Posted on 03/17/2008 2:00:00 PM PDT by BGHater
We can always count on China. Just when the place seems filled with normal people going about their happy business, the government reminds us that its paranoia reaches every aspect of our lives.
Take the baseball game in Beijing last Saturday. It was the first in China between two American pro teams, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres. Even though the contest was an exhibition, it was historic. Baseball is America's national pastime because it's a link between generations and a touchstone of the nation's culture. That baseball wants to extend to China, that China welcomes the game, and that 12,000 baseball fans could gather in a stadium on a lovely spring day, are all signs of harmony under heaven.
One especially excited group was Cub Scout Pack 3944, which is comprised mostly of Beijing-resident American kids under the age of 10. About fifty of them arrived at the game in blue uniforms bedecked with American flags and merit badges, accompanied by their den mothers and scout masters. The night before, they'd learned that the Dodgers had invited them onto the field after the game to meet the players.
But just before the game, the Haidian district police barred the scouts from the field. Why? Because thousands of kilometers away, in the Himalayas, monks and others in Tîbet had launched protests against Chinese rule. The government apparently feared that the young Americans would use their moment on the grassy infield to agitate for Tîbetan independence. This fear that a pack of cub scouts would politicize a baseball game drove the government to politicize the event more effectively than any Tîbetan splittist could hope for, and disappointed a group of bright-eyed kids in the process.
Don't worry too much about the Cub Scouts – they had a grand time anyway, and the Dodgers dispatched a couple of players into the stands afterward to sign autographs. But it's worth considering the thoughts that went through the heads of the Haidian district police.
Your correspondent suspects they ran something like this: Tîbet is in turmoil. Foreigners support Tîbet. Foreigners want to embarrass China. If foreigners embarrass China on our watch, we'll lose our jobs. So we'd better assume the worst of these foreigners, even if that means taking some fun out of the game.
For those of you who thought China could pull off a great Olympics, the exhibition on Saturday was cause for pause.
China exists in a kind of Twilight Zone where it has an outward resemblence to a normal society, but clearly it is not.
On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country. To obey the scout laws, to help other people at all times, and to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.
A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.
Still stuck in my head from 40 years ago! God Bless the Scouts!
I predict the Olympics and the Democrat National Convention will combine to create “The Perfect Storm”.
I am kind of surprised baseball is not huge in China.
I bet they will be, shortly.
I don't know, dolly... You guys got any oil or moose-limb peoples over there? Do you have 50,000 "Uh-murricah" hating Tibet-ian terra-ists, so we can send them here to live like we did with the Somalis, and the Iraqis, and the kosovarians? If not... Can't help you. The Chi-nee are makin' me and my buddies rich...
D.L.: “Maybe I speak now to Condi.”
Within minutes of posting my "suggestions" my Zone Alarm software began detecting port scans at a rate of one every few minutes. Normally I would get one every few hours. At that time Zone Labs had a free feature allowing you to trace the source of a port scan. Usually they came from some U.S. university or a U.S. based communications company. But the flood of port scans I got while posting about China all traced back to ISPs in SE Asia. Many in Taiwan and many in Hong Kong and other mainland China cities.
If you post on the internet on the subject of China or Tibet your computer will be probed by the PRC.
Ping
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