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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.
They're streaming this speech, and historically China has not blocked this domain. So, provided there are curious Chinese citizens who are aware of the visit they have a way to hear directly what was said.
...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.
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
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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!
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*
Giving speeches is a large part of what a politician does. Don't confuse politicians with administrators.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
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!
That's why we can freely talk about Scientology any time we want!
I hope they didn't remove the students who witnessed it as well.
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.
The AC above above is a race-baiting bigot, but one should publish correct facts to avoid leaving their statistics on the wall.
Historically, African-Americans have voted Democrat 88-92% of the time, and sometimes as high as 95%. Going into the 2008 election, any Democratic candidate could expect to get that much. Obama, by pulling 96% of the black vote, at most pulled a couple of percent that he might not have gotten if he'd been white. And even then, it's not obvious that Hilary wouldn't have also gotten 96%, given Bill's popularity with African-Americans, and the current Republican party's outright pandering to racists and white supremacists.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Really removed from view? A quick check on the chinese newspapers, here for example todays Shanghai Daily, proves different:
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=419690&type=Opinion
"Many of the students asked questions in English about Obama's views on Internet censorship, global leadership and Taiwan....
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
The Chinese fully realize that probably half or more of Americans will be very upset if something were to happen to Obama, and they're treating the problem appropriately, as would any other host country.
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.
America! FUCK YEAH! Coming to save the motherfuckin' day yeah!
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
America, *beep* yeah!
if you are still here, then isn't that proof you can in fact talk about Scientology anytime .... hold on there is a knock on the door.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
The Chinese get no Hope and Change, instead they either get silence or the opportunity to live on several people due to the Weekly Organ van visit.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Glen Greenwald writes on Civil Rights, does a good job of critiquing Obama's administration, comparing it to Bush.
Obama's Holder, for example, is pushing the argument that the gov declared methods of spying secret, therefore there is no way to sue it or the telephone companies, harder than Bush's attorney general did.
Obama has NOT ended the wars, has NOT brought the troops home.
He has NOT opened up the government, increased transparency, despite the rhetoric.
Give me a break. The Guardian article you quoted leads with "Fox News is clearly an arm of the Republican party. Obama is right to throw caution to the wind and treat it as such." The MSNBC cite isn't even from NBC, it's a wingnut blog!
That link is wrong, the correct one should obviously be:
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=419750&type=National ...
Yes, you said this before. Word for word. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1236735&cid=27997273
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.
Do you? I mean, really, were you that stoned during your high school government class?
putting legislation online at least five days before it's voted on. That's Congress' (Pelosi and Reid) responsibility, not the President's.
allowing congressmen enough time to read legislation rather than ramming it down their throats at 2am. That's Congress' (Pelosi and Reid) responsibility, not the President's.
And ending backroom politics. That's Congress' (Pelosi and Reid) responsibility, not the President's.
get rid of the lobbyists That's Congress' (Pelosi and Reid) responsibility, not the President's.
midnight bills, etc That's Congress' (Pelosi and Reid) responsibility, not the President's.
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Thank you for a very thoughtful comment. Democracy is not the only form of government in the world, and certainly has its share of problems. China's current government also has its problems, but one cannot deny that China has made huge progress the past few decades. The best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship - the trick is keeping a dictatorship benevolent. China has surprisingly well in that regard. I hope /. readers will think about what you said, rather than mindlessly jumping on the "democracy is best" bandwagon.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Pot, kettle. Creativity is universal in the human race, so is blind conservatism, it just affects different individuals.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Yeah, because internet censorship is the most egregious form of oppression going on in China right now. Sheesh.
Dick had already pissed the money away to Halliburton and the Industrial-Military Complex, remember? It cost an awful lot to donate all that expensive depleted uranium to the Iraqis.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Most people here seem to agree that China's policy of censorship is a bad thing.
Most people at Slashdot also seem to believe it's a good idea to allow the US government's FCC greater authority over network communications.
I'm not saying that the same sort of control is currently proposed. I'm just saying that it's funny to see Slashdotters who believe that the FCC will only use regulatory authority to prevent traffic shaping won't attempt to expand that authority or use it for purposes other than those desired. But yeh, the fact that China can just shut down a network because it's not conforming to government standards is bad.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
I'm not really quite sure what consists of as 'most' especially when opinions vary from generation to generation.
I know for a fact that China has a GIANT bit torrent user base and a large p2p, in general, user base. My guess is that many use this to circumvent the firewall.
Also, most people I talk to seem to be quite anti FCC when it comes to restricting the freedom of speech which generally is the same thing china is doing except for television. However, I do know a good number of people who are pro regulating the internet for the user so corporations can't take advantage and do what China does.
It really depends where you are and who you're talking to.
In communist China, they censor Obama on censoring you so they can censor YOU!
after all, Fox has Glenn Beck, who may have raped and killed a young girl in 1990!