Google's stopped Google.cn, redirecting to uncensored HK host
polycounter lvl 18
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html
CDT approves.
"If China blocks access, it will finally make clear to the Chinese people who is pulling the levers of censorship in the country."
Should get interesting. :thumbup:
CDT approves.
"If China blocks access, it will finally make clear to the Chinese people who is pulling the levers of censorship in the country."
Should get interesting. :thumbup:
This discussion has been closed.
Replies
Definitely interested to see where this goes.
While I'm not disagreeing with Google here, you have to be pretty darn stupid (or naive?) to be Chinese and not know who's really behind all this, because after all if something happens in China there's just one "party" behind everything. But then again, most Chinese do not use Google to begin with...
Yeah, that's what I heard, there were already established search engines in China. Rather than admitting defeat they are putting a spin on things to make them sound less evil (remember, they complied for about 5 years).
The most popular Chinese search engine:
http://www.baidu.com/
Seems like the design was inspired by another site, but I can't quite put my finger on it...
1) Yes, everyone knows who is behind everything. The problem is most Chinese people don't care so anything that brings censorship to their attention is potential progress. Everyone knew who was preventing women from voting in North America. It still needed attention to be changed.
2) Baidu is dominating Google because the government throttled Google and promoted Baidu. I suppose that counts as "defeat" but is that really the way you want to phrase it when the victor only wins because of government sponsored censorship?
Don't get me wrong: Google's a big corporation (inherently evil, despite what they say) and does some ugly stuff now and then, but there's more to this than naivety and exit strategies.
and mostly to do with pirated music!
I'm surprised you would say this, living in the country. I know several chinese people, all very smart individuals, who would swear that not being able to access things like google/facebook is down to Tibet and 'the problems they cause'. It's just brainwashing man.
I don't think you can pin it all down on Tibet. In general any criticism of the government (e.g. complaints about corruption, etc) that is outside official channels (which are basically controlled by the party) ain't welcome. Facebook and blogs are just perfect platforms for such sort of criticism. The same goes for any other private media. Censor yourself and you're fine.
Personally I'm not sure what they're really gaining by controlling media that tight. At least here in Shanghai you feel like they got pretty much everything under control and it ain't a banana republic with the next revolution around the corner. I doubt that's just because they block youtube though
It would be great though if they stop with this filtering crap. I just go thru a VPN to access twitter, facebook and Co. Yet it's annoying. Even though Xin-Hu-Sixpack won't care it would make my online life a bit easier.
My rather humorous explanation for all this is that while the Chinese have enough people to filter thru every photo on flickr and block individual ones, doing the same for youtube or google surpasses even their available manpower
http://www.china.org.cn/world/2010-03/12/content_19596239.htm
The United States ranks first in the world in terms of the number of privately-owned guns. According to the data from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), American gun owners, out of 309 million in total population, have more than 250 million guns, while a substantial proportion of U.S. gun owners had more than one weapon. Americans usually buy 7 billion rounds of ammunition a year, but in 2008 the figure jumped to about 9 billion (The China Press, September 25, 2009). In the United States, airline passengers are allowed to take unloaded weapons after declaration.
In the United States, about 30,000 people die from gun-related incidents each year (The China Press, April 6, 2009). According to a FBI report, there had been 14,180 murder victims in 2008 (USA Today, September 15, 2009). Firearms were used in 66.9 percent of murders, 43.5 percent of robberies and 21.4 percent of aggravated assaults (http://www.thefreelibrary.com). USA Today reported that a man named Michael McLendon killed 10 people in two rural towns of Alabama before turning a gun on himself on March 11, 2009. On March 29, a man named Robert Stewart shot and killed eight people and injured three others in a nursing home in North Carolina (USA Today, March 11, 2009). On April 3, an immigrant called Jiverly Wong shot 13 people dead and wounded four others in an immigration services center in downtown Binghamton, New York (The New York Times, April 4, 2009). In the year 2009, a string of attacks on police shocked the country. On March 21, a 26-year-old jobless man shot and killed four police officers in Oakland, California, before he was killed by police gunfire (http://cbs5.com). On April 4, a man called Richard Poplawski shot three police officers to death in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On November 29, an ex-convict named Maurice Clemmons shot four police officers to death inside a coffee shop in Parkland, Washington (The New York Times, December 1, 2 and 3, 2009).
quote:
The country's police frequently impose violence on the people. Chicago Defender reported on July 8, 2009 that a total of 315 police officers in New York were subject to internal supervision due to unrestrained use of violence during law enforcement. The figure was only 210 in 2007. Over the past two years, the number of New York police officers under review for garnering too many complaints was up 50 percent (http://www.chicagodefender.com). According to a New York Police Department firearms discharge report released on Nov. 17, 2009, the city' s police fired 588 bullets in 2007, killing 10 people, and 354 bullets in 2008, killing 13 people (http://gothamist.com November 17, 2009). On September 3, 2009, a student of the San Jose State University was hit repeatedly by four San Jose police officers with batons and a Taser gun for more than ten times (http://www.mercurynews.com October 27, 2009). On September 22, 2009, a Chinese student in Eugene, Oregon was beaten by a local police officer for no reason (The Oregonian, October 23, 2009, http://blog.oregonlive.com). According to the Amnesty International, in the first ten months of 2009, police officers in the U.S. killed 45 people due to unrestrained use of Taser guns. The youngest of the victims was only 15. From 2001 to October, 2009, 389 people died of Taser guns used by police officers (http://theduckshoot.com).
Abuse of power is common among U.S. law enforcers. In July 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation put four police officers in the Washington area under investigation for taking money to protect a gambling ring frequented by some of the region's most powerful drug dealers over the past two years (The Washington Post, July, 19, 2009). In September 2009, an off-duty police officer in Chicago attacked a bus driver for "cutting him off in traffic" as he rode a bicycle (Chicago Tribune, September 2009, http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com). In the same month, four former police officers in Chicago were charged with extorting close to 500,000 U.S. dollars from a Hispanic driving an expensive car with out-of-state plates and suspected drug dealers in the name of law enforcement, and offering bribes to their superiors (Chicago Tribune, September 19, 2009). In November 2009, a former police chief of the Prince George's County's town of Morningside was charged with selling a stolen gun to a civilian (The Washington Post, November 18, 2009). In major U.S. cities, police stop, question and frisk more than a million people each year - a sharply higher number than just a few years ago (http://huffingtonpost.com October 8, 2009).
Prisons in the United State are packed with inmates. According to a report released by the U.S. Justice Department on Dec. 8, 2009, more than 7.3 million people were under the authority of the U.S. corrections system at the end of 2008. The correctional system population increased by 0.5 percent in 2008 compared with the previous year (http://www.wsws.org). About 2.3 million were held in custody of prisons and jails, the equivalent of about one in every 198 persons in the country. From 2000 to 2008, the U.S. prison population increased an average of 1.8 percent annually (http://mensnewsdaily.com January 18, 2010). The California government even suggested sending tens of thousands of illegal immigrants held in the state to Mexico, in order to ease its overcrowded prison system (http://news.yahoo.com January 26, 2010).
The basic rights of prisoners in the United States are not well-protected. Raping cases of inmates by prison staff members are widely reported. According to the U.S. Justice Department, reports of sexual misconduct by prison staff members with inmates in the country's 93 federal prison sites doubled over the past eight years. Of the 90 staff members prosecuted for sexual abuse of inmates, nearly 40 percent were also convicted of other crimes (The Washington Post, September11, 2009). The New York Times reported on June 24, 2009 that according to a federal survey of more than 63,000 federal and state inmates, 4.5 percent reported being sexually abused at least once during the previous 12 months. It was estimated that there were at least 60,000 rapes of prisoners across the United States during the same period (The New York Times, June 24, 2009).
Chaotic management of prisons in the United State also led to wide spread of diseases among the inmates. According to a report from the U.S. Justice Department, a total of 20,231 male inmates and 1,913 female inmates had been confirmed as HIV carriers in the U.S. federal and state prisons at yearend 2008. The percentage of male and female inmates with HIV/AIDS amounted to 1.5 and 1.9 percent respectively (http://www.news-medical.net December 2, 2009). From 2007 to 2008, the number of HIV/AIDS cases in prisons in California, Missouri and Florida increased by 246, 169, and 166 respectively. More than 130 federal and state inmates in the U.S. died of AIDS-related causes in 2007 (http://thecrimereport.org December 2, 2009). A report by the Human Rights Watch released in March 2009 said although the New York State prison registered the highest number of prisoners living with HIV in the country, it did not provide the inmates with adequate access to treatment, and even locked the inmates up separately, refusing to provide them with treatment of any kind. (http://www.hrw.org March 24, 2009).
While advocating "freedom of speech," "freedom of the press" and "Internet freedom," the U.S. government unscrupulously monitors and restricts the citizens' rights to freedom when it comes to its own interests and needs.
The U.S. citizens' freedom to access and distribute information is under strict supervision. According to media reports, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) started installing specialized eavesdropping equipment around the country to wiretap calls, faxes, and emails and collect domestic communications as early as 2001. The wiretapping programs was originally targeted at Arab-Americans, but soon grew to include other Americans. The NSA installed over 25 eavesdropping facilities in San Jose, San Diego, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Chicago among other cities. The NSA also announced recently it was building a huge one million square feet data warehouse at a cost of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars at Camp Williams in Utah, as well as another massive data warehouse in San Antonio, as part of the NSA's new Cyber Command responsibilities. The report said a man named Nacchio was convicted on 19 counts of insider trading and sentenced to six years in prison after he refused to participate in NSA's surveillance program (http://www.onelinejournal.com November 23, 2009).
quote:
Workers' rights were seriously violated. The New York Times reported on Sept. 2, 2009 that 68 percent of the 4,387 low-wage workers in a survey said they had experienced reduction of wages. And 76 percent of those who had worked overtime were not paid accordingly, and 57 percent of those interviewed had not received pay documents to make sure pay was legal and accurate. Only eight percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed for compensation. Up to 26 percent of those surveyed were paid less than the national minimum wage. Among those who complained about wages or treatment, 43 percent had experienced retaliation or dismissal (The New York Times, September 2, 2009). According to a report by the USA Today on July 20, 2009, a total of 5,657 people died at workplaces across the U.S. in 2007, about 17 deaths each day. About 200,000 workers in New York State were injured or sickened at workplaces each year (USA Today, July 20, 2009).
quote:
Racial discrimination in law enforcement and judicial system is very distinct. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, by the end of 2008, 3,161 men and 149 women per 100,000 persons in the U.S. black population were under imprisonment (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov). The number of life imprisonment without parole given to African-American young people was ten times of that given to white young people in 25 states. The figure in California was 18 times. In major U.S. cities, there are more than one million people who were stopped and questioned by police in streets, nearly 90 percent of them were minority males. Among those questioned, 50 percent were African-Americans and 30 percent were Hispanics. Only 10 percent were white people (The China Press, October 9, 2009). A report released by New York City Police Department, of the people involved in police shootings whose ethnicity could be determined in 2008, 75 percent were black, 22 percent were Hispanic; and 3 percent were white (The New York Times, November 17, 2009). According to a report by Human Rights Watch, from 1980 to 2007, the ratio of the African-Americans being arrested for dealing drugs across the U.S. was 2.8 to 5.5 times of that of the white (http://www.hrw.org March 2, 2009).
Since the Sept. 11 event, discrimination against Muslims is increasing. Nearly 58 percent of Americans think Muslims are subject to "a lot" of discrimination, according to two combined surveys released by the Pew Research Center. About 73 percent of young people aged 18 to 29 are more likely to say Muslims are the most discriminated against (http://www.washingtontimes.com September 10, 2009).
Immigrants live in misery. According to a report by the U.S. branch of Amnesty International, more than 300,000 illegal immigrants were detained by U.S. immigration authorities each year, and the illegal immigrants under custody exceeded 30,000 for each single day (World Journal, March 26, 2009). At the same time, hundreds of legal immigrants were put under arrest, denied entry or even sent back under escort every year (Sing Tao Daily, April 13, 2009). A report released by the Constitution Project and Human Rights Watch revealed that from 1999 to 2008, about 1.4 million detained immigrants were transferred. Tens of thousands of longtime residents of cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia were sent, by force, to remote immigrant jails in Texas or Louisiana (The New York Times, November 2, 2009). The New York City Bar Association received a startling petition in October 2008 which was signed by 100 men, all locked up without criminal charges in the Varick Street Detention Facility in the middle of Manhattan. The letter described their cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for 1 dollar a day (The New York Times, November 2, 2009). Some detained women who were still in lactation period were denied breast pumps in the facilities, resulting in fever, pain, mastitis, and the inability to continue breastfeeding upon release (http://www.hrw.org March 16, 2009). A total of 104 people have died while in custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency since October, 2003 (The Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2009).
quote:
Women do not enjoy equal social and political status as men. Women account for 51 percent of the U.S. population, but only 92 women, or 17 percent of the seats, serve in the current 111th U.S. Congress. Seventeen women serve in the Senate and 75 women serve in the House (Members of the 111th United States Congress, http://en.wikipedia.org). A study shows minorities and women are unlikely to hold top positions at big U.S. charities and nonprofits. The study reveals that women make up 18.8 percent of nonprofit CEOs compared to just 3 percent at Fortune 500 companies. Among the 400 biggest charities in the U.S., no cultural organization, hospital, public affairs group, Jewish federation or other religious organization is headed by a woman (The Washington Times, September 20, 2009).
...
Women are frequent victims of violence and sexual assault. It is reported that the United States has the highest rape rate among countries which report such statistics. It is 13 times higher than that of England and 20 times higher than that of Japan (Occurrence of rape, http://www.sa.rochester.edu). In San Diego, a string of similar attacks happened to five women who have been sexually assaulted by a home invader in March 2009 (Sing Tao Daily, March 14, 2009). According to a report released by the Pentagon, more than 2,900 sexual assaults in the military were reported in 2008, up nearly 9 percent from the year before. And of those, only 292 cases resulted in a military trial. The report said the actual numbers of such cases could be five to ten times of the reported figure (The evening news of the Columbia Broadcasting System, March 17, 2009). Reuters reported that based on in-depth interviews on 40 servicewomen, 10 said they had been raped, five said they were sexually assaulted including attempted rape, and 13 reported sexual harassment (Reuters, April 16, 2009).
quote:
The United States with its strong military power has pursued hegemony in the world, trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries and trespassing their human rights.
As the world's biggest arms seller, its deals have greatly fueled instability across the world. The United States also expanded its military spending, already the largest in the world, by 10 percent in 2008 to 607 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 42 percent of the world total (The AP, June 9, 2009).
According to a report by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. foreign arms sales in 2008 soared to 37.8 billion U.S. dollars from 25.4 billion a year earlier, up by nearly 50 percent, accounting for 68.4 percent of the global arms sales that were at its four-year low (Reuters, September 6, 2009). At the beginning of 2010, the U.S. government announced a 6.4-billion-U.S. dollar arms sales package to Taiwan despite strong protest from the Chinese government and people, which seriously damaged China's national security interests and aroused strong indignation among the Chinese people.
The wars of Iraq and Afghanistan have placed heavy burden on American people and brought tremendous casualties and property losses to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. The war in Iraq has led to the death of more than 1million Iraqi civilians, rendered an equal number of people homeless and incurred huge economic losses. In Afghanistan, incidents of the U.S. army killing innocent people still keep occurring. Five Afghan farmers were killed in a U.S. air strike when they were loading cucumbers into a van on August 5, 2009 (http://www.rawa.org). On June 8, the U.S. Department of Defense admitted that the U.S. raid on Taliban on May 5 caused death of Afghan civilians as the military failed to abide by due procedures. The Afghan authorities have identified 147 civilian victims, including women and children, while a U.S. officer put the death toll under 30 (The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 9, 2009).
Prisoner abuse is one of the biggest human rights scandals of the United States. A report presented to the 10th meeting of Human Rights Council of the United Nations in 2009 by its Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism showed that the United States has pursued a comprehensive set of practices including special deportation, long-term and secret detentions and acts violating the United Nations Convention against Torture.
Visible from space I hear.
Anyways, I doubt the average chinese citizen will know or care.
1) This has to do with the Chinese government hacking into google, and other US company's servers, stealing IP, and trying to find info on human rights activists.
2) That is the kind of stuff the Chinese never hear. They probably think Google hacked China! Good thing they have Baidu to help them find the REAL news.
Very much so, and completely not related to the part of this discussion. (I only read half of it so I dont know if it comes back to the point)
It's hypocrisy to root for Google against China as an American if your "rah rah hometeam" is based on your ideas of what America stands for vs what you think China stands for, since either country criticizing the other is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Whether the news is censored by official policy of the government, or censored because the majority of media is owned by a few colluding white republican men that can dictate the nations narrative, the end result of a brainwashed, uninformed population remains the same.
Literally every problem China is demonized for the US has equal, worse, or equivalent problems with. Including freedom of information and speech.
Lets just say alot of people in the states think were not that many years away from another civil war. If the constitution was still being followed as it was inended by the founding fathers things probably wouldn't be too bad, but sadly that's not the case and its looked upon by many these days as "just an old set of rules that's too outdated to apply to modern society".
So Ben, how's Iceland?
Two words:
Rupert Murdoch
The network may be open, but the content is often biased. The Illusion of freedom in the west is a strong one.
You mean the white land owning men that believed Native-Americans were subhuman, blacks should be owned as slaves, and women shouldn't be able to vote?
There is nothing magic about the constitution or the founding fathers (other than Thomas Paine)
or how about these two?
Clearchannel Communication*
*owns 90% of all radio stations in the US.
Even though I agree with you on the topic of manipulation by the media, I think it's not quite fair to compare the US or the West to Chinba.
In the US you can easily get to other websites which offer different point of views - just enter a different URL in your browser. In China this doesn't get you anywhere.
First you need a VPN connection - with that you can access twitter, facebook, etc. To sign up you should be able to read English (something a lot of Chinese cannot do), have at least 6 dollars for a month of VPN use (still a lot of money for many people in China), and you should have an international paypal account (pretty much impossible unless you have a credit card). So for the ordinary chinese there's quite a few obstacles to get a 2nd opinion on the stuff reported in the state media.
Or you an try using a free VPN, which probably ain't a good idea at all.
Also some more info on filtering in China: it's usually sites offering critical content in Chinese language which are blocked. Often the english language counterparts (like with the BBC site) with their sometimes China critic articles are accessible just fine. If the Chinese wouldn't use youtube it probably wouldn't have been blocked.
Personally I dont think its a good idea for Google to pull out of china, because it just encourages them to become more insular and cut off. Google can push the limits. Where as a company that kowtows strictly to the government would be extremely conservative in its actions and allowances.
Sure, Ok, and? What good does that do to the end political landscape, human rights, and overall quality of life of the population? Freedom of information is only worthwhile if it accomplishes something, it's not some kind of objective good on it's own. There are numerous ways to control your population, and that's what this issue is about; People demonizing China for controlling it's population through government run propaganda and censorship. But the US has it's population under the same kind of control, whether there is easier access to info or not, they've got the control locked down to the same degree, making that freedom for the 5 people that use it irrelevant.
Tomorrow I can start a blog called I fucking Hate America ...I can print flyers and pass them out ...I can hold rallies...promote my point of view... If I am not happy with the news I receive..then I can start my own channel..hell most places you can get on public access...or post on youtube....I can do all that without fear of being thrown in prison....regardless of the impact it has...I am free to do it...
How many Chinese disadents are imprisoned right now because they spoke out against the government...
What if writers like Noam Chomsky were born in china...you think any of his writing would have seen the light of day
Where's the bullshit? people do everything you say above, especially the point about Chomsky, and what does it accomplish? Propaganda is not limited to censorship. Do you honestly think China actually cares about running it's own news stations? or do you think the more important part is ensuring that the majority of china believes the government knows best and is doing great? If the end goal is population control, it does not matter the method, you can hush up your critics (china, russia), or you can drown them till they are irrelevant white noise without a proper platform to disseminate their alternate viewpoint effectively (America).
I assume people should actually care enough to look at things a bit more deeply, but it just doesn't seem to be how most people work :P Most people enjoy being fed all their information and not having to think about things on their own; politics, spirituality, what to do with your own body, etc.
But we can turn off that white noise...we can discuss it..we can write books educating people against it's evil.....that's the difference...we can criticize, analyze, convince other people that our cause is worthy...the mechanism is there
when someones view is not front and center..they scream that the mechanism is broken...how to make your point of view the status quo is completely different subject
People CHOOSE to watch. There is still other choices like IndiMedia or going overseas for different viewpoints. Your argument is baseless. Unless all other forms of communication and Media where limited to FOX.
IF you want to argue about Corporate Media in general.. Im all with you.
The whole freedom freechoice is the bullshit. Yeah sure, any day now enough Americans will start consuming "indimedia" or all the masses of impoverished americans will just up and "go overseas" for their different viewpoint.
Educated, wealthy, white men (myself included) can afford to learn about what's really going on, or travel overseas to get an outside perspective. The same can be said in China, rich chinese absolutely can read whatever they want, or travel to another country and peer back within. The point is that the bottom rung, which makes up the majority of the population in China and the US are subject to the generally available media, state run in china, and corporate owned in the US, and get only a single viewpoint, that being Rah Rah "our" team is great, "their" team is a mass of human rights abuses.
Again, we = the wealthy with an abundance of free time, ie a fraction of the population, and they have an upper class that the rules don't apply to in China as well. You better believe a Chinese millionaire can read the BBC or the latest Chomsky book and knows what happened in Tienanmen square.
This isn't about viewpoints and the-truth-is-in-the-middle bullshit. The US method of spreading information is every bit as broken as China's just in a different way, and it's absolutely hypocrisy to call them out on it as an American that knows nothing about China, nor your own country's human right's abuses.
It boils down to the US media demonizing China. How many people cheering for Google's decision know anything about how China's government works? how many knows how it's government is structured, or just how easy/hard it is to consume alternate news sources VS just hearing all the bad anecdotes designed to make it look like a 3rd world hellhole? It's a way to make America look great by making another global super power look way worse, when the same problems exist in spades in the US.
What a great strawman! That's just what everyone, especially me, has been saying!
The point is that internet hippies getting excited that google is "sticking it to the man" after initially agreeing to the censorship agreement, is stupid. Especially if those internet hippies are residents of a country that has it's own problems with brainwashing it's population with propaganda.
I guess I missed the topic then. I thought you were talking about personal freedoms (and here the US does clearly win out over China). Most governments want to "control" their people somehow and keep them "loyaly" through propaganda, harsh control, nationalism, religion or what not. It's been going on for centuries. Not sure why anyone would think that's not going on on some level in the west too. Anyway, not my kind of discussion...
Look, the issue is. Your confusing the lack of will of people, and yes, I would agree education to understand options. However, the fact remains the information IS available.
I understand your passion. But your letting it cloud the distinction between no >lawful< ability to choose or speakout and a lack of will to do so. I know the US is hypocritical. But no where near to the degree of China. You seem to have done your research on the US. Have you compared it to China?
Really. We have a doctrinal opposition to the idea of living in an open society?
We can debate about the merits of communism vs open society all day long, but it doesn't change the fact that if you DO support the western governmental structure you have a reason to vilify china.
Additionally hah, comparing (skewed) american government reports of issues in america to (incredibly more skewed) chinese reports. You're right, the chinese government says china is a great place!
i'm not rahrah home team at all, i have a lot of respect for people like you who choose to put their money where their mouth is and moved out when they found the country didnt suit them, but this is ridiculous.
China is stupidly demonized, yes. But china also has some major philosophical differences with the entire rest of the world on freedom and human rights.
If you think it is okay to establish a nation, through force, that disallows basic human freedoms that's alright, dude, it's a valid if a bit antiquated stance. But if you think a corrupt but in writing true open society is the same or whatsoever fundamentally similar to china in makeup you're swallowing your own hyperbole a bit too much.
Seriously Ben, can you ever post in a policatal thread without some incredible bias against america? I'm the last person you'll see signing the national anthem, but your incredible basis and relentless need to bash everyone here in the face with the same tired viewpoint over and over and over and over is just ridiculous. Stop with the flame-baiting, it got old a few days after you started posting here again.
Having an opinion is fine, having a discussion is fine, but the only thing you are interested in doing is exaggerating any detail that will help justify to you that america is evil, and spouting it like a fucking broken record. Not once actually trying to have a civil discussion, actually talking about pros and cons of various arguments, simply a one sided hate filed rant with every post you make.
Chinese government ->
The man
Google ->
Sticking up to the chinese government.
This isn't really up for debate. I'm not waving my team google flag for the exact reason you mentioned, they cooperated for years when this option was completely available, but there's not really any other way to interpret what's going on here. If these people were cheering on a rebellion against a major american propaganda power i bet you'd be cheering along the loudest. In your postings here your own bias on issues like this is pretty strong, your arguments typically extend to disregard all logic and eventually side with whatever america isnt doing, even when it isn't really congruent with the rest of your stance.
Look, because I'm critical of the US's model, does not mean I agree with China's. This isn't a black vs white commie vs capitalism debate. I find China's disregard for it's peasantry disgusting, it's lack of concern for the environment self-damning, it's white washing of it's history disgusting, and it's lack of freedom of speech is a violation of basic rights. China sucks in many ways, and I do not view it as a solution to the US model.
I was merely pointing out the hypocrisy of Americans gloating over this non-stance of Google as some kind of victory for human rights.
Then quit framing it as one to try to flame-bait and shock people.
If you really didn't intend to turn this into a basic commie v capitalist argument you should take a good looking at your first wall of text in here.
As long as uniformed insular babies are allowed to spew bullshit around this forum unchallenged by moderators I will continue to post apposing viewpoints.
Seriously you had a border line white nationalist spouting racist bullshit all over the healthcare thread, and while it was locked, who knows why, it could have been the tension rather than the supreme racism.
Until you make a rule that only conservatives and mild centrists are allowed to post in GD I will continue being the obnoxious leftist in every thread that touches on politics. But, that would be censorship, wouldn't it?
When when you contribute virtually nothing positive and are here simply to stir shit up and flame-bate people, you are simply a menace to the forum.