On how a Chinese environmental activist got tripped...

I always enjoy investigative journalist reporting. I would say it's one of the main things that online blogging or amateur news would not be able to match old media. (The new media is good at bite size headline grabbing blob of info that might tell you something has happened or is happening, but you don't find good enough details to tell you why.)

There is the piece from New York Times on how a self-proclaimed environmental activist in China who got pushed into a corner, and eventually got tripped over by the local government with claims that he's engaged in blackmail activities. He eventually was got a three-year sentence. He claimed that the police tortured him, but it did not look like he argued that he did not engage in the blackmail that got him arrested in the first place.

It's quite sad, really. It's not easy to be a lone voice, to swim against the tide, and to bring public attention (if not action) on pollution and environmental issues, particularly if the government is implicated as well. The philosophical question is, how long can a person, even with will of steel, to stand up against the whole establishment; and how long should that person suffer, as a result, before we the bystanders and onlookers should cast the vote and say he's a hypocrite afterall?

There is good reason why great men like Nelson Mandela would get Nobel Peace Prize for all his sacrifices for the cause, be beaten down again and again, can through in one piece, and even champion for a peaceful solution for a long hard problem.

It's way too easy for outsiders like me, to cast the first stone on this condemned Chinese man, even though he started out all these with a pure heart. I do hope there is something good that come out of it.