Illegal and Unhealthy

For some strange reason the Chinese government has decided to block www.livingroomwar.com/blog from each and every Chinese computer. They have not however chosen to block CNN.com and therefore I was able to find out the following:

"BEIJING, China (AP) -- China is tightening controls on blogs and search engines to block material deemed subversive or immoral, the government said Friday. The announcement comes amid a media crackdown by President Hu Jintao's government, with Web sites being shut down and journalists jailed.
"As more and more illegal and unhealthy information spreads through the blog and search engine, we will take effective measures to put the BBS, blog and search engine under control," said Cai Wu, director of the Information Office of China's Cabinet, quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency."

Illegal AND unhealthy, well that just about covers it. Hey did, I post the pictures I took of M-16s for sale on the streets of Istanbul? Have I mentioned anything about the fact that almost every country we've visited has been bombed either during our visit or soon after. (OK, yeah maybe I've said a thing or two about that... and on that tip, I heard on the BBC this morning that a Mumbai commuter train got blown up on Tuesday and 200+ people were killed. We flew out of Mumbai about a month ago).

But the thing that I find truly strange, sitting here on the top floor of a gargantuan Mall complex next to a bunch of healthy young Shanghainese sweating on treadmills after a long week of working the financial markets and shopping at Hugo Boss, is that the only frightening police activity we've seen here has been plain-clothes cops busting street merchants, and everything seems rather open (for buisness).