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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'."
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....
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.
... the internet is growing faster than the policeforce. In China or at home...
You read subversion and think of the version control system.
pi
this guy should have used freenet.
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.
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)
And I thank (a God) if there is one that I do.
We lead the world's technological revolution.
Our government gives money and training to the poor to help them improve their lives. If they don't use it that way, it's not anyone elses' problem.
We have on of the highest literacy rates in the world.
We have saved the asses of every other major western country at one time or another (mostly WW II).
Our short history and culture isn't by choice and was greatly influenced by much older culture. After all we were just colonies of the older western civilizations.
Our government is one of the people, not the state (unlike China).
You can actually become rich and powerful if you try.
We have the RIAA and and DMCA protecting our "digital rights". Oh wait, they both suck.
You're nothing but jealous.
GeneralKael -- Slacker Extraordinaire
--
Everyone knows commies prefer CVS over Subversion!
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
"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.
"Really? I live in a beautiful and small European town, with a very good standard of living."
Well, I'm not the original poster, and I don't like a whole lot of things about my country and my government, but... Replace "European" with "Iowan" and you've just described my situation.
Contrary to popular belief, most cities of the US are actually small, quiet, and rural-ish and not huge dirty, noisy, and over-populated.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
"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.
>The USA would probably lose any war with China.
I don't know about that. I think it would likely slag on for a hundred years, with no winner.
After the piss is already in the wine, I don't think nukes are so scary anymore. See, once somebody nukes LA, DC, NYC, and Des Moines once, and after that becomes part of our history and we move on from it, it won't seem so scary anymore (it won't be "unthinkable" anymore).
So the notion that nukes alone can settle a war go out the window. People adapt, and go back to living in dispersed territories, maybe. But it doesn't end WWIII (which any "US versus China" scenario probably represents), which goes on, and on, and on.
Nuclear weapons might start WWIII, but they aren't the end-of-the-world sort of destruction that we'll probably wish they were when this comes down. Rather, they'll be one of those severely annoying tragic things that you can't really do much about, like living in LA despite quakes. You can only play this trump card one time.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
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
God Bless America, with the worst crime levels in the first world
Except for Sweden, New Zealand and Denmark. In fact, the US has about an average per capita crime rate as the rest of the world, according to the UN
God Bless America, where "democracy" means a rich, white male as President
Who serves by the will of the population, is limited in the length of term and whose powers are tempered by two other branches of government. A president who transfers power peacefully, something that has been done every four or eight years for over two hundred years. Incidentally, America is a democratic republic. When did China have its last free presidential election?
God Bless America, the biggest consumer of the world's natural resources
Actually, the "problem" is a first world issue, not an American issue. Per capita, America is not a leader. Look to Japan.
God Bless America, so happy to violate international laws
Riiiiiight. Let's see. America violated international law by...uh...hmmm. By...hmm. Oh, you mean by invading Iraq? The one that appears to be authorized by UN Resolution 1441? Hmmm...
God Bless America, where "freedom of speech" means race-hate groups like KKK
Yes, and the ACLU and the Sierra Club and the NAACP and Greenpeace and any other organization that criticizes the government. Freedom of speech is not freedom to act. You clearly do not understand what freedom of speech means. To limit one organization's speech because you do not agree with it is to open the door to limit anyone to make the same claim about any organization. Of course, China doesn't have that problem. When you disallow freedom of speech, you only have to worry about the hate groups that keep quiet.
God Bless America, and its massive and ever-growing poverty gap
America's poverty rate in 2000 was the lowest in 26 years. It has only slightly increased, from 8.7% to 9.2%. Recently, NPR reported that instead of people spending vast periods of time in poverty, they tend to move out of poverty in a period of a few years, but others, due to a variety of reasons, move into poverty, again, generally, to move out in a few years. This, of course, is in contrast to China's poverty rate...11.2% in urban areas, darn near 100% in rural areas.
God Bless America, with barely 300 years of dire history and culture
The world's oldest, continously functioning representative democracy. America has managed to overcome, in less than 300 years what China, with over a thousand years of history has not.
God Bless America, all its appalling "sitcoms" with no grasp of irony
OK, I guess I can accept this as a strike against America...
God Bless America, with the highest obesity levels in the developed world
One of the pitfalls of freedom of choice is that one is free to make personal choices that are bad for you.
God Bless America, because corporations should be allowed to run amok
Actually, corporations are not allowed to do that. A tiny bit of research will show you that in the end, they do get caught.
God Bless America, wasting billions to attack foreign countries
Like Tibet? Like Nepal?
God Bless America, and thank God I don't have to live there.
And the final difference between the US and China? In the US, nobody has to live here!
-h-
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.
Well, even though you didn't have the courage to reply with your name, I'll answer your complaint.
You're right, China didn't spend billions invading Tibet. That's because Tibet couldn't fight back. My point was not that China spent billions to invade (incidentally, the US did not spend billions to invade Iraq - the billions are to rebuild the country after the previous regime raped its infrastructure), but that China invaded a country that posed no threat to it, other than being a vocal critic of its form of government.
I did not say that the US accomplished everything that China has accomplished...I said that it has overcome the things that China has not been able to overcome - a totalitarian regime that does not represent the desires of its people.
History and culture come with time. If being a young nation is something to be critical about, then there are plenty of countries to pick on. Given that the US is a country of immigrants, an excellent case can be made that our history and culture goes back to the middle ages of Europe. While that's not several thousand years of Chinese history and culture, I'll also point out that Mao Tse-Tung's government did its damndest to wipe out China's history and culture. Really, you don't think that the Cultural Revolution was about getting back to their historical roots, do you?
The document that I linked to does indeed show reported crimes. I agree, it makes third world countries look outrageously safe. But if you consider the reports from developed countries, you'll find that those statistics are quite accurate. And, after all, the comments that I made and responded to were about crime in the developed world.
The point is that the parent post stated that "at least China is better than America", a patently ludicrous statement, given that the arguments backing it up are, for the most part, wrong.
-h-
I don't see any U.S. Army troops and tanks on the streets of China killing people who steal CD's, either.
Judging from your post, I would guess you've just been watching the news and not actually going to the WTC protests in Seattle like some of my friends did. After a WTC protest, try checking around on the web for sites put up by the protesters. You're sure to see a few heads smashed and related things. America has it's own Tiannamen Squares if you really want to look for them. But usually American censorship is a lot more subtle. You can give an 'evildoer' person 25 seconds of airtime on a public news program as long as you interrupt them frequently. Its hard to explain a different worldview in 25 seconds with frequent interruptions, and the whole thing makes the news organization seem like it's being objective.
And there have been a number of laws passed raising the bar for what it would take to have a third party elected. Lets face it, we may have some control over national elections, but enough money can essentially force a consensus between the two parties and then we have zilch.
If the two parties agree, your vote is irrelevant. It's not like the multi-party systems found in some other democracies where you can have multiple viable parties.
Freedom and democracy? These are not binary yes-or-no things.
And while it's true that America (where I have citizenship) has a good deal more freedom than China (where I'm currently teaching English) there are a lot more comparisons which could be drawn between the two nations than most Americans would be comfortable with.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
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