"New Statesman" Pirates Its Own Magazine

WebMink writes "Knowing that its explosive special edition on China this week will be blocked by censorship, UK political magazine 'New Statesmen' has taken the unusual step of posting its own torrents of the PDF of the Mandarin edition on the magazine. Looking at the content of the issue they are probably right to expect censorship — there's an article from the former newspaper editor Cheng Yizhong about media censorship, and Ai Weiwei interviews a member of the '50 cent party' — a commenter paid half a dollar every time he derails an online debate in China. 'Essentially, these people are paid internet trolls; their job is to stop any meaningful discussion online about the government.'" Specifically, the magazine has made available this issue as a PDF and also as a torrent (magnet link).

Comments

Sounds Familiar

[organgtool]

their job is to stop any meaningful discussion online about the government.

So they are the Chinese equivalent of Fox News. I'm not just trying to make a joke, that is absolutely one of the effects of Fox News. They troll every story with a partisan angle and push their base ridiculously far to the right. Then everyone in the left and center responds by ridiculing them and offering counterpoints to their ridiculous arguments. But that doesn't matter because the effect of Fox News making their ridiculous arguments is that they keep both sides at war with each other so that there is no chance that we find common ground and fix the one problem that we can all agree on: reforming campaign finance and eliminating lobbying. By keeping us preoccupied by arguing over divisive yet relatively inconsequential matters, they are perpetuating our current system that heavily favors the rich. This has been going on for years and has been highly effective, so it's no wonder the Chinese are doing the same thing. People will always find ways around censorship, but keeping the people constantly distracted is the most effective way to fight unwanted changes.