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Chinese Government Sued Over Dog Height Censorship
Googling Yourself writes "More than 30,000 censors are employed in China to monitor the Internet, so it was no surprise when censors deleted a posting by Chen Yuhua protesting Beijing municipal government's regulations barring any dog over 14 inches high and restricting each family to only one dog. The surprise (reports the Washington Post) was when Chen studied China's civil code and marched into court with a lawsuit, only the second time that a Chinese citizen has gone to court over party censorship. 'I was very careful to follow the correct procedure,' Chen said in an interview, while pointing at the official legal manual on his dining room table. On December 14 Chen was told by clerks that the district court, after referring to higher-level judges for advice, had decided to reject the case. The next step, Chen said, is an appeal to the Supreme Court."
Needless to say, Beijing's Municipal Government is not 'The Chinese Government', nor is this 'a bold challenge to the legal authority of the Communist Party to decide what China's 1.3 billion people can say and read on their computers'. And strictly speaking, we don't know whether his posting was actually removed by somebody who was a member of any government or indeed the Communist Party. In fact, the most likely scenario is that some employee at whichever web-hosting company runs the blog saw some reference to Beijing's local government and automatically deleted the post without even reading it further. And bureaucrats all over the world being what they are, they don't want to be bothered with cleaning up after their mistakes, so they tried to ignore it, knowing that this is too trivial for anybody to take serious action.
So how can this become 'a bold challenge' that illustrates that 'some of China's educated elite may be growing impatient with a one-party authoritarian system'? Well, only in the hazy minds of people who are willing to believe anything about their perceived enemies, never mind reality. I can't be bothered pointing out that this kind of things happen all the time everywhere - you already know.
I, like many other people in the world love and respect the American nation and the American people - but, by gods, you sometimes make it bloody hard work.
Read the Chinese constitution, or at least just skim the guaranteed rights.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html
(See, for example, article 35:
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.)
It's interesting that this document exists but, unlike the US Constitution, seems to hold no importance whatsoever.
Still, I'm glad this guy's standing up for himself.
(Completely Off-topic, but what the hell is that Dice Discussions Flash ad doing to Firefox to make it run so slow? Editors, you gotta pull this ad, this is ridiculous.)
Comment of the year
Do a google search for "sneaky leaker".It's a contraption designed for people who need to take a piss on the street during Mardigras (sp?) but can't whip it out because of indecent exposure laws. Basically it's a tube that runs down your pants leg.
*sigh* back to work...