Slashdot Mirror
China Closes 1,129 Web Sites
"The related departments have closed 1,278 illegal web sites and 114 sites promoting gambling, superstitious activities and cult propaganda according to the information provided by the informers. ... China's Ministry of Public Security rewarded a number of informers since China launched a nationwide campaign to crack downon the illegal on-line operations."
Something similiar is happening in Thailand: http://2bangkok.com/blocked.shtml
Sounds like now is the perfect time to use Tor which was previously covered today :)
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/22/20 31229&tid=95&tid=158&tid=153&tid=17
Have you metaroderated recently?
"With the closures, the on-line reports on the illegal web sites have declined to 17.4 percent from 67 percent when the crackdown began." ... 17.4 percent of what? Most of the reports are now on non-illegal sites?
Please mod parent up. For details, please confer with article 4 section 4 of a little document I like to call "the US constitution"
http://www.constitution.org/cons/constitu.txt
we have a constitutional republic, it just turns out we've turned it into a democracy... aka the tyranny of the majority.
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
Mod -1 Obscure Heinlein reference
Euphemisms the chinese govt uses:
superstitious propoganda- church. christianity.
cults- falun gong etc
Religious freedom is very heavily monitored. Read the article from the nytimes below.
THE GREAT DIVIDE | COMPETING FOR SOULS
Violence Taints Religion's Solace for China's Poor
By JOSEPH KAHN
Published: November 25, 2004
UAIDE, China - Kuang Yuexia and her husband, Cai Defu, considered themselves good Christians. They read the Bible every night before bed. When their children misbehaved, they dealt with them calmly. They did not curse or tell lies.
But when Zhang Chengli, a neighbor, began hounding them last year to leave their underground religious sect and join his, it seemed like a test of satanic intensity. He scaled the wall of their garden, ambushed them in the fields and roused them after midnight with frantic calls to convert before Jesus arrived for his Second Coming and sent them to hell.
Advertisement
Ms. Kuang poured dirty water on Mr. Zhang's head. Mr. Cai punched him. Yet Mr. Zhang persisted for months until the couple's sect intervened and stopped his proselytizing for good.
Mr. Zhang's body - eyes, ears and nose ripped from his face - was found by a roadside 300 miles from this rural town in Jilin Province, in northeastern China. The police arrested Mr. Cai and fellow sect members. One of them died in police custody during what fellow inmates described as a torture session.
China's growing material wealth has eluded the countryside, home to two-thirds of its population. But there is a bull market in sects and cults competing for souls. That has alarmed the authorities, who seem uncertain whether the spread of religion or its systematic repression does more to turn peasants against Communist rule.
The demise of Communist ideology has left a void, and it is being filled by religion. The country today has more church-going Protestants than Europe, according to several foreign estimates. Buddhism has become popular among the social elite. Beijing college students wait hours for a pew during Christmas services in the capital's 100 packed churches.
But it is the rural underclass that is most desperate for salvation. The rural economy has grown relatively slowly. Corruption and a collapse in state-sponsored medical care and social services are felt acutely. But government-sanctioned churches operate mainly in cities, where they can be closely monitored, and priests and ministers by law can preach only to those who come to them.
The authorities do not ban religious activity in the countryside. But they have made it so difficult for established churches to operate there that many rural Chinese have turned to underground, often heterodox religious movements.
Charismatic sect leaders denounce state-sanctioned churches. They promise healing in a part of the country where the state has all but abandoned responsibility for public health. They also promise deliverance from the coming apocalypse, and demand money, loyalty and strict secrecy from their members.
Three Grades of Servants, a banned Christian sect that claims several million followers, made inroads in Huaide and other northern towns beginning nearly a decade ago. It lured peasants like Yu Xiaoping, as well as her neighbor, Ms. Kuang, away from state-authorized churches. Its underground network provided spiritual and social services to isolated villages.
But it also attracted competition from Eastern Lightning, its archrival, which sought to convert Ms. Yu, Ms. Kuang and others. The two sects clashed violently. Both became targets of a police crackdown.
Xu Shuangfu, the itinerant founder of Three Grades of Servants, who says he has divine powers, was arrested last summer along with scores of associates. Mr. Xu was suspected of having ordered the execution of religious enemies, police officers said.
Yet such efforts rarely stop the spread of underground churches and sects, which derive legitimacy from govern
Better get your own theology straight before you do - AFAIK, no Christian denomination teaches that. Standard Christian theology teaches that hell is the default destination of every human being (ie: not dependant on your misdemeanours) and protestant Christians at least (not too up on Catholic theology) believe that you are saved from hell by the grace of God (again, not dependant on your actions.)
By the by, do you really believe non-living chemicals learnt to walk and talk all by themselves?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Our rights are ours by virtue of our existence. They cannot be "won" from governments because governments do not possess any rights. What we win from governments is the ability to exercise our rights.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Why did the FBI agents raid that Dallas host?
Agents of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations have raided the offices of internet service provider Infocom in Dallas, Texas. The raid came as a result of information that the company was cooperating with the Holy Land Fund for Relief and Development, suspected of being a Hamas fundraising front. The FBI agents confiscated servers, computers and financial records of Infocom. Several websites came down as a result of the raid, including that of the Holy Land Fund.
Foreign Terrorist Organizations
Maybe this was why that Dallas web host was raided?
I guess this would also be a good time to remind people that the US also managed to shut down 22 IndyMedia sites, administered by groups around the world and physically located in the UK. More from the EFF here.