In China "Free Speech Zones" Are Called "Protest Zones"

From China Nabs Another Gold Medal: Government sets new record for jailing Olympics protesters by Ken Silverstein:

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Chinese government had refused to allow a single demonstration in any of the official “protest zones” it had created for the Olympic games. Now two elderly woman have been sentenced to a year of “re-education through labor” for seeking a permit to demonstrate.

The women, Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, had made five visits to the police this month in an effort to get permission to protest what they contended was inadequate compensation for the demolition of their homes in Beijing…Although it is unlikely that women as old as Ms. Wu and Ms. Wang would be forced into hard labor, many of those sentenced to [re-education] often toil in agricultural or factory work and are forced to confess their transgressions.

Two other rights advocates from southern China “have not been heard from since they were seized last week at the Public Security Bureau’s protest application office in Beijing,” the Times reports.

Read the rest here.

Shouldn't The Use Of "Quiet Diplomacy" Be Equilateral?

From Hadley: Skipping Olympic opening ceremonies is`cop-out':

It would be a "cop-out" for countries to skip the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics as a way of protesting China's crackdown in Tibet, President Bush's national security adviser said Sunday.

The kind of "quiet diplomacy" that the U.S. is practicing is a better way to send a message to China's leaders rather than "frontal confrontation," Stephen Hadley said.

Why the disparity between how we send messages to China with how we send messages to Iraq and Iran? Why didn’t we use “quiet diplomacy” to send a message to Saddam Hussein? Why is Barack Obama critisized when he suggests using “quiet diplomacy” with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Why is not going to the opening ceremonies a cop-out?

"This issue [of the boycott] is in some sense a bit of a red herring," Hadley said in a broadcast interview. "I think unfortunately a lot of countries say, 'Well, if we say that we are not going to the opening ceremonies we check the box on Tibet.' That's a cop-out.

But this is not:

President Bush has given no indication he will skip the event. "I don't view the Olympics as a political event," Bush said this past week. "I view it as a sporting event."