President Bush Visits Bangkok, Thailand
August 7, 2008, 9:30 A.M. (Local)

[...] Our constructive relationship in these areas has placed America in a better position to be honest and direct on other issues. I have spoken clearly and candidly and consistently with China's leaders about our deep concerns over religious freedom and human rights. I have met repeatedly with Chinese dissidents and religious believers. The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings.

Hah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!  Good one!

Oh wait, it gets better!

The Beijing Olympics ended as a global public relations success. Everyone who watched filtered what they saw and heard through the prisms of their own experiences. From my experiences here in the United States and from my years in Taiwan I couldn’t help but watch with a cautious eye.

Obama's campaign logos have been accused of being presumptuous. They have been accused of being 'too Pepsi.' If you care about logos, put your mind on this:

We are all familiar with the propaganda drumbeat on China - they have no rights, they can't use the Internet the way they want, their freedom of religion and speech are repressed, they live in a police state. This view misses the point that freedom comes from within, not from without by a grant of rights by a benevolent sovereign. Freedom of thought can never be taken away, it can only be given away.

Case in point, the recent trial of a Chinese cop killer that has captured all the headlines in China. If a person kills a cop in the US, there is no sympathy. Merely the unsubstantiated accusation of such a crime, backed up by obviously cooked up evidence, is enough to have such a person condemned to death, and what's more, condemned by his peers, without sympathy, as the lowest form of life. But in China people are actually asking questions about what the police did to this man to provoke this response. In conflict between human and the state and its violent enforcers, the Chinese sympathies lie on the side of the oppressed human. Where do ours lie and why?

In 1971 both Kissinger and Nixon talked with the Chinese about the specific release of 4 US soldiers. One of these was Philip Eldon Smith, a POW since 1965 when his plane was shot down over the Chinese island of Hai Nan Tao.

Supporters of Falun Gong - a spiritual movement founded in China -  march on downtown Denver at the Democratic National Convention 2008.

For the last few weeks, all eyes have been on China. They hosted a stunning Olympic games and won tons of gold medals to boot. It is understandable, then, that there would be a renewed focus on China in the media and in the minds of the American people. We thought we'd take a look at China too. Over the next few days, we'll look at China as it relates to Wal-Mart.

Today, we'll look at the role of China in manufacturing.

As I watched the 2008 Beijing Olympics these past two weeks, a concern that had long been in the back of my head started to manifest itself in a very bizarre way. Believe it or not, these Olympics have given China - despite all the protests leading up to the opening ceremonies – the opportunity to display to the world the power the country holds. With the host country spending between $45 and $80 billion on the event, what we are seeing is not simply a global contest of athleticism, but rather a presentation of amazing proportions. Through China's financial and cultural support, the mega-event that is this year's Olympics is beginning to make one thing certain: America's hegemonic grip on the world is fading fast.

I started to notice this last week when I wanted to check the medal standings of nations on CNN/SI. I saw something funny: they list the rankings based not on the gold medal achievements, but on total medal, which made the US number one in the rankings. I mean, please tell me: has it been the norm to rank countries' achievements by total medal instead of the number of gold medal in the US? Or is it just this year?

Since Beijing (and that would be Peking to McSame) is about 12 hours ahead of us here in the states, the Closing Ceremonies are finished.

And while NBC will keep you waiting, the BBC, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) and the official Beijing Olympic website are more generous in sharing the events in real-time.  (In fact if you were in a UK territory, you could watch it right on your 'puter.)  So h/t to all of them for these pics.

So let the games now close:

Once upon a time, in a faraway land called China, a major sports event was hosted. This event was called the Olympics. During this event, an American was murdered and his wife was seriously injured, as was their Chinese guide. The man was related to an Olympic coach.  The media covered the murder, of course, but they failed to delve deeply into it. Why not?

The murder occurred the day after the opening ceremony, and in light of the fact that the Chinese were trying to show the world that they are now a modern society, it's understandable that they preferred the world's focus to be on the city of Beijing rather than on the murder. However, it's unlike the American media to let a murder story go uninvestigated. There are still few details available as to what really happened and why the murder occurred.

I have been working on an argument that I find even the most die-hard Republicans and Independents have great difficulty responding to.  It is an argument that establishes the clear superiority of our position as to national security, the economy, employment, and the legacy that we will leave for our children. I also believe that it recognizes and addresses a serious and dramatic problem that is looming. Single issue voters need to be told that their issue, regardless of whatever it is, pails in comparison to this issue.  

I wonder if the traditional media will remove their lips from China's rear end long enough to cover this one.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

A group of six Americans who were taken into custody on Tuesday as they tried to protest China’s rule in Tibet have been given 10-day detentions, the Chinese police confirmed on Friday.

Lovely.  What did these horrible individuals do to deserve such treatment?

Most of the organization’s demonstrations have involved unfurling "Free Tibet" banners or displaying Tibetan flags, which are illegal in China. In the latest action, just after midnight Thursday morning, four protestors raised their fists and shouted slogans while waving a Tibetan flag near National Stadium. As with the other protests, the participants were quickly bundled away by plainclothes police.

Hey!  Sounds like grounds for imprisonment to me!  

Whether or not the protest was a good idea, don't we deserve even a tiny bit of coverage about the problems in China thrown in with all the tremendous media buttkissing we've seen for the last week and a half?  Maybe?

Dear Olympic National Committee,

I would like to thank the Chinese dictatorship for sponsoring a spectacle worthy of a nation with an unlimited budget and a surging inferiority complex . A large tacky affair with some local costumes, like other nations have traditionally produced, would not have been a proper coming out party for the new China. Only proper totalitarian countries can marshal thousands to perform in machine like precision for the pride of the nation. China has proven worthy of a Gold Medal leaving North Korea a distant silver. This is an achievement that is as much historical as it is Las Vegas.

We have to go back several generations since one of Belgium's neighbors proudly created the medium, but with that unpleasantness set aside, we can all agree we had seen nothing like it and will have to wait until China gets another opportunity to see something like it again.

Note to London: please don't try to coordinate 2,012 Brits to do anything this precise especially if there is anything on tap nearby.

In a hard-hitting Op-Ed in this morning's Financial Times, Singapore's Kishore Mahbubani writes that The West is strategically wrong on Georgia

... most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia. America would not tolerate Russia intruding into its geopolitical sphere in Latin America. Hence Latin Americans see American double standards clearly. So do all the Muslim commentaries that note that the US invaded Iraq illegally, too. Neither India nor China is moved to protest against Russia. It shows how isolated is the western view on Georgia: that the world should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia. In reality, most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be greater.

He extends that diagnosis to our overall approach to the world (as quoted below the fold) and makes a convincing case that the West has an incoherent strategy towards the rest of the world. I would like to suggest, however, that the current 'strategy' has a narrow rationality intimately linked to our current dysfunctional politics.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The Chinese Government is very afraid of these two women.

Seventy-nine-year-old Wu Dianyuan, on the right, and her neighbor Wang Xiuying, 77, followed the law.  They applied for a protest permit.  They wanted to protest inadequate compensation for the taking of their homes in preparation of the Olympics.  They asked for the permit five times.  They didn't get it.  They ended up instead being sentenced to a year of "re-education through labor."

Join me in Beijing.

Stunning! I was just listening to the POTUS channel on XM Radio, when I heard John McCain at today's Town Hall meeting in Las Cruces, N.M. He actually told the crowd that the United States of America could stay competitive with China by buying and selling a bunch of old crap on eBay! I could not believe he said it, so I listened again to the audio and transcribed his speech ...

Two Women Sentenced to ‘Re-education’ in China
By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — Two elderly Chinese women have been sentenced to a year of "re-education through labor" after they repeatedly sought a permit to demonstrate in one of the official Olympic protest areas, according to family members and human rights advocates.

http://www.nytimes.com/...