Remember YouTube? You can't get that any more in China. Now, it looks like Twitter, Hotmail, and Flickr has joined the ranks of state defined "unpatriotic" sites that the Chinese Communist Party doesn't want Chinese people to see. Freedom or access to information remains the biggest danger to totalitarian governments. Chinese the world over need to stand together against this oppression. This is a totalitarian government's blatant act of subjugating a people. Western intelligentsia and punditry had optimistically predicted that the internet would liberalize China, forcing the CCP to change because of its vast amounts of and freedom of information, seemingly uncontrollable by anyone. Those pundits never realized just how total that the word in totalitarian means. There is no such thing as the internet any more in China; it is now the Chinse Communist Party Net, and don't you dare forget it, 同志 . Watch and remember this folks. When your kids ask you when the internet died in China, it was at the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In a rush? For a quick synopsis, just read the red highlighted lines.
the government probably dont want their citizens to use western commodities and just want them to use chinese commodities ~
darn,i won't be able to use neither msn nor google when i go to china...if i ever get to use a computer:(
I think the PRC gov has since allowed the msg services to come come back on line, however, so far as I know, YouTube remains out. I don't know if any of you are following the events these last few days in Iran, but it's rather instructive to the PRC government. The Iranis are using Twitter, YouTube, and a variety of other messaging services to upload cellphone captured videos directly to the internet. Tehran is trying to stop them by cutting out phone and internet service, but so far, it wasn't prepared like the PRC was. Whereas Iranian blockages are sporadic, PRC effectively and totally cut off the internet message boards from being able to reach China and vice versa, during the Tiananmen anniversary. Moral is, even totalitarian governments need to do their homework if they want to stop the internet and suppress the spread of protest news. However, this bodes ill for the Chinese people. It just means that the PRC is a lot more prepared to shut down all avenues of electronic communications in order to stifle the spread of news related to discontent.
The rise of the people usually happens when the government suppresses them to the breaking point; to the point where the people has had enough. Like this ... "... i'm a human being, goddamnit, my life has value ... " and "... i'm as mad as hell and i'm not going to take this anymore ..." [youtube]QMBZDwf9dok[/youtube]
