What Olympic spirit?

Chinese man held for quake photos

A Chinese teacher has been detained for posting images on the internet of schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake, a rights group has said.

Human Rights in China said Liu Shaokun had been ordered to serve a year of "re-education through labour".

Mr Liu was detained for "disseminating rumours and destroying social order", the group said.

The 12 May quake killed nearly 70,000 people. Many of those who died were children whose schools collapsed.

The poor condition of the school buildings has become a sensitive
political issue for the government, and grieving parents have staged
numerous protests demanding an inquiry.

Many have accused local officials of colluding with builders to allow them to get away with cheap and unsafe practices.

"Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy
and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to
re-education through labour to silence and lock up concerned citizens
like teacher Liu Shaokun and others," said Human Rights in China
Executive Director Sharon Hom.

No trial

According to Human Rights in China, Mr Liu's wife was informed
by police last week that the teacher, from Guanghan Middle School in
Deyang city, had been sent to a labour camp.

The "re-education through labour" system allows police to
incarcerate a crime suspect for up to four years without the need for a
criminal trial or a formal charge.

The system, in place since 1957, has been widely criticised by the UN and other organisations.

Thelemic thoughts

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but
according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their
beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when
they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them,
none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other
thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and
strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be
observed,

Do What Thou Wilt;

because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in
honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth
them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is
called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint
they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble
disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake
off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously
enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after
things forbidden and to desire what is denied us

Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel

The Other Kind of Green Beer

From the Rocky Mountains to Japan and Australia, beer-brewing companies are adopting environmentally sustainable practices that reduce waste, as well as energy and water use, according to an Environmental News Network report. more