Beijing 2008

There's no procrastinating like getting on the bad side of the Chinese authorities procrastinating.

So, a brill episode of Frontline (PBS) called The Tank Man aired earlier this week. Framed around what would Tank Man (the infamous protester who stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square in 1989) be doing in today's China, the show discusses the cleavages that are now the norm, and a China that rests on binary oppositions (urban-rural, political limitations-economic freedom etc)

I believe it will be available online for viewing at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/

Further, this reminded me of my outrage at the time of the announcement that Beijing would host 2008, for the economic situation is such that labour, to build the new sites as the docu outlines, is offered in return for food. Not wages, just for food, which is totally a departure from the whole political economy argument that wages replace our own, humanized ability to acheive use-value (aka social reproduction) and infact turns the situation into an argument better rooted in political ecology (that bodies need food to function, and capitalist-like behaviour alienates workers to the point that they are no more than plow horses or ox or other beasts of burden).

Chinese authorities, I would like to remind you that, ironically, I do think of myself as something of a Marxist (Somewhat. You will notice that I am a landowner as per post below).

Anyway, back to labour. Sooner or later, I will draft and post a letter of protest that I will send to the IOC. In the meantime, here are some interesting links:

http://www.olympicwatch.org/
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/china/beijing08/
http://www.clb.org.hk/public/main