The right to peacibly assemble, so long as you're doing what the government says

There are, it seems, some protesters in China that are being tolerated by the national government. A last-ditch effort to improve it's human rights record before Beijing becomes the world's biggest stage?

well, in a word, no.

Our favorite Bohemian (if she isn't your favorite then seriously, what the fuck are you doing here?) has posted on the subject of Tibet. China's tyrannical actions in the region have, and rightly so, attracted a hell of a lot of bad ink. And it's drawn protest. These protests, especially an ill-conceived attempt to grab the torch from a disabled Chinese athlete, have been a hair up the Chinese government's collective ass.

But before I get to that...

Seriously? Someone thought it would be a good idea to go after a disabled athlete.

Stupidity, it seems, is a part of the human condition, for even if we don't propagate it ourselves, it is bound to touch us all.

In any case, dealing with a PR nightmare is a lot easier if you happen to control the media. Xinhua and CCTV have managed to get a non-trivial portion of the populace to believe that protests favoring the liberation of Tibet are motivated by anti-Chinese sentiment that overreaches distaste for their government. My last post was in part about the frankly amazing potential power of net activism. But imagine that same power in a country where the Internet is a government-mandated echo chamber. Where it isn't a question as to whether or not the pro-Tibet movement was an outrage, but what, as a citizen, one is obliged to do about it.

And so came the protest at the French embassy in China.

And this isn't an isolated incident. CCTV has condemned CNN for Jack Cafferty's statement that China was run by "the same goons and thugs who were running it fifty years ago," twisting his words to be taken as a slight on the Chinese people rather than their government.

An interesting note. I've been told that the literal translation of Xinhua is "Newspeak." The institution predates Orwell's 1984, so it stands to reason that he could have taken the name from there, but at the very least it's a fitting coincidence.

For another laugh...



At the very least, this seems to be a contradiction of the adage that those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it.

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Another Tuesday looms.

Can we please be shot of Hillary Clinton already?

On Countdown she just kept laughing like an idiot when Keith Olbermann asked her why the fuck she would accept the endorsement of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a paper that six years ago printed columns alleging that she was responsible for the death of Vincent Foster, and ten years ago was leading the charge to impeach her husband, and thus can be directly linked to the eight years of bullshit that came from the candidate that "values voters" favored. She continued to laugh and said that she believed in deathbed conversions.

Come to think of it, I've heard that laugh just about every time Clinton has found herself choking on her own bullshit...

Hillary Clinton is welcome to drop by my place at any time to play poker.