China Blanks Nobel Peace Prize Searches 326
1 a bee writes "CNN is reporting that China is attempting to block all communication regarding Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Even texting is affected: 'Text-messaging on mobile phones is not immune from censors, either. A Shanghai-based netizen, @littley, tweeted his unfortunate experience: "My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize."' Might as well add Slashdot to the censored list."
Further coverage is available from NBC.
Well (Score:5, Funny)
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-I'm just sayin'
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like a bassackwards solution to me. There's plenty of things the government should be taking care of that they're not, and plenty of things that they should be doing, and are, but in an unnecessarily inefficient way. Rather than gunning for more inefficiency so that the government can't do things they shouldn't, which they seem to manage to do just fine anyway, why not elect leaders and enact laws that prevent the abuse from happening in the first place?
Advocating increased inefficiency as the solution to bad government is like saying that you can't run very well in clown shoes so we can lower the crime rate by making everyone wear clown shoes so they can't get away from the cops. It doesn't really address the root of the problem, barely addresses the symptoms and brings a host of new problems along for the ride.
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In America we privatize our Tyranny. Try getting one of your letters questioning the integrity of the GOP read on Fox News some time.
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Ah, yes. You're one of those twits who claims he lives in a fascist nation because your neighbor deleted one of the comments you left on his facebook profile.
Proud product of the American Education System, huh?
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At least China's reach stops at their borders. Here I'm free to write about all I want.
Oh, hell, Slashcode ruined a great joke that needs Chinese characters. Some day this comment will render correctly. Check back then.
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Are you sure it was because of that?
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Buddhism wouldn't do the job there, though. Choosing from existing religions, they'd need some form of Christianity or Islam.
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One of the tenents of Buddhism (in the texts, at least) is to seek enlightenment by finding peace with your station in life. Questioning authority, striving to better your place in society and studying the science of the Universe only leads to discontentment and frustration.
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But, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
China is just trying to protect it's citizens against the terrorist and child porn. Sheesh.
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China is just trying to protect it's citizens against the terrorist and child porn. Sheesh.
Due to either improper grammar or ambiguous phrasing, that almost sounds like China is trying to protects its citizens against terrorist porn and child porn.
Wait, did I just give people a new super-fear thing from which they need to protect the children by combining terrorism and porn? OH SHIIIIIIII-
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Well, technically you could have terrorist porn. Could you imagine if someone were having sex somewhere along a busy New York street (or having a XXX film played in Times square)? That might cause more accidents and traffic than bombing a store. ;)
Re:But, but... (Score:5, Funny)
INT. SMALL BRICK AND MUD HOME SOMEWHERE IN DESERT -- NIGHT
NADA enters stage right, catching RASHID at a makeshift workbench covered in sections of pipe, wires, and indeterminate objects.
NADA: Rashid!! What are you doing with that pipe?!?
RASHID looks calmly at NADA -- perhaps even seductively.
RASHID: Do not worry, I am expert with all kinds of pipe.
NADA: Oh, Rashid!
NADA pulls on her sleeve, briefly exposing her wrist before..
FADE TO BLACK
{{Bom chicka bow wow}}
Re:But, but... (Score:5, Funny)
INT. SMALL WOODEN SHACK SOMEWHERE IN APPALACHIA - NIGHT
BOBBY SUE enters stage right, catching BOBBY JOE at a makeshift workbench covered in sections of pipe, wires, and indeterminate objects.
BOBBY SUE: Bobby Joe!! What're y'all doing with that pipe!?
BOBBY JOE looks calmly at BOBBY SUE -- perhaps even seductively.
BOBBY JOE: Gosh sis, don't worry I dun learn't a thing're two pipes.
BOBBY SUE: Oh, Bobby Joe!
BOBBY SUE licks her lips, briefly exposing her tooth before..
FADE TO BLACK
{{Bom chicka bow wow}}
(Because we've had just as many terrorists of domestic extraction as we've had foreign ones. Turns out there's nuts willing to blow themselves up for a cause in every country...)
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We already have terrorist porn.
Didn't we have a case recently about someone who pissed off the wrong person and got kiddie porn hacked onto his computer?
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To be fair, they are correct, his views on political reform and free expression by definition subvert state power, but the PRC is in no mood to have it's authority questioned when they are working hard to deflate currency and hide government incompetence and environmental damage.
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Social stability or autocracy? (Score:2)
I've heard it said that much of the Chinese government's restrictions on free speech, protest, etc. are to maintain social stability.
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason? If so, why?
Or is it a transparent attempt to maintain power (stability = keeping the same people/party in power)? Or is it both?
Re:Social stability or autocracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason?
No, it's something that is resonant with people that want to suppress speech. Look at recent articles and you will see similar lame excuses (ie. stopping terror, child porn, copyright protection) for allowing the NSA/FBI/etc to spy on citizens or try to take down their computers.
Re:Social stability or autocracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason?
No, it's something that is resonant with people that want to suppress speech. Look at recent articles and you will see similar lame excuses (ie. stopping terror, child porn, copyright protection) for allowing the NSA/FBI/etc to spy on citizens or try to take down their computers.
Actually, the idea DOES resonante with the Chinese, for cultural reasons that go back centuries. Confucianism held sway in China throughout much of their history, and that philosophy puts a high value on deference to the authorities, be it the Emporor or your local official. And what replaced it in the 20th century... Maoist communism... went from deference of authority to virtual enslavement of it. Chinese culture has never known an ethos of personal freedom the way the West understands it. And lest you think that improved living conditions and the presence of a market has changed anything, keep in mind that when Jackie Chan gave a speech to a major business group in Hong Kong, he got a standing ovation when he said that too much freedom in China was a bad thing [independent.co.uk], and that the government needed to maintain order and tranquility. One of the reasons that NY Times pundit Thomas Friedman admires the Chinese so much [reason.com] is that they have the benefits of a market economy, while having a government with total authority... easier to "get things done" that way, you see.
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Actually, the idea DOES resonante with the Chinese, for cultural reasons that go back centuries. Confucianism held sway in China throughout much of their history, and that philosophy puts a high value on deference to the authorities, be it the Emporor or your local official.
People say this a lot, particularly Lee Kuan Yew to justify the one-party pseudo-democracy in Singapore, but this is not really the whole story. Authoritarians choose to selectively quote his work for their own ends. Confucius is very keen on respect for parents, authorities etc, but respect should not be confused with deference. In fact Confucius says that a minister's failure to correct his prince when the prince errs is one of the few things that can destroy a country.
CHAP. XIX. Chi K'ang asked Confucius about government, saying, 'What do you say to killing the unprincipled for the good of the principled?' Confucius replied, 'Sir, in carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The relation between superiors and inferiors, is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend, when the wind blows across it.'
CHAP. XXIII. Tsze-kung asked about friendship. The Master said, 'Faithfully admonish your friend, and skillfully lead him on. If you find him impracticable, stop. Do not disgrace yourself.'
CHAP. XV. ... 5. 'If a ruler's words be good, is it not also good that no one oppose them? But if they are not good, and no one opposes them, may there not be expected from this one sentence the ruin of his country?'
Re: Social stability or autocracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard it said that much of the Chinese government's restrictions on free speech, protest, etc. are to maintain social stability.
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason? If so, why?
Or is it a transparent attempt to maintain power (stability = keeping the same people/party in power)? Or is it both?
Kinda like announcing that a soldier who died by friendly fire actually died a heroic death? Or quietly putting a priest out to pasture so people won't figure out that he's been molesting children?
People in power do this kind of crap all the time. The only difference is the degree and the extremes they'll go to.
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It's an ideal that is especially resonant with the people elevated to an unstable social standing by party affiliation, who need tyrannical rules against free speech to keep them there.
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Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason? If so, why?
They've had plenty of problems with instability, including as recently as the cultural revolution. Prior to that they had the Chinese Civil War. Prior to that World War II in which both the Chinese and the Japanese killed a lot of Chinese. Prior to that they had many dec
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You can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism [wikipedia.org]. Basically, social harmony is one of the effects and goals of a virtuous person. Even Confucius knew though that political loyalty - one of the qualities of a virtuous person - could be abused by governments.
As such, it is both a culturally resonant idea and a commonly abused method for the ruling party to stay in power.
Re:Social stability or autocracy? (Score:5, Informative)
I've heard it said that much of the Chinese government's restrictions on free speech, protest, etc. are to maintain social stability.
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason? If so, why?
My take.
China has historically been a unitarian state. And no matter how you look at it, China is a *huge* country, and for a thousand years or so, the only one that actually managed to more or less hold itself together. Most other large empires simply dissolved into smaller states within a relatively short period.
And thus, particularly when China become "united" under one government during the Qin-Han periods (around 200BC), most of the scholars and intellectuals were concerned how to make this huge behemoth government work. There were quite a few schools of thought, mostly adapting and refining the ideas that floated around in earlier periods. I describe the two mainstream ones:
The "legalists" believed in rule *by* law, using incentives and punishments to make people keep in line with the government and boosting government efficiency. And by "punishment", I mean harsh punishments such as body mutilations for those who do not obey. The ruler sits on top of this system, and is above it, and is the only one who steers it. Everyone else is subject to the law.
The "confucians" believed in "cultural education", or what I call "propaganda". They sought to achieve social harmony by advocating obedience and subservience to higher authorities, and maintaining a strict social hierarchy consisting of the Emperor at the top, then various nobility and officials in the middle, then the commoners. The commoners would defer authority to higher ups, and in turn, the authorities should treat the commoners as if they were their children.
It should be obvious from the above why the idea of free speech never developed. The only kind of open political disagreement allowed was between high officials, and between high officials and the Emperor. Historically, it is a *virtue* for officials to admonish and risk being executed by the Emperor. I'm not kidding you. Historically, the price of speaking the truth, speaking for justice, speaking for a better society, is risk of death if your views happen to be different from the ruler.
It is under these conditions that Chinese culture developed. And historically, when China was divided into different states or factions, there were constant wars between those states. Millions if not billions of people are killed in these civil wars, and they happen *every time* the government is not strong enough to hold the nation together.
This is the only reason why the Chinese people have tolerated authoritarian governments one by one -- yes it's bad, but the alternatives simply stink.
I hope that answers your question.
Chinese people know... (Score:5, Informative)
In an effort to pre-empt any assumptions about access to information, I am in China and I have been able to access news sources and most articles online using Google News and various Western media outlets linked therein. Searches seem to be filtered by key-word, but most Chinese are aware of the award. Honestly, most of them don't care that much. They all know that the award often carries a political agenda. See: Barack Obama. Some feel it's just the West finding new ways to apply pressure to China on these issues where there has been long-standing disagreement. They are aware of the news though.
Mainly, I think the government is trying to avoid any large gatherings, unrest, or protests in the wake of this decision. We'll see what happens.
I've never had a problem accessing Slashdot from here. Some of the linked articles, yes, but not Slashdot itself. *ducks*
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:5, Insightful)
So a Chinese man is kept in prison purely because his opinions disagree with the government and he gets a Nobel prize and now the government will censor your website, email and even deactivate your cellphone if you as much as mention his name. If they really don't care they most definitely should.
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Also, they are very nationalistic. They see western counties using the human rights "trick" as a way to leverage a political and economic position.
What a hell! If we cared so much about civil liberties and democracy we would not buy so much stuff from them.
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Have they perhaps had a referendum...
No, they had a revolution.
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The USSR didn't exactly want the Chinese Revolution to happen. The USSR was trying to rebuild after WWII and would have to defend itself and China in the event of another war breaking out as a result of the Chinese Revolution.
In fact, Stalin, as head of the Comintern, instructed Mao not to begin insurrection and to work with the nationalists in defense of China against Japan. Mao took half of that advice, forming the Eighth Route Army [wikipedia.org] under Chaing Kai Shek's nationalist Koumintang, but left himself and Chu
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly, I smell a rat.
The poster is fluent in English, posting from China where this subject is banned, towing the party line, telling us how Chinese people think, and generally doing preemptive damage control.
I've lived in a communist country before, and I can guess how this works.
The communists in general spare no effort in propaganda - it's how they stay in power. When the engine of propaganda fails, historically, their power is in danger. I'd be shocked if there weren't a hundred Chinese communists in the ministry of state, paid to read foreign websites/press and reply spinning the pro-party line.
Seriously everyone: do you expect someone from China to publicly voice support for that dissident and his peace prize if it can land them in jail for 11 years (and there are no TVs and such in Chinese jails)? Use common sense. And when a poster is defending their totalitarian government for the indefensible and is currently on soil controlled by that government, do you really expect things to be on the level? If this guy wasn't a plant, he'd never be around to post a response, don't ya think?
If the dissident gets the award, it might be the first time in a long time it's gone to someone deserving, and may force the Chinese to let the guy out from jail (he might be exiled instead). Prizes and international recognition like this have saved lives of the receivers in communist countries before.
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See DMCA, ACTA, PATRIOT act, INDECT, and so on...
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No, it's very different, it is as different as it can be. One billion people, zero message about the news.
Isn't it interesting that liberals never miss a chance to defend an evil regime and downplay their evilness?
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I didn't see any liberals defending or downplaying the evil regime of George W Bush. Yet, I did see Margret Thatcher defending and downplaying the evil regime of Pinochet.
Looks like your observation was naive in the extreme.
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Thank you for proving my point. Yep. Chinese Community Party is at least better than George W Bush.
Yep.
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Isn't it interesting that liberals never miss a chance to defend an evil regime and downplay their evilness?
Why don't you see it as criticizing the problems in the west rather than endorsement of the problems in the east?
We've got effectively no control over what China does, but we do have control over what our governments do and one of the best ways to educate our fellow citizens is to point out the hypocrisy of our own governments so that they won't be so passive about it.
Or are you just defending the failures of the west out of some sort of half-baked nationalism?
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Why don't you see it as criticizing the problems in the west rather than endorsement of the problems in the east?
Because if I say "child rape is bad" and someone else says "it's actually no different from homosexuality", I don't really give a damn that they're probably attacking homosexuality - I care about the fact that they're downplaying a truly evil act in order to further their own political agenda.
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So a Chinese man is kept in prison purely because his opinions disagree with the government [...] If they really don't care they most definitely should.
Think of it as like Americans caring about people being held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay - plenty of people care about it in the abstract sense, but 8 years later you notice it's still going on.
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The Nobel Prize is about scientific and cultural achievement (except for that crappy one, the peace prize, which is just a political football).
You're mixing up two issues, the Chinese censorship of its citizens, and a foreign prize award. It's not because he received the Nobel Prize that he's being censored, it's because he's a political dissident.
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The Nobel Peace Prize has always been politically charged. Even the committee admitted as much when folks kept asking them why Al Gore got one.
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To be fair, the history of China involves not necessarily refusing to care, but instead involves individuals being more interested in not sharing the same fate. Once you read up on its history (esp. the 20th century), you may come to realize that it's not a question of stupidity, but of survival instinct.
Here in the US, we're made up of mostly loud, boisterous, and contentious people... the kind of folks who got killed off rather quickly in China. It's pretty easy for someone here to shout "stand up for you
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:4, Informative)
I am a Chinese, and you are bullshitting.
Nobel prizes has been a hot news item and most major news sites in China had extensive coverage. Chinese care about it very much. Today, *all* coverages about *any* Nobel prize have been removed from these sites. Interestingly that's how many Chinese knew Liu got the Peace Prize.
You won't find any discussion about it on Chinese sites, sure. But it's all over overseas Chinese forums. I haven't seen any single event being discussed so extensively.
And please don't pretend to be a Chinese expert. We (Chinese) know your kind, and we know why you live in China. We despise you.
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And please don't pretend to be a Chinese expert. We (Chinese) know your kind, and we know why you live in China. We despise you.
Care to share your insight on why he lives in China?
Re:Chinese people know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. I figured that was the extent of your insight. Just wanted to make sure.
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Re:Chinese people know... (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting. In this thread you claim to be chinese. Yet elsewhere on Slashdot you're writing about your life in America. Chinese American? By your own standards clearly you're lowly scum trying to be somebody in a foreign country.
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Ok, that was the one answer I was not expecting.
Xenophobia and bigotry: (Score:5, Interesting)
Every foreigner who's in China is a loser who's there for Chinese women? Uh huh. Suuuure...
Might it be that you're pissed that one or more Chinese gals paid you no mind? Or, are you one of those who derides any Chinese female who goes out with a non-Chinese as a "yellow cab"?
Or is it that there's a shortage of them?
China's made its own problem of being 2 million female children short because of "one child" and the cultural emphasis on sons. Better start working on opening your own minds before trying to change minds here.
Oh, wait. You're here in the West according to your comments. Then how is it that you aren't just the same sort of loser leaving your own failures in the country you left behind? Oh. I got it. Different standard for you and others. You're inherently superior somehow. I've heard that philosophy somewhere before.
Or, maybe you were born here, and became embittered all on your own. Good to know to know that bullshit xeno attitude of yours can spring up anywhere.
Here in America (and across the world) we know your kind. We despise you.
Almost as much as we despise a totalitarian government censoring.
(Hopefully, you just wrote something silly because you were ticked off at the previous poster. Very few here sympathize with the Chinese government, but your comment came across just as alienating and biased as how I tried to wrote the above.)
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They don't care because they don't know about these things.
It's like colors to color blind people.
Let them know about those rights, and even give them some, then try to take them away, and they don't care, THEN they truly don't care.
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I think the reference was to Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize last year, despite ongoing occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Hacktivism (Score:5, Insightful)
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I am pretty sure that could cause an effective public outrage.
Perhaps, but not necessarily against the Chinese Government. Think more along the lines of OMG h4x0r5!!
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And this demonstrates well one reason why PC health certificates would similarly fail. One need only propagate an exploit that convinces those running such a system your doing an "unapproved" activity and you can rapidly lock out large numbers of people. Is it not rather interesting also how very closely PC health certificates and censorship also relate?
public outrage (Score:2)
in china, that gets you killed. AND your family if you aren't careful.
Re:Hacktivism (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think this is only in China. I had a chance to interview people after the civil war in El Salvador, and a lot of them also saw the rebels as troublemakers. And not completely without reason. They say that when elephants fight, the grass always suffers.
If you want to make a difference, the best way isn't to attack the government, which makes them see you as their enemy. The best way is to approach them as friends, and talk about all the good things of democracy, etc. Because democracy, free speech and all that really is better. And in a friendly environment, they will see it. Remember we don't hate the government, we aren't trying to depose them; we just want the government to treat the people right, and if they can do that without being deposed, it's MUCH better.
Letter From America (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck you and your backward, stultifying Communist state!
P.S. Do you have 4 trillion to loan us so we can extend our tax cuts?
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lol Tax cuts don't cost money. Spending cost money.
Governmental Control of Content (Score:2)
And they said it couldn't be done. This is actually a quite elegant solution: ALL internet access goes thru a SIM card, and if you do bad things it gets turned off by your carrier.
Google still keeping it real (Score:2)
Google still seems to be keeping search results good - http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=Liu+Xiaobo [google.com.hk] .. But then I am not up to date on whether google is blocked or not. Either way I sense a streisand effect about to woop some commie butt.
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That's Google HK, I'm pretty sure HK's internet was never censored.
End-to-end encryption (Score:2)
Do someone know if there are ports of the "Off-The-Record" library over plain SMS ? I mean direct SMS, not the SIMPLE protocol as recently featured on /.
For WebOS, that should be fairly trivial given that it already uses Pdgin's libpurple as a basis for its chat application.
Are there any Off-the-record supporting Apps for Android ? (And perhaps for iPhone, although I doubt that Apple will green-light one)
Trade will encourage Democracy. Sure it will. (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1989, we watched in horror as the Chinese government murdered 3,000 students [wikipedia.org] for the crime of asking for a Democratic government.
A lot of us tried to boycott China after that for fear of making those bloody monsters even more rich and powerful
We were shouted down. "We have to trade with China. As China grows wealthier, the wealth will trickle down to their middle class, who will then rise up and demand basic human rights and freedoms. As we trade with China, as we stregnthen their middle classes, China will be dragged into joining the civilized world."
It didn't quite work out that way. China still has no real middle class, though ours has been decimated. The Chinese government started executing prisoners and selling their organs for profit, [bbc.co.uk] but that uprising of the newly-empowered middle classes still didn't happen.
So where is this "Enlightenment Through Trade?" China took that money, and used it to build a military that they're now threatening Japan with. They're kidnapping Toyota executives and holding manufacturing hostage with the market corner they've got on rare earth elements.
We've sacrificed our manufacturing base to this idea that a richer China is a friendlier China.
Really? How do you explain this?
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/870490--chinese-dissident-tipped-for-nobel-peace-prize
"Last Dec. 25 her husband was sentenced to 11 years behind bars, after being found guilty of trying to incite others to subvert state power.
Liu was the lead author of a document called Charter '08, calling for multi-party elections in China, where the Communist Party keeps a lock grip on power."
Why are we still doing business with these monsters?
Re:Trade will encourage Democracy. Sure it will. (Score:4, Insightful)
The middle-class will never rise up for human rights and freedoms. All over the place, from Turkey to India, from Russia to China, the burgeoning middle-class is a hotbed of bigotry and hysterical nationalism.
In fact, everywhere, it's the middle-class with its fucking "values" who has sabotaged again and again any idea of fairness and liberty.
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Rare Earth Metals and self-sufficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
"On the topic of valuable materials too where do you think we're even going to get the rare-earth metals for our iPhones, and LCDs, or communication grade lasers given that China has pretty much all the worlds supply"
Pretty much every country that has a rare earth mine (and they're not really that rare) put it back into production after last month's fiasco.
Again I like the ideal but the though is shallow and the consequences are more far reaching than you could imagine.
Oh, kid, I got the grey hair to remember what it was like before we started whoring ourselves out to the Chinese government. I can remember when a blue-collar job could buy a house and put your kids through college. Meat-packers and construction workers used to make comfortable livings. Now airline pilots in charge of hundreds of lives have to apply for food stamps.
The United States, unlike Japan or Britain, is not a tiny little island with few natural resources. We don't HAVE to do business with the outside world. Unlike North Korea, we are capable of feeding ourselves. We can supply all of our own manufacturing inputs for steel, plastic, electronics, etc.
The ONLY people who benefit from trade with the Chinese are the wealthy in this country who get access to slave labor by proxy, who get to shirk their environmental responsibilities because the monsters in Beijing don't care if entire peasant towns die from cancer. You and I don't benefit from it because prices are already set as high as the market will bear. All that trade with the Chinese does is cut the legs out from underneath labor, allowing the wealthy to roll back all the gains that were made when the muckrakers ruled.
Welcome back to the bad old days.
As for those Chinese kids who will suffer when we pull our trade? Believe it or not, I actually do worry for them. My hope is that pulling our trade will spark the revolution that will save their future from the slave labor that now lies ahead. I WANT to see China join the civilized world. I WANT to see a real democracy in China. I would love to think those three thousand college kids did not die in vain.
But what I want more than that is that my own children do not join those Chinese kids in servitude, which is precisely where we're headed.
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As for those Chinese kids who will suffer when we pull our trade? Believe it or not, I actually do worry for them. My hope is that pulling our trade will spark the revolution that will save their future from the slave labor that now lies ahead.
It won't. China is big, they can take care of themselves too. Not only that, any pain caused by our severing ties will be viewed as an attack on China, and will build ill-will against the US, not against the Chinese government. It will take longer for the Chinese to pull themselves up that way, but they will. And they will be mad when they do. If the great leap forward didn't cause the government to collapse, it will take more than something they can so conveniently blame on the outside world.
There is rea
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Made in America used to be a sign of quality and people would happily pay a premium. Back then electronic gadgets w
This is real censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Bush (Score:2, Insightful)
The Chinese state may not be happy about him winning now, but hopefully in the future, the Chinese will fondly remember him as their first Nobel price prize winner.
No matter how much the government thinks that they can hide that he won this year, the information is still leaking through the blocks.
They is a large Chinese scientific community that follow the Nobel prizes each year, and most will notice that there will be o
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Heh, that was my thought too... I couldn't figure out why the Chinese government wouldn't want people to find out that Liu Xiaobo wasn't George W. Bush. I mean, surely, they knew that already.
Re:As long as we Americans keep buying made in Chi (Score:5, Funny)
And it's as boring as fuck and written by men scared of pork products. Next?! I love bacon. Where's your silly "god" now? 666, Hail Satan!!1!
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Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Believe me, it's just your observation. At least he knows how to post on-topic.
Re:As long as we Americans keep buying made in Chi (Score:4, Insightful)
I see you've never taken an introductory logic course before.
It is historically sound - People who are named in the Bible have been found to exist.
People named in the Futurama cartoon exist too, therefore it must be historically sound!
I'd continue, but actually I think I will go watch some historically accurate Futurama episodes instead.
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Sweet Zombie Jesus you're right!
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People named in the Futurama cartoon exist too, therefore it must be historically sound! I'd continue, but actually I think I will go watch some historically accurate Futurama episodes instead.
Of course Futurama is historically sound. It's from the future. It even says so right in the title: Futur ama. That's a portmanteau of 'Future' and 'historically accurate drama'.
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People also don't shoot fleas with a shotgun. What's your point?
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Scientific Accuracy? Pi is 3 in the Bible.
Isaiah 40:22 says a circle, not a sphere, not that it's round, but that it is a circle and "heavens like a canopy" of a tent.
You skip over the universe being created in six days and it being a bit over 6,000 years old.
As for confirming the Bible with Herodotus, he didn't get the title of Father of Lies for being accurate.
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Pi is only 3 if you assume that bowls have no thickness.
Which is a pretty dumb assumption, really.
6000 years isn't anywhere in the Bible, and was created via a priest who added up essentially random strings of numbers from geneologies. Given that he lived within the last few centuries, this is far from essential church doctrine. Similarly, interpreting the beginning of Genesis as anything other than poetry is extremely recent - most well respect theologians have historically held this to be true - see Aqu
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but the Bible told that it was round. (Isaiah 40:22)
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
Which Bible are we talking about?
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Damn! All those history books in the library are actually prophesies! And they came true!
P.S. Star Trek successfully prophesied cell phones, touch screens and hot alien love making (still waiting).
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I can't even recall how many of those I've personally tossed myself... at least a dozen or so over the years.
Dude, you're going to hell. You don't recycle?
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When Russia became a democracy in the late 80s, what happened to the Cold War?
By induction, what happens to the Cold War when China becomes a democracy?
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We don't have "Cold War" with China.
Considering the rich usually run their respective countries, a good precursor to war is economic conflict. And right now the US and China are in a currency war.
Re:Another Nobel Peace Prize dud (Score:4, Interesting)
Then why does North Korea still exist? Why is Tibet not free? Taiwan?
We may be trading with them. We may even be their main source of income and innovation. But we're also still each other's worst enemy, still armed to the teeth, and still targeting each other.
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North Korea's artillery, and its nukes, are not a sufficient deterrent.
The only thing keeping it alive is China. And the only reason we don't liberate North Korea is that it would cause a shooting war with China, which, if it were democratic, would join with us.
Freeing Tibet is the world's problem, just as much as imprisoning Tibet is China's problem.
Taiwan wants to be free of China, but can't even discuss it without getting China's saber rattled at it.
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It's worse than that. Most other countries (include at times partial allies like the U.S.) help China rattle that sabre, even to the point of opposing the practice of democracy in Taiwan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_China_United_Nations_membership_referendum,_2008#External_responses [wikipedia.org]
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Maybe: (Score:3, Informative)
Obvious question: Are you hitting Baidu from inside China, or from outside? An awful lot of sites give different results based on where they determine you are coming from.
It could also depend on what part of the path from the computer to the server the filtering and monitoring was being done on. If it was at a few choke points en route rather than at boatloads of individual sites(likely) then a non Chinese located computer might not hit the filters.
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From inside China :
Baidu Search is not censored, so you can search for "liu Xiaobo" "nobel peace prize" without problem, even in Chinese. Google is censored and doesn't give anything when you search for Liu Xiaobo, but I am quite sure it was already the case before. It is very easy to find uncensored English speaking sources of information. The government doesn't really care about the foreigners and the minority of very educated Chinese that can read English fluently.
What IS censored are all the news media