BEIJING – China executed a former director of its food and drug agency Tuesday for approving fake medicine in exchange for cash, illustrating how serious Beijing is about tackling product safety, while officials announced steps to safeguard food at next summer’s Olympic Games.

The measures include ensuring athletes’ food is free of substances that could trigger a positive result in tests for banned performance-enhancing drugs. Many of China’s recent food woes have been tied to the purity of ingredients, flavoring, artificial colors and other additives.

During Zheng Xiaoyu’s tenure as head of the State Food and Drug Administration from 1997 to 2006, the agency approved six untested drugs that turned out to be fake, and some drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people….”

At MSNBC

Now that’s a thought…

“I remember on YouTube.com the “President of Hip Hop” came out with an initially negative depiction of Ron Paul as a racist. To his credit he said he wasn’t concluding his opinion but that he encouraged people to look deeper. There were many who made comments thanking him for helping to expose information about Ron Paul and encouraged him to continue to look for positive aspects of Ron Paul’s position on racism. A few weeks later he came back and said he decided Ron Paul is definitely not racist and that he deserves much more consideration. This could have just as easily gone the other way. Over zealous Ron Paul supporters could have hastily disparaged and insulted the “President of Hip Hop” and made an enemy out of him. This didn’t happen and now we have a lot more friends.

This much I know, the issue here is Freedom. There is no such thing as a free republic that will last very long unless it is a republic of moral (and respectful) people. Not only do we need to get behind Ron Paul and rally for his support, but we each need to look at our own personal lives and see where we can become better people as individuals. There is nothing Ron Paul or the government can do to make us better people. That is our part of the deal and as we succeed on this front we will propel the cause of Freedom ahead. Neither of us can fight the freedom battle all on our own. We need Ron Paul and Ron Paul needs us.

For many decades the enemy of Freedom has been fomenting all kinds of perversions and divisions into our society to drive us apart and weaken us. We need to acknowledge this and realize much of what divides us stems from this artificial corruption of our culture. The time has come to be people worthy of individual freedom and there is no army or mob that can hold the powers of Heaven at bay from wiping away our dividers and oppressors, just as sunlight wipes away the darkness before it….”

While I’m on a roll, I urge everyone making signs to avoid profanity and hateful slogans. I recently watched a video of Ron Paul in the parking lot prior to the June 30th rally and there was a very distasteful sign regarding President Bush. It looked so out of place next to a true statesman and founding father figure as Ron Paul. The message of Freedom and its positivism is what will build momentum. Presenting increased beams of light coming from our eyes is much preferable to the vitriol of hatred and profanity towards others. Freedom with respect needs to be the focus to keep the momentum going….”

More from Jason Wharton here.

On Antiwar, one rumor about war put to rest by Arash Norouzi. “Everyone knows” that President Ahmadinejad of Iran threatened to wipe Israel off the map..or ever globe.

Except he never did.

A misquote gratefully snatched up and distorted by international news feeds like AP might end up being the bloodiest mistake in translation ever made.

Churches, orders, theologies, philosophies have failed to save mankind because they have busied themselves with intellectual creeds, dogmas, rights and institutions, with acara, suddhi and darsana, as if these could save mankind, and have neglected the one thing needful, the power and purification of the soul.

“There is not a way left to us to pass from our present contemptible amorphousness into the future except through open, personal and predominantly public (to set an example) sacrifice. We all have to “rediscover our cultural treasures and values” not by erudition, not by scientific accomplishment, but by our form of spiritual conduct.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in “The Smatterers,” from Under the Rubble, p. 273 (author’s italics).

Were we directed from Washington when to sow, & when to reap, we should soon want bread.

“Every man cannot have his way in all things. If his opinion prevails at some times, he should acquiesce on seeing that of others preponderate at other times. Without this mutual disposition we are disjointed individuals, but not a society.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Dickinson, 1801. FE 8:76

The psychologist Philip Tetlock has argued that the mentality of taboo–the belief that certain ideas are so dangerous that it is sinful even to think them–is not a quirk of Polynesian culture or religious superstition but is ingrained into our moral sense. In 2000, he reported asking university students their opinions of unpopular but defensible proposals, such as allowing people to buy and sell organs or auctioning adoption licenses to the highest-bidding parents. He found that most of his respondents did not even try to refute the proposals but expressed shock and outrage at having been asked to entertain them. They refused to consider positive arguments for the proposals and sought to cleanse themselves by volunteering for campaigns to oppose them. Sound familiar?

The psychology of taboo is not completely irrational. In maintaining our most precious relationships, it is not enough to say and do the right thing. We have to show that our heart is in the right place and that we don’t weigh the costs and benefits of selling out those who trust us. If someone offers to buy your child or your spouse or your vote, the appropriate response is not to think it over or to ask how much. The appropriate response is to refuse even to consider the possibility. Anything less emphatic would betray the awful truth that you don’t understand what it means to be a genuine parent or spouse or citizen. (The logic of taboo underlies the horrific fascination of plots whose protagonists are agonized by unthinkable thoughts, such as Indecent Proposal and Sophie’s Choice.) Sacred and tabooed beliefs also work as membership badges in coalitions. To believe something with a perfect faith, to be incapable of apostasy, is a sign of fidelity to the group and loyalty to the cause. Unfortunately, the psychology of taboo is incompatible with the ideal of scholarship, which is that any idea is worth thinking about, if only to determine whether it is wrong.

– Stepehen Pinker

in The New Republic