Slashdot Mirror

Is China blocking Slashdot? I'm sure it is now.

Clamour in your own country? Fine. That's the value system your society has decided to adopt. Quit judging other countries' value systems.

When the value systems of other countries result in things like this, and this, and this, and this, sure as hell I'm going to judge them as evil. Because that's what they are.

And yes, of course the West is not perfect. But cases like those are invariably seen with horror by the population at large whenever they surface, and steps are done to fix them. They are certainly not par for the course, as they are in Iran, or China, or Afghanistan, or Somalia...

But what is "normal" in China can be altered under duress. When Chinese authorities ordered Microsoft to surrender its software's underlying source codes--the keys to encryption--as the price of doing business there, Microsoft chose to fight, spearheading an unprecedented Beijing-based coalition of American, Japanese, and European Chambers of Commerce. Faced with being left behind technologically, the Chinese authorities dropped their demands. Theoretically, China's desire to be part of the Internet should have given the capitalists who wired it similar leverage. Instead, the leverage all seems to have remained with the government, as Western companies fell all over themselves bidding for its favor. AOL, Netscape Communications, and Sun Microsystems all helped disseminate government propaganda by backing the China Internet Corporation, an arm of the state-run Xinhua news agency.

What I'd like to know is what sort of backlash there is in china against The Great Firewall? I very much doubt that this blocking goes un-noticed, yet I have never heard anything about any sort of resistance to it in china or any other country in the media, although it almost certainly does exist.

Naturally, a quick search on you-know-what brings up some interesting links.

I'd also like to add that I believe hacktivism to be, at least in this case, piss-all use, and that graffiti on government buldings is the way to get the message to the intellectual proles. And also the way to torture and execution.

Have a nice day.
Ali

Some key subjects to avoid: Tibet, Falun Gong, democracy in China, and porn.

What, no link for the last one?

-Andrew

Friends of Falun Gong

The Falun Gong take on the story is here:

Revealing Broadcasts Are Truly Serving the People-- From the Editors of FalunInfo.net: Falun Gong Practitioners Risk their Lives to Tell the Truth

If you would like to help out the cause, there is a page about it here:

Become a Friend- Alleviate the Suffering, End the Injustice

Friends of Falun Gong

The Falun Gong take on the story is here:

Revealing Broadcasts Are Truly Serving the People-- From the Editors of FalunInfo.net: Falun Gong Practitioners Risk their Lives to Tell the Truth

If you would like to help out the cause, there is a page about it here:

Become a Friend- Alleviate the Suffering, End the Injustice

Friends of Falun Gong

The Falun Gong take on the story is here:

Revealing Broadcasts Are Truly Serving the People-- From the Editors of FalunInfo.net: Falun Gong Practitioners Risk their Lives to Tell the Truth

If you would like to help out the cause, there is a page about it here:

Become a Friend- Alleviate the Suffering, End the Injustice

Remember, though, the current imperative of the Chinese government is to crush Falun Gong at all costs. It's more important than Taiwan to them, though Taiwan is still considered important, too.

The judges statement,

Limbaugh said he reviewed four different video games and found "no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech. The court finds that video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures."

But these things don't bother me as much as they used to. One reason is that the video game industry is obviously all grown up and can take care of themselves as part of the larger content industry. The other reason is that I think that these conservative, midwestern cities are just deliberately trying to stir up controversies. Maybe they want to show, "Hey, we big government conservatives can be just as intrusive and divisive as the most left wing commie fanatics out there."

I mean, how else would this judge get a chance to make a whole moral value judgement on a technology he happens to despise, and get carried everywhere in papers. (I've noticed that conservatives like to be in your face every bit as much as your left wing protest groups, they just have different ways of going about it.)

I mean, I hate hearing about it as much as I hate hearing about government oppression in any place.

Of course, it is not nearly as big as Falun Gong protesters paying the price for taking over the cable service in Changchun province in the People's Republic of China. (Which I'm surprised wasn't covered here on Slashdot as it was a clever hack in the service of free speech, peaceful protest, and justice for people who are being tortured and murdered for their belief systems.)

I do think we will get there (in the United States) soon though, probably within my lifetime. But we aren't there yet.

refusing to obey government censorship (in places like China) by hacking through their censors is, in my mind, is a very noble thing.

To be consistent with Thoreau's ideas on civil disobedience, the hacker would be have to announce his actions to the authorities and be prepared to go to jail.

As political tactics, Thoreau's ideas may not be so effective in China. Considering the treatment of the Falun Gong and other religious groups, appeals to the conscience of the Chinese authorities are likely to be in vain. They don't have any.

After Tianamen Square no one needs to lecture the Chinese on civil disobedience or the consequences thereof.