Murdoch Media Promotes Protests, Boycotts, Civil Disobedience

China's human rights record, for Tibetans, and millions more of its own people, is appalling, and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Australian coal sales is not reason enough to blind eye how China deals with pro-democracy advocates and dissenters. China's repressive regime and enthusiasm for human executions should have ruled it out of even being considered as a host city for the Olympic Games.

The Greens, more than any other political party in Australia, have been telling us this for years.

All pressure on China to shape up is positive, but it's still extremely strange to see anti-China boycotts, protests, civil disobedience and placard-waving-at-the-torch-relay being so heavily promoted by Rupert Murdoch's two biggest selling Australian newspapers.

From the Daily Telegraph today :



From Andrew Bolt in the Herald Sun today :



Andrew Bolt is still to acknowledge that much of the philosophy he now eagerly espouses on China's human rights trampling has been a policy staple of The Greens, through leader Bob Brown.



As Anonymous Lefty points out, Murdoch newspapers also recently championed another policy staple of The Greens.


Here's how the Howard government dealt with China on human rights :

....June 28th, 2005...the Federal Government has come under fire for failing to question Chinese officials about claims that Chinese agents have persecuted political dissidents in Australia.

According to the report, at an annual and closed "human rights dialogue" on Monday, Australian officials did not raise allegations that the Chinese Government had persecuted

...the Foreign Affairs Department official who led the talks, said it was "not the forum" for tackling the allegations.

The report stated that the failure to raise the claims have fuelled accusations that Australia is taking a "softly softly" approach on human rights to keep good relations with China.

....yesterday reports emerged that Australia had refused to join "secret" US-led talks to discuss China's expanding role in the world, for fear of offending China.

Bob Brown from the Greens party accused the Australian Government of being cowardly.

Despite claims by Boltoids and desperate Liberals that Kevin Rudd would cower before China, he appears to be willing to tell China their human rights record is bogus, that Australia won't be bullied, and that our resources are not completely for sale :

Kevin Rudd has warned the Chinese Government he will "defend the Australian national interest" amid speculation that China is planning a stockmarket raid on resources giant BHP Billiton.

As Australian mining industry doyen Hugh Morgan warned China's move on BHP would "misfire" if the strategy was designed to secure assets for the resource-hungry nation, the Prime Minister made it clear in Beijing he would ensure all investments and takeovers of consequence in Australia would be examined.

Mr Rudd pointed to China's tough restrictions on foreign investment, and offered no sign of changes to Australia's foreign investment rules, which have prevented Chinese expansion into Australian interests.

....Mr Rudd said his job "as Prime Minister is to defend the Australian national interest and the Australian national economic interest, and I make no apologies for that while I'm here or elsewhere in the world".

"Australia is an open market when it comes to foreign investment and we have a history of depending on foreign investment," he said, adding: "We have always had the proper regulations to examine and advise on projects of consequence."

Rudd is going to lose a big chunk of his overwhelming support from the Australian public if he even appears to be backing down in his dealings with China in the weeks and months ahead.

Such pressure on China, particularly if the leaders of Australia, France and the US boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, will be vital in letting them know they can't be a part of the larger democratic world when they block proper elections and brutalise their own people and think they should not have to answer for it.

Rupert Murdoch lost about a billion dollars and a decade trying to sew up China's vast TV audience, and failed to nail it, and the Chinese government is making life difficult again by refusing to let Murdoch's MySpace snare a large, independent and more profitable share of China's social networking market.

Murdoch's newspapers are going to hammer China all the way to the Olympics.

Australia Must Pull Out Of 2008 Olympics If Athletes Are Forced To Sign STFU Contracts By Chinese Government

By Darryl Mason

There are some things more important than sport. China is about to find out what that really means.

British athletes have been told they must sign contracts that will censor them from telling the truth about the China they see and experience during this year's Olympic Games.

No talk of human rights, or intolerably cruel training regimes inflicted on children, nor talk of the occupation of Tibet will be allowed by British athletes when they are in front of the media at Beijing in a few months time.

If they break the rule, if they use freedom of speech - the most basic human right of all - they will be propelled towards the next plane home. If enough of them speak out at once, as a group, there will probably be a special plane waiting to remove them from the country.

How can Australian athletes be subjected to the denial of freedom of speech, and freedom to publicly empathise, and still board a plane to Beijing?

You would expect that many Australian athletes, or all of them, will refuse to agree to this appalling demand by the Chinese government.

You would expect to hear our prime minister publicly state that unless the Chinese government withdraws its demands for Australians at the 2008 Olympics to not talk about their experiences in China, there will be no Australian Olympic team in Beijing.

You would expect the prime minister to back the side of human rights and freedom of speech and not agree with the Chinese government.

But will he?

The story :

The controversial clause has been inserted into athletes' contracts for the first time and forbids them from making any political comment about countries staging the Olympic Games.

Yesterday the British Olympic Association (BOA) confirmed to The Mail on Sunday that any athlete who refuses to sign the agreements will not be allowed to travel to Beijing.

The BOA took the decision even though other countries – including the United States, Canada, Finland, and Australia – have pledged that their athletes would be free to speak about any issue concerning China.

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates said: “What we will be saying to the athletes is that it's best to concentrate on your competitions.

“But they're entitled to have their opinions and express them. They're free to speak.”

So that means Australian athletes will not sign the STFU contracts, right?


Go Here To Read Darryl Mason's New Online Novel, ED Day, Telling Of The Lives Of 300 Survivors In Sydney After The Bird Flu Pandemic

The insertion of a clause that forbids Olympic athletes from making 'political comment' about the host is not just for China.

The STFU deal will also be in force when the 2012 Olympics roll around.

In London.

Update : The English language version of China's 'theme' for this year's Olympics is :

Only the one dream?

From the 'One World, One Dream' site :

"One World, One Dream" is simple in expressions, but profound in meaning.

It voices the aspirations of 1.3 billion Chinese people to contribute to the establishment of a peaceful and bright world.

In Chinese, the word "tongyi", which means "the same", is used for the English word "One". It highlights the theme of "the whole Mankind lives in the same world and seeks for the same dream and ideal".

One World. Same World.

The difference between those two descriptions of a united world could not be more immense. Or pronounced.

Do we all really 'seek for the same dream and ideal'?

Is that the kind of world we want to live in?

Sounds boring.

And more than a little creepy.