More dangerous consumer goods from China

WASHINGTON (AP) - Toy-maker Fisher-Price is recalling 83 types of toys—including the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora and Diego characters—because their paint contains excessive amounts of lead.

The worldwide recall being announced Thursday involves 967,000 plastic preschool toys made by a Chinese vendor and sold in the United States between May and August. It is the latest in a wave of recalls that has heightened global concern about the safety of Chinese-made products.

The recall is the first for Fisher-Price Inc. and parent company Mattel Inc. involving lead paint. It is the largest for Mattel since 1998 when Fisher-Price had to yank about 10 million Power Wheels from toy stores.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, David Allmark, general manager of Fisher-Price, said the problem was detected by an internal probe and reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Fisher-Price and the commission issued statements saying parents should keep suspect toys away from children and contact the company.

The reason that this kind of thing keeps happening with Chinese goods is that for decades China has been a communist totalitarian state. In such states the lie becomes utterly normal. One must giver assent to, repeat and give the outward appearance of believing all manner of lies as an everyday occurrence.

When a society destroys the value of truthfulness this is what inevitably happens. Especially when for most of China's history as a communist country its manufactured goods were mostly distributed within China and things like this would be covered up to prevent the state from suffering embarrassment.