The fascinating truth behind all those ‘great firewall of China’ headlines

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/14/truth-behind-great-firewall-of-china-headlines

 

Nice read.

 

I'm sorry, but half freedom is not freedom at all. I would continue this line of thought but it would become too political and so I stop here.

 

95% freedom isn't true freedom either...

 

Care to bet that it all centers around this?

 

There is no true freedom unless you have the world to yourself. The actions you mentioned in your quote are considered subversive in some parts of the world. In the "free" western world, they're called terrorist activities. The result is the same.

Contrast this with this country. Here, that corruption is the means to political office and power. They try to eliminate it. We embrace it, which has led to this corporate controlled mess we have now.

 

Which country?

 

USA One only needs to look at the election process. Basically sold to the highest bidder with the money coming from corporations. I have to believe that this is the reason they want to separate capitalism and democracy. The combination leads to corporate controlled government.

 

Consider this simple triad:

Code:

self            nation

       values

We could add more nodes, such as family, friends and so on.

Relative importance of nodes, and interactions among them, which is basically a graph, is culturally unique. Right?

I'm sure that I'm reinventing some well-known (but not to me) wheel

Anyway, I'm surprised that the article didn't mention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_flesh_search_engine

 

Couldnt agree with you more. The US is controlled by corporations and the election process. The SuperPACs really messed up your system. I personally have no problems with abolishing political donations and changing to public financing.

 

speaking as a foreigner who is currently working in China, I don't feel China's govt manages the great firewall all that well. first, many sites that have nothing to do with politics or anti-Chinese activities or anything nefarious do not load or are slow to load. obviously this is a big inconvenience for many firms who need to do business in China, it's especially bad for tech companies and it makes independent learning harder for Chinese people (learning tech and other skills). second, blocking google makes it harder for foreigners to work in China because they can't use google maps, google translate, or google's play store without a VPN and Apple has problems here too making smart phones and tablet less convenient. third, blocking youtube also makes learning harder, at least i myself use it all the time to see how to do something or to find out about some product or subject. now there are Chinese alternatives to everything of course that work fine here, and that's what Chinese people use, or you can use a VPN like me, but I'm sure this slows down learning and economic growth in China. i really wonder if the author of that article has ever even been here.

 

No government handles the internet well, unless you consider subverting, backdooring, and spying on every part of it as handling it well. In thet case, the NSA handles it quite well, but not completely.

Compare that to what's done in the USA under the guise of protecting intellectual property. For every pirating site they take down, they knock off 10 legitimate sites. In Britain, the results are similar.
From the article:

The "Occupy Wall Street" movement is a good comparison. Instead of being labelled dissidents, here they're low level terrorists.

 

This is an absolutely classic example of one of my least favorite fallacies on the political left. Some people are so wrapped up in diagnosing their own countries' issues, that they forget things can be just as bad (or worse) elsewhere.

Yeah, we have Chelsea Manning. The PRC has so many political prisoners they've probably lost count. Do not for one moment think that the enemy of your enemy must be your friend.