Edmund has given me a fascinating link comparison in the combox. The exercise involves searching Google images using the word "Tiananmen".
First of all, try the UK Google:
(www.google.co.uk/images?q=tiananmen)
Click image to enlarge
Then try the China Google:
(www.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen)
Click image to enlarge
Well fancy that!
12 comments:
You wouldn't, by any chance, be playing a game of "chicken"... ? (taunting our commie cousins in order to see what it takes to get your URL blocked?)...
;-)
Not sure if you are using word/term 'Commies' as oppossed to 'Fascist's', or just to be derogative or something else? Pardon please my ignorance.
Father,
I have often heard them referred to as "Chicoms" here in the US. Brief, to the point, and saves keystrokes for people and whatever for the greenies. LOL
What this suggests to me is not merely the problem of Chinese censorship, but also the problem of the narrowness of western media vision, which is a different kind of censorship. How many people in the west know anything about Tiananmen Square other than that a massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators happened there. While that terrible event should not be hidden from view, it should also not be the only thing we know about this place. The pictures on the Chinese Google page do in fact represent the experience of Tiananmen for the vast (really vast) majority of Chinese people. both before and after the massacre.
Ideally, there would be a truly international Google which would present both sets of images intermingled.
The Catholic Caveman might be able to suggest an alternative for the word "persons" in the above title.
Damn right I could, Pater!! But then I'd have to go straight to Confession.
Fr. Tim, it's not just the Chinese authorities who are censoring the internet and impeding access to religious blogs and websites. If any proof was needed that big brother is watching in the dictatorship of relativism, here it is.
When I was working late at the office recently and having a short break, I casually entered the web address of a Catholic pro-family/ pro-life organization, whose website I occasionally browse from home, into the internet explorer of my office PC. Access was denied and I have reproduced below the blocking message which appeared on my screen. (I have altered the identification details for obvious reasons).
Just look at the "censorship category" in the last line:
----------------------------------------------------------------
FORBIDDEN - WEBSITE ACCESS DENIED
The URL you have entered has been blocked because it violates the Company's policies governing staff Internet use.
Staff should note that:
- Internet access for staff is for business purposes only
- Staff must not use the Company's Internet access for any unauthorized or illegal act
- The Company reserves the right to monitor and restrict traffic entering and leaving the Company's Internet gateway
Access violation details:
Name: [My name]
Staff No.: 123456
User ID - IP address: 111.222.333.44
Current Time: 21:57:51
Date: 02-02-2007
Category: Pro-Life
---------------------------
Clearly, corporate firewalls are now being programmed to treat pro-life websites effectively as if they were pornography. And workers who try to access pro-life websites are being watched.
I fully admit that the pro-life cause isn't relevant to my professional activities, so the web access restriction was in order -- technically. But why single out pro-life websites?
To check if my company's firewalls are restricting non-work-related web access in an even-handed way, I have since used my work PC experimentally to access various general interest, hobby and leisure websites (all relatively unobjectionable, but none work-related).
Interestingly, I wasn't blocked at all -- except when I turned to matters spiritual and entered the web address of a site run by devotees of the Blessed Sacrament. Then the "Website Access Denied" message appeared as before, but with a new and even more frightening censorship category:
Access violation details:
Name: [My name]
Staff No.: 123456
User ID - IP address: 123.456.789.10
Current Time: 18:55:47
Date: 04-02-2007
Category: Religion
---------------------------
Enough is enough, I thought, so I didn't bother trying to access the Hermeneutic of Continuity blog at work!
Welcome to China.
Francis - that is most interesting, especially, as you say, the category field. This happens in schools too - my parish website was blocked as a "portal" (OK, I know it is a great source for all things Catholic:-))
However, the London Grid for Learning, for example, is well positioned to implement internet censorship on schools.
Father,
Not that I agree with everything that the Chinese government stands for. That said, the last time the Chinese got too caught up in ideologies, they suffered a Cultural Revolution that set them back more than half a million lives and rendered them an economic backwater.
I'm not too keen on censorship, but is it truly prudent to focus on their lack of full civic freedoms as they are trying to restore the damage that a madman and a mad ideology did to their country?
The Chinese Communist party decided that China should first become prosperous, and then weigh political reforms, rather than go the Russian route of undertaking political reforms, and then seeing the economy go to hell, as is to be expected when an ailing country lets loose the dogs of politics before the wisdom and maturity necessary for democracy exists. Look what happened in Germany.
While I generally disapprove of censorship, I think in this case it is the lesser of two evils.
I disagree that the Cultural Revolution came about because of the Government being too caught up in ideologies. It happened because they got caught up in the wrong ideology. (The death toll of the Cultural revolution was rather more than half a million lives, I think.)
The main point, as far as I am concerned, is not whether censorship itself it good or bad. Censorship is exercised in all societies to some degree. For example, libel laws, and laws against pornography are things I would agree with.
What is wrong, I think, is colluding with a Government attempting to whitewash atrocities committed against innocent people. The fact that such atrocities continue today is partly due to this collusion.
For prosperity to be achieved in a country, the necessary political conditions need to be present. The pre-war inflation in Germany was not unrelated to the political landscape.
I'm not sure I can agree with John about the portrayal of Tiananmen by the Western media. From the screenshot that Fr Tim displayed, only two of the sites displaying 'that' picture belong to Western media organisations (guardian.co.uk and abc.net.au). The rest are mostly personal blogs or belong to human rights groups. If you look at some of the subsequent pages, there are many current-day pictures of Tiananmen from other sites, many of which are also available from Chinese Google. It's just 'that' picture which is conspicuously absent from the latter!
There are two overlapping but distinct points here. The Chinese government censors their citizens' web access for propaganda purposes. Google, a large multinational whose slogan is 'Don't Be Evil', aids and abets this by carrying out a similar service, not for propaganda purposes, but so that it can get a foothold in the lucrative emerging Chinese market.
I am horrified at this companies action and I am sure blocking catholic sites would count as religious discrimination (especially if athiest sites or anti religious sites are not blocked).
My company is rather better than that and allows reasonable personal use (although it is monitored) and it would be very difficult legally not to allow reasonable personal use where employees have access to the internet.(in the UK)
Another problem is that these firewalls are often off the shelf from often American software companies and come with banned categories pre-programmed.
Our company firewall was blocking any website with the word "weather", which as we work outdoors I stirred up a bit. It turned out that this was pre blocked. We don't know why, but a search on Wikipedia discovered that in the USA about 30 years ago there was an obscure terrorist group called "The Weatherman" and seemingly on this basis the firewall blocked all weather websites....doh! Blocking religious sites may come from similar over zealous pre programming and I can imagine some americans thinking pro-life=terrorism (although to be fair some explicit material on pro life websites isn't suitable for viewing on company computers)
So maybe the USA are not in a position to gloat about China.
One other thing about Tiannanmen Square. I'm told that during the 1968 cultural revolution a bunch of militant students threw Deng Xiaopings son out of an upstairs window having deemed him counter-revolutionary, he was permanentlty wheelchair bound. Thousands if not hundreds of thousands died in the mainly student caused madness of the cultural revolution.
Therefore when PRESIDENT Deng Xiaoping found himself facing a student uprising.....
Behind many sins is the scar of a previous sin.
Father,
I didn't intend to imply that the Cultural Revolution was the fruit of an ideology qua ideology, but rather the fruit of a malign ideology let loose in a country with almost abysmal levels of education.
I believe that some of what the Chinese government wreaks to this day is trite, such as its treatment of Catholics and Tibetans. But I think that opinions on the Massacre at Tienanmen Square must take Chinese culture into consideration, which puts an emphasis on consensus and respect for authority, and, above all else, an abhorrence of anarchy. The students at Tienanmen were not bourgeois soixant-huitards throwing cobblestones at flics as a rite of passage, but rather fanatics who forced the Chinese government into a corner where it was either it or them, and quite probably anarchy if it was indeed them. Even the reformers whom these fanatics claimed to be supporting appeared at the square, and begged them to go home for the love of their country. There was no excuse for their staying there after the politicians in whom they had put their hope had told them that their staying there could serve no purpose. No society can be improved by destroying its very sinews.
I am grateful to not be in a position of power, and therefore to not have to make such decisions, but had I been in the Chinese leadership at the time, I would have read my Edmund Burke for solace and confirmation, and then, with a heavy heart, sent the tanks in. I would fear a government that was not ashamed of having to make such a decision far more than one that was unabashed about the lengths to which it had went to maintain public order.
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