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Trump Makes Money From
the Name ‘Central Park’
Casinos Could See Guitar Playing,
Car Racing, and Card Grabbing
Trump first applied for trademarking ‘Central Park’
branded goods when park crime was still high.
Game companies are trying for arcade-style,
skill-based slots and games in casinos.
See A9
AP PHOTO/REBECCA BLACKWELL,FILE
See A15
Son of Chinese
Revolutionary Tells
Xi Jinping to End
Communist Party’s
Dictatorship
NTD
By Juliet Song & Larry Ong
Epoch Times Staff
A Mbuti Pygmy hunting camp
in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve
outside the town of Epulu,
Congo, on March 21, 2010.
Members of the Baka
Pygmy tribe, the original
forest dwellers of the
Cameroon forests, on
June 9, 2010. The forests
of Cameroon form a large
part of the Congo basin.
ANNE CHAON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A palm trees plantation in northwestern Liberia on Dec. 10, 2012.
est landscape restoration we’ve
seen agricultural yields rise and
farmers in our rural communities diversify their livelihoods
and improve their well-being.
Forest landscape restoration is
not just an environmental strategy, it is an economic and social
development strategy as well.”
Among the pledging countries is Madagascar, where the
island forests are home to some
of the world’s most unique
plants and animals, all under
threat from deforestation. Satellite images of the island show
forests that have been slashed
and burned, according to the
World Wildlife Foundation.
To astronauts observing from
space, Madagascar seems like
an island bleeding into the
ocean as its rich red soil, eroded
by decades of unregulated logging, runs into the ocean, leaving behind cratered land unfit
for farming, according to
the foundation.
Some of the countries that
are home to the Congo Basin,
which conservationists call the
earth’s second set of lungs after
the Amazon Basin, have also
signed up to the project. The
Democratic Republic of Congo
has pledged 8 million hectares
(20 million acres) to the restoration project.
But these pledges may face
challenges from the global
timber industry, exacerbated
by illegal logging, which is the
biggest cause of deforestation,
according to environmental
protection group Greenpeace.
Despite laws to prevent this, it is
has never been easier to illegally
chop down trees in the Congo
Basin, the group said.
Corruption in the Congo
Basin region has undermined
reforms to the timber industry,
especially in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, where protected wildlife areas are increasingly disturbed, according to a
Greenpeace report published
earlier this year.
If this initiative succeeds, it
would improve the lives of people living around forests and
to the ecosystem as a whole,
said Victorine Che Thoener,
leader of Greenpeace’s Congo
Basin project.
“But many of these African
countries make these pledges in
the hope that they will receive
funding,” said Che Thoener,
who is based in Cameroon, one
of the Congo Basin countries
that have signed the pledge.
“There’s a lot of talk, but not
a lot of action on the ground.”
Similar conservation efforts
have failed because they do not
include the right training and
tools to monitor the progress,
said Che Thoener.
Acknowledging these challenges, the World Research
Institute is working on a monitoring project that includes satellite and ground-level observation, said Sean De Witt,
director of the organizations
global restoration initiative.
From The Associated Press
The son of a founding revolutionary
of the Chinese Communist Party has
penned an open letter, published in a
Hong Kong newspaper, telling Chinese leader Xi Jinping to end oneparty dictatorship and transform
China into a democracy.
“If you really want to eliminate corruption,” writes Luo Yu, who is now
71 and lives in the United States, “the
only way is to introduce democracy in
a gradual and orderly fashion.”
“China is beset by crises: a crisis in
faith, morality, the environment, the
economy, finance, education, medicine, and natural resources,” Luo
continues. “Why? The root of all
the problems is the one-party dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party.”
The remarkable open letter was
published in the Hong Kong-based
Chinese newspaper Apple Daily on
Dec. 3.
Luo Yu joins the growing list of former Party cadres, Chinese dissidents,
and veteran China watchers who are
predicting that the Chinese regime
is teetering on collapse, in contrast
to the image of a rising superpower
the authorities seek to project to
the world.
The letter also comes at a time
when the top Party leadership seems
increasingly paranoid that the regime
will collapse if it wavers from orthodox Marxist beliefs.
The Luo and Xi families have a
deep history together, as indicated
in how Luo addresses Xi Jinping as
“brother Xi.”
He opens the letter by reminding Xi of the close relationship their
parents shared. Luo Ruiqing, a very
early Party member and the founder
of the regime’s public security apparatus, and Xi Zhongxun, who formerly headed the Party’s propaganda department, became “intimate
friends” after both were made vice
premiers of the State Council—
the equivalent of China’s cabinet—
in 1959.
Their wives would watch plays at
the Great Hall of the People together,
and visited each other after Luo Ruiqing’s death from illness in 1978.
They maintained contact after Xi
Zhongxun was placed under house
arrest—partly orchestrated by fallen
Politburo member Bo Xilai’s father,
Bo Yibo—in the southern Chinese
city of Shenzhen after Xi Zhongxun
backed reform-minded Chinese premier Hu Yaobang in the 1980s.
Luo Yu and his late wife, former Hong
Kong actress Tina Leung, in an undated
photo.
In the letter, Luo then congratulates Xi Jinping on staying in power
despite an attempted coup by a rival
political faction (consisting of former
Politburo member and Chongqing
strongman Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang, the former security chief), but
insists that his anti-corruption campaign to rectify the Party will ultimately lead to its collapse.
“The entire Communist Party is
rotten. No official isn’t corrupt, and
by opposing corruption, you are
opposing the Party,” Luo writes. “And
in the Politburo Standing Committee, you have one supporter, one neutral, and four awaiting your fall.”
With myriad problems plaguing
China and speeding the regime’s collapse, Luo Yu says Xi should allow
a free press, allow the formation of
new political parties, hold democratic
elections, establish an independent
judiciary, and turn over control of the
military from the Party to the nation.
“You said at the United Nations:
‘Peace, development, equity, justice,
democracy, and freedom are common values of all mankind’ ... Please
don’t say one thing and do another,”
Luo writes.
“The Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, and the persecution of Falun Gong are all cases
of the Party leading the way in violating the law,” Luo writes.
In concluding the letter, Luo says:
“Our fathers were key revolutionaries of Mao Zedong ... But after the
revolution, instead of a democratic
government, we have a dictatorship.
That’s the difference between Mao
and America’s George Washington.”
“I thought we could speak discreetly, being brothers from a similar
background,” Luo adds, alluding to
their heritage as princelings, or children of revolutionary leaders. “But I
have to resort to yelling, as there are
no channels for communication in a
dictatorship.”
Miss World Canada, Anastasia Lin, Returns Home to Hero’s Welcome
Beauty queen greeted with cheers after being denied entry to China and beauty pageant finals
By Matthew Little
Epoch Times Staff
TORONTO—Miss World Canada Anastasia Lin returned
home to cheers and camera
flashes after spending a week
in Hong Kong, where she garnered international attention
for her attempt, ultimately
unsuccessful, to attend the Miss
World Finals in Sanya, China.
“All Hail Queen Ana,” read
one of the signs among a group
of 30 or so people who turned
out to greet the beauty queen
at the Toronto Pearson International Airport. Speaking
to reporters about her experience, Lin said she couldn’t have
expected events to play out the
way they did.
“I did not expect this to
become an international incident, that’s for sure. When I
went there, my sole purpose
was really to represent Canada
in the contest,” she said in an
interview with the Epoch Times
upon her arrival.
Lin’s turn as Miss World Canada brought more attention to
the beauty pageant than it has
had in years, after she went
public with threats her father
in China faced from Chinese
security personnel who wanted
him to silence his daughter.
Lin campaigned for her
crown on a platform of religious
freedom and human rights. She
has spoken out publicly against
the Communist Party’s persecution of Falun Gong and other
groups in China.
“I entered the Miss World
competition because their
motto is beauty with a purpose. I think I stand for values
that are very core to Canadians:
freedom, tolerance, and diversity. That was my initial wish.”
“Of course, those values
are not shared by every government. Although I am sad
I am not in Sanya, the support I got from all over the
world is overwhelming. I really
appreciate that.”
Lin said she hoped she would
be able to slip into Sanya unnoticed on a landing visa, and that
she would not be discriminated
against. She said it would have
even helped China’s reputation
internationally.
“But I guess we overestimated
them a bit. But overall I have
achieved my goal, that people now know about this kind
of story. Because it is not just
MATTHEW LITTLE/EPOCH TIMES
Miss World Canada, Anastasia Lin, returns to Canada after a week in
Hong Kong at the Toronto Pearson International Airport on Dec. 3.
me—my case is just the tip of
the iceberg. It shows a huge pattern: that the communist government uses visas and family
members as leverage to silence
people outside China.”
One of the upsides to being
denied entry to Sanya, said
Lin, was spending a week in
Hong Kong.
“People there are so warm,
and they really get it. It’s
because they are trying to
defend their own freedom, inch
by inch in their own backyard,
so you can see that in them,
they really treasure when someone speaks up.
“They are aware of how
important, how precious freedom is,” she said.
Lin said she doesn’t have
immediate plans on what to
do next, but she wants to use
her platform to speak up for
those suffering oppression. She
said the attention and crown
amplify her voice, and she is
now considering her options.
With all the media attention, Lin said, if people only
take one thing from her many
interviews, it is: “If you persist,
if you stick to what you know
is right, then eventually change
will come.”