China blocks access to New York Times Web site

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: AP

China has blocked access to the New York Times Web site, the newspaper said Saturday, days after the central government defended its right to censor online content it deems illegal.

Computer users who logged on in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou received a message that the site was not available when they tried to connect on Friday morning, the paper said. Some users were cut of as early as Thursday evening, it said.

The Web site remained inaccessible from Beijing Saturday.

It was not clear if the move was meant to block specific content on the newspaper's Web site or if it was a return to stricter censorship of the Internet in general. Beijing loosened some media and Internet controls during the 2008 Summer Olympics - gestures that were meant to show the international community that the games had brought greater freedom to the Chinese people....

Read more: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081220/D956H5N02.html

[WriteDown]

1. China....

Doin' it right. :sarcasm:

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. One of the worst purveyors of mendacity this side of the black stump,

and you're complaining? It's the State Departments and CIA's house magazine! Read what Chomsky has to say about it in his recent book, What We Say Goes. It's not conjecture or opinion. He cites chapter and verse.

[WriteDown]

4. Are you actually supporting...

China's decision to monitor and regulate the internet? Seriously?

Edited for spelling.

[Posteritatis]

5. It's only wrong when Republicans do it, I guess.. (nt)

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. Of course. You're finally getting it. They are bad, bad people. Period.

[Political Heretic]

7. Um... lessee... yeah I'm complaining about mass censorship.

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. Well, if it's protection of the people from throughly mendacious propaganda, absolutely!

Most people are not worldly-wise. If they were, no right-wing party would ever have gained power in any democracy (quasi democracy).

[Zynx]

12. Are you serious?

Sometimes there are left-wing parties that have deserved to lose.

Also, I do not trust a blatantly lying Chinese government.

[Joe Chi Minh]

16. No. Posturing left-wing governments, in principle. But never to lose to

a right-wing party. The old one-nation Republicans and Tories of the earlier post WWII years are a thing of the past.

The tragedy of the left is that in the UK the Labour Party, which was founded by a devout Christian man, Keir Hardie, was very rapidly taken over atheists. And now in the UK, we have the worst of all possible worlds, far-right economics and atheist, left-wing, social liberalism (historically known as "licence").

By a bitter irony, your Republicans have the savvy to realise that most people do not want social liberalism, and while they are generally more promiscuous than the worst Democrats in their private life, make a great play of the historical orthodoxy of their sexual morality.

[Posteritatis]

22. Thank heavens you're not the one who gets to make that decision

"Protection of the people" from words and ideas and apparently believing you're far enough above the populace to suggest what they may or may not be allowed to read?

Who needs rights anyway? They're so blasted inconvenient.

[onehandle]

2. Do not speak ill of our future masters.

Don't worry. I'll get smirk to apologize.

[CatholicEdHead]

6. Blockin that liberal media

:sarcasm:

[pa28]

8. No shock. They block access to this web site too.

Pretty sorry excuse for progress.

[RandomThoughts]

9. Censorship is actually a fascinating topic

Not sure about this actual case, but the whole topic is fascinating.

In a capitalist system with 0 state censorship. All media is chosen, edited, and published by the power of the dollar. Quite simply their is still censorship, but it is economic, since the dollar can pay for favorable articles through shared board of directors, choice of journalist and editors, or to make advertisers happy.

If government regulates size of a media monopoly, that is limiting voice of one group, or censorship. But it is done to counter money owning all information outlets.

If a news source is obviously lieing to promote an agenda, they are actually the ones censoring. They are censoring the counter argument to issues. Fox news censors left thought, by not showing it. MSM censors anti corporate thought, by not covering it. So a false news paper, or tv channel. Is a censor by only promoting, lets say, the corporate side of things. So cutting off viewing would be to fight censorship, often called bias, or slanted media.

Just for a other side of the coin look at how it often works in the third world.

If a 'commoner class' government has a radio station, or news station that tells the truth, and is geared to help society. People would get good info. And station could be monitored by elected citizen people to make sure it is not slanted. (Like the BBC, CBC, PBS, CSPAN are all like this. (However they should all get free adds on other networks, but thats another issue))

But then billions get pumped into region to topple government by saturating fake, pro corporate agenda on 'special new' Tv Stations. Leader shuts down the blatant lies from far right propaganda, and is called a censoring dictator. Yet if money shuts down a commoner news agencies (that tells the truth) by market saturation, monopoly competition, or pulling add revenue. Its just business.

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. Excellent, very insightful post. That economic censorship reminds me of

the right-wing's notion of "freedom" as the freedom to dine at the Ritz, or to sleep under a bridge.

But there is no remedy for the plight of these right-wing mutts on here. Truth is anathema.

[Zynx]

15. Continue to defend the Chinese oppressive system all you want.

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. Alas, it's been moving away from Communism, so my admiration for them

has diminished commensurately. Fortunately, their leaders had the savvy to forbid the monster powers of the West to ruin their country overnight, and turn it into a haven for organised crime, as they had done in Russia. Those in the West responsible for that will pay in Hell for the widespread destitution and misery it led to in Russia.

It's not that atheistic Communism is more acceptable in a post Christian society than any other form of government, but despite the worst endeavours of monsters such as Stalin, no Communist regime ever managed to come near the West for utter moral depravity. Rape-dog Pinochet and the School of the Americas are only the worst examples. Probably, anyway. In the USSR or China, they'd have kept a "school" like that a close secret. And we'd surely have head about it. But then, if China had been as viciously violent as the US, South East Asia would have been colonised by it. The New York Times would be no friend of the South American people. That's for sure.

Only the other day, we had to hear a TV trailer in which a young woman had "changed her sex", and then given birth to some poor, wretched, wee mite. What chance will that kid have of growing up even half sane and happy? She was cooing over it. "My babeeee..."

I understand that some people have the tragic misfortune of having a genetic aberrance, and if a surgical operation can help them in that regard, all to the good, but if a female and she then bears a child "as a man", that is too tragic for words, and certainly not something to be celebrating on a TV programme.

This is the key problem with atheism. If you don't accept an external moral authority, it's pretty much a smorgasbord. The word, "religion" is derived from the latin infinitive for "to bind". What does does an atheist feel bound by? They like to think it is by "reason", yet, as Enstein once said, "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." One of their most strident, celebrated and totally barmy spokesmen is a secular fundamentalist called Dawkins.

[RandomThoughts]

18. I am not defending Chinese oppression

I am discussing economic oppression. It is not a defense of one, it is a connecting of both, commenting on how we are only taught the chinese method of censorship, and not the western economic methods of censorship.

[Joe Chi Minh]

20. I understood that. Your position on China wasn't of interest to me.

[Zynx]

14. All things considered, I will take the ills of private media over censorship.

[RandomThoughts]

19. Why not find a middle ground

The problem that I see, is a target erasing of all teaching of the flaws and limitations of our capitalist system.

There is absolutely no teaching of those flaws and limitations. Originally capitalist knew those limitations so there was an attempt to check on the profit motive in some areas, knowing if left unchecked it leads to a state as bad as state control. It is control by a few with money, instead of a few picked by a government system.

It starts somewhere in the middle, then people use a red scare calling everything not free market capitalism bad. This leads to entire generations, with no knowledge of the faults of capitalism. And capitalism runs wild till a few people that made it to the top of that system through its selection process(greed) are creating policies and practices solely based on the greed of a few.

I think government systems, created from a few people elected by everyone, should compete with capitalist systems where those with shares of stock, and wealth, make the decision. If a few mess up, and through profit motive hurt society more then the capitalist system helps society. They get their power taken away. This creates a cycle of people getting rich through capitalism, then losing that power when it is abused by the natural tendency of greed. and that power is put back in the hands of many, to once again consolidate, and be broken up.

[brentspeak]

21. But this is impossible!

The free-market neolibs who turned the U.S. into a dead-end "consumer economy" promised us that China's becoming one giant polluted factory would mean so much greater political freedom for China. Cheap, exploitative labor was supposed to bring them democracy and freedom! Something must be wrong the article.