To get rich is glorious
Microsoft bans 'democracy' for China web users
Attempts to input words in Chinese such as "democracy" prompted an error message from the site: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Other phrases banned included the Chinese for "demonstration", "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence".
It was possible to enter such words within blogs created using MSN Spaces, but the move to block them from the more visible section of the site highlights the willingness of some foreign internet companies to tailor their services to avoid upseting China's Communist government.
Note that this article is published on an MSN news site, so therefore its frankness is probably more valid than usual, even though the headline (reproduced above) is sub-Hearst in its yellow pisschrome. However, the newsflash is revealing in that it underscores how unfettered markets have no concern whatsoever with spreading democracy. A major American company will eagerly kowtow even to the most repressive crypto-communist nationalist regimes -- and broadcast its own humiliation in the blogosphere -- so long as there is profit to be extracted.
Well. Let's not forget that it was a septuagenarian Chinese communist, Deng Xiaoping, who uttered these most eternal of free-market maxims: "To get rich is glorious", and, more importantly, "Let some people become rich before others." Now what the hell does that have to do with 'democracy'?
posted by Mark D. @ 12:30 AM |
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6 Comments:
Mark,
I'm gonna start calling you the BurgerKing. You want it your way but you don't want to pay alot.
MS offers a low cost service. They can do that because they have such a high volume of business. If they cut off part of that business (particularly the one with the growth potential) they can't do it anymore.
Don't like it? No problem, go start your own burger stand, but please, stop telling other people how to run theirs.
-Censored
Censored, I'm actually a bit surprised that your are such an ardent supporter of censorship!
Seriously, it is comforting to know that your commitment to laissez-faire market-based thinking has even allowed you to discard that one principle which I thought the right and left shared: a commitment to democracy.
Silly Mark -- democracy only applies to governments.
The Free Market will take care of the rest! What value do you place on uncensored content?
What's that-- the Chinese government doesn't give people a choice?!
Well, I'll have to figure out some way to work that into my ideology. I'll get back to you.
This from a bunch that regularly censors posts...
-Censored
FYI censored we do not "regularly censor posts": if so you would not still be around commenting away. But you do raise an interesting point. I chuckled when I read the MSNBC article where certain phrases (e.g. "Taiwan independence") generated error messages as "forbidden speech". What a laughable commentary on that strange paranoid nation!
Yet. We do seem to have something similar to "forbidden speech" here at New Patriot. Hate speech (for example, bigotry and racism) is highly discouraged to the point that we will delete comments that contain it. Same goes for personal attacks of any sort that are irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
So yeah, I wonder. I personally was opposed to the idea of banning commenters or restricting comments to blogger users only, but this was just based on the principle that we can ignore trolls and hopefully they'll go away. But even sincere democrats (and patriots) do think there is such a thing as "forbidden speech". So what does that mean? And I ask you, censored: if you had a blog (maybe you do?) are there certain forms of comments that you would consider "forbidden"?
If a rabid socialist like me regularly visited in order to criticize your lavish parasitic lifestyle and spout revolutionary slogans, would you ban me?
Western democracy and free markets are not always what they seem. For instance, in the run up to the Iraq war we where given two options, war or not. The (shameful) media failed to support any 'real' alternatives, I believed action was necessary but I didn't believe that war was the right action.
Its like someone asking if your glass is half full or half empty, what about the more realistic options because my glass never empties and is always filling. The practice of designing question to obscure (censor) the truth is BAD and its official name is social engineering.
Its like the open market, in principle it is the right idea, the problem is that the issuing of money is not democratic, the 'spending power' is actually in the hands of the banks because they are issuing the money (in the form of loans). Of course the people who are doing a honest days work still have to accept the money (issued to big companies) whether it is earnt honestly or not.
There is a real arrogance in the western world. G.Bush is the ultimate personification of this general attitute of mocking. He claims to be a great leader and a man of God, however this is the 21 century and any leader who can claim victory in war should not be in the position they are. This is because there are no winners in war, war is out and out loss. G.Bush not only claimed victory, he celebrated it!!
Our money system is a real problem, I keep hearing people talking about 'their' money. Lets get this straight, bank money is like MS software, you dont own and never will own the money in banks (im talking about the money in your accounts), this is because that money belongs to the banks and you have a 'license' to use it.
Democracy is about accountability and its about time citizens of the western world took responsibility for the issue of their own currency (as suggested by Thomas Jefferson) and stop the banks support for large business's who are raping lesser developed countries by issuing debt that was not there previously.
My point is that maybe the Chinese simply do not agree with what we define democracy to be. Genuine leaders lead by example, at the moment what the western worlds says and what it does tend to be two different things.
Also, our cultures are very different things, for instance a rough translation of 'wind' from Chinese to English is 'breath of the heavens'. Arabic writing is written from the right hand side of the page leftwards, this is because it draws the hand towards to the heart.
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