A NATION MOURNS. Apparently.

20 May 2008

In the papers today, the press is filled with absurd platitudes about mourning the dead.

“A NATION MOURNS” blares the South China Boring Most, with large font and cliché upon cliché to support the official party line.

Not since the death of Mao have so many people stood still in China to mourn at an officially designated time, we are told. This is apparently a wonder of the age.

“They will never be forgotten” says the Boring Most.

By about page 4 the dead have been forgotten and we have moved on to the reckonings that must be due to corrupt officials.

Perhaps they’ll execute them in the shiney new stadia built for the forthcoming Olympics? Assuming, that is, the stadia don’t fall down because they were built by corrupt officials using substandard materials, like the schools in Sichuan that crushed and suffocated the tiny bodies of the children of the poor.

Over on the back page, a Reuters article reveals that prostitutes in Afghanistan are often young Chinese women. They risk the obvious threats of death to make more money than they would have at home. The downside of China’s economic miracle, it seems, is mass unemployment as state industries are closed, and workers thrown to the dogs.

Or in this case, the Taliban.

The nation does not mourn this.