Healthy and civilised news and information that is beneficial to the quality of the nation

Since Blogger insisted on screwing up the search box at the top of the page so that it only covers the last few months, I’ve added a Google search box at the very bottom of the page that can search all of my posts.

China will restrict internet content to “healthy and civilised news and information that is beneficial to the quality of the nation.” It’s always nice when censorship is civilized.

Amnesty International explains why the figures given by the officials of Stalag Guantanamo for the number of hunger strikers is so low: they only count people who refuse 9 meals in a row, but the prisoners know that and are taking one meal in 3 days and flushing it down the toilet in order to avoid being force-fed, taking advantage of that bit of military bureaucratese.

Lynndie England has been convicted of abusing prisoners, but not of conspiracy (no, sorry, she was convicted of one count of conspiracy, but not another count). Even as yet more evidence of prisoner abuse/torture is emerging, England’s prosecutors were eagerly pushing the line that this was the work of a few bad apples, and certainly in no way related to orders from above to soften prisoners up for interrogation. No, according to them, “This was simply for the amusement of Private England and the other soldiers.” Amused England certainly was, but this doesn’t mean she was acting outside the parameters of the job she was given; she just happened to enjoy her work.

Hunger striking, forcible feeding and the torture of prisoners. Was this blog post healthy & civilized enough to pass Chinese standards, do you think?