Game flames

Oh goody, soon will begin the Olympic Games XXIX and oratorios of outrage over the Chinese government’s snooping on email accounts and blocking of internet sites. Indignant coaches and athletes will wonder what the world is coming to on network TV with panting sportcasters shaking their dismayed heads.

It can safely be assumed that they will not appreciate the irony that, although the Chinese approach is more heavy-handed than the American version, both governments are equally unapologetic about spying on their citizens.

Given that our nation under the rule of Bush has proudly (albeit illegally) spied on its own citizens while kidnapping and torturing people while politicizing the administration of justice, it’s pretty hard to sympathize with the complaints that will soon be issuing from collaborators and abettors of all this about having their mail opened or their favorite porn sites disabled.

The Chinese may be too prudent and sly to draw the comparison, but that doesn’t prevent others from doing so. What a sad day for our Jeffersonian and Madisonian traditions that the execrable government of Zimbabwe can justify its continued persecution of its own starved populace by comparing its approach to the U.S. government’s ‘war on terrorism’.

Meanwhile, the imminent ten-day Chinese p.r. campaign will be an excellent opportunity to recall how the U.S. business class under the Bush/Clinton axis sold out the American worker to communism. All those poorly-dressed worker bees with no labor unions and terrified of mouthing off to the boss will be on the sidelines cheering on their teams in an explosive orgy of nationalist chauvinism—kind of like Los Angeles, 1984. Can’t wait.