But Wait! There's More!

It's been quite a busy week.


The Chinese government would rather its own people not know that twenty-four years ago it violently suppressed a student revolt:

Today's date won't show up.

You can search "June 4th" or "Jun 4th" and results will not come up. You can try with Chinese characters, or in their Pinyin transliteration, or in English or even French and the result will not appear on your screen.

Even "today" won't work. Nor “tomorrow.”

June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre is again keeping censors busy in China.

As in past years, there is a long list of words that people in China are blocked from searching on Weibo (the Chinese version of Twitter) around the time of the anniversary of the bloody incident.

According to a compilation from the Citizen Lab, at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, this year’s banned search keywords include various combinations of the numbers 6, 4, 8 and 9.

Search terms such as “Tiananmen,” “square,” “tank” and “Changan Avenue,” which leads to the central square, and names of leaders of the 1989 protests were obviously blocked.

But Citizen Lab researchers found that even Roman numerals for 6 and 4 (“VIIV”), or the mixing of numbers and letters such as “8q b 4” (89 6 4) or other ways to describe June 4, such “May 35” or “April 65th.”

Another anti-censorship website reported that at times the authorities tried a more fine-tuned, filtered approach, allowing only some search results to come through.

By the date of the anniversary, the Chinese characters for “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” were also blocked, according to China Digital Times, a watchdog website based in California.

Carry on.

This never happened.

Obama rewards two people who know how to both lie and tow the party line:

President Barack Obama chose close confidante Susan Rice as his new national security adviser on Wednesday, increasing White House control over foreign policy and defying Republican critics of her handling of last year's deadly attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya.

**

A White House official says President Barack Obama will name former aide Samantha Power as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Power will replace Susan Rice, who will take over as Obama’s national security adviser. ...

The chair of President Obama’s new Atrocities Prevention Board once called for the United States to force troops into Israeli-controlled territory in order to end abuses she said were being committed by both sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

An interesting article about the identity of God in the Bible and Koran.


Also: a special IRS tax form.


If one is going to legalise killing, at least dispense with the euphemisms:

The Quebec government is expected to table its “dying with dignity” legislation in the coming days.

The law would allow certain forms of medical aid in dying — also called “assisted suicide” by some.

Which is it- "dying with dignity" which occurs after a cursory meeting with physicians who just fill out some forms before before pumping one with death-causing drugs or "assisted suicide" which occurs after a cursory meeting with physicians who just fill out some forms before before pumping one with death-causing drugs?


And now, watch this cat give a pug a massage:




(Gracias)