I totally agree with this author although would go further.

I think it all comes down to ethics and how, fundamentally, non-western cultures have appalling ethics.

The Olympics in Beijiing should be boycotted by any nations of conscience, as should nations that practice apartheid like Iran and Saudi Arabia.

China is building its nation on the backs of 200 million slave labourers who are paid poorly, some even not paid.

'No Spitting' day, yes. Anyone who has lived in Cabramatta as I have will know that spitting is an Asian cultural trait.

Isn't it crazy that some here will label me a racist for pointing out that fact!

It just shows you how dumb such cultures are too, as they think they are smart by making dog food or cough medicine on the cheap, yet no one in the west will ever buy their products again!

Anything one has to put in their body, be it medicine, food, or anything, do NOT buy it if it says 'made in China'.

It's the ethics again, and it's the same with restaurants. Everyone knows the restaurants that always pop up on the news for shocking conditions are ALWAYS Asian - be it Indian, Chinese, or other.

It's the same with cockroach infested Asian breadshops.

Is it racism to point this out? No. If someone thinks so though, I'd be happy to listen to reasons why.

Perhaps the mice, roaches, and rats are racist too.

I can understand why some of them are confused though, given we say we are multicultural.

While we Australians may have been inventing fridges so that we wouldn't need to keep covering our off meat with strong spices (hence Indian cuisine) other cultures have poor ethics so they don't care.

Apu the Indian Quick-e-Mart owner in the Simpsons is a classic stereotype of this sentiment...

...How can we say we embrace other cultures unless we truly embrace them, warts and all?

This means getting food poisoning, possibly being hacked up by thirty Asians with swords at Eastwood train station (as has happened numerous times over the last few years) and so on.

This is why I believe we should accept no other cultures. I am yet to see an ethical system better than that of North-Western European cultures.

Anyone disagree? Before you do though, you have a hard task given even those from non-western cultures are flocking in the millions on boats to try to get into a western country.

So, even those from non-western cultures agree our ethics are the best.

This means they should be exported to the entire planet, by force if need be. We just need a good US President to get in who understands that the US military needs to be used as a force for good in the world.

Look at Vietnam, the US public sentiment forced them to pull out and now it's a Communist dump.

Look at North and South Korea, this example is really all that needs to be invoked.

Wherever the Americans go, it's better for it - unless...the people are so tribal, sectarian, racist, that they can't see the opportunity it presents.

Hence the problems in Iraq with Muslims killing each other.

I have to make a couple of comments. The smog in Beijing was something to behold back in 1995 so what it is like now, one can only guess. The traffic was bearable then but if you take away two million bicycles and replace them with the same number of cars, I can imagine chaos.

I can't agree about the queuing though. My impression was that the Chinese had invented queuing. They have also got rid of all the pigeons and stray cats and dogs, so that might account for the rats. They seem to have developed a tolerance for them, even out here.

"Anything one has to put in their body, be it medicine, food, or anything, do NOT buy it if it says 'made in China'."

White Warlock, that's becoming harder and harder to do. I saw a program about fish farms in Vietnam and was immediately turned off packaged fish, especially the reconstituted rubbish that looks like giant fish-fingers, but I still enjoy a little tuna now and then. My problem is that a lot of what one buys from well known supermarkets is packaged in such a way as to make identity and source of fish, fish products and many other basic food items practically impossible. Common to many brands are the words.... "Produced in Australia from local and imported produce." Just what part was grown in Australia? What percentage of the contents originated from over-seas? And, most importantly, from which country did the imported ingredient originate?

I've become very skeptical about what I pick up in supermarkets these days. I grow a lot of my own, as our healthy grandparents did not so long ago. As a kid growing up, it was very rarely I ate bought vegetables. Everything was seasonal and came straight from dad's veggie patch. To date, I've never encountered a serious health problem and my dear old mum is well into her 90's and never sees a doctor.

My personal opinion is that Australian food packaging information is woefully inadequate.

I agree also, but would go further:
1. "an illegal trade in "harvested" human organs ... unscrupulous doctors and businessmen ... atrocity ..." This wording obscures the fact that the thugs who rule the Chinese Communist Party use their official organs, eg. their military hospitals, to perpetrate these ongoing atrocities. [Kilgour & Matas report].
2. Such atrocities and murder for financial gain are suffered by innocent prisoners of conscience and practitioners of Falun Gong.
3. Our complicity in this enormity will be likened to failures to oppose Hitler's holocaust, but without any mitigating distractions, like wars of national peril.

Perhaps things are looking up.

"Zheng Xiaoyu, former director of the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration, was executed yesterday for approving untested medicines in exchange for cash." Associated Press