We call it a DIY advertising community. Anyone can make an ad. Anyone can buy an ad.

We’ve got a basic alpha prototype website up at http://www.adhack2.com and we’re launching our beta version in the coming weeks. If you’re interested, check it out and let me know.

~James

Probably start in the mid 40’s or so, but the cost of living (less gas and fuel oil) is still pretty low up here.

Read more what he has to say to them:

http://www.news24.com/News24/Sport/More_Sport/0,,2-9-32_2312675,00.html

Lay off China, says IOC chief
26/04/2008 12:11 - (SA)

London - IOC president Jacques Rogge told Western countries to stop hectoring China over human rights in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Games, in an interview with a British newspaper published on Saturday.

“We owe China to give them time,” the International Olympics Committee boss told the Financial Times.

The Olympic torch relay in the run-up to the August 8-24 Games has been met with protests in cities across the globe over China’s actions in Tibet and human rights record.

Rogge said that while he understood the strength of feeling in the West, expectations of how quickly China can change were overblown.

“It took us 200 years to evolve from the French Revolution. China started in 1949,” the 65-year-old Belgian told the FT business daily.

“We all know that there were abuses under Mao and the Cultural Revolution was not a nice period. But gradually, steadily, over 60 years, they evolved, and they were able to introduce a lot of changes.”

In 1949, Britain, France, Belgium and Portugal came “with all the abuse attached to colonial powers. It was only 40 years ago that we gave liberty to the colonies. Let’s be a little bit more modest”.

But Rogge said protests were the wrong way to convince Beijing to change its ways.

“You don’t obtain anything in China with a loud voice,” Rogge said.

“That is the big mistake of people in the West wanting to add their views. To keep face is of paramount importance. All the Chinese specialists will tell you that only one thing works - respectful, quiet, firm discussion.

“Otherwise the Chinese will close themselves. That is what is happening today. There is a lot of protest, a lot of very strong verbal power, and the Chinese, they close themselves.”

Rogge said the IOC always thought handing the 2008 Olympics to Beijing would “open up China”, and that in time this would happen.

“The Games, we believe, over time, will have a good influence on social evolution in China, and the Chinese admit it themselves,” he said.

“I wonder if Tibet would be front page today were it not that the Games are being organised in Beijing. It would probably be page four or five,” he said.

“We have been able to achieve something. I am not quite sure that heads of government have achieved much more than we have done.”

He said the political landscape of South Korea had been transformed by the 1988 Games in Seoul.

“There will never be a solution whereby the political world or the pressure groups will not try to leverage the Games,” he added.

“You cannot stop that because of the prestige of the Games and what they represent for mankind.”

Having studied some more in this program and met some of the outsdanding candidates of the journalism program since posting this comment… do you still want to talk about journalistic integrity? *bweg*

Congratulations on the A’s. Color me even more impressed if they came from Halavais’s classes. I’ve personally found him to be the most challenging grader of the professors I’ve had.

I think you’re doing the baloney dance again. Please don’t put words into my mouth about China’s human rights record. I said many countries uncluding the USA should be chastised for its human rights record too.

China has not done so. Instead of showing itself as even aspiring to conscionable human rights, it remains an adolescent country which is so afraid of being criticized that it censors all incoming and outgoing information. It is a nation which is so absolutely convinced of its own blamelessness that instead of realizing that international scrutiny and criticism comes as part of the whole package when you host the Olympics, they pout and throw the diplomatic equivalent of temper tantrums, trying to turn any questions raised around so that the subject on the table becomes the perceived faults of those who dare to question China’s unquestioned human rights abuses.

Yes, Charlie. There are many countries which have things they need to answer for. And right now, the country which everyone is paying attention to happens to be China. Why? Because China is hosting the Olympics, which is the national equivalent of inviting every country over for dinner. And then China has the diplomatic audacity to do the equivalent of beat its children (or worse) in front of the guests, and then has the gall to act offended when the guests speak out about the flagrant abuse just perpetuated.

If China wants to be accepted by the West, it’s going to have to learn to adopt the earmarks of a “civilized” legal and social structure, one of the historical legacies of China that the People’s Revolution apparently threw out as worthless. Rule one is that you don’t get to kill, torture, beat, main, imprison, or otherwise harshly punish folks who dare to dissent with the official “party line”. Rule two is that you cannot censor the information coming into or out of your country and then wonder why the rest of the world finds your citizens woefully out of touch with reality.

The protests in Tibet were perfectly timed to coincide with one of the most precious commodities in the modern world… attention. Tibet made a perfectly logical decision to capitalize on the international focus of attention to make a cry out to the rest of the world that all was not well in Tibet, despite party-line propaganda from China. Sympathizers took up that call and stood up to carry the message forward into places where China’s bully-boys couldn’t reach them, which is not only smart, it’s inspired.

Why China? Because China wanted to host the Olympics. You can cling to the notion that the Olympics has nothing to do with politics, or even that sports in general have nothing to do with politics, but that view is in fact extremely naive in the face of the history of the Olympic Games alone. More so in modern times, when Audience Attention is recognized for the exploitable resource it is.

China is in the hot seat because China bid for hosting the Olympics. And now they are getting the international attention they asked for, but China is swiftly learning that they have no control over where the world is focusing its attention.

Whether it be for the Free Tibet cause, the disappeared Falun Gong members, even over the harsh treatment of the student motivators of Tiannamen Square from 20 years ago, China has a horrendous human rights record, a human rights record that you do not quesion.

If we ignore that human rights record, including the current examples of how China continues to bully its own political dissidents into silence, prison, or death, then we are guilty by association, accessories to these crimes. This is why the IOC needs to make a statement. This is why countries of conscience need to at least give voice to their objections through some action, perhaps refusing to attend or broadcast the opening and closing ceremonies. This allows the athletes who are in their prime and have devoted years of training to make it to competition to have their day, but to make it understood that nations of the world are still upset with China’s inability to conduct its internal affairs with respect for basic human rights and dignity.

Why China? Because China literally asked for it, Charlie. They asked for this level of attention when they put in a bid to host the Games. And now they are getting exactly the sort of attention which accompanies that.

No hypocrisy here. When the Games are next in the United States, unless the human rights abuses perpetuated now in Guantanamo Bay and the horror of “legalized torture” have ended, I will be speaking out and asking the IOC once again to condemn the human rights abuses of the home country. And yes, I will protest if the Torch passes within my region of the US.

Human rights are important to me as an issue. We are in the 21st century and still, the world political machines struggle to adhere to the concepts that everyone is entitled to the same rights, and they include freedom of expression, freedom of dissent, due process of law, protection of human rights within that law, and freedom of access to uncensored sources of information.

We’ll get there. One uphill battle at a time. And right now, it’s China’s turn, because China volunteered.
-Adam