On the run in China: Chen Guangcheng escapes!

Chen Guangcheng is an activist in China’s northern Shandong Province. He is blind and lives in the tiny rural village of Dongshigu, where he fought for the rights of peasants and especially women who faced forced sterilization and other abuses. He was imprisoned more than 4 years for his efforts and then placed under house […]

The Security Establishment

Now that I have finished my stint in a semi-corporate setting in a security company, i can let you know a little bit about how things work. These companies do business here with the permssion of the Chinese government. This means that they are under the constant supervision of the Public Security Bureau. As such, […]

Rage against the dying of the light

or just post some love on yer blog and send it through the underground. i remember telling some young Chinese friends about the Tank Man in Tiananmen and they all laughed at me and said it was a piece of CIA propaganda. I think for everybody who does not live in China, the image of […]

Day 6 – The Calm Before the Storm

The second week is just around the corner and I felt the lull today. Indeed, the preliminaries and qualifying rounds are almost over. The Chinese blitz on the gold medals will have its Dunkirk in a couple days when athletics begins and “their” sports come to a close. On ticket sales, one noticed a slight […]

busy day

In this small blurb about a photo that made it into a tabloid about the Tiananmen protests in 1989, we see another example of the many people these days who don’t know about what happened and frankly don’t care, yet face the consequences for their ignorance. I wrote before about a couple of copy editors […]

Picture me Laughing

china gives peeps designated “arrest me” zones to do their thing. “Chinese people know better than to go demonstrate in a {issue} zone during the Olympics, except maybe a few people with nothing to lose,” he said. “They know the risk of retribution is very high.” He added: “It is not a step toward allowing […]

Aint Nothing Changed

Things is hectic in this piece … for real. after the K’ming bombings the government made a few changes to security that are putting a crimp in everyone’s style. In the Metro lines the only security they have are cadres of fussy old women — the same people who yell at bicycles that cross the […]

Its goin down

it has struck me — and perhaps not only me — how intense things are becoming this year. The race in the US between the two democrats threatens to tire everyone out by the time the real election arrives and the protests in China threaten to cast a pallor over the games months before they […]