Sunday 3 August 2008

China and the Olympics

Take a look at the labels on the clothes you wear.

No doubt most of them will be marked 'Made In China'.

That means they were made in a nation that is a Communist dictatorship and were the products of a globalised system of industry and economics that closes down factories in the UK and sacks British workers then exports those jobs to China.

Now read the article below - and ask yourself what sort of system is it that trades with China whilst the chinese government is spying on us and trying to steal our military and industrial secrets.

Globalism is the most evil system ever invented by man, it sups with the devils of the world whilst enriching the scum of Britain.

Any company that closes down British factories, offshores those jobs and then produces their goods in China should be classified as a traitor to the British nation and people.

Only when globalism is banned and industry repatriated back to the UK will we be able to save our country.

We may have far less cheap plastic crap commodities in our homes - but our people will have work and dignity.

Less is More.

The Olympics are a sick joke.

Holding them in China is just another crime against humanity by a morally devoid system that enriches dictators who imprison and kill their own people.

A few weeks of steroid injected freaks distracting the public whilst wars wage around the world, the New Roman Games for a dying and degenerate global order.

The idea that anyone should take the Olympics seriously is joke. The amount of so called 'olympic heroes' that have been revealed as drug cheats means the whole system of sport is meaningless.

For the few that do deserve the accolade of hero have been betrayed by those who seek only glory and gold.

The Olympics is nothing more than a spin excercise for globalism, a way to get the people of the world to think we are all one - when in fact we are all slaves.

Spare me the outburst of facile Plastic Patriotism that will be unleashed in the country, the sight of slaves cheering the games of their masters is sickening.




" Wave the flag when you are told,
Salute the lies that you are sold,
Gaze in awe upon distant shores,
As your liberty is made a whore ".





August 3, 2008

Beijing Olympics: the spying games

There’s more to the imminent Olympic Games in Beijing than meets the eye. So what’s hidden behind the slogan of One World, One Dream?

Isabel Oakeshott, Michael Sheridan and Flora Bagenal in Beijing

Two weeks ago, the Whitehall mandarins, ministerial aides and officials who will be in Beijing when the Olympic Games open on Friday were summoned for what they thought would be a series of pro-forma chats with MI5. What they heard was hair-raising.

“It was all very James Bond,” according to one of the 100 or more who were called in by the security service. “We were told to trust nobody. We were warned that there is going to be a huge spy presence in Beijing, and that we should expect to be followed wherever we go.”

The alert came after The Sunday Times reported that a top aide accompanying Gordon Brown to China early this year had been caught in a suspected “honeytrap” by a woman who vanished from his hotel room with his BlackBerry.

The aides and officials accompanying Brown and four ministers to the Olympics were told they must take no laptops and that all BlackBerries or mobile phones must be “clean” – containing no contact numbers or other information.

It is a reminder that, although China has transformed itself into a more self-confident, outgoing and even outspoken society than it was when awarded the games seven years ago, it is still ruled by authoritarians who are above the law.

The official slogan is One World, One Dream. But these are also the Spying Games.

China has justified heavy security measures, entailing the deployment of 110,000 security personnel in Beijing and restrictions on visas, by the need to protect the Olympics against unspecified threats of terrorism.

Surface to air missiles have been placed around the Olympic “bird’s nest” stadium, and from 2pm on Friday – six hours before the opening ceremony is due to start – airports around Beijing will be in lock-down. The army has been instructed to shoot down anything that moves in the five designated air zones above the city. There is much more than an antiterrorist exercise going on, however. A western intelligence official said the Chinese security services saw the Olympics as “a goldmine for intelligence gathering, blackmail and commercial secrets”.

The US state department issued an official warning this year to travellers attending the games that there was “no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations” in China.

It’s not just that the men on the streets in Good Luck Beijing T-shirts and lookalike baseball caps are likely to be vigilantes looking for troublemakers. The man coming into your hotel room to change your free slippers may also be on the security payroll.

“The [British] security services seem particularly worried about the Chinese hotel staff going into our bedrooms,” said a senior aide who will be accompanying ministers.

“We were told they will find an excuse to go into our room five or more times a day. They’ll say they’ve come to change the free slippers – but actually they’ll be on the lookout for any phones or documents we might have left lying around.” Last December Jonathan Evans, director-general of MI5, warned that China was carrying out state-sponsored espionage against vital parts of Britain’s economy, including the computer systems of big banks and financial services firms.

A main fear now is that business visitors to China will be permanently subject to “a cold war level” of industrial espionage from systems put in place for the games.

Two industry sources have confirmed that internet surveillance software to spy on guests at the games has been installed at some international hotel chains after heavy pressure from state security.

It means that business leaders, politicians and government officials using the internet in some of Beijing’s most prestigious hotels can expect the Chinese authorities to monitor e-mails, website visits and private passwords.

The sources confirmed allegations by an American senator, Sam Brownback, who has disclosed the existence of a threatening order from the Public Security Bureau (PSB) to hotel managers ordering them to comply with its operatives.

“Exactly right,” said one of the sources, who said he was familiar with the instructions due to his management position, “it is authentic”.

The PSB document said that “in order to ensure the smooth opening of the Olympics in Beijing . . . it is required that your company install and run the security management system”.

Penalties for noncompliance included fines and the threat the hotel chain could lose its licence in China.

Not only Beijing hotels are affected. Guests at the Shangri-La hotel in Shenzhen, a business hub in south China, were informed in a letter from the management on July 24 that internet access would be shut for several hours for a maintenance “upgrade”.

The Asian-owned chain also operates a hotel at the Kerry Centre in Beijing which is used by the British consulate and multinational companies located in the complex. A spokesman for Shangri-La Hotels did not return calls asking for comment.

Spying on foreigners in Beijing used to be the subject of routine jokes about walls with ears in establishments such as the venerable Jianguo hotel, near the British and American embassies. Western diplomats had assumed until recently that the listening apparatus and telephone tapping, used routinely in the era of Mao Tse-tung, had fallen into disuse.

It is the internet, with high-speed broadband connections in most Chinese hotels, that has given a new lease of life to the eavesdroppers.

The internet was at the centre of an embarrassing public row last week between the international media and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) after it emerged that the Chinese were continuing to block politically sensitive websites at the press centre.

The IOC said all restrictions would be lifted for reporters but technicians said it was not clear how websites such as the Free Tibet Campaign could be selectively unblocked without millions of Chinese users also gaining access.

China’s president, Hu Jin-tao, laid down an uncompromising line in a meeting with selected journalists on Friday, saying the media “should comply with the laws of China”.

Hu made a plea that the Olympics should not be “politicised”; but campaigners for Tibet responded that it was China that had politicised the games by turning them into a propaganda exercise.

The IOC had hoped that awarding the games to China would allow the nation of 1.3 billion people to edge towards political liberalisation to match the gains achieved by double-digit economic growth.

Instead the games have proved to be a hiccup in the expansion of Chinese personal freedom by unleashing intolerant authoritarian tendencies.

Fearful of humiliation in the eyes of the world if all does not go to plan, the government has not only clamped down on dissidents but has also gone to great lengths to ensure that everyone behaves properly.

As well as a ban on spitting, scratching your head, wearing sandals without socks and hanging laundry in the windows, blackboards instructing people to smile have been propped up in communal living areas and a booklet has been doing the rounds informing locals how to communicate with tourists.

Do not ask foreigners their age or about their love life or if they are married. Do not ask foreigners if they are in good health. Do not ask where their home is or what their address is or anything about personal experiences. Do not mention religion or politics or ask how much money they earn. (Money, health and personal life are usually seen as acceptable subjects among friends and strangers in China.)

Student volunteers will even be deployed among the crowd to ensure that people watching the games cheer nicely and attend unpopular sports.

“Our team of crowd monitors has two main jobs,” said Jin Tian, a student volunteer from the international relations department at Peking University. “One group is responsible for the audience’s feelings, like leading them to cheer politely or applaud appropriately during matches. The other group is in charge of organising primary or middle school students to be the audience for the matches that are less popular.”

Paranoid about seeming backwards, dirty or unsafe, the government has introduced measures aimed at forcing the capital’s poorest inhabitants– many of them migrants from rural areas – to be kept hidden during the games.

The city’s bus stations have been crammed with migrant workers and their families queuing for coaches back to the countryside.

“They closed our factory and told us to go on holiday,” said Zhu Lai Cheng, a migrant waiting for a coach to his home-town in Anhui province, a 36-hour journey. “We were given £12 and told to come back in two months.”

The irony is that, despite all the security precautions, a video of last week’s supposedly top-secret rehearsal for the opening ceremony was easily smuggled out and shown on South Korean television.

It showed a series of stunning performances that will astonish worldwide audiences when the real thing is seen on Friday night.

This suggests two lessons. First that China really is going to have a great deal to be proud of by the time the games are over. And, secondly, that in a vigorous nation of 1.3 billion, Big Brother is not all he is cracked up to be.

FOR THE RECORD

— At £22 billion, the Beijing Games will be the most expensive (three times more than Athens)

— 40m flower pots have been ordered

— The ministry of culture and ideological progress has distributed 50,000 packets of tissues. Anyone spitting will be fined £3.50

— To improve air quality, officials created a forest next to the venues

— 90,000 taxi drivers have had “Olympic English” training

— The opening ceremony will cost £151m and feature more than 10,000 performers

— 10,000 athletes, 70,000 Chinese volunteers, 20,000 journalists and more than 80 heads of state will attend

— 7m tickets have been sold










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