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GAMES GAMES GAMES

The lead up to the Beijing Olympics is so depressingly like the approach to a UK General Election. It is all 'game playing' isn't it; fooling as many of the people as much of the time as possible.
Come to think of it, there is a lot about top level sport that mimics government. let's not go there.

Your blog link is down already: sabotage?
To get here you have to click 'web-team'; clicking 'Monday' leads to error messages.

Have you got: Mia Farrow? Stephen Spielberg? The Dalai Lama? Comrade
Mason? Daniel Cohn-Bendit MEP? Or
Kevin Rudd? Or even Henry Kissinger?

[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

The new SNP Government in Edinburgh has a China Plan too that might be worth you taking a look at. Education Minister Fiona Hyslop visited China in April 2008 as well.

Details of Fiona Hyslop
visit to China.

The Scottish Government's refreshed China Plan sets out the aims and aspirations for engagement with China May 7, 2008.

The Zimbabwe situation could do with an update soon as negotiations have been going on.

Phil Woolas on the GM debate he wanted to lead. Don't think it got far.

How about a continuation of the 68 series soon on the allegations that Wilson was a spy. If I understood the gist of Tom Mangolds "Coldwar Warrior" he subscribed to the theory that elements of the CIA like Angleton and elements of MI5 like Wright did indeed believe that.

Why not set up Mangold and Rimmington who said in her Dimbleby lecture that there was never any conspiracy against Wilson.

As so much time has passed perhaps there is little reason to hide the truth now.

Scottish referendum 2010 is due soon - are we prepared for a possible SNP victory. We signed up for a new airbase there the other day. Smart move? If Trident has to move where is it going etc. etc.

Sorry Neil (2) - bit of a glitch with the link on the homepage, it's now sorted.

With 1.3 billion people, the number one problem is how to feed them.

When I would criticise the leaders, I stop and think what tremendous problems they face and how well they have been doing.

When complaints arise from Western sources, the usual response is "we are making progress". Indeed, they are!

Now, pause for a moment. What would be the probable result if the American or the British political system were applied in China?

(I raise these points because I know the usual NEWSNIGHT format of talking heads
solving the World's problems in three to five thirty-second sound bytes.)

so who got peter's job. Can we have a tv phone in reality show to choose someone?

olympics is a contest between chemists and the drug testers or between organised betting gangs and the bookies. so why go there? Why collude?

A woman who helped a Chinese spy obtain U.S. military secrets has been sentenced in Virginia to a year and a half in prison.

A Staines dad-of-two has been kept in solitary confinement in Qatar for the past month after being accused of spying. Ian Heywood, a former British Airways executive, is fighting to return to Britain after being held for nearly a month in the Middle East on suspicion of industrial espionage.

who is china's Solzhenitsyn?

is it Harry Wu and his book "Bitter Winds" ?

There are mass executions with the consequent sale of human organs. The exploitation of children is widespread, obliged to forced labour. The different Churches and communities of believers suffer threats and reprisals. Abortions and forced sterilizations are widespread.

There is a widespread abuse of psychiatry as an instrument of political oppression.


Soviets designed the first Chinese gulags or Laogai, down to the windows being slanted in barrack so that there would be no ledge to grab?

Did you notice the cheeky sign-off on David Miliband's Foreign Office blog 'The Road To
Gatwick'? He ends: "Blog resumes in three weeks or so. Hopefully browner and fresher." Ouch!



Meanwhile civil war has broken out in the Labour Party in Scotland following a wall
poster comment by the former Holyrood
Minister Tom McCabe MSP (who was also -
incidentally - one of the architects of the
Scottish Government's China policy under
Jack McConnell). He has been denounced.

bookhimdano (#9) Given that the 1982 PRC constitution proscribes some activities which the West and other liberal-democracies consider essential human rights or freedoms ("the law forbids the advocation of independence or self-determination for territories Beijing considers under its jurisdiction, as well as public challenge to the CCP's monopoly in ruling China. Thus references to democracy, the Free Tibet movement, Taiwan as an independent state, certain religious organizations and anything remotely questioning the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China are banned from use in publications and blocked on the Internet")

s_Republic_of_China

as the Chinese government sees it, they are upholding rule of law, and Western NGOs (like Amnesty International) and human rights activists are regarded as hostile subversives acting de facto in the interests of incompatible powers - so they ban/arrest them.

Why do Western 'NGOs' (or activists) believe that they have the right to interfere with the domestic policies of countries which operate under such laws? Amnesty International asserts at their website:

"Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all."

Which manifestly is not true, as presumably, if it were, China wouldn't block their internet site/report?

Well- you'd have thought that, with oil comps screwing us, credit crunch biting left right and centre, as yet unquantified PFI debts waiting to be added to the books etc, our Dear Leader might be interested in sitting down and doing his job (as opposed to useless public posturing-remember those rolled up sleeves?-and,er, "listening") - but oh no,no.. not ours Gordon!

Apparently he's just discovered the and will !

Oh, for [censored]!! If this continues I'll be bald come the autumn....

The idea of Cabinet roadshows is lifted from Scotland where the SNP Government does this during the summer recess. On a recent
Cabinet visit to Dumfries, interestingly, Alex
Salmond discovered that a company in the
South West of Scotland makes a polymer
that apparently goes into identity cards
in China ............. market of 1200 million!

Wonder if members of the Cabinet will be briefed by MI5 prior to their visit to West
Midlands on the dangers of the Miliband
honeytrap - and asked to return all their
mobilephones on their return to London?

What happens here (and in Comment Is Free and other blogs) is that when a user freely expresses her or his views, what's said is carefully scrutinised by moderators (so it doesn't 'offend' - but to whose benefit?). If deemed to break 'House Rules' it's swiftly consigned to a 'Memory Hole'. In The Guardian's Comment is Free (which it most certainly isn't) disfavoured past postings at odds with the lead article author's views or government policy have been known to surreptitiously disappear.

More telling;y, publicly talking about some subjects in European countries still gets one arrested and imprisoned.

How is that any different from China?

COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS COMMENT (Cloe #12 - tiddleywinks)

As any fule kno, in the absence of finger nails, ones tiddle is unreliable, both directionally and in terms of elevation, due to the pudge-factor of the finger tip. This reduces the player to a winker and the game is forfeit under new EU regulations.

The thought of Gordon re-appearing, slim and tanned, but with the same old stumps for digits, makes one wonder if he should have taken a psychotherapist with him - or maybe a Super Nanny and a couple of stout cardboard boxes?

The next PM will be equally bizarre; just different bizarre The old computer adage applies to political parties choosing a leader, as surely as it does to computing: RUBBISH IN - RUBBISH OUT.

When attempting to portray human right's infringements in China the media often show poor people evicted from their houses to make way for new " developments ".

The pan is ever apt to call the kettle black, here in the UK people are being evicted from their perfectly habitable well kept terraced houses. However, that's OK because its all part of Prescott's Pathfinder project for the regeneration. Its called Elevate in East Lancs, they don't even swap you a house for a house, you could be left with a large debt or renting when you thought that you had paid for your house outright for life.

Its just as bad as China but the Corporate Nazi leaning media appear to gloss over it.

An Open Society?
It's not only blog sites, like this one, that moderate (suppress?) facts and the truth.

Many organisations with sincere and good credentials seem to operate a sort of self-censuring policy, probably constrained by years of political correctness and acceptance that free speech is no longer welcome in our society.

I once supported Amnesty International, having seen at first hand some of the crielties of a certain African dictator, but I cannot accept AI's support for open immigration to UK; similarly with Council for Preservation of Rural England, who rightly campaign against the building of millions of houses in certain areas, but refuse to comment on the fact that the 'need' for so many additional houses is caused by uncontrolled immigration and the high birth rate of many immigrants, compared to that of the indigenous population.

Can we still claim to be an open society ?

Goose steppers with intellectual pretensions. I suppose it all starts in childhood really.

I've just been looking up Xin Jiang following the excellent James Reynolds's live report
from there by the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News. I confess my
knowledge of the geography of Xin Jiang
was non-existent - until about 5 minutes ago. I suppose that is what is important
about taking these Olympics to China - it
does indeed open the country up to folk
like me (even with all these restrictions)?

Such a huge area; so many millions of very different peoples; such a rich cultural history; so many different languages.

I have 15 volumes of Joseph Needham's
'Science and Civilisation' on my shelves
too so am aware it is also very ancient!
They also know a lot about medical use of dynamite according to these volumes and
that is now a multi-million pharmaceutical
business - according to Uni of St Andrews.

"Science and Civilisation in China" by Joseph Needham is the proper title of
these volumes which the University of
Cambridge continues to publish I see:

thegangofone (#19) "Goose steppers with intellectual pretensions. I suppose it all starts in childhood really."

Over-disclosure - aka 'too much information'. Been hitting the books I see.

'Lots of production effort is needed to ensure that the look and structure of the show works properly.'

Let's make sure we have substance and not show eh? Like instead of lightweight circular arguments and Gavin superficiality, how about some real connections to real stuff.

Just seen the poll results, what on earth do the Koreans have against Chinese PEOPLE?

No one said anything convincing about China and climate change. Although the country isn't to blame for CC, with the CO2 stocks coming from 200 years of industrial activity, it is about to become the biggest emitter (which we all share in as consumers) and has a lot to lose in terms of natural disasters. If the summer of 2003 becomes normal by 2040, life could become unbearable. It's not enough to say 'well, our population didn't double like India' - that's playground talk. As the UK's emissions rose in real terms in line with economic growth, the magic rabbit needing to be pulled from the hat is truly decoupling carbon and growth.

Maybe that's why politicians want to bang on about having 'faith' and using 'faith' groups to heal the 'broken society'? Perhaps religious faith is all that's left? With the capitalist communist China (capitalist with a capital 'C') the world is entering a post political age. From now on we can cast our vote in a pound shop.

China brought us ping pong diplomacy in the 1970's so I enjoyed this timely piece
about table-tennis in Easterhouse and Drumchapel by legendary social worker
and radical Bob Holman .......................:

I thought last nights programme was excellent and the polls interesting.

On the far right and immigration as ever the Searchlight website mentions:

"We broadcast a video, shot only four years ago, which shows leading BNP officials singing racist songs and giving a Nazi salute. We reveal the nazi and terrorist links of the BNP leadership and we explain, in the "Us and Them" section, just why the BNP does not stand in the great British tradition of tolerance, equality and compassion"

Why do the far right pretend to be something they are not? Wolves in sheep's clothing!

PARADOXICAL INTENTION

thegangofone (#27) "the BNP does not stand in the great British tradition of tolerance, equality and compassion"

As these are values which you appear to cherish and presumably defend/promote, perhaps you can explain to us why the (indigenous) British are now having so few children, why 20% of primary school children are 'failing' to reach 'the required standard' and why so many of our schools are buckling under the strain of trying to be tolerant, compassionate and reach 'the required standard'?



Might any of this be because people are not in fact equal because cognitive ability is largely genetic, 80% heritable and is normally distributed? Might it be that nefarious rhetoric like yours in practice turns the promotion of "tolerance, equality and compassion" into a formula for the erosion of great British traditions and that this may be the real agenda of the human rights/equalities/PC lobby?

This is not an endorsement of the BNP, it's just a warning that vilifying some of what the BNP and other 'goosesteppers' appear to stand for merely serves to endorse something far worse - predatory anarcho-capitalism aka a 'Worker's Democracy'.

'Wolves in sheep's clothing'.... indeed.

Barrie #16 - call for moderation, ey? Fell free to complain about/remove my #12, it was pure venting. On balance I'm not sure everyone is that useless, it's bound to be more complicated than that.. But somehow, and I really have no idea how, Brown and his posse don't seem to realise that these stories make him look infinitely worse. I wonder how far removed from Planet Earth you have to be before you turn into little green men on Mars?... I'd better stop...

Talking of venting, just saw this link on - ought to keep you busy for a while..