Chinas Torch

It’s Sunday in London, a city that has been hailed as the most cosmopolitan metropolis in the world, and the protestors are out, those pesky nuisances to “proper and civil discourse”.

Chinas Olympic torch is trying to make its way through these crowded streets with the aid of athletes, television and films stars and an assortment of other people someone has apparently deemed “important enough” to carry this flame from one block to the next.

The torchbearer is surrounded on all sides by Chinese security guards, and those security guards are flanked by a bevy of British policemen on “foot, on bicycles and motorbikes.”

Nice to see all the effort that has gone into protecting not a person but a flame. No, that’s not right is it? They’re not just protecting a flame are they?

Well, of course its not that simple, it never really is.

No, they’re protecting an idea, a symbol of what China says it is and hopes to become, but is not yet. Chinas human rights record is deplorable at best and horrific in reality. Chinas recent (and long term) actions toward Tibet have caused uproar amongst people around the world.

Of course the government of the United States has been “stern yet balanced” in response to Chinas glaring human rights violations, including the most recent ones happening in Tibet. Which makes sense since the States is basically owned by China (we owe them Trillions of dollars meaning we are in debt slavery to them).

A New York Times article spun it like this on behalf of the British government,

“Caught in the middle [of Sundays protest] was the British government, which like many others around the world has sought to find a middle way between fostering good relations with China by supporting the Beijing games, and placating those at home who oppose holding the games in a country often cited as having one of the world’s worst records for punishing dissent.”

What the reporters were really meaning to say was that the U.S., Britain, and a handful of other world superpowers support China and remain spineless and damn near silent on this issue because they are benefiting massively from Chinas lack of human rights laws. Think sweatshops, and when you think sweatshops think Nike or Disney or any other corporate monolith that has set up shop in China precisely because they can get away with paying the workers virtually nothing and treating them however they want to.

Don’t let the “Olympic Dream” blindside you. Don’t play victim to the “this is Chinas time to shine” speeches. If anything this is the time to shine a glaring spotlight upon the darkest places of corruption and greed that have ruled the long night for too many of Chinas people.

And in other news that you probably don’t want to read about much less hear me rant about the government of the Unites States is trying (and doing a fairly successful job might I add) to push through an act that would virtually outlaw blogs like mine from seeing the light of day. It would also give the government the right to deem me a “homegrown terrorist” or “violent radicalist” dependent upon what mood they were in that day.

This is serious stuff folks. Its called the H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (also known as S 1959) and it would basically give government the power to dub anyone who so much as even thinks a subversive thought against the U.S. government to be deemed a “Violent Radicalist” to dealt with “accordingly”.

Scary, scary stuff. I like how they added “violent” before the word Radicalist. No one likes violence, right? Hence you throw the word violent in front of Radicalist and voila! you’ve redefined millions of radical citizens (when I say “radical” I'm thinking of people like Martin Luther King, Saul Alinsky, Pete Seeger) as a violent group of terrorists looking to destroy not only the government but also the people of the United States.

It’s all about words and how you use them, and the government knows how to use them.

If I were you I’d get informed about this act. You can track its progress through Senate at this nifty little site: Govtrack. It just might affect you more than you’d like to think it would. Get educated, get active, and get out there and start talking to others.

Silence and apathy are our two worst enemies.