Chinese Democracy

No, this is not about politics. Fools.

My first Guns 'n' Roses album was Appetite For Destruction. I didn't buy it - I swapped it for Michael Jackson's Thriller. It must have been sometime in the early nineties. Nevermind was all the rage, Kurt Cobain was still alive, and I was just becoming musically aware. Nirvana was the background music of my early teenage years, but GNR was souffle to my ears.

The deep affection I felt for this band hasn't waned over time, but it has morphed. When I was not yet a teenager I found the unbridled energy of the driving guitar solos thrilling. Each song was a wild ride of testosterone-fuelled excess. As my musical tastes developed, I began to notice the almost comically ridiculous nature of the band's antics. And lyrics. And hair. And everything else about them. But the shine has never worn off.

In 2007, I had the good fortune to go and see the band live in my hometown of Perth, Western Australia. Actually, it was not GNR, but Axl Rose was the swaggering frontman, and all the classics were played. Middle-aged, carrying a few extra kilos and some ridiculously plaited long dyed blonde hair, he wouldn't be out of place in certain seedy areas of Bangkok. But he belted out the music with the force of a sonic tsunami - even if he did pant a bit in between songs. Jumping and swaying in between bearded bogans* - and their equally bearded bogan mothers, I fell in love with Gunners all over again. This time as something that was almost as a parody of itself. Music, and an image that is sublime in its ridiculousness, and proud of it.

And so it is with considerable bogan relish I would like to announce that the final musical fruit of the band is about to be released to a record store near you.

Unless you are in China. I just can't see the album name getting past the censors.

Guns N' Roses' long-awaited, endlessly delayed new album, Chinese Democracy, finally has a release date. According to the music industry site Hits Daily, the CD will drop at all Best Buy stores, where it is an exclusive, on the Sunday prior to Thanksgiving, November 23. This will give the album a full seven days on sale before entering the chart on December 2. Best Buy's sales week runs from Sunday through Saturday night.

What were they thinking when they came up with this album name 12 years ago??


*A bogan is southern Australian slang for white trash. More or less.

AXL: On a crusade for democracy.

The funniest news this week

China posts fake rocket launch story

CHINA'S leading Xinhua news agency reported the successful flight of the Shenzhou VII - complete with detailed dialogue between the
astronauts - hours before the nation's third-ever manned space mission had even lifted off. On Thursday morning, Xinhua posted a story on its website saying the Shenzhou capsule had been successfully tracked flying over the Pacific Ocean even though the rocket and its three astronauts had not yet been launched. The article, dated September 27, described the rocket in flight, complete with a sharply detailed dialogue between the three astronauts. Excerpts are below: "After this order, signal lights all were switched on, various data show up on rows of screens, hundreds of technicians staring at the screens, without
missing any slightest changes ... "One minute to go!' 'Changjiang No.1 found the target! ... "The firm voice of the controller broke the silence of the whole ship. Now, the target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time ... "The air pressure in the cabin is normal!"Ten minutes later, the ship disappears below the horizon. Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean." An editor at Xinhau told AFP that the story had been posted due to a technical problem. "We dealt with it after we had found it," the editor said.

I love those last two lines. No explanations as to why they were writing stories in advance of them happening, but an assurance that it was dealt with, whatever that means. In other news, Shenzhou did succesfully take off. However whether the mission will be succesful is another question. This from the Guardian:

The state media said investigations showed that most of those taken ill had consumed milk labelled with the Sanlu brand. The company is China's biggest milk powder producer, with almost a fifth of the market, and is the dairy supplier to the country's space programme.

Will this mission end in melamine-inspired failure? Only time will tell. Stay tuned, my fellow taikonauts.

Chinese Government soft on smack

If you are a recovering junkie looking to kick a jumbo-sized habit, and feel like a free rehabilitation program on sunny Hainan island, I suggest you get on a plane to China now. This from the NY Times:

An elephant that became addicted to heroin at the hands of illegal traders will return home after three years of rehabilitation, the Chinese state media said Thursday. The elephant, Xiguang, a 4-year-old male, became addicted after the traders captured him on the China-Myanmar border in March 2005. They fed him bananas laced with heroin as bait and to pacify him, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. When he was found two months later in southwest China, he was suffering from withdrawal. He received methadone at a center on Hainan Island and recovered, Xinhua said

I find this article especially fascinating for several reasons. 1) Traders fed an elephant bananas laced with heroin. Besides the fact I thought tranquilisers were all the rage these days, where did these traders get their hands on heroin? Is there a corruption angle there? 2) Since when did the NY Times uncritically reprint a story about somebody "undergoing treatment" with the blessing of the CCP? 3) Where is the political angle? Was the elephant "re-educated" for his political views? Did he "write a letter of self-criticism," in the manner of the Chinese soccer players who went to have a bath in a hotel room with several prostitutes, girlfriends, and groupies because the water in their team hotel was cold? Was the elephant under house arrest? Were his rights violated? Did he have suspected links to the Dalai Lama?

As Alice in Wonderland observed after her own mind-altering experiences, this just gets curiouser and curiouser. There is a big, juicy story under all that Xinhua spin. Slopppy journalism, NYT, sloppy journalism....

Journo says it as it is

Qu: What has the power to turn a bunch of rabid China-bashers into frolicking panda huggers?
A: The soothing capitalist sweetness of M&Ms.

I don't think I'm the only one who has noted with a little surprise the changing of the tune in the western press over the last couple of weeks when it comes to reporting on China. It was as if all the armchair critics who had been firing journalistic missiles at everything Middle Kingdom-related for the last eight months had suddenly become complimentary, if not downright fawning, at the way the event was handled - and by extension the dastardly commie government that ran the show wasn't so bad after all. It was only two weeks ago that the sinister foreign media were making totally unreasonable claims about internet access, yet today it's all about how extraordinarily efficient the whole shebang was. I was delighted to find a refreshingly candid article in the Irish Times explaining this weird phenomenon.

More than at any other Olympic celebration , we were aware of being tranquillised - we lived in a theme park, not China, writes Tom Humphries

THE MAIN transportation area at the Olympic press centre is a grid several football pitches in area with buses going hither and thither from designated stops. To get to the shuttle that whisks us nightly to our plush seven-star hotel suite, we must go past the stop that whisks other people to the Beijing Foreign Experts Institute. We can't help but feel a pang of envy.

All of us here, after all, are foreign experts, unblushing about painting an overall picture of China after a couple of weeks spent within the Disney on steroids environment that the Olympics provides.

In truth we are the least-qualified people on earth to comment on China and the games. We can only compare and contrast these Beijing games as seen from within the bubble with the experience of being within other bubbles.

First the bubble. You know it is there but the Chinese, in a masterstroke of overstaffing, have solved the security problems that can occasionally make the Olympic experience (or lately just working in Croke Park) so oppressive, intimidating and so involving of queue.

Exposure to the Salt Lake City winter games and to the Athens Olympics left a trace impression of a security world gone mad. Nightclub bouncers and men with machine guns had inherited the earth. Long, long queues formed to get into any arena or press centre. There were no words better guaranteed to sink the hearts of hacks at the back of an epic security queue than the demand that all cameras and laptops be removed from bags for inspection.

The Chinese have solved it all. We come down to the hotel lobby, scan our danglers in (sounds more exciting than it is: our danglers are our accreditation cards, which dangle from our necks like cowbells). Once that is done (10 seconds max), including wild cheery hellos and good days and thank yous and you're welcomes, we step on to a bus and drive down a special Olympic highway and become part of the Olympic family in the pristine Olympic green.

And we can go from venue to venue on our dedicated Olympic highways without ever leaving the Olympic bubble or needing to be searched again. Our meals, our banking, our technology, our haircuts, our massage requirements, our visits to McDonalds - all these things are provided within the bubble. Sometimes we come out and it has been raining. Other times we come out and the government has been oppressing. Of the two conditions, rain makes more impact on us. We berate the athletes for not making an articulate expression of political concern like Smith and Carlos in 1968, but in the bubble we are just as soothed and self-absorbed.

In terms of being hermetically sealed off from the host community, these games feel qualitatively different from their recent counterparts. The Olympic venues don't groan under the weight of merchants' tables flogging mountain ranges of licensed souvenir gear. In parts of Beijing, the Olympics are practically invisible.

Perhaps because the Chinese people are so overwhelmingly decent and friendly without ever being cloying about it, we find ourselves within our Truman Show compound trying to re-educate ourselves and to help things along for China by maintaining a sunny Olympic spirit.

You give little things a pass. You can't get Amnesty sites or the Huffington Post on the web within the press centres, but we are busy anyway. That little girl miming because she was cuter than the girl who was actually singing well - The Irish Times often uses other people's photo-bylines on my pieces for the same reason.

Even the charmingly Kafkaesque idea that there would be three special areas reserved in Beijing for people who wanted to protest about things, but that those people would have to apply to the local authorities for permission to protest (no permissions were granted among the 77 applications), almost became darkly humorous with the news that several applicants for the right to protest had been arrested, among them two old ladies.

If we are to be frank, the human rights violation we fret about the most is that the shop in the main press centre stocks no other type of chocolate except Snickers bars and M&Ms - and they disappear quickly once word gets around that a new consignment has arrived.

We live in a big theme park, not in China. Those of us who came to this country to work at the games don't even have visas. Our danglers identify us as special at the airport - Olympic family. More than at any other Olympic celebration we are aware of being tranquillised and we are gulled by the experience, soothed and made passive.

China has planned and constructed these games to soothe us. It exposes us to the friendliest, most helpful security people in the world, the warmest citizens and their touching innocent pride. They smile hugely when they throw Snickers bars at us! And our reservations and protest plans feel like bad manners.

We roam the huge Olympic green like contented buffalo. Past the wonderful red glow of the Bird's Nest and the gloopy blue Water Cube, and the quiet thrilling efficiency of everything, and we are not in China but China is selling a version of itself to us.

We remember all the promises made in Moscow seven years ago and realise that China has delivered over and over again in terms of the infrastructure of these games and, rather cynically, hasn't blinked on much else. But we can see nothing and hear nothing, so while we are here, we do nothing and hope those who hope for more understand. We were queuing for M&Ms. Okay?

And thus the bias of the western press has been proved. If you feed them enough M&Ms, they will definitely turn a blind eye to assaults on a few of their colleagues.

Actually, this should come as no surprise. The psychoactive powers of chocolate have been well-documented scientifically. Chocolate contains around 380 chemicals, some of which act as cannaboid mimics and latch onto receptors in the brain, triggering a reaction not unlike that of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The relevant lipid, Anandamide, is perhaps the cause of this unprecedented wave of panda-hugging engulfing the western media.

Your blogger would suggest that in admitting his and his colleague's journalistic laziness, Tom Humphries has in fact stumbled upon a great TRUTH - that the Chinese Government deliberately packed the international media centre full of opiate-inducing snack machines IN ORDER TO STOP ANY JOURNALISTIC INVESTIGATION OUTSIDE OF THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA CENTER.

And in terms of their objectives - you can't but help admire the vile cunning of the Chinese Communist Party. Of all the choices of brain-affecting substances available, they chose the most inane, yet effective. They could have packed their vending machines with cocaine, ecstasy, or heroin, but these drugs are just so democratic. Nobody would believe you can get better dope in Beijing than the great cities of Berlin, London or New York. Opium was a possibility - but it's just so god-damn imperialistic. And caffeine - well that's been known to give journalists energy instead of put them to sleep. Energy that could be spent on chasing down a story.

Now that Guerrilla Snorefare has uncovered this slimy sweet-toothed scandal, the question must be posed: Just where will the Chinese Government stop?

It must be said though, that there may be more than one factor at play. Perhaps part of the reason the English press, at least, is so complimentary is because they are packing their dacks* at the prospect of being humiliated by the efficiency of the Beijing organisers. As was noted by The Independent following the closing ceremony:

It was hard not to feel a shiver of sympathy for Boris Johnson as he was handed maybe the heaviest baton ever passed on in the history of organised sport. Implicit in the eight-minute handover sequence was that if London was to succeed it would do so on its own terms – and its vastly inferior budget.

Roll on 2012.

*This Australian slang refers to defecating in your pants out of a heightened sense of fear.

Guerrilla's astute predictions come to pass

The Games are over, the verdict is in, and the critics (by this I mean me) are unanimous. The gold medal of the Games (and by this I mean the most astute predictions of how the final medal count would unfold) have been won by none other than myself. It is now my distinct pleasure to quote from my post on the first Sunday of the Games - that's two freakin' weeks ago - about which country would rack up the most medals.

So in the interests of insightful commentary and cutting-edge analysis that you've come to expect from GS, allow myself to quote.....myself. Following a brilliant expose on China's ancient plans for Olympic domination I said:

The rest, as they say, is history. Except in China, of course, where it's 5000 years of history. And if you had any doubts, I feel I need to hardly point out to you the incredible effectiveness of this wily scheming. Just check out the medal table. Here is my prediction, at the end of Day Three. The US may win most medals, but China will top the gold medal count.

1.	China (map)	49	20	28	97
2.	United States (map)	34	37	36	107

Sometimes I feel my talent is being wasted in the stuffy confines of the advertising world.

Fear and loathing at the women's beach volleyball

It was a Thursday at the office when I felt the Olympic pull drag me in the direction of the office door. Without a clue as to what I wanted to see, I consulted my attorney. "I advise you to go to see the women's beach volleyball," he said. Then he sighed mournfully. "You do realize I'm forced to come with you."

As we arrived at Chao Yang Park, it was clear this was no ordinary law-enforcement activity. Police swarmed the scene like bees to nectar, looking for the numerous criminals, terrorists, and Tibetans undoubtedly infesting our midst and perpetrating the most heinous crimes as we speak. But we had a dirty little secret of our own. That's right. We had no tickets.

Surreptitiously, we sidled up to people who looked shady enough to possess the contraband we so desperately sought. The guy in the shades and the trenchcoat standing next to the playgound, the nice young lady with the miniskirt, fishnets, and cigarette dangling out of her mouth, the Indian man selling Rolexes for a very good price.

Our intrepid adventure was cut short when a bunch of of brazen bronzed Brazilians walked straight up to us and said point blank "Do you need tickets?" After a few moments of haggling my attorney and I had the contraband, and I turned to find that a cop had been curiously watching the whole sordid affair.

Affecting an air of nonchalance, we strolled toward the gate and past the cop, who seemed as if he were undergoing a deep internal struggle to contain his indifference to our existence. A few minutes later, we were inside the stadium.

As for the actual event itself, I feel it can best be displayed pictorially.

Diabolical Chinese performance-enhancing plot exposed

In a stunningly devious display of satanic.... deviousness, China has hijacked the colour red in order to gain a statistical advantage over their Olympic opponents. (The world)

Yes folks, this is what is has come down to. A century of planning to get the Games to China, a communist revolution sixty years ago to ensure that red would be the color of the flag when it finally happened, and 5000 years of history have all crystallized into this one event.

But actually, the scheme goes much deeper than that. Several thousand years ago, the Chinese built a wall to keep meddlesome outsiders away so they could develop their sporting skills uninterrupted. Then they invented sophisticated farming techniques and started to breed like rabbits, waiting for the time they could claim a full 20% of the world's population to launch a serious medal assault. Cunningly, they created gunpowder and exported it, knowing full well that barbarians would use it to kill each other and keep their reproduction rates down. They established ping-pong training centres at Shaolin Si and Leshan where super warrior-paddlers honed their lethal speed by smashing needles through plates of glass. They practiced their gymnastics skills by flying through the air and running along walls. Then, in a brilliant twist of psychoanalytical mastery, China created the worst soccer (football, if you will) team in the world. Embarrassment, humiliation, and loss followed. The anger of the people knew no bounds. Defeat after defeat stoked the nationalistic hunger for victory. The red flag burned like a raging fire in the hearts of the people, desperate to be quenched.

After 5 thousand years of history, I mean training, the gold campaign was almost ready. But something was missing. Victory seemed inevitable. The people were becoming too complacent. They lacked a certain....focus. Deep in Zhongnanhai, an ancient sage counseled the Central Committee. Although he was in failing health, he had one last edict to issue. "To give the people the drive they lack," he said, "You must find them a common enemy. Look no further than the western media." With these final words, the ancient one went to take his afternoon nap.

Bemused by the old man's words, the Central Committee carefully considered the problem. After a few rounds of ping-pong and some baijiu, Hu Jintao snapped his fingers. "I've got it!" he said. "We'll let some of the Lhasans off the leash for a while. Then we'll clear out the foreign media. Then we'll make our torch relay go all around the world, and express our complete surprise at the protests that follow. We'll also send some goons and thugs to protect it! The western media is sure to go ape, and when they do, we'll claim it's all a plot against China!"

The other members were shocked at the audacity of the plan. "Jintao, you old bastard" said Wen Jiabao,"If the people knew how brilliant you were, I'd lose my Facebook status as China's favourite politician."

The rest, as they say, is history. Except in China, of course, where it's 5000 years of history. And if you had any doubts, I feel I need to hardly point out to you the incredible effectiveness of this wily scheming. Just check out the medal table. Here is my prediction, at the end of Day Three. The US may win most medals, but China will top the gold medal count.

Doublespeak

All governments do it. The Chinese Government happens to be incredibly blatant about it, probably because they can be. One of the things they have been talking up is the designation of special protest zones. However not only are these areas so far away from anywhere that they are rendered more-or-less useless, the strong likelihood remains that authorities will take down the details of protesters (not an idea I'd be comfortable with, that's for sure). On top of that, it seems that even if you want to protest in the 'correct' way, this is what may happen:

Beijing trumpeted its decision to establish special protest zones for this month’s Olympics as a demonstration of the liberties enjoyed by citizens of China’s capital. But when former residents of Beijing’s historic Qianmen district applied for permission to use one of the zones to demonstrate against the demolition of their traditional courtyard homes, police were unequivocal. They said that in order to maintain stability they would certainly not approve our protest,” said Zhang Wei, a group member whose home was levelled two years ago to make way for an upmarket retail and residential complex. The quick refusal of permission for a demonstration, even one in a city park well away from Olympic venues, underscores the determination of China's Communist government to curb dissent.

In the meantime, the amount of tourists in the city two days out from the biggest show on earth is decidedly small, and not looking to get a whole lot bigger.

"I am giving you a low price because there are no customers these days," a shop-keeper at Beijing's Hongqiao market, famous as one of the world's major retail market for pearls, grumbles after a customer has managed to beat down the price to drastic levels.
People connected to the travel industry were expecting a flood of visitors coming to Beijing two weeks before the Games. Instead, there is a small trickle of visitors just three days before the start of the Games apart from the athletes and sports officials from different participating countries.

I would like to make a (belated) suggestion to the Government that will solve both of these problems. People around the world have the opinion that these Games are going to be boring because of the micro-management of everyone's behaviour - right down to kite-flying. In order to get tourists flowing, I say the government lets people protest when and where they want. Free Tibet marches on Tiananmen Square? Student sit-ins demanding democracy at Tsinghua? I know I'd pay good money to see that, and I'll bet a lot of other foreigners would too.