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Week Around the Ists
When we were growing up as super geeky elementary school kids in our hometown, we would be excited whenever the the Bookmobile, a large van equipped with tons of children's books for purchase, rolled onto our campus. We loved hopping in with our hard-earned allowance money balled up in our fists, waiting to get our grubby hands on the newest Judy Blume Encyclopedia Brown books.
We miss those days when enlarged vehicles meant purity and innocence, instead of, well, death. From USA Today we learn about China's "death vans." And by "death vans" we actually mean "fleet of mobile execution chambers." Yes, that sounds much better.
Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China "promotes human rights now," says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van in which "Devil" Zhang took his final ride.
So it turns out that all this hullabaloo about human rights in China was for nothing, now that we have these super humane, highly efficient soul-snuffing motor vehicles that may or may not be cover for organ harvesting. That'll show the world!
Photo attributed to the Jinguan Group taken off the USA Today website
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Well you can't deny that it's convenient. Need to be careful though:
"Hello is this the bus to Carrefour?"
"No this is the mobile death bus, you want the one from stop A5"
It would be awesome if it ran on screams
Considering how effective the "killing fields" type executions used to be in terms of multiple executions at one time and the potential for harvesting so many organs, this type of a more humane execution, combined with the fact that death sentences now need the high court to approve before it is carried out, certainly slows that down a bit.
As for actual harvesting of organs, if someone is indeed condemned to death for a capital crime, then so be it, let at least something go back and help someone else. Provided its not motivated by the harvesting, executions here are part of their system, and so why would one let those resources go to waste.
if the "usa today" reporter, the ex-husband of ms. zhang lijia, had read following article, he would've certainly postponed the publication of his sensational non-news.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jW1C7fxNd2pCEW2Nucy4vqNPlWoQD96DD6100
Eastma-san goes about defending the motherland again. A bit lame, but good try.
From the AP article Eastman links to:
"The underground organ trade in China has been a notorious supplier of organs to foreigners desperately in need of transplants, who make up as much as 40 percent of the market. Brokers regularly arrange transplants in weeks rather than the months or years it generally takes in the West"
This Shanghaiist entry is a tongue-in-cheek poke at the "human rights" promoting mobile death unit portrayed above, but I'm not sure that the underground organ trade article Eastman points too stamps the joke out very well, it seems to confirm that there's a huge underground organ market in China, but how does that prove the humanity of the mobile death unit?
Anyway kudos on both the sensationalism and the non-news, I get the feeling that was the whole point...
Don't make the mistake of thinking Eastman ever makes sense.
To paraphrase his convoluted argument -- the demand is created by foreigners, therefore it is all their fault.
Agree with Stephan, the thing about this post is the irony of linking a mobile death-bus with some idea of human rights. And the contradiction of ideas like 'humane executions'.
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, common sense and , for example, all EU member countries, capital punishment is itself a violation of human rights.
Posts like this one about the 'death-bus' should hopefully show up how ridiculous it is to have 'concerned' discussions related to organ trading inside the context of executions IE state sponsored murder.