Word: communistes
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...mythical "grass-mud horse" - whose name in Chinese sounds just like a vulgar expression involving a sex act and, well, your mother. Bawdy as it may seem, an Internet children's song about the animal, full of lewd homophones, has emerged as a galvanizing protest against the Communist government's efforts to ban "subversive" material - political dissent, most importantly - from the web. Purportedly a harmless fantasy, the wink-wink, giggle-giggle creation is a virtual thumb in the eye of China's unblinking censors...
...government's rules for what's permissible online are sweeping and, like much of its rhetoric, vague. News, for instance, should be "healthy" and "in the public interest." Audio or video content must not damage "China's culture or traditions." And nothing must challenge the Communist party. The guidelines leave many media outlets and web surfers baffled. Last December, for example, the New York Times reported that its website had been inexplicably blocked, while earlier in the year the BBC's English language content was just as surprisingly unblocked, with visitors on Chinese computers quickly jumping from about...
...know what is funny? Pretending your pet lives in Communist Russia. Hilarious (unless you once lived in Communist Russia). You could take a picture of your cat eating cat food and pretend it was dinnertime at the gulag. Or if you have an unusually small kitten, you could joke about robbing it of its childhood and training it as an Olympic gymnast. But where would one find a website dedicated to such a strange, esoteric joke? If only one existed...
...China holds more U.S. debt than any other entity either private or sovereign. Whether the communist government is really worried about the value of the U.S. paper it holds or is just making a public insult about the flaws in American capitalism may never be known. What is known is that the financial markets have enough concern about Treasuries now to support a market for insuring U.S. debt in the event that the government cannot meet its obligations in the future. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
...armed-rebel image for more mainstream political branding: Funes, 49, a former television journalist, is the first FMLN presidential candidate who was never a guerrilla commander. In El Salvador's last presidential election, in 2004, the FMLN led in early polls until it announced its candidate - the former communist and guerrilla chief Schafik Handal - and went on to be crushed by the ARENA incumbent. This time, the right-wing party managed to narrow Funes' early lead in the polls by painting him, often maliciously, as a puppet of the more radical Latin left led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez...