[Skybird]

Peterloo, as a German I must remind you that Germany, this country I live in, has left behind the tyranny it once has born, while China's party-regime still is stuck in the midst of it. That's why I don't pay respect to the Chinese officials or a Chinese mayor being embarrassed by a Olympics hoax like you posted about, and that is why such a hoax in case of Australia did not do any damage, and wouldn't not do any damage in Germany these days. But in china, the person doing that hoax probably would end with years in prison, or worse.

I see that "face" is an important issue in Chinese culture and mentality, but I also think it is hopelessly exaggerated beyond the borders to ridicule. My opinion may not change that, but when even the most brutal, barbaric crimes and tortures and killings become an object that runs second in importance to save the torturers or killer's "face", then I know that some most essential priorities are totally distorted, and that by the result the sensitivity to "face"-issues is simply wrong. For example, justice is far more impornt than saving face. Or freedom. Or peace. A mind thinking that war could be waged to save one's face, that freedom can be turned into dictatorship in order to save one's face, and justice can be turned into injustice to prevent loosing one'sS face, is a sick, brutal and deeply perverted mind. It's the mind of a criminal, murderous gangster. and that pretty much sums up what I think about the Chinese governments since Mao. And i explicitly include the government of the present.

I often said that regarding various things and issues, Europeans as well as Americans will need to accept that they have to change, from politics over economics to missionary spirit. I tell China the same: some things in your cultural self-understanding you have to change. America is not the standard to which all civilisation must compare. the EU is not the one global standard to which all civilisation must compare.

And China isn't such a central standard either.

Germen newspaper Die Welt just reported that the IOC is seriously considering to ban the tradition of the torch altogether now. And the German IOC also sees increasing debate wether one is right to forbid athletes free speech and saying their opinion on Tibet while being in China. In the end, a sports commitee and a group of bureaucrats is not in the legal position to partly suspend key items of our nation'S constitution. It tells something about their glorious self-perception that they think they have a right to do so. The voices saying this order" has to be taken back and has to be limited to forbidding participation in protests marches, are increasing in number. I hope that the decision gets taken back indeed, and that other nations follow. I also hope that the Chinese regime will deeply regret the day when they decided to sign in for the competition to win the games in 2008, for they obviously expected that all world would agree to their interpretation of freedom: to suppress all anti-Chinese protests, and keep the games running as a meaningless farce with not the smallest Olympic spirit in them, that got killed by commerce and Chinese brutality in close cooperation. This year's games will the greatest lie of games in the history of the Olympics after WWII. I hope it all boils up and away and blow up right in their faces.

And you, Peterloo, must only feel targeted by my attack against "China" in so far as you support and back the official Chinese position regarding the Olympics and Tibet and the party's interpretation of freedom. And if you do not back the government's actings and positions, you have no reason to feel offended by me, for you do not belong to the addressed receivers, then - and if these feel offended, I couldn't care less, for I do not use to "save my face" by hiding it behind a reflecting visor, like Chinese policies use to do. In the end it runs all down to just this: the Chinese government demanding not to be correctly held responsible for the crimes it commits, and labelling that demand as a question of politeness.

Now considering the Nuremberg trials being run with an attitude of allowing the Nazi defendants to "save their faces". Absurd.