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An Inside Look at the Great Firewall of China
alphadogg writes "An interview with James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, who has experienced 'The Great Firewall of China' firsthand, an experience people from around the world will share this summer when the Olympics comes to that country. Based in Beijing, Fallows has researched the underlying technology that the Chinese use for Internet censorship. One good thing to know: With VPNs and proxies, you can get around it pretty easily." Will these Olympics lead to a more free China, or is it just corporate pandering?
What does an athletic competition have to do with the internal politics of a country?
At the risk of running afoul of Godwin's law, Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics before the beginning of WWII. They mostly used it as a propaganda opportunity, and it's hard to say that the event led to any more openness or political moderation on the part of the German government.
Because China is trying to figure out a "balance" .... they want foreigners to be able to come in and communicate home, but don't want the general population getting too much unfiltered information.
It's about controlling the politics, not maintaing some information purity.
And, simply by blocking these sites, the government is able to mark them as bad or dangerous, which has weight with a lot of the population.... usually at least until the blocking hits too close to home. (As in all free speech issues).
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
One suspects that if I made the same argument and replaced 'China' with 'the United States' and 'Tibet' with 'Iraq' that I'd be quickly modded troll. And since you mentioned Puerto Rico -- are we repressing an independence movement in Puerto Rico at gunpoint? Are the people of Tibet free to vote in local elections and choose their own destiny as the people of Puerto Rico are?
They revolt out of nationalistic pride, but in reality they are better off with China's modernizations.If I made the same argument about Native Americans I'd be modded down faster then you can say "gunpowder". What the hell gives one group of people the right to impose "modernization" on another group of less well armed people? This isn't the 19th century anymore.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
ll three are self-serving, but the Chinese government are the most socially responsible of the lot.
I see. That would be the China that just shouted down any attempt by the UN to even hold discussions about whether to try to bypass the Burma junta and get international aid directly to the million people that are about to die there? That IS socially responsible!
And corporations? They exist to serve the people that form and invest in them. That's their actual purpose. Of course, many of them are lining up to provide goods and services to aid the people who are about to die in Burma, while China and Russia are backing the junta's demands to funnel all of the aid through them (you know, the people who elected not to warn their coastal population that they were about to die in droves, even though the rest of the world scrambled to let that military regime know what was about to happen). You know, the military regime that is confiscating such aid as IS allowed to land there, and which they are labeling with their own stickers and political propoganda before handing it out. You know, the military regime that China is insulating from so much as a formal rebuke from the UN.
What's your motivation, here, exactly? You find the Chinese government - who jail and even kill people for saying the sorts of things you can sit at a US corporate desk and say all day long, and who harbor and sanction outright network vandalism and malware propogation around the world, and prop up hell holes like North Korea - more trustworthy than Honda, or Bayer, or LG, or Nokia, or Virgin Atlantic, or AMD, or your local grocery store chain? Really?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Actually, Russia has lately been sliding back into old Soviet ways recently. Putin is ex-KGB, and his hand-picked successor recently became president. Most media outlets are very fearful of criticizing the government. I wouldn't exactly point to Russia and call it a success story.