I am ringing in 2008 by being officially too lazy to write anything original. But here are a few interesting stories from the past few days that are worth a read:

And I thought Aussies were relaxed
Controversy in Australia, which has announced the implementation of a previously announced measure to censor pornography on the Internet at a nationwide level. This is leading to comparisons with other famous Internet sentencing nations such as, well, you know.

Related to this, it turns out that the new motif for mocking the authoritarian tendencies of your politicians is to incorporate them into a Maoist propaganda motif. Australia's new PM, Kevin Rudd, has been on the receiving end of this in a YouTube video (the Chinese voice-over is totally random, and not related to the content or subtitles):

Dave at the Mutant Palm (proxy link) has vgiven a similar treatment to Mitt Romney in honor of some of the candidates dafter statements about how increased powers of surveillance and detention will, um, make us all more free (and on that note, it looks like we're well on our way to fulfilling Mitt's vision). Longtime readers may recall that Larry and Sergei of Google were previously similarly honored.

For those looking for that unique Christmas gift for next year, the entrepreneurs at Maopost will put your face, or that of your pet/loved one/boss into a Maoist propaganda poster at a far higher level of quality for a modest fee. 

Marxist journalism
I was trying to think of a joke for that headline and then I realized it didn't really need one. Ed Cody of the Washington Post writes about training in Marxist journalism for Chinese reporters. Fittingly, many of the people he wanted to interview didn't want to speak to any non-Marxist foreign journalists:

[Former People's Daily editor] Fan [Jingyi], who is convalescing from a serious illness, declined to be interviewed, as did Li Xiguang, executive dean of the journalism department, and Li Bin, associate dean and co-editor with Fan of the course's main textbook, "Fifteen Lectures on the Marxist Concept of Journalism."

Interviews with students and others associated with the center suggested unease at what the Marxist journalism courses were supposed to impart. Some students said they could not remember what they were taught, or that they paid little attention because they were concentrating on other subjects. None seemed eager to discuss the course.

 And, just because I like this quote from the aforementioned Mr. Fan:

"Reviewing the reality of journalistic education, one finds many inclinations that need attention," he continued. "One is out-of-date textbooks. One is the Westernized concept of journalism. And another is the abstract research approach in which theory and practice do not match. These problems can only be solved by strengthening the Marxist concept of journalism."

Well, since we're strengthening the Marxist concept of journalism I trust we can do away with those nasty "transportation claim" payments now?

I didn't know Newsweek did stories that long
Newsweek Beijing bureau chief (and FCCC president) Melinda Liu has written a huge, interesting article in which she recalls how her family was divided when her parents came to the US before the Communists won power:

I stopped in Shanghai to meet my eldest uncle. He had once been a public-health official, but during the communists' first wave of witch hunts in the 1950s he was condemned as a "rightist" and banished to Xinjiang province, at the edge of the Gobi Desert. He returned home a broken man in 1964, only to have his old "crimes" trotted out again. Members of his family were forced to denounce him. My aunt, now in her 80s, still whispers of their "treachery" as if the intrigues had happened only yesterday.

By the time I met him, Uncle had been politically rehabilitated once again. The authorities had pasted a bright red certificate on his front door declaring that his pension had been reinstated. A neighborhood public-health center had even offered him a job teaching hygiene classes. Uncle was glad Deng's reforms had come soon enough for him to offer the country his own skills and knowledge—unlike in Russia, where communist orthodoxy outlasted everyone who had any experience living in a capitalist society. "For years we've taken the wrong path," Uncle told me. "Now we must catch up. If the young ones cannot learn and manage by themselves, then we old ones must come back to help."

Is a Pomfret-style journalist's memoir in the works?

I'll worry when they have a team playing in the Rose Bowl
From the LA Times, the Chinese had an Olympic float in the Rose Parade and, to activists' dismay, nobody really cared:

"We haven't talked about [human rights]," said Cat Chao, host of a popular Mandarin-language talk show on KAZN-AM (1300), about the Olympics float. "The majority of Chinese think the Olympics is bigger than human rights and that human rights are already improving. They'd rather see China improve on issues like pollution."

After last week, I kind of feel the same way. By the way, did anybody check to see what the all-American crowd thought of the Fuwa?

Shocked (shocked!) to discover gambling in Chinese online games
From Billsdue, the curious story of a short-lived article in Southern Weekend on Giant Online's mega-game, ZT Online. Danwei's Joel Martinsen, the hardest working translator in China, has translated both the original article, which discussed gambling in the game, and an OhMyNews article speculating on the original articles rapid disappearance from Southern Weekend's site. It's all interesting both for the revealing look at the seedy underside of the Chinese online game world (and yet another manifestation of the Chinese love of a good punt) and, for we flacks in particular, the questions raised about Giant's relationship with the media. At first people thought the story was a PR puff piece. Then they wondered if Giant had used its influence to have the story killed. Well, it can't be both, can it?

(Bill gets credit for the Casablanca reference.)

Online PR gone wrong dept.
This isn't related to China at all, but it was of interest to someone who has been doing geek PR as along as I have. Microsoft has a YouTube page on which they have posted a bunch of their promotional videos. They've left comments enabled on the videos, thus garnering thousands of remarks notable for their near uniform visceral hostility. Tech superblog Gizmodo castigated Microsoft for leaving comments enabled. Imagethief feels this was undeserved. In fact, Microsoft is to be given credit for leaving the comments open and letting people have their say, no matter what. I would have advised them to do the same. It's mostly just empty bile and in fact it becomes self-parodying after a while.

However, what Gizmodo also rightly points out, and what Microsoft deserves to be flailed for, is using YouTube to post such a range of soporific marketing detritus on. This is a company that went a long way toward rehabilitating its image by encouraging its employees to blog. Come on, guys, surely you have something more interesting to put up than that?

And finally, top ten Olympic news stories, as picked by BOCOG
Read it here. Includes such gems as, "17th CPC National Congress calls for successful Beijing Olympics and Paralympics in 2008." Mysteriously not making the list are a few of Imagethief's picks, including:

I think they need a longer list.

Fasten your seatbelts, everyone, it's going to be an interesting year in Beijing.