On my trip to Shanghai in January this year, I found that China government blocked Wretch--the biggest web community in Taiwan. It's like censoring the whole Blogger.com! The same fate has happened on almost all the pictures on the Internet with titles like "bikini," "underwear," "thigh," or "swimsuit." The government not only trample the freedom of speech, they also deprive the pleasure of of every healthy man.
My friend from China tells me that China government hires thousands of people as Internet police task force. Their everyday job is to search keywords relating to contents that might "destablilize China's society and immoralize its citizens." I think they have the most boring job in the world.
Internet police force is a new form of security forces. These people are the reflection of their narcissistic boss. "The security forces ensure that the leader retains his celebrity, and in return the leader empowers the security forces (who often consist of young men from the countryside) to do whatever they want to the population at large," as James M. Curtis writes in "Why World History Needs McLuhan." But China's Internet police forces are no country bumpkins; they are a band of techno-savvy geeks who show Chinese people that everything is still under their control, even on the Internet.
I might work in China in the future, so writing this topic might jeopardize my future career. However, I believe that blogs will bring more accurate pictures of truth than the mainstream media, especially in China, where the mass media are manipulated by the government. Blocking blogs is unbearable.
My friend from China tells me that China government hires thousands of people as Internet police task force. Their everyday job is to search keywords relating to contents that might "destablilize China's society and immoralize its citizens." I think they have the most boring job in the world.
Internet police force is a new form of security forces. These people are the reflection of their narcissistic boss. "The security forces ensure that the leader retains his celebrity, and in return the leader empowers the security forces (who often consist of young men from the countryside) to do whatever they want to the population at large," as James M. Curtis writes in "Why World History Needs McLuhan." But China's Internet police forces are no country bumpkins; they are a band of techno-savvy geeks who show Chinese people that everything is still under their control, even on the Internet.
I might work in China in the future, so writing this topic might jeopardize my future career. However, I believe that blogs will bring more accurate pictures of truth than the mainstream media, especially in China, where the mass media are manipulated by the government. Blocking blogs is unbearable.
3 comments:
The world is choosing to ignore all of this during the lead up to the Olympics. I think that responsible countries should boycott the Olympics in protest of the clear human rights violations that China has become famous for.
University of Toronto professor Ronald Deibert (a friend of Dr. Strate's who will be speaking at NYU on March 7th) has a project called Psiphon that helps people in censored countries to communicate via the internet. Here's the description of Psiphon from their website:
"psiphon is a human rights software project developed by the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies that allows citizens in uncensored countries to provide unfettered access to the Net through their home computers to friends and family members who live behind firewalls of states that censor."
The website for psiphon is:
http://psiphon.civisec.org/
Here's a CNN interview with Dr. Deibert about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMMzGO_KfhY
Peter-
This is the kinda shit that makes me mad. No government should have the right to dictate what good people read about.
As a man who enjoys porn just as much as the next, that irks me on another level as well.
First freedom of speech and expression but honestly, porn is a close second.
I believe it was Thomas Aquinas who likened prostitution to a sewer system. A necessary, but ugly thing that helps keep a city functional.
what is porn if not a form of digital prostitution? necessary to maintain the health of a larger entity of which it is a part.
After I saw a movie (The Lives of Other), I was thinking about two distinct articles about China in Time magazine. One is about China's Me generation who care more about iPods than the subsequent suppression after the Cultural Revolution. The other one is about China's tightening control on media and the imprisonment of human rights fighter such as Chen Guangcheng. It is ironic to see that chinese people have learn two attributions of America culture--mindless consumption and devotion of human rights. Right now, the former one has much influence on Chinese than the latter one.
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