Skype censorship

According to this article:

China is monitoring the chat messages of Skype users and censoring them if they contain sensitive keywords such as Tibet or Communist
Party, according to a group of Canadian researchers.The massive surveillance operation of TOM-Skype, a joint venture between Chinese mobile firm TOM Online and Skype, owned by US online auction house eBay, was alleged by Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto research group.

This may or may not be true. I use Skype quite a bit though, and I can't say I have ever noticed interference (supposedly words like Tibet attract attention). Then again, I don't chat in Chinese all that much, so possibly it is only the Chinese that is being monitored.

It also sounds like a hell of a lot of effort to go to to stop a few conversations. I'm not calling bullshit yet, but I would like to know more.

A scary future

It's October 2009........

President McCain has been dead for two months. President Palin has declared war on Russia. And abortion. And moose. And green activists.

She has personally said she wants to "kill herself some non-believers." Under the umbrella of job creation and healthcare, that is.

Oil is at $300 a barrel. Although they can't afford to fly, Americans are leaving en masse. The Canadian army (ha) is desperately trying to stem the flow of refugees across the border. Boatloads of Americans are attempting to cross the Atlantic in huddled masses, desperate for a new life in the New World of the European Union. Others are turning up in Vietnam, China and Australia (where they are sent to prison camps in the desert.)

Thankfully it looks less and less like this is actually going to happen. According to this article:

A GROWING proportion of US voters question Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's readiness for the job, according to a national opinion poll reported by The Washington Post.The poll results came as the Alaska governor prepared to face Democrat Joe Biden in the only vice presidential debate before the November 4 election.
About half of all voters surveyed said they were uncomfortable with the idea of Republican presidential nominee John McCain taking office at age 72, and 85 per cent of those voters said Governor Palin does not have the experience needed to be president, according to The Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Praise the lord!

Gymnasts not underage after all?

One of the bigger controversies of the Beijing Olympics concerned the question of whether some or all of the Chinese women's team were underage due to their tiny frames and incriminating information appearing on the internet. This questioning provoked an extremely defensive response by the Chinese side, including the old chestnut of "hurting the feelings" of the gymnasts' families. However, according to an investigation, this year's team is in the clear, but China's bronze-medal winning team in Sydney is still under suspicion.

China's gold medal gymnasts are in the clear. Its team that won the bronze medal eight years ago, however, still faces questions. International gymnastics officials on Wednesday closed their 5
1/2-week investigation into the ages of the Chinese gymnasts at the Beijing Olympics, saying the documentation provided confirms they were old enough to compete. But two members of the 2000 squad — Dong Fangxiao and Yang Yun — remain under scrutiny.

This is despite an American computer expert finding documents that he claimed prove that she was in fact only 14 at the time of the competition. From The Times:

Mike Walker, a computer security expert, told The Times how he tracked down two documents that he says had been removed from a Chinese
government website. The documents, he said, stated that He’s birth date was January 1 1994 - making her 14 - and not January 1 1992, which is printed in her passport.

He turned to a Chinese search engine, Baidu. In its cache he found both documents. "The listing in there, quite clearly, is He Kexin’s birth date, January 1, 1994," Mr Walker said. That makes her 14 years and 220 days old and too young to compete. The lists were compiled by the
General Administration of Sport of China. How aggressive and sustained the IOC-ordered investigation will be remains to be seen. If it did ultimately result in the stripping of gold medals from one of China’s favourite athletes, it would be an Olympic scandal with reverberations far beyond the sport itself. In July the New York Times published references to articles in the Beijing press in which He was referred to as only 14 years old.

Presumably, He Kexin and her teammates had competed at international level before the Olympics. I wonder if there were many questions about her age then. And if there were, were requests made for corroborating proof?

He Kexin: 16 years old, fake ID

Censorship

The following article was written by a chief executive in a Chinese publishing company and published in the New York Times:

I always used to hate it when foreigners focused on censorship of the media in China. I think foreigners have this image of a Fu Manchu-like Chinaman, sitting in a dark corner trying to censor everything. I often wanted to say: “It is not like that. We don’t really feel that much censorship.”

Take my job as a lifestyle magazine editor and publisher. We have not been censored for the last four years, and we have had pretty aggressive (i.e., very sexy) fashion shoots, etc. I mean, FHM is the
most popular men’s magazine here.

Clearly we have liberalized.

However, during the current milk powder crisis, I realized censorship is actually pretty strong. Yes, Fu Manchu as Big Brother is among us. There is a lot of open debate about the milk powder crisis on the Internet. People are questioning the news, and everyone suspects a massive government cover-up job. However, all this debate is banned on state-owned media, particularly television.

Another prime example of censorship during the Olympics happened when the Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang dropped out of the race. There was a lot of speculation as to how long his coach, the government, his sponsors and even Liu himself had known that he could not compete. The public felt that they were given a song and dance at the last minute. Again, state-owned traditional media were not allowed to talk about it.

I must say I find it very difficult in some ways to understand the comment “It is not like that. We don't really feel that much censorship.” Really? Is that a willfull myopia?

As part of my general reading after this article, I googled "China press freedom." To get to the first few documents listed I had to use a proxy server. (Incidentally, according to Freedom House in 2008 China ranks equal 181st out of 195 countries in terms of freedom of the press - North Korea is last.)

However, although it is easy to be sarcastic about and critical of comments like the ones made in the article above, it is neither constructive nor useful. The fact is, many Chinese people (though by no means all) feel the same way. It could be argued, for example, that this is a cultural difference, and how Chinese respect for authority and supposedly raging hunger for harmony are simply at odds with western liberal ideas of freedom of speech.

But there is another take on this article. The writer is a chief executive at a Chinese publishing company. She KNOWS how much censorship affects what can be published, and she KNOWS that is she is too harsh in her comments written in a neo-imperialistic capitalist mouthpiece like the New York Times it is going to seriously disrupt her guanxi with the powers that be. That's why, of all the corrupt and non-harmonious events that happen in China on a daily basis, she chooses Liu Xiang's freakin' achilles heel (gossip, not harmful) the melamine scandal (already out of the bag) and nudity and sex (as if any China watcher really considers that as important) as examples of censorship. One comment on the original article calls this "complicit ignorance" and I have to say I agree.

The funniest news this week

China posts fake rocket launch story

CHINA'S leading Xinhua news agency reported the successful flight of the Shenzhou VII - complete with detailed dialogue between the
astronauts - hours before the nation's third-ever manned space mission had even lifted off. On Thursday morning, Xinhua posted a story on its website saying the Shenzhou capsule had been successfully tracked flying over the Pacific Ocean even though the rocket and its three astronauts had not yet been launched. The article, dated September 27, described the rocket in flight, complete with a sharply detailed dialogue between the three astronauts. Excerpts are below: "After this order, signal lights all were switched on, various data show up on rows of screens, hundreds of technicians staring at the screens, without
missing any slightest changes ... "One minute to go!' 'Changjiang No.1 found the target! ... "The firm voice of the controller broke the silence of the whole ship. Now, the target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time ... "The air pressure in the cabin is normal!"Ten minutes later, the ship disappears below the horizon. Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean." An editor at Xinhau told AFP that the story had been posted due to a technical problem. "We dealt with it after we had found it," the editor said.

I love those last two lines. No explanations as to why they were writing stories in advance of them happening, but an assurance that it was dealt with, whatever that means. In other news, Shenzhou did succesfully take off. However whether the mission will be succesful is another question. This from the Guardian:

The state media said investigations showed that most of those taken ill had consumed milk labelled with the Sanlu brand. The company is China's biggest milk powder producer, with almost a fifth of the market, and is the dairy supplier to the country's space programme.

Will this mission end in melamine-inspired failure? Only time will tell. Stay tuned, my fellow taikonauts.

One reason why Kevin Rudd is a better PM than John Howard

In his eleven years of being Australian prime minister, I don't think I once heard John Howard articulate any vision of how he wanted to make Australia a better place. As a prime minister, the man was a manager rather than a leader. A product of the World War II generation, it seemed he was unable to move on from the post-war view that because America joined the war just before Australia was invaded, Australia holds an eternal and unquestioning allegiance to support the US in any and all conflicts it places itself in. (Previous to that war many Australians felt that way about Britain.) As such, his attitude to the rest of the world lacked nuance, substance and vision. Rudd, on the other hand, is a product of the diplomatic service, speaks a good standard of Chinese, and has a clearly articulated, if highly ambitious, vision for Australia and Asia in the coming century. This is what he said at today's OzAsia symposium, according to WA Today:

"Our challenge in the future is not to retreat to any view of Australia which is a small Australia, but instead to ensure a vision for Australia which is wide and open to the world and region," he told an OzAsia symposium in Adelaide today.

Mr Rudd said his government's mission was "for Australia to be the most Asian literate nation in the western world".

He said the future of Australia was "tied to the most dynamic region in the world".

"The 21st century will be the Asia Pacific century ... so we need to make sure that in decades ahead we are fully engaged with the region," he said.

After more than a decade of dreary conservative attitudes to Australia's place in the world, this is like watching an episode of South Park after 10 episodes of the Brady Bunch. It's like listening to the party mix after 10 hours of country music. It's like drinking a mocha double frappuchino whip with a shot of vodka after 10 soy lattes. Next stop.... an Australian republic.

The whacko from Wasilla

With the gathering storm clouds portending a giant shit-storm of fiscal misfortune the world over, I am now cautiously predicting an Obama win in the US election. Of the two candidates, I think he is better positioned to claim authentically strong financial credentials. However, the sick and twisted voyeur in me is still somewhat curious to see what a McCain, and potentially Palin, presidency would bring, particularly in light of this story from the Alaska Daily News:

In June, long before she was selected as the Republican nominee for vice president, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin attended a religious gathering at the Wasilla Assembly of God, her former church.

Standing there on stage and speaking to the college-aged graduates of the church's Master's Commission ministry, the governor reminisced about growing up in the fellowship -- "getting saved here, getting baptized by Pastor Riley in Little Beaver Lake Camp" -- while urging the new disciples to help fulfill the church's mission, as well as certain destinies for America and Alaska.

Pray for the construction of the $30 billion natural gas pipeline, Palin told them. Pray for the military men and women overseas, "that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending (U.S. soldiers) out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for -- that there is a plan and it's God's plan." Later, senior pastor Ed Kalnins -- with Palin standing at his side -- spoke about tapping into Alaska's natural resource wealth in order to fulfill the state's destiny of serving as a shelter for Christians at the end of the world.

"I believe that Alaska is one of the 'refuge states' -- come on you guys -- in the Last Days," Kalnins said, raising his arm to underscore his point. "And hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state to seek refuge. And the church has to be ready to minister to them."

Now that she's been selected as Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate, such comments raise questions: What are Sarah Palin's religious beliefs? What churches does she attend and who are her pastors? How have her beliefs played out in her public life in Alaska? What do they portend for a possible vice president?

This is the million dollar question: What does this portend for a possible vice-president? Hopefully, not a lot.

But for a President, which is definitely on the cards if McCain doesn't make it through the next four years, I think we know. A gun totin', god fearin', bible thumpin', abortion hatin', abstinence teachin', military promotin', oil guzzlin', environment trashin' George Bush Jr II, except with big hair and from Alaska. YEEEHAAW, let's go shoot ourselves some non-believers!