Why Obama Blinked...

By John Cooper-Bassett

Clearly the Anointed One, the Messiah, the putative Orator from the Ghetto blinked in the Chen Guangcheng case.

Mr. Chen, a self-taught Chinese legal worker who is also blind, had been held in detention as well as under house arrest in Shandong province. A few days ago, Mr. Chen, with the help of friends, escaped Shandong and popped up at the U.S. embassy in Beijing. Today, the United States Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, Gary Locke, personally delivered Mr. Chen to the awaiting Chinese authorities in the guise of a hospital visit in the Chaoyang district of Beijing.

Flash back to 1989. The late human rights activist, Professor Fang Lizi (who passed away in Arizona last month), sought refuge in the same US Embassy immediately after the Tiananmen Square crackdown. The George H.W. Bush Administration fought off the Chinese authorities for over a year. Finally, the United States won concession from the late Deng Xiaoping to let Professor Fang and his family emigrate to the United States.

So what happened between 1989 and 2012?

1. China became the second largest economy in the world and is poised to overtake the United States as the biggest economic powerhouse by 2016.

2. China now has the second most powerful military forces in the world.

3. At $3 trillion, China has the largest foreign exchange reserve in the world.

4. China holds $1 trillion in United States public debt.

5. The United States is run by a group of untested frat boys led by an inexperienced community organizer while China is governed by a cadre of seasoned political veterans who are backed up by a larger group of PhDs.

Coincidentally, the collapse of American political power and prestige is also revealed in the recent mad-cow scare. Last week, the US announced that a California cow was diagnosed with mad-cow disease. The Koreans have sent a delegation of animal husbandry experts to inspect the farm in question. This was what the United States used to do to third-world banana republics when something went awry in one of their production plants.

Now that the US has become the proverbial banana republic, one would hardly blink an eye when it is suggested that United Nations observers should be sent to monitor the presidential election in November in order to ensure transparency and a clean election…