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China Rewards Porn Snitches
MinimeMongo writes that the "Associated Press reports that China's police ministry on Sunday handed out rewards of up to $240 to people who reported pornographic Web sites in a campaign to stamp out online smut...The online crackdown is part of a sweeping official morality campaign launched this year on orders from communist leaders."
I just returned from China, where I travelled with my PowerBook and used both dial-up and ethernet connections at many places, including internet cafes and people's homes. After hearing all about the authoritarian firewall and net filtering I was a little surprised to see absolutely no firewall or filtering of any kind in effect. I was able to connect back to my home using SSH, use https to web sites in the U.S. and get to arbitrary places, news sites, and web based email every where I tried.
I could find no evidence of a firewall of any kind. I read about the google results, but what else are people talking about?
Pat
In Saudi, all Web traffic from all ISPs are forwarded through central array of proxy servers, which is then censored to "preserve their Islamic values" by "filtering the Internet content to prevent the materials that contradict with our beliefs or may influence our culture."
Never underestimate the will of the people in stifling themselves.
The CCP isn't doing this because they care, they're doing it because they are afraid if they don't the people will get upset, and it will undermine them.
"Morality" has always been an important aspect of Chinese culture, as much as in early puritan America, earlier Europe, and the modern middle east (complete with killing adulterers)
Think of a society like a living organism. Cells can only take so many "insults" before becoming cancerous. Similarly, individuals can only become so annoyed before they revolt. We tend to think of those insults as oppression, but they can also be in the form of not being able to oppress others enough. Just look at the US civil war.
The internet is not a magic bullet that routs around all 'censorship'. It's a constant battle, and requires education. Unfortunately in "communist" China the government has decided to try to stamp out porn rather then try to err on the side of freedom (not particularly suprising).
Anyway, I'm off to China for my new bussness venture of anonymously setting up porn sites and then turning them in for a reward. Zai Zhen, bai bai le~.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Part of our system of voting requires us to think about the candidates that we think has a chance. It is a clear side-effect of a first-past-the-post voting system. As explained there:
...
First-past-the-post encourages the tactical voting technique known as "compromising": voters are encouraged to vote for one of the two options most likely to win, even if it is not their most preferred option.
If enough voters vote using this tactic, the first-past-the-post system becomes a form of runoff voting where the first round is held in the court of public opinion. This can give substantial power to the media as voters will tend to believe their viewpoint on who the leading contenders are likely to be in the election and use that viewpoint to decide where a "tactical" vote would be (in the voter's opinion) best used. This can also become a system promoting votes against more so than votes for.
If you go on and read about tactical voting, you'll see it says that "Duverger's law suggests that, for this reason, first-past-the-post election systems will lead to two party systems in most cases." Quite discouraging if you ask me; I'd love to see more parties involved.
I just read some of these articles yesterday trying to learn about the British election system. It's very interesting stuff. Sometimes I wish I was a political science major...
The space unintentionally left unblank.
>Note that the UN decalration says "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."
Doesn't the ability to read whatever one chooses fall under "liberty"?
Actually, in the UN declaration, what exactly is "liberty" referring to? It's one of those words with many different meanings.
Before Bush, trucks were a small part of the American fleet, so their emissions exemptions weren't as big a problem for the environment. Under Bush, their use has exploded, helped by the tax deduction of their purchase, as well as the extremely low interest on Federal loans to car companies that they pass on to consumers buying them. All these issues are questions of management as conditions change. Bush is a miserable manager, who sticks to his guns when conditions change. We can blame him for not rebalancing the finance and pollution systems when SUV pollution started to become a problem on his watch. But of course we're not surprised that he protects double the gas consumption per mile while oil costs twice as much per gallon, because he's a Texas oil baron cowboy. Lack of surprise doesn't excuse his mismanagement, it underscores it.
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make install -not war
Actually, this is a key difference between Christianity and both Islam and Communism. Both of the latter two religions (yes, Communism is a religion) promise world peace once the entire world is subjugated and morality externally imposed. The word 'Islam' is the name for the promised peace that will result once all the earth is subject to Sharia law. The word 'Communism' is the name of that state of peace and well being that is promised once all of the old capitalist systems have been overthrown and replaced with a world wide commune.
Christianity, on the other hand, while sharing the goal of promoting morality, dismisses the possibility of achieving true morality by external control as impossible. Consider the strong willed child whose parents make him sit down: "I'm may be sitting down on the outside, but I'm standing up on the inside." For Christians, true morality begins when God changes the heart, and transforms from the inside, and finally manifests itself in external behaviour. World peace will never be achieved until Christ returns to destroy this universe and move all those who have been internally transformed to a new heavens and a new earth. (In some interpretations, there is first a period of 1000 years of externally enforced peace on this Earth with Christ as the ruler - which ultimately fails, proving the need to destroy this world and start over).
Christians who think that true morality can be externally imposed are heretics. The heresy is called "legalism" or "phariseeism" after the Jewish sect prominent in the New Testament. A more subtle mistake Christians make is to think that they, as an individual, can transform their own lives by imposing a set of rules on themselves. This is no more effective than having the government do it - the result is an annoying "holier than thou" attitude. In Christian doctrine, the process of becoming truly righteous must begin with a supernatural internal change initiated by God Himself.
The use of external force is reserved for Secular Government. The specific example Paul points to was the secular Roman government - but this does not mean that officials of the government cannot be religious. The purpose of government is to externally impose morality - for example, "do not murder" is a moral principle which the government attempts to enforce. ("Whoso sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.") It is supposed to be understood, however, that this external enforcement does not produce true righteousness, but only enables the society to survive.
Attempts to externally enforce sexual morality are similarly founded on the survival of society. The healthy growth and development of children is best promoted by a stable two parent family. This principle is the basis on which the government claims the authority to take children away from a clearly disfunctional family (locking kids in closets, etc). It used to be the principle on which our government implemented sanctions against adultery. It used to be the principle on which premarital sex was sanctioned - it tends to create children in need of a home. It is also the principle on which gay marriage should not be allowed. It is one thing for people who will never raise children to fool around and cut their own lives short. It is a more serious matter to bring children (e.g. adopted) into that environment.