China
The Industrial Relations A-Team
As any man is, who grew up in the Reagan and Thatcher eras of right-wing television, I’m guiltily enjoying my growing cultural hegemony. When I pass the billboard for the remade A-Team film on my way to the station each morning it cries to me; “the popular culture references of your age and class are the new universal by which others’ alternatives are measured”. Of course all glory is fleeting, but to have your own personal childhood’s cultural markers socially fixed as standard is a pleasant compliment.
You go, Hollywood imperialism. You keep doing it for us Anglo white collar thirty year old blokes—we can’t do it without you.
But that’s by the by. In China, they’re living the dream.
Yang Youde, 56, has twice repelled government-backed demolition crews by firing the cannon and peppering workers with fireworks.
Mr Yang manufactured his arsenal with used stove pipes and $US300 worth of fireworks, and his cannon can fire projectiles up to 100 metres.
“I’m a law-abiding citizen. I don’t believe these fireworks can kill,” Mr Yang said in an interview.
Bad-arse.
we is in ur streetz
This is really a perfect time for the Tibetan nationalists to come out in open rebellion, because the Olympics means that the Chinese state either will not be able to crack down as brutally as it has in the past, or, if it does, that unprecendented attention will come to bear. If a Yangoon-style crackdown is forthcoming in Lhasa, liberal/democratic governments will have no choice but to boycott the Olympics (I would have thought). This would set a very interesting precedent. The Western boycott of the Moscow Olympics by the West was on the basis of the alleged Soviet invasion of Afghanistan not the domestic human rights situation, and the retaliatory boycott of the LA Olympics by the Eastern Bloc was on the basis that the US was not a safe place for communist athletes. This would then be the first human rights boycott at the Olympics.
For Chinese dissidents at this juncture, there is an unprecedented possiblity of getting away with the kind of action that might otherwise be met simply with deadly force, and in the case that it is met with such force, would have multiplied effects to what it otherwise would, forcing Western countries to take a concrete stance on the issue, embarassing the Chinese government and getting Western governments reluctantly involved in Chinese domestic issues. Such an involvement would set an uncomfortable precedent for Western government of concern for human rights and for the treatment of oppressed nations, the latter being particularly important because of the existence of national minorities within Western state borders whose national aspirations are circumscribed.