A flurry of press releases from the group’s Falun Dafa Information Center in New York has told quite a bit about the situation lately, focusing on how Party mandarins in Beijing have targeted the group for mass-roundups, arrest and torture in the run up to the Olympics.

The latest, Behind the Olympic Spectacle: A Journalist’s Walking Guide to the Persecution of Falun Gong in Beijing could lead to some really interesting reporting coming out of Beijing. But only, of course, if there are reporters out there with the courage and gumption to tell the truth. Not easy to do when you’re being followed around, spied on and otherwise hog-tied as a not-so-welcome-but-necessary-evil-foreign-reporter visiting the Middle Earth.

I hope some are able to overcome the challenges and do a little digging. The story of Falun Gong, I feel, is the greatest untold story on Earth.

You gotta wonder why – why it remains untold, and why it’s such a great story.

This is not news to the people of China, of course, since they live under such censorship and oppression every day.

But great news! This story on CanadaFreePress.com tells how those who practice Falun Gong have developed a set of tools that journalists (and anybody else) can download for free to circumvent China’s Internet blockade.

The same tools can be used to break through blockades imposed by other oppressive regimes as well.

Let’s hope the Olympic reporters use these tools and bring us the truth about what’s going on in China today. I’ve got a feeling its not all as bright and shiny as the clear blue skies Beijing would like you to think they have. More like the poisonous cloud of pollution and haze that has settled over that city, leading many arriving Olympic athletes to don surgical masks to protect themselves.

Why? Because many believe that the sweeps are thinly veiled attempts to stop anyone with brown skin and ask them about their immigration status, deporting those who can’t produce the right paperwork on demand. NPR carried a six minute story today that you can listen to here.

People are stopped for minor traffic transgressions (broken taillight, etc) in specially designated sweep areas, which just so happen to only be areas where Mexican immigrants are known to be in high concentration.

Sheriff Joe has been widely applauded for many of his past efforts to discourage crime in the area, but many, including Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, believe that this time, Sheriff Joe has gone too far.

An owner of a local restaurant tells the story of a loyal and outstanding employee who’s been working there for years. Last week, while driving in North Phoenix, the car the employee was driving was pulled over for a traffic infraction, and the employee (whose job paperwork was all in order, as far as the employer could tell) was immediately deported.

Call a spade a spade… and it seems to many that racial profiling is underway en masse here in Phoenix. That’s a slippery slope on the road to the loss of civil liberties and freedom.

Taken together with the draconian Arizona state legislation requiring all new hires to be verified for employment eligibility in a national database (with the promise of mandatory business license cancellation for failure to comply), it’s all just too much.

So sit up and take notice folks. This is serious!

Unfortunately, they rank places based on longevity, ability to earn and save, luxury and accommodation.

For me, the “fun” quotient has always been of prime importance, as has its physical and natural beauty, and some kind of measure of how exotic the place is.

These things are inherently difficult to measure, of course, and most often can only be felt.

I guess I’m more the Anthony Bourdain kind of guy… living new and different cultures experientially through food and intimate (conversational) contact with folks who actually live there.

I’d rather stay in a thatched roof hut than a Ritz Carlton, since it’s more real, more eco-friendly, and somehow, more genuine.

But thanks anyway Forbes!

I know, their run-for-the-door seating system caused a lot of you to grimace in dismay in years past, but they’ve taken some steps to mitigate that lately.

I was delightfully surprised today to see that they remain profitable, one of the very few airlines able to hold their head above water in today’s disastrous air and travel market. Rising fuel costs have near-bankrupted many carriers, while Southwest is able to boast a 15% increase in profits.

And while other airlines nickel and dime you to death with fees to check bags, change reservations or have some peanuts, Southwest still does all of this for free.

The downside, I understand, is that most of their profit increases came from playing futures in the oil market, hedging their bets long enough ago that their average fuel price is locked in around $60 a barrel while the rest of us struggle at over double that level.

What do I mean by downside? Well, it’s that kind of speculation in the market that many claim has led to such crazy up-spikes in oil prices.

But at least Southwest does it honestly, with the intent of actually burning the fuel they buy contracts on.

The real speculators have no intent of actually taking delivery of the oil they buy in futures. They close out their positions to lock in profits (or losses), a pure numbers game of rolling the dice and betting that your guess about the direction of oil prices will outsmart the market at large.

Keep up the good work, Southwest Airlines!

You see, I’m of an age that I have to put glasses on to mess with my phone when texting. I need glasses to read the message, to navigate the stupid menus on my tiny phone, and to fumble with a numberpad to type out words and sentences at something far less than even a snail’s pace.

It would be faster to call.

Or send an email, since I don’t even have to look at that keyboard, and my glasses are already on when I’m sitting at the computer, anyway.

But all that aside, I’m infuriated by people who text while they drive, or while walking on the sidewalk, or while in the middle of a conversation with yours truly.

Not to mention by women speaking loudly into their cellphone while standing right behind me in line at the grocery store. You know what lady? I don’t want to know your business. Quiet down, hang up, or get away from my ear already! But of course, that’s another story.

Back to this story…

So you can imagine the smug self-righteous look that appeared on my face when I read this article in the Wall Street Journal today.

“Who would miss someone wearing a white dress and an 8-foot train?” mutters Mike Munoz, speaking of himself after he smacked into the bride at a wedding reception whilst furiously texting one day.

“Fallen texters are more prone to facial injuries: They tend to hold their devices close to their faces, so their hands are less likely to break their fall,” says one doctor quoted in the article. He has treated patients involved in texting accidents nearly every day this summer.

What goes around, comes around, I guess. I shouldn’t feel good about it, I suppose, but somehow, I do.

Enchanting, even eery at times, because the sight is so truly other-worldly.

The aurora borealis, as they’re also known, remain largely a mystery to modern science, but some recent observations have led to greater understanding.

“The particles that cause the aurora borealis stream from the sun in a constant flow known as the solar wind,” says an article today in Canada’s Globe and Mail.

“Think of a river flowing around a rock,” says Jonathan Rae, a research associate at the University of Alberta, quoted in the Globe and Mail article as a co-author of a paper published today by the journal Science.

But no matter whether science can explain the Northern Lights or not, for me they remain the “Greatest Show on Earth.”

And who knows, maybe someday we’ll discover how to harness some of the energy to help break our reliance on fossil fuels.

Time to break our addiction to oil.

Pitiful, but not in the least surprising.

Party mandarins in Beijing will do just about anything to quell voices of dissent in the run up to the Olympics. Widespread arrests and torture of Tibetans, Falun Gong and Uighurs have been reported and documented all over China, though particularly in Beijing, and particularly in sections of town close to Olympic venues.

Now, true to corrupt communist form, they’re turning to another of their old standby forms of persuasion: bribes.

The article says, “Chinese officials had promised a new era of openness in the wake of the earthquake and in the months before the Olympic Games, which begin in August. But the pressure on parents is one sign that officials here are determined to create a facade of public harmony rather than undertake any real inquiry into accusations that corruption or negligence contributed to the high death toll in the quake.”

I can hardly wait to read a translation of the agreement the mother holds up for all to see (in NYT photo) though I can tell from the look on her face that it’s a far cry from enough to make up for the loss of her nephew, or the grief of a young girl’s father (also pictured).

Gee whiz. What will they think of next?