MOOSERIDER magazine: Everyone is watched in China, all the time! China protest call smothered in police blanket

Quotes

"Fascism and communism both promise "social welfare," "social justice," and "fairness" to justify authoritarian means and extensive arbitrary and discretionary governmental powers." - F. A. Hayek"

"Life is a Bungling process and in no way educational." in James M. Cain

Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. Sir Winston Churchill

"summum ius summa iniuria" ("More laws, more injustice.") Cicero

As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.”

"Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Ronald Reagan

"Law is where you buy it." Raymond Chandler

"Why did God make so many damn fools and Democrats?" Clarence Day

"If I feel like feeding squirrels to the nuts, this is the place for it." - Cluny Brown

"Oh, pshaw! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have." Owen Wister "The Virginian"

Oscar Wilde said about the death scene in Little Nell, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Thomas More's definition of government as "a conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of a commonwealth.” ~ Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” ~ Jonathon Swift

Monday, February 28, 2011

Everyone is watched in China, all the time! China protest call smothered in police blanket

The dirty secret is that so are we, most of the time, and in England, almost all the time. Our surveillance is just more electronic.China protest call smothered in police blanket - Yahoo! News

By Michael Martina and Royston Chan – Sun Feb 27, 7:43 am ET

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – An online call for anti-government protests across China on Sunday instead brought an emphatic show of force by police determined to deter any buds of the kind of unrest that has shaken the Middle East.

Lines of police checked passers-by and warned away foreign photo journalists in downtown Beijing and Shanghai after a U.S.-based Chinese website spread calls for Chinese people to emulate the "Jasmine Revolution" sweeping the Middle East and stage gatherings in support of democratic change.

Officials from China's ruling Communist Party have dismissed the idea that they could be hit by protests like those that have rippled across the Middle East.

But a rash of detentions and censorship of online discussion of the Middle East have shown that Beijing is deeply nervous about any signs of opposition to its one-party rule.

What started as a call for protest has instead become an opportunity for the Chinese government to brandish the big and sophisticated security forces funded by rapid economic growth.

In Shanghai, police bundled away at least seven men, one of whom had been taking photos. Reuters TV filmed several policemen forcing a man in a brown jacket into aPublic Security Bureau van, while other police held up an umbrella to block the view.

In Beijing, uniformed police were joined by plainclothes officers who kept shoppers and journalists moving. Men in sanitation uniforms with armbands that said "Public Security Volunteer" used brooms to sweep pedestrians along.