during his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Argentina on Nov. 30.

Smith said at a congressional hearing on Nov. 28 that the United States stands in solidarity with the Chinese people, and not with a dictatorship that “kills lives … tortures … and crushes religion.”

Smith’s comments come amidst growing tensions in China’s Xinjiang Province, where reports of unprecedented human-rights violations of Uyghur Muslims have echoed through the international community. Reports of torture, rape, and killings in secretive political re-education camps also have been documented.

“They use the same tools, used different pretext, always crushing people of faith, whether it be Falun Gong, Catholics, Christians, Protestants, Tibetans, Muslims,” Smith told The Epoch Times. “What government does that to its own people?”

As co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Smith has heard in detail the horrific methods the Chinese regime uses to torture its own citizens. Any pretext is used as an excuse to persecute groups that the regime considers a threat or objectionable.

The treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang is reminiscent of the persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong in China that began in July 1999, Smith said.

The Connection Between Human Rights and Trade

Trump’s tough stance on trade may be the only way to get the Chinese regime to change its unfair subsidies, state-sponsored technology theft, and human-rights violations.

“People say, ‘Well, what is the connection with trade?’ Do you think we can count on people to respect copyrights and intellectual property rights if they can’t even respect their own people? And if they torture them with impunity as they do?” Smith said.

State-sanctioned forced organ harvesting under the Chinese regime devalues human rights and dignity for profit. Forced organ harvesting, has claimed large numbers of lives in what researchers are calling a cold genocide of Falun Gong practitioners.

“If they steal their organs as they do the Falun Gong and then sell those organs for massive profits, that is barbaric,” Smith said. “The Falun Gong people have suffered so much, and as I and so many others have raised over the years, the Chinese government needs to be held to account.”

Smith and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have introduced legislation that would call on the Commerce Department to stop U.S. companies from sending surveillance capabilities to Chinese police and other security apparatuses.

“They’re using [surveillance capabilities] against good, hardworking individuals who happen to be Muslim [and] against other faith denominations, as well,” Smith said.

A Call to the President

He says it’s absurd that the Chinese regime is fearful of people of faith who want to live out their convictions, and hopes that the president doesn’t abandon the human rights issue as previous administrations have.

Smith has also called on the president to use the global Magnitsky Act to sanction individual perpetrators of these crimes.

“We had eight years of President Obama who looked the other way when it came to China. Bill Clinton notoriously and infamously de-linked human rights from trade … and said, ‘We’re going to make profits, that’s more important,’” Smith added. “President Trump now has to rise to the occasion of defending these wonderful Chinese people who are being so horribly repressed by the government. They deserve better than what they’re getting from their government.”

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) at the CECC Hearing on The Communist Party’s Crackdown on Religion in China in Washington on Nov 28, 2018. (Jennifer Zeng/The Epoch Times)

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) at the CECC Hearing on The Communist Party’s Crackdown on Religion in China in Washington on Nov 28, 2018. (Jennifer Zeng/The Epoch Times)

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Global Coalition of Scholars Demands Beijing End Mass Internment of Uyghurs

BY JENNIFER ZENG

November 28, 2018 Updated: November 28, 2018

WASHINGTON—A global coalition of nearly 300 scholars from 26 countries has demanded Beijing abolish its mass internment camps in Xinjiang. The coalition calls for the international community to in various ways add more pressure on Beijing and to sanction Chinese leaders to cease “this act of unprecedented repression.”

statement signed by 278 scholars was released on Nov. 26 at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington. Sean Roberts, director of international development studies at the George Washington University, said that although scholars usually don’t hold press conferences, the situation in Xinjiang was so worrying that he and many of his fellow academics felt compelled to take this action.

Sean Roberts, director of international development studies at the George Washington University, speaks on behalf of a coalition of scholars opposing the repression of Uyghurs in China at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 26, 2018. (Jennifer Zeng/The Epoch Times)

Sean Roberts, director of international development studies at the George Washington University, speaks on behalf of a coalition of scholars opposing the repression of Uyghurs in China at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 26, 2018. (Jennifer Zeng/The Epoch Times)

“As concerned scholars who study China, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), Central Asia, and other related regions of the world, we issue this statement to highlight our concerns and to call the international community to action in relation to the mass human rights abuses and deliberate attacks on indigenous cultures presently taking place in China’s XUAR. The signatories to this statement are united in viewing the present situation in this region of China as one of significant international concern,” the statement says.

The statement relates how over 1 million people are detained in the camps without trial and subjected to torture, psychological stress, and deeply invasive forms of surveillance to force them to abandon their native language, religious beliefs, and cultural practices.

The coalition of scholars is calling on states and institutions to issue formal statements demanding that Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo immediately abolish the “transformation through education” detention system and release all Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other detainees.

The coalition also calls for economic sanctions on Chinese authorities and technology companies in and outside of China that are benefiting from the campaign against Uyghurs and other minority groups in the region.

In addition, the scholars call for the UN, countries presently engaged in negotiations regarding projects that are part of the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as academic institutions around the world, to take actions to end this atrocity.

Economic sanctions are already under consideration by the U.S. Senate, in which a bipartisan bill, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2018, was introduced this month.

The bill commits the U.S. government to pursuing economic sanctions against a number of Chinese officials, including Chen, who is widely considered to be the driving force behind the crackdown on the region’s Uygur, Kazakh, and other ethnic groups.

Mihrigul Tursun weeps as she relates her experiences in the detainment camps in Xinjiang, China, at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 26, 2018. (Jennifer Zeng/The Epoch Times)

Mihrigul Tursun weeps as she relates her experiences in the detainment camps in Xinjiang, China, at the National Press Club in Washington on Nov. 26, 2018. (Jennifer Zeng/The Epoch Times)

A Victim’s Story

Personal accounts at the press conference gave the scholars’ statement a human face.

Mihrigul Tursun, a 29 year-old Uygur woman, gave a most compelling account of her experience being detained three times at a mass internment camp.

Tursun was arrested for the first time when she arrived at Urumqi airport from Egypt with her 2-month-old triplets in 2015. Her babies were taken away from her.

There months later, she was released on “parole” because her three babies were in critical condition in a hospital. The eldest one died the next day.

During her second detention in 2017, she was interrogated for four days and four nights without any sleep.

During her third detention in 2018, she witnessed 9 deaths of fellow inmates within 9 months. She was tortured so badly that she begged the guards to kill her.

She was eventually released so that she could take her children to Egypt, but she was ordered to return to China.

Tursun struggled very hard between a desire to speak out about her experiences, and a guilty feeling that if she didn’t go back to China, her family there could be arrested and tortured.

She eventually summoned up her courage to contact a reporter of Radio Free Asia, who later put her into contact with U.S. authorities.

She was granted permission to come to the United States and settled in Virginia with her two remaining kids in September.

She is scheduled to testify again at the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China’s hearing on “The Communist Party’s Crackdown on Religion in China” on Nov. 28.

Tursun said that at the hearing she would call for the U. S. Congress to pass a bill about Xinjiang and let the Chinese Communist Party realize that there is international pressure. She also hopes that the U.S. government can protect her family to China.

Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/global-coalition-of-scholars-demands-beijing-end-mass-internment-of-uyghurs_2725889.html

Chinese police attend an anti-terrorist oath-taking rally in Hetian, in northwest China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region on Feb. 27, 2017. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Chinese police attend an anti-terrorist oath-taking rally in Hetian, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region on Feb. 27, 2017. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

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Southeast Asia Needs to Choose Between the US, China on Principles, Experts Say

BY JENNIFER ZENG

November 27, 2018 Updated: November 27, 2018

WASHINGTON—With the intensifying rivalry between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, Southeast Asian countries can no longer sit on the fence, and have a tough choice to make. That choice should be made based on worldviews and principles, experts say.

John Lee, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, who worked for the Australian government as a senior national security adviser until April, said that with the discussion of Southeast Asia’s tough choice between the United States and China, recent comments by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s could very well reflect the situation.

“If you are friends with two countries, which are on different sides, sometimes it is possible to get along with both. Sometimes, it is more awkward when you try to get along with both. I think it is very desirable not to take sides, but the circumstance may come when the Association of Southeast Asian Nations [ASEAN] may have to choose one or the other. I am hoping that it will not come soon,” the prime minister said Nov. 14, during the final day of the annual ASEAN summit, which was held in his city-state.

John Lee speaks at a panel discussion on “U.S.-China Rivalry: Southeast Asia’s Tough Choice” at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 19, 2018 (Wu Wei/NTD)

John Lee speaks at a panel discussion on “U.S.-China Rivalry: Southeast Asia’s Tough Choice” at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 19, 2018 (Wu Wei/NTD)

John Lee said at a panel discussion on the “U.S.–China Rivalry: Southeast Asia’s Tough Choice” at the Hudson Institute on Nov. 19, that when he met with people from Southeast Asian countries, he always made three points.

First, “Southeast Asian nations must live in a world they find for themselves. And it is time for Southeast Asian nations to choose. But is it not [an] inherent choice between two countries, the U.S. and China, It is a choice between two different worldviews. And more specifically, a choice between two different sets of principles which should rule and govern the region,” he said.

Second, “as an organization which seeks diplomatic centrality, ASEAN centrality will be lost. Its relevance will decline if it continues to remain silent on alternative sets of principles with which it chooses to endorse and engage.”

Third, “if ASEAN does not choose between principles, ASEAN will itself begin to fracture, to the point where several of its own members will begin to abandon ASEAN centrality in substance, and pay minimum lip service to ASEAN centrality.”

Reaffirmation of Principles

Hudson Institute’s Lee said that while many political officials in Southeast Asia are uncomfortable with the Australian, Japanese, and U.S. notions of a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” it is, in his view, essentially a “reaffirmation” of economic and security principles that have evolved after World War II.

He said, in terms of economic affairs, the “free” part should include freedom from economic coercion, and from the use of debt to acquire leverage over another country’s decision-making process.

“In short, economic relations in ‘free and open’ Indo-Pacific should not entail the diminishing of a country’s sovereignty,” Lee said.

Lee said that while the Southeast Asian countries were sitting on the fence, things were not standing still.

“The grounds are shifting to their disadvantage, especially in the South China Sea. So in my mind, a ‘wait and see’ approach—the so-called ‘small target’ approach—is actually a guaranteed strategy for them to lose,” Lee said.

“I grant that there are key Southeast countries working hard behind the scenes to support the U.S. and ally countries strategically and militarily, but the refusal to overtly choose and support a set of principles gives China diplomatic cover to do what it does.

“The other side of the coin is that support for the principles of a free and open Indo-Pacific will make it easier diplomatically for the U.S. and allies to give meat to the bones of this free and open Indo-Pacific concept.”

Amy Searight speaks at a panel discussion on “U.S.-China Rivalry: Southeast Asia’s Tough Choice” at Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 19, 2018 (Wu Wei/NTD)

Amy Searight speaks at a panel discussion on “U.S.-China Rivalry: Southeast Asia’s Tough Choice” at Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 19, 2018 (Wu Wei/NTD)

Positive Message

Amy Searight, senior adviser and director of the Southeast Asia program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that while the U.S.–China strategic rivalry is intensifying, both countries in recent years have been sharpening the differences between their visions for Asia.

Unlike Lee, Searight sees continued room for Southeast Asian countries not to make a definite choice between the United States and China’s differing visions.

“For many of these countries, hedging these two powers and other regional players is really an attractive and reasonable option. And I don’t think hedging, for the most part, is necessarily problematic, as long as countries that are hedging do two things,” Searight said. “First, they stand up for their own interest, and make decisions that are good decisions, that are informed, that are transparent, that will lead to good outcomes for the country.”

Searight said the second thing the countries need to do is “not to accept Chinese bribes, to accept a financing package from China that will lead to unsustainable debts.”

Patrick Cronin speaks at a panel discussion on “U.S.-China Rivalry: Southeast Asia’s Tough Choice” at Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 19, 2018 (Wu Wei/NTD)

Patrick Cronin speaks at a panel discussion on “U.S.-China Rivalry: Southeast Asia’s Tough Choice” at Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 19, 2018 (Wu Wei/NTD)

Patrick Cronin, director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said that although China swore that it wasn’t going to be a hegemon, it would never be hegemonic, the Beijing regime was already acting in that way. And the region understands that.

Cronin said what the United States needs to do is to show to the region that it will support them.

“For Southeast Asia, at the end of the day, we have to have a positive message about their future, and about why we are committed to their future. And it’s not their future as a means for us to get to China; it’s their future for us to both have better, brighter, prosperous, more secure tomorrows.”

Cronin said the world should guard against China’s attempts to export its model to other countries.

“This is why that the Xinjiang detention is such a warning sign for the region. If China were to export its domestic policy, what would it mean?” Cronin said.

“Just this weekend, they were lecturing the Europeans that because of their lassitude on dealing with terrorism and jihadism in Europe, they should look to China’s model of detention camps in Xinjiang. No, we reject that.”

Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/caught-between-the-us-and-china-southeast-asia-needs-to-choose-on-principles-experts-say_2725091.html

A panel discussion on “U.S.-China Rivalry: Southeast Asia’s Tough Choice” at Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 19, 2018 (Wu Wei/NTD)

A panel discussion on “U.S.-China Rivalry: Southeast Asia’s Tough Choice” at Hudson Institute in Washington on Nov. 19, 2018 (Wu Wei/NTD)

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence (R) and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang leave the stage after posing for a group photo before the start of the 13th East Asia summit plenary session on the sidelines of the 33rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Singapore on Nov. 15, 2018. (ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence (R) and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang leave the stage after posing for a group photo before the start of the 13th East Asia summit plenary session on the sidelines of the 33rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Singapore on Nov. 15, 2018. (ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

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The Relativity of Cleanness and Dirtiness & How Do I Become “Untouchable”? 髒與淨的相對論 & 我是如何做到百毒不侵的?

The other day I shared a story about my 12 year old daughter stopped me from smashing roaches by saying that “they’ve been our neighbors no matter what”.

前些天我分享了一個小故事,名爲「好歹鄰居一場」,裏面談到我12歲的女兒阻止我打蟑螂,理由是大家「好歹鄰居一場」。

A friend left a comment and said that she could hardly regard roaches as “neighbors”, as she felt they were dirty.

一個朋友看後留言說:「但是我還是會覺得這個鄰居有點髒呀。」我當時就答應,要寫篇文章來論一論這個「髒」的問題。所以今天算是兌現諾言。

Well, in the real world, it is perfectly reasonable to think that roaches are dirty and to even try to get rid of them one way or the other.

當然,在現實的世界裏,覺得蟑螂髒,並想辦法除掉它,都再正常不過了。

However, as someone whose thoughts often drift out of this world, I do have some “alternative” insights and even real-world experiences to share.

不過呢,對於我這個思想常常跑到現實世界之外的「書呆子」,對於髒與淨的相對論,忍不住做了一點「哲學思考」。

First of all, if we put a roach in front of a newborn baby, will the baby feel anything about this roach? Probably not. He or she might just curiously stare at it without any fixed notions.

首先呢,如果我們把一個蟑螂放到新生嬰兒面前,他(她)會做何反應?他(她)可能什麼想法都沒有,而只會好奇地盯著蟑螂看。

However, when we grow older and start to “learn” things, we begin to form various notions. As time goes by, when we gain more and more “knowledge”, or become more and more experienced in this world, we accumulate so many notions that gradually our true nature and wisdom are buried by those postnatally acquired notions. When our notions become too strong, we might become totally controlled by them, and live for our notions instead of for ourselves.

But most of the time, we may not know this.

也就是說,從我們開始「學習」並認識這個世界開始,我們就在慢慢的形成各種觀念。觀念越積越多,慢慢地就埋沒了我們的本性和先天的智慧。到最後,觀念變得過分強盛時,許多人事實上是被後天觀念支配著在活,而真正的自己,可能並沒有活。只是不仔細去想的話,人們可能意識不到這點,而會把觀念當作自己。

So, when we think roaches are dirty, we certain would feel it is difficult to regard them as our “neighbors”. However, if we can change our notion and regard them as our “neighbors” first, we may no long feel that they are dirty. That’s why I said that my daughter’s one sentence had changed my perspectives forever.

所以呢,當你覺得蟑螂髒的時候,你當然很難把它當「鄰居」;可反過來,如果你能轉變觀念,先把它看作「鄰居」,也許就不會覺得它髒了。這就是爲什麼我會說,我女兒的一句話,永遠地改變了我的看法。

Secondly, “dirtiness” and “cleanness” are actually relative concepts. Many different ethnicities share a same legend: God (It was a Goddess, Nüwa, for Chinese people) created man from clay. So in the eyes of God, man lives in a world of “clay”. We can also understand it as the space between the stars and the molecules. For lives at higher realms, for example, for those who live at more microscopic, and therefore “cleaner” worlds, everything and everywhere in this human world is dirty. If this really is the case, what is the point for us to compare who is a little bit “cleaner”?

其實,髒與淨,是個相對的概念。世界上許多民族都流傳著上帝用泥土造人的故事(中國人是講女媧用泥土造人)。那麼在上帝眼裏,人就生活在泥土的世界裏,我們也可將之理解爲介於星球與分子之間的這層空間。對於生活在更高境界、更微觀、因而也就更「乾淨」的世界裏的生命來說,人的空間當中,一切都是髒的,哪兒哪兒都是髒的。

如果真是這樣,我們在這個泥土組成的骯髒世界中,再去比誰比誰乾淨一點還有什麼意義呢,對吧?真嫌髒的話,其實應該想辦法離開這裏。這是另一個大話題了,這裏先不談。

Thirdly, sometimes we are afraid of or dislike dirty things because we think that they will cause illnesses. If we are not afraid of getting ill, we may stop fearing the dirtiness.

And here is my true story.

第三層意思呢,就是說,我們人怕髒,有時其實不是怕髒的本身,而是覺得髒東西會讓我們生病。如果我們不怕生病,也許就不怕髒了。

以下就是我的真實經歷和故事(赤裸裸的現實,不再是「不著邊際」的「哲學思考」而已)。

I began to practice Falun Gong in 1997 in Beijing; and recovered from all my diseases very soon. More importantly, I gained a very deep understanding of the root cause of people’s illnesses and bad fortunes, as well as how to get rid of them. And a “side effect” of this was, that I no longer feared dirtiness.

我是1997年在北京開始修煉法輪功的,很快就百病全消。更重要的是,我懂得了人爲什麼生病、爲什麼會在生活中遭遇不幸的深層原因,以及怎樣擺脫這些的方法。而這一切的「副產品」就是,我不再怕髒了。

For example, Beijing’s tap water was not drinkable, and bottled water or water dispensers were still no where to be seen in 1997. So people usually stored boiled water with thermoses.

比如,北京的自來水是不能直接喝的,那時候人們也還沒開始喝瓶裝水,也沒有什麼飲水機。所以大家都是燒開了水再裝在暖水壺裏。

For me, boiled water was too hot to drink in summer; and it took too long to have it cool down naturally. So it was always a problem for me to get cool and drinkable water in summer.

對我來說,夏天喝開水太熱,放涼再喝又太慢,所以怎樣弄到夠涼的開水喝一直是個問題。

After I took up Falun Gong, I started to think: Since no illness can touch me now, why should I bother whether there are bacteria in the tap water? They cannot do me any harm any way.

修煉法輪功後,我開始想:既然現在根本不會生病,我爲什麼還要怕細菌?就喝自來水又能如何?

Therefore, from 1997, I started drinking tap water in summer; and felt quite good. I never encountered any problems because of this.

於是,從1997年夏天開始,我就直接喝自來水了(老人們叫它「生水」,意即沒被燒開過的水),感覺很好,終於不用等熱水變涼了。我也從來沒因此遇到任何問題。

In 2001, I ended up being incarcerated in Beijing Female Forced Labor Camp due the Chinese Communist Party’s overwhelming persecution of Falun Gong. Apart from all the other brutal torture, eating itself was also a problem: The food was too hot, too salty, and the meal time was too short. Therefore, for a very long period of time, eating was itself a torture.

2001年,在中共對法輪功的瘋狂迫害中,我也被送到北京女子勞教所。在勞教所,除了其他種種非人酷刑之外,吃飯本身也是一種折磨,菜總是又燙又鹹,吃飯時間又短到根本不容你有時間去等菜涼下來再吃。

One day when I was forced to remove the trash as a punishment for not giving up Falun Gong, I spotted a small used mineral water bottle buried in the stinky rubbish. I quickly picked it up and put it inside my pocket.

有一天,我因拒絕接受「轉化」,被罰去運垃圾。在臭氣熏天的小山般的垃圾堆中,我發現了一個小礦泉水瓶子,趕緊如獲至寶的撿起來,偷偷塞到衣兜裏。

In the labor camp, everything was strictly regulated, including when and how many times one was allowed to use the restroom. When it was the restroom time, all the inmates from the same cell went together, with everybody watching everybody else’s whole process of “doing the business”, as there was no closed space inside the restroom so that nobody had the chance to commit suicide.

在勞教所,一切都是嚴密管控的,包括上廁所的次數和時間。一天只能在規定的、有限的時間內上廁所,而且大家得排著隊一起去,名曰「放茅」,「放茅」完全是在眾目睽睽之下完成的,沒有任何隱私而言。

So, after we finished using the restroom (together with everybody else), I always filled my small bottle with tap water, and put it back into my pocket.

所以每天集體「放茅」後,我便在洗手时用撿來的小礦泉水瓶裝一瓶自來水,放到衣兜裏存著。

When the meal time came, and food was provided, I quickly took out the bottle and poured all the water into my bowl, stirred and mixed everything with my spoon, and then ate with all my might. In this way the food was immediately cooled down; and much less salty.

到了吃飯時間,飯菜發到碗裏、吃飯口令下達後,我會飛快地將一整瓶水倒入碗中,再飛快的用勺子攪拌,這樣馬上能讓飯菜涼下來,且能讓菜不再鹹得難以下嚥。

One day a police officer saw what I was doing, and exclaimed in alarm, “My Goodness! How dare you! Won’t you suffer from diarrheas by eating like this?”

有一天,一個警察無意間看見我的動作,驚呼道:「天哪,曾錚!你這麼吃!不拉肚子啊?」

I smiled back at her and calmly said, “No, I won’t.”

我對她笑笑,平靜地說:「不會。」

Surely enough, had I not practiced Falun Gong, had I not gained a better understanding of the root cause of illnesses, I would never have dared to eat that way. I could have ended up in trouble for many, many times.

當然,如果我沒修煉過法輪功,沒從法輪功的著作中獲得對疾病產生根源的深層理解,我是絕對不敢那樣吃的,因爲不知道會拉多少次肚子了。

Well, in conclusion, the practice of Falun Gong has really set me free. I am not only free from all diseases; but also free from many notions, including the notion of one will get sick if exposed to dirty things. Therefore, most of the time, I enjoy a fearless and very peaceful mind, knowing that I am “untouchable” to dirtiness and illnesses in this “dirty” world.

所以結論是,修煉法輪功,真的讓我獲得了大自在。我不僅不再生病,也不再固守包括吃了髒東西會生病等許許多多在人中形成的觀念。很多時候,我內心平和幸福,深深感恩自己在「十惡毒世」中,卻能做到「百毒不侵」。

And another important point to make is that I humbly gained all my above understandings and insights from the teachings of Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa). All the Falun Gong books, exercise instruction videos and musics can be freely downloaded from: http://falundafa.org

最後必須指出的是,以上我所有的觀點和理解,都直接或間接來源於法輪功創始人李洪志先生的著作,而不是我自己平白無故想出來的(我還沒那麼聰明)。法輪功所有書籍、李洪志大師教功錄像和功法音樂都可從以下網站免費下載:http://falundafa.org

4/3/2017

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How Does One Sentence of My Daughter Chang My Perspective Forever 「好歹鄰居一場」

Once upon a time, there appeared a lot of cockroaches in our kitchen. My first reaction was trying to find something to smash them. My daughter stopped me and said, “Don’t! They’ve been our neighbors no matter what!” 

從前,有一天,我家廚房裏來了好多蟑螂。我的第一反應是找個東西來打,女兒阻止我道:「別呀,好歹鄰居一場!」

I laughed out loudly and was amazed by her “neighbor” perspective of the cockroaches. Since then I’ve never hated them again. And that is also the reason why I didn’t feel upset when I saw the ants in my kitchen today. I regarded them as a happy sign to announce to me: spring is here after a long, long winter. 

我笑得肚子都痛了。從此以後再看見蟑螂之類的蟲子時,也不再有討厭的感覺,而真的就當它們是「鄰居」。這就是爲什麼今天在廚房裏看到已經絕跡了一冬的螞蟻時,我也沒有難過,而是高興的想:我的「鄰居」在向我報告春的消息!

3/27/2017

发表在 zengzheng | How Does One Sentence of My Daughter Chang My Perspective Forever 「好歹鄰居一場」已关闭评论

神韻加州聖地亞哥爆滿 觀眾盛讚「史詩般巨作」

【新唐人2016年01月28日訊】1月27日,美國神韻紐約藝術團在加州聖地亞哥的演出再次爆滿,演出結束後,所有觀眾起立長時間熱烈鼓掌,向神韻藝術家們致以深切敬意。他們也眼含熱淚,訴說著內心的喜悅和深深感激。

音樂製作人Arion Jay Goodwin:「史詩!神韻是史詩!」

畫家Helen Cons:「我無法表達內心的感動,我愛中國人,我愛中華文化,我無比幸福,無比感激,神韻能呈現在舞臺,讓這麼多需要聽到看到的人能夠欣賞。」

前美國總統攝影師Joe Heard:「世上有七大奇蹟,我到過其中幾個。沒看過神韻的人,他們錯過了世上第八大奇蹟。」

畫家Helen Cons:「神韻所傳達的信息如此美麗,如此深邃,非常需要在全世界廣傳,用如此美麗,如此專業的方式傳達是最好的,我一直都在流淚,同時又在歡笑,享受著一年來最美麗、最優雅動人,最快樂的時光。」

古典樂作曲家Paul Warner:「噢,驚喜萬分,驚喜萬分,中西樂器合璧令人驚艷,聞所未聞。」

畫家Helen Cons:「我們被中國人的美好、智慧和深邃精神內涵深深震撼。」

教師Margo Alora :「我的心被幸福充溢。」

畫家Helen Cons:「有四個神韻藝術團在全球演出,我真是太高興了。」

音樂製作人 Arion Jay Goodwin:「我將永生銘記。」

畫家Helen Cons:「世界需要神韻。」

音樂製作人 Arion Jay Goodwin:「快來看神韻,神韻將改變你的生命。」

畫家Helen Cons:「如果有更多的藝術家、舞蹈家,所有人,知識份子,演說家能來此稱賞神韻,他們能從中華文化中汲取營養,極大地豐富自己。」

在神韻人氣越來越高的聖地亞哥,神韻是劃時代的創舉,是世界第八奇蹟。

新唐人記者曾錚、張文剛聖地亞哥報導

轉載自:http://www.ntdtv.com/xtr/b5/2016/01/28/articledownload1249740.html

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Chapter Fifteen: The Communist Roots of Terrorism

The specter of communism did not disappear with the disintegration of the Communist Party in Eastern Europe

BY EDITORIAL TEAM OF “THE NINE COMMENTARIES ON THE COMMUNIST PARTY”

November 17, 2018 Updated: November 18, 2018

The Epoch Times is serializing a translation from the Chinese of a new book, How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World, by the editorial team of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. State Terrorism Under Communist Regimes

2. How Communist Regimes Exported Terror

3. The Communist Origins of Islamic Extremism
a. Sayyid Qutb: The Marx of Islamic Extremism
b. The Leninist Vanguard of Jihad
c. The Communist Core of Islamic Extremism
d. Qutb and the Rise of Terrorism
e. How Communism Has Victimized Ordinary Muslims

4. The Chinese Communist Party’s Support of Terrorism
a. The CCP’s Support of Yasser Arafat’s Terrorist Activities
b. The CCP’s Ties to Al-Qaeda

5. The Hidden Alliance Between Terrorism and the Western Radical Left

Conclusion

References

Introduction

On the morning of September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked passenger airliners and flew them into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York, as well as the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people. It was the first time since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that the United States suffered a blow of this scale on its own soil. The 9/11 attacks had worldwide impact. The United States launched a global War on Terror, overthrowing the Islamic regime in Afghanistan and the Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

The public has since become familiar with the terrorist movement and its representatives, such as Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Few, however, are aware of the close relationship between terrorism and communism.

The terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” first appeared in 1795 as a reference to the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, [1] which laid the foundations for the communist movement (see Chapter Two of this book). 

In the modern world, terrorism comes primarily in three forms: state terrorism under communist regimes, terrorist activity carried out abroad by the agents of communist regimes with the aim of spreading violent revolution, and Islamic extremism, which owes much of its ideology and methods to communism.

1. State Terrorism Under Communist Regimes

The communist century is a century of lies, violence, and killing. Terrorism is an important tool for communists to spread their ideology around the world. The rise of a communist regime, in turn, results without exception in the mobilization of the state machine to impose terrifying brutality. This government-sponsored repression is state terrorism.

Vladimir Lenin relied on terrorism to take power in Russia. In 1918, Felix Dzerzhinsky, whom Lenin regarded as a revolutionary hero for his role as director of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka), said plainly,“We stand for organized terror — this should be frankly admitted.” [2]

The Marxist Karl Kautsky, who in 1919 published Terrorism and Communism, gave a comprehensive overview of what would come to pass under the proletarian dictatorship that Lenin sought to establish. Examining the violence of the French Revolution, Kautsky concluded that Lenin’s Bolsheviks had inherited the terrorist character of the Jacobins and would repeat it. [3]

Yuri N. Afanasyev, a Russian historian, blamed Lenin for founding a policy of state terror, violence, and lawlessness: ”Violence is actually our entire history,” Afanasyev said. [4] 

Following the creation of the Soviet Union, the communist regimes of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Erich Honecker, Nicolae Ceaușescu, Kim Il Sung, and other despots all depended on killing to maintain their power. The violence and barbarism of their state terror has been addressed in previous chapters. 

Violence and murder comprise but one component of communism’s terrorist agenda. Even more destructive is how communism uses the combined powers of political and religious fervor to indoctrinate people with communist party culture, planting the seeds of deceit, hatred, and violence to be passed from generation to generation.

2. How Communist Regimes Exported Terror

While imposing state terrorism on their own people, communist regimes support terrorist organizations abroad for the purpose of fomenting revolution or destabilizing rival states.

Anti-communist expert Brian Crozier, founder and director of the Institute for the Study of Conflict, spent decades studying the relationship between communism and terrorism, and published many books and papers detailing his findings. He served as an aide to anti-communist leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in analyzing the use of terror by the communist bloc. [5]

Stanislav Lunev, a former officer in the Soviet military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) who defected to the West, accused the GRU of being one of the primary mentors of terrorists around the world. [6]

Many extremist groups that staged anti-U.S. attacks — among them the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Japanese Red Army commandos, Italy’s Red Brigades, Germany’s Red Army Faction, Turkish arms smugglers, and South American guerrillas — had the support of the Soviet KGB. In 1975, Richard Welch, director of the CIA in Athens, was assassinated by Greek Marxists. [7] 

In 1979, top NATO commander General Alexander Haig was involved in an attack that wounded three of his bodyguards when a landmine exploded under their vehicle, which was following the general’s vehicle. In September 1981, General Frederick J. Kroesen, commander of the NATO Central Army Group, was injured in Heidelberg, West Germany, when members of the Red Army Faction fired an anti-tank rocket at his armored car. 

The most influential form of modern terrorism, however, was the radical Islam nurtured by the Soviet bloc as a means of destabilizing the Muslim world. 

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Middle East belonged to the Western colonial sphere. As peoples in the region gained independence, the Soviet Union took the opportunity to exert influence. Contradictions between Muslim denominations, Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Cold War, oil politics, and the clash of civilizations between the Western and Islamic cultural spheres have led to the complex and chaotic situation that the Middle East finds itself in today. 

It was in this background that the Soviet Union carried out its penetration of the Muslim sphere. This may seem contradictory at first glance. Muslims follow an Abrahamic faith and believe in Allah, but Marxism-Leninism is atheist and aims for the elimination of religion. How could they be reconciled?

The communist movement resembles a plague that spreads through all available vectors. Communism made its first, albeit failed, advances on the Muslim world shortly after the October Revolution. 

In June 1920, the Bolsheviks aided in the establishment of a Soviet regime in the Iranian province of Gilan, the Persian Socialist Soviet Republic or the Soviet Republic of Gilan. The regime carried out a series of radical reforms, including policies to expropriate landlords of their wealth, that were accompanied by a program of anti-religious propaganda. These measures proved exceedingly unpopular, and the regime was ousted by the following September.  

Later, the concept of “Islamic socialism” began to take hold. Representatives include Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Movement (PLO), and Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. The PLO was supported by the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and engaged in widespread terrorist activities.  

Algeria, South Yemen, and Afghanistan were under communist rule for varying lengths of time during the Cold War. In 1979, the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Afghanistan and occupied the country for ten years in an attempt to prop up the last remaining communist regime in the Muslim world.

Promoting communism in an area with deeply held religious beliefs is a steep challenge. The Soviet Union’s efforts in directly exporting socialist revolution to the Muslim world proved very unsuccessful. However, while communism itself failed to establish control over the region, it did much to influence the creation and development of contemporary Islamic extremism. 

Ion Mihai Pacepa, former three-star general in communist Romania and advisor to President Nicolae Ceauşescu, acting chief of his country’s foreign intelligence service and a state secretary of Romania’s Ministry of Interior, became the highest-ranking Eastern Bloc defector when he escaped to the United States in July 1978. 

In his article “Russian Footprints,” Pacepa revealed a large amount of insider knowledge about communist support for terrorism in the Middle East. [8] He quoted Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence, as saying, “In today’s world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon.”

Eighty-two aircraft hijackings were carried out in 1969 alone. Many of them were the work of the PLO with support from the Soviets and Chinese communists. Pacepa recalled that when he visited Sakharovsky’s office, he noticed a sea of small red flags dotting a world map. Each flag represented a hijacked plane.

Sakharovsky boasted to Pacepa that the tactic of aircraft hijacking was his own invention. Between 1968 and 1978, the Romanian security directorate made weekly aircraft deliveries of military supplies to Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon. Archives from the dissolution of East Germany show that that in 1983, the East German Foreign Intelligence Agency sent $1,877,600 worth of ammunition for Kalashnikov assault rifles to Lebanese terrorist organizations. Czechoslovakia provided Islamic terrorists with 1,000 tons of Semtex-H, an odorless plastic explosive. 

In the early 1970s, Yuri Andropov, then-KGB head and later general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, began a covert, meticulously planned propaganda campaign to sow the seeds of anti-Semitic and anti-American hate throughout the Arab and Islamic world. For his work, Andropov became known as the “father of an era of disinformation.” [9]

3. The Communist Origins of Islamic Extremism

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, heralded a major shift in world affairs. Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda took front-page news as the threat of Islamic extremism gained prominence.  

For the vast majority of people around the world, 9/11 came as a shock and a tragedy. But in China, under the CCP’s censorship, reactions were quite different. From internet forums and chat rooms to university cafeterias, large numbers of people rooted for the terrorists, with comments such as “good job!” and “We strongly support the acts of justice against the United States.” According to a survey of 91,701 people on NetEase, a major Chinese website, only 17.8 percent of respondents expressed strong opposition to the terrorist attacks, while a majority of people chose “opposition to the United States” or “the best is yet to come” in regard to the catastrophe. [10]

The Chinese who cheered the terrorist attacks had never met bin Laden and his ilk, but the roots of their toxic thinking were the same. The Chinese have been poisoned by communist propaganda and Communist Party culture since childhood. Logically, however, one would wonder what connection this could possibly have with bin Laden, who had fought against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. 

The ideological source of bin Laden’s Islamic extremism can be traced back to Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian pioneer of Islamic terrorism, a man who could be described as the Marx of Islamic jihad [11] and who is often referred to as the “godfather of modern jihad.” [12]

a. Sayyid Qutb: The Marx of Islamic Extremism

William McCants, counter-terrorism expert and former researcher at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, has observed that Islamic extremists often refer to Qutb’s teachings when explaining their motivations, and that many of them regard themselves as his successors. [13] Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda following the death of bin Laden, regarded Qutb’s thought as being the spark to ignite the fire of jihadi extremism.

In 2016, Middle East expert Hassan Hassan published a report with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace called The Sectarianism of the Islamic State: Ideological Roots and Political Context. Toward the end of the report, Hassan quoted a popular summary of the Islamic State’s essential doctrine: “The Islamic State was drafted by Sayyid Qutb, taught by Abdullah Azzam, globalized by Osama bin Laden, transferred to reality by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and implemented by al-Baghdadis: Abu Omar and Abu Bakr.” [14]

Bin Laden and later the Islamic State (ISIS) adopted and expanded on the ideology of Qutb. In a nutshell, Qutbism is the pursuit of violence to destroy the rotten old society, or “jahiliya,” calling upon jihadis to lay down their lives for an ideology that will supposedly usher in human liberation. [15]

This bombastic style calls to mind the writings of Marx and Lenin, and with good reason: Qutb was a member of the Communist Party in his youth, and his ideas were steeped in the rhetoric of Marxism-Leninism. Robert R. Reilly, a senior fellow at the U.S. Foreign Policy Committee, has said that Qutb was actually a Communist International liaison for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Communist Party of Egypt. [16]

Born in 1906, Qutb studied socialism and literature in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1940, he had already studied abroad in the United States for two years, and joined the Muslim Brotherhood after his return to Egypt. [17] Qutb had always had contact with army lieutenant Gamal Abdel Nasser, leader of the socialist-leaning Free Officer Movement. 

In 1952, Nasser launched a military coup overthrowing the Muhammad Ali dynasty, a pro-Western monarchy. It is said that this socialist-revolution coup was planned by Qutb and the Brotherhood together with Nasser. However, while Qutb hoped Nasser would establish an Islamic regime, Nasser instead took the path of secularization, and in 1954 began suppressing the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Qutb and the Brotherhood prepared to assassinate Nasser. The plot failed, and Qutb was accused of attempted murder and imprisoned. During his three years in prison, Qutb suffered severe torture. Later, conditions became more lax, and he was allowed to write. He wrote his two most important works while in prison — In the Shade of the Qur’an and Milestones. These two books, covering his views on the Qur’an, Islamic history, Egypt, and Western society, laid out in full his advocacy of anti-secular, anti-Western extremism. 

Qutb was once briefly released from prison. He did not take the opportunity to leave Egypt and was jailed again. In 1966, Qutb was convicted of his involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate President Nasser and was executed by hanging. 

Qutb’s subversive thinking bestowed the Islamic concept of jihad with a new interpretation. Upon mention of jihad, many immediately think of “holy war.” In Arabic, jihad simply means to struggle or to fight. To mainstream Muslims, it can be taken to mean internal conflict (self-perfection) or defensive jihad. [18] Qutb extended this definition to include proactive and unbridled use of violence in the holy war of jihad and laid out its theoretical foundations. [19] Qutb took pride in walking up to the gallows and becoming a religious martyr. 

Qutb’s philosophy held that any social system that abided by secular laws or ethics was an anti-Islamic “old society” — jahiliya (ignorance of religious truth, originally referring to society before the spread of Islam). Even a society that claimed itself Muslim could still be jahiliya. Qutb considered the Egyptian social system in which he lived to be one in which jahiliya was dominant, and therefore it had to be overthrown. [20]

According to Qutb, jahiliya was the greatest obstruction for both Muslims and non-Muslims,  preventing them from fulfillment of Islamic values and law. He claimed that the old society had been forced on people and in the process, robbed them of their freedom. These enslaved people — analogous to the working class in Marxism —  had the right to wage jihad to overthrow the oppression of jahiliya. Qutb advocated jihad as the means of liberation for all mankind, Muslim as well as non-Muslim. [21] When Qutb’s books became public, many Islamic leaders thought Qutb had gone too far and regarded his ideas as heresy. [22]

Qutb further borrowed the Marxist concept of “false consciousness,” which refers to the ordinary masses’ acceptance of the ruler’s ideals and culture. This consciousness thus prevents them from perceiving their own oppression or overthrowing capitalism in favor of socialism. For Qutb, those living under jahiliya don’t realize they are slaves, [23] which is why they do not engage in jihad to emancipate themselves.

“What is to be done?” as Lenin put it in his pamphlet by that name. Qutb had the same question, so he looked to Lenin for a solution.

b. The Leninist Vanguard of Jihad

Qutb’s writings are replete with vocabulary familiar to students of Marxism-Leninism, such as “vanguard,” “state,” “revolution,” and the like. The situation and challenges Lenin faced at the time of writing his pamphlet What Is to Be Done? mirrors the circumstances faced by Qutb as he formulated his own radical ideology. Lenin placed all hope for a successful revolution on a proletarian vanguard party. Qutb copied this theory and replaced the Leninist political party with Islamic extremist organizations.  

Lenin puts heavy emphasis on the importance of organization and the vanguard. He identifies a clear distinction between spontaneity and consciousness, and coined the idea of party-building. According to Lenin, with only spontaneous action, workers can only make superficial demands, such as pay raises and eight-hour work days, but they lack the consciousness needed to liberate mankind. 

Lenin believes that external vanguards (usually bourgeois intellectuals, who have the privilege of education) are required to incite and indoctrinate the workers, so that they realize that revolution is their only way out, and reach the understanding that only by liberating the entire mankind can themselves be liberated. In order to fully utilize the vanguard, a tightly knit political party is needed to totally arrange their activities and provide them with opportunities for underground work as professional revolutionaries. This political party, the proletarian political party, is the proletariat vanguard. [24]

Glenn E. Robinson, associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and Research Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of California–Berkeley, said of radical Islam: “Although for obvious reasons jihadi ideologues do not cite Lenin as an inspiration, their concepts and logic, especially Sayyid Qutb’s, betray this influence. Having been educated in Egypt in the 1940s, Qutb would certainly have been exposed to Lenin’s writings. Two key concepts from Qutb come straight from Lenin: jama’a (vanguard) and manhaj (program).”[25]

Drawing from the essence of Leninism, Qutb advocated the organization of a Muslim version of the Leninist vanguard party. 

“Qutb made precisely the same argument for the Muslim world,” Robinson wrote. “The vast majority of Muslims were too caught up in and corrupted by the system of unjust and anti-Islamic rule to know how and when to take up arms against the state. A dedicated vanguard of jihadi cadres was needed to organize direct action against the state.”[26] Also, “Lenin’s insistence on the centrality of the vanguard’s having a detailed and coherent program for undertaking and then consolidating the revolution was likewise echoed, with an Islamic tone, in Qutb’s writings.”[27]

To Qutb, this vanguard, which consists of what he calls “true Muslims” — or extremists — has the revolutionary mission of liberating all Muslims and the whole of human civilization. The vanguard must strike hard on false Muslims, follow Islamic ideology as determined by Qutb’s interpretation, establish a new nation based on Islamism, and use violence to impose Islam on the rest of the world. 

In addition to the vanguard, Qutb’s theory also includes rhetoric advocating “social equality,” elimination of classes, anti-government activity, and the liberation of mankind.[28] All these points echo the stated aims of communism. 

After Qutb’s death, his brother Muhammad Qutb continued to publish his books. The book Ma’arakat ul-Islam war-Ra’samaaliyyah, published in 1993, again exposes Qutb’s communist inspiration. Qutb blatantly states that Islam is a “unique, constructive and positivist aqidah, which has been moulded and shaped from Christianity and Communism together, [with a] blending in the most perfect of ways and which comprises all of their (i.e. Christianity’s and Communism’s) objectives and adds in addition to them harmony, balance and justice.”[29]

c. The Communist Core of Islamic Extremism

Class struggle is another Marxist idea central to Islamic extremism. Karl Marx spent his whole life trying to incite conflicts between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in order to amplify these conflicts to the point of no return and finally “solve” the conflict through revolution. The Islamic extremists operate in much the same way. 

Did destroying the World Trade Center in Manhattan do anything to help realize the united Muslim world that Qutb wanted? Absolutely not. It was merely a means of exacerbating the conflict between the Western and Muslim worlds. In the West, the terrorist attacks incited hatred of Muslims, and vice versa in the Muslim countries. [30] Their method is the same as the conflicts between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie promoted by Marx and Lenin in order to create the conditions needed for launching revolution.

It is no exaggeration to say that Qutb’s theories bear greater resemblance to communism than to  traditional Islam. While the Islamic extremists profess a religious opposition to communism, in fact, they absorbed the pure essentials of communist revolutionary doctrine. As one scholar has noted, “The arguments made here are that the real enemy confronting the free world remains Communism and that radical Islam is nothing more than Communism cloaked in the traditional garments of Islam.” [31]

It is not only in the Muslim world where violent extremism has been introduced. The Western counterculture movement spread leftist ideology around the world, and with it Lenin’s terrorist teachings. Finnish political historian Antero Leitzinger believes that modern terrorism was born between the years of 1966 and 1967, developing at the same time as the international communist movement. According to Leitzinger, this is no coincidence. In the 1960s, as radical student movements ran amok in the West, many foreign-exchange students from the Muslim world became connected to leftist thought and brought leftist concepts such as violent revolution back home with them. [32]

In 1974, Abdallah Schleifer, professor in media research at the American University in Cairo, met Ayman al-Zawahiri, who later became second in command of Al-Qaeda. Al-Zawahiri, who was studying medicine at Cairo University at the time, boasted that Islamic extremist groups recruited the most members from elite institutions, such as medical and engineering schools. Schleifer replied that he was not surprised: During the 1960s, these schools had the highest concentrations of young Marxists. He noted that Islamism was simply a new trend that developed in the student revolts of the 1960s. 

Schleifer recalled: “I said, ‘Listen, Ayman, I’m an ex-Marxist. When you talk, I feel like I’m back in the Party. I don’t feel as if I’m with a traditional Muslim.’” [33]

It is curious that many associate Islamic extremism with fascism (Islamofascism), and for various reasons, fail to mention its communist origins. Fascism is a form of nationalism and has no particular religious background. When considering Islamic extremism in terms of its overall approach and doctrine, it becomes apparent that it shares more in common with communism.

d. Qutb and the Rise of Terrorism

Qutb’s writings influenced many young Arabs, including the Palestinian scholar and later one of the founders of Al-Qaeda, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. [34] The 9/11 Commission Report outlined Qutb’s influence on bin Laden’s worldview, and also referred to Azzam directly as “a disciple of Qutb.” [35]

Muhammad Qutb, Sayyid Qutb’s younger brother, was also one of the primary transmitters of Qutb’s views. Muhammad Qutb later went to Saudi Arabia and became a professor who conducted research on Islam, and at the same time, was also responsible for editing, publishing, and promoting his late brother’s theories.

Bin Laden read Qutb’s books when he was a student, and he was familiar with Muhammad Qutb, regularly attending the latter’s weekly public lectures. The former CIA official who oversaw the group in charge of bin Laden, Michael Scheuer, also senior researcher at The Jamestown Foundation, described Muhammad Qutb as bin Laden’s mentor. [36]

The aforementioned Al-Qaeda second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is also a fanatical disciple of Sayyib Qutb. [37] When he was a youth, Zawahiri repeatedly heard from his uncle about Qutb’s character and how great he was to suffer in prison. [38] After Qutb’s death, Zawahiri wrote in his memoirs: “The Nasserite regime thought that the Islamic movement received a deadly blow with the execution of Sayyid Qutb and his comrades, but the apparent surface calm concealed an immediate interaction with Sayyid Qutb’s ideas and the formation of the nucleus of the modern Islamic jihad movement in Egypt.” [39] 

In the year that Qutb was hanged, Zawahiri, then 15, helped form an underground militant cell determined to “put Qutb’s vision into action.” [40] After that, Zawahiri joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and later became bin Laden’s mentor and an important member of Al-Qaeda. After bin Laden was killed, Zawahiri became the leader of Al-Qaeda.

Glenn E. Robinson, the Middle East expert quoted above, said that in the Sunni Muslim world, Qutb is the most important thinker who emphasized violent jihad. [41] Virtually all the concepts and innovations of the Sunni jihad groups can be found in Qutb’s books. [42] Although the various jihadi groups may differ in form, they all share one point in common, namely, the use of violence under the banner of Islam to realize their political aims. [43]

The 1981 assassination of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat by the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and the Egyptian terrorist group al-Gamma al-Islamiyah’s attacks against government officials, secular intellectuals, Egyptian Christians, and tourists in the 1990s are all steps in the campaign to bring about Qutb’s vision. [44]

The radical jihadi groups that pursue Qutb’s ideology are categorized as Salafi jihadi terrorists. Robert Manne, professor of politics at La Trobe University, in Melbourne, Australia, called Qutb the “father of Salafi jihadism” and the “forerunner of the Islamic State.” [45] In his book The Mind of the Islamic State: ISIS and the Ideology of the Caliphate, he wrote: “Fifty years after Sayyid Qutb’s execution, this is what the tradition of Salafi jihadism, the mind of the Islamic State, has become. There are no more milestones to pass. We have finally reached the gates of hell.” [46]

The report A Persistent Threat: The Evolution of al Qa’ida and Other Salafi Jihadists by the Rand Corporation in America outlined Qutb’s influence on Salafi jihadis, and at the same time listed more than 40 Salafi jihadi groups. They are active across almost all continents. [47]

Looking at the various extremist Islamic organizations in existence, although they lack a united vision and are given to ideological infighting, there is one trait common to the overwhelming majority of them: Qutb’s aggressive form of  jihad. They have essentially inherited Qutb’s work, which is communist revolution in a different form.

e. How Communism Has Victimized Ordinary Muslims

The 2011 Report on Terrorism published by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center states that “in cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82 and 97 percent of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years.” [48] 

Country Reports on Terrorism 2016 lists a total of 11,072 terrorist attacks that caused 25,621 total deaths for that year alone. In addition, terrorist attacks were overwhelmingly likely to take place in Muslim-majority countries and areas: “Although terrorist attacks took place in 104 countries in 2016, they were heavily concentrated geographically. Fifty-five percent of all attacks took place in five countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines), and 75 percent of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place in five countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria, and Pakistan).” [49] 

By contrast, terrorist attacks resulted in far fewer deaths in Western countries. A study conducted by the Cato Institute in September 2016, Terrorism and Immigration: A Risk Analysis, stated that foreign-born terrorists who entered the country, either as immigrants or tourists, were responsible for 3,024 of the 3,432 murders caused by terrorists on U.S. soil from 1975 through the end of 2015. This number includes the 2,983 people killed in the 9/11 attacks. [50] An average of seventy-four Americans are killed in terrorist attacks annually.

Despite the fact that extremist groups operate in the name of Islam, their biggest victim is Muslim society. This is because, whatever the superficial excuses, the true motivation of terrorism is a desire for killing and destruction.

4. The Chinese Communist Party’s Support of Terrorism

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long supported terrorist activities abroad, including those of Palestinian terrorist leader Yasser Arafat. Helping to pioneer the tactic of hijacking commercial airlines, Arafat targeted U.S. forces and became an inspiration for Osama bin Laden.

a. The CCP’s Support of Yasser Arafat’s Terrorist Activities

Arafat started the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (FATAH) in 1959 and established the state of Palestine in November 1988. Until his death in 2004, he was the leading figure of various Palestinian militant organizations. Arafat was likely the CCP’s favorite Middle Easterner. He visited China fourteen times and met nearly every Chinese communist leader, including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin. 

In 1964, Arafat established al-‘Asifah (“The Storm”), FATAH’s military wing, after which he immediately went to Beijing to meet with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. Zhou reminded him to pay attention to his strategy and not to use counterproductive slogans such as those calling for the complete destruction of Israel. [51]

Besides providing weapons and financial support, Beijing often guided Palestine on how to wage conflict with the United States and Israel while expanding its influence on the international scene. The CCP also invited Palestinians to receive training in China. In January 1965, Arafat declared war on Israel in north Palestine using his guerrilla organizations. In May 1965, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) set up an office in Beijing. In an unprecedented move, China afforded the PLO office diplomatic treatment and openly supported the PLO in various international events. 

In November 1988, the nineteenth session of the Palestinian National Council announced the independence of the Palestinian state. Beijing immediately acknowledged it and established diplomatic relations on Nov. 20.

Arafat and the then-CCP general secretary Jiang Zemin visited each other in 2000 and 2001, a time in which bloody conflicts broke out on a large scale between Palestine and Israel. Israel repeatedly condemned Arafat for his role in the violence. With the CCP’s support, Arafat was able to contend with the United States and Israel while further damaging the stability of the Middle East.

The PLO and FATAH were involved in various open and underground militant terrorist activities. They claimed that violent revolution was the only way to liberate the country, an ideology that follows the same doctrine of communist movements. Arafat was very close to other communist countries. He was a member of the Socialist International, and FATAH was an observer in the Party of European Socialists (PES). [52]

The United States and Israel have marked Arafat as the man behind a number of terrorist attacks in the Middle East. The White House identified FATAH and the PLO as terrorist organizations and closed the Palestine Information Office in 1987. [53]

In 1970, FATAH planned and carried out the unsuccessful assassination of Jordan’s King Hussein bin Talal. [54] In September that year, FATAH hijacked three commercial planes from Britain, Germany, and Switzerland in front of the television cameras. The terrorists claimed that hijacking a plane had a greater effect than killing a hundred Israelis in battle. [55] 

In 1972, the terrorist group Black September, a militant faction of FATAH, carried out a terrorist massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich. The person who planned and carried out this massacre was Ali Hassan Salameh, Arafat’s head of security and director of FATAH intelligence. In addition to the eleven Israelis killed in the attack, a West German police officer also died. [56] Arafat was one of the first militants to target innocent civilians in his operations.

b. The CCP’s Ties to Al-Qaeda

The CCP has had far-reaching interactions with Al-Qaeda, beginning with its clandestine collaboration with the Taliban, which provided protection for bin Laden. In 1980, in addition to sending about three hundred military advisers to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the CCP also set up military training camps in Kashgar and Hotan in Xinjiang to instruct them in skills such as the use of weapons, military strategy, propaganda, and espionage. 

Xinjiang became the base for training the Afghan mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union. By the time the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, the Chinese military had trained at least several thousand jihadis. It provided them with machine guns, rocket launchers, and surface-to-air missiles, altogether two to four billion U.S. dollars in value. [57]

The CCP maintained close ties with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, as well as in the period when the Taliban provided protection for bin Laden. Even though Al-Qaeda carried out terrorist attacks on the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Navy, and the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden to the United Nations, the CCP has always opposed U.N. sanctions against the Taliban. In 1998, the United States attacked Al-Qaeda bases with cruise missiles. The Chinese regime paid Al-Qaeda $10 million to purchase unexploded U.S. missiles so as to improve its own technology. [58] 

At the same time, the CCP continued to provide sensitive military technology to state sponsors of terrorism. [59] At the end of 2000, the U.N. Security Council proposed sanctions on the Taliban to force it to close bin Laden’s terrorist training camps located on its territory, but China abstained from the vote. After that, the CCP continued secret negotiations with the Taliban and reached an agreement to have Huawei Technologies help the Taliban establish an extensive military communication system throughout Afghanistan. [60] On the day of the 9/11 attacks, Chinese and Taliban officials signed a contract to expand economic and scientific cooperation. [61]

More shockingly, after the 9/11 attacks, two Chinese military officers were hailed as national heroes for their authorship of a book titled Unrestricted Warfare, which was published in 1999. In the book, they suggested that if the World Trade Center in New York were attacked, it would open up a complicated dilemma for the United States. The authors also named Al-Qaeda as an organization with the ability to carry out such an operation. [62] Suffice it to say, the Chinese regime’s concept of “unrestricted warfare” provided theoretical guidance for bin Laden’s future operations. 

When the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on the Taliban regime after 9/11, China not only abstained from the vote, but also sent military personnel to support the Taliban immediately after the U.S. military began airstrikes in Afghanistan. It was also after 9/11 that American intelligence agencies learned that ZTE and Huawei, China’s two military-linked tech companies, were helping the Taliban military establish a telephone network in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. [63]

In 2004, it was revealed that Chinese intelligence agencies used shell companies to help bin Laden raise funds and launder money in financial markets around the world. [64]

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the communist camp faced total collapse. Having inherited the ideological garb of the Soviet Union, the CCP was left to face the tremendous pressure from the free world on its own. As it happened, 9/11 took place just as the United States and the free world began to focus their attention on condemning communist tyranny. Priorities changed dramatically, and the free world had to hold off its plan to combat communism as the War on Terror began. This gave the CCP a reprieve and allowed communism to expand once again. 

While the Western world waged war in the Middle East, a large-scale transfer of wealth quietly took place between China and the United States. Communism was able to build another superpower. 

The chaos caused by terrorism has caused the free world to divert its attention away from the communist menace, delaying the main conflict between good and evil as it plays out in our world.

5. The Hidden Alliance Between Terrorism and the Western Radical Left

A contemporary German musician said, “This is the greatest artwork in the entire universe.” He spoke not of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but of the September 11 terrorist attacks. [65]

After 9/11, radical Western leftist intellectuals cheered the attacks and defended the perpetrators. One American writer praised the terrorists for destroying the “Tower of Babel” (that is, the World Trade Center) as a symbol of U.S. wrongdoing. An Italian playwright and Nobel laureate in literature said: “The economies in which [Wall Street] speculators roll killed tens of millions of people every year with poverty. What is a big deal if 20,000 people die in New York?” [66] A professor at the University of Colorado–Boulder campus characterized those working in the World Trade Center as “little Eichmanns,” referring to one of the architects of the Nazi Holocaust. [67]

Hoping to prevent the United States from carrying out military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, various radical left-wing forces launched a large-scale anti-war protest movement. Linguist and radical leftist thinker Noam Chomsky said in a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that the United States is “the largest country of terrorism” and that Washington planned to launch “a quiet genocide” in Afghanistan. [68]

The leftists held “peace vigils” and teach-ins around the country. While the United States’ operations against terrorists in Afghanistan were in full swing, Chomsky took a two-week trip to the Indian subcontinent, spreading rumors to millions of Muslims and Hindus. He accused the United States of planning to kill three or four million Afghans by hunger. 

A professor at Columbia University said he hoped the U.S. military would suffer one million Mogadishus. [69] The Battle of Mogadishu refers to the 1993 Al-Qaeda ambush of U.S. special forces in Somalia in 1993, in which eighteen American soldiers were killed.

The anti-war movement, initiated by the radical Left, targeted the United States in order to hamper its efforts in the War on Terror. 

In February 2003, a month before the United States attacked Iraq, bin Laden released an audio recording through Al Jazeera calling on people to fight against the U.S. military in the streets. He openly declared, “The interests of Muslims and the interests of the socialists coincide in the war against the crusaders.” [70]

ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is an anti-war organization with prominent exposure in the media. Its members are mostly socialists, communists, and leftists or progressives. Many of its founders have ties with the International Action Center and the Workers World Party, a communist radical organization. In this sense, ANSWER is actually a front-line force aligned with Stalinist communism. Also participating in the anti-war movement is Not in Our Name, a front organization of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which is a Marxist-Leninist party linked to the Chinese communist regime. [71]

In addition to actively whitewashing terrorists and organizing anti-war movements, leftists in the legal community have gone all-out in opposing the Patriot Act, passed by Congress shortly after 9/11 to strengthen the U.S. counter-terror capabilities. Before the bill was passed, the FBI waited seven years before arresting Sami Al-Arian, a professor of computer science at the University of South Florida who provided terrorists with financial support. If an equivalent to the Patriot Act had existed earlier, arresting Arian earlier might have prevented the September 11 attacks. [72]

The blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1995. His defense lawyer, Lynne Stewart, visited the prison and passed a message from Abdel-Rahman to followers in the Middle East, telling them to continue their terrorist activities. Stewart was found guilty in 2005. Surprisingly, after her guilty verdict, she became a political idol for the Left and has been repeatedly invited to lecture at universities, law schools, and other venues. [73]

A 2004 study by American scholar David Horowitz titled Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left reveals the nefarious connection between Islamic extremists and radical leftists. According to his analysis, the radical Left around the world has served to cover for Islamic jihadis. [74] 

Standing with terrorists against Western democratic states is part of the radical Left’s long march to destroy Western society from within. They are willing to use any method that helps them achieve this goal. Though leftist ideology has no superficial relationship with Islamic extremism, their objectives coincide to form a pernicious alliance against the Western world and become a powerful tool for communism.

Conclusion

From the Paris Commune and Lenin’s institutionalization of violence, to the CCP’s state-sponsored persecutions, communism has always used terrorism to achieve its aims. Moreover, beyond the territory controlled by communist regimes, communism has manipulated a variety of groups and people to carry out terrorist acts, sowing chaos around the world and throwing up a diversionary smokescreen for its enemies. Advancements in science and technology have made it easier for terrorists to endanger innocent victims. 

Terrorists use violence to throw society into disorder, and use fear to bring people under their control. They violate the moral values held universally across humanity in order to achieve their ends. The roots of communism can be seen in their core ideas, as communist ideology provides a theoretical framework for their evil values.

The primary victims of Islamic extremism are the people of countries from which terrorists originate. While the media focuses its attention on terrorist attacks that target Western society, the vast majority of those killed are Muslims. Similarly, the more than 100 million deaths caused by communism were nearly all those of people living under the rule of communist regimes. 

Terrorism is inseparable from communism, which itself is the greatest root cause of terrorism around the world. Until these toxic roots are dug out, mankind will not enjoy a single day of peace. Only by recognizing the role of communism in the terrorist activities that plague our world, and by standing on the side of traditional moral values and faith can people safeguard themselves against this menace.

References

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[17] Berman, “The Philosopher of Islamic Terror.”

[18] McGregor, “Al-Qaeda’s Egyptian Prophet,” https://jamestown.org/program/al-qaedas-egyptian-prophet-sayyid-qutb-and-the-war-on-jahiliya/.

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[20] McGregor, “Al-Qaeda’s Egyptian Prophet.”

[21] Stahl, “‘Offensive Jihad’ in Sayyid Qutb’s Ideology.”

[22] McGregor, “Al-Qaeda’s Egyptian Prophet.” 

[23] Roxanne L. Euben, “Mapping Modernities, ‘Islamic’ and ‘“Western,’” in Border Crossings: Toward a Comparative Political Theory, ed. Fred Reinhard Dallmayr (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2013), 20.

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[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid. 

[28] McGregor, “Al-Qaeda’s Egyptian Prophet.”

[29] “Impaling Leninist Qutbi Doubts: Shaykh Ibn Jibreen Makes Takfir Upon (Declares as Kufr) the Saying of Sayyid Qutb That Islam Is a Mixture of Communism and Christianity,” January 2, 2010, http://www.themadkhalis.com/md/articles/bguiq-shaykh-ibn-jibreen-making-takfir-upon-the-saying-of-sayyid-qutb-that-islam-is-a-mixture-of-communism-and-christianity.cfm.

[30] Damon Linker, “The Marxist Roots of Islamic Extremism,” The Week, March 25, 2016, http://theweek.com/articles/614207/marxist-roots-islamic-extremism.

[31] Chuck Morse, Islamo-Communism: The Communist Connection to Islamic Terrorism (City Metro Enterprises, 2013), Introduction.

[32] Antero Leitzinger, “The Roots of Islamic Terrorism,” The Eurasian Politician, No. 5 (April–September 2002), http://users.jyu.fi/~aphamala/pe/issue5/roots.htm.

[33] Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11(New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 2006), 21.

[34] Dawn Perlmutter, Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes (New York: CRC Press, 2004), 104.

[35] The 9/11 Commission Report, The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 55, https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

[36] Michael Scheuer, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, 2nd ed. (Washington: Potomac Books, 2006), 114.

[37] Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11(New York: Knopf Publishing Group, 2006), 36.

[38] Lawrence Wright, “The Man Behind Bin Laden: How an Egyptian Doctor Became a Master of Terror,” The New Yorker, September 16, 2002, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/09/16/the-man-behind-bin-laden

[39] Lawrence Wright, The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State(New York: Vintage Books, 2016), 17.

[40] Wright, The Looming Tower, 36.

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[42] Robinson, “Jihadi Information Strategy,” 88.

[43] Robinson, “The Four Waves of Global Jihad,” 85.

[44] Anthony Bubalo and Greg Fealy, “Between the Global and the Local: Islamism, the Middle East, and Indonesia,” The Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World, No. 9 (October 2005), 7, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/20051101bubalo_fealy.pdf. 

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[46] Joshua Sinai, “Mining the Roots of the ‘Why and How’ of Terrorism,” review of The Mind of the Islamic State: ISIS and the Ideology of the Caliphate, by Robert Manne, The Washington Times, October 31, 2017, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/31/book-review-the-mind-of-the-islamic-state-by-rober/

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[48] 2011 Report on Terrorism, The National Counterterrorism Center, 14, https://fas.org/irp/threat/nctc2011.pdf

[49] Country Reports on Terrorism 2016, Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism, https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2016/272241.htm.

[50] Alex Nowrasteh, Terrorism and Immigration: A Risk Analysis, Cato Institute, September 13, 2016, https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa798_1_1.pdf.  

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[54] Andrea L. Stanton, Edward Ramsamy, Carolyn M. Elliott, Peter J. Seybolt, eds., Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopedia, Vol. 1 (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2012), 274.

[55] Stefan Aubrey, The New Dimension of International Terrorism (Zürich: vdf Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH, 2004), 34.

[56] Ibid., 34–36.

[57] S. Frederick Starr, Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland, first ed. (London: Routledge, 2004), 149.

[58] John Hooper, “Claims that China Paid Bin Laden to See Cruise Missiles,” The Guardian, October 20, 2001, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/20/china.afghanistan.

[59] Ted Galen Carpenter, “Terrorist Sponsors: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China,” The Cato Institute, November 16, 2001, https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/terrorist-sponsors-saudi-arabia-pakistan-china.

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[62] Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Chao Xian Zhan (Unrestricted Warfare) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui chubanshe, 2005), Chapters 2 and 5. [In Chinese]

[63] “Chinese Firms Helping Put Phone System in Kabul,” The Washington Times, September 28, 2001, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2001/sep/28/20010928-025638-7645r/

[64] D. J. McGuire, “How Communist China Supports Anti-U.S. Terrorists,” Association for Asian Research, September 15, 2005, http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2733.html.  

[65] Jamie Glazov, United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror (Los Angeles: WND Books, 2009), Chapter 14.

[66] Ibid.

[67] “Ward Churchill Profile,” Discover the Networks, accessed November 17, 2018, http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1835

[68] Glazov, United in Hate, Chapter 14.

[69] “Nicholas De Genova Profile,” Discover the Networksaccessed November 17, 2018, http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2189

[70] Glazov, United in Hate, Chapter 14.

[71] Ibid. 

[72] Ibid.

[73] “Lynne Stewart Profile,” Discover the Networks, accessed November 17, 2018, http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=861

[74] David Horowitz, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left(Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004), 37.

Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/chapter-fifteen-the-communist-roots-of-terrorism_2718226.html

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How Has Falun Dafa Changed My Shopping Behavior 不一樣的購物心情-修煉前及修煉後

I’ll reserve this dress for next  Shen Yun  show. 這件禮服準備下次看 神韻 時穿。

I’ll reserve this dress for next Shen Yun show. 這件禮服準備下次看神韻時穿。

I heard this Black Friday more than 164 million Americans are shopping. How can I resist the temptation? So I decided to join in the great shopping carnival as well, and these are what I got. 

我聽說今年黑色星期五有1.64億美國人在大搶購,我終於也未能「免俗」,加入了這個感恩節的購物狂歡,不過還算節制,只買了兩件衣服而已。

Another reason is, I heard some good news this morning. Although I cannot share it now, I will definitely share it later when the time is right.

加入「狂歡」的另一個原因是,今早聽到了一個好消息。什麼好消息呢?現在還不能透露。時機成熟了再說吧。

So to celebrate this good news, I gave myself these little “rewards”.

所以這兩件衣服,也算是給自己的小小「獎賞」?

Then I remember that before I practiced Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), every time I felt upset, I went out shopping. I thus ended up buying a lot of things that I never used and wasted a lot of money. (Do you know any other woman doing this too? Your wife perhaps?)

然後我想起我修煉法輪功之前的一個壞毛病,就是那時情緒一不好,一跟家人生氣,就跑出去狂買東西作爲發泄,而且一定要買很貴的才解氣。就這樣買了很多一輩子也用不上的東西。情緒還未見得能真正地改善。(你身邊也有這樣的女性嗎?)

Ever since I started practicing Falun Gong, this never happened again. Nobody can upset me anymore. I am always calm and happy. Even when I was subjected to the cruelest persecution, I still feltI was better off than before. 

不過,修煉法輪功以後,再也沒有這種事啦。現在誰想讓我生氣,還真是不容易,也不再有需要用亂買東西來發泄或緩解情緒的時候啦。就覺得修煉前活得真苦真累!現在活得真明白真開心,哪怕是在承受迫害最痛苦的時候,仍然覺得比沒有修煉時強太多太多,心情簡直是不可同日而語。

So, shopping is now a means to celebrate good news and to reward myself, instead of a way to ease my bad mood and to release the pain in my heart, like in those “old bad days”. Isn’t it wonderful?

總之呢,現在購物,是爲了需要或獎勵自己,而不象以前那樣是爲了跟自己或家人過不去了。現在的日子,是不是很棒呢?

This one should be able to give me some warmth in this coldest Thanksgiving! 遇上有史以來最冷感恩節,這件羽絨服正當其時!

This one should be able to give me some warmth in this coldest Thanksgiving! 遇上有史以來最冷感恩節,這件羽絨服正當其時!

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 Fire to Form

By Gerard Traub

From fire to form

seed to stars awakening

here and beyond immensity

of water to light

melding mountain with sun

seasons still hiding the mystery.

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Why are People Particularly Move by Free China

These are Q & A between English Epoch Times and myself in 2012.

I was often moved to tears as well, when reading the many articles by Falun Gong practitioners posted on the Minghui website, and attempting to organize a “Falun Gong Chronology” to attach to my autobiographical book, “Witnessing History: One Woman’s Fight for Freedom and Falun Gong“. I believe that things in this world often have more profound reasons beyond the surface than what we can normally see and understand. That’s why sometimes it is very difficult to explain why we are so moved. 

Deep within our hearts we all long for goodness, kindness, beautiful and wonderful things; we all long to live in a better place, and be surrounded by kind-hearted people. That’s why many are drawn to Falun Gong. Through the practice, many gain wisdom and courage to abandon negative thoughts and feelings so as to become better people. This may sound simple in an everyday environment; but things are different when being confronted by a life-threatening situation. And yet Falun Gong practitioners still strive to maintain the courage to uphold their principles. I think people can easily see and be moved by kindness, as everyone has some measure of kindness within their hearts. Because of kindness, when they see that there are people who are trying continue to be truthful and compassionate even they are suffering huge pains for doing so, they are naturally moved. 

  • The Falun Gong practitioners in China could make their life easier if they just quietly practised at home. No person or group has managed to defy the CCP’s control for so long. What makes Falun Gong practitioners able to stand up against the Chinese government’s persecution, guns and corruption? 

I think it is because their faith has given them the wisdom and courage to overcome the persecution. The human spirit will always have more power than guns.

  • What is your dream for China and its people? 

Simply to have a brighter future.

  • What would you like this film to accomplish? 

The persecution of Falun Gong is the largest scale human rights calamity and anti-humanity crime of our times. As I stated in the preface of my book, “I appeal to all kind- hearted people around the world to take note of what is happening to the Falun Gong practitioners in mainland China. Extend your helping hands to these millions of innocent beings, save them and, at the same time, save yourselves. For this, I am prepared to sacrifice my life…With all my strength and my entire being I offer this book. I offer my heart, and the essential principles of the universe that I validate through my life.”

  • Your responses to off-camera questions in the film are very honest. What, for you, was the most challenging part about making this film? 

Perhaps the greatest challenge was how to face and present the part of my own history that I was very ashamed of. As I had shared in the film, I wanted to give up writing my book, and had indeed stopped for some time, because I was too ashamed. As an author, I knew I had to remain absolutely truthful with my readers. However, to be absolutely truthful, I felt like I was being stripped naked, and having people form the whole world pointing their fingers at me. That was a real personal struggle. 

With the making of the film, the major hardship was actually the lack of funds. When we were in discussions about planning the film, the producer initially wanted to fly the entire crew from the US to Australia to interview and film me. That would have been a considerable cost. I knew it was a low-budget, or even a no-budget project, like other projects NTDTV had been doing. So when I told Kean, the Producer of Free China, that I would fly to the US instead, and at my own expense, he was really overjoyed. 

However, because the time I could stay in US was very limited, everything had to be done quickly and intensively. After completing the filming in Washington DC, I was immediately driven to New York to be interviewed. I was still attempting to get over my jet lag, having a “heavy” head. I was interviewed for 12 hours or more in a very small studio with many lights, but no windows nor air conditioner. Some of the questions, as you can imagine, were very tough. Time and again, I had to overcome my language deficiency (don’t tell me my English is good enough. It’s far from what is enough for me to express myself correctly, and with correct grammar), as well as other physical and psychological factors. I remember seeing Kean falling asleep during the interview while sitting on the floor beside Michael. Of course, he was also tired. Later, Michael told me that it was the longest interview he had ever conducted. We could have spent even more time with the interview, if not for the budget and time constraints. 

I’d like to encourage more people to view and support NTD Television so as to enable the station to produce more meaningful films and TV programs to share the truth about the situation in China. There is a saying that, “The truth will set you free”. I hope all of China will soon be free!

Screenshot from Free China movie showing Jennifer doing the 5th exercise of Falun Gong,   Reinforcing Supernatural Powers  .

Screenshot from Free China movie showing Jennifer doing the 5th exercise of Falun Gong, Reinforcing Supernatural Powers.

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