Hello?! zeugmite - OF COURSE google.cn is NOT blocked in Beijing! YOU get with the programme!!!
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The only reason I mentioned that was because ShrimpCrackers pulled the opposite conclusion out of his rear in support of one of his unsubstantiated arguments. Not only is Google.cn not blocked, Google.com, the main Google site that everybody gets, is not blocked, either.
It’s obvious that people with their minds already made up do not have an incentive (and probably a disincentive) to double-check something so simple as that.
Well, this extreme TI supporter of Japanophile inclination prefers to cite the Taiwanese people’s perspective of days past…
“The Japanese were dogs, and the KMT are pigs. At least a dog is good for guarding one’s home.” [/quote]
Firstly, I hope people can see that yet another TI/er is supporting the “TI’ers are Japanophiles” thesis that both ac_dropout and I have been writing on this board.
Secondly, another thesis that should be pretty obvoius by now is that TI/ers like to dictate other people’s identities, preferences, and perspectives as if this was their perogative. In particular, one often hears things such as “TI is the will of the Taiwanese people” even though many Taiwanese do not support their politics by a long shot. When pressed, they try to get around that by dismissing those with different politics as “not Taiwanese” but “ch!nks in exile,” which further supports the thesis as stated. The last paragraph quoted above is just another example, where a Japanophilic TI/ers’ view suddenly becomes “the Taiwanese people’s perspective.” By the way, the usual version has “ch!nks” in the place of “KMT.”
If this kind of pathetic attitude is all that remains of the substance-deprived TI movement since the opening-up of the political process, I truly don’t see why anybody still supports it.
Yes, if you and ac_dropout repeat that TIers are Japanophiles enough times, even the TIers will start to believe and repeat it. My using the exact same terms as ac_dropout was an attempt to let sleeping dogs lay for the time being whilst taking ownership of a pejorative. In reality, I’d identify myself as a Taiwanophile rather than a true Japanophile.
As I said “the Taiwanese people’s perspective of days past,” that’s what I meant. In 1945 the term Taiwanese applied to the people already living on Taiwan Island before the mainlanders’ arrival en masse. Today, “Taiwanese” or “New Taiwanese” can apply to all who call the island(s) home. By announcing “of days past” I am referring to the former. Did the Taiwanese of the past utter the expression I gave? Yes. Did every single one of them utter it? No. Obviously, there are no altruisms when discussing large populations of people.
Nonetheless, from today’s Taipei Times:
“Wu Zhiou-feng, 77, remembers the Japanese colonial period with great fondness. ‘Things were good then,’ he said. ‘The political situation was settled and while things were tough economically we always got along.’ Wu and many other Taiwanese of his generation favorably contrast the Japanese colonialists to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who arrived in Taiwan from China in 1945. But right from the start many Taiwanese disliked their new masters, regarding them as corrupt, overbearing and uncultured. ‘Soldiers took many things from us,’ Wu said. ‘Including our young women.’”
And somehow the first year of Japanese take over of Taiwan was peaceful and altruistic?
From an objective historical perspective active rebellion against the Japanese lasted for the first 20 years of the colonialization.
After 50 years neither democracy, equal rights, nor a native Taiwanese leadership selected to rule to island.
Not to mention after the KMT retreat, all the wealth of the mainland was brought onto the island to help it develop. One could interprete the current economic sitution as simply “the money CKS liberated from the mainland has run out, anybody got any bright ideas left for an economy.”
But hey if no one has any bright ideas, let’s focus on google.cn.
I mean really if I get a quote from someone that remembers fondly the days of CKS/CJG rule of Taiwan, would that ameliorate your perspective of Taiwan history.
Mr. Liu also said the powers that the Bush administrations gained under the Patriot Act to monitor Web sites and e-mail communications and the deployment of technology called Carnival by the F.B.I., which allows it to scrutinize huge volumes of e-mail traffic, are examples of how the United States has taken legal steps to guard against the spread of “harmful information” online.
“It is clear that any country’s legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information,” he said. “We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front.”[/quote]
Thought this might be interesting to those who have posted on this thread. It is an article in the Washington Post today about Google and it’s compromise between “do no evil” and do business in China:
[quote][url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/magazine/23google.html?th&emc=th]Yet Google’s conduct in China has in recent months seemed considerably less than idealistic. In January, a few months after Lee opened the Beijing office, the company announced it would be introducing a new version of its search engine for the Chinese market. To obey China’s censorship laws, Google’s representatives explained, the company had agreed to purge its search results of any Web sites disapproved of by the Chinese government, including Web sites promoting Falun Gong, a government-banned spiritual movement; sites promoting free speech in China; or any mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. If you search for “Tibet” or “Falun Gong” most anywhere in the world on google.com, you’ll find thousands of blog entries, news items and chat rooms on Chinese repression. Do the same search inside China on google.cn, and most, if not all, of these links will be gone. Google will have erased them completely.
. . . . .
Google posed a unique problem for the censors: Because the company had no office at the time inside the country, the Chinese government had no legal authority over it
Actually the article Bodo mentions is in the NY Times Magazine section. It’s particularly good on corporate self-censorship and on the Chinese appetite for arguing in on-line discussion forums.
