Slashdot Mirror
China Blanks Nobel Peace Prize Searches
1 a bee writes "CNN is reporting that China is attempting to block all communication regarding Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Even texting is affected: 'Text-messaging on mobile phones is not immune from censors, either. A Shanghai-based netizen, @littley, tweeted his unfortunate experience: "My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize."' Might as well add Slashdot to the censored list."
Further coverage is available from NBC.
You got to admire their attention to detail. I wish my government cared that much about ANYTHING.
A B A C A B B
China is just trying to protect it's citizens against the terrorist and child porn. Sheesh.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
In an effort to pre-empt any assumptions about access to information, I am in China and I have been able to access news sources and most articles online using Google News and various Western media outlets linked therein. Searches seem to be filtered by key-word, but most Chinese are aware of the award. Honestly, most of them don't care that much. They all know that the award often carries a political agenda. See: Barack Obama. Some feel it's just the West finding new ways to apply pressure to China on these issues where there has been long-standing disagreement. They are aware of the news though.
Mainly, I think the government is trying to avoid any large gatherings, unrest, or protests in the wake of this decision. We'll see what happens.
I've never had a problem accessing Slashdot from here. Some of the linked articles, yes, but not Slashdot itself. *ducks*
~A~
And it's as boring as fuck and written by men scared of pork products. Next?! I love bacon. Where's your silly "god" now? 666, Hail Satan!!1!
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Somebody ought to write an exploit for Chinese iPhones and Android based phones that autotexts the name "Liu Xiaobo" to everyone in a person's contact list, then goes on to force their phone to do the same thing. Within a matter of days the entire population of the two most popular smartphone platforms in China would have their favorite toys censored. I am pretty sure that could cause an effective public outrage.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Believe me, it's just your observation. At least he knows how to post on-topic.
Qxe4
Dear China,
Fuck you and your backward, stultifying Communist state!
P.S. Do you have 4 trillion to loan us so we can extend our tax cuts?
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason?
No, it's something that is resonant with people that want to suppress speech. Look at recent articles and you will see similar lame excuses (ie. stopping terror, child porn, copyright protection) for allowing the NSA/FBI/etc to spy on citizens or try to take down their computers.
I've heard it said that much of the Chinese government's restrictions on free speech, protest, etc. are to maintain social stability.
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason? If so, why?
Or is it a transparent attempt to maintain power (stability = keeping the same people/party in power)? Or is it both?
Kinda like announcing that a soldier who died by friendly fire actually died a heroic death? Or quietly putting a priest out to pasture so people won't figure out that he's been molesting children?
People in power do this kind of crap all the time. The only difference is the degree and the extremes they'll go to.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Then why does North Korea still exist? Why is Tibet not free? Taiwan?
We may be trading with them. We may even be their main source of income and innovation. But we're also still each other's worst enemy, still armed to the teeth, and still targeting each other.
I see you've never taken an introductory logic course before.
It is historically sound - People who are named in the Bible have been found to exist.
People named in the Futurama cartoon exist too, therefore it must be historically sound!
I'd continue, but actually I think I will go watch some historically accurate Futurama episodes instead.
Obvious question: Are you hitting Baidu from inside China, or from outside? An awful lot of sites give different results based on where they determine you are coming from.
It could also depend on what part of the path from the computer to the server the filtering and monitoring was being done on. If it was at a few choke points en route rather than at boatloads of individual sites(likely) then a non Chinese located computer might not hit the filters.
Scientific Accuracy? Pi is 3 in the Bible.
Isaiah 40:22 says a circle, not a sphere, not that it's round, but that it is a circle and "heavens like a canopy" of a tent.
You skip over the universe being created in six days and it being a bit over 6,000 years old.
As for confirming the Bible with Herodotus, he didn't get the title of Father of Lies for being accurate.
You can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism. Basically, social harmony is one of the effects and goals of a virtuous person. Even Confucius knew though that political loyalty - one of the qualities of a virtuous person - could be abused by governments.
As such, it is both a culturally resonant idea and a commonly abused method for the ruling party to stay in power.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
North Korea's artillery, and its nukes, are not a sufficient deterrent.
The only thing keeping it alive is China. And the only reason we don't liberate North Korea is that it would cause a shooting war with China, which, if it were democratic, would join with us.
Freeing Tibet is the world's problem, just as much as imprisoning Tibet is China's problem.
Taiwan wants to be free of China, but can't even discuss it without getting China's saber rattled at it.
In 1989, we watched in horror as the Chinese government murdered 3,000 students for the crime of asking for a Democratic government.
A lot of us tried to boycott China after that for fear of making those bloody monsters even more rich and powerful
We were shouted down. "We have to trade with China. As China grows wealthier, the wealth will trickle down to their middle class, who will then rise up and demand basic human rights and freedoms. As we trade with China, as we stregnthen their middle classes, China will be dragged into joining the civilized world."
It didn't quite work out that way. China still has no real middle class, though ours has been decimated. The Chinese government started executing prisoners and selling their organs for profit, but that uprising of the newly-empowered middle classes still didn't happen.
So where is this "Enlightenment Through Trade?" China took that money, and used it to build a military that they're now threatening Japan with. They're kidnapping Toyota executives and holding manufacturing hostage with the market corner they've got on rare earth elements.
We've sacrificed our manufacturing base to this idea that a richer China is a friendlier China.
Really? How do you explain this?
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/870490--chinese-dissident-tipped-for-nobel-peace-prize
"Last Dec. 25 her husband was sentenced to 11 years behind bars, after being found guilty of trying to incite others to subvert state power.
Liu was the lead author of a document called Charter '08, calling for multi-party elections in China, where the Communist Party keeps a lock grip on power."
Why are we still doing business with these monsters?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
This is an example of real censorship. Please reserve this word for things like this, and not your boss preventing you from using company computers to chat with someone about whatever you want. Thank you.
Pi is only 3 if you assume that bowls have no thickness.
Which is a pretty dumb assumption, really.
6000 years isn't anywhere in the Bible, and was created via a priest who added up essentially random strings of numbers from geneologies. Given that he lived within the last few centuries, this is far from essential church doctrine. Similarly, interpreting the beginning of Genesis as anything other than poetry is extremely recent - most well respect theologians have historically held this to be true - see Aquinas, for example.
Even if you are to ignore the poetic elements, you quickly run into issues - measuring time would be devilishly tricky without any matter to establish a reference frame, for example.
It's not like there's a verse that says "And then YHWH took Moses away for seventy years, starting him on basic mathematics and proceeding through higher and more accurate models of the universe, until Moses was an expert in the most advanced and arcane of physics, adept at quantum and a master of relativity. And then He said unto Moses 'Now that I have shown you all this, I will relate unto you an in depth account of exactly how I created the universe'."
1.) It's a unique book - It's the most widely distributed book in history. The Bible has been printed at least 4.7 BILLION times, in more than 2,400 languages. The Bible has endured bans and attacks from opposers.
Too be fair Gideons International is dedicated to carpeting the planet with copies of the thing. According to wikipeida they are personally responsible for distributing 1.5 billion copies. So that accounts for over 30% of all bibles printed right there.
I can't even recall how many of those I've personally tossed myself... at least a dozen or so over the years.
Secondly, "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung" aka "The Little Red Book" was printed an estimated 5 to 6.5 billion times. (or should I write it as BILLION the way you did.)
2.) It is historically sound - People who are named in the Bible have been found to exist. Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea - his name was found on a stone in Caesarea in 1961. Events that happened in the Bible are proven to have happened. The account of Edom and Israel battling was one such event that proved to be true.
Mentioning people, places, and events that are real doesn't lend the quality of "historically sound" to the entire work. I hope we don't decide "The Last Samurai" was "historically sound" because we find a mention of Emperor Meiji in an archeological dig in the year 4210.
And indeed, Washington Irving's retelling of the life of Christopher Columbus creates the picture of a stubborn Columbus trying to make theologians understand that the earth was round. When in reality by this time the church already accepted the earth was round. Our modern conception that the church believed the earth was flat at this time is actually derived from Irving's fictional ("dramatic") account of it.
3.) Candor and honesty - Not only are their achievements recorded, but the people of the Bible also recorded their shortcomings and errors. Moses told of a mistake he made, Jonah made a big mistake and landed in the belly of a fish. Even the Apostle Paul humbly admitted that he made mistakes.
flawed characters? That's unique how? Achilles infamous heel, Lady Macbeth's self-destructive guilt...
4.) Internal Harmony - There were 40 men who wrote the Bible in the span of some 1,600 years. And yet, they wrote about the same theme - a harmonious message - God's Kingdom. From Genesis to Revelation, this theme can be found.
Its riddled with contradictions. And the modern 'bible' was assembled from a large collection of independant works precisely because they were deemed thematically harmonious by the theology over several hundred years. Books were systematically purged from the Bible, and purged from 'canon'.
The Gospel of Thomas..? First and Second Epistles of Clement?
Seriously the composition of the bible and Christian canon is even more convoluted, contentious, arbitrary, and self-serving than that of Star Trek or Star Wars.
5.) Scientific Accuracy - People used to believe that the earth was flat, but the Bible told that it was round. (Isaiah 40:22)
Yeah, I've seen that one before. But we also have Matthew 4:8 "Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;"
Its easy for the Bible to be right if it contains passages predicting both sides. If the earth were in fact flat, I expect you'd be pointing at Matthew and pounding your chest.
Furthermore, Isaiah 40:22, in the original tongue uses a word that is translated as 'circle' not 'sphere'. Its not like they didn't have a word for "sphere" or "ball". The word Isaiah uses is more properly interpreted as 'circle' like a 'disc' not like a 'sphere'. There are a number of passages in Job that reinforce this disk interpretation as well -- refering to shaking the earth by its edges (spheres don't have edges, nobody ever grabs a ball by its edges, but a disk would make perfect sense). Job also compares the earth to a clay seal w
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason?
No, it's something that is resonant with people that want to suppress speech. Look at recent articles and you will see similar lame excuses (ie. stopping terror, child porn, copyright protection) for allowing the NSA/FBI/etc to spy on citizens or try to take down their computers.
Actually, the idea DOES resonante with the Chinese, for cultural reasons that go back centuries. Confucianism held sway in China throughout much of their history, and that philosophy puts a high value on deference to the authorities, be it the Emporor or your local official. And what replaced it in the 20th century... Maoist communism... went from deference of authority to virtual enslavement of it. Chinese culture has never known an ethos of personal freedom the way the West understands it. And lest you think that improved living conditions and the presence of a market has changed anything, keep in mind that when Jackie Chan gave a speech to a major business group in Hong Kong, he got a standing ovation when he said that too much freedom in China was a bad thing, and that the government needed to maintain order and tranquility. One of the reasons that NY Times pundit Thomas Friedman admires the Chinese so much is that they have the benefits of a market economy, while having a government with total authority... easier to "get things done" that way, you see.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Six days. Right there in Genesis.
According to the Hebrew calendar the Universe was created in 3760 BC, so it's less than 6000 years by that measurement.
And yes, pi is three in the Bible, even Jewish scholars admit to it.
http://www.abarim-publications.com/Bible_Commentary/Pi_In_The_Bible.html
"He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits."
Heh, that was my thought too... I couldn't figure out why the Chinese government wouldn't want people to find out that Liu Xiaobo wasn't George W. Bush. I mean, surely, they knew that already.
I can't even recall how many of those I've personally tossed myself... at least a dozen or so over the years.
Dude, you're going to hell. You don't recycle?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Every foreigner who's in China is a loser who's there for Chinese women? Uh huh. Suuuure...
Might it be that you're pissed that one or more Chinese gals paid you no mind? Or, are you one of those who derides any Chinese female who goes out with a non-Chinese as a "yellow cab"?
Or is it that there's a shortage of them?
China's made its own problem of being 2 million female children short because of "one child" and the cultural emphasis on sons. Better start working on opening your own minds before trying to change minds here.
Oh, wait. You're here in the West according to your comments. Then how is it that you aren't just the same sort of loser leaving your own failures in the country you left behind? Oh. I got it. Different standard for you and others. You're inherently superior somehow. I've heard that philosophy somewhere before.
Or, maybe you were born here, and became embittered all on your own. Good to know to know that bullshit xeno attitude of yours can spring up anywhere.
Here in America (and across the world) we know your kind. We despise you.
Almost as much as we despise a totalitarian government censoring.
(Hopefully, you just wrote something silly because you were ticked off at the previous poster. Very few here sympathize with the Chinese government, but your comment came across just as alienating and biased as how I tried to wrote the above.)
"On the topic of valuable materials too where do you think we're even going to get the rare-earth metals for our iPhones, and LCDs, or communication grade lasers given that China has pretty much all the worlds supply"
Pretty much every country that has a rare earth mine (and they're not really that rare) put it back into production after last month's fiasco.
Again I like the ideal but the though is shallow and the consequences are more far reaching than you could imagine.
Oh, kid, I got the grey hair to remember what it was like before we started whoring ourselves out to the Chinese government. I can remember when a blue-collar job could buy a house and put your kids through college. Meat-packers and construction workers used to make comfortable livings. Now airline pilots in charge of hundreds of lives have to apply for food stamps.
The United States, unlike Japan or Britain, is not a tiny little island with few natural resources. We don't HAVE to do business with the outside world. Unlike North Korea, we are capable of feeding ourselves. We can supply all of our own manufacturing inputs for steel, plastic, electronics, etc.
The ONLY people who benefit from trade with the Chinese are the wealthy in this country who get access to slave labor by proxy, who get to shirk their environmental responsibilities because the monsters in Beijing don't care if entire peasant towns die from cancer. You and I don't benefit from it because prices are already set as high as the market will bear. All that trade with the Chinese does is cut the legs out from underneath labor, allowing the wealthy to roll back all the gains that were made when the muckrakers ruled.
Welcome back to the bad old days.
As for those Chinese kids who will suffer when we pull our trade? Believe it or not, I actually do worry for them. My hope is that pulling our trade will spark the revolution that will save their future from the slave labor that now lies ahead. I WANT to see China join the civilized world. I WANT to see a real democracy in China. I would love to think those three thousand college kids did not die in vain.
But what I want more than that is that my own children do not join those Chinese kids in servitude, which is precisely where we're headed.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I've heard it said that much of the Chinese government's restrictions on free speech, protest, etc. are to maintain social stability.
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason? If so, why?
My take.
China has historically been a unitarian state. And no matter how you look at it, China is a *huge* country, and for a thousand years or so, the only one that actually managed to more or less hold itself together. Most other large empires simply dissolved into smaller states within a relatively short period.
And thus, particularly when China become "united" under one government during the Qin-Han periods (around 200BC), most of the scholars and intellectuals were concerned how to make this huge behemoth government work. There were quite a few schools of thought, mostly adapting and refining the ideas that floated around in earlier periods. I describe the two mainstream ones:
The "legalists" believed in rule *by* law, using incentives and punishments to make people keep in line with the government and boosting government efficiency. And by "punishment", I mean harsh punishments such as body mutilations for those who do not obey. The ruler sits on top of this system, and is above it, and is the only one who steers it. Everyone else is subject to the law.
The "confucians" believed in "cultural education", or what I call "propaganda". They sought to achieve social harmony by advocating obedience and subservience to higher authorities, and maintaining a strict social hierarchy consisting of the Emperor at the top, then various nobility and officials in the middle, then the commoners. The commoners would defer authority to higher ups, and in turn, the authorities should treat the commoners as if they were their children.
It should be obvious from the above why the idea of free speech never developed. The only kind of open political disagreement allowed was between high officials, and between high officials and the Emperor. Historically, it is a *virtue* for officials to admonish and risk being executed by the Emperor. I'm not kidding you. Historically, the price of speaking the truth, speaking for justice, speaking for a better society, is risk of death if your views happen to be different from the ruler.
It is under these conditions that Chinese culture developed. And historically, when China was divided into different states or factions, there were constant wars between those states. Millions if not billions of people are killed in these civil wars, and they happen *every time* the government is not strong enough to hold the nation together.
This is the only reason why the Chinese people have tolerated authoritarian governments one by one -- yes it's bad, but the alternatives simply stink.
I hope that answers your question.
Don't quote me on this.
Actually, the idea DOES resonante with the Chinese, for cultural reasons that go back centuries. Confucianism held sway in China throughout much of their history, and that philosophy puts a high value on deference to the authorities, be it the Emporor or your local official.
People say this a lot, particularly Lee Kuan Yew to justify the one-party pseudo-democracy in Singapore, but this is not really the whole story. Authoritarians choose to selectively quote his work for their own ends. Confucius is very keen on respect for parents, authorities etc, but respect should not be confused with deference. In fact Confucius says that a minister's failure to correct his prince when the prince errs is one of the few things that can destroy a country.
CHAP. XIX. Chi K'ang asked Confucius about government, saying, 'What do you say to killing the unprincipled for the good of the principled?' Confucius replied, 'Sir, in carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The relation between superiors and inferiors, is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend, when the wind blows across it.'
CHAP. XXIII. Tsze-kung asked about friendship. The Master said, 'Faithfully admonish your friend, and skillfully lead him on. If you find him impracticable, stop. Do not disgrace yourself.'
CHAP. XV. ... 5. 'If a ruler's words be good, is it not also good that no one oppose them? But if they are not good, and no one opposes them, may there not be expected from this one sentence the ruin of his country?'