Shi Tao awaits sentence

A post that doesn't involve anything to do with web-browsers? Surely not. However, we do run stories on other subjects from time to time - that's right, it's our regular look at tinpot fascism in China!

This time round, we're looking back to Shi Tao, who is currently facing anything from 10 years to life imprisonment (hey, that seems like a sensible time-range!) for letting it be known that he wasn't too impressed with a bunch of tanks having a grand day out in Tiananmen Square. The Chinese Government have already kind of skewed the outcome of his trial - seeing as his lawyer is currently sitting in a cell somewhere, with his licence torn into shreds by a party-line not keen on anyone defending the rights of their online inmates.

The problem with these cases is that the drip-feed of information back into the West is often painfully slow - by the time you've got wind that someone has potentially been arrested for something, more often than not they've already spent the best part of six years rearranging piles of dust in a desert somewhere under armed supervision.

For now, all we know is that he should be sentenced within the next seven days at the very latest. That is, if he lasts that long. It has been reported that, whilst seeing relatives during a short reprieve, he was suffering from flu and the authorities refused him any treatment.

Generous as always, then.

It's not all bad news, though - Shi Tao was represented by one of Guo Guoting's colleagues, who (by all accounts), was "a touch nervous". No kidding! I'd be aquiring one of those tanks myself if I had to walk into that courtroom sometime in the next day or two. I can guarantee this - if (by some miracle) - such as, say, the whole jury drops down dead - it won't be long before Guo Guoting has a reunion with his former workmate...where they can all live happily ever after making dustpiles.