Taiwan, China, and other things. Recovered from the defunct TypePad platform.
China hands 3 1/2-year prison sentence to 65-year old granny who organised retiree-benefit protest
In Chu's defense, I'm sure she was a VERY grave threat to Chinese national security.
Update (Nov 22/2012): China arrests blogger for TWITTER joke.
Beijing Bev could not be reached for comment. AGAIN.
What, no editorials from Taiwan's China Post, cheering on Liu Xiaobo for the Nobel Peace Prize? Whose struggle for freedom and democracy is something that Chinese everywhere can take justifiable pride in? Not a word from the newspaper which has stated that after a century, it's HIGH-TIME for a person of Chinese extraction to win?
Nope, guess not. Where once were glowing paeans for Beijing's '08 Olympics, are now only crickets for the frontrunner poised to become China's FIRST-EVER winner of the award. Chinese nationalists, indeed.
(But then, when one takes the position that democracy is the worst political system ever tried (bar none!), it's not surprising that by default one roots for Communist jailors instead.)
(Image from Reporters Without Borders)
UPDATE: An Irish gambling company which allows people to wager on who will win the prize is apparently so confident that Liu Xiaobo will come out on top that they've stopped taking bets and started paying-off bettors 48 hours before the actual announcement.
Parting with their money before they absolutely have to suggests that they're completely nuts. Or that they know something the rest of us don't…
UPDATE #2: Beijing threatens to bring Norway its knees by withholding vital supplies of heavy metal-laced cigarettes. Which will be difficult for the Norwegians to substitute, since China controls at least 92% of all the world's rare earths cadmium-flavored tobacco products.
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Dr. Jerome Keating did a pretty good job last month. But for bust-out funny, Iowahawk's the man to beat:
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. For example, some argue that one-party autocracies might not always do stuff Thomas Friedman agrees with. But this risk can easily be avoided if the one party is a reasonably enlightened group of people, such as China, and/or Thomas Friedman. Only through this one party system can we impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward into a thousand-year empire of benevolent, iron fisted enlightenment.
Come to think of it, Iowahawk sounds like Sino-Imperialist Bev Chu over on Lew Rockwell's site.
(Only difference being Iowahawk has tongue planted firmly in cheek, while Bev is dead serious.)