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China Telecom Blocking Skype Calls
Retrospeak writes "According to a Reuters report China is starting to block Skype service in Shenzhen, an affluent southern city of China. Local Chinese media report that China Telecom has plans to eventually block the service throughout its coverage area nationwide. Could this have something to do with the fact that China Telecom charges close to $1 per minute for calls to United States and Europe?" From the article: " A China Telecom spokesman had no comment on the reports about the Shenzhen blockage, but gave a broader view. 'Under the current relevant laws and regulations of China, PC-to-phone services are strictly regulated and only China Telecom and (the nation's other fixed-line carrier) China Netcom are permitted to carry out some trials on a very limited basis,' he said."
Here in America, at least we have the FCC and other governing bodies telling big business what they are allowed to do and what they are forbidden to do, and the majority of time the rules are followed at least. I know a while back that some major ISPs tried to block Vonage on their systems but after a major outcry from their subscribers this was changed quickly.
China has always been known to be a government that censor's free speech and tries to limit what it's citizens have access to. I am sure that their email systems are all monitored with anti-government emails being filtered out or those sending/receiving these emails being placed on watch lists, and am sure that each citizen's web surfing habits are monitored as well.
This is just another example of why I am glad to live here in the United States of America. We may complain about things from time to time, but at least we do have more freedom of information and able to know more, then most other countries out there. If my Vonage was blocked by my ISP, I would be contacting Road Runner in a hurry, and getting things straight, something that as an American we can take care of. I'm glad to not be helpless like the majority of private citizens in China are.
I wonder if this is proven to be a successful triumph on China Telecom's part, if it will help spur other ISP's in various countries around the globe to take a part in this as well. Voice over IP has been a wonderful blessing to many around the world, being used by many to reach other's in distant countries, at a far cheaper cost then a normal voice call would cost... hope this doesn't catch on and cause VOIP as a whole to start being shut down outside of America.
Hopefully, Skype can just one-up the Chinese, and change the way their system works, to more easily get around the blockage, as well as having the system be more intelligent in finding connections, bypassing any blocking measures that China Telecom might try to implement.
I'm not a lawyer, and curious about the legal implications of this. I know that with China being a communist nation, that the people probably have no rights, but could Skype turn around and have a lawsuit against China Telecom, for "obstruction of service" or "tampering with service" which is essentially what they are doing?
Need a Nerd?
Nerd Systems
Now if we could somehow get a US company to pay Chinese workers $2 per hour to make Skype handsets for sale in China, then we might have a deal on our hands. Anyone?
Boy, it has come down then. When I was in China a few years ago it was $2/minute to the USA. It was a bargain to get to Japan and have calls cost only $1/minute.
Australia, last December by comparison was about 4 cents/minute on a phone card.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Regardless of any efforts to block its use, once people realise the advantages of VOIP, organisations, whether Governments or companies who want to enforce some kind of monopoly, will have to embrace this worthwhile development.
If they aren't set up to tap IP telephony, then they'll want to block it until they are.
It's the way of such governments.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As the article stated:
I'd say it has more to do with the fact that people (mainly Falun Gong practitioners) like to use services such as Skype to tell Chinese mainlanders, who don't have access to free (as in speech) media, the truth about the persecution that's going on there.
Falun Dafa is good!
notice just how 1984esque this is, really?
w00t
Shoo' I'm being raped, tortured, and murdered there!
Falun Dafa is good!
I'm not a lawyer, and curious about the legal implications of this. I know that with China being a communist nation, that the people probably have no rights, but could Skype turn around and have a lawsuit against China Telecom, for "obstruction of service" or "tampering with service" which is essentially what they are doing?
It's hard enough to sue a sovereign nation for violating it's *own* laws, let alone over something like this. IANAL either, but I can tell you that a snowball would have a better chance lasting in hell than Skype would have in winning such a suit.
Anyone have any idea how they are identifying SkypeOut traffic? Skype makes a pretty serious effort to be hard to identify. Do they just block the login server?
Actually, they are blocking because Skype is more or less a peer to peer protocol, and it's very hard to monitor the conversations.
Anyway, this is the day that the great firewall really becomes useful (in a painfully annoying way)
by the way, calls from china to the US are not 1 dollar per minute. nobody uses those services. everyone buys IP cards for maybe 2 cents a minute or so. FYI
What I really love about these "Telco_X Blocking VOIP" stories is that Telco_X is already using, or at the very least implementing, this technology to make your calls cheaper for them. The only circuit that still exists is the one between your house and the local Telco_X exchange. Everything else is or will very shortly be packet switched.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
Are you SURE it's blocked? I have colleagues in Shenzhen and HK and just finished a skype conf call with several of them and didn't have any issues getting through. Granted, it wouldn't surprise me given China's often ham handed attempts to control communications infrastructure. But before we go accusing them of something that wouldn't be so surprising, let's make sure it's actually happening and not some temporary glitch. Cheers,
This is what happens when a fascist oligarchy adopts the worst aspects of capitalism.
Funny, I was in Beijing two months ago and there was a HUGE billboard for Skype, right in the center of the business district.
My guess is that they are just using a heavy hand to pressure skype into two things:
1) handing over some money/bribes.
2) making sure they can listen in on conversations
3) They did something like this to Google a few years back. Even now google experiences outages all the time. I guess this is just the way the chinese gov't is used to doing business.
Skype just has to figure out the right person to bribe and this will all go away.
Peace, or Not?
This is just another example of why I am glad to live here in the United States of America.
You know, it's fine if you want to be glad that you don't live in China, but you should at least recognize that being better than China when it comes to human rights is kinda like bragging that you're not the stupidest kid on the short bus.
Except in this case the stupidest kid is driving the bus.
...Voice-Over-IP blocks *you*!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Maybe this is also about cutting off communication ties in a town because the Chinese authorities have something to hide. Shenzhen (and other localities) saw a recent outbreak of a bizzare pig-related illness that killed people over the summer. Some speculate that this was, in fact, a nasty version of Bird Flu (that thankfully seems NOT to have gotten out of hand). Virtually no epidemiologist believes the official line that this was a bacterial outbreak. There have been lots of reports of government cover-ups much like the early days of the SARS outbreak. Maybe Skype is getting the boot to keep the lid on reporting/rumors of ongoing or possible future outbreaks? Here are links about it: http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx? type=worldNews&storyID=2005-08-23T173823Z_01_NOOTR _RTRJONC_0_India-213550-3.xml
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/08170503/Suzhou_ Swine.html
http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2005/08/the_glo be_and_m.html
...just get one of these revolutionary Skype-over-PSTN devices.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
This is just another example of why I am glad to live here in the United States of America. We may complain about things from time to time, but at least we do have more freedom of information and able to know more, then most other countries out there.
I think you missed this story.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Having VoIP (which is an unreliable technology mostly just good for cheap low quality unreliable phone calls) banned in China is minor compared to the fact people are TORTURED, IMPRISONED FOR YEARS, and EXECUTED for political crimes.
If you have Vonage with a routerphonethingie, you take your local calling area wherever you are on the network. If you take your New York Vonage router with you to China, you can make local calls to New York. Calls to China, not surprisingly, are long distance.
Just one more way that VOIP is changing the face of telecommunications.
The ______ Agenda
Lets see.. A sovereign state wants to regulate its telecommunications.. What is the problem here?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Despite all of the 'dot-com' excitement and digital change in the past twenty years in the West, we tend to forget that China is still under the political control of the Communist Party. Even with all the talk about serving the people and all of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist political theory, the communist party is going to be the most backward, reactionary, brutal, and oppressive institution in any country that is still run by communists.
I don't wish to sound like a old cold-war, earth-burning, Dr. Strangelove flag-waving American buffoon. Nevertheless, certain facts must be faced. And one of those facts is that regardless of where one's political stance is the communist party is going to be the most backward, reactionary, brutal, and oppressive institution in any country that is still run by communists. This is true no matter how stylish or technologically-aware the young people are in that country. The government in any communist country is still going to act like dictatorial thugs; making arbitrary and senseless decisions without any due process of international law.
Now I know that you all are going to say that George Bush acts the same way. But American blockhead brutality (at least in the USA) is a far cry less from what passes as ordinary administration in any communist country. And this also applies to 'strong man' crypto-dictatorships in the post-Soviet orbit.
So don't be surprised at this heavy-handed nonsense. The whole point of the Information Age is that the primary guidance of society passes from those who rule through systematic application of violence to those who guide by controlling the flow of information. China will enter the Information Age eventually, but it won't be easy or painless.
I might be moving to China because of my dad's job and they flew my family and me out there about 3 weeks ago to see Beijing. The roaming charges are ridiculous and I ended up having to pay for $260 of roaming charges from my dad's cell phone just calling my gf in the states. The last few days I used Skype which was awesome, but now this happens and I'm pissed. This is just bullshit now. Fuck you Chairman Mao.
Simple test to see which country is more free.
Can you join a Nazi party in your Country? Many European Countries you can not, in the US, you can.
Can you buy a copy Mein Kamf? Many Countries you can not, in the US, you can.
Can you buy anything that is printed? In the United Stated, bomb making books are printed and sold, legally.
Are your basic rights outlined in your constition? Freedom of Speech, Right to Assemble, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Religion are the basic foundations of this Country are protect by our Bill of Rights.
Europe and other countries can bash us for many reasons and in some areas are more free than we are, but in the Big Picture, we are more free than anyone else.
Linux O Muerte!
I think pc to pc is fine. but using a fix phone line to talk to a computer or the other way arround uses other resources aside form regular internet connection.
But again, I think a large part is that this sort of activity cut into big corporation/government's bottom line, that's why skype is being shut out.
If you read chinese, here is a link
http://it.sohu.com/20050909/n240361738.shtml
It is actually pretty supportive of china telecom's action
I know that with China being a communist nation...
China is NOT a communist nation. It is an authoritarian nation. Big difference there. In other words, The authorities are asserting their authority. Tell me something new. It happens all over the planet. We don't need to single them out. We use IP law to do precisely the same thing. It all depends on the spin that's put upon it. You can use censorship to protect property or one's power over others. It makes no difference. It's still censorship. Your entire post sounds a little like a 1950s propaganda piece.
What?
Chinese version is here: http://news.mydrivers.com/pages/20050910030227_131 47.htm
I never thought I'd say this, but China's leaders need to keel over and die due to 'natural causes', with the help of a few allied governments' militaries.
I'm usually all for leaving other countries' governments alone, but I'm starting to feel like there's a certain threshold which you can stifle people's rights, and China is well past that and needs to be dismantled/reshaped.
Btw, I should note, that I don't feel like this solely due to Skype - I could care less about skype.. Watching a country try and make information and self-education disappear is both hillarious and saddening. It is hillarious because they will never succeed in the long run, it is saddening that they have succeded in general for now and succeeded in limiting so much other information.
We all know this is bad for the Chinese; however, this does effect us in several indirect ways.
First it makes us more tolerant to abuses here in the USA (sorry non-USA folks out there). For example as the Patriot act erodes our freedom, we can be more tolerent because we see other governments abusing their constiuency even more. So we let the abuses slide since we can always say "at least its not as bad a China).
Second it sets a precedent for the lobbyists to follow. Our telcom industry will say to the congress, "look mwe are lossing $$$$ because of this, and when we loss $$$ your constituents lose jobs." Then they say look at how effectively CHina handled the problem...
Third, the (this might be a stretch, but hear me out), it erodes our belief in one of our most sacred beliefs - Freedom of SPeech - which - really means the freedom to communicate, Communication, be it to the masses via a newspaper, or to your best friend via IM is fundamental to society. Any restriction is wrong. What is going to stop them from blocking email (I know they won't because they like the money SPAM generates), or IM.
Here is a more direct example. I don't know anyone in CHina, but I regularly get calls via Skype from customers in South America, Europe and Austrialia. If those countries take a similar hardline approach, I will likely lose customers.
Anyway, this sucks for the Chinese, and will have an impact on teh rest of us in some fashion.
-MS2k
"Skype -- the entire world, except for China, can talk for free"
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
Pardon my ignorance on the subject, but I was under the impression that any type of packet blocking/filtering can be pretty easily overcome by simply masking the packets someway? (i.e. wrapping them in a different protocol via SSH tunnelling or something like that....) Again, I'm unclear on the details, but isn't something like this possible?
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
This is just another example of why I am glad to live here in the United States of America. We may complain about things from time to time, but at least we do have more freedom of information and able to know more, then most other countries out there.
You'll be suprised how many countries there is actually out there.
*Most* countries have the same body of regulators, have you heard of this thing called the UN? Check it out same time, you'll find a lot of countries "doing the right thing" in terms of freedom and law.
Mod me down, but I hope that one day the US citizens will look outside the scope of their backyard once and while.
Having just returned to the US from a post in a Beijing technology law firm, I can tell you that this move has been coming for a long time and nothing is going to stop it. China's state-owned enterprises are very aware of emerging technologies like VOIP and have the power and motivation to protect the technologies that have supported their bottom line since the '80s. These behemoth companies lack the know-how to scale tech like VOIP to the consumers in the Eastern cities who are actually starting to develop disposable income, so they simply use their government muscle to stonewall and prevent smaller players from introducing fresh products. This is a classic example of regulators being in bed with the corporate goons and the consumer losing out, and is one reason why America's economy will retain an adaptive advantage the forseeable future. This is clearly an enormous obstacle for the American and European entrepreneurs who are, increasingly, betting their reputations on selling slick new technologies to China's 1.3 billion consumers. You just can't brush outdated Chinese corporations aside by marketing a better product. Smart entrepreneurs will find a way to get in bed with the government too.
But, as another poster pointed out, you can still use Skype in Shenzhen -- China's big problem is enforcement. The software dealing with internet searches in China is primitive and random -- searching 'map of Guangzhou' is equally likely to earn you a 1-hour Google ban as searching 'falun Gong resistance movement'. China's government is not large enough to police 360 million Internet users, and their engineers are not as good as America's, so any kind of truly effective enforcement seems farfetched. They face a problem of both scale and skill. In the US we hear all these myths about the repressive internet regime in the PRC, but in reality it's kind of a farce. You really have to consider the size and pace of this country -- Shenzhen is a city larger than New York that was a fishing village in 1995. Who can really keep track of such rapid development? What I think will happen is that people will always be able to use the Skype technology in some capacity, but the company (and its peers) will be on the rocks in terms of expanding in China until they find a way to sell the idea to the government.
Four days ago, Skype signed a joint venture agreement with the Chinese wireless company TOM Online. What I think you are seeing here is that Skype bet on TOM's connections and know-how to protect them from the Chinese government, but in fact TOM's size and political weight are tiny compared to China Telecom's, so they are getting thrown around because China Telecom perceives a threat. What Skype should have done is tried to sell the idea to China Telecom or China Mobile, even if they would have taken a less lucrative contract. It will be interesting to see where this goes from here, but I predict until Skype redefines their strategy and relationship with the government, they will be kept out of the market.
Slashdot's modding system seriously needs a (+?, Incomprehensible)
Is the US still chasing commies ?
Votator.com implements a fair voting scheme (free
I think this is just overreaction by Reuter and other slashdotters. Internet based phone is incredibly common in China, you can buy "IP Phone cards" that work with any phone for ridiculously cheap prices. (100 RMB cards selling for 50 RMB, plus buy one get one free.)
Skype has always been somewhat blocked in China since they signed the agreement with tom.com. Sometimes buying credits directly from Skype.com doesn't work unless you're an existing user. Sometimes the entire skype.com site is blocked.
As for popularity, QQ has far more users and is known by even non-computer users...
It's unfortunate you seem to hold most dearly those values related to the Nazi revolution. Unfortunately, I don't like settling for that kind of freedom.
If I'm blocked from attending a town hall meeting put on by my President because I'm a Democrat, I'm not very free.
If elections can be decided by a court, I'm not very free.
If neoconservatives can threaten to impeach judges because they don't decide cases based on religious contrine, I'm not very free.
If big businesses can invest their money wisely enough to buy off a Congress, I'm not very free. (See the energy, telecommunications, defense, highway bills.)
If oil companies formerly run by our Vice President get no-bid contracts and take over Iraqi oil fields, I'm not very free.
If the government office in charge of investigating abuses of power (like those no-bid contracts) say they're "too busy" to investigate Cheney, despite having three times the case load when they approved a Clinton investigation, I'm not very free.
If my uncle down south, along with others, is asked to leave his church because he's a card-carrying Democrat, I'm not very free.
If wealthy people get billions of dollars and, as a result, we cripple state budgets and tens of thousands of people die because of a Hurricane, I'm not very free.
The truth is, honest to God, I'd trade in my copy of "My Struggle" if it reversed all those things. Freedom is in the eye of the beholder. The rich and the religious feel very free. In fact, they feel ENTITLED. But the truth is, there's a reason Norway is #1 on the UN's list of countries to live in and the U.S. is #37. I can't imagine Norwegians are screaming for liberty and freedoms. They're free, they go about their lives, and they do well.
The U.S. has turned a corner and is on a very dark path right now. If you don't see it - even just a glimpse of it - then you need to, because power tends to consolidate, and if past actions lend to future ambitions, we're in for big trouble as neocons continue gaining strength.
Your simple test is misguided. It's not about which party you can join. After all - Germany had a problem with Nazis and outlawed them. We spent a better part of the 20th century tearing to pieces Communists in our own. Even today, in the 21st century, many folks spend their time talking about "killing" (yes, hate speech) the liberals who ruin this country. They are perverse, sick, disgusting individuals who are so entrenched in a false system of values.
The true test of freedom is the consolidation of power. Is it centralized in the people in America? I would say less and less. Corporatism is the new threat - and the neocons (and even many Conservatives) are perfectly aligned to feed it. This threatens our values. These are not our American values -- hell, they're not even good Christian values, if you want to bring religion into it.
Love your country, Mullen. Just don't love it too much. The Constitution is a pitiful and weak thing -- it is not the protector of our great democracy.
We are.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Can you take apart and modify your own electronic equipment ? in the US you can't
Can you get a fair trial in front of your peers ? in the US you can't
Can you read books in your library without fear of being persecuted ? in the US you can't
Can you report stories as a journalist without fear of revealing your sources and being jailed ? in the US you can't
freedom is a good idea but its not working out very well in USA
Don't ignore the fact that the USA's Department of Justice has the perverse idea that since an accident of technology (circuit-switched telephony) made it possible to monitor telephone calls, that situation should continue, regardless of changes in technology. They now view that capability as a "right", forcing others to build backdoors into their systems. It would be trivial to add strong link encryption, and end-to-end encryption for on-network calls, to modern cellular phone systems. Why don't we have it in the USA? Ask the FCC, DoJ and NSA.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Not true.
You simply buy it at Barnes and Noble, pay cash, take it home and enjoy. No paper trail, no problems.
Freedom of Speech, Right to Assemble, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Religion are the basic foundations of this Country are protect by our Bill of Rights.
No, our rights are protected by our willingness to demand, and if necessary, fight for them. The Bill of Rights is just a statement of expectations.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This has to be an issue of relations with the government.
The Chinese government loves to make exemptions to the law for its friends. Skype is getting fucked because it isn't a part of the circle. Hire a "consultant" from high up in the Chinese government, and things will change very fast.
Lots of back scratching goin' on..
I dunno, that seems a little spendy...
I'd go $0.75 an hour to build handsets for my own voip service, though.
China is NOT a communist nation.
China is a country ruled by communists. Hair-splitting over whether they're a "communist nation" or not is pointless.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Here in America, at least we have the FCC and other governing bodies telling big business what they are allowed to do
Whee! They have that in China too.
In fact, China Telecom is the government. Or vice versa.
It's pretty meaningless to talk about things like consumer choice or business regulation in China. The government is essentially communist, and even though things appear "free market" in essence nothing happens in China without the government's approval and, in fact, urging.
This is not a matter of profit. This is a matter of speech and freedom of information.
Although there's no doubt that China may want the revenue it may get from calls to and from China, keep in mind that this *is* China, where on almost any street corner you can find a man selling you a new bargain phone card that charges only a yuan or two per minute for calls to the US. Oh, and if you're not a complete moron you don't pay face value. If the card says 80 yuan, you offer 40 tops and the seller agrees, because he probably paid 20.
So it's not so much a money thing. It's a control thing. If Chinese people are using Skype, there's no way for the government to control and monitor the communication.
Disclosure: I've been to China, loved it, still think that having no civil liberties sucks. But, as the Chinese government likes to point out every time we issue a human rights report on them, the US fails on nearly as many of the items in the International Bill of Human Rights as they do. Of course, we fail on the inconsequential things, like healthcare and education.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
I travel the world with my job all the time and you think you have it all - which you don't.
There is some beautiful countries out there, all I'm saying is look around - you'll be surprised what you find.
Oh, there certainly are. My biggest complaint with our government is that we haven't annexed them yet.
Take Mexico for example. With the Florida coast jammed beyond capicity with old farts, the US desparately needs more beach property. It would take about a 2 week war for us to gain control of Mexico. I wish we'd just do it and get it over with.
See, I could easily move to Cancun and live in a much more pleasurable climate that I'm in right now, but I'd also be living in the Mexican economy, which would mean a shitty salary.
If, on the other hand, we just fired up the 101st Airborne for a few weeks, we could have 7 or 9 more states (depending on how they divided things up) and I could move to Cancun, live on the beach, and earn an American salary.
As an added bonus, after a few years we would increase the standard of living down there to such a degree that we wouldn't all of these wetbacks invading our workforce.
Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
"If I'm blocked from attending a town hall meeting put on by my President because I'm a Democrat, I'm not very free."
An this is exactly what happened in the US a few months ago.
I do not have a link, but you must recall the woman who was denied entry in just this situation, because agents spotted her car with a democrats sticker on it parked several hundred yards down the road.
THis china story is nothing but commercial dominance.
Telecom in New Zealand have not blocked IP calls per sey, but have intoduced latency and interleaving.
These case have nothing to do with freedoms, but incumbents moving as aggresively as they dare.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Simple test to see which country is more free.
Can you join a Nazi party in your Country? Many European Countries you can not, in the US, you can.
Can you buy a copy Mein Kamf? Many Countries you can not, in the US, you can.
Can you buy anything that is printed? In the United Stated, bomb making books are printed and sold, legally.
Are your basic rights outlined in your constition? Freedom of Speech, Right to Assemble, Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Religion are the basic foundations of this Country are protect by our Bill of Rights.
Europe and other countries can bash us for many reasons and in some areas are more free than we are, but in the Big Picture, we are more free than anyone else.
I am amazed by which "parameters" you measure FREEDOM (actually, I can freely buy Mein Kampf at my place, if you really had to know - it seems you have the freedom not to know correct book names, though). Don't you think there are about million more questions which could be added to the list (both against and for any country on the planet)?
Let me guess - you are from the USA?
And let me guess, you have extensive knowledge of life and culture at other places?
Let me guess - you spent exactly 0 minutes as RESIDENT of any other country than the USA.
Or maybe, you've been to France or Germany as a tourist, so you got these fantastic parameters for your "Freedom-meter" device?
Ah, reminds me of my fist encounter (years and years ago) with an American. When I told him where I am from (and he had no clue where that was, because it's a small European country), his next questions were "Do you know what is McDonalds? Do you have Coca-Cola?" Kind of left a strong impression on me...
I've spent 6 years of my life in other countries (2 of them). Even so, I don't think I'd ever try to measure "freedom" in those countries. I might ask people living there to measure it. I lost some freedoms I was used to, but I gathered some others.
Like "Freedom to be left alone", which is the most important freedom, but not something you have, for example.
Gotta love Slashdot wankers who are experts in everything but have experience in nothing...
The real reason is very simple and easy to understand.
China has 1,000,000,000 peasants and 300,000,000 urban dwellers with about 20 years experience of not being peasants.
If China allowed dissenters to utilize high technology to whip up discontent in even 1% of that peasant population it would seriously destabilize the country.
The Chinese government is roundly criticized for growing their economy at 20% to 25% per year. But even if they manage to maintain that rate it will be decades before a large portion of those 1,000,000,000 peasants can have access to modern housing, enough electricity to run a light in the evening so their children can study and a higher protein diet that would still only have half the protein a poor American has in their diet.
If China lost control the way Russia did, the resulting civil chaos would result in more deaths than all the people that died in WWI and WWII combined.
And we are no longer the bright torch of freedom we once were. CALEA, PATRIOT I, PATRIOT II, DMCA, RICO, TSA (remember when you could move state to state on an airplane with no government issued travel documents? Well you can now in Russia, but not here) have taken our freedoms one acronym at at time. Systems like Carnivore and what-ever-the-hell-its-called-at-the-NSA snoop all our emails, phone calls and web surfing habits. Cities are installing 10,000's of cameras with facial recognition software and microphones with voice recognition systems to watch and monitor citizens every public move and utterance. The Chinese wish they had such technologies!
Some American's sit back and condemn China for human rights abuses and arrogantly extend a ruler to measure Chinese progress in reforms against. The reality is that China's constitution is in many ways more modern than our own, not surprising considering ours is over 200 years old and theirs isn't even 60. But the American constitution was implemented on a population that wouldn't even fill a small city in urban China.
To make progress on a population the size of China's at the rate demanded by some here in America would result in a Chinese government that those very same people would then accuse (justly) of genocide due to all the peasant's they'd have to kill to achieve the rapid social change to generations of folks that were raised and indoctrinated as peasants.
If you want to help China become a bastion of freedom the path doesn't run down blasting them for blocking Skype calls. What they need are schools, textbooks, teachers and money to operate the schools and pay the teachers. Helping them to better educate their children will help them build their freedom. And while you are at it, don't forget money for food so the families could still feed themselves while their children were in school instead of helping raise food to feed themselves.
Your average American can not picture what a difference this would make, now, give us a few more decades to destroy our public education system and we'll have a better idea...
However, in America the norm is for a child to have access to schools, books, teachers, at least one nutritious hot meal a day and no need to miss school in order to help grow food. In China the norm is no school, no textbooks, no teachers, no guarantee of a nutritious hot meal every day for their children, and a desperate need to help grow food.
Even your average Chinese citizen can't grasp how large the challenge is for their government. Last year I was in China and heard one of their urban citizens grumble about the waste of their government spending $500,000,000 USD on hosting the 2008 Olympics. I asked that person "Do you realize that even if your government took every dollar of that Olympic money and used it to buy text books they couldn't even buy every school child in China one text book?"
The only person in the world that could help China meet the ruler of progress held up for them is Bill Gates. But even if he woke up one morning and decided he was going to cash in all hi
Go and do it for sure - I'm 30 years old but already looking at remote places to retire. :)
... according to their usage policies for UMTS and EvDO service. Read the fine print.
> The authorities are asserting their authority. Tell me something new. It happens all over the planet. We don't need to single them out. We use IP law to do precisely the same thing. It all depends on the spin that's put upon it. You can use censorship to protect property or one's power over others. It makes no difference. It's still censorship. Your entire post sounds a little like a 1950s propaganda piece.
No it's not the same as IP law at all. Just because a nation enforces *any* type of law, doesn't mean all "enforcements" are morally or ethically equal.
- sigs are for wimps.
I'm only 34, an I'm already disgusted with the complete lack of affordable beach property that my country has waiting for me when I reach retirement age.
INVADE MEXICO NOW!!!!
And while we're at it, let's carpet bomb India with nukes. Those fucking assholes are coming over here, stealing jobs from home-grown Americans, and then moving back to India. The sick part of it is, the foreigners get preferential treatment for job openings at most big companies.
The United States DOESN'T FUCKING NEED to import talent. There is plenty of talent right here at home. What we need is to get rid of the visas, and start hiring the people who were raised here.
Everyone seems to think that we're "importing talent". The truth is that we're "exporting education".
Well, true, but this story has nothing to do with that, it's just about good old robber-baron style capitalism, big companies who are well-connected with the government abusing the rights of consumers to protect their profits.
No, it's a huge difference. Maoist China was a communist nation ruled by communists. Modern China is essentially a capitalist nation ruled by communists. North Korea is about the only real "communist nation" left.
For those of you who don't buy into my little rant about Indian employees stealing jobs from Americans, let me provide a little anecdote....
Back in the early 90's I was working for a "tiny" little company that was, at the time, operating under the name of "Norwest". I was, at that time, a wicked C/C++ programmer, but management had some sort of "PC" program going on where they needed to put foreigners in high paying positions in order to look good on some report that was coming up....
To make a long story short, I spent a lot of time in the break room talking to the Indian programmers who actually got the jobs that I wanted. They told me a lot about how much they hated living in this country, and how they were sending every penny that they earned back to their families. All I ever heard from them was how they couldn't wait to complete their "tour of duty" in the US, and get back home.
Meanwhile, they were asking me and my colleages for help. One guy, who was supposed to be an "expert" C programmer offered to pay me 500 bucks to explain pointers to him. I was making 40 grand, he was making upwards of a hundred, and he was asking me to teach him the very basics of his job...
I had an app in for that job, but it was never even looked at because I wasn't "foreign enough".
There's something VERY, VERY wrong when the "law of the land" dictates preferential treatment for incompetent foreigners while highly skilled locals are forced to occupy the lower ranks in the name of "quotas".
That's widely considered by analysts to be quite fictional. Otherwise, I don't see your connection between hoding back a peasant revolt and blocking Skype calls. That's mostly about protecting income from overseas calls, and if your average peasant can call some relative working overseas occasionally I don't see how this can destabilise the country (more than the first-hand stories these relatives have when they return anyway).
Aww... Shit...
I got modded down as "flamebait"....
I guess the tradition is that I spend the next 12 years crying myself to sleep every night, right?
Eh, fuck that, I think I'll just go ahead and laugh at the ignorant fuck that modded me down. Fact is that he's probably an 18 year old college student who has never spent a single day of his life in the "real world"...
Should be fun watching him "adjust" once mommy and daddy stop paying his bills for him and he actually ends up in the unfortunate situation of needing to earn a paycheck.
(At which point he'll probably be seeking out either myself or people like me to give him advice...)
If I'm blocked from attending a town hall meeting put on by my President because I'm a Democrat, I'm not very free.
Are organizers of an event not free to block anyone they like?
If elections can be decided by a court, I'm not very free.
So what would be freedom then? for YOU to decide based on what you would prefer? If an election is close and has questions about votes, wouldn't you want some kind of arbiter to come in and settle things? Define the freedome you are thinking you lost here - especially since by any major newspaper tallies, the votes came out the way the election did.
If neoconservatives can threaten to impeach judges because they don't decide cases based on religious contrine, I'm not very free.
That's odd, I thought the ability to threaten other people in the government without being shot was actually rather liberating!
If big businesses can invest their money wisely enough to buy off a Congress, I'm not very free. (See the energy, telecommunications, defense, highway bills.)
Get your own money and buy off who you please if it's so easy then. After all, you are Free to do so.
Do you think only the right have money? Well then it must not come dwn to only money that controls things or else there would be more balance.
If oil companies formerly run by our Vice President get no-bid contracts and take over Iraqi oil fields, I'm not very free.
In what way did this impinge on YOUR freedom. Did you have a bid that got rejected?
If the government office in charge of investigating abuses of power (like those no-bid contracts) say they're "too busy" to investigate Cheney, despite having three times the case load when they approved a Clinton investigation, I'm not very free.
Again irrelevent to the topic of Freedom for citizens of this country. How did that affect your freedom?
If my uncle down south, along with others, is asked to leave his church because he's a card-carrying Democrat, I'm not very free.
Again in what way is he not free to start another church? Should the chruch be oblidged to keep in people they do not welcome? Should you be obliged to let weathly oil execs stay in your house for a week because they want to?
If wealthy people get billions of dollars and, as a result, we cripple state budgets and tens of thousands of people die because of a Hurricane, I'm not very free.
Depiste the pretty horrific leap to judgement and lack of train of thought, again how does that affect your freedom? Not at all.
The truth is, honest to God, I'd trade in my copy of "My Struggle" if it reversed all those things. Freedom is in the eye of the beholder.
If freedom is all relative, then you are only as free as you feel. thus America is indeed the land of the free for those that think they are. You are in a prision of your own devising, and should proabably try visitng someplace that really does understand what lack of freedom really is.
You just lack no notion at all of what freedom is, vs. what you see as corruption of the system. There is a very real difference between corruption and freedom and the sooner you understand this basic fact the sooner you might make more lucid arguments. My perscription is to have you read Reason for no less than two years and come back when you are a sensible Libertarian instead of a flaming liberal who forces Democrats to loose elections and throw the whole damn system out of wack.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Could this have something to do with the fact that China Telecom charges close to $1 per minute for calls to United States and Europe?"
No, more likely it has to do with the fact that Skype calls and chats are encrypted, preventing the controlling communist government and party from eavesdropping on their populace via their state-controlled telcoms. Certainly such a thing is absolutely unacceptable for the Chinese Communist Party.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Yes here you have money donated by corperations to government offcials.
But at the national level you have that canceled out by many competeing interests also donating money. So for instance MCI might donate a lot of money to someone, but so can Sprint...
Then on top of that all the money is (mostly) recorded, so if someone taking a lot of money from one company suddenly starts throwing everything there way people look at that a little funny, and true rascals get thrown out eventually.
In China you have one huge company that's really an arm of the government basically able to toast who it likes with impunity. The equivilent here would be the post office clamping down on FedEx and UPS. Yet did that happen? No.
If you think corperations are "in bed with politicians" here, you REALLY need to wake up and examine what is going on in other countries that do not have as well thought out systems for keeping companies at arms length from the government! Our system is not perfect but it's one of the better ones.
At the very local level, like towns, I think there is a lot more opportunity for corruption - but it's not evrywhere like it is in other countries. You can get an insection for home improvements done here and if you've done good work you are going to pass without a bribe, for instance. In other cultures bribes can become almost expected for any possible thing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We all make mistakes, and we as a country (the US) have made mistakes in our history.
We claim to be a free country, but we used to have slavery, we went after commies, we imprisoned innocent japanese after pearl harbor. We made those mistakes and we learned from them. You didn't see our country piling innocent arab-americans into prisons after 9/11??
Yes, the United States is very much free. In short, no, we don't go after commies anymore.
I got nothin'
I would say our print media is about the same, the internet is by its very nature the same, and that our TV media is the wildest and most colorful when it comes to politics (though we are quite prudish about violence, and even more so about sex).
On the whole, we are all in the same ballpark, however.
Clearly, though, the freedom of the press is greater in the first world than in many less-developed countries, and definitely China.
I think a better attack on China in this instance is to start calling all their blocking of our media a trade violation - you block our news, we block your cheap @$$ junk.
How hard could it possibly be to figure out that he/she is saying to mod the parent up?
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Where is Rome?
Guess whose alphabet you're using right now?
China as a whole country has 2500 years history.
As do other regions of Eurasia. In fact, Iraq, Egypt and Greece and other areas have way, way more than 2500 years of documented history.
Hell, even the word 'China' refers to the 'Chin' dynasty - a bunch of semi-literate barbarians who overthrew the Ming Dynasty about the time America was being settled.
What do you expect the telco to do, let people share the resources equally? Pay what they can afford, get what they need? What do you think they're running in China, communism? Er...
--
make install -not war
No, it's a huge difference
If you think so, then I'm sure it is for you.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The grandparent poster is correct. China is only nominally tied to Maoism at this point, and is probably closer to a mild version of fascism. They have local elections but an unelected national government. They are allowing private ownership of property, a growing free market, increasing disparity of wealth etc. Some industries are still government owned.
The ruling party might be called 'Communist' but they sure don't act like it.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Nobody in their right mind thought that Saddam was trying to get Uranium from Iraq.
Should read "from Nigeria." And yes, I know Saddam did try to build a nuke power plant at one point, and had one that was observed by the IAEA.
My point here is that the documents were rigged, everyone knew it, and Bush still used them.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
we have the FCC and other governing bodies telling big business what they are allowed to do and what they are forbidden to do
some major ISPs tried to block Vonage on their systems but after a major outcry from their subscribers this was changed quickly.
So thank goodness for big government, while the consumer outcry actually gets the work done? The problem in China is that it's a state-run monopoly and they really don't care what their "customers" may or may not want, because they don't HAVE to care. They can squash comepetition (Skype) with impunity. That's what big government accomplishes.
Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Nuts
"This is just another example of why I am glad to live here in the United States of America."
Have you ever been outside your own country? I can hardly express how happy I am to not live in the U.S. Not sure I would enjoy China either, but your sentence above is like preferring HIV over cancer or something.
Dag B
NT
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
At the moment, I'm in my apartment in Shenzhen, using skype. No problems.
Of course, that might mean they haven't gotten around to blocking it, or just that I'm now on their bad list.
In response to a lot of other posts, though, the articles indicates that just the one major telecom plans to block it. It doesn't say that it's going to be blocked at the great firewall level. (like google groups, blogspot, and even gbadev.org).
You didn't see our country piling innocent arab-americans into prisons after 9/11??
Erm, yes I did.
In short, no, we don't go after commies anymore.
Oh, and yes , you do.
I've got another good test:
Are there areas under the rule of your country, where the Constitution and Bill of Rights don't apply, where the Government can disappear you without a trial under any pretense it feels like?
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Can you go skinny dipping on the beach? In Europe you can.
Can you teach evolution free of religious influence in school? In Europe you can.
And concerning your points:
Are your basic rights outlined in your constition? Here in Germany they are. They are also in draft for the EU Constitution. It's just the british where it's a little different.
Can you buy a copy Mein Kampf? You can buy it used. You can't buy it new, because it's not printed any more. It's not printed any more because of copyright issues: the state of Bavaria has the copyright. But it's not banned.
Yes, there are some differences. In Europe, freedom is usually not given to those that want to abolish that very freedom. That's an ongoing discussion in both Europe and the US.
Fleur de Sel
Just because the party calls itself "The Communist Party" it doesn't mean that it's particularly following real communist policy - any more than the German Democratic Republic (old East Germany) was actually democratic.
I object to your simple-minded "simple test" for a country's freedom. piecewise offers a number of "if"s, of which I consider some much more relevant than the items of your simple test, and some less so. But I believe he missed out on a few important ones, which I would like to add. For conciseness, these tests are for non-freedom:
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
Only PC-to-Phone calls are blocked. PC-to-PC calls are not affected. Phone service is regulated in China with China Telecom and China Netcom being the only 2 companies licensed to provide fixed-line phone service. It's under this pretense that China Telecom is blocking Skype PC-to-Phone calls. This sort of tactics to block potential competitors is not really surprising. A few years ago, China Mobile and China Unicom (the 2 cellular phone service providers in China) tried to prevent China Telecom and China Netcom (the fixed-line phone service providers) from introducing a limited range wireless technology called "Little Smart" using the fact that they were the only officially licensed mobile phone providers.
Repeat after me: China does not have 5000, 3000, or 2500 years of history. The country of China did not exist until the Qing Empire was overthrown in 1911-1912. Before that there was simply no. such. place. What we now call China was a succession of empires controlled by hereditary dictatorships (many of them, such as Qin, Tang, Yuan, Northern Sung, Qing, etc from so-called "barbarian" territories) with often long periods of total chaos interrupting them.
What traditional attitudes towards personal freedom, economic developement, and foreign relations brought those empires was often spectacular early growth brought on by little more than a return to stability followed by long slow declines into absolute corruption followed by conquest or chaos. Tell my why this is different from any other place in the world and you get a cookie.
Finally, as for your absurd statement that the US uses force to resolve disputes but China somehow doesn't: China threatens to invade Taiwan, an independant polity that poses no credible threat to it whatsoever; China invaded Tibet and massacred its inhabitants, though the Tibetans also posed no threat to China; China tried to invade Vietnam as punishment for toppling the evil Khmer Rouge regime (Mao's ally), and got its head handed back to it - probably because they'd become too used to fighting people who couldn't fight back. China used horrific force to disperse the Tiananmen protests in the '89 (which the rest of the world calls "Tiananmen Massacre" but China calls the "Six/Four Incident"). Don't talk to us about China's restraint.
This is just another example of why I am glad to live here in the United States of America. We may complain about things from time to time, but at least we do have more freedom of information and able to know more, then most other countries out there.
Americans 'know more then (sic) other countries"? Americans know NOTHING about the rest of the world; thats why half of them still think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 911. Thats why half of all congressmen do not have passports. That country has one of the most parochial populations of all the nations on earth, and this would be perfectly fine if it did not go smashing up other peoples countries on a regular basis.
You are anything BUT free in the USA, now more than ever. You cannot move your money where you like without reporting to your government, you cannot travel on an airplane without showing your papers just like the Soviet Russians ('Commies') had to, and just ask the peope in New Orleans who are being forcibly evicted from their houses by the army thanks to new 'emergency powers' taken by the state, namely, 'The Louisiana Homeland Security Act'.
You and all of your fellow ostrich posturing eloi colleagues are the most blind deaf and dumb sheeple that fine country ever produced, and you are the precise cause of the problem, because if you were awake, your government would be under control, and the world would be a safer place.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
"Can you join a Nazi party in your Country? Many European Countries you can not, in the US, you can." Well, go and join Al Qaeda and see how long your freedom remains. I'd also suggest you read up on neo-nazism, there's still a few about in Europe. However, I'm quite happy that exterminating whole races of people is outlawed. Still, America are quite happy to do it themselves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazi
Ah, the lovely effects of sleep deprivation. Today his post doesn't seem all that incomprehensible. :P
Uhm. Wasn't it difficult in your country to be a communist? Doesn't your electoral system require you previously sign up to an electoral list, so isn't it a peculiar situation to have people openly support their candidates with those nice badges and all and then not being able to check if your vote counts because the diebold machines do not let you?
:)
BTW I live in corporate Italy, I do not feel free, but at least SOFTWARE PATENTS are invalid here
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
What were they supposed to do? Start a war to break free from their oppressors? (I.e. you lot). That would go down real well with the likes of you...
So.... you are asking whether or not, after starting two World Wars in less than 50 years, the Germans should have gone off and started another world war because they didn't like the outcome of their most recent one?
If the Germans didn't want to lose a war and have foreigners write them up a new constitution, why did they go off on their little march of European domination?
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Actually, in Britain they are too. In Britain we have a written constitution which protects our rights. What we do not have is a codified constitution. In basic terms, the difference is that our constitution is split between a number of documents (such as the Magna Carta and the ECHR).
Oh, and we can buy Mein Kampf here too. I have a copy on my bookshelves next to The Communist Manifesto. Reading it, however, is a different matter - the writing style is similar to The Road Ahead, it is poorly structured and reads like the semi-conscious ramblings of a drunk on an ego trip.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Land of the free? " With a record-setting 2 million people locked up in American jails and prisons, the United States has overtaken Russia and has a higher percentage of its citizens behind bars than any other country." ...
"On a per capita basis, according to the best available figures, the United States has three times more prisoners than Iran, four times more than Poland, five times more than Tanzania and seven times more than Germany. Maryland has more citizens in prison and jail (an estimated 35,200) than all of Canada (31,600), though Canada's population is six times greater." ...
"A major cause of the increase is the war on drugs. In 1980, says Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project in Washington, about 40,000 Americans were locked up solely for drug offenses. Now the number is 450,000, three-fourths of them black or Hispanic, although drug use is no higher in those groups than among whites."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0601-01.ht m
I'm sorry: a free country would not lock up half a million people for engaging in recreational pharmaceutical use or business activities related to it.
I think that $500 million could easily buy a textbooks for each schoolchild in China. The prices there are much lower, also authors in China don't get paid obscene royalties, maybe only a few cents per book. The cost of printing on a large scale could be $1 or $2 per book which would give about 300 million books in total. I don't know statistics but I guess that there are not as much students in China.
Though organizing 2008 Olympics could result in much higher economic boost than subsidizing a few textbooks.
I initially thought they only blocked you from calling real telephones in China Telecom territory, but I guess they are IP filtering as well, so you can't even use Skype IM. If this happened in America it would be Blotto Box time :)
That's OK, though. China continues to claim that they want to play along in the world economy, but moves like this reinforce the notion that they're just a third world dictatorship. Effectively isolating themselves from the rest of the world by prohibiting cheap communications will ensure that their government stays in power, but it also ensures that they'll never be a world power.
I don't need to call anyone in China anyway, but if I ever visited I would be upset that I couldn't use Skype to call home. I'm not paying $1/minute in this day and age; it's not 1920 anymore. Like I said, though, that's OK -- I'll take my business elsewhere. Hello India or perhaps Singapore.
My other car is first.
Before everyone starts going on about how business is evil, I would like to remind them that China Telecom and the other telecom companies in China are government owned and operated.
China has been taking the communist "ministries" and making them into "businesses" who's majority stock is still owned by the government. Which lets the Chineese government remove responsibility while maintaining control.
65536 ports. ...
Take one down, they switch to the next.
65535 ports on the stack, 65535 ports.
Take one down, they switch to the next.
65534 ports on the stack,
[Replace 'ports' with 'protocols' and 65536 with 'bout a Googol' and same holds]
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
[Replace 'censorship' with 'protectionism' and same holds]
Unless China plans on doing away with computer networks entirely, this simply isn't going to work.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
It's saying mod it up or down. Aka on the vertical axis. Down is vertical as much as up.
As opposed to, I guess, modding it sideways. Or back-and-fro. Or modding louder and quieter, or brighter and darker, or chicken soup and croutons...
Of course, you can't actually mod anything up or down. Posts merely have more or less moderation points, as that is not a measurement of anything except itself, and certainly not a measure of height.
Ahem.
Anyway. MOD PARENT ORTHOGONAL TO THE RATING SYSTEM
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You are anything BUT free in the USA
Then I suppose this little rant of yours will soon be removed for the "good of the people?"
And why do you think our congressmen should need passports? We can freely travel between states without them. Most europeans seem to forget that Texas is the size of many countries and that the US has more diversity than any single European state. But I'm sure *you* know that being the world traveller you are. I'm sure you've been to Maine, Texas, California, and the mid-west and seen the vast differences in food, people, politics, and general way of life?
Sure, I show my drivers license when traveling by air. But from what I remember I always did, if only to ensure that I am indeed the person who ordered my ticket. I don't need to prove my identity to cross state borders. Nor do I get stopped. The whole airport security thing is a knee-jerk reaction to be sure. You know, like the whole France/Nazi Memorabilia thing? Europeans aren't immune to this either.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Oh please! Do you think China's rulers spend their time discussing Marxist theory all day? What nonsense. They balance their check books, play their stock options, are fretting over the costs and potential profits of Three Gorges, are shorting Microsoft(heh, they could pull it off)...just like everybody else. Communism never left the class room. Mere humans are all they are. No different than any other. What they do inside their borders, we do outside ours. I believe you are the one hair-splitting what are simply different forms of authoritarianism.
What?
There's a difference in refusing to reveal sources, even ones who admitted they have commited various crimes, and going along with criminals as they commit crimes.
Hell, there's even a difference between being an unrelated observer of crimes in progress, and enabling a crime by listening to someone break the law by telling you classified information. (Note, 'enabling', not 'committing'.)
There's even a difference between refusing to reveal who was commiting a crime by revealing classified information when it was a whistleblower inside the government, and when it was the administration looking for a political gain.
Miller went so far past acceptable behavior it's not funny. She even went past 'Pentagon Papers' behavior...for a lie to discredit a dissenter. (Yes, let's send our husband on a vacation to fabulous Niger. An all-expenses paid trip, although, since the country is so poor, that actually works out to like 200 dollars for two weeks, plus air-fare. See the lovely sights like...uranium mines! And...um...hungry people! Sometimes there are paved roads!)
And, you'll notice, no one even wants to arrest her...they just want her to tell them who commited a crime in front of her face.
And I don't believe you about Sweden's law in that regard. So a journalist can reveal classified information, and not only do they not have to say who told them, but you're not allowed to investigate who told them?
I think you're rather seriously misinterpeting any laws in that regard. Either that or you guys don't have the concept of 'classified information'.
However, everything else is dead on. The US is becoming much less free.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
And the whole 'torture' thing.
And executing people on shoddy evidence.
Wait, were you being sarcastic? When did healthcare and education become inconsequential?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
it's just about good old robber-baron style capitalism, big companies who are well-connected with the government abusing the rights of consumers to protect their profits...
In China, the communist party is the greatest robber-baron capitalist. They will do anything to maintain control, including killing millions of people for trival reasons. And as communists, they are the least likely to implement any technological change that will benefit the middle classes (at least those who are not in the party) while also crushing any fashion style or personal expression outside their strict puritanical viewpoints. Communists are capitalists without due process laws, fascists without swazticas, and wacko religious fundamentalists all rolled up into one. They are bad news.
- Skype is huge here. Have a look at Skype Tom, tom.com is a big Chinese-language portal, they've had a strategetic partnership for a while, which got upgraded last week. Shanghai newspapers will have an editorial or article about Skype all the fucking time, it's almost a joke. China is Skype's 3rd largest market and I imagine will soon be Skype's largest. The service works very well within China, although you can't get a China Skype In number yet, only Hong Kong.
Who knows how this went down, but I'd blame it on China Telecom bastards, and a LACK of government regulation on the market. If it was the government, why would it be limited to CT, and not CU (the other big telco) as well? Unfortunately business and government workings are not so transparent outside the US.
The $1/minute LD figure is a joke. Technically that's true but realistically everybody uses IP phone cards to call the long distance, they're sold EVERYWHERE. It's a Byzantine system but boils down to maybe $.10/minute. I use Skype for LD so I'm not quite sure on the cost though.
The idea that Skype is especially suspectible to Falun Gong propoganda is somewhat insane. Anybody who mentions this idea is really out to lunch or learned everything they know about China from anti-China propoganda (which is a possibility I guess).
The main problem to Skype is that the Internet connections are overloaded. Well, at least that's the case in Shanghai.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
... phone block you!
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
Wait, were you being sarcastic? When did healthcare and education become inconsequential?
Yes!
The point being that, although torture and capital punishment still exist, the real area where the US fails miserably on "human rights" is rights associated with social welfare.
Traditionally, the US (not just the government, but the people in general) for some reason has been more hostile to treating these as "rights." Most developed countries spend far more on welfare than the US does, and it shows.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
One solution would be to route Skype (VoIP) traffic over UDP 53 (DNS). I would like to see the Chinese Government block this without seriously undermining their own internet connectivity.
--
I know, trying to run a caching proxy DNS for an entire country is more headache than it is worth, especially when DNS cache poisoning can now corrupt an entire continent of youthful minds.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Also, my copy still proudly sports the 1$ sticker of a B&N sale.
Fleur de Sel
vertical - Situated at the vertex or highest point; directly overhead. (dictionary.com) So if I say, for example, MSFT went down 40 points today on the Nasdaq, obviously, it is negative 40 integers from the preceding baseline. Applying that logic, and incidentally, common sense, to the modding system of Slashdot, a post can be modded down. Or up for that matter. Semantics games are for losers and little kids. Please grow up. Although, I'll certainly concede that modding a post vertically could just as easily mean up or down.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Just because the party calls itself "The Communist Party" it doesn't mean that it's particularly following real communist policy
Well, I guess it has been a couple of decades since they were deliberately starving millions of people to death. Of course, they do kill dissidents by infecting them with tuberculosis, so I'd still call that a communist policy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And while 'up' and 'down' may be used to mean 'more' or 'less' points, I assert that 'moving vertically' is not automatically correct by analogy. It might make sense when you are actually looking at a graph over time, but as far as I know there's no graph of the moderation of slashdot posts, and it doesn't really make sense, because posts are not compared to each other, and only the current rating is revelant.
Otherwise, you just talk about the values 'changing' or 'moving'. Not moving vertically.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Sounds like a job for the WTO.
Hmmm, China has been under this "communist" rule for some 56 years now? Let's go back to 1845 when the US was about the same age. The people the govt was killing weren't even dissidents. They were just "in the way". It was another 120 years before people of African descent had any voice in the govt. It's okay to criticise the Chinese, but remember, what the US/UK does outside their borders is every bit as horrible. They have no monopoly on atrocity.
Of course, they do kill dissidents by infecting them with tuberculosis, so I'd still call that a communist policy.
What in the world makes this exclusively, or even particularly a communist policy? Would it be more "American" if we pushed them off the roof on the Letterman show?
What?
What in the world makes this exclusively, or even particularly a communist policy?
Did I say exclusively?
I call it a communist policy because it's something that communist regimes have done as a matter of policy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Thank you, parent poster! I've been trying for years to make that point clear to people who don't get the significance.
Communism is an ECONOMIC ideal, much like Capitalism is. It has nothing whatsoever to do with democracy or the lack thereof. It is perfectly possible for a nation to democratically elect to be Communist, just as it's possible for a fascist dictator to believe in free market economics. They're two sides of the same coin.
Economically, China is a lot close to capitalism than to communism. Politically, China is a single-party semi-fascist autocracy. That the party is called "communist" is largely irrelevant.
We in the US tend to use the word "communist" to describe both China's economic and political systems. Really, this is wrong on both counts -- since the word doesn't apply to politics in the first place, and the Chinese economy isn't communistic in the second.
/* "Specialization is for insects." -Heinlein */
I suspect that, if you were to visit China, you WOULD be able to use Skype to your heart's content -- because you'd be getting online from a nice western-style hotel, approved for foreigners' use.
:-)
I did some work in Tianjin about two years ago, and amused myself by trying to test the "Great Firewall of China" that I'd been hearing so much about. Try as I might, I found NOTHING that I could not access -- American newspapers, ebay, slashdot, anti-chinese blogs, stuff about the Dalai Lama, Taiwanese pro-independence articles, the gnutella network, really naughty pr0n -- you name it, I got there.
I'm guessing that western hotels (this was a Holiday Inn) get special treatment by the China Internet Police -- or did I just get lucky? Or will they be waiting for me next time I apply for a Chinese Visa?
/* "Specialization is for insects." -Heinlein */
barnes and noble asks for a phone number when you buy a book... at least our local ones do.
And what's that got to do with communism? I don't remember Marx or Engels promoting the killing of dissidents with tuberculosis. Could you point me to a reference?
A party that used the name 'Communist' may have done that, but as I mentioned in the previous post, that's about as relevant as associating the policies of the German Democratic Republic (or the Democratic Republic of Congo, or most countries that have the word Democratic in their name) with real democracy.
See, he had discovered there was no sign of Iraq attempting to purchase Uranium, and that was an important part of the lies about WMDs. So they decided to discredit him, and decided they would commit treason to do so, by suggesting his wife, (who incidentally happened to be a CIA agent, but don't tell anyone), suggested him for the position.
This is despite the fact she didn't in fact do that, and the idea is absurd...no one wants to go to Niger, it wasn't a damn vacation. He had experience in Niger, he knew the government over there, and he didn't even get paid for the two weeks of research he did over there.
That is not what protecting your sources is about, helping the government destroy people by revealing classified information. (Which, incidentally, got some people working with the CIA killed.)
Miller should have, when she realized what was going on, revealed her lying and treasonous sources. Sadly, she has not, as she apparently has no integrity. So everyone in the current administration can feel free to give reporters classified information to suggest any bogus facts they want, apparently.
What's even funnier is that she didn't even write a damn article. She just spread this information to other reporters.
As for where I draw the line about revealing sources? I don't know, exactly, but I know Miller is way past it.
The press must not let itself be used like this if it wants to retain any priviledges at all, and members of the press who weren't in Bush's pocket wouldn't be acting like this. Leaking classified information is one thing when you're some clerk in the CIA who disagrees with the administration and think the American people should know something, it's another when you're the administration itself and using it, in lies, to discredit people who disagree with the administration.
Sadly, I'm worried that this could result in people being required to reveal who gave them any classified information. We had a very famous case about 30 years ago called 'The Pentagon Papers', when a classified report about how bad the Vietnam war was going, and it was half the reason we left it.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Out of your three links about "arab-americans", only one of them is actually an american at all, Steven Hatfill, who was being investigated for the Anthrax letters in 2001. But he was never put in prison, and he doesn't even appear to be Arab-American. Did anyone actually even read your links?
He was being investigated because a) he was a bioengineer b) he was on on record before the letters saying that terrorists could use anthrax letters and c) the anthrax used was biologically descended from the strains grown at a lab where he worked. The government would have been negligent if they HADN'T investigated him!
So the links would have been relevant if the grandparent had written You didn't see our country piling innocent people into prisons after 9/11??? If Cat Stevens had been American the link would have been relevant? The attrocities in the third link are ok as the prisoners are not American?
My point remains: that imprisoning even criminals in this way is not acceptable, much less civilians whose guilt has not yet been proven (or do you not believe in "innocent until proven guilty"? Perhaps it only applies to Americans?)
(As to the link about Steven Hatfill, I apologise for the red herring -- I was out of the country at the time and only caught the beginning of the tale, not it's conclusion. Thank you for enlarging my knowledge in that area.)
For the record, I am not condoning prisoners being mistreated while being investigated, I don't even agree with most of what the Bush administration does.
Maybe my comment was just too vague or unclear. I'm not saying that injustices were not done by the US government. It just seemed like the person I was replying to thought we were going after arabs McCarthy style. If that were true, I'd surely hear about it since I live next to a city with a very high concentration of arab-americans.
But who knows with the current administration. Maybe it is true and I am ill-informed.
I got nothin'
Please be more careful about who you tell to learn more about Chinese history - I studied Chinese history in university for years, and in all likelihood know far more about Chinese history than you do. I can also read ancient documents in their original, which is more than you're probably capable of doing - did you get your information from fourth-hand Communist-authored textbooks? No wonder you have no idea what you're talking about.
OK - Tibet was a client state of the Mongol empire, and later was part of the Qing empire. Tibet, before the Communist invasion, was never administered by a Chinese-controlled dynasty - the Ming, for instance, were not able to establish control, and before the Yuan Tibet was an independant kingdom that nearly conquered the Tang capital.
Taiwan was basically ignored by the Qing until the Japanese took an interest in it. Before then, the Qing claimed that Taiwan was outside of their territory. The island's population was mostly Aboriginal peoples, and the Chinese weren't interested.
When you say, "China was set up," do you mean Qin? Because Qin wasn't China (although that's where we stupid Westerners got the name) - Qin was Qin Guo, an empire established by violent semi-barbaric people from (what was then) the West. And as far as I can tell, back then people didn't talk about Zhongguo - they talked about Tianxia, which really just mean "everything we are interested in."
In sum, STFU.
Um, I noticed this link (of which we share in common).
http://slashdot.org/~RollcallOfArseholes/foes
I've finished reading up most of the slashdotters' journal and cannot find a common thread topic wise...
By any chance, do you use TOR?
A party that used the name 'Communist' may have done that
Since every regime that claims to be communist makes a habit of murdering dissidents, it leads me to conclude that the communist philosophy itself is intrinsically evil. Sorry, but I just don't buy the excuses.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yeah, great, mod me off topic for asking the parent a sensibl question, but let the parent post who not only is offtopic but makes no sense at all, fly.
Why are so many moderators such morons.
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The point is that they are not excuses - it's simply a case of government spin, and if you associate the Chinese regime with real Communism you're falling for it.
If you're going to abuse your citizens then you're more likely to get away with it by claiming to be doing it for their own good under the banner of 'socialism' or 'communism', even when in most cases it's nothing of the sort. If you want to understand what real Communism is, try reading something like 'The Communist Manifesto'.
You've not addressed the point that every country that's ever had the word 'Democratic' in the title (or at least the ones that I can think of) is also nothing of the sort.
I call it a communist policy because it's something that communist regimes have done as a matter of policy.
Really? Genocide by tuberculosis is actually codified into law? Was Hitler a communist? He certainly did practice genocide as a matter of policy. And the original question still remains. Is the method suppressing dissent used by your average tin-pot Latin American dictator, or Saddam during the 80s somehow better? I'll have to reiterate here that just because they might call themselves communists, it does not meant that they are. Bush calls American "a peaceful country", but history has shown it to be anything but. This is authoritarians protecting their authority. It's not a communist thing.
What?
If you want to understand what real Communism is, try reading something like 'The Communist Manifesto'.
I did read the manifesto, and I found it only slightly less appalling than Mein Kampf. Like all colllectivist screeds, it is a blueprint for disaster.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What exactly gives you the idea I'm 'little'?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Whether you like communism as a theory is irrelevant. The point was - did you find any reference to the killing of dissidents?