links for 2006-03-30

• Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: A Chinese "Fool"
  "His political struggles and attempt to criticize his own government while loving his own country make the contradictions we Westerners labor under seem petty."
  (tags: freehaowu freespeech humanrights china)
• Pop and Politics: Multi-racial Dream by Claire Light
  "The stereotype/fantasy is an attempt to control the uncontrollable, to understand that which you can’t understand."
  (tags: americanvoices race)
• Tech's Faster Boat to China
  "Microsoft, Motorola, Intel and others are expanding their mainland research facilities -- so much so, finding workers could soon get tougher"
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch techtrends internet business)
• China's Clash of Cultures in Cyberspace - Los Angeles Times
  "A blogger's video spoof of a big-budget film is swept up in the debate over censorship and the freedom to speak one's mind on the Internet."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch blogs internet freespeech humanrights democracy)
• Web crackdown, Web protest: Three recent cases (Updated) :: China Digital Times (CDT) 中国数字时代
  "Since the "Rules on the Administration of Internet News Information Services" came out last September, government control over online content has intensified. Following are three recent examples of how the local authorities have acted on the regulations,
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch internet censorship freespeech)

Comments

[mahathir_fan]

To prevent jail time, bloggers and dissidents should be very well aware of the law and limitations of their rights.

I was thinking about starting my own blog and read the "handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents" that is linked from this page. It is quite dissapointing because the handbook appear to be written for "fanatics" or "extremists" or "suicide bombers".

There is nothing in it to inform would be bloggers to respect the law, or to educate them on the limitations of free speech. Instead, hints are given to them on how to blog anonymously.

It reminds me of the training of kamikaze pilots. There are definitely those who wish to blog and yet, wants to do so within the limits allowed by the law.

In the 1920s, Gitlow a socialist published articles to incite Americans to overthrow their government by force to transform America into a Communist State. He was arrested and in his defense he argued that because his publication did not result in any action, and it was his freedom of press right to publish those articles. The US Supreme Court still found him guilty.

Today, many of those dissidents arrested in China are our modern day Gitlows. They clearly violated the law when they wrote articles to incite people to overthrow the government, yet they think it was their freedom of speech/press.