FILE; Feng Li/Getty Images

Protesters just can't win in China these days. Now, even those who have requested official permission to protest in Beijing are being arrested, including a handful of citizens upset about having their homes destroyed in preparation for the big games. One would-be demonstrator, Zhang Wei, was even given a sentence of 30 days after repeatedly applying to protest about her forced home eviction.

Given the nature of the protest application process, it's not surprising that the three city parks "designated" as protest zones (and patrolled daily by police) have remained pretty quiet. Two, in fact -- Shije "World" Park (shown above in June) and Ritan Park -- have reportedly remained 100 percent protest-free since the opening ceremonies.

It all makes the words of Wang Wei, the Beijing Olympic Committee's executive vice president, sound pretty empty. Here are his comments from today's press conference in Beijing on press freedom:

[T]he Olympic Games coming to China will help China to open up further and to reform."

Tell it to Zhang Wei.

RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

With all eyes on China this week, it's refreshing to see George and Laura Bush noting that today is the 20th anniversary of pro-democracy protests in Burma that were brutally suppressed.

Last fall's Saffron Revolution was the probably the closest the country has come to mass protests since that fateful day when hundreds of thousands of Burmese took to the streets to call for democracy: 8.8.88.

The Irrawaddy, the best source of news on Burma, has a special issue today commemorating the '88 uprising. They are reporting that many people in the capital donned black clothing to mark the anniversary today, and that plainclothes police were out in force. All the while, conditions in the delta where Cyclone Nargis hit hardest remain dire, with little to no government or foreign aid coming through.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a longtime critic of the Egyptian government, has been convicted in absentia for "tarnishing Egypt's reputation" and sentenced to two years in prison. Saad spent about 10 months in jail after an earlier conviction in 2001, and he was released thanks to U.S. pressure.

Saad was my boss and mentor while I worked at the Ibn Khaldun Center in Cairo, the pro-democracy NGO and think tank he founded. An extraordinarily gracious and charismatic man, all he wants is to see a free and democratic Egypt. Under constant threat of arrest, the 69-year-old sociologist has been living in exile, his income under severe strain.

This new conviction is ludicrous, though it has been a long time coming. It's obviously payback for Saad's efforts to lobby for cuts in the U.S. aid package. Though he is hardly the shadowy, all-powerful player the Egyptian state media make him out to be, Saad does have a lot of admirers in the media and on Capitol Hill who will not look too kindly on this move. But with the "freedom agenda" long dead, perhaps Hosni Mubarak's government -- which has been ruling under a repressive "state of emergency" since 1981 -- thinks it can get away with it.

Feng Li/Getty Images

If you want to protest in favor of freedom and democracy during next month's Olympics, you have an ironically appropriate place to go: the Beijing World Park. The park -- which has replicas of the Statue of Liberty, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the White House, along with other world monuments such as the Sydney Opera House and the Eiffel Tower -- is one of three official protest zones that China has set up for protesters.

Some have speculated that the logic of designating the World Park as a protest zone is to make it look like protesters are elsewhere when images appear on television and the Internet.

And what's up with the Twin Towers still standing in the replica of the New York City skyline?

YouTube and even the more freewheeling LiveLeak have both apparently yanked a video showing a dress rehearsal for the Olympics opening ceremony, citing copyright concerns. It's not clear to me whether that would refer to the South Korean network that originally aired the footage, China, NBC (which bought the rights to broadcast the games), or the International Olympic Committee, but I am trying to find out.

When my colleague Travis posted the video last night, he wrote: "Maybe mighty China doesn't have as much control over the Internet as it would like to believe." Perhaps he was wrong?

UPDATE: Here we go again. Chinese Internet users are enraged at South Korea.

... Reuters reports that SBS pulled the footage off its own Web site Thursday afternoon. So, presumably we can rule the South Korean network out, unless YouTube and LiveLeak pulled their footage earlier in response to a request from SBS and then SBS did so later in response to a demand from China. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images

Moving to disarm critics and follow through on promises made to the International Olympic Committee, China announced yesterday that it will allow demonstrations in special "protest pens": three public parks that are no closer than several miles to the Olympic Stadium.

Unsurprisingly, activists are unmoved. Demonstrations must first obtain formal approval by local police, and it's not clear whether Chinese laws banning political protest "harmful to national unity and social stability" will apply:

We never get it no matter how many times we try," said Jiang Tianyong, a lawyer and legal-rights advocate who has been rejected numerous times [attempting to schedule a protest]. "This is only a show for foreigners. Otherwise, I'd love to see these three places be kept after the Olympics so we can let our voices be heard, too."

That said, such "free-speech zones" are really nothing new for the Olympics. They've also been employed at other large international gatherings such as the G-8, as well as American political conventions. China certainly stands out for its political suppression before and after the Olympics, but during the games, for better or for worse, it's par for the course.

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images

Remember that little feud between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Well, the spat between the two men isn't quite over.

Ahmadinejad shot back today at comments made by Velayati in an Iranian daily newspaper criticizing Ahmadinejad's hardline nuclear rhetoric, saying that the former foreign minister and Khamenei advisor had no role in the country's nuclear program:

Velayati is a respected man. Like everyone else in Iran, he is free to have personal views... But he is not involved in nuclear decision making."

Ahmadinejad may be more delirious than I thought if he actually thinks that "everyone in Iran is free to have personal views." Did he get the memo about Ahmad Batebi, Iran's estimated 250 executions last year, the systematic suppression of journalists and bloggers, or that the country was ranked 181st out of 195 countries in Freedom House's annual Freedom of the Press survey last year? Apparently not.

And with tensions brewing between Iran and the West, it would help to know who is actually in charge of the Islamic Republic. I never thought I'd say this, but let's hope it's Khamenei.

U.S. Library of Congress

Which economists, journalists, and business leaders are doing the best job of advancing free markets and free people? You can make your opinions known by voting for nominees for the Free Market Hall of Fame.

At this year's FreedomFest—which describes itself as the world's largest annual gathering of free minds and is the brainchild of contrarian economist Mark Skousen—the first five members of the Free Market Hall of Fame will be inducted at a July 12 gala banquet in Las Vegas. Unlike with FP's top public intellectuals poll, however, the nominees receiving the highest vote counts won't necessarily make it into the Hall of Fame. Rather, "[a] select group of economists and other free-market supporters will make the final decision and vote on upcoming Hall of Fame members," according to the hall's Web site. I guess the Hall of Fame isn't ready to surrender the commanding heights to the tyranny of the Internet majority.

Anyone who's ever lived in London, New York, Chicago, or any one of 20 other cities around the world knows that Time Out is an indispensable guide to going out on the town. The arts and entertainment magazine lists events and reviews of museum exhibitions, theater performances, movies, clubs, restaurants, and anything else you can think of as a way to spend your free time. It's all in good fun, and totally apolitical, right?

Not according to China. The country's General Administration of Press and Publications, which is in charge of censoring media it deems threatening to the government, has banned the June issue of Time Out Beijing. The agency's offical reason for banning the distribution of the English-language magazine is that it lacks a proper license. But the publisher of Time Out, which is headquartered in London, has implied that it's all part of Beijing's crackdown on foreign influences in the runup to this summer's Olympics. The real test will be whether the magazine is allowed to go to press in August, when foreigners are flooding the city for the games. In the meantime, Internet users can still access the Web site to get their fix on what to do in Beijing.

The eXile, Moscow's button-pushing alternative biweekly and self-described "Jesus Christ of English-language publications," is no more. The 11-year-old tabloid shut down after its investors were scared away by a Russian government investigation of its ties to opposition leader Eduard Limonov as well as its general obnoxiousness toward those in power. Editor Mark Ames has been blogging the eXile's downfall for Radar Online and "war nerd" Gary Brecher has launched a fundraising drive to keep his employer alive as an online-only publication.

Brecher brings up the possibility of relocating to a city with a more welcoming media climate, but it's hard to imagine the eXile's unique brand of obscenity and excess existing anywhere but Moscow.

Feng Li/Getty Images

The last thing Beijing wants to see at the Olympic opening ceremonies on August 8 is Tibetan flags, "Stop genocide in Darfur" signs, or similar such provocations from "troublemakers." And given Beijing's paranoia, it's hardly surprising that this year's opening and closing ceremonies are going to have some of the tightest security of any event, ever.

Each ticket for the ceremonies will have a microchip embedded with the user's photograph, passport details, addresses, emails, and telephone numbers. All event tickets also have microchips to prevent counterfeiting, but only the ceremony tickets will contain the personal data. Some have raised fears of data theft, and others question whether activists known to the Chinese authorities could even attempt to attend, since many of them are being detained or at least closely watched ahead of the games. Perhaps the biggest concern is that the tickets will be too effective: If you are attending the ceremonies with a few friends or family members and your tickets get switched among you, expect big delays at the gates.

It looks like the climate for Russian media may not be improving so much after all in the Medvedev era.

The eXile, Moscow's venerable English-language alt-weekly, is under investigation by the Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage and may be shut down. After 11 years of proudly mocking government authorities, it's not clear what finally brought the hammer down. It could have something to do with Eduard Limonov, novelist and leader of the banned National Bolshevik Party, who is friends with editor Mark Ames and a frequent contributor. 

Though I sometimes found its descriptions of ordinary Russians condescending, bordering on racist, the eXile was undoubtedly one of the great guilty pleasures of living in Moscow -- a rare breath of politically incorrect air in an otherwise muzzled media climate. Its cultural coverage sometimes felt like the last vestige of the wilder, pre-Putin Moscow scene of the early '90s. It's also had some international influence, with Gary Brecher's War Nerd column gaining an loyal Internet readership and former editor Matt Taibbi going on to cover U.S. politics for Rolling Stone.

In what may be a farewell editorial, Ames recounts the eXile's history of abuse in a tone of proudly obscene defiance:

From its very inception, The eXile has been under constant siege, always pushed to the brink of collapse by a nefarious alliance of Russian bureaucrats, aggrieved small-business owners, thick-ankled American women, thin-skinned Russian celebrities, seething Western journalists and politicians, and even members of our own staff, people whom we thought we could trust. Everyone, it seems, learns to hate us at one time or another, leaving only a small rump core to keep the flame of hatred burning. Is there a lesson to be learned in that? Yes there is: everyone but us is a worthless piece of [expletive]."

Moscow won't be the same without them.

As Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe was proving that he has a sense of humor by appearing at a the U.N. food summit in Rome while his people suffer from government-induced starvation and out-of-control inflation, Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was being arrested today. Charges have yet to be filed against Mugabe's chief political rival -- whom many observers say was victorious in the first round of the country's presidential elections in March -- and with the sad state of affairs in Zimbabwe, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Iran is far from a free and open society, but apparently its control of the Internet is not as pervasive as one might think.

Created by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) -- an Internet surveillance monitoring partnership between the Citizen Lab, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Advanced Network Research Group at the Cambridge Security Programme, and the Oxford Internet Institute -- this week's Tuesday Map plots the top 6,000 Persian language blogs according to the links among them, showing both those blocked (left) and visible (right) inside Iran.

Each dot represents a blog, color-coded by content (yellow and green for reformist, secular and expatriate bloggers; purple for Persian poetry; green for popular culture, and red for religious and/or conservative bloggers) and scaled by the number of links to the blog from other sites. 

Although most blocked blogs are "secular/reformist" in nature, ONI notes:

[T]he majority of these [secular/reformist] blogs are not blocked. Also, a handful of blogs from religious, pro-regime parts of the network are blocked as well. A preliminary analysis of these indicates content (like anti-Arab bias and discussion of "temporary marriages") that, while not unfriendly to the Islamic Republic, might nevertheless be embarrassing to it."

For a closer assessment of the Iranian blogosphere, check out this more detailed map and case study from the Internet and Democracy project at the Berkman Center.

DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/Getty Images

Does Dmitry Medvedev have a mind of his own after all?

Yesterday, Russia's new president essentially sank a draft law that would have allowed the government to shut down a newspaper suspected of libel without even waiting for a court decision. A lawmaker from the ruling United Russia Party introduced the bill after a tabloid published rumors that Vladimir Putin was leaving his wife for a 24-year-old gymnast. Under Putin, the paper was shut down within days, but Medevedev has indicated that he may be a bit more liberal in his view of press freedom:

It is obvious that the ... draft law could lead only to the creation of hindrances to the normal functioning of the media, and does not accomplish the declared aims -- to defend citizens from the distribution of material that is libelous."

Hopefully, this is an indication that it is still too early to dismiss Medvedev as Putin's sock-puppet. Russia's not going to magically transform into a liberal democracy any time soon, but there's reason to suspect that Medvedev isn't entirely on board with all of Putin's authoritarian tendencies. He may be testing the waters to see how much he can get away with. Given that Putin has rigged the system so that he can impeach the president fairly easily, Medvedev doesn't exactly have a lot of room to maneuver. But it's still encouraging if he's using what power he does have to curb some of the state's most draconian excesses.

FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images

In case it weren't already clear, the organizers of this summer's Olympics would rather you not protest against China during the games. The Bejing Organizing Committee has posted a set of 57 dos and don'ts for foreign visitors to the games, which include a ban on "religious or political banners or slogans at Olympic venues."

Strangely for a document aimed at foreigners, it's only available in Chinese, but the New York Times reports that other "don'ts" include defacing the Chinese flag, holding unsanctioned demonstrations at Olympic venues or anywhere else, and bringing printed materials critical of China into the country. The International Olympic Committee has yet to respond but it seems unlikely that they will deviate from their general policy of spinelessness.

ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/Getty Images

Singaporean-American lawyer Gopalan Nair, who blogs at Singapore Dissident, threw the gauntlet down last week to the Singapore authorities:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am Gopalan Nair. Today is May 31, 2008 at 10.40am Singapore time. I am at present in Singapore at Broadway Hotel, Room 708, 195 Serangoon Road, Singapore, 218067. The hotel telephone number is is 62924661. My local SingTel telephone number is 83764236. [...]

Mr. Lee Kuan Yew [at left], look here. I am now within your jurisdiction and that of your corrupt police and your corrupt judiciary who will do anything you want of them, however criminal and illegal.

What are you going to do about it?

Turns out, a lot. Police quickly arrested Nair and charged him with insulting Belinda Ang Saw Ean, a judge whom the blogger had earlier accused of "prostituting herself" for Lee Kuan Yew during a hearing at which the former prime minister testified against opposition politician Chee Soon Juan, who was charged with defamation. Judging by comments like these, I think Nair got thrown in the briar patch, so to speak:

I repeat the threat that Lee Kuan Yew had made on day two of the show trial during the last 3 days in the High Court. When asked by Dr. Chee whether he will sue those who write on the Internet defamations against him, I mean defamations in the Singaporean sense, his definitive unequivocal answer was that he will sue them. There is no doubt in the Singaporean sense, I have defamed him and his Prime Minister son, not only in my last blog post but in almost all my blog posts since my blog's inception in December 2006.

The U.S. embassy says it is "monitoring the case closely." Stay tuned.

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

It looks like Georgia's opposition may have a legitimate beef about yesterday's parliamentary election, which President Mikheil Saakashvili's party appears to have won commandingly. Here's what the observer mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had to say:

Parties were able to campaign actively, but there were numerous allegations of intimidation, some of which could be verified [...] Election day was overall calm and generally assessed positively, although problems with inking and instances of pressure on observers and proxies were noted. Counting and tabulation was evaluated less positively, with many significant procedural shortcomings observed.

While they differ little on policy, opposition parties accuse Saakashvili's government of widespread corruption and are still angry over the crackdown on demonstrators in Tbilisi last year.

But as valid as their complaints may be, last night's post-election rally sounds like one uninspiring affair:

The opposition called for protests in Tbilisi late on Wednesday night, saying tens of thousands would gather, but only about 1,000 people showed up [...] Protesters then watched live coverage of the Champions League final in Moscow between English teams Manchester United and Chelsea.

It does sound like it was a good game, but still, this is no way to overthrow a government. I hope they weren't Chelsea fans at least.

blog.ifeng.com

Zhang Ping, a senior editor of China's Southern Metropolis Weekly, recently penned several columns under a pseudonym about Chinese censorship of the situation in Tibet. One his pieces, "How to Find the Truth About Tibet," reflects on how both official and self-censorship among the Chinese media prevents Chinese readers from knowing the full story about Tibet, and laments that readers then focus their ire on perceived Western biases rather than agitating for more press freedoms. Here's an excerpt:

If the netizens [hyping inaccurate reports by foreign media] genuinely care about news values, they should not only be exposing the fake reports by the western media and they should also be challenging the control by the Chinese government over news sources and the Chinese media.  There is no doubt that the harm from the latter is even worse than the former.  When individual media outlets make fake reports about real events, it is easy to correct because just a few meticulous Chinese netizens can do the job.  When media control is exercised by the state authorities, the whole world is helpless.

There was a predictable nationalist-inspired backlash against Zhang, with Web forums labeling him a traitor and worse. Now, he's been fired.

Just after he was sacked, Zhang wrote a blog post titled, "My Cowardice and Impotence," in which he struggles with the work journalists are forced to produce in a place with so few press freedoms.

I am afraid of other people praising me as a brave newspaperman, because I know I am full of fear in my heart. I did write some commentaries on current affairs, and edited some articles that exposed the truth. I lost my job and was threatened for speaking the truth. However, to be honest, these were exceptional cases. They were my miscalculations. In my various media positions in the past decade, what I’ve practiced most is avoiding risk.

Self-censorship has become part of my life. It makes me disgusted with myself. Some of my peers are proud of their censorship skills, and like to show it off to employers. I have similar skills, and I am using them everyday. But I am deeply uncomfortable with it. I feel ashamed about it, just like an executioner knows that he is good at killing.[...]

[T]he media industry is different. I participate in telling lies to the public whenever I cancel a good news story, whenever I delete a sentence of truth, if we regard the media as a public good.[...] Even if I don’t have the courage and capacity to do more than I can do now, I should at least live honestly and conscientiously, and be aware of my cowardice and impotence.

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

It was to be the marquee event of the Olympic torch's tour around the world. In a triumphant show of Chinese prowess and technological know-how, the torch was to ascend to the highest point on Earth and powerfully symbolize China's dramatic entry on the world stage.

Instead, as Agence France Presse puts it, the torch's trip up Mt. Everest, which could begin as early as this weekend, has "descended into farce":

[L]ast-minute changes this week by Beijing Olympic officials called for a rapid and tightly controlled two-to-three day trip through riot-hit Tibet to Mount Everest base camp. The changes raised concerns among journalists about the health impact of ascending too quickly to the camp's elevation of 5,150 metres (16,900 feet). After foreign media requested further information on the safety concerns, Beijing Olympic Games organisers set a sudden Thursday morning payment deadline for air tickets to the Tibetan capital Lhasa. The situation descended into farce when the Olympic official tasked with collecting payments refused to accept the fees from organisations including AFP and other international news agencies as he headed to the airport to purchase the tickets. 'I'm sorry, it is too late. I am going to the airport now,' said Xu Xianhui, a Beijing Games media official. It was not immediately clear if the refusal to accept payment was part of an official government decision to keep reporters out of Tibet. Xu said the payment of some foreign media organisations had been accepted but declined specifics. Olympic organisers were asked to explain the refusal but did not immediately reply."

Officials in Beijing also announced that foreign press would not be allowed to cover the climbing team's departure from Everest Base Camp, scheduled for tomorrow.

Moreover, medical experts say the trip from Beijing (at sea level) to Base Camp should not be made in less than one week in order to allow for acclimatization. Accordingly, several news agencies pulled their reporters from the assignment due to the potential for serious health complications. Authoritarianism through bureaucracy is an art form in China.

The move is hardly surprising, considering that the reporters hoping to cover the torch's climb up Everest were to be the first allowed to enter Tibet in a month or so. Scattered reports of continued protests are still leaking out of Lhasa, despite a near-complete ban on media coverage. And Beijing is clearly paranoid that the torch's trip there will spark more uprisings. Earlier this week, an American mountaineer was kicked off Everest by officials keeping watch over the mountain after a "Free Tibet" banner was discovered in his gear. Oh, and Tibet won't be reopened to tourists next month as planned, either.

Does anyone else see a pattern developing here? At this point, it seems appropriate to ask whether the Beijing Games can even be taken seriously. So, can they?