Hebei Sunpo Metal Products Co.[/tag][tag]Ltd [Manufacturer] China
Posted by admin - 07/01/09 at 08:01:59 amHebei Sunpo Metal Products Co.[/tag]furniture
Brian Conley of Alive in Baghdad Jailed by Beijing Police
Posted by admin - 06/01/09 at 08:01:01 amThis story on Brian Conley appeared in my email via Read or Alive’s Ultimate Josh.
Beijing - Brian Conley, creator of the well-known videoblog, Alive in Baghdad, was detained with his friend, Jeffrey Rae, early Tuesday, August 19th in Beijing. Their detention appears to have taken place at the same time as that of international artist James Powderly, whose detention was reported Tuesday. Three other bloggers and activists, Jeff Goldin, Michael Liss, and Tom Grant, have also been missing since Tuesday morning. Conley, 28, Rae, 28, Goldin, 40, Liss, 35, Grant, 39 are all American citizens.
The five “citizen journalists” and activists were in Beijing to support and promote human rights, freedom of expression, and freedom for the Tibetan people. They and numerous others have acted as an independent media centre for the dozens of pro-Tibet activists in Beijing who have sought to draw attention to the Chinese government’s occupation of during the Olympics
Mainstream media seems to want to ignore this bit of news. I wonder why.
According to hotel staff, Rae and Conley checked out of their hotel in Beijing before dawn Tuesday morning. At 12:30pm Beijing time on Tuesday, Conley’s wife in Philadelphia received a text message from him reading “In Jail. All fine.” A “twitter” message to Students for a Free Tibet suggested that they were being held with James Powderly, the artist and co-founder of Graffiti Research Lab who was preparing to debut a new work and technology of protest, the L.A.S.E.R. Stencil. (See http://freetibet2008.org/globalactions/jamespowderly/)
Be sure to read the full story here.
It seems I made a note of Brian Conley’s efforts back in 2006.
If the mainstream won’t say boo about this, the blogosphere must. Spread the word as far and wide as you can. We must remember that the country holding one of the last few international gestures that immediately bring up the thoughts of hope and peace is the same government known to have committed terrible violations of humans rights.
Other blogs are talking:
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Chris Brogan: Brian Conley Jailed in Beijing
Brian Conley and other American activists Detained in Beijing
Help Free Brian Conley, James Powderly and Others
Chinese Government Detain Western Protestors Shock
Why aren’t you?
UPDATE: Under law the Chinese government has “72 hours before it is required to notify an embassy about foreign nationals who have been detained.” It is currently 60 hours and counting.
UPDATE UPDATE:
(via read or alive, Brian Conley’s Twitter, Free Tibet 2008, Alive in Baghdad)
Chinese Journalist Cries For Help
Posted by admin - 05/01/09 at 01:01:16 amA chinese journalist used twitter .. to inform others of his arrest by security forces during the olympics and was forced to go somewhere far away from the event. It was said .. that Zhou the chinese journalist was ordered to meet the police and accused of having 2 kids in the 1 kid bylaw of China.. and local limit. But according to Zhou.. he is childless.. therefore the accusation was baseless. Zhou 27 was placed under arrest when he arrived at the police station .. and was driven to a mining town and currently under house arrest till the Olympics is over..?
We’ve heard alot about the chinese laws in China.. and i’m not hopeful for Zhou at all. There is no appeals.. and it is still pretty much a communist kinda practice.. from what i’ve heard.
I (heart) Lego
Posted by admin - 04/01/09 at 01:01:28 am
What can you do when you get a rare few days off work - climb a mountain? Hike through the wilderness? Travel to far flung and exotic lands and immerse yourself in an alien culture? All wonderful choices, of course, but with one common problem: none of them necessarily involves a random visit to the Lego Store.
Today we went to Bluewater. Or was it Lakeside? Not sure - either way it was a shopping centre somewhere on the outskirts of London, roughly the size of Luxembourg and alarmingly sterile in that way that big shopping centres tend to be. We wandered around a bit, conspicuously failing to buy anything of much value, but then we found the Lego store. Now, Lego and I go some way back - we had lots of it as kids and, when building little houses lost some of its technical challenge, I spent what must have been entire years constructing things out of Lego Technic - the fancy Lego with cogs and gears and electric motors and pneumatic doodads and all that good stuff. In fact, I got surprisingly good at creating completely tiny, and pointless, things like miniature Lego gearboxes for slightly larger Lego cars - looking back, I suppose my progression onto adult geekhood wasn’t a huge shock to anyone. [Even geekier sidenote - turns out that today’s Technic bricks don’t have lumps on - they’ve gone all odd and rounded. I’m not sure if this is progress or heresy.]
Anyhow, in a fit of nostalgia I spent a tenner on a big box of bricks: not fancy Technic ones, just the classic primary-colours-with-lumps-on type. And they’re great: having got home I spent a good hour mashing them together, all the while grinning like an ourang-outang who has just discovered not one banana but a whole Chiquita shipment all to himself. And, in honour of the Olympics (it’s hard to craft a model of Georgia using perma-happy minifigs right now), I created the masterpiece you’ll see above: a Lego diving contest. I thought it was quite good, until I looked on Flickr and found this:
So, that’d be the Olympic Stadium in Lego, then. Bloody hell. And they didn’t stop at the one building, either - behold the entire Olympic Village, crafted in plastic bricks. Watch this space to see if I go slightly crazy, sell the car, fill the bedroom full of tiny plastic bricks and attempt to recreate the entirety of Western Europe in full, glorious, detail, before I have to return to work.
Chinese less restricted, except for politics
Posted by admin - 03/01/09 at 08:01:23 amFor the past two decades, China’s people have become richer but not much freer - and the Communist Party has staked its future that the Chinese will live with that tradeoff.That, at least, is the conventional wisdom. But with the Olympic Games opening in Beijing on Friday, training a spotlight on China’s rights record, that view obscures a more complex reality: Political change, however gradual and inconsistent, has made China a significantly more open place for ordinary people than it was a generation ago.
Read on from the IHT
Bolt Wins 200m
Posted by admin - 02/01/09 at 11:01:13 amI was lucky to have watched Usain Bolt run in the 200m finals today live. What a guy. Not only is he not stony-faced like most of the other sprinters, he blew away the world record time of 19.32 seconds, despite running into a headwind. Down the stretch, you could see him glance over at the clock and I just knew he wasn’t going to let up one bit going into the finish line to try and break the record.
And perhaps to appease his detractors, his celebration was quite muted, occurring only after passing the finish line. He seems like such a confident, happy kid, not much older than I. And how appropriate that today was his 22nd birthday - the stadium sang happy birthday to him. I can’t imagine the feeling that must have been: gold and a wonderful birthday celebration.
Congratulations Bolt!
Pan Shop [Manufacturer] Thailand
Posted by admin - 01/01/09 at 10:01:06 amPan Shop [Manufacturer] ThailandPan Shop is the manufacturing of wooden antique furniture.We have more than 5000 products and export to another country[/tag]
In Which I Talk About The Closing Ceremonies
Posted by admin - 30/12/08 at 04:12:32 amI again took over Nathan’s HD tv for the Closing Ceremonies. I brought Fish and Chips. We watched the festivities. And just like the Opening, the Closing was phenomenal. Even the hand off to London part was good. Nathan predicted that the little girl on the bus with the soccer ball would hand it off to David Beckham and it happened. Spooky.
Lest you think this is my last Olympic post, I am here to tell you it’s not. I need to get my thoughts together but I’m going to have a Best/Worst Of list going up soon.
Olympics - It’s Not Over Yet
Posted by admin - 28/12/08 at 07:12:02 amThere was much talk of the Olympics, and now the real winners start to compete in Beijing.
Over 4,000 athletes from 150 nations will compete in the Paraolympic Games. These games feature world class athletes who are vision impaired, paralyzed and many other physical disabilities.
The opening ceremony had all the glitz and glamour the Chinese showed for the Olympics, and featured sign language dancers and disabled athletes.
Women competed in weightlifting for the first time at the Sydney Games in 2000, when 80 female weightlifters competed for medals in ten different weight categories.
Zekra Zaki, who lost her legs in a car accident at age 2, became the first Iraqi female athlete to ever qualify for these games and will compete in weightlifting.
Rachel Morris of Great Britain, who also lost her legs in an accident, is the World Champion in handcycling and makes her Paralympics debut.
To keep up with scores and medal tallies of these incredible athletes visit the official Olympic website
London’s Olympic Stadium Will Be Portable
Posted by admin - 26/12/08 at 09:12:05 am
London’s Olympic Stadium will seat around 80,000 people, but what makes the stadium unique is that it is being constructed with special flatpack materials which means that it can be easily taken down and moved to another place after the games.
Gizmodo shares some details about the stadium.
The stadium is to have a permanent 25,000 seat main structure, but for the Olympics they’ll also install a 55,000 seat upper tier. When the games are over, it can be (relatively) easily taken down and, if needed, shipped to another Olympic city for the next games. In fact, London is currently talking to Chicago, a possible host of the 2016 games, about sending the stadium their way.
However, the idea of having a megastadium in different cities appears to be rather interesting.
One could imagine a movable set of stadiums, moving from city to city and being set up for each games. It’s a cool idea, one that I could see grabbing hold as the real impact of having to build a megastadium every four years in a different city becomes more apparent.
Photo: © diamond geezer