IT DOESN'T REALLY SUPRISE ME that China cut the parts of Obama speech where he was talking about Communism and dissent. Why? Because even in Spain some parts of his speech were left out too: I'm told by a friend who watched the inauguration on government-owned TVE (I watched it on US newschannels) that the translator just skipped all the mentions of God, particularly the "so help me God" at the end of the oath.

Of course, the anchors and correspondents on the ground were fawning. They even said, twice, that in the future everybody would remember where were they during Obama's inauguration, as they do "when Kennedy and Franco were killed" (link in Spanish). Not only this is stupid, because everyone knows that Franco died in his bed (rewriting of history by retroactive "freedom fighters" who didn't do anything and peacefully lived under the dictator notwithsanting), but it's offensive: it implies that Bush was a dictator just as Franco was.