"Five thousand years civilisation" and old wine in new bottles

 It might be convenient to use my having just spent six months in China as an excuse for neglecting the blog. However, until a couple of weeks ago, the vpn gave me access to blogger.com. Indeed, the few posts during the last six months show that for most of the time I could access everything and anything. At least that was until the run up to and during the 90th anniversary of the CCP, when the DNS posioning took effect  Nevertheless, perhaps the last couple of weeks were a blessing in disguise with my being forced out of my little bubble and forced to experience a world of censorship that had remained, more or less, not applicable to me during this particular stint in China. Now, was this what Adam Boulton was thinking as he asked the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, when China was going to make progress on human rights? 

That was not what Mr Boulton meant, but that should not seduce us into thinking that the man from Rupert Murdoch's Sky News is as interested in human rights per se, as he is in scoring points for an employer who could show the Chinese Communist Party a trick or two when it comes suffocating  a truely free, press. Now, if you don't get the point you might want to have a look at the film "Outfoxed". Of course, being already doped  by Murdoch's 'News Corporation', most people are hardly likely to engage cognitively with that or any other real news. Therefore, for them a skimming and scanning of the phone hacking affair that will now see Murdoch's 'News of the World' being most probably replaced by Murdoch's 'Sun', would suffice.

There are human rights violations in China. Nevertheless, the mainstream media, which actually stifles freedom of expression in a West that engages in illegal wars and the surpression of human rights all over the planet, is not in a position to lecture. Indeed, with China itself becoming increasingly chauvanistic as it becomes more and more powerful, this is in fact dangerous and, when Wen Jinbao indirectly refers to his nation's five thousand year civilisation, there is an indication of a new exclusivity. However, with people spitting, shoving, shouting and shiting in public and with factories and cars choking people to death, while employers bully employees, that exclusiveness has about as much moral substance as democracy made in the United States of America. Old wine in new bottles? To some extent, yes, and, unfortunately, Rupert Murdoch and the Chinese Communist Party are going to do everything they can to ensure that we do not become teetotalers.