The Wheel of Law:
Kickin' that gong around
The woman who jumped out of the tightly-controlled crowd of journalists at the Hu-Bush press conference speech thing had been arrested 5 years earlier for doing the same thing to then-president Jiang Zemin in Malta.
She yelled at Hu Jintao, and Bush, and was able to continue yelling for two minutes and fifteen seconds without being interrupted by the Secret Service. When she was escorted from the scene, instead of being hustled out discreetly she was "taken away in front of the entire assembly, against White House and Secret Services regulations".
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-Explaining the incident - the first disruption at the executive mansion in recent memory - White House and Secret Service officials said she was "a legitimate journalist" and that there was nothing suspicious in her background.In other words: Who knew?
Hu did. The Chinese had warned the White House to be careful about who was admitted to the ceremony. To no avail: They granted a one-day pass to Wang Wenyi of the Falun Gong publication Epoch Times. A quick Nexis search shows that in 2001, she slipped through a security cordon in Malta protecting Jiang (she had been denied media credentials) and got into an argument with him.
Dana Millbank/WaPo
Li Hongzhi, the Reverend Moon of Falun Gong, says
"he can levitate and become invisible simply by thinking the phrase 'nobody can see me'. He can control people's movements by just thinking, he says, and can move himself anywhere by thought alone. He claims to have averted a global comet catastrophe and the Third World War and says that Nostradamus's prophecies are coming true today in China."
Independent UK
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Bush made a brief mention of civil liberties in China: "I'll continue to discuss with President Hu the importance of human rights, and freedoms of the Chinese people. China has become successful because the Chinese people have experienced the freedom to buy and to sell and to produce. China can be even more successful when the Chinese people have the freedom to assemble, to speak freely and to worship."
Hu followed President Bush's remarks, but was interrupted by a protester as he began his speech. The protester, Wenyi Wang, denounced the Chinese government's treatment of practitioners of the spiritual movement Falon Gong. Wang yelled: "President Bush, stop him from killing... Stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong." Wang was grabbed by Secret Service officers and led away. President Bush then encouraged Hu to proceed with his remarks, telling him "You're OK." An administration official later said the President Bush apologized to Hu for the protester's interruption. Although the incident made headlines around the world, it failed to reach a mass audience in China. According to CNN, the Chinese government censored the portion of its broadcast that showed the incident taking place.
DemocracyNow!
