Slashdot Mirror
China Detains Internet Essayist for Subversion
romcabrera writes: "Reuters reports that 'Chinese authorities have detained a civil servant, whose essays are banned by Beijing on the Internet, on charges of subversion'.
According to the article, China has created a special Internet Police Force which 'blocks some foreign sites and shuts down domestic sites posting politically incorrect fare'."
Another first "Sir Haxalot (aka Pingular) is a douche bag" post.
Seriously, your general, vague, and obvious "gimme karma" posts are very transparent. Please stop.
Welcome our new Chinese Communist overlords.
i got it!
God Bless America, with the worst crime levels in the first world
God Bless America, where "democracy" means a rich, white male as President
God Bless America, the biggest consumer of the world's natural resources
God Bless America, so happy to violate international laws
God Bless America, where "freedom of speech" means race-hate groups like KKK
God Bless America, and its massive and ever-growing poverty gap
God Bless America, with barely 300 years of dire history and culture
God Bless America, all its appalling "sitcoms" with no grasp of irony
God Bless America, with the highest obesity levels in the developed world
God Bless America, because corporations should be allowed to run amok
God Bless America, wasting billions to attack foreign countries
God Bless America, and thank God I don't have to live there.
-
When little people think they know more than the big boys, they quickly get squished. Don't stay in the kitchen if you can't take the heat.
They take censorship very seriously over there. Frankly, it would surprise me more if they didn't detain him.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Gotta have respect for a country which managed to take the best of both worlds. They got totalitarianism from communism, and greedy corporations from capitalism. w00t! Well done!
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Don't give Ashcroft, Cheney and Bush anymore ideas for Patriot Act II....
to 1984.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
In case anyone hasn't noticed, China is a hardline socialist dictatorship. They kill people for defying the state and send the bill for the bullets to their families. This is why American protestors really have no idea how good they have it. The "state" doesn't come and kill you if you voice your opinion on something. China's government is bad, we know this. Unless we plan to invade and liberate them then there's nothing we can do about it.
Oh wait, someone actually got arrested in China for criticizing the government? What's that you say? A few years ago people actually got crushed by tanks for demonstrating against the Chinese government?
While I'm certainly no Patriot Act supporter, things like this tend to add a little perspective to a lot of overheated rhetoric, no?
It's funny to see how slashdotters deccry the US as a 'police state' when it's obvious they've never seen the level of what a real police state looks like in China.
... the internet is growing faster than the policeforce. In China or at home...
DAARRRHHHHH---DAARRHHHHHHH
...for posting pictures of some of some of China's prominent loading docks to your blog.
China has been doing this for years. It's widely known. What's the story here?
Oh, and watch for the user named Reporter to post some anti-China comments.
You read subversion and think of the version control system.
pi
A massive DDoS attack was launched against slashdot.org, with 99% of all attackers in China. Chinese officals are investigating, but say there is little hoping of stopping the attack for several days, due to a government holiday. No comment could be recived from any slashdot members, as they were found huddled in their basements, crying.
SAILING MISHAP
Meeestah Chan no rikey-rikey when you post the bad Westuh news. That poriticarry incorrect! No rove for that here in China!!!
Authorities detain YOU!
.
.
wait....
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Hmm, for some reason this reminds me of that story about Microsoft firing that pro-Mac employee.
this guy should have used freenet.
On Bush & Ashcroft somehow...
hurry up tin-foil hatters figure out a way that this is America's fault.
This
They've already gotten to Democracy.org! The page won't load. I suspect the Internet Police Force posted this story in an attempt to squash the Democracy.org server like a bug.
shuts down domestic sites posting politically incorrect fare
You mean like the DeCSS stuff ... ?
On a serious note, what should we expect anyway. After all politically it is a communist dictatorship. Why should be expect them to treat internet publishing different than normal print publishing ?
karma : former act as leading to inevitable results
This is sad to hear, being someone who has traveled to China several times in the past ten years it has been my experience that China has been very slowly opening up and becoming freer country. This saddens me deeply considering the progress that has been slowly made since Tienanmen Square. The internet still proves to be something that the Government is very sensitive about. Luckily there are many American Corporations who seem more than happy to help continue the cycle of information opression.
Something intelligent here.
Even in a free country where people are afraid to speak anonymously speech is curtailed...if not by the government but by the screaming mob.
We live in a country now where people who criticize the war are called traitors and put in government databases. Where visitors to our country are fingerprinted without suspicion and where people are held without charges for months at a time. Where the label of terrorist is slung around with a casualness unknown 5 years ago.
Our politics has been poisoned and this poison is eating away at our republic.
Sure China isnt free but Chinese have hope for the future all we have is fear.
And that's why it would never happen. Changes will have to come from within.
It's America's fault for creating the Internet in the first place. If the 'net hadn't existed, this guy wouldn't have been tempted to write his essays, since they couldn't have been posted on web sites!
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
A few years ago people actually got crushed by tanks for demonstrating against the Chinese government?
Actually, there's no evidence to back up what happened to that student, although he may possibly have been killed.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Sick of gentoo zealots throwing plugs in completely unrelated topics? Me too!
Change "gentoo" to "linux" and it works even better!
As long as you agree with the republicans, everything is ok under john ashcroft.
A good /.ing leads to truth!
--
Well, I can. I've got a secret surveillance camera watching him right now.
They Chinese government has been doing it for too long and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Especially when there is the new interpretation that works for every regime, that is to label any and everybody "terrorist". Even the "most" democratic nation of all could not resist the convenience.
Let Bush stay in power for another 4 years and then vote for his brother when time comes. I bet there will be more "terrorist" in the world than anyone dare to imagine. Of cause, at the same time, the situation will be improving everyday -- since that's why they are getting desperate -- Oh, how many times do I have to witness this kind of twisting before somebody kick it in the face!
There are so many similarities between the Bushies and Chinese by now. Even the spin they put on the propoganda are getting indistinguishable. It seems the east and west will finally unite and become a better place for all the government.
You have got to be kidding.
Most people think of China as a Third World country that can barely feed their population.
While this may be true in many areas, it's also true that they have incredible military power.
The USA would probably lose any war with China.
Btw, I'm not from USA or China, but I've been to both countries.
...that China would get that bent out of shape about version control.... Go figure.
Everyone knows commies prefer CVS over Subversion!
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
The US is still holding hundreds of "Enemy Combatants" offshore at Guantanamo Bay. No charges, no public hearing, etc, etc.
I'm sorry this is so offtopic, but it ticks me off.
I swear to all that is good: goatse.cx has a Halloween Theme today: check it out
Trolling is a art,
"We see a China that is stable and prosperous, a nation that respects the peace of its neighbors and works to secure the freedom of its own people. " President Bush Addresses Australian Parliament Oct. 22,2003
"The ignorant fight to win, the wise win before they fight." -Sun Tzu
what did this guy REALLY do? I mean, this is Slashdot. You can't exactly expect biased reporting. Especially when it's reporting on news reported by a biased Western news source! What exactly did this guy write? What else is he involved in? Who does he work for?
I just can't take this very seriously. It reeks too severely of "look at how evil our rival government is!" propaganda.
China Detains Internet Essayist for Subversion
Why isn't he using CVS?
Even Linus uses Bit Keeper!
China is simply following the example of the world's greatest defender of free speech which also secretly monitors internet useage and jails citizens for subversion.
...
Nothing new to see here, move along
"While I'm certainly no Patriot Act supporter, things like this tend to add a little perspective to a lot of overheated rhetoric, no?"
Indeed they do. They show just how bad tyranny can become, and how desperately unjust a government can become, quickly, if the tyranny is suffered by its people.
Your argument helps make the case for people making a continual effort to keep government in check. China since Mao is not as horrible as Russia was under Stalin, but they are dealing with many of the same problems in the same way.
The regime enjoys a great deal of support from people in China, though. Until their government can no longer provide them with credible evidence of progress and prosperity, there probably isn't anything to do. If you think a political issue is worthy to kill or die for, then by all means you should kill or die for it. But that also means you must be willing to accept the consequences. Be a Chinese dissident (or do ANYTHING that isn't expressly prescribed by the party?) well, you accept the consequences of imprisonment and/or death when you do that. Hopefully your death will not go unnoticed by others, and your sacrifice will instigate some action. Probably not though, there's a lot of inertia over there, and a whole hell of a lot of people in China think everything is just hunky dory.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
...he had used Freenet.
Damn, who runs that place nowadays? Larry McVoy?
Is this rock and roll, or a form of state control?
Exporting jobs to China is good. Exporting various opinions is bad. We have always been allies with East Asia.
n/t
Geminatron
I hope the China Internet Police force will do something about:
chinanet.cn.net
The source of 80% of my spam.
I dought it though
* Carthago Delenda Est *
i for one, welcome our new chinese overlords...
...that spam can be a steganographic medium to transmit anti-regime propaganda. Maybe China will finally start doing something really good to the rest of the world.
This problem recently came up on a college and university web development list I belong to. Many of our schools sites are being blocked. Places in China will then mirror them, a problem in itself, but one that causes even more damage when their latest mirror is about 3 years old with completely out of date information.
0 .html
Anyway, here were some links provided by the list about the issue (some are a little old I know):
Empirical Analysis of Internet Filtering in China
Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, Harvard Law School, November 2002
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/
"The authors are collecting data on the methods, scope, and depth of selective barriers to Internet access through Chinese networks. Tests from May 2002 through November 2002 indicate at least four distinct and independently operable methods of Internet filtering, with a documentable leap in filtering sophistication beginning in September 2002."
China's Cyberwall Nearly Concrete
Michael Grebb, Wired, November 5, 2002
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56195,0
"While the Great Wall no longer deters would-be invaders from entering China, experts... said the Chinese government continues to maintain a nearly rock-solid cyberwall. "
Software rams great firewall of China
Paul Festa, CNET News.com, April 16, 2003
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-997101.html
"The news and propaganda wing behind the U.S. government's Voice of America broadcasts has commissioned software that lets Chinese Web surfers sneak around the boundaries set by their government."
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Great moderating Slashdot....Someone posts a quote that makes Bush look bad and gets modded up. Someone replies with the correct quote and gets modded down.
Don't believe me? Check the link from the original post.
Sheeesh!
What do you mean JUST another step away? Here is the link
for the letter from President-Vice Cheney's lawyer to The White House
Very seditiously yours,
Kilgore Trout
I just came back from making a deposit in my checking account. This took rather longer than it might have. In front of me in line was a young girl and her mother trying to open a junior passbook account.
For those that don't know in America we have program to teach school aged children savings, banking and the benfits thereof. (Everyone sing, "Tupence, carfully, prudently. . ")
These poor people were unable to open said account because the child did not have a driver's license. The Patriot Act imposes certain requirements on the mere opening of an account ( a simple, contractual business transaction involing a matter of cents) even applying to accounts available to only schoolchildren.
The mother was not allowed to swear for her own child and use her own ID, even though the law makes her the legal custodian of the account.
In the opinion of the bank's lawyers only a driver's license in out state complies with the Patriot Act's requirements. Specifically even the child's Federally issued Social Security card or Passport did not comply with the Federal ID law for opening any banking account.
Recently Howard Dean and his closest associates were directed to go stand in a "Free Speech Zone" corral while on their way to a political function, because they were carrying signs that said "I'm For Dean" and this was deemed to be a protest and thus restricted for "security" reasons. The security personel were, of course, were in error, but actually the law allows this sort of behaviour. The fact that security personel can even think that supporters of the leading Democratic Party candidate, and the candidate himself, for President is "protesting" for supporting himself is scary, nevermind issues of the right to assemble and protest.
Ashcroft is promoting laws that would allow the government to take into custody, without warrant and even without a charge, anyone whom they held to be "under suspicion" and such people could be held indefinately, without representation, indeed without any necessity on the part of the government that they had done so.
There's a word for such people: Desaparecidos
Go ahead. Google on it.
You're right, Ashcroft isn't a Nazi, but that's rather like saying you've just been eaten by a leopard, not a panther.
Think things can't get worse? This is America, after all. Well, I would argue that protections that this can't happen in America if the very protections that are designed to prevent it from happening are held to be void.
I would also suggest you Google on leopard+spots+change.
KFG
WTF? I really dislike bush (an understatement), but this is ridiculous - especially after someone pointed out the true quote.
Pronunciation: (")dis-'tO-pE-&
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from dys- + -topia (as in utopia)
Date: circa 1950
1 : an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives
(from www.m-w.com)
Imaginary place? You haven't been living in Patriot Act America for the last for years, have you partner? We have U.S. citizens held on U.S. soil without charges and access to lawyers all on the say-so of the Selected President* declaring them enemy combatants. We have hundreds of foreign nationals detained on a off-shore base for an undefined period of time, declaring them to not be prisoners of war so that they receive none of the protections of the Geneva Convention. And we have the Ashcroft "Justice" Department figuring out new ways of taking the measures of the Patriot Act and applying them to non-terrorist prosecutions.
. . .indeed without any necessity on the part of the government to inform anyone that they had done so.
I'm tired. I've been standing in line at a busy bank. I'm going to go have a cup of coffee and a lie down, thank you very much.
KFG
Even better, they're co-opting our principles and burying them under the banner of the Party. For example, (and I don't know the source) but a generation of Chinese citizens believe that the 'free-market' (or rather the trans-literated version of the word) was exclusively invented by China's storied leaders. Despite The fact that their 'free-market' is a gross distortion of the Smith/Ricardo/Keynes school of economic principles, they have been liberalizing many of the formerly closed segments of the business world. And really:
- China has a large population of young, unemployed men.
- Using these men in an Internet Police Force is better than, say, in the Chinese standing army.
- Communist Governments have more resources when its people do better in commerce.
- The world outside China is on the order of four or five billion people.
- The Internet Police Force members could earn quite a bit of cash if they, for example, started an programming company that sold software to a few of these five billion people.
- Again, communist governments like productive (i.e. revenue-generating) citizens.
I'm not an expert, but do the gains of 'protecting' citizens at a loss (the IPF members need food and stuff... and they don't create income) outweigh becoming an international powerhouse? I certainly don't think so, and in the spirit of the free-market, I'm sure they won't for much longer.That student yes... but during the night the 1000s of students were stirred from their slumber by many APCs coming across the square running over their tents and running over a few hundred of them at the same time.
But this is a few years ago. Those in command then were old and are mostly dead now. Those in the mid level then are now in control, in 10 years those unassociated with the old rule will be in control. The old guard is dying out and interesting times await.
-- Alchohol is a hard drug. Cannabis is a soft drug.
Obviously, you weren't paying attention to this previous discussion about what's wrong with the Patriot Act.
its US land.. we got it after the Spanish-American war
We trade with these pricks, so they can buy nuclear weapons and subvert human rights, for what reason? I say we boycot Chinese goods. If not we are indirectly supporting their behavior for a mildly cheaper product cost. Down with the man!! Cyanobyte
Cry me a river. You could have been born in China, India, South America, or anywhere in Africa. You're in the richest 1% of the world's population almost by default by just living in the U.S.
The per capita income in China is under $4000.
greedy corporations from capitalism
There is no such thing as greed. It is a completely subjective notion that has no objective means of measuring it.
Is it greedy to buy a 29 inch television when you could have bought a 27 inch television and given the difference to someone who "needed it"?
If so, then is it greedy to have bought a 27 inch television when you could have bought a 25 inch television...?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Quite the contrary. American protesters DO know how good they have it. That's why they try to preserve it by exercising their rights.
This attitude that people should just be grateful for what they have, is exactly the same attitude they use in China to keep the populace in line.
It's a very "conservative" point of view... yet it has nothing to do with conserving our liberty.
How long until we have one in the US?
We wouldn't want to be left out after all.
My subtext is just a figment of your imagination.
When a criminal is executed by firing squad his relatives are charged for the cost of the bullets.
This is completly and utterly false (see Constitution, see Bill of Rights, see various treaties that the US has signed). What are you trying to do? spread FUD about the US?
Under our new W-Ashcroftian Overlords, it's already here.
the people who run those spam-houses...err chinese telecoms.
but what can you expect from a country that brutalizes its people, its animals, and its resources just for an easy dollar.
Any Real War(tm) between USA and China would be a draw with both sides equaly dead. MAD would be back effect and hence war would (assuming sanity of both sides, thats a big assumsion Kim Jong-Il has a contry affer all) not happen directly.
now back on topic there is no doubt to any well read individual that China's gov't is evil if you dont beleave that get some Tiananmen square footage a barf bag and some therpy. Them taking political prisoners is about as surpising as micro$oft speading fud about open source.(not to compare the harm of one to another one completly silentices free speakers the other just anoys them)
Damn the man!
Try to use "Search" here on Slashdot and see what you can find for "Subversion".
Less is more !
Chapter 3.
VICTIMS, OR PERSECUTORS?
From the earliest record of the Jews' contact with other; nations, no long period of years has ever passed without the charge arising that the Jews constitute "a people within a people, a nation within a nation." When this charge is made today it is vehemently denied by men who pose as the defenders of their people, and the denial is more or less countenanced by all the Jews of every class. Yet there is nothing more clearly stated in Jewish teaching, nor more clearly indicated in Jewish life, than that the charge is true. But whether the truth should be used against the Jews is quite another question.
If the Jews are a nation, their nationality founded upon the double ground of race and religion, it is certainly outside the bounds of reason that they should be asked or expected to de-racialize, de-nationalize and de-religionize themselves; but neither is it to be expected that they should bitterly denounce those who state the facts. It is only on a basis of facts that a solution of any problem can come. Where the blame attaches is here: that the evident facts are denied, as if no one but the Jews themselves knew that there are such facts.
If the Jews are to be continuously a nation, as they teach, and if the condition of "a nation within a nation' becomes more and more intolerable, then the solution must come through one of two things: a separation of the "nation" from the rest of the nations, or an exaltation of the "nation" above the rest of the nations. There is a mass of evidence in Jewish writings that the leaders expect both of these conditions to come -- a separate nation and a super-nation; indeed the heart of Jewish teaching is that Jewry is a separate nation now, and on the way to becoming a super-nation. It is only those appointed to address the Gentiles who deny this: the real rabbinate of Judah does not deny.
JEWS OBJECT TO "AMERICANISM."
In any investigation of the Jewish Question, the student is struck over and over again by the fact that what the Jews most complain of, they themselves began. They complain of what they call anti-Semitism; but it must be apparent to the dullest mind that there could never have been such a thing as anti-Semitism were there not first such a thing as Semitism. Then take the complaint about the Jews having to live in ghettos. The ghetto is a Jewish invention. In the beginning of the invasion of European cities, and centuries later of American cities, the Jews always lived by themselves because they wanted to; because they believed the presence of Gentiles contaminated them. Jewish writers, writing for Jews, freely admit this; but in writing for Gentiles, they refer to the ghetto as an illustration of Gentile cruelty. The idea of contamination originated with the Jews, it is an old oriental survival; it spread by suggestion to the Gentiles. So with this fact of the separate "nation"; it was the Jews who first recognized it, first insisted upon it and have always sought to realize that separateness both in thought and action.
More, the true and normal type of Jew believes that the influence of Americanism, or of any civilized Gentile state, is harmful to Judaism. That is a serious statement and no amount of Gentile assertion will be sufficient to confirm it. Indeed, it is such a statement as the Gentile mind could not have evolved, because the trend of Gentile feeling is all in the opposite direction, namely that Americanization is a good thing for the Jew. It is from authoritative Jewish sources we learn this fact, that what we call civilizing influences are looked upon as being at enmity with Judaism. It is not the Gentile who says that Jewish ideals, as ideals, are incompatible with the life of our country; it is the Jew who says so. It is he who inveighs against Americanism, not the American who inveighs against Judaism.
Americanism is yet unfinished, Judaism has been complete for centuries. While no American would think of pointing to any part of the country or to any
Just as you're free to protest the war and label the government as evil conspirators, supporters of the war are free label you as traitors and troops-haters.
free speech != speech that you agree with.
I'm not wild about the war in Iraq either, but I do think that both sides need to lay off the rhetoric. Whatever or whichever way this nation is trending, we are not, repeat not, in any way shape or form subject to the type censorship demonstrated in this article.
When someone is executed in America it's the American tax payer that pays for the bullets. (or poison as we do now)
Isn't that what conservatives wants? I mean you say why should society pay for the deeds of a criminal?
Isn't making the criminals family pay for his punishment what conservatives in America have wet dreams about?
...don't be suprised if you come out smelling like one.
Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the slashdot.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an uber-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
for those who say we shouldnt be complaining about our state of affairs, you're still wrong, because here's the thing, if people dont outcry every time we lose our rights, pretty soon, we'd be in the same position as chinese citizens, also, people protest to prevent things from going that far, because if you let the government get an inch of our rights, they'll grab that inch and yank the rest of our rights out from under us and laugh at us.
because, in REALITY it doesnt make MUCH difference what some luser with VERY limited power says on /.
and it makes the luser think he has some kinda imaginary "freedom" which supposetly other countries DO NOT have.
...especially when that LOSER doesn't own a dictionary...
actually, it wasnt ONLY you. It was also the Russians, and may other nations. Learn some history.
I have tried this several months ago. Very very few nodes can be contacted (though many have been tried) even after several hours of attempt to use, so I think they are probably blocked. Anyway, I think it is not really that hard to filter out Freenet traffic, because IIRC the header is unencrypted anyway.
gee, and WHY exactly IS that? Haveyou ever thought about THAT? WHY the "per capita" income is highest in US? 'Cuz US is so great?
I agree, but there are some "enemy combatants" who are American citizens!!! That is the problem.
You're a fool to give the Chinese government credit for suppresing their own people.
If the open source community was really so much in love with the idea of freedom, they'd be hard at work challenging Chinese restrictions and helping the Chinese people find ways around them and, ultimately, to eliminate the blocks and elect their own government.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
"And those people are often (not always, as in Bill Gates, who got his through a notable lack of ethics) kids of those who were powerful before." Actually I believe that Bill Gates is in many ways underrated in these discussions. I could mention a couple of things: - Bill Gates really is so rich since he is so smart. There might be a lack of ethics involved, but his intelligence should not be underestimated. Don't you just wish that you could have done the things he did? He just understood the chance did it first. - Bill Gates has certainly boosted the social image of all types of geeks and nerds. Previously such persons were just the losers. Hey, now we have the chance of being rich and admired! - As you mentioned, he has no old family money etc. It's all his. All from his own abilities as a capitalist. Now, don't misunderstand me. I think that Bill Gates is a capitalist oppressor who should be overthrown. I just mean that you should never, ever underestimate your enemy. After all, he wouldn't have so much money and power without some extraordinary intelligence or some other good quality?
Don't be silly. Ask that coworker if he could call a public meeting to work towards the defeat of the Communist Party of China. Ask him if could put up a website campaigning for the release of political prisoners, automonomy for the Muslim sections of western China, and free elections in Tibet.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The DMCA?
You've got to be kidding!
You're comparing the DMCA to the the one-party totalitarian regime in China?
I don't see any U.S. Army troops and tanks on the streets killing people who steal CD's. Do you?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The point is this:
There is no Slashdot in China.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Pick up the sword and free the many from the powerful few.
of course, we really need to bitch slap our own government first, but that's a post for another topic.
PINGULAR = SIR HAXALOT
I think China, America, and Russia each have enough nuclear arms to blow the other two off the face of the Earth.
Whether or not you agree with the policy, that is how it is defined.
I can't tell you how many idiotic Yahoo talkbacks I read in response to the Taikonaut story - "Go China!" they said.... "beat the USA"... drivel like that.
If any of them had to live under that regime they would change their tune and kiss the ground that GWB walks on.
Fer sure.
No, you don't see that. What you do see is people getting bankrupted, blacklisted, jailed, and left with a life not worth living. In some cases, if you violate the Patriot Act, run afoul of Homeland Security, or have your profile flagged as "suspicious" (US Gov Matrix has been resurrected), your life is turned into a huge steaming brown mass. Having your name ruined and being consigned to a life of poverty in the US is worse than death in many ways. It's torture in every sense of the word, especially if it all begins when your human rights to "fair use" of creative works for personal enlightenment and enjoyment get trumped by legislation that's basically rooted in fiscal policy. DMCA is censorship for financial reasons, whereas the Patriot Act is sensorship on an political-ideological basis.
And occasionally somebody's executed (Patriot Act here, not DMCA). I think the last time I looked, Amnesty International reported that on 7% were truly and completely innocent. I'm not sure at what percentage of innocents executed it becomes State-sanctioned murder to "encourage" others to stay to the rules without question, but I'm sure there's a number when it does... They say that China is bad because it executes innocent people, well, wake up, they kill innocent people in America too, all the time. And of course there are the locked-up non-citizens in Guantanamo. Left there to rot because they [presumably] have a different point of view than American policy makers. Think "re-education camp" here.
I see these as slight variations on a theme. All governments do these things to the citizenry, and try to say it's necessary to keep peace and order. But it never is, really, the true agenda is to create an environment where wealth can be ammased by a few at the expense of the many. True, some newly established post-revolutionhary governments have given momentary respite (like the US for its first 80 years or so of existence, and France too, at about the same time and duration). It's not that I don't like America -- it's the same as every other government on Earth before it -- I am not a fan of any of them. Man dominates man to his injury, a wise man once wrote about 3,000 years ago. This will always be true.
Perhaps the most deeply unsettling phrase I've ever heard is "America -- love it or leave it." It is the chant of the profoundly ignorant.
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"Lenin was a fascist."
Actually i think that the difference between national socialism and stalinism isn't that big. A little bit different propaganda, that's all. Basically Stalin was just a faithful apprentice taking the ideas of Lenin to a new level.
Then again we can discuss the different types of communism, possibilities for a truly democratic communism etc. Blah blah blah, then again we could think about utopias where pigs can fly and people never die.
I quess that they haven't got the basic ingredients for democracy there.
Ok, you can impose democracy on a country which has the basic ingredients for democracy, an educated public and which has been liberated from a basically totalitarian government, such as Germany after WW II.
But think about Iraq? Democracy there might really mean a theocratic government such as Iran. The majority of the people might really choose that.
And what about a place like China? With countless millions of basically uneducated people? What would it become? Who knows? Maybe a complete chaos?
This is really good. After US has invaded China we really don't have to worry about neither country anymore.
Please just try to limit the nuclear holocaust to these two countries...
"Tiananmen square was on par with Waco."
Maybe you should start the "Invade and Liberate" (tm) with a parachute drop of several million religious right-wing nuts into China then?
"Why not drop some bombs on them too for quelching freedom..."
Think about the positive sides of nuclear war. We could have another dot.com boom around year 3000, so many slashdotters could get rich!
And on the positive side after the EMP there would be no electronics, so your jobs wouldn't migrate to India after all! Isn't that great!
So, i say, let's start a war! A nuclear war! At the gay bar!
"Unless we plan to invade and liberate them then there's nothing we can do about it"
Man fuck! Why do you give a flying fuck about "fixing" other countries? As we all know, America technique is to "build public support through media, invade & bomb like crazy, and put spin doctors to handle questions later on".
Go here: http://www.holocaustnow.org/main.html. And see how many fucking people die while big companies benefit. I mean there are more people dying in your country using guns(25,000/year according to "Opera"), alcohol, tobacco, etc.
Let me tell you one thing and one thing only: US never invades a country for morality/beliefs. Go read your history - such as why US invaded Cuba. Anything against the 'interest' of US and it's private industries will be met with "Shock & Awe".
If you believe your country is there to fight for you on the international front, then my friend you are the biggest fool of all time, who doesn't even read American history books and see otherwise. Hell, you prolly believe all the crap news agencies spew out these days with a daily 'Al queda' report.
"China since Mao is not as horrible as Russia was under Stalin, but they are dealing with many of the same problems in the same way."
;)
Russia was not as bad after Stalin as it was under Stalin... What is your point here?
And usually it is called Soviet Union since it included a lot more than Russia/Russians.
The point is that when you treat them that way you are not giving the world an example. After all, USA _should_ be an example of democracy for the rest of the world.
Though you haven't been after circa World War II. Sad but true. Where are the Americans who liberated Europe today?
I just read the story about killer viruses, i thought that it meant computer viruses... I was a bit confused.
First off,
NO ONE EVER WINS A NUCLEAR WAR!!!!
It's not the WWII now, once some zealots launches a nuclear weapon into another nuke capable country, then both are losers. This is just common sense and need not to be explained further. I really have no idea how the Slashdot crowd could augue "who wins a nuclear war" by looking at who gets more nukes, this is so naive.
It's rather rare to see actual facts on America vs China type of discussion here in Slashdot.
looks more tidy now, don't you think?
But frankly if US (people and governement) would learn to check its own internal state of affair , own crime rate, and so on, before looking at its near and far neighbourghs, maybe such stuff like the totally democratic patriotic act, dmca, percent of murder (yeah not reported crime) per 100000, drug, poverty would be less blatantly spring to the eye of foreigner about US flaw.
In other word : do not point finger because not only you aren't perfect , but also your so called liberty of expression, many times amount to say what is "accepted" by the majority in fear of getting isolated in a community.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I followed your link, being an Australian. What I found there disturbed me greatly.
The speech transcript acccurately gives Bush's words on the day and lists in brackets the parliament's responses where said (eg. Hear, hear etc). However, what non-Australians may not know is that there were two outbursts from Senators Brown and Nettle (both from the Greens Party) during the speech.
The disturbing part of this self-censroship of the Whitehouse is that whilst the Speaker's comments on the outbursts are written verbatim, the Senators' comments are merely posted as "audience interruption" Not once, but twice (one for each Senator's comments). Bush's smart arse reply "I love free speech" is even included, but the reader has no context in which to place this remark as the comments that forced this remark are non-existent in this transcript.
This is, quite simply, unacceptable. Read the transcript as it stands in the parent poster's link.
I have tried to no avail to locate a full transcript of that speech INCLUDING the remarks by Senators Brown and Nettle. If anyone has such a link please post it here so that people may know what exactly was said.
Erasing comments because they don't suit the image you wish to portray is so Orwellian it beggars belief that we live in a society of free speech.
I plan to do something about this though - I'm running for election next year here in Australia, and if I get elected one of my aims will be to provide uncensored transcripts of everything said in parliament, not just that which suits the governent's agenda.
http://www.users.on.net/grypen/politics/
If you are Australian please peruse my site and support my effort if you like what I have to say.
Visceral Psyche Films
From the article atn d_01 .htm
http://www.democracy.org.hk/EN/aug2000/mainla
He angered authorities by operating a website, www.6-4tianwang.com, which published information on human rights and corruption in China, including the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen killings in which hundreds of unarmed civilians were shot.
So, check out the guys www site:
http://www.6-4tianwang.com/
Its now a reposity for on-line Viagra, etc. So now Viagra-sellers (who seem to occupy so much of my in-box these days) have taken over a www site from a Chinese democracy protester who could be facing a life sentence.
Are there no depths to which these guys will not stoop?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Go back and reread my post. I'm not talking about the arrest of protestors. I'm talking about peaceful protesters getting the shit kicked out of them by US marshalls. There have been tanks on US streets, and I do know it and you would too if you didn't believe everything you were spoonfed. Using violence to suppress dissent is not somthing foriegn to American soil. There's a long history of it in this country.
News organizations are not obligated to put anyone on the air for any amount of time.
Of course not, and again you're missing my point and responding to a different argument that you had in a different time and place. There are a lot of people who operate under the assumption that because we have 'freedom of speech' that the news presented by the media is accurate and balanced and this isn't true. It isn't true in China. It isn't true in America. Chinese don't know about the recent protests that happened in their country. Americans are given a spun version of the major protests in the US. What happens is entirely legal in both countries. That was my point about the subtelty of American censorship. I never once claimed that 'freedom of speech' entitled everyone to be heard. I claimed that the journalistic ethic of presenting different sides of the story has long since gone out the window and as informed consumers of information we should recognize this when listening to the news. The information most people are exposed to is as biased as the information given to people living under dictatorships.
Freedom and democracy? These are not binary yes-or-no things.
Ludicrous and naive. Of course you must be free to have a democracy, and, of course, if you have no democracy you are not free.
Again, you're completly missing my point. Imagine for a moment that the two major parties could automatically put their candidates on the ballot, but a third party had to get 10,000 signatures. Would this be an effective barrier to democracy, in that candidates would not have a fair chance to compete on a level playing field? Yes, it would. You could push this requirement up as high as you wanted. Maybe you need signatures from 10% of the citizens to get your name on the ballot. You still technically have a democracy. But the higher you push this number, the less representative your democracy would become. And in many states, after Ventura's election in Minnesota, the number of signatures a candidate needed to get a candidate's name on the ballot was raised. In other words, American democracy is becoming less representative.
You want to talk ludicrous and naive?
Think for a moment about how ineffective third parties have been at the national level. Do you really, honestly believe that everyone capable of political leadership is packed into one of those parties? The legal barriers to getting a third party candidate on the ballot are enormous and only those people who radically disagree with certain mainstream policies and have enormous capital, political or otherwise, are willing to run. So you get nuts like Perot or Buchannan. To get on the ballot in a majority of the states requires time and money which would otherwise be devoted to campaigning. Party candidates automatically get their names on the ballot. How is that fair? And if some candidates have barriers that other candidates don't, is your democracy as representative as one which dosen't have this restriction.
If the two parties agree, your vote is not irrelevant. It just means you're in the minority and you lost.
This is an unsupported assumption.
After Perot and Ventura, many states enacted new barriers to third party candidates. Was this because people the majority of voters wanted them to 'stop the third parties! stop the third parties!' No. It wasn't. It was because the parties themselves, acting as institutions and powerbrokers in their own right, were looking out for their own interests. Third parties may be good for us, but they're unequivocally ba
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Unfortunately alot of people forget that free markets are not about markets, but about freedoms. When you secure the appropiate freedoms, then the markets will take care of themselves as people use those freedoms to persue their goals, interests, and can persue financial gain justly.
Strong industry and an oppressive state is a formula for a Hitler like government every time. Any time an economey grows, you always have social strife and struggle, but unlike western countries - China has no internal checks and balances to keep the government from freaking out. It could very easially become a militant police state.
The ONLY check and balance China has is the USA - and frankly we are not doing our job. While I dont think we should block trade, we need to be ready to force the issue with Tiawan and Hong Kong and make investors who invest in China sign off that their investments are not and will not be secured by the US government. We should openly discourage foriegn investment, and need to persue any policy that makes them economically weaker and us economically stronger, and knock off the copyright and intellectual property bullshit (the culturial open sharing of knowledge is one of the few counterbalances there). We should have underground networks that smuggle chineese disadents out, and we should have lots and lots of favorable treaties and agreements with India to offset the Chineese threat. Now that we more or less got Pakastan off Indias back, we should encourage them to be the force that counteracts China.
All of you jump to the same conclusion: "China is a hardline socialist totalitarian dictatorship and all of it's citizens must hate it there!" (1) we don't know anything about this 'cyber dissident', what sort of dissident was he? Was he funded by the CIA? If a 'dissident' is placed in a country to spread literature by a foreign nation it is a legitimate target for arrest. Any country would arrest such a person. The U.S. randomly arrested the Cuban Five and thousands of arabs basedo n loose connections. (2) China is half socialist (public ownership of production) and half a market economy. It's economy is not totalitarian in any sense. The Politburo is impereable. It seems to have set up some nice barriers around it's bureaucratic apparatus, but, there still exists democracy from the local up to the central committe level. (3) If you noticed, when thousands marched in Hong Kong, the Chinese government backed away from their new law, in the United States, when hundreds of thousands protest against a war, nothing happens.
So kids, everyone still think its a good idea to provide powerful operating systems etc. to people who jail citizens over nothing? "Red Flag Linux for the People! Well, except the ones we shot because they whined, eh?"
Good idea for the Chicom government to be able to make clusters? And use 'em for nuclear explosive research? I'm thinking no.
Maybe some fertile minds should think about that little problem, eh? Exploding Linux for Chinese missile labs, run a nuke simulation on it and it burns up your CPUs. Make the bastards WORK for their WMD's!
Thanks for the link, but that one basically mirrors the official White House one in that it doesn't transcribe Senator Brown or Nettle's comments, it just lists them as interjections.
I'm after a link that shows what those two Senators said (I believe it was an anti-war commentary, but I didn't get a clear line from TV).
This is my point - nowhere does it give the Senators' actual remarks, thereby effectively censoring their speech (in parliament no less!). Thanks anyway.
Visceral Psyche Films
media control and the machinations of states have profound effects on those of us fortunate enough to live in liberal democracies, but the impact is nothing like what the government in Beijing does to its populace.
are we democracies somewhat hypocritical? yes, but short of threatening the lives of various government officials, I can literally say anything I want. I'm doing that right now, in fact, with impunity.
If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else.
Yesterday I could not access /. directly, later I could via a SSL proxy. (though now I can access it again.) I wondered why. /. permanently.
I appreciate greatly that slashdot can say what the Chinese gov. is unhappy to hear. but I worried that if stories like this are a little more, the China gov. would block the
-- forgive me my poor Engl...