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China's All-Seeing Eye
krou writes "Naomi Klein writes in Rolling Stone Magazine about China's Panopticon-like experiment called 'Golden Shield' taking place in Shenzhen using technology supplied by companies such as IBM, Honeywell, and General Electric. Klein writes: 'Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data.' According to Klein, this is more than just a Chinese experiment, it's also one that holds ramifications for America and elsewhere: '...the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state... The global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.'"
Anonymous Coward? Not for long...
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
"using technology supplied by companies such as IBM, Honeywell, and General Electric."
IBM making money at the expense of morality; nothing new here.
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/articles/auschwitz.html
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
Fortunately, somebody had the vision to warn us about this sort of thing, sixty years ago. I'm willing to bet that in China, a land where the government censors almost everything in sight, Orwell is banned.
BTW, has 1984 ever been translated into Mandarin? If so, whoever did it, that person should have a statue erected in every Chinatown in the western world, just like Dr Sun Yat-Sen eventually in Shanghai and Beijing.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
I am amazed. This has to be a joke, right? China is currently a largely agricultural society where a majority of citizens still live in the mountains. The money spent on bugging the population could be better spent on feeding the poor. I am surprised at how short-sighted the Communists are, and I already hold them in pretty low esteem.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Flash crowds, encrypted communications and decentralised communications vs. the (almost) all seeing police state. We will see this battle everywhere, not just in China. First casualties will be the geeks of the world, the ones who have the ability to put the people in control of their own communications.
Sure it is. Unless you're both more reputable than Rolling Stone, and conducting your own independent research to validate RS's claims, your opinion is worthless. But hey, pray to your glossy magazines, if that's what lets you sleep at night.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Must be a really slow news day, as this falls below even /. editors' usual low, low bar for Eek The Sky Is Falling Big Brother Is Watching FUD.
That a Communist regime spies extensively on its own citizens is news? Hello? Did you miss the entire 20th century or what? Some reports only half-jokingly suggest that roughly a fourth of East Germans were employed in some fashion or other on spying on their friends and neighbors through the Stasi. That's what happens when most of society is directed from the top -- "the top" needs extensive information about you to make decisions. More central control always requires less privacy, duh.
Then there's the tired old 20th century Marxist crap at the end about how this is all not, as you might naively think, the result of the morally corrupt and inhuman foundations of the Chinese Communist state, a direct and obvious form of Maoism, but instead...bwa ha ha...a fiendishly clever plot by IBM and friends to develop a new market for hardware. Wow, there's an original thought. Just a weird coincidence that it looks so much like classical 1920s Marxist assertions that the First World War was the result of heavy industries (Ford, Krupps) needing to develop a new market for steel products.
Gosh, if we're to be subjected to paranoid loony ravings, I wish they were at least original ravings, and not the warmed over groupthink of 1950s pseudo-Soviet apparatchiks with zero grasp of history. Feh.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see nothing in the above that we're not already doing here or have announced that we will be doing soon. And the amazing thing is this really big giant coincidence that it's also happening everywhere else. What gives? It's like a world government has been instituted or something.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
Police state 2.0!
If it were 1.4 or 1.5 we might have had a chance. But 2.0, theres no hope.
What news sources and/or publications would you suggest to stay informed?
-Grym
haha good one there.
/.
Also this is OLD FUCKING NEWS!
not to mention extremely boring and not really worthy of
Welcome to big brother state, one wrong move and your history, literally.
1984 is just a minor joke compared to what China is going to do in the future.
I guess we are going to see new breed of crackers and hackers soon.
It is also going to get really messy when this falls in on it self.
It has been a while since I've read Rolling Stone, but hey, it gave us the likes of Hunter Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. All that is shiny is not shallow.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Put MediaDefender on it!
Well at least the Chinese government will be accurate when they claim that the bourgeois and corporations are oppressing the people. The Chinese implementation of communism is certainly novel.
It's very important to point out that Naomi Klein is a Leftist who hates capitalism. This story isn't from a journalist who's trying to be fair. It's from a dedicated ideologue who is promoting her new book, "The Shock Doctrine." In the summary of this story, you can tell that something is amiss when you read, "...the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state." That has nothing to do with what's gone before it, so its lack of sense in context makes it jump out, because it's not supported by (or related to) anything else in the summary so far. Then you realize who the author of the piece is and you realize this isn't a technology story. It's a Leftist political piece dressed up for Slashdot. Klein is trying to take something that we all will hate (the spying and lack of freedom in communist China) and forcing it into being linked to capitalism. To see the illogic of this, all one has to do is see that the countries that are the freest also tend to be the most capitalistic. The ones that are the most politically repressive also tend to be the most anti-capitalist. The Chinese experiment in limited economic freedom stands out because it's an anomaly, not because it's typical. In fact, what the Chinese fear more than anything else is probably what will eventually happen -- people who become accustomed to making money and controlling their financial decisions eventually start wanting political freedom. There is a limited IT story here, because western companies are selling technology that's being used for bad purposes by the Chinese government. But it ultimately makes as much sense as lambasting Ford because the bank robber drove a Mustang as his getaway car. Just understand that Klein has an agenda here, and being evenhanded toward the free market certainly isn't on that agenda.
Does China's All-Seeing Eye work better than Yahoo's? Maybe I can finally find a Quake2 jailbreak server!
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Thompson was a sensationalist. O'Rourke is an opinion writer. If you like crazy narratives, the former is excellent. If you agree with a certain kind of worldview, the latter is likewise excellent. But don't confuse either for the facts on the ground. And don't confuse either with Naomi Klein.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
My lasers trace / everything you do,
You think you've private lives / think nothing of the kind,
There is no true escape / I'm watching all the time!
CHORUS:
I'm made of metal, my circuits gleam
I am perpetual, I keep the country clean.
I'm elected, electric spy,
I'm protected, electric eye.
Always in focus / you can't feel my stare,
I zoom into you / you dont know I'm there.
I take a pride in probing / all your secret moves,
My tearless retina takes / pictures that can prove...
(Chorus)
Electric eye (in the sky)
Feel my stare (always there)
There's nothing you can do about it, develop and expose,
I feed upon your every thought, and so my power grows!
(Chorus)
I'm Elected -
Protected -
Detective -
Electric -
Eye.
- Judas Priest, Electric Eye, 1982.
Orwell's 1984 isn't the only functional specification out there, after all.
Germany was the proof-of-concept. Stalin's Russia and the Cold War Warsaw Pact countries were the alpha, which failed due to scaling concerns. China is the beta test site and release-candidate. Unistat goes live in 2009.
With the US government stealing their citizens' privacy, I think the eye on the dollar bill is more than just some print now. I wonder if China will add the eye to their bills too?
Big Brother is watching!
One day the world of robotics will have the answer.
>> "the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state"
Someone is in serious need of medication. Communism is the polar opposite of capitalism.
I am a bit dumbfounded by your approach to reading article. You need trust to read something ? What happened to critical anaylsis. I think most "reasonable" people will read an article and analysis the content of the article rather than taking the content on blind faith. You've basically judged an article simply by the publisher without even considering any of the issues brought up from the article. It seems the question isn't whether you should trust it or not, its whether you can make an informed judgment, and it doesn't seem you can.
Urban warfare and population suppression 2.0 is ready for export from Iraq. Just in time!
good lord I thought she ceased to exist after no logo. 2000 called, they want their author back.
Free market. Heh.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
And it's not Capitalist, it's a wonderful halfway point called fascist.
From TFA: "Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state"
Free markets require the freedom to chose without coercion in order to be efficient for everyone involved. China does not have a free market. The transactions are not efficient for the low man on the totem pole, namely the worker. China is fascist, and the country is a giant form of monopoly that has huge profit margins by manipulating the labor supply and the rights afforded to individuals to drive down costs. Just because China is having huge profits does not mean they are more efficient.
A lot of people will go on about the horrible violation to civil liberties all of these things China does are, but no one ever talks about the horrible damage these things do to the economic well being of the country.
China IS going to undergo serious reform or revolution. It won't be possible to maintain any level of efficiency without the proper rule of law or a Meritocracy. China WILL become more efficient once more people start demanding a larger share, and the only way they can do this is through greater representation and markets, markets that need informed consumers who are not being forced to act against their best interests.
All successful revolutions have come from the middle to upper class capitalists who are feed up with kings and lords ruling by mandate cutting into their bottom line. China is no different.
From TFA "With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement"
If someone is dissenting that means there is something that needs to be changed. That is the best example of why china, like the USSR, will hit a standard of living wall. Efficiency requires freedom.
I agree that Rolling Stone is mostly padded with disposable fluff. But they always take their journalism seriously, so it's a great, subversive starting point for a good chunk of young people: buy the issue for their article on Panic At The Disco, then when you're bored, end up reading the article on how the Bush government has deregulated industrial pollution. And suddenly, shazam! A spark has gone off in your mind and your curiosity is piqued, and you've begun your life's journey as a conscious citizen.
You know what the Greek term is for the citizen who does not participate in public affairs? Idiotis. Rolling Stone has planted the seed to obliterate the idiotis for a huge amount of people.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
With China (& Japan) loaning so much $$ to the US, eg, to fund the Iraq war, etc. (Go check it out!) ...it won't be -too- long before China (&/or Japan) will -own- the US.
:-/
If China gets the Country, then it's Great Firewall will "protect" US citizens & residents from all those troublesome ideas, that they worry will infect their own people, today.
Better learn Chinese, folks!
When you reduce Thompson to "a sensationalist" I suddenly take you far less seriously. Yes, he had outrageous style but he was a trenchant observer.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say. It's nonsensical, if anything you're describing the Bush administration, and your post should read If you agree with this sort of thing, you should vote Bush. Get your brown shirts out! You'll need them.
But then again, political effervescence brings out the irrational in people, even some true Slashdot veterans, and within minutes your post was modded Troll.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Beetle B.
After the planebombs of 9/11/2001, Bush made a big deal about how suddenly, "oceans cannot protect us anymore". As if oceans had made us immune to ICBMs in the 50 year Cold War, or to air and sea raids in either WWII or any of the other wars (like 1812, or the Revolution) we'd survived without throwing away liberty. It was true, but it wasn't new.
We're going to find out a lot more about blowback when the government Bush installed these past 7.5 years, built mostly on his Republican Congress (and not reformed by the Democratic Congress of the past year and a half), is the foundation for all these invasive technologies we're "beta testing" in China.
If the 2009 Democratic Congress and White House doesn't spend most of its time ripping out Bush's Unitary Executive by the roots, a bigger reform than Bush's 8 years of catastrophes, this country is going to make China look like a cheap, ignorant backwater. By making this country into cheap, ignorant backwater central.
--
make install -not war
and it has already generated quite a bit of attention outside of slashdot
I read the article earlier in the week and it is indeed thought provoking. It's a shame it was posted on Slashdot at this hour on a weekend. At the time I post this at least 50 other people have posted and if a single person actually read the article they have chosen to hide that fact. It's a damn shame because there is much in it that would interest people here if they took the time.
And before someone asks - no, I am not new here.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
More and more our society is becoming little more than a glorified ant farm for the government's voyeurist enjoyment - manipulating and watching us little ants roam around in our daily routines, while every so often throwing some monkey wrench into the works for some excitement.
I've met numerous security folks over the years who have acknowledged often using security cameras for their personal pleasure, such as stalking and voyeurism.
Ron
Naomi Wolf paths towards fascism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc
I think you mean "define" instead of "quantify," because surely you're not looking to put a number on it. And it's not especially hard to do. To be free is to be able to make your own decision insofar as you're not infringing on others' rights or property. The difficult part for some people (especially those on the Left) is that so many of them don't believe that people truly have the right to make their own decisions and they don't believe that private ownership of property is moral. Of course, those on the repressive Right don't believe in freedom, either, but they want control in different areas. Typically, a Leftist is willing to give you social freedom, but wants control of your economic life, while a Rightist is willing to give you economic freedom, but wants to control your social life. Someone who really believes in individual freedom doesn't want to control either your social or your economic life.
Sadly, you're so blinded by your ideology you don't even see the lack of factual accuracy in this statement. There is a long tradition of authoritarian capitalism, here are just a few, for your reflection:
- Tsarist Russia
- The Second Empire (Napoleon III)
- Prussia, later Germany
- Nazi Germany
- The authoritarian/fascist states of central and eastern Europe between the wars and during WWII
- Spain under Franco
- Greece under the Colonels
- Iran under the Shah -- a violent and repressive regime if ever there was one
- Chile under Pinochet
- Brazil under authoritarian military rule
- for that matter, all other Latin American dictatorships: Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, etc. etc.
- Indonesia under Suharto
- South Africa under Apartheid
- The Philippines under Marcos
- South Korea under Military Rule
So as you see, the correlation between capitalism and true democracy is actually quite weak. I don't think the facts can be accused of being "illogical".You're talking about governments which exercised huge control the economy (in addition to repressing their people in other ways). If you want to call that capitalism, that's fine. But it's not what a free market really is. Even to take your definition, you could have a far more statistically significant correlation between capitalism and freedom than between capitalism and authoritarianism. For you to call Nazi Germany a capitalist country (when the economy was quite controlled in a top-down fashion) shows who is truly "blinded by your ideology."
It's OK. Just take your soma and have a nice holiday. Everything will be alright.
BTW - I will be modded troll as I do not agree with the enlightened /. masses. Uni was quite a while ago for me. I've lived a bit and have experienced our world for what it really is.
All hail our supposititious messiah... or else!
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
Doesn't look so free anymore in the US, does it?
But maybe your analysis is right -- the US is home to massive corporate subsidies for Big Ag, Big Oil, Big Pharma, the Big Three automakers, the Big Five record companies, just about any big business. I guess the Big People don't need strong character when they can pay the little people to build and maintain character for them, or something. But it ultimately makes as much sense as lambasting Ford because the bank robber drove a Mustang as his getaway car. Cars aren't purpose-built to rob banks, duh. High-speed facial recognition systems and content filters are purpose-built to quickly recognize individuals and hide content. There are very few legitimate businesses that have a legitimate need for such systems, casinos and child-friendly ISPs being the only ones that come to mind. Just understand that Klein has an agenda here, and being evenhanded toward the free market certainly isn't on that agenda. The free market doesn't work without transparency. Recent laws in the US have enabled and in some cases mandated opacity for business. Waving a copy of Reason around isn't going to make that go away.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Would they have built out their surveillance network as fast if they had to build it themselves? Reference Godwin's Law and IBM.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Despite the presence of many centralized CCD cameras in London, crime levels have yet to be reduced.
If police cannot effectively track and follow criminals, what makes anyone think China can do any better tracking and following dissidents? It's a lot more obvious on a camera when a real crime is being committed, far less so when a thought crime is...
What makes anyone think we should not laugh at the Chinese for attempting this? Let them waste their money on this fruitless pursuit of technology that someone with a square of cloth or a bit of paint can work around.
People would be wise to remember that China has done a lot worse things than point cameras at people in the past. It seems like dissidents would be better off with a China that has fewer actual agents on the streets to collect and track people, and more worthless cameras collecting so much data they are unusable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I for one welcome our Chinese brothers into the secure world of police surveillance!
From Austin, TX:
Sixth Street is only one of four "high-crime" areas in which Chief Acevedo plans to install "Big Brother"-style surveillance cameras. Other targets include the intersection of North Lamar and Rundberg; 12th Street and Chicon in East Austin; and along Montopolis Blvd. on the Southeast side of town. The particular neighborhoods have ostensibly been chosen because they have "high crime rates." Chief Acevedo believes he can get "federal funds" to pay surveillance equipment manufacturers and installers, and for maintenance of the system. It is likely these monies would be allocated from the Department of Homeland Security as an âoeanti-terrorismâ measure. The Statesman raised questions over some important details yet to be arranged in the Chiefâ(TM)s camera proposal. Tony Plohetski reported (1/24/08)
I just finished rereading this book. Interesting that it's not entered the public domain yet in the US, even though it was written sixty years ago.
Your post deserved better than this moderation. The all-seeing eye of Big Brother is a tyranny to be avoided. Next time cite the author though, ok?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
this:China's All-Seeing Eye
You are confusing communism in theory with communism in practice. It's a common error and your reeducation team will be around presently to correct the error.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
how - ironic capitalists helping communists to screw themseleves, heh go figure
"Iran under the Shah" was due to the UK and USA.
:) ).
Same for Chile, and a few of the rest you listed (and many you didn't
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_U.S._regime_change_actions
Your assumptions are so ill-founded that it makes the rest of your rant worthless. I don't defend the United States as free, as you seem to think. We've been slowing losing our economic freedom since at least the late 19th century. (The only positive things insofar as freedom in this country is that we've gained a bit in some areas of social freedom.) Most companies are so "in bed" with big government today that we have Facism Lite, not capitalism. You can't declare support of the current U.S. economic system to be my position and then try to make me defend it. In addition to making unsupported assumptions about my point of view, you don't seem to understand that free people can do evil things, but that doesn't make the system under which they exist evil. Do some free people help evil people do evil? Sure, but that has nothing to do with making real freedom evil.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You mean it's going to be just like the US and UK already are?!? I agree that is horrifying!!!
If you are concerned about human rights and the right to privacy in any country, please feel free to spread this image around:
http://a819.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/8/l_16c58f4c82c1b2155b841ff67aeb02ba.jpg
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
sadly, whilst this is a vague attempt at humour, it's also mostly true.
I did have a longer response but the stupid new slashdot posting mechanism caused me to lose it when I accidentally clicked on something using my overly sensitive touch pad, had to click back and of course its gone.
"I am amazed. This has to be a joke, right? China is currently a largely agricultural society where a majority of citizens still live in the mountains. The money spent on bugging the population could be better spent on feeding the poor. I am surprised at how short-sighted the Communists are, and I already hold them in pretty low esteem."
China has dragged more people out of poverty in the last 30yrs than the rest of the planet combined and it has done so on a fraction of the resources available to the west.
Sure, Mao's 'cultural revolution' was a state managed famine that killed millions at the stroke of an ideological pen, however the 'gang of four' and their genocidal ideology were kicked out of power a long time ago.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Looks like I'll be changing my name to Blank Reg now.
Expecting serious journalism from Rolling Stone magazine is like expecting a minnow swimming in a millpond to deliver a university-class lecture on differential calculus.
same title and all, was on the front page a couple of weeks ago: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/18/1630208 [slashdot.org]
It sounds like a way to provide work - have a few billion people watch a few billion other people. A totally pointless exercise, but it will keep them busy...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A key point about canecubo's list is that many of these regimes were at least condoned by the U.S. while many were puppet regimes out right installed by the U.S. just because they were anti communist, anti union and pro big business. Nazi Germany was openly embraced by the elites in the U.S. right up to 1939 and sometimes after. George W. Bush's grandfather, for example, was the American banker for the Thiessen family who bankrolled Hitler's rise to power.
If the United States is the guiding light to Capitalism and Freedom around the world, how come the U.S. is so closely aligned with so many repressive regimes. The answer is because capitalism has no real correlation to freedom. Capitalism is just as much at home in repressive right wing states as it is in liberal democracies. There is no real correlation between economic system and governmental model.
Capitalism does in fact flourish in right wing states, often very oppressive ones. Unbridled Capitalism has a nasty tendency towards wealth concentration in the hands of an elite few and the people with all the money almost inevitably seek to control all the levers of political power because it protects, supports and nourishes their economic interests. This is a cocktail which often leads to right wing dictatorial governments which are no friends to freedom. In particular they often are extremely fond of breaking up labor unions, because labor unions are good for workers but bad for profitability. They are also fond of rigging elections or getting rid of them all together because ruling elites are small and easily outvoted if you let all the poor unwashed masses have an actual say in their government. In the U.S. this has been accomplished by a two party system where both parties are controlled by the ruling elites and which never offer an actual choice to ordinary people.
The U.S. being a free society can mostly be attributed to the immense wisdom of our founding fathers who did create a remarkable framework for a free society. Unfortunately, its been slowly unraveling ever since. I think if the founding fathers saw the horror that is the Federal government, the state of civil liberties, and our two party system today, they would no doubt launch a second revolution to topple it and restore the government outlined in the Constitution which has been almost completely obliterated by our two political parties and the corporations and ruling elites which own them.
Capitalism is about profit, pure and simple. Freedom doesn't really have anything at all to do with profitability and often gets in its way. Capitalism and Freedom can coexist, in fact Capitalism is a helpful ingredient for freedom since it is extremely beneficial to control your own wealth rather than letting a bureaucratic state do it for you. Unfortunately Capitalism can and does flourish in repressive right wing states, always has and probably always will.
@de_machina
Hmmm. So the Chinese are watching their citizens as much as the UK and the US watches theirs?
Is the complaint that it has taken the Chinese so long to catch up on the level of snooping?
Steven.
Yes, why develop critical reading skills when you can rather lay your trust in known authority. If a source is good, the information will be good, if a source is bad, the information will be wrong. I know this because everything I read confirms my worldview.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Funny, last time I checked, I've been resisting soma for the last seven years. I've lived a bit and have experienced our world for what it really is.
All hail our supposititious messiah... or else! I guess Obama is my pick for prez because I'm looking for a fresh approach, at the risk of being obvious and maybe even stereotypical. At this point, gimme the youngest Baby Boomer available, maybe he/she will be closer to enlightenment! So far, the post-war kids (Bushes and Clintons) have been declaring the throne theirs, for the last twenty years, by divine choosing in one way or another.
American government urgently needs to get weird again. When he gets to the White House, Obama gets no pass from me, the highest tribute a paid official can get from an educated citizen: I'm looking at you.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
It's always worked in the past, right? What a bunch of fucking bullshit. Know what else? We won't have to fire a single shot against China, ever, because they continue to perpetrate crap like this, there's eventually going to be a civil war over it. Human beings don't like being treated this way, and they can't jail the whole billion-plus of them -- not even by making the whole country into a prison -- which is essentially what they're trying to do. I don't care WHAT culture you're from, you can't make me believe that you LIKE being treated like a prisoner.
Thanks for pointing this out. I was too disgusted by someone trying to claim that those countries represent capitalism to notice his unstated assumption that freedom and democracy are the same thing. You can ask 1,000 people today to define those two terms, and most of them will give synonymous definitions, at least one of which has to be incorrect. It's nice that there are still a few people who understand that democracy really means "dictatorship by the majority."
I think a lot of the comments in this thread would be cause for Slashdot to be banned - but here I am, reading and posting with no probl~~~~ [NO CARRIER]
--
But seriously, I am in China, and the whole censorship thing is total BS. I can read all about Tiannenmen Square, and indeed anything else I like (including stuff that The Party may not), and no, I'm not using a proxy or any other workaround.
So put that in your FUD pipe and smoke it. Or paint your little red wagon with it, or whatever...
I could not explain my family life otherwise.
It just doesn't scale up.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Wow, if I ever need a good example of what an ad hominem attack is I'll just refer to this post.
Refuting a point I've just refuted, within the same argument I'm refuting.
Illustrative. Typical. Boring. An0nymous.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
China is the most capitalist place I've ever been. Censorship has become more relaxed over the last few years with only extreme political and pornographic websites currently blocked. As for setting up a police state take a look at Britain, there have put up a lot of new cameras in Beijing but its still no where near as serious as Britain (Most seem to be aimed at the traffic anyway). Most people with extreme views on China have usually never been here.
I thought he was joking, but you really are impressively clueless.
I bet you still think the anti-Saddam war was a great idea. Not great enough for you to participate, but almost that great, right?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You've basically judged an article simply by the publisher without even considering any of the issues brought up from the article.
I do that all the time with Time Magazine. I mean sure, I'll pick one up twice a year and read the main article (at the dentist, or waiting for a new set of tires to be installed...etc). But hey, it's not *my* fault they have a political leftist agenda at the root of their premises. When a publisher has a bias, I will have a biased attitude toward them. Funny how that works, eh?
Life is not for the lazy.
No, you'll bo modded a troll because you promote moonbat insanity.
...and China will finally be on the same level as some Western countries !
Jokes aside, it is good to have a handy counter-example of what "not to do" with privacy laws. Too bad it harbors 1/5th of the planet population...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
There are lots of comments using big words like "capitalism" and "communism" and "totalitarianism", and as expected on /. the actual economics knowledge is very poor.
Capitalism is not industrialism, nor is it corporatism. It is the inclusion of the passing of time in economic calculations, which means three things: connecting markets of different time periods as in connecting present offer with future demand (speculation), integrating time preferences (interest in loans), and anticipating risks in your costs (insurance). The first two features have been in extensive use since at least the 1st century B.C., as is evident in the Roman Empire's banking system. The last one was invented in the 13th century by a monk and has, too, been in extensive use from then on. Capitalism has been in full use ever since. It's not to be conflated with any political system in particular - no political system can abolish capitalism since they can't abolish the passing of time and its effects on people's trading habits, they can only suppress trade directly.
I think its open to debate if China is remarkable for its "efficiency". It mostly just has lots of cheap labor, no labor unions and very weak pollution and safety regulation which means its a cheap place to do things like manufacturing. There are quite a few things working against its economic efficiency.
You hit the nail on the head here. The very particular ownership regulations of China, which are still very communistic in both spirit and letter, prevent the integration of a great many costs in the economic calculations. For example the land is owned by the state and cannot be owned and traded by the people making use of it: the owners have no incentive to increase or protect its value, so instead they milk it off as fast as they can for immediate gains in influence, renting it out as cheap dumping ground for industries that employ the citizens. The value lost here is monumental, and it does not make it to the GNP because there is no market for it - no valuation, no losses recorded. Same goes for homes, which are still extremely regulated, and a million other things they Chinese are not permitted to have and trade on their own.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
"I am not the first to point out that capitalism, having defeated Communism, now seems about to do the same to democracy. The market is doing splendidly, yet we are not, somehow." - Ian Frazier.
Capitalism has about as much to do with free market as Communism with planned economy. They can be linked, but there is no immediate requirement for that.
I am sure we can agree that we "western" people live in a capitalist system. But is it a free market system? Well, it used to be for a while, to some extent, but this is getting eliminated. More and more laws are passed that eliminate the freedom of the market, shifting power towards corporations. Still, it's a capitalist world, even true to the definition.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When you're typing "rights or property", you're thinking of "rights and property as defined by capitalism". So, essentially, you're defining freedom as a capitalist society. In which case, yes, of course, freedom iff capitalism.
I could believe that private ownership of property is moral while believing that capitalist methods of acquiring property are not moral. For example, I could believe that no second home owner has the right to police protection against squatters (no-one's using my tax money to protect someone who's making profit from such little effort, thanks), essentially destroying the private property rental industry.
Incidentally, adding up all the taxation in the average Western nation, over 50% of our productivity goes to the government, wealth which is redistributed as the government sees fit to favor particular corporations, organizations and individuals. Given what'd happen if you were to suddenly try to stop the government from taking its slice of the pie at every stage of creation of some particular good or service, you'd be an idiot to call the US capitalist.
...the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state...
Can somebody please explain what the Hell that means?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'd especially recommend the essays - Politics and the English Language is a classic, and as a rabid anti-Zionist, AntiSemitism in Britain always helps to bring a sense of proportion to any outrage I feel when Israeli misdemeanours~ are reported on the news.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Your assessment of Right vs Left seems reasonably accurate; we really need a slightly more complex way to specify these things, specifying social left/right and economic left/right.
Basically, all of the bastards seem to want to control something, normally as much as possible.
The GP was saying "quantify", because without some sort of quantification it's difficult to say one is more free than the other. While the countries that are currently more capitalistic may be currently more "free", the old slashdot adage applies; correlation is not causation. Perhaps the increased freedom simply allows capitalism to flourish more easily, not the other way around.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
You aren't new here? Sorry... your high UID tells me otherwise.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
then why is sensationalist garbage like this being posted? This is garbage that gets dugg up because of the douchebags at digg but has absolutely no place in a respectable forum.
Let me prefix this comment with a personal note of concern for your personal welfare. Your dosage. Check it. If your English is good you have issues requiring immediate medical attention.
Communism works in intimate settings but doesn't work in wide practice. It's been tried numerous times in various ways and noone has found a way to make it work. Even the best intentioned communist societies succumb to oligarchy and personality tyranny in short periods of time. The common man is too easily swayed for communism to work well. Bread and circuses.
Pure Capitalism also doesn't work in practice, but it takes much longer for the failures to be apparent. Ultimately those with capital discover their best result is to enslave (in practice if not in name) those without capital to preserve their comfortable positions.
Pure democracy was also tried - in Germany in 1933. They only had one election though. It didn't end well. Quite a mess getting quit of that one.
A noble experiment involving a mix of federal democracy and capitalism is under way in North America. It's only been 230 years. That's not as old as a good house in most of Europe. A good oak tree is older by far. It's not going well. Apparently vox populi is not the voice of reason. I'm participating in it and the consensus among my friends is "a pox on all their houses." We're engaged in a cyclic divestment of our national wealth to airlines, banks, mortgage banks, auto manufacturers, oil companies, insurance companies, doctors, lawyers, oil nations, China and the aged. That list may expand based on groups supporting this year's presidential election. Apparently it costs half a billion dollars to be elected president of the US. Bill Gates? Where are you when we need you most? This is pocket change for you. You've retired from Microsoft. Get in the real game.
But we have a constitutional right to bear arms, so if it gets too bad... well, you know. We'll fix it. Those founding fathers were brilliant.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Well obviously it isn't since there was already interesting posts on /., weeks ago, that mostly destroyed the idea that the Chinese state could monitor a sizable part of its population. Because the Chinese government is not as all powerful that the anti-Chinese occidental liberals (the kind that live in San Fransisco or Paris, I know quite a few of them here we call them "bo-bo", as "bohemian bourgois", young people who live comfortably who can buy Chinese and slam China over Tibet in the same breath.. in short, hypocrites.)
So yeah, if you're a bobo, of course you will like such articles a lot and find them great journalism. It's just that it actually isn't.
"High tech polic state ready for export," wow, not sensationalist at all.. and so true! exept it's mostly wrong, because a police state would have to... actually work. And China is nowhere as closed as the politically correct people would want us to believe.
This article is so poor it hurts.
Jeezus, where do you people get this nonsense? You sound like one of those NWO conspiracy nuts who watch that nutcase on youtube with his "they want to rule us all and repress us" claptrap.
Simple fact: poor people can't buy shit. If these are capitalists then they know its in their best interest to foster a society of wealth. Why does the US foster oppressive regimes? Because they buy things like fighter jets and tanks to help them oppress their people - just like china buying computers and routers. It has nothing to do with some mad scientist conspiracy of an "elite few" to rule the world and everything to do with simple human nature - greed.
As it's "in vogue" in this country to throw those terms around (bias, etc.), you've revealed your identity as an American citizen.
gg
did you read a single thing in Davemania's post? I can't believe you're replying to what he said, with what you said.
I want to mod you funny, but I'd rather get this out there.
BR What happened to critical analysis. indeed.
-- arstchnca
--
I can't think of anything intrinsically wrong with glossy magazines other than when you're reading one in the toilet and you notice you're out of lavatory paper. At that point, they are evil.
Do you actually read Rolling Stone? Sensationalist? More like soporific a lot of the time.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Yes, but what you're doing to the article here is called ad hominem, and it's a fallacy. If you want to ignore it on account of the publisher, feel free to do so -- but if you're going to speak regarding the article's merits, it behooves you to read it first.
It's a heckuvalot more informative than your post, and raises legitimate issues (ie. mechanisms in use to circumvent laws specifically forbidding export of law enforcement equipment to China) even should you choose to ignore the editorializing.
Please use paragraphs.
You know, for all the accusations of communist wingnuttery that abound on the internet, the substance just isn't there. Apparently, Daily Kos is supposed to be a far left hate site, but when I go there, all I find are disaffected liberals and social democrats. I'd love to believe that there are authoritarian leftists just waiting to turn Western countries into police states, but I just can't find them.
Klein is a slightly cute Canadian lefty liberal. That's about it.
On the other hand, you cannot go anywhere on the internet without finding an endless supply of free market nutcases who are obvious fanatics, and who continue to pontificate on about Austrian Economics, an economic doctrine that no reputable economist endorses and which has never been shown to work. For all their problems, at least the communists managed to keep a society together for longer than ten minutes, and sometimes actually achieved stuff (like putting a guy in orbit).
The vast conspiracy of leftwing nutcases is in fact a conspiracy imagined by the vast actual conspiracy of rightwing market fundamentalist nutcases projecting their nuttiness on others.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
But we have a constitutional right to bear arms, so if it gets too bad... well, you know. We'll fix it. Those founding fathers were brilliant.
Yeah. Let us know how you get on with your hand-guns and rifles against the US army's tanks, rocket launchers, (insert list of virtually all modern weapons systems) etc. Good luck!
But at least they don't pretend they believe in democracy (or am I soft on terrorism ?)
I was ready to thank you for your link, even though I have a copy of the book and I prefer not to link to copies that violate copyright in my jurisdiction. And then I read this. Please die in a fire, or if that is not possible select the most painful way. It were better if your breed of fanaticism were not reproduced. Thanks.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You think Time Magazine has a political leftist agenda? You must be to the right of Bush to see Time magazine as leftist. On international politics it is right wing.
.00001% of the crimes the U.S. Government does in the world, the Right Wing accuse it of being leftist.
The mainstream American Press as a whole is very right wing. The publishers are right wing. If a news source prints
That's why such a large percentage of the American people are so ignorant. They've been fed propaganda all their lives about how America is some goody two shoes trying to help the world. The millions of innocent people killed directly and indirectly by the U.S. Government around the world since WW II is not reported on.
This is similar to what happened to the Native Americans. The Presidents slaughtered them and stole their land, but almost none of it makes it into the mainstream histories taught in schools. Of course, people like you would accuse any such accounts of being left wing.
This ad space for rent.
You just shoot the first few hundred who try anything then the other 999.9999 million suddenly find that keeping their heads down and tending their crops or working in a sweat shop suddenly seems that whole lot more appealing. Works everywhere in the world - look at Zimbabwe for another example.
Which is China's version of Slashdot:http://society.solidot.org/society/08/06/02/0955249.shtml,,the title reads:China 2084.
+Insightful someone?
And in the USA, "free" markets are often not controlled by corporations? Many of the big corporations have more power than some 3rd world dictatorships do.
Yeah, I guess it's free in that it's theoretically open to competition.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/18/1630208
I want detection of crimes, and apprehension of criminals, to be fundamentally rooted in machine automation. I am for these machines being implemented by both government and private citizens. Using populist cloud technologies ( e,g, some variation of Youtube and real time chat rooms) citizens could make this type of law enforcement a design of the community rather than design of distant bureaucratic experts working for a specific political regime ( e.g. the Bush Administration). We have entered an age in which privacy and anonymity lend more to vulnerability and non-representation in the economic system -and police protection is part of that economic system. 1984 is a great book, and was about Stalin's 1948 Russia, a powerless peasant class owned by an elite. But citizens in the 2008 G8 countries have access to technologies and sophisticated communications that render 1984's metaphors less meaningful. We have entered an era in which a happy and secure human is enabled by assistance from machine automation in domains considered sociological.
The most insightful thing you guys could say is to quote a cautionary tale? Repeatedly?
Really, I don't see why the compulsive obsession with 1984. I feel it has almost attained a cult status here...
The quote isn't even right. These days in China you couldn't control information. Yes there is censorship, but with extensive communication systems there, eg. Internet, many people having mobile phones, etc. Imagine controlling the information of more than a billion people. Did you know much information about the recent earthquake in China came from Chinese users posting on Twitter? Those information got out quicker than many traditional journalist sources. You really can't control sht. As I've said, the Chinese government aren't Gods.
Wake up. This surveillance system is no good thing, but it's not 1984. If anything, with 1.3B people and a vast geographic area, China is one of the hardest country to implement TOTAL control. A high level of control had always been present in China, but total control? You'd have better luck with places like North Korea.
Of course, you may still live in your fantasy world and BELIEVE that China is Orwellian. But am I the only one who expects a bit more from fellow slashdotters who claim a certain level of intelligence?
Don't quote me on this.
I have (had - he died in 1979) a great uncle that served as an intelligence officer in Palestine during the Mandate, and heard from him first hand about the terrorism conducted by Irgun, Rosh Haganah and their like.
Funnily enough, he was quite complimentary about the Arabs.
I think that may have coloured my opinion somewhat.
Thanks for your solicitude, though - if I fancy a warm death I will certainly consider your advice.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
So lobby your congresscritter to have the relevant technologies added to the Commerce Control List. Ty-Raps large enough to be used as handcuffs are already there for exactly this reason. It might not stop the Chinesee, but it will stop American facilitation. The penalties are hefty.
How is this different than all the CCTV cameras on every new stoplight post?
Or carnivore checking emails. Or all of our cell phones being monitored?
China's just trying to catch up to the U.S.A. & U.K.
Seriously. You can't really blame companies such as IBM, Cisco, etc. If they do not move into the market, some else will. It is hypocritical of us to criticize them. Why? Because our government has established the legal framework that allows us to trade with China. If you are unhappy with the way China behaves, you should ask our government to issue an embargo against them. Heck... we have an embargo against Cuba because they are a regime much like the Chinese one. Why don't we have an embargo against China as well? An embargo would level the field because no competitor would be able to jump ahead of each other when it comes to taking over the Chinese market. So if you are not happy with the brutal dictatorship in China, write to your congressman and ask for an embargo. It does not make sense to blame the companies. They are doing what they are supposed to do.
Truthfully, the hand-holding reporting when it comes to the U.S. Government from U.S. media is less about right/left bias and more about access. To get the juicy stories out in time to "scoop" or at least keep-up with competitors, a news outlet must fall within the good graces of the government.
Sure, you can print an article outlining all the gross incompetence and criminal behavior of the current administration, but then you can kiss any hope of being invited to a presidential press conference ever again. And, when you start becoming the last news outlet to print stories about politics, your readers switch to another news station that gets the stories faster, even if the other station consistently has a pro-administration slant.
The problem with U.S. media isn't one of bias - it's one of business needs trumping journalistic integrity.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Gotta have to satiate the /. and diggers appetite for China bashing. Too bad you have to recycle, you guys should dig up some new sensationalized garbage or write your own.
Given the choice of reading material you put up, I'm assuming this is not the case, but on the internetwebitrons, "rabid anti-zionist" links in to a particular brand of conspiracy-whackjobbed anti-semitism. I think you're identifying with non-support of Israeli policy coupled with non-belief in "the Holy land belongs to Jews on religious grounds," as opposed to "Ah'm a skinhead but don' lahk to let on, then the gummint will take mah kids and guns away."
Assuming you're not looking to identify with that definition, explicit definition of what you mean by anti-zionist might avoid some grief based on the median (perhaps also mode) anti-zionist.
I guess they're not going to let you make a music video using the footage from this, then?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The right balance between keeping the rift-raft under control and keeping them motivated and working hard = maximum profit.
This goes a long way to explain why the memes of "America land of the free", "America the greatest country in the world" and "In the US everybody has a chance to make it big-time" are constantly being pushed by US media, even though nowadays they are all false:
But hey, it's still better than North Korea.
Signed: One European that has been exposed to one too many ignorant American.
PS: In my experience, most Americans I've met that actually spent some time living and working in a country other than the US - vacations do not count - are usually much more well informed and realist about the US itself and the rest of the world than most of those who didn't.
Naomi Klein is an idiot, and her editors at Rolling Stone are likewise idiots for printing this crap.
1) The subtitling: 'With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.'...well, yeah, but let's phrase it more accurately and a little less hysterically: China is building a high tech police state, US megacorps are helping. First, why would we call it the 'prototype' for a police state? China IS, WAS, & WILL BE a police state, not some tentative experiment into police statery. And all the players in this article are giant international megacorps - I'm guessing that there are probably other megacorps from other countries that are also involved wherever they can be. It's a BILLION-consumer market...any publicly held company would be ROASTED by its shareholders for not jumping in where they can. I'm not making a judgment on the morality of the companies involved, but Ms. Klein's phrasing and approach is so (anti)US-centric, it borders on mendacity. Ironically, Klein herself has railed against the US embargo against Cuba. So which is it, Ms Klein? I don't want to make you sound like simply an anti-American hypocrite, but when we are confronted with a socialist, anti-democratic state, are we supposed to deal with them or not?
2) "Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric." What? How in the hell does one connect Adam Smith's capitalism - which requires free information to consumers, and consumers that are able to choose freely - with a communist-style police state?
Naomi Klein may be staggeringly well-connected, and seems to have come from one of those 'classic' affluent Socialist families (ironic?) in which she would have been fed the creed that capitalism=oppression to the point where it's simply a bedrock assertion, I guess. Wealth, privilege, education, and access to the corridors of a media that likes your message doesn't intrinsically increase the wattage of a low-candlepower bulb, apparently.
-Styopa
Time magazine leftist? BWAHAHAHA!
You've been Punk'd.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
"But while China's cities need these displaced laborers to work in factories and on construction sites, they are unwilling to offer them the same benefits as permanent residents: highly subsidized education and health care, as well as other public services. While migrants can live for decades in big cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou, their residency remains fixed to the rural community where they were born, a fact encoded on their national ID cards. As one young migrant in Guangzhou put it to me, 'The local people want to make money from migrant workers, but they don't want to give them rights. But why are the local people so rich? Because of the migrant workers!'"
Sounds like the place is ripe for a communist revoluion.
I'm glad people are aware of what's going on and are leery of it. We need to talk about it. But I just don't see the public in North America allowing it to happen here, not in this scale. Our culture values personal freedoms much more than the Chinese culture. No matter how much the government tries to scare us into these kinds of things for our own protection, our cultural heritage provides a certain amount of immunity to this kind of thing.
What's needed her is a good rational reminder of why our people value personal freedoms. It's not so that you can download music for free, it's to prevent individuals from gaining too much power over the masses. Too bad we can't enlist a good influencer like Michael Moore to explain it in prole speak for us... It seems that big brother always has the best orators.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Have truly fascist governments been gone so long that everyone forgets what they are like?
Here in Sweden we're about to get almost the same kind of surveillance. Last year the EU approved a directive forcing ISPs to store information about connections made by their clients for at least 6 months. Sweden went ahead and made it at least 1 year.
On June 17th the parliament will pass a law forcing ISPs to send a copy to FRA (Swedish SIGINT) of everything that passes Swedish borders for analysis. This also goes for phone calls and makes no exception for traffic going to newspapers or the police, thus making it impossible to make anonymous tips or protecting the identity of information givers.
What is even more scary is the way it is implemented. FRA used to only be allowed to look for foreign military threats in the air (something which has been unveiled as illegal now) for the Swedish defensive forces. Now they will be allowed to read both cable and air and look for immigration waves, monetary speculation as well as terrorist and military threats.
On top of that though, they will also be allowed to take assignments from Swedish police and foreign department which does not have any restrictions, basically giving them a sort of NSL that doesn't require a court order.
All this intelligence gathering is also done without any suspicion of crime in case someone commits a crime later on.
But I'm not antisemitic - hell, I went to a school that was about 1/4 Jewish, and had a lot of non-Zionist Jewish friends.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
What you're doing is ad latinum - the fallacy of throwing out a fancy latin term and thinking that it refutes a point. What the GP is doing is no different from watching a few episodes of Mythbusters, noting its decided lack of a love story (well, other than a love for blowing things up), and deciding not to watch the rest of the series. The fact that the GP used an ad hominem attack against the article does not make the article right. (Just like this post doesn't make you wrong.)
The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. If you don't like a magazine due to its political slant (left, right, lack there-of, or any other slant for that matter), why should you continue reading new articles? If you see a large number of articles with which you find fault, why would you expect the next one to be better? That's not to say that the next one won't be better, just that there's no expectation of it from you and you probably shouldn't waste your time reading it.
If a colleague continually spouted conspiracy theories to your face, you'd be much less likely to listen to him on another conspiracy-sounding thoery that may actually raise legitimate issues. And that's really all the GP is doing. So relax. It's natural, it's normal, and it's the mind's defense against going crazy by listening to things that are a waste of mental energies.
I mean, it is true - we are the root of all evil after all. Even if some other nation is the culpruit, the US is to blame.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Of course people in the U.S. have been taught to believe that by the public school system which furthers a communist agenda.
Corporatism is a form of communism (i.e. the violent robbery and suppression of one group of people for the benefit of an other group) not capitalism. The fact is that the United States is not now, nor has it ever been a capitalist country. The very term "capitalist country" is itself an oxymoron. Capitalism (i.e. the individuals right to engage in economic self-determination) is fundamentally incompatible with the concept of government.
America is and always has been a communist country:
http://www.criminalgovernment.com/docs/planks.html
'Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras"
Australia and the UK also have extensive CCTV camera networks. No idea about the USA but I wouldn't be surprised.
and remote monitoring of computers."
And ISPs are forced to keep logs and respond to law enforcement requests by identifying users and offering those logs. In the USA you have the patriot act which lets them do it free from press or reporting scrutiny.
"They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies."
An idea given to them, no doubt, by the USA who routinely tap phone calls. Australia and the UK are no saints here either.
"Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall."
Fair point. Although Australia's government has repeatedly attempted to push similar Great Firewall technology "to protect our children". They have failed a few times, but they only need to succeed once.
"Their movements will be tracked through national ID card"
You think yours aren't? Not that it matters, since you're far more easily tracked through your credit cards.
"with scannable computer chips"
Australia are trying to push through national ID cards with RFID chips in them. China may be ahead of the curve here, but make no mistake that USA, UK and Australia will follow suit fairly soon.
"photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data.'"
Just as with passports, drivers' licenses, and other ID cards. That is, databases which police and other government agencies have access to.
According to Klein, this is more than just a Chinese experiment, it's also one that holds ramifications for America and elsewhere: '...the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state... The global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.'"
ready for export? Please. It already exists and is being exported by us.
You aren't new here? Sorry... your high UID tells me otherwise.
Reminds me of some New England neighborhoods where after 6 years they still refer to you as "the new family down the block"! :)
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
"In my experience, most Americans I've met that actually spent some time living and working in a country other than the US"
I'm American but I've lived in Canada for years. I have to agree the luster does quickly wear off the U.S. as soon as you see it from outside, and especially get away from the saturation coverage of the American media, schools and government telling everyone in America how wonderful America is. It simply isn't that great a country any more if ever it was. It sure has never really promoted freedom around the world like the propaganda says it did. It was mostly just a huge beneficiary of being one of the the last great untapped frontiers and it benefited mightily from being protected from the ravages of two world wars by two big oceans. Now that all of those edges are exhausted its becoming more and more apparent that the America system and the American people are pretty much morally, intellectually and economically bankrupt. It hasn't helped that recent American governments were completely incompetent and drove America off a cliff.
@de_machina
Come on now... let's just forget about that boring stuff and enjoy the Olympics! Those people who gathered around to welcome the torchbearer sure seemed excited so it must be a good one! ...or we could boycott them and their sponsors. The IOC won't care, but if the sponsors wind up digging themselves into a pit with bad PR they might think twice before signing on again. Wishful thinking, I know, but why help them?
One name comes to mind: George Orwell
It's all about the money apart from Western values. The current geopolitical view is that Western values were nothing more than a tolerated byproduct where world history is concerned. Once the associated values could be successfully divorced from the money, everywhere else in the world has more than welcoming.
Troll -n- a statement of uncomfortable and irrefutable truth.
I believe that the unspoken opinion on Slashdot is that cameras are only useless in free societies, and that totalitarian societies are much better able to make use of them. This is how people are simultaneously able to hold the opinion that 1984 warned us about all of this and these cameras aren't all that useful anyway.
As I noted in my original post, the goals of both police and fascist would seem to be the same when using cameras. Police would be looking for behavior patterns (and actual crime) just as the chinese government would. It has not worked in England despite best efforts, and quite a lot of technology deployed.
This is Slashdot - we are supposed to be able to look at these things from a technologically informed view. Well then, as a technologist I realize the practical reality that you cannot put up a million cameras and have anything of value come from them without so much manpower, you might as well have patrolled the streets to start with. Facial recognition cannot help you, for anyone seeking to thwart the cameras can simply partially obscure themselves so automated tracking is useless. The cameras themselves are easily tampered with, as England has seen with widespread traffic camera damage (in protests against unfair speeding cameras). You can never have so many cameras that people cannot simply slip away from them if they wish, or simply move to a less covered region and travel in to the covered area from time to time taking precautions as I said.
1984 is a good cautionary tale, but too many people take it as stright-up reality instead of a story, which did not have to go into great detail to explain just how massive wide-spread monitoring really helps oppress people all that much and how in fact it technically works at all. Again I say we are better off letting fascist pursue a pipe dream rather than spending money on more effective tools of oppression, which always ends up being people on the streets watching everyone. That in the end is what you have to have for true oppression to exist, monitoring is but one half of the equation.
Let's say airports everywhere put cameras in every corner of every airport (which is probably the case today anyway) and then declared it impossible for crime to pass undetected. All of Slashdot would chortle in uproarious laughter at the thought that the cameras could truly stop or even meaningfully deter criminals, and come up with a million ways to bypass them. They would rightfully label this as another aspect of security theater.
Well then how is the Chinese attaching cameras to every lamp-post not equally insecurity theater of the most absurd sort? Using reason we know it simply cannot work, for the same reasons we laugh at examples of security theater here.
It's not even like we have a choice in the matter, the Chinese government will do as it wishes. But people need to stop freaking out so much and think instead, about the practical realities of such a thing and what it really means. I guarantee you real Chinese dissidents are doing so as we speak and are a lot more level headed than most Slashdot posters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ok, so here we have an article about Big-Brother-style government in China. It seems pretty important, right? This is a big deal.
But actually, the more interesting thing, in my opinion, is the Slashdot commentary about it:
An article in Rolling Stone? The pop-culture rag? How important can it be? Why haven't I heard of this before? Can this source be trusted?
Let's consider the article itself, found on RollingStone.com. There, next to the boring black-and-white text (that you actually have to read) are lovely full-color ads. Meet the Spartans! The all-new VW Tiguan! Caffeinated liquer! Come to the dark side of Toyota! More than 1000 smileys and emoticons... FREE!! Meet sexy singles!
What am I to make of all this? Does China's all-seeing eye matter? Does it matter as much as sexy singles or sleek new cars? Flashy emoticons? Pop culture? Or is it just another maybe-factoid to file away in my data-bank of useless knowledge?
At least a handful of Slashdot commentaries don't buy it. But others seem almost frantic: the sky is falling!
So we'll argue about it. But what does it mean? Is there something to be done? Not likely: we'll forget this bit of news shortly. There are a million other stories ready to inundate us with something new to get momentarily impassioned about.
So, while we're fretting about Orwellian nightmares, something else equally interesting is happening.
The social critic, Neil Postman, picked up on it. So did Aldus Huxley and even Ray Bradbury. Their dystopias look very much like Orwell's, except for one critical point: There is no Big Brother, no bogeyman or coercive external agent to suppress information.
How can people be manipulated to act as cogs in a great machine? Not a communist machine, but as agents of the Invisible Hand? How can we make servants to a mass-production economy?
Too much information, it turns out, is just as mind-numbing as too little. Stories of great importance in a pop-culture magazine? How does one discern what matters and what doesn't? What is real, and what is fake? All information is now equal: the ravings of True Believers, the theories of scientists, the saccarin glurge of advertising, the maudlin patriotism of politicians, this post on slashdot... It's all carries the same weight.
Choose your preferred information opiate and plug in. You'll forget, soon enough, what really matters. It's the non-thought of received ideas now. There is no time to own thoughts anymore. Even the skeptics have their own preferred formulas for labeling things as useful or not. Besides, after 6.5 hours in front of Tivo, GTA IV, iPod and StumbleUpon, who has time sit and think?
We mostly live, like Dilbert, in 4x6 cloth-covered cubicles, and in small automobile cabs. Our human relationships consist of attaching little machines to our ears and fingertips as we zoom about, alone. Our world-view is shaped by an electronic fire-hose, where everything is made irrelevant by sheer volume.
How will things be different when we are spied on and brainwashed? Whose dystopia is the preferred one? Maybe that is something to argue about, but it seems silly.
Whilst there was naught to see beyond the mist of his bedroom, he knew the computer was there, watching.
"Up you go", he said to himself. Into the shower, into his polo shirt, into his fucking docker kakhis. Out the door, neighbors in their own fucking kakis. Neighbor wives into their own fucking kakis.
A fucking brown golden retreiver got him to think about the color kaki and to wonder about why does it contrive such peacefullness to him. He disregards that thought. He moves on.
He gets in the brown bus, heading to the brown office of Brown-Red Hat food division. He does not stop for lunch: its waiting for him in the cafeteria the exact momento his meal time comes up.
"Just in time, is how the japs did it, just in time is how i like it", its eleven o'clock, he finishes lunch. He goes back to the office. He gets no calls. He only codes two lines, and hits the green button, then the machine tells him what to do next. If he does not hit the green button every exactly one minute, a big red buzzer comes up, and that lady from up there will come and look down on him, she will tell him how he is endangering the possibilities of their kids, he is telling him about the new legal provissions that provides for the automatic inheritance of both credit and work records to his children.
She will drop a final line about the war, about how the red-chinks are going to "get us" because we do not know how to work for a common goal, as a team, and they can. Theyve learned to sacrifice for the lot. Theyve learned to trust their leaders.
Theyve learned that the gene-fight the cultural-fight is for the long run, and while we, a young occident, were fighting about whats the right ammount of freedom, they were building the mega-machine-economic-behemot covering from Moscow to Tokio, from Siberia to Malasya. And we are loosing this war because of selfish people that do not understand the importance of the green button. It allows us to plan on the long run, to calculate mistakes, to get ahead of them, to be more productive.
"You should feel fortunate", she would say, turning on her heels and moving away, gesturing as if she were crying, just like the Corporate Human Resources IT Coach Management Manual says she should gesture.
NO SIG
please get your facts straight.
weimarer republic was not a pure democracy and the election in march 1933 was not the only one, it was just the last one. the first one was on january 1919.
btw most u.s. americans who actually bear arms tend to care about that single constitutional right only.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Apparently you're not familiar with insurgencies? First of all, relating to our own war for independence, the colonists won against a world-class, superior fighting force. Another example would be the War in Iraq. Our soldiers are getting taken out one by one by inferior weapons. In Vietnam, we *technically* (in a narrow sense) "won the war". We tried attrition, but even then the opposing force was endless in numbers.
Remember, not all warfare is traditional, land based, who-has-the-best-toys warfare.
And no, I'm not advocating the violent overthrow of the US government.
If you've found fault with arguments made by an individual or organization in the past, that may legitimately make you less likely to want to spend your time listening to and considering their current argument -- but an argument you're choosing not to listen to is not necessarily bogus, it's merely something you choose not to consider; that distinction is important. Assuming that everyone you don't like is wrong (or that every position espoused by an individual with whom you strongly disagree on some things is wrong) is the kind of mistake that gets wars started; people generally hold positions that make some kind of sense, once you understand their assumptions and perspectives.But the GP didn't just decide not to watch; rather, the GP publicly attacked a specific segment which other folks (by submitting the article to
An interesting (if little known) fact about the guy (Edwin Black) who wrote that book is that he was a major proponent of OS/2 back in the 90's. At the time, he had absolutely NO PROBLEM with IBM's history, which IBM has always owned up to, and was more than happy to do a lot of business with the company. Around the time that Lou Gerstner announced that OS/2 was a "dead end", he started making noise about getting back at IBM for ruining his publishing business (he published books and magazines around OS/2). Shortly thereafter he wrote that book and launched a lot of high publicity lawsuits (all of which got thrown out almost immediately for lack of evidence and relevance). The guy made a LOT of money hyping a thin connection between modern IBM and the german nationalized subsidiaries that were involved with the Nazi's, and it is well known that he got a lot of the basic facts wrong. Still, because there is a lot of pent up anger at IBM for various reasons (you name it, the failure of OS/2, their previous domination of the computer industry, etc) this IBM-Nazi connection gets thrown around a lot as a sort of blood libel against the company.
Then please, waste no time explaining why. I'm eager to hear you rebut the observations made in the article, if you have anything to say other than "I disagree with critics of the Chinese government, therefore this article sucks".
It is plainly the case from history and the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers that the citizenry is to own and practice with standard infantry weapons and each lawful militia (under the autority of duly-elected constitutional officers, not political factions) having control of artillery (which is what the Brits were trying to grab in April of '75) It isn't about hunting. It is about who will watch the watchmen - which is why the gun control people are so opposed to it, they uniformly favor the totalist State.
Busted. Mod grandparent to -1 please.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
I might be arguing semantics, but that's the existence of the state doing that, not capitalism. Under real capitalism people can only get rich by either someone giving them money (perhaps inheritance) or by making a better product than other people that customers are willing to buy (or being lucky with a lottery ticket ;P .) Any other ways such stealing and fraud are, by definition, not capitalism because stealing and fraud is obviously not respecting private property. Private property I would think of as the foundation for capitalism. Of course, some people find it easier to use the state to regulate their line of business to shut out competition, or even to lobby for a monopoly etc. Using the state to steal and put barriers in front of other people is not exactly respect of private property, so I would find it pretty difficult to put that under the category of 'capitalism.'
this
"Like everything else, assembled in China with American parts.... "
That's the way it used to be. Now everything is manufactured in China with Chinese parts. And while we in the US have been arguing with backwoods Muslims, China has stolen the world, with the acquiescence of our government. (When was the last time you heard of a major party candidate being believably anti-globalization?)
DAILY ROTATION
this
You've basically judged an article simply by the publisher without even considering any of the issues brought up from the article.
That's why I read WorldNetDaily, Spotlight, National Enquirer, and the Maoist International Movement's MIMnotes. I mean, no point in judging by the publisher or anything.
Advice: on VPS providers
Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays.
Seriously though, which publications do you find to be more accurate in their reporting? And doesn't the last little dig about being more reputable and conducting independent research make you feel like a giant definitive example of 'hypocrite', being that you STARTED this whole thread with a prime example of running off at the keyboard without a drop of real information in your post?
I thinking you're looking at this from a sort of top-down fallacy, which is that we actually know what efficiency looks like, and all we need is the best way to impose that vision.
But the secret to the success of free societies is that "efficiency" is an unknown and highly mobile target. This is partly because new knowledge and technologies can be disruptive, so that what was efficient yesterday is not so today. A free market system allows for more quick adaptation because individuals and small parts of the society can try many different new things all the time. If it is a better direction, the rest will follow. This is analogous to why a school of small fish, which can collectively outweigh a whale by many times over, can be much more agile.
It is also partly because human talent is often hidden until it has a chance to be exercised. A dishwasher may be capable of being a very successful professional poet, or they might not be. In your vision of economic efficiency, this is known ahead of time, and they're locked into their proper place. In reality though, there's no way to know if the dishwasher could become a successful poet until they actually try. If they can, it's most economically efficient for them to do so. If not, it might be more economically efficient for them to do something related (be an editor perhaps). And if all else fails they can work as a dishwasher. A free market system does a better job of allowing people to rise to their maximum level of economic contribution--a sort of Peter Principle.
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.
That's all well and good, but in that case you are dis-qualified from commenting on the unread articles. The only possible exception would be to comment that you have found the source to be lacking in the past and why. A sneer does not constitute a valuable contribution to any discussion.
Boo hoo... China, for all their top-down government control, is basically benevolent, especially towards their own people and their history. Yes, they've got a vise-like grip on media and are torturing a lot of poor people, but if you look at the country as a whole, it doesn't seem to be an inefficient system. Importantly, China makes decisions and get things done in ways a real democracy could only dream of.
In 100 years, thanks to their means of development and system of governance, China will be settling Mars, while I suspect the rest of us will be up in the trees, flinging our crap at each other.
To that, I agree wholeheartedly. The original sneer was unhelpful (and so I don't argue its flamebait mod). That the original note was ad hominem doesn't mean it was wrong, just illogical, i.e., the conclusion does not follow from the predicates. My only point was that calling it ad hominem was just as unhelpful and illogical.
Ok, I understand that you are from China. And you have mastered the English language, which is a significant acomplishment.
Nevertheless, I encourage you to actually use the spell checker on your PC. In our language, the first letter of each sentence is always capitalized. The first person singular noun, "I", is always capitalized.
This is not a little thing. We don't read individual letters in English. We read phrases, groups of words. If the rules of grammar are not followed, then our ability to read printed text is significantly slowed. I am not insulting you or making a trivial observation. Please continue to use the spelling checker. And don't let the dumb Americans tell you that this doesn't matter.
Imagine if I were to add another random stroke or draw a 'happy face' in every Chinese character. It would be a major irritant to reading. Worse than reading and writing the traditional Chinese characters still used in Taiwan.
The same is true for the capitalization rules in English. And, the other European languages have completely different capitalization grammar rules than English does.
Plus if these grammar rules aren't followed, it is usually impossible to use language-translation programs.
Thank you.
I'd log in, but I'm at work... it's a government job where I do nothing all day long but where what I do on the internet is still censored to keep me from being unproductive... you wanna talk about inefficiency? Hoboy.... ...which is why I'm outta here in two days.
Welcome to the leftist nation of /.
So it seems China is trying to become Britain.
That is a real recipe for intellectual laziness. Although I consider myself a hard leftist (left of the Green party) I often read Pat Buchanan's magazine The American Conservative and find it very thought provoking. If we can't judge articles solely based on the cogency of the article itself and not it's publisher we wind up in an echo chamber incapable of learning anything. See commondreams.org and freerepulic.com for the left and right wing examples respectively.
:)
Oh wait did I say echo chamber I am on slashdot, never mind...
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
OK /., the following looks like sh*t on the site, you should be able to display chinese!
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å...å®é"(TM)è
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å¾çé"(TM)è
é"¾æZ¥é"(TM)è
èè®çoeYåå(TM)ä½çsè"çæ-å¼ï¼s
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BTW, http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_services/worldlingo_translator.html
really helped me a lot! ...kudos to make another site (http://suggestion.beijing2008.cn/Correction/send-error.sohu?method=init&skin=2&title=Technology%20and%20Equipment%20-%20The%20Official%20Website%20of%20the%20Beijing%202008%20Paralympic%20Games&url=http%3A//en.paralympic.beijing2008.cn/news/sports/sailing/n214355251.shtml&sourceid=0)
better.
Cheers!
~ Artificial Intelligence is better than none! ~
The problem with US (and other) media is NOT the media itself. It's the readers who'd rather read false and fresh, than true and timely. They'd rather read gossip and speculation than what is really going on.
The consumers are that: consumers. They consume, and to do that, you need 'a lot' and 'fast'. That's no environment for decent media to grow.
First of all, relating to our own war for independence, the colonists won against a world-class, superior fighting force.
I'm actually not convinced that the USA isn't a bit of an anomaly in this regard. There are a number of factors involved that tend to be overlooked:
1. The oppressor in this case was Britain - which was itself a democracy. I'd say the sentiment in parliament was paternalistic and looked at Americans as people who just needed some strong guidance. They didn't particularly want to give up their major trading partner, but on the other hand they weren't out to dominate them either.
2. The US revolution consisted almost entirely of military failures. Several blunders could have ended the whole thing if the British had properly exploited them (the Brits made several blunders of their own - but they were in such a strong position that it didn't cost them as much).
3. The effect of US resistance was basically to drive up the body count. Lexington and Concord were clear British victories, but the cost of those victories was so high as to challenge British resolve.
4. The British generally practiced the kinds of restrained warfare usually associated with Western democracies. Americans caught by the British were not treated in the same way as Chinese were in Japanese-occupied territory in WWII. The British people would not have tolerated atrocities.
5. The US victory at Yorktown was only possible with the aid of the French. In fact, the French contributed strongly to the success of the revolution. If Yorktown were not blockaded the British would simply have retreated and fought on at another place - British seapower was used to great effect when it was necessary to outmaneuver the Revolutionary Army.
6. Ultimately America wasn't THAT important to the British. Sure, it was important, but not so important that the British would sacrifice everything just to say that they owned it.
In the end, the US basically had more resolve to be independant than the British had to dominate them.
If, on the other hand, Britain were a true monarchy or other non-representative form of government I think we'd have seen several differences:
1. British power would have been employed much more freely. Revolutionary sympathizers would be killed outright and hunted down. Tories would have been encouraged to turn in anybody who was suspected of rebel sympathies. Nobody back home would be offended by such heavy-handed activities.
2. There would have been no ultimate surrender - the loss of a few thousand soldiers would result in just deploying a few thousand more.
3. The Americans could have killed as many Red Coats as they liked - they would just keep getting replaced. The democratic British government had to stay popular with the people and a million-man army that suffers a few tens of thousands of casualties is a major political defeat - even if militarily only a small loss. In order to defeat the occupying army the Revolutionaries would actually need to deplete it on a strategic level.
4. If America were a substantial part of a tyrant's power base they would be inclined to fight on until the very end - they would gain no benefit from surrender.
I think that the American Revolution is not a very good model of revolutions in general - I can't point to too many countries that have successfully employed it. It certainly hasn't turned out as well in other countries either - probably due to the nobility of the US Founding Fathers and their Western heritage. America was a western colony dominated by another western colony. India was fairly Westernized as well when it gained independence - again from a Western nation. You don't generally see these kinds of tactics successfully employed when one African nation wants to gain independence from another - and the results are generally far worse.
The late 20th century saw capitalism triumph over communism. The early 21st century is seeing capitalism triumph over democracy.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
he said they were disproven by slashdot comments a few weeks ago. Heck, if it was in a slashdot comment it must be true!