ConservativeINC

The City of Denver has been working to make sure everything is in tip-top shape for all the visitors coming to town for the Democratic National Convention, and now a local salon is helping in that effort.

It seems to be a first — don’t move the homeless, clean them up. That was the work of one salon and the recipients didn’t even seem to care if the Democrats were coming to town. Sly’s Salon at 17th and Grant was offering free haircuts to the homeless Monday.

“To give them haircuts and make them all spiffed up for the Democratic National Convention, because they are part of our community as well,” said Ghandia Gohnson, co-owner of Sly’s Salon.

Two elderly women were sentenced to a year of “re-education through labor” after they applied for permits to demonstrate during the Olympics, according to the son of one of the would-be protesters.

Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, went to Chinese police five times between Aug. 5 and Aug. 18 to seek approval to protest against officials who evicted them from their homes in 2001.

The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau did not approve or deny their applications during the first three visits. On the fourth visit, the women were told that they would receive a year’s punishment, until July 29, 2009, for “disturbing the public order.”

In response to international pressure, China said it would allow protests in three parks during the Aug. 8-24 Olympic Games. Earlier this week, the official New China News Service reported that police had received 77 applications but none has been approved

“Punishing Wu and Wang after they applied for protest permits and actively petitioned the government demonstrates that the official statements touting the new Olympics ‘protest zones,’ as well as the permit application process, were no more than a show,” the executive director of Human Rights in China, Sharon Hom, said in a statement.

Wang Wei, executive vice president of the Beijing Olympic organizing committee, cast the empty protest zones in a positive light, telling reporters Wednesday that the disputes brought by would-be protesters had been resolved.

Good journalists watch, see, write, report, and comment.

Great journalists go where they are totally unwanted and do those things exceptionally well.

I consider Muhammad Khurshid a great journalist.  He went home to Pakistan’s tribal areas, an area of the world crawling with any number of al Qaeda and Taliban militants that could have killed him at any time, and he brilliantly kept many in the West informed of the situation.

When the Pakistani Army moved right into his back yard, we lost touch with him and we feared he was lost.  But God protected him (again) and we are thankful.  We hope he is reunited soon with his family.

Muhammad is threatend in the course of his work with death from terrorists, from the Pakistani government and its Army and officials, and even from ‘death from above’ due to the activities of missile-armed drone aircraft from the U.S. and its coalitional allies.

There are great journalists under fire in all the dark corners of the world. 

There are those that want to prevent reporting and eyewitnesses who usually have something to hide.  More often, they have plenty to hide.  These people reside in such unsavory houses of power as in Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and yes, even in China and Russia.

We salute today those great and brave journalists and we stand in awe of them.