Push Ups to make a statement

July 27-126,July28-267,July29-222,july31-210, total chins/push ups 115,590


“Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.”
Jamie Paolinetti

Below is a news story from China- in which push ups are being used to make a political statement:

Chinese netizens rail against Great Firewall
Stephen Hutcheon August 1, 2008 - 12:26PM

The current fad in China for push-ups is not inspired by the approach of the Olympic Games; nor is it part of a campaign to improve physical fitness.
In a country that employs a vast bureaucracy to monitor all types of internet activity and where posting a comment critical of the authorities can land you in re-education camp, people have to choose their words very carefully.
So they resort to euphemisms to evade the cyber spies and skirt the automated keyword blocking tools which the Chinese authorities use to keep tabs on the online world.
When a Chinese blogger says "I'm just doing push-ups", it's actually a roundabout about way of attacking the regime without risking retribution.
The phrase came into use last month after a mob of 30,000 ransacked government offices in the town of Weng'an in far-off Guizhou province.
The people were venting their anger over the death of 15-year-old schoolgirl Li Shufe who was suspected of having been raped and then thrown into a river by her attackers and left to drown.
The accused, who were released after being questioned, were suspected of being related to a senior Communist Party officials.
That turned out not to be the case and three autopsies also failed to back up the rape claims. But the way the authorities reacted initially by trying to sweep the incident under the carpet gave rise to suspicions.
In the official version of events, police said one of the accused had earlier talked the girl out of jumping off the bridge after a late evening rendezvous.
At ten minutes past midnight, while still on the bridge, he started doing push-ups and as he was doing the third one he heard the girl cry: "I leave", followed by a splash.
"Doing push-ups" became a way for people to vent their anger over the incident and express their disgust at attempts to censor reports and stifle discussion about it on the internet.
People registered push-up domain names, created push-up ringtones and even began reposting bizarre photoshopped images of a a famous TV host doing naked push-ups at famous Chinese landmarks as a way of fuelling the push-up craze and maintaining the rage.
It's just on example of the extraordinary lengths to which Chinese internet users - netizens, as they are called - have to go to skirt the country's noose of censorship.

Here is the link if you want to read the rest of the article:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/off-the-field/chinese-netizens-rail-against-great-firewall/2008/08/01/1217097494319.html