Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Official Vows to "Purify" the Net
Sleeping Kirby writes to tell us China's Communist party leader, Hu Jintao today announced the intent to leverage the economic potential of the web while seeking to "purify the internet environment". He proposes to do this by maintaining "the initiative in opinion" on the internet and to "'raise the level guidance on the internet," thus civilizing and purifying the internet environment.
From TFA:
It's still why I think Bolshevism* and its sequelae are more insidious than fascism: sure, the fascists will shoot you if you agitate against them; but the Bolshevik state would prevent you from agitating in the first place by limiting the set of stimuli that comprise your world.
Reminds me a great deal, actually, of that old Semitic myth about a certain garden and tree of knowledge; whose premise was: fragile and jealous power depends upon the ignorance of its subjugates.
The ignorance of subjugates will always be a Bolshevik, and not a fascist, end.
_____________
* Or Marxism, etc.
Don't they mean purify humanity?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Hu Jintao is a very talented man.
from the article:
Hu stressed the need to exploit the net's possibilities, while keeping a tight grip. "Ensure that one hand grasps development while one hand grasps administration," he concluded.
On the internet I thought one hand was for the mouse and the other was otherwise occupied. Its no wonder he is keeping a tight grip.
liqbase
Well with the unix epoch hitting 1169696969 in 7 hours and thus a dip in the 65% of people spending time with their SO, it should be harder for him to purify the net.
You might think that the average person wouldn't stand for it. But I recall someone once saying the "average person" is 5' tall, female, and Chinese.
While China may only house 15-20% of the world's population, that's still a huge fraction. That would be one hell of an astroturf.
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Yeah, just what we needed - officials of a country with a long track record in crimes against humanity bent on 'cleaning up the Internet'.
Every time you buy some "MADE IN CHINA" shit from WalMart, etc. you help bankroll this type of crap.
Trolling is a art,
...that he is going to ban Internet Explorer (tight grip) and force a replacement for SMTP (innovate).
Well, he's nearly got the clout for it. Good luck Hu. You've got my vote! oh wait...
Anyone who confuses the Web and the Internet isn't qualified to report about either.
And anyone who puts a ® at the end of an entire article as if it was a copyright symbol isn't qualified to copyright or register as a trademark anything.
Staring at a white background [on a computer screen] while you read is like staring at a light bulb — Maddox
And this is unique to "Bolshevism" how? Controlling the media to present a picture of fair and rational government has been the aim of almost every government/state/ruler in history and it continues to the present day. You need to hit the books if you think fascists (or democrats - small "d") don't practice this too...
A vast majority of the world's servers are in countries not named the People's Republic of China. Therefore, to do as he insists, he would have to take control of those servers. I suspect, that even given the large number of people at his beck and call, that is a task beyond his capacity. At some point, every person is possession of sole authority in some organization gets delusions of grandeur.
In plain English: he's FOS.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I think it's obvious the entire slashdot community is going to be 'against' this initiative. We all have experience using 'more than average' time on the internet and particularly the world wide web ; it is completely impossible to 'guide' people on the internet.
China would have to have a ginormous amount of 'censors' constantly surfing and updating their own database of acceptable internet sites to have anything close to a 'guidance initiative'. This is just a media spin on what china has been doing all along, blocking major portions of the internet off completely from it's own citizens.
You can see the ridiculous tracert douginadress.com takes to reach chinese citizens right now ; another comment on China's inability to even provide standard censorship
Ace
Article 35. Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
Article 37. The freedom of person of citizens of the People's Republic of China is inviolable. No citizen may be arrested except with the approval or by decision of a people's procuratorate or by decision of a people's court, and arrests must be made by a public security organ. Unlawful deprivation or restriction of citizens' freedom of person by detention or other means is prohibited; and unlawful search of the person of citizens is prohibited.
Article 39. The home of citizens of the People's Republic of China is inviolable. Unlawful search of, or intrusion into, a citizen's home is prohibited.
Article 40. The freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens of the People's Republic of China are protected by law. No organization or individual may, on any ground, infringe upon the freedom and privacy of citizens' correspondence except in cases where, to meet the needs of state security or of investigation into criminal offences, public security or procuratorial organs are permitted to censor correspondence in accordance with procedures prescribed by law.
Article 41. Citizens of the People's Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions to any state organ or functionary. Citizens have the right to make to relevant state organs complaints and charges against, or exposures of, violation of the law or dereliction of duty by any state organ or functionary; but fabrication or distortion of facts with the intention of libel or frame-up is prohibited. In case of complaints, charges or exposures made by citizens, the state organ concerned must deal with them in a responsible manner after ascertaining the facts. No one may suppress such complaints, charges and exposures, or retaliate against the citizens making them. Citizens who have suffered losses through infringement of their civil rights by any state organ or functionary have the right to compensation in accordance with the law.
Dude, spoiler warning!
/tosses book
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
From wikipedia, In December 2004, the Hong Kong magazine Open quoted an alleged instruction by Hu to propaganda officials in September in which he wrote that, when managing ideology, China had to learn from Cuba and North Korea. Although North Korea had encountered "temporary economic problems", its political policies were "consistently correct". Open also quoted Hu as calling Mikhail Gorbachev, "a betrayer of socialism".
Well, that doesn't sound too good. And he wants to "purify" the internet.
Another interesting summary on wiki of his "Eight Do's and Dont's", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba_rong_ba_chi
Number Eight is interesting, "Regard plain living and hard struggle as an honour, regard living in luxury as a shame."
Perhaps he needs a number nine, which reads something like "Regard the internet as a backward Western evil, filled with filthy images and make-believe."
Straight outta pre-bubble 2000 sales hype for some dot-com. Yup, China is advancing far faster than we could have ever believed.
Thank God! We need less memory leaks.
Kind of like skynet, but with porn.
So, ThighNet then?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Every time there's this knee-jerk, robotic reaction I totally don't get. Believe in what you WANT TO believe in. In this case, there's no FA to read.
The first Chin Emperor (Qin in modern romanization), ZHENG Ying (259-210BC), gave his Dynasty's name to the entire country of China. He burned all the books in the country and banned scholarly discussion of history. Sounds a lot like the current Emperor is just doing what a Chinese Emperor normally does. And that might explain why the Chinese people, whose sense of history extends far further back than most Westerners', tolerate his continued rule. A sense of "unity" for all of China comes from the Emperor. See the modern movie "Hero" for one take on this facet of Chinese culture.
He also changed his name to Shi Huangdi, meaning "First August God". This is certainly nothing that the current Emperor would ever deign to do.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
From: Chmn Hu Jintao
Date: Thursday, January 25, 2007 12:53 PM
Subject: PURIFICATION CAMPAIGN
Chmn Hu Jintao
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am fine today and how are you? I hope this letter will find you in the best of health. I am Chmn Hu Jintao, the Chairman of the "Communist Party" and the "Fifth Civilization Marching Forward Into the Millenium (FCMFIM)", a subsidiary of the "PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA (PRC)".
The Fifth Civilization Marching Forward Into the Millenium (FCMFIM) was set up by the late Head of State, Chmn Mao Zedong who died on 9 September 1976, to manage the excess revenue accruing from the electronic commerce and its allied products as a domestic increase in the campaign to purify the internet environment. The estimated annual revenue for 2005 was $45 Billion US Dollars Ref. FMF A26 Unit 3B Paragraph "D" of the Auditor General of the People's Republic of China Report of Nov. 2006 on estimated revenue.
I am the Chairman of the Contract Award Committee, and my committee is solely responsible for awaiting and paying of contracts on behalf of the People's Republic of China. My Committee awarded Contracts to foreign contractors for Vigorous Purification By One Hand Grasping Matters in the cheap plastic consumer goods producing areas of Sichuan. We overshot the contract sum by US$25,000,000.00. We have paid the contractors and withholding the balance of US$25,000,000.00. But, because of the existence of some of the domestic laws forbidding civil servants in PR from opening, operating and maintaining foreign accounts, we do not have the expertise to transfer this balance of fund to a foreign account.
However, this balance of US$25,000,000.00 has been secured in form of Credit/Payment to a foreign contractor, hence we wish to transfer into your bank account as the beneficiary of the fund. We have also arrived at a conclusion that you will be given 20% of the total sum transferred as our foreign partner, while 5% will be reserved for incidental expenses that both parties will incur in the course of actualizing this transaction, and the balance of 75% will be kept for the committee members.
If you know that you will be capable of helping us actualize this transaction, you should send to me immediately the details of your bank particulars or open a new bank account where we can transfer the money US$25,000, 000.00, which you will be holding in trust for us until we come to your country for our share. Your nature of business does not matter in this transaction. The required details includes your company's name, address, your private personal telephone/fax numbers, your full name and address, including your complete bank details where the transferred fund will be routed by the Shengdong Bank.
Note that this transaction is expected to be actualized within 21 working days from the day the required details are forwarded to the People's Ministry of Finance who will approve the needed foreign exchange control allocation for the release of this money to your account. Please, treat this as top secret. You should contact me urgently.
Thanks for your cooperation.
Yours RESPECTFULLY,
Chmn Hu Jintao
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
So Hu is on the First?
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
Wow there is a lot of anti-China rhetoric out here. Sure I hate the great firewall as much as the next /.ter but...
.xxx domains, Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), DOPA, banning online gambling...
How is this any different than local efforts to purify the internet like segregating the dirty pics into
You can find out all about international efforts to purify the net here. And its already outdated.
Every politician will talk about purifying the internet, making it safe for you and your children because most people have a knee jerk reaction, and it distracts from real issues.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Good luck with that.
From TA: "Hu stressed the need to exploit the net's possibilities, while keeping a tight grip. "Ensure that one hand grasps development while one hand grasps administration," he concluded."
In other unreported comments he went on to explain China's new computer initiative involving Linux and the new Chinese made and developed hardware. He said that his remarks applied equally to the new smart phone due to be released at the Beijing summer IT fair.
"It is exactly the same", he said "ensure also that one hand grasps hardware while the other grasps the OS. This way all users are given full integrated experience and can exploit potential of modern computer science to maximum without distraction from driver problem.
"Ensure one hand grasps phone network while other hand grasps mobile appliance. Only so can stability of both be assured and West China networks kept immune from crashes.
"Ensure also one hand around throat of developers and other around phone application environment. So can help users avoid distraction by non optimally working applications not authorized by Party.
"In coming weeks will be propounding further on four principles of making happy users and clean and healthy computing and phoning environment: protect OS, protect hardware, protect applications, protect networks. Trust in Party."
I am very surprised these inspiring comments, which will alas strike a chord with only one or two Western computing and mobile phone companies, and which are a devastating if tactful correction to the whole Open Source movement, failed to find their way into the press.
Shouldn't the Olympics of 2008 be boycotted just like the Olympics of 1980? China has done far worse things to the people and environment than Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
Of course, it would probably be easier if your politicians were not so tightly related to the big oil companies, but that's another story. Or is it ?
And mod me down all you like, I have plenty of karma to burn. Burning karma does not produce greenhouse gases :-)
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.