Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
SEND MORE NOODLES. I can't get enough of those noodles.
And how about that Falun Gong? They sure are enjoying their freedom of speech, the problem is that they were dumb enough to actually try it.
You can't have just a little freedom of speech. If it's restricted even a little bit, it isn't free.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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.
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.
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.