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How Chinese Evade Government's Web Controls
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "China is moving to 'centralize all China-based Web news and opinion under a state regulator,' the Wall Street Journal reports, but determined citizens have found a way out of previous restrictions in what has become a cat-and-mouse game: 'Many Chinese Internet users, dismissing what they call government scare tactics, find ways around censorship. The government requires users of cybercafs to register with their state-issued ID cards on each visit, but some users avoid cybercaf registration by paying off owners. In response, the government has installed video cameras in some cafs and shut others. ... While certain words such as "democracy" are banned in online chat rooms, China's Web users sometimes transmit sensitive information as images, or simply speak in code, inserting special characters such as underscoring into typing.' Also noteworthy is that major portals seem to be cooperating with authorities' restrictions: 'Insiders who work for the big portal sites say they are already in regular contact with authorities about forbidden topics, such as the outlawed Falun Gong religious group, which their teams of Web editors pull off bulletin boards.'"
"Move along. Nothing for you to see here."
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
Note to Chinese government...censorship of the Internet is a lost cause, give it up. If you want to be the next economic superpower, you are going to have to deal with dissenting ideas found on the Internet. You'd do better to work out an ongoing public discussion forum on incorporating the best ideas into the public and private sectors instead of trying to censor access.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Teh D3cl4r4ti0n 0f 1nd3p3nd4nc3?
This article helps reinforce my constant philosophy that information is now freed of regulation and censorship, and that no law can trump humanity's moral law that makes only offensive crimes truly wrong, legally or morally.
I feel bad for the Chinese, but thankfully the ways around censorship are growing in number. We have to note these gains internationally as we watch our speech get restrained even in the U.S.
No law will prevent the average person from doing what they feel is right, which to me is proof of the inherent rights we're all born with. Every person in this world has the God-given (or inherent) right to speak. It is only government that attempts to restrain it.
Take note, your freedom to speak is declining as we support persons we vote for to further degrade our rights. As the Chinese save up to 40% of their income, they also find ways to save their rights. As we U.S. citizens look to the federal government to educate us, rebuild our mistakes and provide our retirements, we save nothing (1%) and lose rights.
Honestly, though... I doubt they'll ever be able to successfully censor the internet. There are too many people in China for them to keep an eye on everyone...
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
The question is, which scares the Chinese government more? Democracy or porn?
And which will be more difficult to filter out?
Cogito Ergo Sum
I hope they are using something like TOR(http://tor.eff.org/) so that they can effectively browse how and when they want.
China is moving to 'centralize all China-based Web news and opinion under a state regulator,' the Wall Street Journal reports
:)
Isn't that yesterday news ? There was an opportunity for a dupe link...
Where's my dupe ?
Slashdot doesn't respect traditions those days, tss...
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Does this strike anyone as being a lot of friggin' work and for hardly any gain?
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
Internet censors you.... wait a sec....
This article was submitted by:
;)
Carl Bialik from the WSJ
AKA
wsjarticles@wsj.com
and the story is at:
http://online.wsj.com/public/...
I'm sure it's just a coincidence
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Even more, when the young hackers and spammers in China realise that they are being opressed, they will try to get out, and I'm sure they'll open up a lot. It's impossible to regulate so many people on something as free as the internet.
...speak in code, inserting special characters such as underscoring into typing.
And this will be known to the world as 'r33t 5p33k'
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
...saving chinese freedom of speech, one haxor at a time
-- lol pwned
democracy democracy democracy democracy democracy democracy democracy democracy democracy democracy
HaHa. Take that Chineese government !
The Chinese Communist governement is fighting a battle that they will eventually lose because they have lost the hearts and minds of their people. The internet today provides the average Chinese citizen with enough information about alternative forms of government that communist propaganda is just one source of information among many. The Chinese communist government cannot finger every hole in the dike forever. They're already knee deep in the leaks. I'm proud to be part of the wider information technology community that is taking communism down.
Also noteworthy is that major portals seem to be cooperating with authorities' restrictions
Thats noteworthy? That the big companies in China are complying with Chinese law? I'm speechless.
Kudos for the citizens for finding clever ways to communicate. Its not as if they can just PGP their messages or do anything really suspicious. Just the fact that you're not doing "normal" surfing would probably be enough to raise someones eyebrow.
is that you ban the opinions on the words as well.
You ban the opinions that democracy is not right for China at this particular time in its history.
You ban the opinions that the Falun Gong are a bunch of deluded nuts who are being used for various purposes.
There are several sides, including the gummints, to every story.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Also noteworthy is that major portals seem to be cooperating with authorities' restrictions.
Happy 7th Birthday, Google.
Chinese Leetspeak? What does that look like, I wonder.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This harks back to the early days of IRC and the attempts at blocking, or simply censoring, conversation. Enter elite speak (l33tsp3ak, l337sp35k, etc) and how it can constanly evolve/change and eventually there's no stopping it. Democracy? Hmm...d3m0racy, demoKrazy, d3m0cr5cy... For an example more near and dear to
fak3r.com
/giggle
You go, AC!
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Pardon my ignorance but wouldn't the availability of free occidental VPN servers and CGI proxys overwhelm the authorities?
I mean they can block a few IP adresses by handpicking them but they cannot go ahead and block the whole internet, can they?
Some small app ala Google WIFI with rolling IPs (in an encrypted list of course) connecting to dynamic hostnames would be too much of a task for the authorities to bear with.
Any other ideas?
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
Chavez was democratically elected. The people love him.
Trolling is a art,
So yeah, cencorship is bad. And all the props to the people who get around it.
But I see these Falun Gong people on the streets of NY protesting and handing out whatever crazy newspaper they've got. And while the fact that their beliefs are illegal is bad, these Falun Gong people are kind of nutty. They do some wacky mediation stuff. And they dress up as people being tortured with rags covered in fake blood. There's a huge wikipedia article on it you can read.
What I'm trying to say is that it is wrong for the Chinese government to persecute these people. But when that government calls Falun Gong a cult who teaches superstition, they aren't too far away from the truth.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I think you mean "bully". A bully picks on those he can pick on --- with little consequence to himself. He picked on Iraq, because he could. North Korea has a gazillion men on the border of one of our huge trading partners, so we don't dare disrupt S.Koreas economy. So, N. Korea is out. Iran is huge and they are more organized militarily than Iraq was, so they're out. China - large military + nukes plus they're financing our deficit- they're out also.
It's going to get a lot harder for the Chinese mafia government to control or track people's Internet use when hundreds of millions of them have swarm-tech mobile devices. Hopping along each other's connections to "the Net" offers lots of ways to anonymize and hide just with whom the bit stops. And since swarm economics favor massive, dense sharing, China is its natural home.
--
make install -not war
Maybe then your post is worthy of a +4.
finger every hole in the dike forever
ROFL
Please tell me the pun was intended.
You are right, but most empires do not like to quietly go down in flames. On the other hand...
./ is not supposed to be going anywhere, and that it's purpose is just informing nerds (TWICE) about stuff that matters, but having freedom of speech does not solve many problems.
I do not think that freedom of speech is necessary for economic growth. Sometimes it might work the other way around. Having a strong leadership with no space for dissent guarantees that if the leader knows the way no time will be lost discussing. Look at Slashdot, many times the discussion is so out of focus that no usable conclusion is ever reached. A group is trying to troll, another to be funny, etc. I know that the
Please, don't jump to the conclusion that I want oppressive governments or dictators. All I'm saying is that China can be (IS) the next economic superpower without the civil liberties or political models of the West. Most people don't know what real freedom is, nor do they care if they have enough 'freedom' to have fun and live a 'no worries' life.
I sometimes think that 'freedom' is way over rated by people like us, who believe in some World way beyond the Rainbow where all software is GNU-like and MS does not exist.
Disclosure: I'm stupid
This is just another testament of humanity's innate desire and need to be free from oppression.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Right. It's easy to get all incensed about the bad old Chinese government (and they are very clearly a threat to us all - no joke) and their heavy-handed authoritarian tactics. But let there be no doubt: Falun Gong are not the Good Guys, either; they're a bunch of raving, delusional nutcases who make Scientologists seem sensible by comparison.
Every one in a while I still get those e-mails about the goverment trying to tax e-mail. Anyone in the networking community knows this is logistically impossible due to the nature of the SMTP protocol, the Internet, etc. In the same way many believe it is also difficult if not impossible, for the government to truly censor the Internet.
Here comes China. China is only one of many countries that filters Internet and media content. It's no where near as extreme say North Korea, which doesn't allow ANYTHING in. China has an economy that's integrated into the world economy and therefore needs the Internet available to the public in order for commerce. There are always ways around such filtering, back to the nature of the Internet, however it comes at a steep price if you get caught.
Free speech is valuable and is feared by governments who want to keep control. In many westernized countries, we take it for granted.
But one should not take the existence of loopholes to mitigate the perniciousness of censorship. The educated/motivated people who know the workarounds are not the issue. The purpose of this censorship is to prevent the unwashed masses from being exposed to "subversive" ideas. At that I fear it may be effective.
Bottom line: don't be complacent just because it doesn't stop *you* from reading your favourite web pages.
I'm not sure I agreed with everything he said but it certainly made an interesting discussion.
If find it deeply disgusting and appalling that US companies are conspiring with the Chinese government to implement censorship. I am all for corporate freedom but there should be laws that discourage cooperation with a totalitarian and oppressive enemy that practices censorship and violates human rights to a much more serious extent than we do.
Chavez was democratically elected ?? Balderdash, he rigged the election, and Jimmy "I never saw an anti-US election i didn't like" Carter gave his imprimatur to it. Chavez will destroy his country just as Castro and Mugabe have done.
In China, what is forbidden is anything that might threaten the obvious power structure of governmnet. In the United States, forbidden information is anything that hurts the profits of a large corporation. Even honest commentary that names the company responsible is effectively impossible here, unless you can afford to fight the charges of slander or trademark infringement in court. The DMCA is another example that's been covered exhaustively elsewhere.
I've heard it said by someone else, and someone please tell me who if you know, that in America we have free speech only as long as it doesn't make any difference to anyone. As soon as what we say has an impact on someone's life or a company's bottom line, then we can't say it anymore. Is that really freedom?
Don't forget the Neocons in charge require communication restriction. No pictures of dead bodies floating in the water of New Orleans, no pictures of the coffins of our servicemen who paid the ultimate price in Iraq and Afghanistan. They put people in jail without communication, without access to lawyers, strip them of their citizenship. They treat prisoners of war in defiance of the principles of the Geneva convention. This is America. How did we become like the Chinese communists? How long has the hunger strike in Guantanamo been going on now? It's easy to be an armchair supporter of freedom of speech. It's very frightening when you exercise it in a country that is heading down a dark path.
"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Nothing makes scientologists seem sensible ....
I wonder if China is going to do this during the olympics. I am getting a strong feeling that they will bend the rules during this time period. I just so desperately want to walk into an internet cafe in 2008 and type on the computer," Democracy, Democracy, Democracy, Democracy, tiananmen square, tiananmen square, tiananmen square, tiananmen square. China Suxor. Woot." Then I would watch chaos ensue as I am arrested and dragged off.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Phooie! Lets get real here. Who's "blindly accepting"? We are under painful threat of personal terrorism if we DON'T accept their dictates. Americans know we are getting screwed,you would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't think this, the deal is, the government will and does use force-at any level-to get their way, up to the point of the barrel of a gun. It is not 'we the people" anymore, it is "us versus them".
.Look at what they did with hurricane katrina, went WAY out of their way to keep private help and citizens out,walmart trucks with water told to go back, citizen convoys with rescue boats, ordered to go back, civilian communication lines CUT by agents of the feds, on and on, until it had dissolved into chaos, THEN they decide to show up to 'restore order". THIS IS A CLUE. That isn't an "intelligence failure" like that additional 9-11 bigfat lie, it was done on purpose.
Want to go exercise political "free speech" at a rally? If they have decided that speech is ok here but not over there across the street, their armed agents WILL use any amount of force necessary to make you comply. How about "random courtesy roadblocks"? What BS is this, when I was a kid this was taught to us as only something some tyrannical regime pulled, the third reich or stalins soviet union or some place like that, we were shown how utterly bogus that was, because it's true, it IS bogus. Now? What are you supposed to do, NOT STOP? Guess what happens to you if you don't stop, they'll run you off the road or shoot you in the head. How about taxes going through the roof, what do you do about it, taxes and out of control government spending? Vote for the two cooperating political gangs who have hijacked government and make it near impossible for any other party to actually function and get a toe hold in? they have killed off any effective third party action, this is pretty obvious since the reform party actually made a showing. Even took them off the national debates, the League of Women Voters was so disgusted with that blatant power grab that they stopped sponsoring the national debates. A CLUE. How much of "black box" electronic vote hijacking, gerrymandering and skewing the nomination and ballot process has to occur before the government guys doing it arrest themselves, which is what it would take? that just ain't gonna happen, and everyone knows it, and you as joe citizen can't just go and "detain" some governmental crook. They would kill you dead.
We can all see corporate/governmental industry collusion, no bid contracts, blood profits pushed over everything else, yet what are you supposed to actually do about it? You can't stop it physically, you can't vote it away, and any crimes committed by the government are aided and abetted by their armed agents in various colored uniforms. I've been in this gig for decades, for every one little retreat back to the constitution we've seen, we get several large steps forward into despotism.
No the problem is, the government has way too many "just following orders" types who will follow any order given to them, even if they know it is pretty dodgy. And that means both overseas and domestically. Wars based on utter lies and fabrications-still being waged "just following orders".
Face reality, we have been under a violent armed coup for several years now, just no one really wants to say that out loud too much. check the "hate crimes" bill about to pass, this will affect online and printed and broadcast speech, yet the mass media is mostly ignoring it-wonder why? could it be they are in on it at the top, it's the same technofeudalists who run things, the same elite?
From my perspective, the coup started in earnest when they got clean away with whacking JFK and it has gone downhill from there. A nice slow semi stealth dictatorial take over, every day, establish more command and control and surveillance.
We aren't too many years away from being more like China
Yes, it might be tough to impose that for a while, but we are talking about a country that mostly succeeded in putting forth the idea that "education = evil" for quite some time. How did they do it? Death, and plenty of it in gory excess.
You just have to be focused on the end goal and not care about the messy little details that get in the way between here and the goal. Since we are talking about the ruling oligarchy getting pushed out of power if they do not succeed, there is plenty of motivation. It isn't just some old men's lives we are talking about - it is their children as well. Funny, people do lots of odd things to ensure their children's future.
)(@Q*^$!($@!)(!*&!^(*!#&#(!#H!(*#! ! !#&!#*&^%$)_+)!*_$&!*&!)*&
I don't understand it either.
This just in: Chinese government dismayed in the decrease of hits per day to their democratic slander and propoganda pages. Millions of Online Democracy Bashers out of jobs!
You call it excessive, I call it ambitious.
that is trying to track cyber-cafe users it seems. the inquirer reports that france is going to require internet cafes to keep track of who access what for a period of 3 years! http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26482
Some people had thought they could ensure 0% readership...
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
In case you don't know about the Falun Gong group mentioned in the summary, I've read about them. This group is categorized as a destructive cult by various organizations and cult experts, including Rick Ross (famous anti-scientology deprogrammer). Apparently its teachings include conspiracies, alien invaders and interdimensional travel (WTF? O.o)
Here's more info on Falun Gong, and a testimony of a former member (which doesn't say much unfortunately).
Anyway, it's sad that the reason this cult was censored, is not because they abuse their followers physically and emotionally, but because they threaten the chinese national security.
Don't you mean "demrocacy or pron?" EOM.
"So yeah, cencorship[sic] is bad."
I would agree that GOVERNMENT censorship is nearly always bad.
But, I would argue that PERSONAL censorship is wise, good and necessary.
Example:
While I would never advocate, nor agree with, government censorship of theories that the Earth is flat, I have already resolved that issue for myself and don't waste time on it anymore.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Let's not forget how far China has come since Richard Nixon's visit back in the Seventies. Compare 1970's China with modern China and you will see. I am not against gradual change as long as it's constant.
Confucius said something like, 'it doesn't matter how slow you go as long as you don't stop.'
The following is part of a short text I wrote partly in response to Lokman Tsui's (Leiden University, the Netherlands) thesis "Internet in China: Big Mama is Watching You". (Lokman Tsui, Internet in China: Big Mama is Watching You, University of Leiden, July 2001)
In his thesis Lokman compares the internet censorship in China to the Panopticon, a concept of a prison invented in 1791 in which the prisoners do not know whether or not they are being watched, and thus always behave in a proper manner. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon)
If you like I can send you my full text, if you're interested in this subject you might find it an interesting overview.
The new phenomenon of blogging is beginning to ?upturn? the traditional Western media1. Newspapers and TV channels now have to deal with bloggers spreading news and information themselves they do not cover, and discussing topics traditionally left ignored. The same can be said to be happening in China, although there the difference between the traditional media and the bloggers is of course much larger. However, although the Chinese government is not, maybe not yet, capable of dealing with the blogs, censorship is still strict and punishment severe, and as all Chinese are aware of this, only those who want to deliberately act against the censorship will do so. This also applies to proxy-use. Using a proxy server to look at blocked content is punishable, so only those who really want to, will.
As Lokman Tsui says, views on the possibility of censoring the Internet in China differ, but the most prevalent view among "Western" journalists is that the Internet cannot be censored. Tsui however, is of the opinion that, contrary to what most Western journalists say, even though the control of the Internet by China's government is not a hundred percent, it is effective nonetheless. The threat itself, he concludes, is enough and makes it possible for the Chinese authorities to control the Internet.
Indeed, barriers, self-censorship and fear of being monitored make for strong control. Not only in the case of Internet censorship, this is the basic functionality of every law. However, what Tsui does not do is distinguish between different kinds of Internet users. He deals with the group of Internet users as if it were homogenous, all motivated and scared by the same things. Yet here too it is the same as with every other law: those who want to break a law will. A distinction should be made; the group that is being controlled by a law should be divided into three groups. The first group are those who have no intention of breakinghte law and who would not do so if possible. The law does not affect this group, as they never come in contact with it. The second group are those who will break the law, for whatever reason they have. Even though they might have to suffer the consequences of breaking it, the law does not affect this group, as they will not be stopped by it. The third group are those who do not break the law, but might if given the opportunity. This third group is the group affected by laws. As long as the laws are there and being enforced, they will not break it. However, when breaking it is made easy and the risk of getting caught becomes very small, this group might do so. The grouping, of course, varies for every different law.
The censorship of the Chinese government of the Internet is one of these laws. Most of the Chinese Internet users only use the Internet for "allowed" activities. On the other hand there are certainly Chinese who use the Internet for illegal purposes. These users are motivated to learn what they need to know in order to be able to, and because the use of proxy servers has become very easy, as they have increased in number and availability, the knowledge barrier has become smaller. This shrinking of the knowledge barrier, in combination with a very fast growing number of bloggers, who are obviously much less controlled and censo
I see a market for an enterprising genius in the free world to write more intelligent software to try to track these people in China to the Chinese government! It's just money laying on the ground!
Who's up to the challenge?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The real reason the Chinese government (or any authoritarian) doesn't like religion is because most religions put either one's self or one's God or one's religious leaders or fellow believers at a higher level than one's party, one's country and one's ruler. This is totally unacceptable in an authoritarian system in which loyalty to the country or the country's ruler must be absolute and unquestioned. I'm an atheist, but I find authoritarian systems far more repulsive than any religion I've encountered (even the "nutty" ones).
In a related News Article, the U.S. Government unveiled new security measures for their classified documents:
An unidentified official was quoted to say: "From now on all U.S. Government Documents will include the word 'Democracy' used liberally through out the text."
Take that you commie bastards....
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for the are subtle and quick to anger.
I really want to know if you can read this thread in China...
I suppose you have bunches and bunches of evidence of Chávez rigging the election... or maybe you are talking out of your ass.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
May be the paradigm has changed lately...I thought "If you control mail, you control information". But chinese government has taken it to the next level, "If you control internet, you control everything (information, dissent, negative views and freedom)".
societies are like compressed springs. The more government tries to compress that spring, the greater the chance of it bouncing back and giving a nasty surprise. History has ample examples on this.
My-oh-my how we whine about the "bad" chinese govt for not allowing their citizens access to crap news sites like CNN. Yet we all shop at Walmart, or Target, who imports so much of their retail items from China.
My-oh-my how we wiggle the accusing finger while wearing the "Made in China" t-shirts. Frankly, the truth is that we really dont care what they do in China, so long as the products remain cheap. I dont care - I have enough problems right here to deal with - Corporate News Censorship is greater than any US govt censorship.
Having been to China, I can tell you that most ppl there dont care either about what sites they can or cant access. A kilometer out of the cities is rural poverty that shocked me even in the light of India or Nepal. These chinese ppl would much rather have clean water, and a sewage system. Maybe hope for rural electricity!
In a perverse way, economic exploitation isnt so bad. The drive to sell more products to the west begrudgingly forces infrastrucure improvements. It draws more ppl to the cities where clean water and sewage exist. I'm not calling for "greed is good" posters, but, doing no business with china would have the tangible effect of setting back the population of worker lifestyle.
So, whats so bad about greed and their own censorship?
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
thats why they need more support for projects like anonet..
A few quick comments in my still very Chinese mind massive cencorship is sure a lost course for Chinese government. Almost everybody in China, including officials, believes democracy is the goal and will come one day, although almost nobody believes they should come imminently. Government is doing it to deter "unwashed masses", as gvc pointed out, and doing it as long as they can. Also noteworthy how much government has changed from N.Korean-type 30 years ago: every year they use less and less punishment, even when they use more preventitive method. This is why you see so many creative ways to evade cencorship. democracy and good administration are two separate things. we've seen way too many failed democratic developing countries, so most Chinese buy in the government words about China is not ready for democracy yet. Also democracy is different from free speech. Even after China turns democracy, I expect online porn still largely banned... at that time, we'll see cat-and mouse game for online sex :)
FaLun Gong is notorious among both Chinese in China and Chinese oversea. As Spy der Mann said: it's sad that the reason this cult was censored, is not because they abuse their followers physically and emotionally, but because they threaten the chinese national security. And it's MORE sad because of their aftermath, many other good groups are banned.
A few real codes (abbrevs) for people interested:
democracy--MZ, government--ZF, communist party--GCD, FaLun Gong--FLG, leaders' name are also abbreved, or call "old xxx",... these are just most common ways.
If you want to know more about how chinese censorship works and how people are getting around it, check out some of these mp3s:e at-firewall.mp3
c -hacktivism-1.mp3
c -hacktivism-2.mp3
http://the1.no-ip.com/~the1/spoken%20word/hope_gr
http://the1.no-ip.com/~the1/spoken%20word/hope_cd
http://the1.no-ip.com/~the1/spoken%20word/hope_cd
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Wow, who writes these stories?
The person writing this story has no clue what they are talking about and probably has never been to China.
I am sitting in a net bar in China at this very moment. I can search google for democracy, I didnt use any Id to get in, its dark so video cameras would be of no use and the only portals that have ever been blocked in my past 3 years here in China have been geocities and a few of the original copy cats. I have been to 100's of net bars all over China and this is pretty much the regular.
The only reason they check Id is Children inder 18 are not allowed in net bars. Net bars will be fined if children are found on their Pc's. The net bars that were closed were closed because of not meeting newly passed fire regualtions in some bigger cities after some fires killed some people.
Don't believe everything you read in the news about China, as much as China is known to pump out the propoganda our own governments and media do it as well.
MB
You're absolutely right.
Software along with dirt cheap ubiquitous wireless kit. Adhoc grid routing, anonymous nodes in a wireless network.
e.g. something like:
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/grid/
Information is, and always has been power and guess who can do something about it...
Deleted
Your argument is detestable. There is no comparison between the two countries. Your attempt at doing so shows a great amount of ignorance and trivializes the suffering of the Chinese people.
In China the true side effect of getting in the way of the state or a business, which by the way most businesses are the state, is imprisonment or death.
Go look at Amnesty International's 2004 page on China, now tell me how you can truly compare what they do to the US? Freedom of speech? I can go shout at Bush and any member of Congress while in Washington, I can post to a blog, or even buy an ad. I can run anti-corporate web pages here as well as those of accusing the US of atrocity after atrocity without fear of losing my life, having my family disappear, or being imprisoned forever hoping some international group my find me.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
One philosphical thought I had that may not have been covered in the 19th century western thinking (because its an Eastern concept) is the fact that in a competitive market, what helps the perceived interest of one entity will often harm the perceived interest of another. Help and harm here being entirely subjective, unless you apply the crude metric of next quarter's short-term profits.
If we accept the fact that any action or communication with potency will help some and harm others, then forbid harmful communication, we have to forbid all communication that has any potency or effect of any kind.
Its the first insightful thing I've read in these comments, and deserves to counter balance against all the ranting comparisons of equivalence between authoritarian china and democratic US. Or in some cases, comparasons that look upon china as freer than the US.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by
stupidity. - Variously attributed around the net to Napoleon, Robert Heinlein and/or Robert Hanlon.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Essentially, it ammounts to doing whatever you want to without harming other people.
Except for all the chemicals the government has rather arbitrarily decided you aren't allowed to put into your own body. And you can't break encryption to watch media you bought on other platforms. And you can't download stuff that's no longer available to purchase. And you can't drive without wearing your seatbelt. And... you get the point. And the current religious right in power is moving towards placing even more restrictions on what consenting adults can and cannot do.
The underlying assumption in your "Occident Vs. China" post is that the occident = America.
America may be top dog for economics and many things but being a whistleblower for human rights protection is pretty ironic.
Leave the old continent in charge of these matters; after all France invented the universal declaration of human rights didn't they?
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
Fox News said it so it must be true. I believe in Fox News. I bask warmly in the holy light of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. I have a picture of my Most Exalted Leader In Christ, President George W. Bush, over my mantelpiece. He has a halo. And I know, as does anyone save the traitorous anti-American liberals and their America-hating Democratic Party (they might as well rename it the Communist Party of America) that Chavez is a baby-killing, abortion-loving, gay-marriage-favoring, election-rigging Communist who, like his good friends Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore, loves the terrorists and hates America, Mom, and apple pie.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
....You would now be doing 15 years for 'subversive language,' assuming you wouldn't simply be beaten to death in some back alley.
It's amusing really; how many people screech 'totalitarianism' when they wouldn't know a totalitarian state if it bit them on the ass.
Sixty years ago, my mother's family came stumbling out of the smoking ruins of Nazi Germany. I myself spent sixteen years paying witness to the acts of the Soviet State while the rest of the world looked the other way. I know what totalitarianism is. You, my friend, haven't a clue.
Regards;
Is the government corrupt because it's evil, or because it's stupid?
Either way, it's corrupt, and either way, it's wasted the constitution, and either way, they're locking protesters up in fenced off 'freedom of speech zones' and tear-gassing them.
I don't care what their reasons are, they need to be stopped.
crap_i_think_they're_on_to_us
Leave the old continent in charge of these matters; after all France invented the universal declaration of human rights didn't they?
Sure. They did such a good job with the Barbary pirates. The French also invented the guillotine. Of course, we Americans invented the atomic bomb.
Interesting to watch my comment get modded up to a 5 insightful then modded down to a 2 with troll and overrated. I might agree with the latter. It's easy to point fingers at repressive countries. It's not so easy when your own country starts behaving like them. I must have pushed someone's button to be rated troll. I feel honored.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Form the article:
"Sohu said the company was still digesting the new rules, but in general welcomes them. "They are good for the development of the Internet in China," spokeswoman Dahlia Wei said."
Reminds me of the old Twilight Zone episode with the jack-in-the-box and the corn field where they keep telling the all-powerful boy that everything he does is good.
So if they censor words like "democracy", I take it that the Chinese cannot access their own constitution then since that word is right there in their preamble. Maybe it's better for the Chinese government that their own people can't read their constitution so they don't know how they're being robbed and cheated in plain sight.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Yup, this is what visiting the wrong website in China could get you:
6 22,00.html
5 /220905dehumanization.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1568
The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners
(The London Guardian, 9-13-05)
Wanna see pictures?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september200
The US will not abandon elections any time soon. If you know ANYTHING of the US military, you know that if Bush's term came to an end and he didn't get his ass out of the office, the military would pick his ass up and kick it out of the military for him.
People often forget how important the military is for a functional civil society. A military that respects the rule of law and seeks to protect the state is extremely important. If your military does not feel like it is commanded by the civilian state and feels that its goal is not the protection of the civilian government, you tend to get overthrown governments. Popular uprisings that are not crushed are rare, but the militaries taking over civilian governments are a dime a dozen.
In this regards, the American democracy is one of the most secure in the world. The US military would NEVER take up arms against the civilian government unless a leader in the civilian government refused to get his ass out of office when his time was up. Further, even if the military did turn on the civilian government for the purpose of dragging Bush's ass out of office once his term was up, it would end its role there and go back to letting lawyers and politicians clean up the mess.
Fear Bush for whatever reasons you like, but don't fear him because he is going to use the military on the civilian government. In fact, if you recall, the US military refused to enter New Orleans and conduct any sort of peace keeping operations within the city because it is so strictly forbidden in the US constitutions. The only thing the military was allowed to do was provide logistical support and search and rescue operations. If a city getting wiped off the map is not disaster enough for the US military to bend the rules, I would say it is safe to say nothing is going to cause them to break them.
Can someone point me to the character that means 'democracy' in Mandarin? I'd like a graphic of it on my web site :-)
tia...
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
Pier 57. Look it up.
Censorship is much worse in the USA than in China. You can write or say anything you want as long as it doesn't criticize the Bush Administration. Just ask Cindy Sheehan.
FInally we aRe Seeing Those chinese POSTing sensitive information using mechanisms like this....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I have a right - to party!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Note: If one party is in China and the other outside China and they type in an email address; e.g. foo@yahoo.com, foo at yahoo.com, foo@hotmail.com, foo at hotmail.com; initiated at either end of the conversation - guess what? Nothing gets through the otherside.
Curiously, foo@yahoo.com.cn works just fine.
Hi.
Regarding
>Except for all the chemicals the government has rather >arbitrarily decided you aren't allowed to put into your >own body.
and
>And you can't drive without wearing your seatbelt
I've heard it argued that people gettng into trouble as a result of doing stupid things to their bodies does financially stresses the National health care system. We've all heard statistics of how many lives seatbelts have saved since the 40's; how about money?
Less seat belts and more heroin & coke addicts -> higher health care costs -> higher taxes.
- R
....walking with people who just wanted to VOTE, and had their rights denied. I took the gas when we wanted open honest debate and actual facts and data over a war fought but never legally declared, a war for blood profits, partially fought with chemical weapons that were killing our own guys and still do to this day. And MOST of those guys were very poor young folks who got dragooned into it against their will, while the fatcats sons got student 2s deferrments or cushy national guard non-jobs, like a certain smirker in chief.
I watched as a group of cops picked someone who was non violent, just yelling, out of a crowd and STOMPED AND BEAT HIM TO DEATH at a rally AND IT NEVER MADE THE NEWS. they were laughing while they did it, LAUGHING. Kent state made the news, jackson state did, this incident didn't, and there have been a lot more over the years, just not reported or barely reported or excused off for some vague double speak reason. I, and several other people took that case as eyewitnesses as far as we could, to a lieutenant governor meeting, IT STILL RESULTED IN NOTHING HAPPENING. They hauled the poor guys body away and wouldn't even admit it happened.
THAT is partially from where I am coming from. Don't assume things about people you don't know. just because nation x is worse than nation y doesn't mean nation y doesn't have uber sucky aspects to it of the dictatorial goon squad nature. This is a government that has a past verifiable track record of foreign official assassinations, support for death squads, cozying up to dictators or helping install them, and utterly wasting most of the money they get from the tax payers with a shrug,a wink and a nod to "business as usual".
My goal is somehow work so that it never gets worse than what it is! And somehow this is wrong because some other place it's even worse?? Sorry, no one controls where they are born, but we all have a stake in where we live, to try and make it better and you can't do that unless you are able to actually LOOK and see where the faults are. I have done this, did it, and will continue to do so. My commentary was on the 'americans blindly accepting' part, some of us don't 'blindly accept' matters we know are just plain evil wrong, but we also are aware of the consequences of actions in todays political world. If we don't push back when it's so called 'not that bad", then GUARANTEED they will keep pushing until you and me and thee and thou are squashed flat eyes downcast shuffling slaves.
$%^&*( that, homey don't play that game
You make a wonderful point. When I look at all of the problems caused by the various religions (Islamic Terrorism, Christian Anti-Science, Wacky Scientology cults, etc.), I often think that religion in general should be outlawed. I don't see how it is compatible with civilized living. Plus, there are a number of very nice countries that have outlawed nazism, so I don't see how outlawing religion would be all that different.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Less seat belts and more heroin & coke addicts -> higher health care costs -> higher taxes.
Oh goody. Now we can ban McDonald's and other such places. Obviously, they are bad for us and we need to be protected from ourselves if the problem might cause health problems. Oh, and the costs and deaths to either alcohol or tobacco is more than all other drugs combined, legal and illegal. If the problem was cost, then alcohol and tobacco would be outlawed, as well as fast food, stairs, billboards, scissors, and anything else that might pose a safety risk (billboards as a driving distraction, if you missed it).
Learn to love Alaska
Except for all the chemicals the government has rather arbitrarily decided you aren't allowed to put into your own body.
I am much more concerned with the chemicals that the goverment has decided should be in my body. What I mean by this is pollution, waste from chemical factories, price supports for certain food products with certain additives (milk with hormones added, high fructose corn syrrup, etc.) ADM basically makes a bunch of food additives that aren't good for you and are mostly put into products because of goverment regulations and price supports.
I am also opposed to the current "war on drugs". I think it does a lot of harm to our society. But I also think the government could easily end meth use if they really wanted to. I think they allow it to exist because someone makes money off of it. Same with a lot of other kinds of crime (auto theft, illegal immigration, burgalary, etc.)
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Hmm... unless the Chinese emails in English, adding underscore in between Chinese characters doesn't do much. Each Chinese character has a meaning by itself - unlike alphabets.
Furthermore, wouldn't surfing with encryption enabled baffle the filters anyway?
Or is this too simplistic an assesment? What am I missing?
 
__________________
shameless googlebomb: wallet
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
"While certain words such as "democracy" are banned in online chat rooms, China's Web users sometimes transmit sensitive information as images, or simply speak in code, inserting special characters such as underscoring into typing."
H4rdc0re d3m0_cracy CLICK HERE
The people alredy know what is out there. Had they censored early on, the damage would have been far less. As it is today, too many people are aware of things and will continue to seek the information they want/need.
It will take a while, but the chinese people will learn enough to demand change someday.
Blogging because I can...
How Chinese did Evade Government's Web Controls before it was all revealed on Slashdot.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Unfortunately, there is always a grey area about your effect on others. For example, those chemicals can make you a dangerous person - possibly increasing the risk to others. By breaking the encryption on the media you make piracy easier, possibly hurting those that made the media. By downloading stuff that no longer exists you might hurt someone who just bought the distribution rights to the stuff. By driving without a seat belt you might increase the risk to the rescue personnel that risk their life trying to save yours.
Yes, some of that stuff seems a stretch - and it is. But a lot of it is different viewpoints on what constitutes "harm" to others. Piracy harms society, by decreasing the rewards for creating content and therefor decreasing the content. But it also helps society, increasing the distribution of content (most likely to those that need it most). Everything is balance!
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
My question for you is:
What is the price, in USD, of a frappaccino?
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
That the parent scored 5: insightful after claiming America is run by armed dictators that purposely drowned N.O. makes me wonder where slashdot's moderators come from. This is a meaningless conspiracy theory.
Maybe this is exactly what people want? Maybe we (as in the royal "you" if you think this doesn't apply to other countries, to differing extents) aren't really interested in "freedom" as much as we (as in the actual "me and you") would like to think. Bread, circuses and the ability to lead extremely safe lives without the need to think to much, these may be what most people really want. Maybe they're not being robbed of their less commonly used freedoms, maybe they're trading them away?
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
It's odd to read this right now. I just realised today that I can access Google news and the BBC Web site. I have been living in China for 8 months and this is the first time that Google news has been accessible. At least the first time that I have noticed. Blogspot and other Blog sites are still unavailable and the Taiwanese Google News site didn't come up, but I was pretty happy to see BBC and Google News... I thought it was getting better.
I was just in China and Tibet last week and used cybercafes several times during my visit, and I can tell you that at least in the ones I used the unique ID rules are not enforced. In the bigger cybercafes, as you enter they gesture you to a paper notebook as if expecting you to write down a username, but if you just ignore it and hand them the money they just grab a new unique ID card for you each time you visit. They have stacks of plastic ID cards with long user ID and password numbers printed on them, and I assume you're supposed to keep it and bring it back with you later, but since I ignored it they never gave it to me. However, it could be that this was because I was a westerner, and a local would not be allowed to do this. In the smaller cafes there is no structure at all that I could see. You just sit down and start using the computer.
China from my observations is a very dynamic (or chaotic) place, and I'd be amazed if they managed to widely impose strict rules without them being ignored or subverted right away.
WRT the food products, the government doesn't force you to eat any of these - there are readily available alternatives in all cases. I do disagree with government subsidies however (just as I object to all direct or indirect confiscation of citizens' resources [a.k.a. taxation] by the Federal government to perform tasks not assigned or allowed to them by the Constitution - including education, medicare, social security...).
But I also think the government could easily end meth use if they really wanted to. I think they allow it to exist because someone makes money off of it. Same with a lot of other kinds of crime (auto theft, illegal immigration, burgalary, etc.)
Do you have any support for this allegation of intent?
If you think the government (local? state? Federal?) could "easily" end meth (I assume you meant the use of meth since it would presumably be hard to eliminate atoms, or even the molecules, that are necessary to make meth), can you provide some hints on how? Obviously (as we saw earlier in this thread), attempting to constrain the supply of an easily available critical component of meth results in someone screaming about how his/her "constitutional rights" are being violated.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
If there are any chinese websites that we (in the rest of the free world) can get to that those in China can also get to, we should log in and post some of the banned stuff.
We'll need
a) willing volunteers (I'm one)
b) something worthy to post, preferably in chinese, that is both illegal and worth while (no chinese nazi hate shit, you know, but maybe a chinese version of Tom Paine's Common Sense
c) some chinese urls
Why not flood their internet with banned material? sort of a force feeding of freedom. What are they gonna do, build a giant freaking wall?!?! And if they do, will it keep chinese spammers out?
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
I believe this long predates either western or eastern thought and perhaps is older than humanity itself. It certainly is a necessary concept for traders.
that are responsible for it all. Reuters has reported that an old Jewish looking man was seen acting suspiciously in New Orleans shortly before and during the recent hurricanes. Experts have testified that the damage suffered in the gulf cannot be totally explained by natural phenomena. Several witnesses claim to have seen the same man take an old tree branch and wade into lake Ponchartrain shortly before the water seperated around him and rushed towards the city. He was pursued by local patriot militia groups into the lake who just before apprehending the suspect were unfortunately all drowned when the seperated waters returned.
The man has not been seen since. However experts at the Discovery Institute have uncovered damning evidence that the man belongs to an ultra secret branch of the Israeli secret service. Discovery Institue chairman Bruce Chapman is now leading a campaign to have this evidence presented to school children. The commonly held belief in America that "Jews Are Nice People" is only a theorey states Chapman. In the spirit of open minded inquiry he wishes to see other competing theories taught. Suspiciously the American gun control lobby is leading the legal backlash to Chapmans move.
* In other news FOX NEWs reports that George Bush was seen eating Gefilte fish and matzoh balls.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
Back in 2002, at H2K2 Cult of the Dead Cow and Hacktivismo (http://hacktivismo.com/) talked about a "new" protocol called Six/Four- aimed at circumventing the censoring in China and other places in the world by using simple tunneling to proxies. I believe the project flopped but was still a step in the right direction.
"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist.." -Sedgwig
Yes, there are alternatives to eating unhealthy food ingredients. However, they require lots of vigilence, additional expense, and a constant reexamination of one's diet. Just because a product does not contain a substance you want to avoid is no guarentee that the manufacturer will not change the ingredient at any time. As for non-manufactured foods, you often have no idea what kinds of chemicals are used in their production unless you buy organic which is expensive and sometimes hard to find.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
more heroin & coke addicts -> higher health care costs -> higher taxes.
Actually, this is not the case. The case for a massive rise in use without prohibition has weak support, and the little existing studies of places where use is not policed, actually shows usage rates to be lower. The drug war has been scientifically demonstrated to not reduce the use or availability of drugs. Most of the violence comes from prohibition, not user crimes. The problems associated with the high cost of addiction come from prohibition. The spread of disease is largely caused by prohibtion preventing availability and affordability of clean syringes for IV users, around 40% of AIDS cases are from needle sharing. Studies have shown the cost of treatment to reduce cocaine use by a specific percent is lower than the cost of acheiving the same decrease through law enforcement. All in all, the economics are prohibition greatly exacerbate the cost to the rest of society in terms of deaths, diseases, and violent crimes, and the associated costs of these activities.
Regarding seatbelts and everything else, would you really want to live in a society where the government oversees every aspect of your life and forbids you from doing anything that might make you more likely to need expensive healthcare?
Dude, we most definitely do not live in that society. At least assuming that the society you're talking about is the same one that I'm talking about: that one in the U.S.A. If we lived in that society--the one where you could do whatever you want as long as it didn't harm other people, then certain drugs would not be illegal or at least less illegal than they are now. Of course you couldn't/shouldn't be allowed to operate a motor vehicle or be at work when stoned or tripping on acid or something, but in a "free society", I can't see how you'd be prevented from doing so at home, and I don't think it should be illegal to produce or sell such things.
And then there's good ol' gay marriage, general homosexuality (sodomy still illegal in some states), breast feeding in public, general public nudity, and even that thing you've probably not heard of polyamory.
Basically, there's a large list of consensual crime laws in this country whose existence flies in the face of your statement that we live in a truly free society. I agree, we have freedoms a-plenty in this country, and I for one am happy for them. I'd be happier still if we could get rid of the all the consnesual crime laws. Note that even we did get rid of those laws, the underlying social stresses would not go away--not everyone would like or accept homosexuality, not everyone would agree with people taking drug X-Y, or Z, and those drugs would still, no doubt, pose big-ass problems, and drug addicts could/would be a drain on society. But laws should not be used to attempt to enforce morality because... it just doesn't work. Morality--what is ok?--what is not ok--is something that we, as a society, should be working through together all the time. Indeed we are doing so, but there are many (IMHO lazy-minded people) that think it's ok to make a law against something, and so solve once and for all that particular moral connundrum. (See: Prohibition)
Furry cows moo and decompress.
There's no traffic where Sheehan was protesting, it is a pedestrian mall closed to vehicles...basically the area was recently remodelled to hold events just like this one.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The official U.S. unemployment number is NOT the number of people collecting unemployment benefits, it is the result of a survey called "the household survey" that involves tens of thousands of telephone interviews per month. This measures the number of people who are looking for work but who cannot find a job. Because it rigorously surveys the actual populace, it is considered an accurate measure of unemployment, and is the official measure in the U.S.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Actually, Mill does make allusion to this type of situation in his essay. He does say the majority does tend to stop on the rights of the minority. PS. You should be able to peform sodomy in all the states now. Those laws are moot.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
May I commend the summary on using the phrase 'cat and mouse game' in a context where one side is unambiguously the cat and the other the mouse. This seems to happen so rarely it hardly counts as a cliche either.
Sure. They did such a good job with the Barbary pirates. The French also invented the guillotine. Of course, we Americans invented the atomic bomb.
Actually it was the Scottish who originally invented the guillotine--they were too cheap to hire an axeman.
or simply speak in code, inserting special characters such as underscoring into typing Simple way to stop that. Remove underscores from all keyboards in China. Whose your new great leader now, huh? :)
...I'm a traditional constitutionalist nationalist. Nowadays I might be called a paleocon. Complete opposite of these globalist interventionist neocons. those folks are just internationalists, have no lyalty to nation or neighbor or good tradition, and have a "profits at any cost" mentality, which I reject. to me, money is not the most important thing in the world, and never has been.
I worked my first presidential campaign for AuH20,because at a minimum he wasn't a liar, and he understood states rights and individual rights and was a nationalist. I also got my education in power politics then a i watched the establishment elite repubs sabotage their own candidate on purpose for later on political gain.
My first politics *in general* were for civil rights and environmental conservation, then anti illegal war and anti illegal draft-or forced servitude.
I always believed in the root word of conservative = "conserve", or nurture and protect. I still think that is a good idea, and that it also makes the best economic sense, best security sense, best environmental sense, best social sense, not only for US citizens but for anyone around the planet. to me, our "bill of rights" means all humans, it is what all humans are born with.
I am against dictators wherever they are, what language they speak, what color they are or what religion.
I am pro self defense and hold the second as highly as the first and all the others.
look-collate data-analyse-speak (and act) the truth with your heart and mind, it's about all you can do as a man.
...of a plethora of examples of where the feds went out of their way to make things *worse*. You can call it whatever you want, but I don't think it's an _accident_ after seeing them do similar hundreds of times now over decades of watching. There's more examples if you care to google around, it's not like it hasn't been in the news pretty constantly now for weeks.
c torordered001.shtml
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091605/new_do
...trolling. I said nothing like what you are implying, nor is it any sort of valid sarcastic commentary, it's just *weird*.
Hear, Hear.
That bears repeating.
it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
it's just as stupid and evil to be a communist as it is to be a Nazi.
I would only add that the Nazis (the National Socialists) are just one more flavor of left-wing tyrants. The Nazi ideology is almost indistinguishable from the rantings of such despicable anti-Semitic "progressives" as George Galloway. Two sides of the same filthy coin.
--ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I'm getting pretty sick of checking into this website and seeing too many people China bashing with no real perspective.
I'm currently living in China and have been for quite some time and this place really isn't that bad. If you don't do anything stupid you live a pretty free uninhibited life. For all my time here even as a foreigner I've never been stopped by police or security once except at an airport to double check the nail grooming kit in my carry on luggage (not noticed at other international airports).
Notice to all bloggers please leave your small internet dependant lives and experience the real world. Don't criticize a country because you feel little internet news bulletins gives you the right to do so. The internet does not give people a genuine perspective of the real world just the virtual one. Fact of the matter is most people in the real world don't have computers or the internet.
Once again please get out more and open your eyes sitting in your home and watching documentaries for information is no substitute for going somewhere and getting a first hand perspective. In case you hadn't noticed the majority of the worlds population is Chinese and how much do you really know about them or their culture? Are they happy...in my opinion yes far greater than the complaining masses in other first world countries.
I mean seriously does watching every bond film in the series or playing too much C.S make anyone of us even remotely like spies... Take a real look at the world some time most people live here.
not the single word like "democracy".
Do you stil (sic) think the US is 'the richest nation on earth'? Look at unemployment, illiteracy, innumeracy, infant mortality (43rd, after Cuba!) and poverty figures for the last decades. Compare to any other country and then do the same for the added figures for the whole EU.
The United States IS "The Richest Nation on Earth." The value of our assets dwarfs the values of the assets of most nations, with only a couple coming anywhere close (Japan, China, Germany).
Look at the value of our prime assets and liabilities: our owned equity, money, real property, inventories, capital goods, net our net debt. I don't have hard numbers, and I challenge someone to find them. I'd imagine the wealth US owned (by citizens, government, and share of corporations) to be about $100 trillion. I'd estimate that this is 30% of global wealth. Probably only Japan comes even close, with maybe $30 trillion, or 10% of global wealth.
Unemployment: United States labor markets are so efficient, that unlike the socialized economies of Western Europe, if you don't have a job, you can get one. Only in Japan is unemployment better managed (at the cost of growth). Some people might be into something called 'facts' - here you go.
August 2005 - US: 4.9%. Germany: 11.6%. France: 9.9% . China: 23%, +/-20% (pick a number, any number). India: 9%. Indonesia: 9%. Japan: 4.4%.
Illiteracy: Literacy rates of countries with population of more than 150 million - US: 97% China: 91% India: 59% Indonesia: 88% Brazil: 86% Pakistan: 46%. While I'd assume EU Literacy rate is 99% (quite commendable), 3% of our population being miseducated is not a condemnation of our wealth - just our education system. Imagine what our unemployment would look like if everyone could read... (Source: CIA World Book)
The main wealth Americans have, however, is institutional. We have the ability to choose from a variety of goods and services, more enforceable rights than almost anywhere else, and impressively low corruption. When the Chinese can buy any American goods, have the right to due process and continuous ownership, responsive government, and don't have to pay off the police on a daily basis, maybe then they could build wealth.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested