A Reuters story about the pre-Olympic crackdown on dissent going on in China right now features an especially Orwellian headline:
China announces Olympics stability drive after riot
"[S]tability drive"? What sort of bizarre euphemism is that and why is Reuters using it without scare quotes? (The phrase also appears in the article.) Did they get it from the People's Daily? I know it's difficult for journalists to operate in an authoritarian country, but there's no excuse for parroting official propaganda like this.
Well if I had to guess what a "stability drive" is, I would guess it involved the government making sure people who would cause public demonstrations or controversy around the Olympics were stopped from doing so. And according to the article, that's exactly what it is: "the government has ordered local officials to defuse petition campaigns by discontented citizens and to prevent 'mass incidents,' such as riots and demonstrations, according to the news reports." It seems pretty straight forward to me; I certainly don't think the Chinese government was trying to hide the true purpose of the campaign. In fact, compared to the names of some of the legislation our government has put out ("PATRIOT Act", "No Child Left Behind", "Protect America Act", a whole lot more I can't think of), I would say this is downright transparent.
Posted by: Tritone | July 03, 2008 at 02:41 AM