After speaking out in support of Tibet Independence in Shanghai, Bjork has ruffled the feathers of the Chinese government.

“We will further tighten controls on foreign artists performing in China in order to prevent similar cases from happening in the future,” the Ministry of Culture said in a statement on its website.

“We shall never tolerate any attempt to separate Tibet from China and will no longer welcome any artists who deliberately do this.”

Here’s a crappy Youtube video of the incident:

The United States is truly a land of plenty; just ask your local warden. The USA has reached a record high ratio of people in prison. Over one in 100 adults are behind bars, which adds up to 2.3 million people, a number greater than even China’s prison population in both size and percentage. (Mind you, China’s general population dwarfs that of the US by over 1 billion people.)

But what does this mean? Do Americans commit more crimes? Are our cops that totally badical that they catch all the bad guys? Maybe it’s just that US criminals are dumb enough to get caught. Over the past two decades, state spending on corrections has increased 127 percent. In the same amount of time, education funding rose only 21 percent.

Remember the other day when I was going on about Aqua Dots and Bindeez, and how China is poisoning our children in an attempt to wipe out our future generations? More lead paint products were recalled today.

Name of Product: Children’s Fashion Sunglasses

Units: About 51,000

Importer/Distributor: Dolgencorp Inc., of Goodlettsville, Tenn.

Hazard: The yellow surface paint on the sunglasses may contain excessive levels of lead, violating the federal lead paint standard.Description: The recall involves yellow children’s sunglasses. No other colors of sunglasses are included in this recall. The word “CHINA” is printed on the left side of the frame. The UPC #400007860896 and words “Fashion Sunglasses” and “Time to Play Every Day” are printed on the product’s red hangtag.

Sold at: Dollar General stores nationwide from March 2005 through October 2007 for $1.

Manufactured in: China

YOU SEE!!!!!! China is seriously out to get us.

I had never heard of Aqua Dots or Bindeez Beads until yesterday, when it was announced that their manufacturer is recalling all the Aqua Dots in Australia and the US. As it turns out, when ingested, that shit turns into something close to GHB (a common type of roofie) once inside your body.

They look just plain delicious, don’t they?

So where, exactly, were the Bindeez/Aqua Dots manufactured? Where else but the leading producer of fuck-your-kids-up-with-lead-paint, and favorite US trading partner, China.

From Moose World:

The company’s products, which are manufactured by internationally approved toy
manufacturers in China, are subject to world standard independent testing. Moose
Enterprise has not experienced any safety concerns with its products since the company
was purchased by its current management team six years ago.
The product was immediately withdrawn from sale yesterday and parents can receive a
refund by freecalling 1800 303 895 or email returns@moosetoys.com .
Further information will be made available as soon as possible.
Media enquiries:
Peter Mahon
Royce Communications
Tel 03 9639 2300 / 0418 351 754

I swear, China must really have it in for our kids. It’s almost like they want to kill off or make vegetables out of our next generation, making it all the more easier to assume global hegemony/world leader status in the next 15 - 20 years. But that could never happen. Never. Ever. Even they say they’d never do that. And they would never lie to us.

As of now, you can still buy Bindeez online. Get your orders for cheap child date rape drugs in while you still can…

As we all know, the ol’ USA’s days as top dog are numbered. When China ascends to its rightful spot as world leader, I’ll be ready thanks to TryMango.com. It’s a free language learning site. English language speakers can learn Brazilian Portuguese, Greek, German, French and more through a series of lessons that include sound and tips about conversational speech. If you’re smart like me, though, you’ll get cracking on your Mandarin. Ni hao.

Recently, the Chinese “goddess of the Yangtze,” the Yangtze or baiji dolphin, was believed to be extinct. But on Aug. 19, a resident of the Anhui province, Zeng Yujiang, spotted one of the rare beasts frolicking in the river of Tongling and recorded video of it on his digital camera. Yujiang told Xinhua news:

“I’ve never seen such a big thing in the water before, so I filmed it. It was about 1,000 meters away and jumped out of water several times.”

A team of 25 international scientists embarked on a 38-day search last year to find the elusive baiji, but were unable to find any. Earlier this month, the animal was declared extinct, but thanks to this footage, another expedition will be conducted in September. However, even though this sheds a glimmer of hope for the seemingly doomed river critter, the scientists who led the last expedition still consider the dolphin “functionally extinct.” Ouch. Godspeed, noble baiji.