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Vietnam Imposes New Blogging Restrictions
GMAW is one of many to mention that the Vietnam government has approved a new set of regulations aimed at bloggers. The new restrictions ban bloggers from discussing certain subjects that the government deems sensitive or inappropriate. Not only are the topics limited, but bloggers are being directed to only write about issues that directly impact their personal lives. "The rules, which were approved Dec. 18, attempt to rein in Vietnam's booming blogosphere. It has become an alternative source of news for many in the communist country, where the media is state-controlled. The new rules require Internet companies that provide blogging platforms to report to the government every six months and provide information about bloggers on request."
So I guess no "me blog you long time"??
Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody... - Dick Armey
Yeah, I have thought about the real situation in Vietnam: a small tin hat group of asshats who will stop at nothing to manage and control the society in which they govern. Being a "small" or a "weak" state militarily these days means nothing... good countries (as in the freedom loving kind) will always find friends amongst strong free states. Unfortunately, the same is true for communist states. Keep drinking the koolaid, friend. I know, communism just needs a little more tweaking and adjustment in order to work... it's sound in theory... ad nauseum.
So what you're saying is that in Vietnam, it's possible to die in a Blogging accident?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Vietnam is communism in name only (not even that since it calls itself socialist). Since 1986 Vietnam is, like China today, just yet-another undemocratic country. Communism is mostly an economic concept, and the Vietnamese economy has largely shifted to a free market system.
Fleur de Sel
Nah, it's fascist bull just as we suspected. I lived in Vietnam for a year, married a Vietnamese woman, and spend at least two weeks there every year since. They have no legitimate need to censor the net other than to keep the current corrupt officials in power.
I dunno if that's true. Though the only time that comes to mind is in times of (actual) war. The citizens should not allowed to publish the locations and troop strengths of army regiments, for example; it may directly endanger those soldiers.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I don't think I've ever truly seen a communist state. For what it's worth I've never seen a true capitalist state either. Communism like capitalism is an economic model and it has nothing to do with freedom of speech, religion or human rights.
The closest thing perhaps to communism would be the isolated communities of indigenous peoples. While the closest thing to capitalism would be Hong Kong.
Some of them chose communism. A lot of them didn't. Having lived and worked over there (on a Linux related project even) I know good Vietnamese there who supported South Vietnam and the US. After the south fell they spent years in re-education camps. They had been to the US in the 60's and received training on computers and electronics. Now they don't own a single thing and are kept out of any good paying job by the communists who still seek to push the former South Vietnamese. They live in poverty even poor Americans cannot imagine. It is very sad what they are doing to their own country. But the poor brainwashed people of Vietnam still support communism.
I'm not sure we can really fault the poor and uneducated who chose communism. They were starving and were just looking for a better way. They did not have access to world news or history classes from their villages and only knew what they received in the form of propaganda.
But we can definitely fault the corrupt communist leadership for taking advantage of these poor people and making millions of them pay with their lives.
No, it wasn't a troll. Unfortunately, due to the lack of a "-50,000 Gormless Cretin" moderation category, the "troll" rating often gets used as a substitute.
The new restrictions ban bloggers from discussing certain subjects that the government deems sensitive or inappropriate. Not only are the topics limited, but bloggers are being directed to only write about issues that directly impact their personal lives.
If I was a Vietnamese blogger, the new restrictions would directly impact my personal life.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
From a purely ideological perspective, there isn't anything wrong with communism. But in practice it utterly fails due to incompetence, corruption and selfishness. From a purely ideological perspective, there is a lot wrong with capitalism. It thrives on selfishness, inequality and stupidity but it works better than anything (well, credit crisis aside).
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
Communism like capitalism is an economic model and it has nothing to do with freedom of speech, religion or human rights.
Communism as espoused by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto required the use of public education as an instrument of social control, the destruction of the traditional family and the destruction of traditional religion.
"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc. that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis"
"The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention"
"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists."
There is of course some context to these quotes, which you can check out for yourself - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61/61.txt
I don't think it is unreasonable to use the Communist Manifesto to answer the question "What is communism?". The answer most definitely has everything to do with freedom of speech, religion and human rights.
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Though the only time that comes to mind is in times of (actual) war.
Governments all over the world frequently ask newspapers not to report stories.
Sometimes the Government claims 'National Security' and other times they just ask nicely.
Every now and then, a newspaper says no and a government scandal is born.
All you're really saying is that Western Nations aren't as blatant about their censorship...
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
that he agrees with you completely?
In case you haven't heard of it, Vietnam didn't become a communist state as a result of some democratic process. Military force was involved, with the help of foreign powers
While you are correct, the Communism being referred to is the history-free Communism-lite popular on college campuses which really amounts to nothing more than a kindergarten-level notion that 'sharing is good'.
I think what he's saying is that governments who drive subversive speech underground aren't really doing themselves, or their citizens, any favors. Ideas don't need sunlight to grow.
Look at the US's case. We don't criminalize any speech, really, except kiddie porn and direct incitements to violence. (The McCain-Feingold campaign funding law is an arguable subject but there it's funding and timing, not content as such, that is involved.) So any nutcase with a chip on his shoulder can propagate the most outlandish, hateful tripe you could imagine. Things that would get him prosecuted in much of the EU, or executed in China.
What happens as a result? Not a damn thing. The resulting cacophony of dissidence just raises the "noise floor" of popular discourse. No radical point of view gains any more traction than it would have if it were aggressively suppressed by the government; if anything, we've become a more conservative nation since the Internet gave the nutcases their soapbox.
Suppressing speech is always pointless at best, and more likely counterproductive.
Yes, the previous generation choosed communist, but it was the only way to gain independence back then. We have China (ROC) in the north, the French in the South. And the only force that can prevent us from being enslave one again is the communist.
So at least we got a bed to sleep ;)
Because it does not fall into the standard /. creed.
If you don't support the /. groupthink(which they say they hate but deeply love)(which is ironically doublethink) you will be downmodded as troll/flamebait/overrated. It seems that the overrated tag is made especially for this situation. Some people may disagree with a message that is not troll or flamebait so there needs to be a solution. That solution develops in the form of overrated. Overrated is nothing more than a cheap populous vote on the popularity of the opinion. Don't agree with a post? Mod it overrated/underrated to "correct" the score.
Slashdotters claim to believe in absolute freedom of speech but if your opinion is unpopular it is hidden from sight. Well, that isnt a problem because everybody can still see it via the view levels, right? True, but it obscures the message and that is all /. needs, to make it harder to see views that do not conform to groupthink. It's like the great firewall of China, people with will can surpass it but it stops most people from seeing unwanted information and that's enough for them.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
They will arrest you directly instead.
This new 'restriction' is not really a restriction, they just need a tool to keeping a tight grip on bloggers. They already has something else to arrest anyone they want, as this is written in Vietnamese law:
- The communist party of Vietnam is the only political party in Vietnam
- All action that is against the government or the nation is strictly forbidden.
(roughly translated)
And that would be the same Democratic freedom fighter, Sirik Matak who, "On March 18, 1970, while Norodom Sihanouk was on a trip abroad in Beijing, China, Prince Sirik Matak assisted Prime Minister Lon Nol in organizing a vote of the National Assembly to depose Norodom Sihanouk as head of state. The measure passed easily in parliament and they declared a new government named the Khmer Republic." Wiki Thus opening the country (with the help of millions killed by B52 raids) to Pol Pot, who killed a couple of million more.
Governments all over the world frequently ask newspapers not to report stories.
Sometimes the Government claims 'National Security' and other times they just ask nicely.
Every now and then, a newspaper says no and a government scandal is born.
All you're really saying is that Western Nations aren't as blatant about their censorship...
I think the larger point is that the US and other nations with inherent freedom of the press have to ask news outlets to hold a story. In Vietnam, I'm quite certain they simply tell the press what they can and cannot say. One of those pesky little "checks and balances" Communism doesn't have to worry about.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Communism killed more than 100 million people in the last century
Capitalism has killed more than a million people in the past 4 years. What's your point, other than to create a straw man?
Communism is a loaded propaganda term that's basically meaningless, but I'm guessing you mean "strong state socialism", which is an economic system. Strong state socialism with free communication and democracy would be an interesting experiment - we can see weak state socialism, working great, in Northern Europe.
Saying that Communism means Totalitarian Socialism would be like saying Capitalism means Fascism. It's certainly the way it was presented as a propaganda term during the cold war, but it's not terribly useful to accept that meaning.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Although to be fair, it was technically the previous generation that made the bed.
It's pretty easy to choose Communism when Democracy is blowing your babies in half.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
It's nothing like that at all. Communism is a political philosophy not a science. Evolutionary theory has changed in response to new evidence, as you would expect for any field of scientific endeavour. Coming up with a completely new and unrelated theory and calling it "evolution" would be fundamentally dishonest, as is coming up with new political theories and calling them "communism".
Redefining words to stifle opposing arguments is exactly the kind of behaviour to expect from people intent on destroying freedom of speech and human rights. I'm shocked to hear it from a communist, shocked I say!
Marx not a good enough source of information about communism? I doubt you'll manage to pull that one off very successfully. I suppose the rest of us have it all wrong and "communism" means "love"? Maybe I just need to be sent to a "re-education camp" to learn more about love. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Wow, killing Vietnamese people is now linked to voting for Sarah Palin... incredible! What astute political analysis! As far as the millions of dead Vietnamese are concerned, I think you will find that those numbers are due to the fact that 1) communists didn't like American forces defending a free South Vietnam, 2) picked up weapons to engage in hostilities with said American forces, and 3) were subsequently killed by their decision to fight a better trained, more disciplined, better equipped military force. The Communists and the Khmer Rouge really did a bang up job once we left. As far as your vague reference of war belonging to Republicans (I'm guessing by your rather obtuse Palin reference), it was Kennedy (a democrat) who started the war, Johnson (a democrat) who escalated the war, and Nixon (a republican) who ended the war. Just thought I'd remind you of those facts.
Glad you bring that up. Driving is a privilege, not a right. As such, it is a reserved right of the states as per the 10th amendment to license drivers and establish standards of licensing. As with any license, there are certain terms and conditions of that license. The laws don't FORCE any driver to buckle up, or to stay sober... they simply establish punishments for failing to do so. Owning, or rather, buying, a house is not a right endowed unto someone by their creator. While someone may have property rights (what the 'pursuit of happiness' clause has been often interpreted to be) once they OWN that house, it is not a right to be given the means in which to PURCHASE that house. When I bought my house, I could very easily have acquired a mortgage of about a quarter million, far beyond my means to pay on a 20 year loan. I instead opted for $75k, which bought the fixer-upper that I wanted, and is within my means. Yes, while it was unethical for lenders to seek giving out the biggest loans possible to a buyer, banks were essentially forced to do so or face penalty for not loaning to sub-prime borrowers. In the end, it's the responsibility of the individual to not try to live beyond their means.
Yeah, and 10% of the population also pays 90% of the tax burden. Quick question: Have you ever been hired and given gainful employment by a poor person?
OOooH GOODY! An anti-war activist! I love you guys... in your fervent shouting for an end to hostilities, you will often be hostile to guys like me, who being part of the great "military-industrial complex" are either viewed as baby killers, mother rapers, father rapers, or any other number of really bad things. This past year, thousands of Christians in Iraq were able to celebrate Christmas as an official holiday for the first time in decades. I served my nation's military which through our actions helped make that happen, in addition to giving millions of people freedom from a brutal dictator... how's that protesting coming along?