Hello Kitty

Cute Kitty is Pink Badge of Shame in Bangkok, but what about NY or SF? - Police in Bangkok who commit minor infractions (littering, parking in a no-parking zone) will be required to wear a pink armband with a Hello Kitty face and a pair of linked hearts. Brilliant, so brilliant that the mere threat of the pink Hello Kitty has eliminated bad behaviour and no one has been kittied yet. A previous incarnation of the same idea featuring a tartan arm band failed miserably - naughty cops would wear it for a day then take it home as a souvenir. The prospect of sporting Hello Kitty appears to hold special terrors for the macho psyche. Would it work in NY? Probably not as well, the police here may be tough but they understand irony and would display Little Kitty with a grin. The concept might still work with a little fine tuning. What if the Police Commissioner went berserk, and used the Department's homophobia against it? Maybe a rainbow armband with a pink triangle would give NYPD bad boys second thoughts. One thing is certain - if Commissioner Bud Selig had issued a rainbow/pink triangle armband every time he had reason to believe a major league baseball player was using steroids the game would have cleaned up its act a decade ago and Barry Bonds would have hit number 656 last night.

Abuses Belie China Pledge on Rights, Critics Say - A group of human rights organizations accused China of harassing lawyers, dissidents and journalists and reneging on promises to make human rights a centerpiece of the 2008 Olympics. Organizations included Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc. - the usual suspects. As Good As News, naturally, agrees with the good guys, but really, what did you expect? Even Jay Leno harasses lawyers, dissidents and journalists. For Party Animal Hu Jintao this is not oppression, it's a recreational activity. So what if China made a few promises to get the Olympics, every Party Animal says things at night he can't remember in the morning. In another effort to capitalize on publicity surrounding the one year count down to the Olympics, a group of Chinese scholars, lawyers and journalists wrote an open letter to Party Animal calling for the release of political prisoners. This letter had dozens of signers, a courageous group indeed. One signatory is Bao Tong, a former party leader now under house arrest. Mia Farrow, Madonna and Angelina Jolie are not offering to exchange places with Bao Tong - Only Africa is in, America is still looking the other way on problems in China.