I guess although it doesn't show that they don't care, it's indicative of their messed up priorities. (some of them, at least)
I've seen comments (not on slashdot, elsewhere) ranging from: "serves you right, commies!" to "why would they care? those sick bastards would be murdering their own people anyway" to various smartass comments.
Yeah should have made some sick waterboarding joke when Katrina struck...
I've heard it said that, as a people, the Chinese have a long view of history, and tend to be more patient than those of us in the west. Maybe. But I think the real reason is that they got burned in recent history. If you read up on the "Tienanmen Square" event, past the tank shock story, into the causes and consequences, you'd see that actually the Chinese (the people, and some in the CCP, notably Zhao Ziyang) tried to push for democratic reforms... and you know bad that backfired. There's been a lot of paranoia ever since.
It can simply mean that he believes it but lacks the ability to carry it out. Sometimes I just wonder. In a democratic country supposedly you do have an ability carry it out.
Uh, I think most desire food on the table first. Then they desire education.
Parts of China is still pretty third world.
I mean, seriously do you think they could use this "freedom" if they didn't even have the basic capabilities to *think freely*?
Parts of Eastern ideology might be a cause too, but you've been reading too much fiction if you really think most Chinese are ridding themselves of desires...
As a sibling poster has mentioned, it's not just about communist state propaganda. The Chinese has never viewed their government as inherent enemies, to be reined and constrained. Traditional Confucius ideology is that the government should be like caring, benevolent parents to the people. Of course things don't always turn out that way, but no political doctrine is perfect. It just happens that for some reason I have the impression that the "good" Chinese leaders/high officials (whether contemporary or historical) do impart a sense that they held that power not (only) for their personal gains/agendas but that they really deeply cared about the people. I confess that I don't know much world history, but western politicians seem relatively lacking in this commitment to serve the people. Exceptions exist of course. For example I'll give Obama credit for this.
And sometimes I just don't understand why Americans could put up with your current government that obviously made a blatant lie to the people, sacrificed lives and spent millions (/billions?) of dollars on a meaningless war -- not to mention that they bankrupted your international credibility. (which is one of the reasons you are having a hard time explaining why freedoms are important). I just can't help but wonder whether it's this "oh, governments are bad, live with it" mentality that numbed the senses of Americans.
I agree that hoping that leaders would be good and benevolent is too passive, and that affirmative action is better. But then right now the Chinese leaders are doing fine, and as the Chinese people look around they see this "democratic country" like America electing GW Bush TWICE (I don't need to go into his faults, you should know), and then Taiwan electing Chen TWICE (read up on charges of blatant corruption about him). Now, if you're a person who's never heard of the concept of democracy before, what would be your observation? Democracy leads to corrupt, stupid leaders. And then as you look back to your own country its apparently doing fine without democracy... so of course you'd ask "what's the point?"
In my point of view, sometimes you Americans are too paranoid about the government.
IIRC a while ago there was a discussion whether the police should be able to track a person through his cell phone if he disappears without reason (and reported by family etc). The answer seems extremely obvious to me (if you're concerned about privacy, shut that damn thing off), but some comments here puzzled me as much as you're puzzled by your girlfriend. I mean, I think I saw a comment saying that they'd rather be buried in snow than to allow the police to get their whereabouts in some very specific and reasonable circumstances. I, for one, wouldn't give up my life just because I thought I'm important enough for the police to go through the paperwork to ask my provider where I am (and usually at home/work!). If that's not paranoia I don't know what is.
Worse, this paranoia seems to only apply to the fictional story called "1984". As long as things don't match this story, Americans seem to think it's OK. I hate to repeat, but I don't see why Americans seem to think it's OK to elect a warmongering idiot twice, a government that treats everybody as terrorists, etc. "It's not 1984 yet" is something that I've heard more than once, and I do think it's really a bad way to look at things. If you seriously think about it, the horrors in 1984 won't happen -- it's infeasible, and those in power don't desire these things (unless, of course, somehow a lunatic gains absolute power).
So while I fully agree that most Chinese do have quite a bit of catching up in understanding why freedoms matter, there are probably subtle points that you've missed out too.
I regret that you, sir, probably won't live long enough to see how wrong your statement is.
I'll just tell you that the Chinese "empire" has more or less maintained unity over 2200+ years. Yeah, taking centuries right. Hate to break it to you but China was past its feudal period 2200 years ago where the continent comprised dozens of small kingdoms. Not every continent has to forget everything about civilization and fall back into the "dark ages". Get a clue.
And I guess you'll have to replace your crystal ball.
One has to remember in the USA we tolerate world-is-flat believers and despite being a minority, they have gained disproportional representation. (thankfully, not enough to mess with evolution in most public schools yet...) (First of all I'm not an American so please flame me if I'm wrong.)
Sometimes I just can't stop thinking that there really are almost half of Americans believing that the world is flat and 6000 years old. Otherwise I really don't see how you got your current President elected, and then RE-elected....
I don't think Chinese want *less* freedom, surely you can't have too much of these if there are no catches. But the fact is after a century of foreign invasions, civil wars and political catastrophes, they want stability. It's not just the Chinese government but the people too (if only because of "hey we're just starting to get rich so let's not ruin the moment"). The government probably has an influence on this mindset, but they're not pulling it out of thin air.
I think you're making a lot of assumptions about how I view the Chinese people. I have no desire to treat them disrespectfully or to impose my western views on them. It's simply my view that an authoritarian government is much less desirable for a society than a representative government, and I see no compelling reason why I should adjust that view. Generally, yes. In China's case, maybe not. I take it that you know parts of China still has a significant illiteracy rate? How you'd expect those people to make informed votes I have no idea. And those people are poor too, so if you have some millions of dollars to spend and people are willing to buy a vote for a couple of dollars, you could essentially rig an election.
It's not really about the system. Here in Hong Kong where free speech is still at an acceptable level (protests against government policies organized every other day, Falungung's anti-communist promotions on the busiest streets, etc), we've seen that "patriotic" mob's hostility towards people who hold alternate views, during the Olympic Torch relay here. I personally don't think issues like Tibet are appropriate during Olympic torch relays but the sheer zealotry of the "patriotic" mobs really makes me worried.
And most of those people are from mainland China (mostly students studying here). I wonder what chaos would ensue if you gave all the liberal-democratic-freedoms to all of China overnight.
Back to your point -- you don't have to change the view, and I don't think it's wrong. But if you're wondering, there are situations where you can't just impose a democratic system on a country and expect it to work. Like it or not, introducing political instability for a country with 1/5 of the world's population and in possession of one of the world's most powerful military is not what the world would like to see happen.
There are some things for which there is no justifiable moral equivalence. Among the most fundamental of these tenants is the right of self-determinism. No one deserves to be a slave. Not to another person, and certainly not to a government. The situation in parts of China might be bad, some regions like Tibet might fall under your definition, but if we're talking about China generally, none of your claims applies.
Chinese are not slaves. Some might be poor, they might not have as many political rights as you do, but they are not slaves. I'll refer you to the first line of the Chinese (PRC) National Anthem: "Rise up! The people who do not wish to be slaves!"
I doubt anybody believes the Chinese government has 100% approval rating. But then as I understand they do have a pretty high approval rating. They don't have the pressure of (re-)election, but legitimacy is still extremely important, and probably more-so due to the lack of democratic elections. I'll note that in Chinese history when a government falls below a certain level of legitimacy, they get overthrown by revolutions and civil wars... and I believe every Chinese leader is well aware of this fact. Basically they might get away with worse things, but when things REALLY fall apart they don't just lose their positions but possibly their lives. (Note that I don't think such things are going to happen in the foreseeable future, but almost every successful rebellion in Chinese history resulted in the previous ruler murdered)
So actually in democratic countries where (actual, ie. not fabricated) approval ratings below 50% are common, in China this rings all the alarms of civil unrest and serious political instability. 100% ratings is of course a fiction, but don't automatically assume that a high approval rating of Chinese leaders is fabricated. In the past 20 years or so they've done pretty well -- not flawless -- but most Chinese would think that they've done a commendable job. Can't say the same for some democratically elected leaders in other countries though.
I'm not saying this brutal "system" is more desirable than democracy -- I'm just saying that despite the lack of democracy the government still needs to maintain their approval rating, and that a high rating doesn't necessarily mean something is afoul.
So yeah. Basically, while the human rights status in China is not exactly top notch, it isn't as bad as you'd think either. There isn't a nice way to control the government, but it's not like the people are totally powerless over any abuse. The government is aware that they can't do anything really unpopular. They can get away with abuses here and there (all governments do), but assuming an undemocratic government automatically wields all power is naive.
And again, we're not slaves!! (well, most of us...) For some reason I'm reminded of the Monty Python scene where the a guy tries to get the body collect to collect a living person as a dead one -- "I'm not dead!!!". If you don't look closely at the actual picture (i.e. looking things up yourself from a neutral source) you'd bound to have distorted views.
(Btw, M[rs]. AC has done a great job explaining the intricate details of the more complicated controversies on the issue. Kudos.)
"Vague" terminology in laws scare me; there's something really unsettling to me on debates over what the law is. Constitutions are supposed to allow some wriggle room in case unforeseen things happen. In cases of emergencies you'd want those "vague" clauses to save your ass rather than wait for congress or whatever to try to pass an amendment.
Of course, the difficulty is to get the balance right... but constitutions which spell out every detail precisely can easily lead to crisis.
As a sibling poster has mentioned, using XFS is dangerous if you don't have a UPS.
It's well known that if you get a hard shutdown (like, sudden power failure) when accessing files in a XFS partition, the contents of those files will be zeroed out.
For expensive server farms this won't be a problem. UPS, redundant servers, backups, etc will generally render the problem moot. But for my desktop that's backed up like once every few months (I know, I know...) data integrity is much more important than whatever advantages XFS could provide.
I believe we can do better than what you described.
Second, I would still suggest that everyone will not agree on the definition of 'fact'. I could argue that it's a fact that the British government thought Iraq had WMDs. I could argue that it's a fact we had every reason to believe what they told us. British Government thought Iraq had WMDs -- unknown. Unless you're Tony Blair or his close ministers you don't know what he was really thinking. British Government claimed that Iraq had WMDs -- Fact. USA had every reason to believe what they told us -- subjective. Different people have different reasoning processes. (Most of) USA believed what they told us -- Fact.
You can then add a list of reasons Americans claim as justification for the war. They don't have to be "valid", they just need to be the actual reasons America gave for the war, or the reasons Americans thought they were having the war for. Those are facts too.
People can look at those reasons, and either agree, or think:"wow how stupid", or somewhere in between. But there's no need to present a view or conclusion -- that's the reader's job.
Of course we cannot 100% separate fact from opinion, but we can do much better than what you implied.
I also have this doubt about unit test: If the coder is already aware of the possible failures, then he should be fixing the code instead of writing a test.
And after a "unit" of code is written correctly, it shouldn't be changed a lot. Any big changes means a change in semantics, which means the original unit tests are useless anyway.
According to my understanding if this is the case then it should be your (American) duty to rectify this instead of using it as an excuse for all the crap your government has done.
Few monkeys in a wrong spot can do a lot of damage. I'm no American but I thought you guys voted them into office. Stop blaming the guys you (collectively) elected and start taking responsibility for your votes.
I'm not an American, but I'm really disturbed by your attitude. (Not that I'm in a place where there's a remote chance of America declaring war on us though.)
You're simply saying that you're going to support a war just to remove a guy that you're *told* that you're supposed to be pissed off with (see the other responses about Saddam), and killing people to lower your gas prices is a justification. If you don't see how sick this is.... ugh.
I hope you won't mind when I later refer to this thread when your fellow countrymen says "It's only the Bush Administration! We don't like wars".
And even then, when I do reality check, I CAN criticise Bush heavily and be not prisoned or silensed in US. Can't say that about Russia and Putin. I see this argument over and over again. The logic doesn't seem right but I really can't exactly pin point the problem. Anyway, two questions:
* what does it matter if you could criticize your government if it doesn't amount to any real changes? * Suppose in an imaginary scenario, Russians gets free speech tomorrow. You criticize them for (eg) their imperial attitude. They respond by saying USA has the same issues too. Now, you say "so what? we can criticize our government for that!", but then they respond by saying "guess what, now we can do that too!" Are you going to stop criticizing their government for their wrongs, or are you going to shut up now because they have free speech? (and this question is intended both as a rhetorical one and a real question, I really am interested to know the answer)
If the former case, suppose further that they agree with their government's imperialist attitude, and don't try to change things, what would you do? (This is actually what I feel towards the USA in these few years. I mean, I can write off the 2000 elections due to various reasons, but > 50% Americans (who bothered to show up) voted for Bush during the Iraq invasion. They say things are going to change "soon", but everybody else is saying that too...)
If the latter case, you just showed that free speech to criticize your government is orthogonal to the discussion. Why bring this up as an excuse then?
Well Microsoft has been proven bad, SCO is bankrupt, Vista is released and sucks, BSD is already dead, 2007 was the year of Linux on the desktop, and in Soviet Union, you belong to a Beowulf cluster of bases and nobody cares.
I have more examples but I have showed my point quite well about the so called indoctrination of a countries citizens I don't see it. Hate to dive into these muddy areas but tell me how exactly has the right to bear arms actually had a noticeable effect on your politicians. Not in theory (i.e. if the government turns against us we can organize an armed revolution!), but in practice. Besides, when the theory of right to bear arms was devised, tanks were not yet invented, so having a gun means equipment-wise you're not too behind an average soldier. But these days, Fighter jets, tanks, missile bombs, etc... do you seriously think a bunch of people with amateur guns could fight with an army with tanks etc? I'm not saying the right to bear arms was a flawed idea from the very beginning, but these days I think it has become pretty obsolete.
My humble opinion is that you fail to see the indoctrination of your countries ideals, and then claim that others are indoctrinated because they don't believe in the exact same things as you do. To be fair, this is the case of many many other countries' and their peoples, but your example is really not the best one, and if any, it just corroborates the GP's proposition.
Old news. As a Chinese I've seen enough "message force multipliers" (whatever that means) that I'd be surprised if I read a news article by western media which doesn't have them.
Digression: when the Chinese "nationalist" bloggers say "the western media 'lies'", this is exactly what they mean. Sometimes when you dig deep enough into the story the facts are usually true, or somewhat true, but twisted beyond recognition to cause cries against the Chinese government.
I'm pretty sure the multipliers were worse during the cold war against the Soviet Union (not that I was old enough to understand/remember at that time though)...
If the people are aware of censorship, that's a vital piece of information, and if one wants information badly enough, (s)he will get it, especially with the technology in the last decade.
However, if one simply believes that information given to him/her is free and unbiased, (s)he will never seek other perspectives and probably will dismiss any other views that conflicts with his/hers.
This willful ignorance can be even more dangerous in some situations. For the person who's aware of censorship, to reason with him you simply present him with the missing information. For the willful ignorant, no amount of evidence will convince him that maybe, perhaps, the things he believed in was wrong.
Of course in countries with heavy censorship there are people who's willfully ignorant of opposing views, but in a supposedly "free" country I think it's just easier to fall into that trap.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess although it doesn't show that they don't care, it's indicative of their messed up priorities. (some of them, at least)
I've seen comments (not on slashdot, elsewhere) ranging from: "serves you right, commies!" to "why would they care? those sick bastards would be murdering their own people anyway" to various smartass comments.
Yeah should have made some sick waterboarding joke when Katrina struck...
[/rant]
It's just too easy for some crazy religious leader to "misinterpret" the intentions and send his followers on a killing spree.
Just look at all those witch hunts in medieval Europe.
Actually, the prospect of this risk is scary enough to me.
Speaking from (online) experience, some Americans do really think that.
Uh, I think most desire food on the table first. Then they desire education.
Parts of China is still pretty third world.
I mean, seriously do you think they could use this "freedom" if they didn't even have the basic capabilities to *think freely*?
Parts of Eastern ideology might be a cause too, but you've been reading too much fiction if you really think most Chinese are ridding themselves of desires...
As a sibling poster has mentioned, it's not just about communist state propaganda. The Chinese has never viewed their government as inherent enemies, to be reined and constrained. Traditional Confucius ideology is that the government should be like caring, benevolent parents to the people. Of course things don't always turn out that way, but no political doctrine is perfect. It just happens that for some reason I have the impression that the "good" Chinese leaders/high officials (whether contemporary or historical) do impart a sense that they held that power not (only) for their personal gains/agendas but that they really deeply cared about the people. I confess that I don't know much world history, but western politicians seem relatively lacking in this commitment to serve the people. Exceptions exist of course. For example I'll give Obama credit for this.
And sometimes I just don't understand why Americans could put up with your current government that obviously made a blatant lie to the people, sacrificed lives and spent millions (/billions?) of dollars on a meaningless war -- not to mention that they bankrupted your international credibility. (which is one of the reasons you are having a hard time explaining why freedoms are important). I just can't help but wonder whether it's this "oh, governments are bad, live with it" mentality that numbed the senses of Americans.
I agree that hoping that leaders would be good and benevolent is too passive, and that affirmative action is better. But then right now the Chinese leaders are doing fine, and as the Chinese people look around they see this "democratic country" like America electing GW Bush TWICE (I don't need to go into his faults, you should know), and then Taiwan electing Chen TWICE (read up on charges of blatant corruption about him). Now, if you're a person who's never heard of the concept of democracy before, what would be your observation? Democracy leads to corrupt, stupid leaders. And then as you look back to your own country its apparently doing fine without democracy... so of course you'd ask "what's the point?"
In my point of view, sometimes you Americans are too paranoid about the government.
IIRC a while ago there was a discussion whether the police should be able to track a person through his cell phone if he disappears without reason (and reported by family etc). The answer seems extremely obvious to me (if you're concerned about privacy, shut that damn thing off), but some comments here puzzled me as much as you're puzzled by your girlfriend. I mean, I think I saw a comment saying that they'd rather be buried in snow than to allow the police to get their whereabouts in some very specific and reasonable circumstances. I, for one, wouldn't give up my life just because I thought I'm important enough for the police to go through the paperwork to ask my provider where I am (and usually at home/work!). If that's not paranoia I don't know what is.
Worse, this paranoia seems to only apply to the fictional story called "1984". As long as things don't match this story, Americans seem to think it's OK. I hate to repeat, but I don't see why Americans seem to think it's OK to elect a warmongering idiot twice, a government that treats everybody as terrorists, etc. "It's not 1984 yet" is something that I've heard more than once, and I do think it's really a bad way to look at things. If you seriously think about it, the horrors in 1984 won't happen -- it's infeasible, and those in power don't desire these things (unless, of course, somehow a lunatic gains absolute power).
So while I fully agree that most Chinese do have quite a bit of catching up in understanding why freedoms matter, there are probably subtle points that you've missed out too.
I regret that you, sir, probably won't live long enough to see how wrong your statement is.
I'll just tell you that the Chinese "empire" has more or less maintained unity over 2200+ years. Yeah, taking centuries right. Hate to break it to you but China was past its feudal period 2200 years ago where the continent comprised dozens of small kingdoms. Not every continent has to forget everything about civilization and fall back into the "dark ages". Get a clue.
And I guess you'll have to replace your crystal ball.
Sometimes I just can't stop thinking that there really are almost half of Americans believing that the world is flat and 6000 years old. Otherwise I really don't see how you got your current President elected, and then RE-elected....
Don't speculate :)
I don't think Chinese want *less* freedom, surely you can't have too much of these if there are no catches. But the fact is after a century of foreign invasions, civil wars and political catastrophes, they want stability. It's not just the Chinese government but the people too (if only because of "hey we're just starting to get rich so let's not ruin the moment"). The government probably has an influence on this mindset, but they're not pulling it out of thin air.
Even among the educated, they weren't brought up on liberal values, and sometimes even I myself get quite unnerved about the lack of individual, critical thinking of the so called educated.
It's not really about the system. Here in Hong Kong where free speech is still at an acceptable level (protests against government policies organized every other day, Falungung's anti-communist promotions on the busiest streets, etc), we've seen that "patriotic" mob's hostility towards people who hold alternate views, during the Olympic Torch relay here. I personally don't think issues like Tibet are appropriate during Olympic torch relays but the sheer zealotry of the "patriotic" mobs really makes me worried.
And most of those people are from mainland China (mostly students studying here). I wonder what chaos would ensue if you gave all the liberal-democratic-freedoms to all of China overnight.
Back to your point -- you don't have to change the view, and I don't think it's wrong. But if you're wondering, there are situations where you can't just impose a democratic system on a country and expect it to work. Like it or not, introducing political instability for a country with 1/5 of the world's population and in possession of one of the world's most powerful military is not what the world would like to see happen.
Chinese are not slaves. Some might be poor, they might not have as many political rights as you do, but they are not slaves. I'll refer you to the first line of the Chinese (PRC) National Anthem: "Rise up! The people who do not wish to be slaves!"
I doubt anybody believes the Chinese government has 100% approval rating. But then as I understand they do have a pretty high approval rating. They don't have the pressure of (re-)election, but legitimacy is still extremely important, and probably more-so due to the lack of democratic elections. I'll note that in Chinese history when a government falls below a certain level of legitimacy, they get overthrown by revolutions and civil wars... and I believe every Chinese leader is well aware of this fact. Basically they might get away with worse things, but when things REALLY fall apart they don't just lose their positions but possibly their lives. (Note that I don't think such things are going to happen in the foreseeable future, but almost every successful rebellion in Chinese history resulted in the previous ruler murdered)
So actually in democratic countries where (actual, ie. not fabricated) approval ratings below 50% are common, in China this rings all the alarms of civil unrest and serious political instability. 100% ratings is of course a fiction, but don't automatically assume that a high approval rating of Chinese leaders is fabricated. In the past 20 years or so they've done pretty well -- not flawless -- but most Chinese would think that they've done a commendable job. Can't say the same for some democratically elected leaders in other countries though.
I'm not saying this brutal "system" is more desirable than democracy -- I'm just saying that despite the lack of democracy the government still needs to maintain their approval rating, and that a high rating doesn't necessarily mean something is afoul.
So yeah. Basically, while the human rights status in China is not exactly top notch, it isn't as bad as you'd think either. There isn't a nice way to control the government, but it's not like the people are totally powerless over any abuse. The government is aware that they can't do anything really unpopular. They can get away with abuses here and there (all governments do), but assuming an undemocratic government automatically wields all power is naive.
And again, we're not slaves!! (well, most of us...) For some reason I'm reminded of the Monty Python scene where the a guy tries to get the body collect to collect a living person as a dead one -- "I'm not dead!!!". If you don't look closely at the actual picture (i.e. looking things up yourself from a neutral source) you'd bound to have distorted views.
(Btw, M[rs]. AC has done a great job explaining the intricate details of the more complicated controversies on the issue. Kudos.)
Of course, the difficulty is to get the balance right... but constitutions which spell out every detail precisely can easily lead to crisis.
As a sibling poster has mentioned, using XFS is dangerous if you don't have a UPS.
It's well known that if you get a hard shutdown (like, sudden power failure) when accessing files in a XFS partition, the contents of those files will be zeroed out.
For expensive server farms this won't be a problem. UPS, redundant servers, backups, etc will generally render the problem moot. But for my desktop that's backed up like once every few months (I know, I know...) data integrity is much more important than whatever advantages XFS could provide.
British Government claimed that Iraq had WMDs -- Fact.
USA had every reason to believe what they told us -- subjective. Different people have different reasoning processes.
(Most of) USA believed what they told us -- Fact.
You can then add a list of reasons Americans claim as justification for the war. They don't have to be "valid", they just need to be the actual reasons America gave for the war, or the reasons Americans thought they were having the war for. Those are facts too.
People can look at those reasons, and either agree, or think:"wow how stupid", or somewhere in between. But there's no need to present a view or conclusion -- that's the reader's job.
Of course we cannot 100% separate fact from opinion, but we can do much better than what you implied.
I also have this doubt about unit test: If the coder is already aware of the possible failures, then he should be fixing the code instead of writing a test.
And after a "unit" of code is written correctly, it shouldn't be changed a lot. Any big changes means a change in semantics, which means the original unit tests are useless anyway.
According to my understanding if this is the case then it should be your (American) duty to rectify this instead of using it as an excuse for all the crap your government has done.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
How about the people who buy into all this crap?
I'm not an American, but I'm really disturbed by your attitude. (Not that I'm in a place where there's a remote chance of America declaring war on us though.)
You're simply saying that you're going to support a war just to remove a guy that you're *told* that you're supposed to be pissed off with (see the other responses about Saddam), and killing people to lower your gas prices is a justification. If you don't see how sick this is.... ugh.
I hope you won't mind when I later refer to this thread when your fellow countrymen says "It's only the Bush Administration! We don't like wars".
* what does it matter if you could criticize your government if it doesn't amount to any real changes?
* Suppose in an imaginary scenario, Russians gets free speech tomorrow. You criticize them for (eg) their imperial attitude. They respond by saying USA has the same issues too. Now, you say "so what? we can criticize our government for that!", but then they respond by saying "guess what, now we can do that too!" Are you going to stop criticizing their government for their wrongs, or are you going to shut up now because they have free speech? (and this question is intended both as a rhetorical one and a real question, I really am interested to know the answer)
If the former case, suppose further that they agree with their government's imperialist attitude, and don't try to change things, what would you do? (This is actually what I feel towards the USA in these few years. I mean, I can write off the 2000 elections due to various reasons, but > 50% Americans (who bothered to show up) voted for Bush during the Iraq invasion. They say things are going to change "soon", but everybody else is saying that too...)
If the latter case, you just showed that free speech to criticize your government is orthogonal to the discussion. Why bring this up as an excuse then?
Well Microsoft has been proven bad, SCO is bankrupt, Vista is released and sucks, BSD is already dead, 2007 was the year of Linux on the desktop, and in Soviet Union, you belong to a Beowulf cluster of bases and nobody cares.
Nerd news is getting slow these days.
My humble opinion is that you fail to see the indoctrination of your countries ideals, and then claim that others are indoctrinated because they don't believe in the exact same things as you do. To be fair, this is the case of many many other countries' and their peoples, but your example is really not the best one, and if any, it just corroborates the GP's proposition.
Old news. As a Chinese I've seen enough "message force multipliers" (whatever that means) that I'd be surprised if I read a news article by western media which doesn't have them.
Digression: when the Chinese "nationalist" bloggers say "the western media 'lies'", this is exactly what they mean. Sometimes when you dig deep enough into the story the facts are usually true, or somewhat true, but twisted beyond recognition to cause cries against the Chinese government.
I'm pretty sure the multipliers were worse during the cold war against the Soviet Union (not that I was old enough to understand/remember at that time though)...
I think it goes both ways.
If the people are aware of censorship, that's a vital piece of information, and if one wants information badly enough, (s)he will get it, especially with the technology in the last decade.
However, if one simply believes that information given to him/her is free and unbiased, (s)he will never seek other perspectives and probably will dismiss any other views that conflicts with his/hers.
This willful ignorance can be even more dangerous in some situations. For the person who's aware of censorship, to reason with him you simply present him with the missing information. For the willful ignorant, no amount of evidence will convince him that maybe, perhaps, the things he believed in was wrong.
Of course in countries with heavy censorship there are people who's willfully ignorant of opposing views, but in a supposedly "free" country I think it's just easier to fall into that trap.