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Obama Talks Internet Freedom, China Censors
eldavojohn writes "In a town-hall-style Q&A with (hand-picked) Chinese students in Shanghai, President Obama made several statements knocking China's firewall and censorship. Quoting: 'I am a big believer in technology and I'm a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information. I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas. It encourages creativity. And so I've always been a strong supporter of open Internet use. I'm a big supporter of non-censorship. This is part of the tradition of the United States that I discussed before, and I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet — or unrestricted Internet access — is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged.' The Washington Post notes that the event was broadcast only on the local level, and in fact Chinese authorities removed from view what little coverage it had gotten, after about an hour. But at least American news media are gobbling it up."
Unfortunately, in Obamas' case, words speak louder than actions.
...ah, I just don't have the heart to finish the joke anymore. I'm so glad to have had the opportunity to have been raised in a culture where free speech and personal choice are so highly prized.
So that's why he's opposing and releasing all of the information about the ACTA treaty as well as allowing the pictures of the "POWs" that were enhanced interrogated to be shown. It's great to know that he got rid of all those national security and state secrets defenses in the courts, too.
Streaming in Chinese? Let us say it was the other way around, and the Chinese president was speaking here, how many "curious American citizens" would even understand what was on the Chinese equivalent of whitehouse.gov?
I'm glad that in the United States, the president agrees that an open and uncensored internet is important to ensure the free exchange of ideas. Sometimes, to ensure true freedom of speech, you have to allow that which you may find objectionable or offensive, because once you start blocking some information, you start to... OMG what's that? Child pornography?!? BLOCK EVERYTHING, ARREST EVERYONE, MONITOR ALL TRAFFIC!
True, true, but it goes both ways.
Far Left - "Obama is perpetuating cultural hegemony and displaying his intolerance toward other cultures' ways of life by forcing Western cultural norms down their throats."
of talking to the Chinese if the Chinese people don't hear the message. It's certainly falling on deaf ears on the Chinese authorities.
And who cares if the American media is gobbling it up, the American people don't care.
*DrugCheese rants*
Talk in bold. Reality in plain.
I am a big believer in technology
American IT workers laid off, jobs outsourced.
and I'm a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information.
DMCA
I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes
Renegs on promise to release Gitmo pictures
because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable.
Continue to occupy Iraq
They can begin to think for themselves.
Decimate the education system
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The Chinese are noted for their LACK of creativity due to their strict caste structure - in that a person of a lower caste cannot offer up a potential improvement in any process or technology that might embarrass a superior. This structure (or lack thereof) in the US is a big reason we develop so much new out-of-the box technology. All the Chinese know how to do is copy, right down to our architecture. The day they learn to think for themselves we are REALLY in trouble.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
So is it complete coincidence that Fox News began "doing it's job" meaning being completely critical of the actions of the President only once George Bush left office?
That same Bill of Rights also grants the government the right to criticize a news organization that seems to relish making the news as well as covering it.
Meanwhile some liberal somewhere makes up:
On Fox News The main headline : Obama SELLS American Freedom to Chinese
Bill O'Reilly - Obama is betraying all Americans by giving away the secrets of freedom to the Chinese
Glenn Beck - Obama is raising a Chinese Army to take over the United States
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
For starters, you're off-topic.
When you've got the numbers working for you, you should stop playing stupid games. Is there a reason that you use Obama's middle name and not McCain's (it's Sidney) other than Obama's middle name being Hussein? It dilutes your point. I'd be curious to see the votes by race for Kerry, Gore, and Clinton (x2) in the last few presidential elections. That would probably make a better baseline.
If you claim that normal support would be closer to 65%, then it's only 30% who voted based solely on race. Still a non-trivial number though.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Which would be fine, if Chinese students were allowed to have political opinions.
It seems too convenient that the one moment where Obama was openly critical of Chinese leadership occurred during the only public venue which was not broadcast on live television. Those admonishments of Chinese censorship were intended more for us back home than the repressed Chinese people; a political stunt to appear as if he cared about human rights abuses without paying the associated political price of taking such a stand. If you doubt this, ask yourself this: why didn't he make such statements during his two earlier live broadcasts just days earlier?
So continues the Obama Administration's strategy of trying to have its cake and eat it too. It's almost as if a PR firm was elected President instead of a leader. ("Now with more Change(TM)!") On every major policy issue he has tried to split the difference until what remains is an unrecognizable mess, like cooperating with the Chinese to censor his criticism of their... censorship...
He is fast becoming a joke, a self-parodying symbol of a broken political system. Some examples:
The list could go on and on including: comprehensive Healthcare Reform (i.e. Medicare for All with Prescription drug price negotiations), limiting lobbyist influence (in his own administration, even!), repealing Don't ask, Don't tell, etc.
All of this, of course, is textbook post-Clintonian Democratic political strategy. The only problem is: this isn't the 90's. The public winds have changed. The information sources have changed. The problems are too big to be swept under the rug. I don't think even Barack Obama understood just how much his talk of transformative change and real progress resonated through the hearts of a disillu
As a product of both Western and Eastern cultural influences, I think that a remark like that is not necessarily off the mark. Freedom isn't something you can just give to a people and expect them to do great things with it. It depends greatly on the socio-cultural norms and lifestyles of a people, and how well their infrastructure can support it. Without proper education, for example, radical freedom can result in someone throwing their lives away by making poor choices.
Now you can argue that freedom means that it's their choice if they throw their lives away, and it's none of your business. And it's true, that's a great thing about freedom. But you have to keep in mind that that very viewpoint is a product of your socio-cultural upbringing. We Chinese have many sayings that refer to other Chinese as brothers or sisters, as one big family. If a member of your family suffers, the entire family suffers. To the Chinese, that's not a good thing. So with even this one facet of freedom, the freedom of others to throw their lives away and the freedom for you to ignore them, is both a strength and weakness depending on your point of view.
Now I'm not a cultural/moral relativist. I very much dislike relativism as a philosophy in general. However, that doesn't mean that we in the West can feel smug about our superior cultural values. It just means that there may be some true measure of how to live a good life, but we don't necessarily know what that measure is. Freedom is, in my view, definitely a part of that measure, but there still remains several questions. How much freedom? Which aspects of life should be subject to freedom, and which should be subject to regulation? Questions like these have not been conclusively answered, and it's up to the people of a certain culture to try to determine for themselves what those answers are. Isn't that a part of freedom? To be able to decide, as a people, what rules should govern your own society?
So yes, I think that Obama is showing at least some cultural insensitivity. Not because of some far-left cultural relativist reasons. But because a part of freedom lies in the ability to define the boundaries of freedom in your own society.
(I realize that there will inevitably be replies that will ask how the people of China are determining their own freedoms, since their system of government is not democratic. There are several responses to these replies. One of which is that the people of China are not sufficiently inclined to pursue the Western style of democracy because the Chinese government is working well enough for them. China's growth as an economic powerhouse has not been an accident. Another response is that they do have some elected regional representation, but that their power is simply not as great as their counterparts in the West. And it's not an oddity that the power structure in one government is different from another. -- In any event, regardless of whether you think each individual Chinese person has the power to change the circumstances, the fact is that it's not Obama's place, or any American's place, to decide for them whether they want to pursue freedom, how much of it to pursue, and in which aspects of life they should pursue it.)
What does their primary voting pattern have to do with a general election? They had to vote for one or the other. And in fact, they were 80% for Hillary up through February of 2008. Obama didn't have the majority of their support until after it was mathematically clear that he was going to win the nomination at the end of March.
So, your claim that they voted for him based on the color of his skin (as if black people are too stupid to pick a candidate for any other reason) is simply false.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
They're not allowed to express political opinions. The government can't control what they think, except by controlling their access to contrary opinions.
I sometimes envy the Chinese, they at least know that they're being censored. Here in the "west", it's just getting started and people in general have no idea what's going on.
The first step to defeating censorship is public awareness of censorship. China has us beat here. By the time China stops censorship, the western countries will have become what they demonzied.
I think you are thinking of Chris Mathews of MSNBC. Unless someone at CNN said the same thing.
That link is wrong, the correct one should obviously be:
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=419750&type=National ...
when the items in the loss category far exceed those in the win column in areas of importance or magnitude.
Its like having a city claim crime is down because jaywalker incidents are down 100% while ignoring the fact it was because someone was shooting them.
This is President Wall Street. Main Street won't matter to him until 2011. For all the anguish and hysteria over Bush and his so called allegiance to big business, at least Bush wasn't just handing money to Wall Street. Obama proved one thing about trickle down economics, its too slow and inefficient as a means to reward those who really support the campaigns, its many times faster to just send them tax payer money directly.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The MSNBC cite shows a video of MSNBC. Ignore the blog, ignore the comments and let the video speak for itself. The GGP seemed to not believe that the WH was a "war" with Fox News and asked for Non-Fox sources. The Guardian link also shows this and it is certainly NOT a Republican, conservative or Fox News site, as you clearly pointed out.
I didn't comment on the Guardian at all. I noted that the article said the opposite of what you claimed. I didn't even load the video on that Freedom Whatever blog, thank you Flashblock, because I'm already familiar with the arguments.
So, first you try to rebut by saying that my first source does not agree with Fox News, which is not what I was trying to show, and then you complain that my second link is conservative and it agrees with Fox News. The point was to show WH attacks towards Fox News, which both sites did. For more, please use Google. Search terms, "Anita Dunn" "Fox News", with quotes.
BTW, challenging the WH and reporting on the stuff they do does not make you "an arm of the Republican party". It makes you a news organization.
What Fox "News" broadcasts is not a "challenge" to the White House. It's made-up accusations, like this Anita Dunn nonsense, like the fuss about ACORN, like the association between the President and Bill Ayers, that make it an arm of the Republican party. These stories are simply specious, having no purpose beyond allowing the talking heads to call President Obama a socialist over and over on national TV.