Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Bloggers Stage Hoax
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "It seemed like the latest instance of a recurring story: Two Chinese blogs had shut down, apparently the victim of government censorship. 'Within hours, English-language bloggers and Western news media spread the word that the Chinese government had closed the sites,' the Wall Street Journal reports. The BBC spread the word, and its report was picked up by the French free-press group Reporters Without Borders. 'But in this case, it appears the Chinese government wasn't involved, the WSJ reports. 'By Thursday, a day after the shut-downs, the blogs were back up and running. In an interview, Beijing-based journalist Wang Xiaofeng of Massage Milk says he shut his blog down to make a point about freedom of speech -- just one directed at the West instead of at Beijing. He calls the Western press "irresponsible" and says that the hoax was designed "to give foreign media a lesson that Chinese affairs are not always the way you think." ' The BBC later corrected its story."
-Kurt
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
As long as they don't shut down the plastic flower pot manufacturer's sites...2 005_03_29_001.jsp
But who knew that the 7th most popular non adult web search in China is Plastic flowerpot manufacturer...
http://www.accoona.com/about/press/press_release_
Yes, it ranks above emmigration!!!!
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
This post has been removed by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Revelation of its original contents is a violation of DHS regulations. Violators will be fined, imprisoned, or both.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
This makes it sound like all the major news outlets were up in arms about it. In fact, a quick check of Google news for "Massage Milk", sorted by date, shows that there was the BBC story on the 8th, then numerous reports about it being a hoax the next day.
The BBC article states:
(Emphasis mine.)
The WSJ article claims that the BBC updated its article, but it doesn't make clear what was updated. The few blogs that picked up the story seem to support the text I quoted above. Meaning, that the BBC was not unreasonable in its report, even if it did assume the worst.
As far as I can tell, the only irresponsible party here is the blogger himself. He created a situation that directly insinutated government shutdown, then tried to play the matter up as "irresponsible western journalism." He's proved nothing except to do damage to the free speech movement in China.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Pretty smart move by the Chinese Government if in fact they had shut down the blogs, but realized their mistake after all the press.
Not too far fetched if you think about it. I've seen many many people do the same thing. "Oh, I made a mistake? No, i was just kidding.".
Next time their blogs really get shut down by the government and the bloggers mysteriously disappear, nobody is going to even hear about it. The sad thing is that the actions of two guys can and will affect other bloggers in China. Now, talk about irresponsible!
If MS have their astroturfers and paid shills to run their errands, why shouldn't the Chinese government?
Yes, the "Western" media does get many issues wrong, so I am in no way defending their every aspect...but come on. I mean, if two Chinese-based blogs are "shut down," what does one usually think? I doubt you can just call Bejing and get a straight answer from the govt. people, so it does not seem wholly irresponsible in my view to assume that the govt. did in fact shut them down.
Also, maybe I am an idiot, but I would rather have a (relatively) free press who get things wrong from time to time to a govt. which muzzles just about everything. Call me crazy I suppose. I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese govt. backed this project in the first place.
Heh, heh, maybe the freedom to be irresponsible on occasion is part of the whole point (and risk) of a free press. After all, once the truth was known, the story was corrected. I'm not so sure that mistakes would be corrected with a less than free press. It's funny, many seem to think that freedom means making the right choices all of the time. But in fact most of the time it means screwing up and falling flat on your face whether that be choosing the wrong party or president to lead your country or just choosing an SUV with really bad gas mileage. What governments and societies around the world need to come to grips with is allowing people the freedom screw up. There can be no success without the risk of failure.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
He calls the Western press "irresponsible" and says that the hoax was designed "to give foreign media a lesson..."
So the next time we get a story like this, we will be twice as skeptical, and may not even believe it at all.
Media today uses 'instant information' to formulate stories, and there is a race to be the first to report 'breaking news' - sometimes with little fact checking involved.
With the tight restrictions from the Chinese media and the internet, it is easier to believe a hoax from China, since we do not know, and may never really know, the true story and the facts behind it.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Chinese affairs are not always the way you think
This is bullshit. Respect of the human dignity and free will of a Chineese person is just as important as the respect of human dignity and free will of an American one. The notion that rights are opinions and mutual agreements worked out with a government died over 200 years ago. Today it is widely understood that individuals have rights with or without government, and that those rights are inaliable, and that the puspose of government is to help secure those rights. If the government can't do it, then it is a failure - plain and simple. This isn't rocket science, the history of rights has been well tested out and is only misunderstood by those who would want to ignore it and abuse it.
It might do more to combat Chinese censorship than anything else if the current regime decides that maybe the Internet isn't *strictly* a propaganda tool aimed at overthrowing them.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I also submitted this story, linking to http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-03/1 4/content_534795.htm for further information.
It just shows that Western media has a standard agenda of politicizing everything, and that checking sources is not honored by Western journalists (who really should set a good example on this to show Chinese journalists how to do it).
Now the crowd here will come up with ingenious "what ifs" and other excuses, actually defending this bad journalism. It is Us and Them nomatter what, as usual.
The western press isn't perfect at detecting liars. As a result, they should shut up and say nothing at all.
... what was it called again? Oh yeah, Afghanistan.
What a bunch of bozos.
Am I pissed at the western press for giving Bush a free pass for so many years, and still showing a suprising lack of backbone even today? You bet. Does that mean the press offers nothing of value (even on those subjects it slants in ways I disagree with)? No.
So a couple of government-friendly bloggers decided to stage a hoax and mimic a shutdown so many bloggers have actually experienced at the hands of that same government, just to draw out the press and discredit their message that "censorship is wrong."
Well, maybe they're congratulating themselves, but I'm not buying their criticism. The press is imperfect, and downright wrong from time to time. Reporters are often lazy, doing more googling and reprinting of press releases than actual research, and courage seems to be lacking from many news organizations (and others appear to be outright owned by supporters of the current conservative regimes in many places, including Australia and the USA).
However, faking a blog shutdown in a way that mimics dozens of real shutdowns, then screaming 'ha ha! fooled you you dumb free speech westerners' is like staging your own kidnapping, hiding out, then going public with how stupid the news media is for reporting your disappearance and possible kidnapping. The media has plenty of faults, but not detecting every case of fraud and deliberate deception is hardly a reason to dismiss every news they report, particularly with respect to repressive regimes.
Hell, if the media were able to detect hoaxes and lies so easilly, Bush, Blair, and their respective administrations would get a whole lot less airtime, and we wouldn't be busy fighting a war in Iraq instead of fighting the War on Terror we were supposed to be fighting in that other country, hundreds of miles to the east
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The media being irresponsible? NEVER! We have the highest quality of sensationalistic Journalism that money can buy!
"Your Children are in danger of being sexually molested by crazed monkeys in certain areas. News at eleven that you can't afford to miss."
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
Journalists today often do not fact check any more than the bloggers they denounce. That's why this lesson was necessary and will need to be repeated several more times. The "mainstream media" is not differentiating itself from bloggers because no one expects us to fact check every post and its references because we're amateurs. Calling bloggers "citizen journalists" is flattery that none of us deserve. When blogs do fact check, it's like a mechanic doing some engineering work, but the journalists are behaving like engineers who are too proud and lazy to actually do basic mechanical work on their own machines or software. You don't expect the mechanic to be able to partially redesign something to get it working better, but when they do, you respect that. However, you ought to expect an engineer to be able to maintain what they've built, and the media shows no signs of being willing to do professional grunt work as "lowly" as fact checking.
Another important lesson here is that the media often doesn't do its job when it comes to presenting Americans with a deeper report on totalitarian governments and violence abroad. So far, no American newspaper has reprinted the Danish cartoons, allegedly out of respect for Muslims. Yet the New York Times will report on something as safe as "Piss Christ" which is significantly more of an attack on Christianity than those cartoons were on Islam. Why? Because then they'd have to worry about Islamists carbombing the NY Times. If they wrote scathing exposes of China, Syria, Libya and other states like those, they might have to worry about those countries' security and intel agencies killing their reporters abroad.
It seems like these bloggers were trying to make a point about western idealists and media blowing this Chinese internet censorship totally out of proportion. China does not allow the same individual rights as Western countries, and American corporations do business in China. That shouldn't really be a story, but it's a gigantic story. Maybe it's a good thing that Western media and idealists are using this story to try to make change happen across the world, but if I were Chinese I'd imagine I'd find it more than a little condescending.
I have had the honor to be involved in a couple of big hoaxes on the American media (and yes, I'm American). We've been trying to drive home the point that they report without fact-checking and rely too heavily on anonymous sources and unverified "news" stories.
Without getting into details, my group has managed to put several fabricated stories on the wire, prompted an editorial on a major news network, and I personally have been quoted as an "unnamed source in the government" by a major newspaper.
I guess I fail to see the irony here. A Chinese blogger posts a vaguely worded story meant to imply that the government shut him down, and the media reports it, and corrects the error the next day. How is this "proving a point"? The news media get things terribly wrong without anyone helping them all the time. I guess this guy has never seen an episode of The Daily Show.
As a media hoaxer, he really needs to learn a thing or two. There's been some very big media hoaxes over the years, though I can't remember anything recent. Everyone knows the War of the Worlds radio hoax by Orson Wells of course.
AccountKiller
This bizarre hoax makes about as much sense as a Pinochet supporter disappearing and reappearing during his reign, to make a comment on the Western media's coverage of the 'disappearance' of many of his protesters. It amounts to nothing less than hide real injustices in a thick fog of doubt.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
Yeah right. The guy intentionally feeds incorrect information to the outside world, then blames everyone for interpreting it incorrectly? Great logic skills, buddy.
Given his statement, apparently all of those censorship and freedom of speech problems don't exist. Move along, nothing to see here.
I think that we may be seeing the echoes of European and American imperialism and racism here. Over the past few centuries, the West certainly has historically exploited and looked down upon the East, and I can only imagine that Western crowing about the virtue of Western style human rights must be a bitter pill for China to take, all the more so because in this case the West is right, or largely right.
And here is his link:
http://www.accoona.com/about/press/press_release_
They're just ticked off because The Onion keeps fooling them.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
...the Boi Hu Clyde Wharf?
Hey...you where thinking it, I just went ahead and said it!
[Sarcasm] Wow they fooled the Media. I never thought i'd see the day where the media would report some sensationlist news without checking the facts out. This is a sad day indeed. [/sarcasm]
~Should i be worried when the real world starts lagging?
Cultural bias aside, the Chinese really do things like this often so how could people interpret it differently? This is not an indictment of the news media; it's an indictment of cultural differences being exploited for notoriety. Chinese media does have a very real history of being repressed by Chinese authorities and intentionally making fools of people doesn't really point out anything in this context. The Chinese government (and if some congresspersons and senators here in the U.S. have their way, the U.S. government - see the recent stories about requiring bloggers and posters to register with real user information) will continue to repress expression on the web and their point proves nothing.
It's a kind of reverse "cry wolf" effect the bloggers pointed out, but to what ends does it serve excepting gaining notoriety for those sites/persons?
How can we be sure that the Chinese government really didn't shut down the blog?
Perhaps this was a planned political marketing ploy. They force Mr. Wang to take down the blog, and then force him to put it back up again, claiming he had the idea the whole time, and thus giving the idea that the Chinese government does not act like the Western world thinks it does. How can we be sure Mr. Wang is not under coercion (by money or by threat) from the Chinese government? Watch his blog posts over the next month or two; if they change in composition, he's turned.
Or, alternatively, since he couldn't be reached for comment (at least by the BBC), perhaps that's not even him posting in it now. Perhaps the government threw him in a cell, and now has one of the lower-levels getting ready to post things in support of the Chinese government. This would potentially be worse, since people would be more willing to accept counter-ideas from a source they trust.
Also, am I the only one who found the following line humorous?
Mr. Wang says he and Milk Pig acted jointly. Milk Pig couldn't be reached for comment.
(This post was made with only halfhearted conspiracy ideals- I ran out of tinfoil, so it's only half a hat. I'm thinking of making it a beaner(ie?)...)
Maybe just propaganda! (The Chinese version of FoxNews?) He was probably paid by the regime.
Having said this the media should be careful about their reporting. But the good thing is freedom of speech allows to correct mistakes... without stuff like editing photos to make no-longer-popular people disappear.
Last week China responded to US criticism of their human rights record. My guess is the blog incident this is part of a planned strategy of pushing back in the human rights debate. Not very convincing or effective. I expect more from the communist party propaganda machine.
an ill wind that blows no good
HELP I am being held prisoner in a Chinese BLOG server room
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
... Okay so now we don't know what to think any longer. It seemed pretty simple before with people writing things only to have them tracked down with the aid of Yahoo! and prosecuted. Now bloggers themselves pulling stunts attempting to make western media seem foolish?
I don't get it. First of all, the media generally reports the facts as reported to them. If 100 people claim to have witnessed Godzilla walking along the beach in Japan and there are footprints there, the media will report those facts... not neccessarily that Godzilla exists, but that witnesses claim and evidence exists. If some bloggers claim to have been censored by the chinese government and the blogs disappear, then their claims are reported and the fact that the blogs have disappeared is reported.
If the idea is that the western media should not trust the media from China, then okay, I'll accept that. If the Chinese don't want to be trusted, I now trust them less than I did before.
His goal was to demonstrate that the Western press makes everything political. Perhaps he's right, but it seems to me that he's failed to demonstrate it. He posted a deliberately misleading message on his web site. If he wanted to post evidence, I'd rather see examples of how things he posted were taken out of context. The China Daily article doesn't give them.
Well, now he's attracted attention, and he gets the opportunity to do the demonstration he wanted, but the way he attracted the attention doesn't demonstrate it by itself.
"Bad journalism" seems a misnomer to me. The story they wrote contains the conclusions the blog strongly implied they should. When it turned out they were wrong, they retracted the story. Journalism is "the first rough draft of history", but that draft is continually revised. Which means that sometimes they will be fooled by people deliberately setting out to fool them.
They claim that they were unable to contact him to check the story in detail, and I believe them when they say that they couldn't. If their goal was purely to politicize, they wouldn't have bothered posting the retraction.
If there's criticism to be made of journalists, it's that they feel compelled to report what they see immediately, before they get a chance to do full detailed investigation. That's the fault of the Western system in general, where people will buy whatever news media outlet will give them the news first. And perhaps that also extends to whatever gives them the most "exciting" news, even if it means jumping to conclusions, but I think that this case doesn't demonstrate that.
... there are stupid trolls.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
A blog say that it was trying to "tell" media that it was shut down by the government, and that is exactly what the media reports. Later the blog changes "tell" to "trick", and the media reports that. Seems to me the media did exactly what they were supposed to - report what was happening.
republishing a story from the Onion. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/07/1829212.shtm l
Too bad the Reuters link is no longer valid.
"Western media" is irresponsible when not checking up lies like "Because of unavoidable reasons, this blog is now temporarily closed". If just a blog would've dissapeared, this would be far less likely to even have been covered. It's not like media fabricated this story on their own; he assisted in creating a plausible foundation for rumors and web chatter quite a bit as well.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
this.
I also do not live in China, and I also think the Chinese government is just fine.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
He's collaborating with those who try to suppress it.
Nothing!
Here's a newsbreak for ya: 'blogs' are not news sources.
We have a fable about a little boy who cried wolf as a prak one too many times. When there really was a wolf and he was in need, no one believed him. When your site is really taken down by the Chinese Government, don't be surprised when we don't believe you.
Wang Xiaofeng wrote "Due to unavoidable reasons with which everyone is familiar, this blog is temporarily closed." ..which is basically saying "Due to government sensorship, this blog is closed." Here in the west, that would be called entrapment. Why the phrase "..with which everyone is familiar"? You know the answer: he wanted to make readers think of government censorship.
And then he has the gall to say Western press "irresponsible" and that the hoax was designed "to give foreign media a lesson that Chinese affairs are not always the way you think."
What a childish toy game he's playing. Obviously he doesn't understand that being lied to, and then getting lambasted for believing what he said, is professional suicide. Do you think anybody will give a hoot about what happens to his blog now? All his peers should be pissed at the spillover effect.
I mean, this would be like blogging a fake story about a building being bombed in Baghdad or one about Michael Jackson molesting a child and having it picked up by news outlets. There's nothing impressive about that. People expect it to happen.
You want to impress me. Pull off a hoax that gets people to believe that the US Government shutdown your blog and see if news agencies carry it. That would really get peoples panties in a wad. Might even make it to the Slasdot front page so we could all rant about it. That's always fun because once it's found to be a hoax we get to belittle the Slashdot editors for posting it in the first place.
MG
Good job! You just shot your cause in the foot.
I'm super impressed by your skillz.
Thanks for the nothing.
"Knee Jerk" is exactly the expression I would use in describing much of western media's reporting on China. I feel funny even having to say this, but China is a huge country with a complex society. The naive precept of a bipolar China with an evil communist government vs. the people is just that: naive. Speculating government suppresion in any social incidents is as "knee jerky" as pointing to the Bush administration whenever a car accident happens in America. By reporting based on speculative instincts rather than facts and objective analysis, the western media has been DETRIMENTAL, rather than helpful, to the free speech movement in China. Reporting like this one and others have dis-credited the western media and alienated even disgusted much of the Chinese people (not the government). It's no wonder there has been a serious backlash in China's cyber free speech movement in recent few years. I'm sure at this very moment the Chinese Minister of Central Propaganda is laughing his rear end off reading this column.
Here's your evidence. This lady is a VA nurse who wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper about how poorly Bush has been handling the Iraq war and huricane Katrina.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/33027/
She's been under investigation by the FBI since then, and they're threatening to throw her in jail on sedition charges. They've been using scare tactics like interrupting her in the middle of her work at the hospital and confiscating her work computer "to look for evidence".
The future is arriving faster than you think.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
So while there's no dispute that the media are largely left-biased, they're just not biased enough to suit you and the rest of the "ultra-progressives". Sort of how President Bush is clearly right-wing, but not right-wing enough to suit Pat Roberts.
You know, that actually makes sense. It certainly explains why the truly insane leftists out there keep insisting that the media is actually biased in favour of the right-wing. When you're an extremist with no basis in reality, then anyone who's significantly less extreme than you will appear to be on the other side.
Sorry for being o.t. but this post reads like bad code.
...useful idiots.
When you lie about something that could easily be true, and the person you're lieing about (the Chinese government) is unreliable, then people will oftentimes believe you. Granted, it is irresponsible to assume that something is true without proper verification, but that is the real "point" here, and isn't really related to "free speech."
Reminds me of the old story of the boy who cried wolf.
A boy was watching a flock of sheep. One day, he was bored, so he started yelling, "Help there's a wolf attacking my sheep!" The rest of the town ran to the boy's aid, they looked every where to make sure the boy was safe, but there was no wolf. So the returned to their daily lives.
The next day the boy was bored again, so he started yelling, again, "Help there's a wolf attacking my sheep!" Again the rest of the town ran to the boy's aid, but again, there was no wolf.
The third day a wolf actually showed up and started to attack the flock. The boy started yelling, for a third time, "Help there's a wolf attacking my sheep!" The townspeople tired of falling for the boys tricks, ignored him. Unfortunately, the boy was never heard from again, when the wolf ate the entire flock and then turned on the boy.
Drawing attention to the sensationalistic desires of the media by fraudulent representing the actions of a government with a less than stellar reputation is not the best way to make a point. However amusing the resultant firestorm of reports were, Wang Xiaofeng may never be listened to again.
Shame on the media!
Sheeesh, is the press without the means to actually spend 5 minutes of research on anything at all? I am so sick of that fact that the press is great at yelling at one another, but obviously piss poor at performing the most basic research.
... in the promotion of pro-censorship direction, as of late?
Now if two bloggers can fool the media who in turn fools the people....
Don't the Governments do this too?
So who the hell needs censorship if you have so much misinformation out there?
Or is it that mis information is the only allowed informatioon?
the hoax was designed "to give foreign media a lesson that Chinese affairs are not always the way you think."
I.e. don't criticize our government, western dogs. We here in China have a right to free oppression!
Apparently, they wrote the latter.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
I mean, come on:
1. Hoax pulled off by Chinese bloggers
2. WinXP on a Mac
3. Novell's Linux Desktop to catch on
Are you fellas warming up for the Big Day, or something?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
While I agree that the Chinese government is oppresive in many ways including free speech, I like what this blog site owner was trying to do. He managed to fool (troll perhaps?) the western media. While it wasn't really anything of great importance he was able to prove his point that the Western media is "irresponsible" and they often dive head first without checking to see how deep the pool is. I think his intentions were excellent and that he did a pretty good job of proving his point, even if the Chinese government does shut down his site.
6 in a row
This isn't a personal dig as it applies to pretty much everybody these days, but with all due respect the government of China really isn't very communist. Neither was the Soviet Union's or North Korea. It's a side issue to the debate here, but read Marx and then tell me that it's part of a communist system of government to censor blogs (or have public executions, or systematically starve whole regions etc etc). These types of governments may try to convince their people that they're living in a communist paradise where everyone's enlightened and equal, but let's not fall for the idea in the west too.
so the tactic is ... I don't want the west thinking that my government is against free speech so I'm going to pretend that my government IS against free speech then I'll pull the cover and HAH! see, they are NOT against free speech???? WTF?
... shoulda seen the look on my face.
You got me China
to do these days, it's simple as that. do you really think the western care about human rights in other countries? give me a freaking break. it's all political, and for one (country)'s own interests. things change, flavours change, and political winds blew in different directions at differnt times. right now it's blowing against china. i'm a proud chinese and i live in the states. i do not necessirailly agree with a lot of things the chinese government did (i was in Tian-an-men square during the summer of 1989). however if china succumbs to western pressure and becomes demacratic in a hurry, only disaster will follow. Russia and Irag are two prime examples, and they have *far* less population than china to worry about. have you imagined what will happen if every household in the US or EU suddenly becomes 5-times more crowded? yes 5 times, that's the population of china compared with US; if you have 1 brother, you will now have 8 more. social tensions will inevitablly rise and that's just human nature (look at the aftermath of hurricane katrina, when thousands of people were crowded into a single stadium and left to compete for resources with each other; the whole china is in a similar albeit a bit less dramatic 'stadium' if you will). do i wish for a democartic china? of course i do. but i also understand the realities and cultural backgrounds to know that time has not yet arrived. my point is each people and culture is different. even if democracy is a universally achievable common goal, eahc country and people may have to approach it in different methods and paces. and for people to constantly criticize china just because it's a politically correct thing to do is ridiculous.
Don't dupe yourself -- America is a fascist state, and has been for some time now. It probably started around Clinton's time, although Dubya has worked hard to try and outdo him.
A breathtaking example of misinformation. I couldn't think of a more effective attack on the rising discontent about China's stance on human rights and freedom.
...about freedom of speech...
as long as they are well-supplied with their Burberry, Gucci and Chanel goods.
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
OK, who's not thinking of boobies right now?
include $sig;
1;
Does he/she live in Europe? Its a good question.
Serious questions not meant as flamebait:
In which country do you now live?
Why does your family no longer live in China?
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
Although some Chinese support a free press, most do not. The consequence is that Chinese modernization will lead to a state like Singapore, not a liberal Western nation like either Japan or Canada.
A modernized China will shape the world in its imagine just as the USA did with its own economic might. How will Beijing shape the world? Here's a hint. Most Chinese (including those in Taiwan and Hong Kong) conduct business with anyone, including murderous thugs. After Western businesses pulled out of Sudan, the Chinese rushed into it. The Sudanese government, which massacred hundreds of thousands of defenseless children, is reaping huge profits from selling oil to the Chinese.
Are you looking forward to this kind of future world? Not me.
Fascism is what Mussolini practiced. I suggest you look it up -- you'll find the parallels between fascism and neoconservativism quite striking. I'd think that someone who is supposedly a libertarian would be more concerned about modern American politics -- everything about the Bush administration is diametrically opposed to libertarian ideals, unless your idea of libertarianism is just leaving the disabled and infirm to freeze to death in the back-alleys of ghettos while still wasting trillions of dollars on the largest government in American history.
Read carefully. Wang's note merely said: "Because of unavoidable reasons, this blog is now temporarily closed". Which part of "unavoidable reasons" sounds like either wolf or government suppresion? Websites and Blogs shut down temporarily everyday. Virus attacks, unscheduled maintenance, power outage, datacenter problem, hardware issues, even natural disasters... In recent memory, even multinational giant sites such as Yahoo, MSN became "temporarily unavailable" several times. Why does "unavoidable reasons" have to be government suppresion in this case? Now read the BBC report again. The first sentence in the report claims Wang "has been closed down by the authorities". Obviously SOMEONE jumped into a conclusion. The tendency to make a judgement without corroborative facts, is the definition of BIAS. A biased wester media that doesn't do its homework lacks credibility, and biased reporting does not help promoting democracy or freedom of speech, instead it helps build the Chinese government's argument that the west media is irresponsible. At the end of the day, that's the point Wang's prank tries to make. For those capable of thinking independently, without the divine guidance from the "mainstream media", then consider again who cried wolf, Wang or the media?
"Communism has been responsible for more pain and suffering than any other form of government in the history of men"
..."worried that the revolution came too early in Russia's economic development as Marxism requires capitalism to have exhausted its mechanisms of growth before attaining socialism. Consequently, the major Socialist Party in the UK decried the revolution as anti-Marxist within twenty-four hours"
That feudalsim lark was just zealous banter between different families / clans / tribes / regions / countries / continents then?
Those colonial conquests were only mildly awkward?
Those crusades into the holy land were just a passing fad, then; no harm, no foul?
I am not denying that fascism and despotism have grown under the cloak of communism since the days of Marx, but let's be clear: At the time it was clearly better to fight and die for freedom and equality (recognise those ideals?) than subsist and starve a Tsarist peasant slave, because that is what droves of people chose, when fighting armed, paid soldiers.
Labelling the idea of Communism as a failure because some military dictatorships call themselves 'Communist Countries' is like labelling Socialism as aggressive because of the 1920's+ German 'National Socialist Workers Party'.
I might also point out, quoting wikipedia:
Many
[ insert meme here ]
I guess when you overthrow democratically elected governments and replace them with butchering despots, murder civilians with weapons as hideously and needlessly cruel as napalm, and bomb countries that you aren't even at war with, people somehow see that as a bad thing... what ever could they be thinking?
Hello all: I like to point out that the story is lost in most of our posts here (some of us still remain true). The point is that our news media takes materials out of context. In annoyance, the two Chinese bloggers protest how their words have been twisted... The original story is NOT about western news media's lack of research and getting their stories wrong (though that certainly contributed to the development of this event). As stated in http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2006-03/1 4/content_534795.htm, the story is about our media turning these two bloggers' words into politically charged statements.
The original story is NOT even about Chinese government's censorship over material on the internet (though that is true). The story is about extra material our media added to spice up a story about two Chinese bloggers' site being shut down.
Cheers
B. Pascal.
The situation is far more complicated there than 'Maoist bad' etc. The Maoist rebels need to be considered in relation to what they stand in opposition to - the brutal dictatorship under the current king of Nepal. It's no coincidence that at this point, the major political parties in Nepal are siding with the Maoists.
Furthermore, the death toll analysis is not very reliable. For example, much of the death in the GLF was from incompetence and lack of control, rather than authoritarian actions. The Cultural Revolution, meanwhile, was not a centrally organised disaster, but of self igniting fanaticism. And so on and so forth.
While it is easy to make such lists, it is more valuable to look at what connects them - and what connects them has little to do with communism itself - Marx never espoused a dictatorship. What made these cases arise is the raising to high station of an insignificant, paranoid peasant warlord, who becomes obsessed with delusions of self-grandeur. The above sort of thing is not restricted to communism, but occurs in any case where a hated government is removed suddenly by a rebel movement, which then finds itself surrounded by external enemies and half-imagined, half-real remnants of the deposed force. Non-communist examples involve the Taliban, Nazi Germany, the Rwandan massacres, post-Soviet Russia, Saddam-era Iraq......
The bloggers are absolutely right in this case. In this case. The fact is, western media and news is irresponsible on a regular basis. If any of the reporters in this chain of news had done their homework first, called who they needed to call, investigated what they needed to investigate, we might have ended up with a nice report of the whole truth behind this situation from the both the Chinese and the western perspectives. But no, the rumors were just lazily passed on and written up as fact.
However, this does not mean that China is a white knight or always misunderstood. Show me any government that is innocent.
If reporters did their job the way we ideally expect them to, there would be far less reported on, but each report would be full and more accurate. Personally, I could do with less noise.
As usual, depends on which side of the barricades you are. Same as "terrorist" vs "freedom fighter", "massacre of civilian population" vs "collateral damage", and the rest of the bunch.
When I was in Beijing in 1998 the city looked like Bladerunner. There were Dominos Pizza places, McDonalds outlets (playing Happy Birthday endlessly), high-rise department stores, little computer shops, street vendors everywhere. There's private property, investment, a market. They joined WTO.
Of course the government is controlled by a single party with significant intervention in the economy, and that party is called "communist". However, since Tienanmen square, the government has lost its ideological halo. It is trying to legitimate itself through nationalism and growth; it's not afraid to be capitalist if that's what it takes to hang on to power.
In fact, the biggest danger is likely that the government will lose control. The great fear of those I talked to was that China would follow Russia's lead if reform were too rapid. As it is, there are worrisome challenges to the central government, ranging from petty dictators in the countryside to corrupt businesses (manufacturing fake medicine or reselling used needles, for example) and towns that operate outside the law. In these cases, the central government are often the good guys, and the capitalists are the bad guys.
When I arrived, I figured air quality was more important than democracy. I could barely breathe. The pollution was so bad you could look directly at the sun on a cloudless day without blinking; it would be brown. I hear it's much better now: the government exerted its power and outright banned coal burning and leaded gas in Beijing.
I'm not defending the many abuses in China. They need democracy. I bet lots of Chinese officials would agree (if you want to reform a one-party state, which party do you join?). But it's not so simple; there's no clean slate. And that's why it's absurd to simply call China "communist", or to use "communism" as code for "evil". I suspect that was the point Wang Xiaofeng was trying to make. I'm sad to see this reaction.
You're a bit behinds the times.
It is no longer difficult to arrange oversea trips or immigration AS LONG AS YOU HAVE SOME MONEY.
Those hiding in the container cargo are doing so because they could not get a legal visa to enter the USA!
While it used to be the case where many graduate students from China choose to stay in the US. Now a days, there are many who have returned to China due to greater work opportunities. Of course, this applies to those with applicable education or a head for business. Those who are sneaking into the US tend to have less education and fewer opportunities there.
In World War II, many in the US did not believe that the Nazis were systematically killing millions of Jews. Many still don't believe it today.
During the cold war many refused to believe that USSR (as the greater Russian conglomerate of states was called at the time) had an economy and military as horribly managed as was sometimes described in the press. That only truly became apparent when the communist government collapsed and finally the west got to take a look at a third world country economy that was masquerading as first world. East Germany is still trying to shake off all the problems of its inherited woes and it has the active help of an integrated partner.
I constantly remind myself of these things when I hear that "things could not really be that bad in China". Any place that implements systematic censorship is, almost by definition, worse than anything the western media reports. But having said that, I would really be surprised if China has any really horrible crimes that it is suppressing. Sure powerful people are pushing around the less powerful in ways that contravene justice, but you have to be awfully blind not to see that is universal in almost all countries regardless of government type. At least in a country with free press I can safely (for the most part - there have been too many exceptions) complain about it and once in a while justice will be done.
Of course, the fact that the media was fooled by a couple of prankster bloggers does not actually imply much about the politics of the media, but more about their general gullibility in reporting anything as fact without really checking it.
Not having read the actual article and going by the misleading article blurb, I'd like to throw out my uniformed comment. To quote Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon: "What was that? An exhibition? We need emotional content. Try Again."
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
It seems Western running dogs are terribly sensitive to being pwned by Chinese bloggers :) Let's pretend the topic doesn't exist?
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
And what are governments made up of, if not people?
~ Wizardry Dragon
A group of 3 art students in the UK in the early 1990's got a grant for 'Live Art' and 'blew it' on a holiday. The press released the pictures, and the media hype over the scandal of paying 'lazy students' went to the national TV news.
/. at least), and the atmosphere now google are complying with Chinese State censorship, I would say this stunt has a good chance of becoming fine art in hindsight too.
Once the story went national, the students showed that they had actually spent the grant faking the pictures, phone calls - in fact the whole holiday (they had never left the country), to bait the country into a discussion over the perception of students, and the (at the time, just starting) change from free grants and subsidies to 'Student Loans', which have replaced them (although Uni tuition fees are still free).
It's the timing which made it such good 'Live Art' - and I would go as far as saying it became Fine Art (in hindsight, having racked up £10,000 = $17,500 in loans).
Given the furore over this 1 man (on
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I think what the guy did is great! In fact, I think it should be a new sport. Contestants can compete to see who can dupe more lazy journalist in a month. I'd be happy to donate money towards a cash prize for such an event as long as the hoodwinked news organizations get their crow served up publically.
Years ago there used to be this thing called "journalism school" in which all sorts of arcane knowledge was taught like "ethics" and "more than one primary source". Modern media needs to be exposed for the joke that it is.
Wasn't this an April Fool's Slashdot joke?
Do you guys know the origin of U2's "Sunday bloody Sunday"?
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
well, most of you. no one, i don't think, defending the chinese gov't is saying that it is perfect. they're saying it is not getting the credit it deserves from western media. which, by the way, is the exact defense ppl here are using for the u.s. gov't, the western media, etc. yes, bush does evil things, but we have a democracy that has checks and balances blah blah blah. well, yes, the chinese gov't doesn't allow individual freedom on the same level western gov't do, but... can most of you finish that sentece? no, b/c all you hear about china is 1. (lack of) human, er western conception of human, rights, 2. (too much) economic / military growth. the message that most chinese ppl are desperately trying to get out isn't save me from this evil god aweful communist repression, but that look at how far we've come, understand us, walk a mile in our shoes, please. now since i've taken the chinese side, it does me no good to say i'm a u.s. citizen does it? cuz who could be sure the chinese aren't making me say it? well, ask yourself why you think that.
Don't be so quick to look at it through the geo-political polarizing sunglasses. YOu claim that people are upset because its the Chinese. YOu also say your dad "...firmly believes that people are getting paid by the US government to bash the Chinese government."
While Occam's razor might drive us towards the simplest solution (e.g. the bloggers just tricked us), it is always more fun to believe in a conspiracy theory because its more exiting, has more options, etc. So whether for the Chinese that conspiracy is the U.S. government pulling the strings, or if for the West that conspiracy is the Chinese government block bloggers, the true fact is that universally, conspiracy theories are more fun to believe!
He calls the Western press "irresponsible" and says that the hoax was designed "to give foreign media a lesson that Chinese affairs are not always the way you think."
What the hell is he talking about????
He himself wrote on his blog "Due to the reasons known to everyone"
What the hell is China known to everyone for?
What is not mentioned in the WSJ is the real reason why they shut down their blogs—I would called the journal report still a biased one. In fact, they did it as a humorous action, because 8 March is a special day in China: the Women's Day—no, I have read no Chinese words that they intended to give the Western reporters a lesson. However, since their words are ambiguous ("Due to unavoidable reasons with which everyone is familiar, this blog is temporarily closed."), it raised doubts in the West.
China is not at all perfect. China is not at all as bad as some think.
Is the Chinese government kinder and gentler than in 1989 when the Massacare occured in Tienanmen square? Do you even know of this? I would say this is evidence of an overly heavy handed government. People were killed in the hundreds for daring to publicly call for democracy.
With that being said, I do believe the Chinese government is going to have to change and adapt. They won't be able to stop people from seeing the world and having wants and needs. Prosperity will lead to democracy and the Chinese middle class is taking root.
Speaking as an American living in Beijing, I concur with what you say.
In this day and age, you cannot trust any government or news outlet to give you the complete truth. If you have the capacity for independent, critical thought, you are the minority. Jingoism tends to get in the way of being objective.
Many Chinese think that information in the USA is censored like in China.. Unfortunately (this will sound sinister), I think it is easier to exploit the ignorance of people than it is to educate them.
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
"My country, right or wrong," eh? Congratz. You are now every bit as dumb and jingoistic as the most drain-bamaged red-state 'murrikan.
My dad ... has an even stronger opinion than I have. He firmly believes that people are getting paid by the US government to bash the Chinese government.
Your dad is an optimist. You don't have to pay most people very much to get them to act stupidly.
This is a great characterization of what happened, and shows that the real problem here is that the people doing this don't understand free speech. Free speech is not perfect speech, and that's the point. No-one's speech is perfect all the time. But by allowing free speech, mistakes are much more likely to be corrected, and abuses much less likely to remain undetected.
People living under a speech-restricting regime have a hard time understanding the natural chaos in a society with free speech. Heck, people who live in free speech societies often have difficulties with that chaos. People like to have sure sources of information that they can always rely on - the problem is that such sources don't exist.
see http://blog.bcchinese.net/bingfeng/archive/2005/10 /26/40133.aspxc s_interview.htm
and http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20051107_bb
Well, the only thing matters is the taste of the audience, reporting the full truth is not always the best business. That's the way Confucius edited The Annals Of The Spring and Autumn.
Happy holiday!