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China Blocks 'Egypt' On Twitter-Like Site
Suki I writes with this excerpt from news.com.au: "China has blocked the word 'Egypt' from the country's wildly popular Twitter-like service, while coverage of the political turmoil has been tightly restricted in state media. China's ruling Communist Party is sensitive to any potential source of social unrest. A search for 'Egypt'' on the Sina microblogging service brings up a message saying, 'According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results are not shown.' The service has more than 50 million users. News on the Egypt protests has been limited to a few paragraphs and photos buried inside major news websites, but China Central Television had a report on its midday broadcast. China's Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the events in Egypt."
Egypt isn't mentioned at all in the official Cuban website
To us Chinese, this is hardly news, considering that they block all kinds of stuff like "carrot"(contains a character which also occurs in the president's name) and "empty chair".
If 9/11 was my generation's Pearl Harbor, and Afghanistan/Iraq are our Vietnam, then what is this equatable to?
Mr. America walk on by your schools that do not teach Mr. America walk on by the minds that won't be reached
Only when they try to blame it on the dog.
The Chinese govt gets nervous anytime any dictatorship is under attack.
Guilty conscience pricks the mind.
Maybe we can give the Chinese the French ISP phone number
Are the Chinese even allowed to dial outside their own country? Also I imagine the 15,000 mile distance would really create a lot of noise on the line. They'd be lucky if they got even 9600 bits per second. (Which means pages would take 5 times longer to load versus a full 50 kbit/s connection.)
Trivia:
China's average internet speed is 3900 kbit/s. For comparison the EU and US average ~10,000 kbit/s.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
This looks a lot like what I remember from the protests in TianAnMen in Beijing. Then is was for democratic reform rather than an entirely new government but if Egypt is successful, things might change quickly in China too. I remember the horror people in Taiwan felt when the army attached the protesters. Probably made reunification impossible for decades to come unless the communists go. People with Peace Prizes under arrest seems pretty similar in both Egypt and China.
Maybe we can give the Chinese the French ISP phone number
Are the Chinese even allowed to dial outside their own country?
Of course. My wife's mother was on holiday in China a few months ago and she was calling back here all the bloody time.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Are we going to hear about every time China farts?
Well, if they can get their entire 1 billion+ population to do it in unison, in a coordinated nation-wide "pull my finger" action, you might actually hear it. The US Geological Survey would probably release a Tsunami warning.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Great Firewall is a joke. Anyone who wants to, uses proxies. I set up Apache+https+CGIProxy on my residential connection while my friend was touring in China, and I just left it up. It is undetectable (sans the fact that an https connection is established), impossible to filter, and completely transparent to a client. Piece of cake.
Well isn't that cute. Apparently the old nellies in the communist party of China are somehow feeling a bit threatened by protests happening in an entirely different country, involving an entirely different culture, and involving an entirely different type of government. What could they possibly think is the connection between communist China and the Mubarak/NDP party rule in Egypt? The politics is completely different. It doesn't make any sense.
Oh, wait, I know what the connection is -- the longing of the people to be free of autocratic rule, which transcends borders and the peculiarities of political parties. I can see why the people in power might be a little frightened by that. It's something that autocratic regimes always worry about -- that the people might finally rise up and say "enough".
I wonder if they'll block "Tahrir Square" next? (It means "Liberation Square" in Egyptian)
no, no, no - it's the guilty pricks that mind your conscience
China is not censoring the events in Egypt. If this word is blocked on one site it is certainly not representative for the media at large. It's all over the news on all news outlets in China. And no, this will not give the Chinese people idea's. In general the Chinese population is supportive of there government.
Tunisia's government dropped like a rock and it seems that people around the world took notice that a populist movement could actually overthrow an unwelcome regime. Of course, if the regime didn't care about its image in the world, it could just kill a few tens of thousands of people until the troublemakers either stop revolting or are dead...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That's an odd tone in your post. Censorship is an event. Trying to smush it away by saying "it's only one word" is some kind of red herring.
After all, if they are going to pick one word, it is an odd choice to pick "Egypt". I'd think "Freedom" would be more dangerous.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Not surprising. The Chicoms see their future. Unless citizens can petition fairly government with their grievances, this scene is inevitable.
an ill wind that blows no good
It's too early to tell if the events in Tunisia will produce a wave of liberation. But it does call to mind the events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. This could turn out to be the Arab world's Berlin Wall, then if it spreads to non-Arab countries like Pakistan, the Muslim world's as well.
There are a number of parallels. For example, pop historians like to point to the Berlin Wall as the event that triggered the end of communism in Eastern Europe. But there were lots of false starts that go back further, at least, say, to the protest movement spearhead by Solidarity in Poland, or maybe even further back to the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, in the late 1960s. The latter was brutally suppressed by the Soviets and their allies.
Could the present events have been inspired by the earlier events in Iran after the hotly contested elections in that theocratic country? Expect any event remotely similar to the Fall of the Wall to usher in a period of instability in the Arab world, something that extremists could exploit to install psychotic regimes worse than the despots they replaced/displaced.
Who knows, maybe Obama could be this generation's Reagan when the late Republican president issued his famous challenge to his Soviet counterpart: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
I've heard a lot that the people of Egypt were a little bit embarrassed that a small country like Tunisia could topple a dictator when they couldn't. Egypt has more than 5000 years of history, and Egyptians have some pride and exceptionalism regarding their long history and power in the Arab world. Chinese people also have a lot of pride and exceptionalism in their long history, and feel that they should be the center of the world in Asia. In that regard, the two countries aren't so different, and this revolution could be very threatening to the communist regime.
In reality, I think as long as China continues to concretely improve, at a snails pace though it may be, there will not be sufficient appetite for a revolution in China. To say that the CPC is a little bit paranoid about revolutions and stability, though, would be an understatement.
Apparently the old nellies in the communist party of China are somehow feeling a bit threatened by protests happening in an entirely different country, involving an entirely different culture, and involving an entirely different type of government
Yes. They really started clamping down right after the Iranian riots. There is no doubt the ruling class in China feels pressure and the need to keep the people happy.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yesterday Iran executed a dutch woman, supposedly for smuggling drugs and selling it. Her arrest however came during Iran's own riots and some people believe the charges were fabricated. Curious she would be executed in such a hurry at this moment. Sending a message perhaps?
But don't worry, the dutch government froze, not cut, all ties with the Iran government an. That will teach them.
China has little to worry about, these revolts have been about high unemployment levels. China is not suffering from that. The people got their bread and circusseses. It is the Islamic nations that are worried. They are corrupt, inept and overflowing with ever larger generations of yoing people with no future. China escaped that with the one child policy.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Or as Vidal Gore put it; A farmer has no reason to muzzle his sheep.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Do you think that they might still be a bit rattled after the release of this?
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
I am living/working in China and the Egypt situation has been the lead story on CCTV English news for the last 2 days... complete with clips of the Egyptian protests and the mandatory "Talking Head" analysts (both Chinese and foreign). It's getting 6~10 minutes worth of air-time at the top of each hour... Even the CCTV web site at http://english.cntv.cn/01/index.shtml has many clips available. The Chinese channel newscasts tend to be leading with stories of arduous treks back home for Spring Festival [EG: Riding 600Km on a motorcycle, in winter)... but there are still items, with footage of the riots, running on those news shows.
Egypt - Fact
New Secret Jet - Hoax
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Frankly, this isn't news. The whole country blocks facebook, twitter and god only knows what else. The netizens in China have figured out terms they can use to work around the filtering (they're not dumb) which goes to show how stupid the government sanctioned "great firewall" is (please take note Australia and other countries which are democracies who are entertaining mandatory filters!). Blocking a single word on a single site is hardly the biggest outrage I can think of. Think about it.
Really? Any totalitarian regime must worry about regime change. Tunisia, Egypt, ...
Who's next, Iran, Libya, Israel, Lebanon, N. Korea, China, ...
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
From a quick look, it it does not mention Russia or India either. It does mention the USA. That's just three of the world's four most populous countries. You have found an official state journal, for a state that is not commenting on something that does not concern it or its citizens. Possibly only because it does not have the resources, but nevertheless a commendable attitude.
I remember predicting the .com bubble poppage to my wife in the nineties (we own an ISP which was actually generating revenue, as opposed to so many .com's which were receiving funding based on future predicted/possible income).
I see two bubbles in China: economic and social.
The only question is: *when* they're going to pop, and whether they'll pop *together*.
But your attempted search is reported to the government.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Whereas Carthage has *only* 3 000 years under its belt.