China arrests Cardinal Zen- Cruel reminder about the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary

Opinion:  The arrest of a 90-year-old cardinal signals China’s crackdown — and its fear:  By Nancy Pelosi

Echo opinion published in The Washington Postt

Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, is speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

On June 4, the world will mark 33 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre*.

On that day — a date that is seared into the consciousness of all freedom-loving people — we remember one of the greatest acts of political courage in modern times. Beijing’s horrific slaughter of its own citizens crushed the protest but could not extinguish the flame of freedom that burned in their hearts.

Yet, a generation later, Beijing is fighting harder than ever to extinguish that flame. Indeed, over the past 30 years, the Chinese Communist Party’s appalling human rights record and repression of political freedoms have only worsened.

Zen is an outspoken champion of democracy in the Catholic community, advocating for religious liberty in Hong Kong and, in 2016, urging the Vatican to reject an agreement that would give the People’s Republic of China say over the ordination of bishops. But he is not only a leader of Hong Kong’s and other Chinese Catholics. To a broader audience, he is a critical voice of conscience: an embodiment of moral fortitude, who has been a constant presence as Hong Kong has led a decades-long pursuit of the freedoms promised with the handover from British rule.

Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun**

On Wednesday, Beijing launched its latest assault: ordering the arrest of 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong. Zen was charged with “colluding with foreign forces,” after serving as a trustee of a now-disbanded relief fund providing criminal defense to those charged in cases involving freedom of speech and expression. Four colleagues — barrister Margaret Ng and singer-activist Denise Ho, scholar Hui Po-keung and former Legislative Council member Cyd Ho — were also rounded up under the same pretext.

These arrests are part of a severe crackdown enabled by the 2020, so-called national security law, designed to eliminate all dissent in Hong Kong. Beijing has used this law to crush freedom of the press, assembly and speech, arresting activists including Joshua Wong, Benny Tai, Jimmy Lai, Lee Cheuk Yan, Gwyneth Ho and Carol Ng. Now, empowered by the installation of another staunchly pro-Beijing leader in Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party has trained its sights on Zen and his colleagues.

In the lead-up to the 1997 transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom, the Chinese government promised “a high degree of autonomy” for the territory: with an independent executive, legislature and judiciary; freedom of speech, the press, assembly and religion; a path to universal suffrage; and an assurance that China would not interfere in the affairs that Hong Kong administers under the Basic Law. But nearly 25 years later, China’s pledges have been utterly abandoned. Any pretense that Hong Kong’s rights would be respected has been shattered by violence and intimidation.

Zen’s arrest is one of the clearest signs yet of Beijing’s worsening crackdown as Hong Kong fights for its freedoms — and of Beijing’s growing desperation and fear that it is losing this fight. Indeed, this act of persecution is a sign of weakness, not a show of strength.

As speaker of the House, I have been blessed to witness Cardinal Zen’s courage and commitment up close. When I met with him in Hong Kong in 2015, he warned that “one country, two systems” was in great peril. And when we met most recently — in 2020, in the U.S. Capitol, where I awarded him the Wei Jingsheng Chinese Democracy Champion Prize — he again spoke powerfully about China’s broken promises.

Zen and three of his colleagues have been released on bail, but the charges remain in force, with each facing the prospect of life in prison. We must all condemn their arrests, which are an affront to religious freedom, political freedoms and human rights. As I have said before, if we do not speak out for human rights in China because of commercial interests, we lose all moral authority to speak out on human rights anywhere in the world.

1989 protests in Tiananmen Square

Congress, on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, has always supported Hong Kong in its fight for its freedoms. In 2019, a bipartisan Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which is now law. We have held Beijing accountable for its human rights abuses, passing legislation to counter horrific campaigns against Uyghurs, Tibetans, activists on the mainland and many others — and we will continue to do so, until these abuses cease.

For the people of Hong Kong — and for all yearning for freedom around the world — the entire international community has a responsibility to forcefully speak out against these arrests and demand that the CCP end its abuses. The world is watching.

*  Although they were highly disorganized and their goals varied, the students called for greater accountability, constitutional due process, democracy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech. At the height of the protests, about one million people assembled in the Square.

**  HONG KONG, May 11 (Reuters) - Cardinal Joseph Zen, one of the most senior Catholic clerics in Asia, and three others who helped run a now-disbanded Hong Kong fund for protesters were arrested on charges of "collusion with foreign forces," and later released on bail.

Zen, a 90-year-old former bishop of Hong Kong, was questioned for several hours on Wednesday at the Chai Wan Police Station, close to his church residence, before being released on police bail. The silver-haired Zen, wearing a white clerical collar, left without making any comment to the media.

Sympathy - Clare Hollingworth brave reporter dies

Sad to read this an era of excellence in journalism now passed at 105 years old, in Hong Kong.

"Ms. Hollingworth was never so happy, she often said, as when she was roaming the world equipped with little more than a toothbrush, a typewriter and, if need be, a revolver."

From a single gust of wind, Clare Hollingworth reaped the journalistic scoop of the century- watching the beginning of World War II, first hand..

"There's a German Just Behind Me", (book jacket) by Clare Hollingworth

Ms. Hollingworth, the undisputed doyenne with enormous experience in war correspondance, died on Tuesday in Hong Kong, at 105 years old. Less than a week into her first job, she was as a reporter for the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, on a windy day in 1939.

Driving alone on the road from Gleiwitz, then in Germany, to Katowice, in Poland — a distance of less than 20 miles — she watched as the wind lifted a piece of the tarpaulin that had been erected on the German side to screen the valley below from view.

Through the opening, Ms. Hollingworth saw, she later wrote, “large numbers of troops, literally hundreds of tanks, armored cars and field guns” concealed in the valley.

She knew then that Germany was poised for a major military incursion. Hastening back across the border to the Polish side, she telephoned her editor with the news, a world exclusive.

The date was Aug. 28, 1939, and her article, published the next day, would become, as the British paper The Guardian wrote in 2015, “probably the greatest scoop of modern times.”

On Sept. 1, Hitler’s forces invaded Poland, marking the start of World War II.

Clare Hollingworth (1911-2017)- picture at 85 years old

For the next four decades, Ms. Hollingworth (who over the years contributed articles to The Telegraph, The Guardian, The International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal) covered World War II from Eastern Europe, the Balkans and North Africa; the Greek and Algerian civil wars; hostilities between Arabs and Jews in the waning days of the British mandate in Palestine; and the Vietnam War, among other conflicts.

Often under fire, occasionally arrested and possessed of such a keen nose for covert information that from time to time she was accused of being a spy — both by local governments and by the British — Ms. Hollingworth was friend, or foe, to seemingly everyone in a position of power in the world at midcentury.

She obtained the first interview with Mohammed Reza Pahlavi after he became the shah of Iran in 1941, and what was very likely among the last, after he was deposed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979.

In 1965, wanting to cover hostilities between India and Pakistan but discovering that reporters were barred from the front, she simply secured permission from an old acquaintance, Indira Gandhi, who was then India’s minister of information and broadcasting.

Ms. Hollingworth was also one of the first Western journalists to report regularly from China, opening The Telegraph’s Beijing bureau in 1973.

Her other major scoops included a 1963 article for The Guardian in which she cautiously identified the British intelligence agent Kim Philby as the long-sought “third man” in the ring of Soviet spies then known to include the Englishmen Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess. Another was a 1968 article for The Telegraph in which she reported the United States’ incipient plans for peace talks with Vietnam. (The talks opened in Paris later that year and were concluded in 1973.)

Ms. Hollingworth was never so happy, she often said, as when she was roaming the world equipped with little more than a toothbrush, a typewriter and, if need be, a revolver. Embedded long before the term was applied to journalists, she slept in trucks and in trenches, at times buried up to her neck in sand for warmth on cold desert nights. She once held off an armed Algerian policeman by threatening to hit him about the head with a shoe.

Had her eyesight not begun to fail some 20 years ago, it was a life, Ms. Hollingworth made clear, that she would gladly have continued to the end of her days.

“I must admit that I enjoy being in a war,” she told The Telegraph in 2011, on the eve of her 100th birthday.

In 1989, though nearly 80 and nominally retired, Ms. Hollingworth, attired in a safari suit, her working uniform of choice for 60 years, was spotted in Tiananmen Square shinnying up a lamppost for a bird’s-eye view of the government’s violent crackdown against civilian protesters.

She periodically slept on the floor of her home in Hong Kong well into her 90s, just to keep from going soft.

Through all her travels, with all their attendant rigors, there was only one thing, Ms. Hollingworth said, that she truly could not abide. “I do not mind not washing for a week or more,” she wrote, “but I do hate getting fleas in my hair.”

Her Graham Greene existence, with its typewriter, revolver and most particularly its fleas, was a far cry from the life her conventional, well-heeled British parents had envisioned for her — one of quiet propriety, dutiful wifehood, charity balls and hunting.

Clare Hollingworth was born on Oct. 10, 1911, in Knighton in central England, outside Leicester. As a child, she enjoyed touring the historic battlefields of England and France with her father, who ran the family’s boot and shoe factory.

At her parents’ insistence, the young Ms. Hollingworth attended domestic science college in Leicester, an experience that did nothing to make the prospect of hearth and home attractive. (“Although it is useful to be able to make an omelet,” she later wrote, “my domestic science training caused me to hate having anything to do with housework.”)

Partly in deference to her upbringing, she became engaged “to a suitable young man,” though she soon broke off the engagement and further scandalized her parents by announcing her intention to become a journalist.

“My mother thought journalism frightfully low, like a trade,” Ms. Hollingworth said in the 2011 interview with The Telegraph. “She didn’t believe anything journalists wrote and thought they were only fit for the tradesmen’s entrance.”

In the 1930s, Ms. Hollingworth attended the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London and afterward studied at the University of Zagreb, then in Yugoslavia.

Working for the League of Nations Union, a peace and social justice group established in Britain in 1918, she was dispatched to Warsaw.

There, in early 1939, she aided thousands of refugees from the Sudetenland — the region of Czechoslovakia that had been annexed by the Nazis in October 1938 — arranging travel documents that would let them cross into Poland. She wrote about their plight for small publications in Britain.

The Telegraph learned of Ms. Hollingworth’s work in Poland, and on Aug. 25, 1939, while she was visiting London, it hired her as a correspondent. Assigned to cover the prelude to war in the region, she flew to Warsaw the next day.

From Warsaw she traveled to Katowice, commandeering an official car from the British consul general there. It was in that car, Union Jack boldly flying, that she drove over the border, past astonished Nazi guards and into Germany on Aug. 28.

Ms. Hollingworth’s scoop comprised two parts. The first was her story of Aug. 29, about the advent of war. The second was her report on the start of the war itself.

Awakened by explosions at dawn on Sept. 1, Ms. Hollingworth, from her quarters in Katowice, saw German bombers overhead and the flash of artillery fire in the distance.

She telephoned a friend at the British Embassy in Warsaw.

“The war has begun!” she cried.

“Are you sure, old girl?” he said. Her published article notwithstanding, Ms. Hollingworth later wrote, British officialdom persisted in thinking that war remained weeks away.

She held the receiver out the window as German tanks roared outside. The embassy was persuaded and soon, too, was her editor.

Ms. Hollingworth’s article on the start of hostilities appeared in The Telegraph the next day. Her work from this period is unbylined — few reporters were accorded bylines then — a state of affairs she pronounced as being for the best: It simultaneously spared her parents familial anxiety and social indignity.

What followed was more than 40 years of chasing danger, for it was in the most dangerous places, Ms. Hollingworth often said, that the best stories lay.

Traveling with British troops in North Africa, she was buried in the sands for the night when she awoke to the sounds of a German reconnaissance party. “A sneeze would have brought death to us all,” she later wrote. She held her breath in the darkness, and the party passed unseeing.

In Vietnam, a sniper’s bullet narrowly missed her head.

Ms. Hollingworth’s first husband, Vandeleur Robinson, whom she married in 1936, divorced her for desertion 15 years later. (“When I’m on a story, I’m on a story — to hell with husband, family, anyone else,” she told The Guardian in 2004.) Her second husband, Geoffrey Hoare, a journalist whom she married in the early 1950s, died in 1965.

Her death was confirmed by Patrick Garrett, her grandnephew and her biographer. Her survivors include a stepdaughter, Hilary Sandre.

Over time, some members of the British press grew alienated by what they saw as Ms. Hollingworth’s imperious manner. “Ms. Hollingworth’s snobberies are very tiring, her cozy relations with British embassies irritating,” the English journalist Robert Fisk wrote, reviewing her 1990 memoir, “Front Line.”

But she remained a widely admired, even venerated, figure, a recipient of the Order of the British Empire in 1982 and a perennial fixture at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong, where she had made her home since the early 1980s.

Her other books include “The Three Weeks’ War in Poland” (1940), “There’s a German Just Behind Me” (1942), “The Arabs and the West” (1952) and “Mao and the Men Against Him” (1985).

As Ms. Hollingworth made clear in later interviews, though there was no dearth of wars to accompany her old age, she did not truly expect to be called upon to cover them. Yet to the end of her life she slept with her passport and a pair of shoes within easy reach, just in case.

(Certainly I'll look up some of Ms. Hollingworth's books, RIP)

Dear Brian Williams - Monica Lewiniski is old news

Here's a list of real news stories to help the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. He appears to need advice about how to provide news viewers with information, rather than muckraking old political information from the 1990s, just to create buzz.

My top of mind list:

1.  Lead with Richard Engels. Please.

2.  Report on how caregivers in Liberia are facing Ebola.

3.  Interview Secretary of State Kerry about how Turkey is responding to negotiations about supporting international efforts to destroy the evil ISIS.

4.  Provide an investigative report about how America's roads, bridges and airports are in need of infrastructure support.

5.  How have the sequestration cuts imposed by the US Congress impacted the US infectious control response to the Ebola virus?

6.  Interview Cubans in Florida about immigration reform.

7.  Follow yachts out of Key West Florida, as they sail unencumbered into Havana harbor.

8.  Interview Russian President Vladimir Putin.

9.  Report about the Hong Kong protesters.

10.  Investigate Germany's military...does it even exist?  How  can Germany defend itself these days?  Is NATO the German defense Alliance?

So, Mr. Williams, I wrote these 10 ideas in less than 15 minutes. Your  news staff is surely paid many thousands of dollars to create dog features and muckraking stories, rather than report real news.
Maybe your  staff would appreciate my part time help.  

Monica Lewinski is old news.  Just because she's become a champion of anti bullying doesn't make her news. In fact, Monica Lewinski can mobilize Democrats faster than former right wing darling Sarah Palin ever could.

Who is Paying for Edward Snowden's Treason?

Former National Security Agency whistle blower Edward Snowden didn't just pack up and leave Hawaii for Hong Kong without having inside help in the form of money.  Strict visa rules are necessary to comply with before entering China, but at the end of the process, the fact remains, it takes money to pull off Snowden's entry and exit from Hong Kong.

Likewise, it surely took lots of money for Snowden to enter and remain in Russia.  His exile with political asylum approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin must have been paid for by somebody. Possibly, the Wikileaks organization is funding this skulduggery to keep a runaway traitor on the lamb, but money can't be endless. Snowden has to be worried about what happens to him when his sugar daddy runs out of patience, cash or both.  

So, now Snowden has abandoned his American home country because he claims it is running amok with surveillance on citizens. Instead, he will now live in exile in Russia, where people are monitored by video cameras and thrown into Siberian prisons whenever sedition by its citizens is even suspected. Does Snowden know how many millions of people Russian dictators like Joseph Stalin and his successors killed to excercise totalitarianism over its people? In fact, nobody knows the accurate number of millions who have been murdered by oppressive Russian leaders.

Regardless of whether or not Snowden knows how oppressive Russian leaders can be, whenever they feel like it, he must have money to pull off his asylum, beginning with a one year entry permit and, probably, followed by whatever additional time he's willing to pay for.  Money is the mother's milk of Russian asylum. Snowden is likely to find Russian refuge for as long as his money holds out and while extradition is denied to him by other nations. Meanwhile, it's impossible for Snowden to live in Russia without a quid pro quo.  What's more, he can't speak Russian and, let's face it, nobody trusts a traitor.  Treason is never rewarded.

Attorney Anatoly Kucherena appeared on Russian television and said Snowden had been granted asylum in Russia for one year, showing a scanned copy of an official document approving his asylum request. Snowden was in a safe place, according to Kucherena, who said he would not reveal the location for security reasons.  (And who is paying Attorney Anatoly Kucherena?)

What does Russian President Vladimir Putin gain by granting Snowden asylum?  Obviously, Putin thrives on publicity.  He enjoys showing off his body, his ability to fly airplanes (with a co-pilot), his ability to catch as well as kiss big fish and cunningly steal a super bowl ring from New England Patriot owner Robert Kraft.  Not surprisingly, Putin recently lied about even taking the ring:

"The Russian president was responding to a surprise question about the controversy at the St Petersburg Economic Forum, where he was on a panel with German chancellor Angela Merkel.  In response, Mr Putin said he had no recollection of the ring or Robert Kraft, 72, the billionaire owner of the Patriots American football team and one of the biggest US sports tycoons."

There you have it.  Putin craves publicity and he'll lie to get it.  I suspect he didn't really catch the big fish he kissed for a publicity photo-op and he probably can't fly an airplane without a ghost pilot holding the controls, either.  

Nevertheless, this imagery makes excellent publicity for Putin, who clearly thrives on creating news about himself.  

Yet, publicity for Putin can't be the primary reason why Snowden was given asylum in Russia.  After all, Snowden clearly tried reaching out to other countries before he was likely forced to settle on finally leaving the Russian airport and accepting the one year asylum.  Putin must have more to gain than loose by embarrassing the United States with this Snowden incident.  

In other words, a lot of money must have changed hands during the asylum negotiations.

When Putin finally gets whatever it is he wants from the US, he'll find a reason to expel Snowden like a batch of tainted vodka.  

Therefore, Edward Snowden has reason to be worried - very worried.  He's now living in exile in a nation where surveillance is commonplace and on borrowed time, paid on the clock, by unreliable sources.  He would clearly be better off throwing himself on the mercy of the US justice system, than allow himself to live like a man without a country in a nation where justice is arbitrary.  

Meanwhile, Snowden must pay rent, bribes, lawyers and living expenses while in Russia.

So who pays the ransom for Edward Snowden's treason?  Whoever or whatever entity is forking up the ransom money, the cash can't last forever. Russian people surely know how Snowden's asylum comes with a big price tag. These people know how to live by paying bribes, dealing in black market businesses, with government graft and corruption.  Consequently, they'll follow Snowden like birds seeking bread crumbs.  He'll be stalked by the Russian government and those who want to share in his ransom.

Snowden will eventually return to the US, but those funding his treason will be flat broke whenever he is forced to return.  

When Snowden eventually returns to the US, he'll be treated like a traitor. In the event he happens to die before returning, he'll still be considered a traitor.  Be it in Russia, the US or wherever, treason is a cross cultural label.