The human rights abuses of China and the sheer number of people killed since 1945, let alone the disgraceful treatment of Tibetans and Falun Gong practitioners, who are now kept in 'concentration camps' as living stockpile of human organs for the party elites would make any comparison with the real freedoms enjoyed in the USA and the west simply odious!
_{Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.- A.J. Liebling.}

depending on which year the history started. Occupying Americas killed about 90 million Indians.

Something else is subjective too.

At the moment Russia and China have civil war, and some other countries have external wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter seem to have one war too little, according to the news.

The governments of the West collect more data on their citizens than the former spy king DDR. Every tenth citizen of DDR reported to Stasi. Are the western governments just curious or panicking?

Human organs, in Brazil they fetch them from the street kids. You can buy them too there. I mean, both organs and kids. I think that they sell organs in China to foreigners too.

In China they see their country as the State of Peace. If I remember right, they haven't lately attacked anybody. I'm not sure the same applies to Australia. The observable peacefulness of China might be caused by the recent (3 centuries?) weakness of the country. And the things might normalize in their foreign policy.

-- There are no income taxes in The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

No-one is denying that China is a mass of contradictions, but it's treatment of its own citizens in matters of personal freedom is twisted. Just on the news last night villagers were shown who have had their traditional lands overrun by party members who are building huge mansions, one such mansion a copy of a French mansion!!!

Sure the little people in the USA and Australia do it tough but not as tough as the Chinese. There is a two tier society in China, and the huge three problems are HIV/AIDs, environmental degradation and the gender imbalance. When these get out of hand, the Chinese war dragon will awake to focus their population on the enemy outside...
_{Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.- A.J. Liebling.}

I agree with you on the personal freedoms found in China although I'm not sure if your example is the right one...power elites have grabbed land for personal gain from those less powerful all over the world since time eternal...ask the Aboriginal people.

The "chinese war dragon" though, I'm not sure, what is that?

Like almost everybody else.

The historical narratives are based on the psychological need to believe that the reader represents the Good Ones and especially the losers were The Bad Ones. You seem to have swallowed the sugar bait of positive ego. Vomitting it out will be intellectually painful.

You are being spied on more than an average Chinese and you somehow manage to call it 'real freedom'. To me it seems that you have internalized the regrettable development in the West after 9/11 and try to explain it away by arguing: "But there is at least one place on earth which is worse! Thus the degrading conditions in the West are ok."

-- There are no income taxes in The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

I was replying to Graham, not you. I am much more in agreement with you Gandalf, than with Graham. That's why I wanted to see some documentation.

from reliable mainstream sources of your claims against the Chinese re: Falun Gong being kept in Con. Camps and used as human organs.

Those in death row are used as organ donours after their execution. I don't have read any numbers and none of the sources has claimed that the practise is political or especially related to the communist party. Nihilist and related to bribery, they say.

I see the religious aspect of Falun Gong just as a disguise for a distraction movement financed by American tax payers (CIA).

-- There are no income taxes in The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

If blogs are going to exist, they're going to need some financial model.

... misses the point of blogs. Blogs are not politics, blogs are not journalism. Blogs are what happens when the irrepressible human desire for self-expression finally meets a technology made for it.

And the growth of blogging is not the least bit related to the profit motive. Humans love to yak, and they love to tell you their opinions, and blogging has given them the ultimate soapbox from which to do so. This will continue and accelerate without the injection of a single additional dime.

What will flourish with "commercializing blogging" is commercial blogging.

I think that's called "TV".

I see your point but don't agree. I mean, some blogs can be like that -- I guess, you could call it the "diary" model -- but that doesn't mean they all have to.

I don't really think you're going to get people devoting a lot of their time -- increasingly in a professional way -- without some means of support.

If you want to call it "commericializing", fine. For a lot of these blogs though it's more a question of survival. Blogs increasingly are taking the role of traditional media. For liberals and progressives, this is a good thing. But if you're going to make it someone's "job", they need to live on something.

That's all I'm saying.

Independent Illinois Grassroots: IllinoisDemNet.com

Where does the money come from that finances all these political blogs? Some of them have ads, while others (like Huffington Post) don't appear to have any.

Is it just a matter of the relative financial independence of the founder? For some, as in Arianna's case, clearly money is no problem. Others, like Agonist, Kos, etc, may solicit ads, or advertize books, or simply ask for donations. Still others are extensions of other media, like The Nation. Financial models are diverse, and costs are limited to how much time and money the blogmeister wishes to spend on it. And how fast they type...;-)

But no matter what financial model you employ, it's important to remember that in your sandbox, you make the rules. If you want to maintain your personal integrity (and your reputation with your readers), then you should seriously consider what to do about ads that clash with your sense of honesty and fairness.

Reminds me of what Ben Franklin said about trading essential liberty (in this case integrity) for a little (financial) security. In the end, you get and deserve neither. Thus, if a "liberal" blog continues to run anti-Net Neutrality propaganda ads, it begins to lose its reputation for intellectual honesty. At that point, why not run ads for Republican crooks? Cigarettes? Oil companies? Hell, you might really rake in some dough, until all your readers are gone. And then your sponsors, having achieved their real objective, will disappear, mission accomplished.

If the money is tainted by dishonesty, then simply turn it down. Whatever you gain in the short term isn't worth losing your good name.

"Death before being dishonored any more." - Col. Ted Westhusing