The police image that will appear on computer screens.
Posted on 08/31/2007 8:54:30 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
Cartoon police officers are to appear in "pop-up" warnings on the internet every half hour to warn Chinese users that they must steer clear of unapproved websites.
As the country prepares for its landmark five-yearly Communist Party Congress in October, human rights groups said the authorities are exerting even greater pressure on freedom of speech.
Officials stress that "Jing" and "Cha", its two "internet cops" named after the two characters that make up the Chinese word for "police", are on the look out for criminal activity. "They will be on the watch for websites that incite secession, promote superstition, gambling and fraud," an official told the China Daily newspaper. "Secession" refers to support for an independent Tibet or Taiwan.
A second official said it was important to wipe out information that "disrupts social stability", a catch-all phrase often used to refer to emails, bulletin boards and blogs that challenge the political status quo.
One unusual aspect of Chinese censorship is that as it has become more systematic in recent years, it has also become more open, with less sensitive decisions published and even argued over in newspapers.
The new rules, devised by Beijing city authorities under the devolved system common in China, mean that the two cartoon characters will from Saturday roll up from the bottom of the 13 biggest internet sites every 30 minutes. They will expand their presence to all city internet sites by the end of the year.
As well as being a reminder to users not to break the rules, they also link directly to a website where surfers can report "unhealthy" websites.
The battle between China's internet police and the minority of its tens of millions of bloggers and other users who discuss politics is very much a battle of wits, with more and more surfers using "computer patches" to get round the government's "firewall".
Bloggers even won a battle with the government when it dropped plans for a compulsory registration scheme that would have forced them to identify their real names and turned it into a voluntary code of conduct instead.
Beijing is unrelenting in cases it believes to be a real threat to security. President Hu Jintao has shown himself to be particularly tough on leaks from inside the party apparatus and has not shown concern at adverse world opinion in this area.
Police have forced the internet giant Yahoo on a number of occasions to provide information that has led to the arrest of journalists and dissidents who sent "subversive" emails, especially abroad.
The company is currently being sued in the United States by a free speech campaign group on behalf of the wife of one such dissident, Wang Xiaoning, who was jailed for 10 years for "incitement to subvert state power".
Cutesy tyranny.
Coming to an America near you soon.
I guess that's a big danger, when you're a bunch of loony control-freaks trying to corral a billion people comprising hundreds of nationalities into one happy slave camp.
Go, Peking! Herd those grasshoppers! (I don't think it's going to work.)
I'd like to make a bold prediction....Jing and Cha will be doing the nasty on a chinese pron website before the year is out.
yup , .. and also , while the despoiling & poisoning of land/water {{ sheeeeeesh!!! }}
"They will be on the watch for websites that incite secession, promote superstition, gambling and fraud," an official told the China Daily newspaper. "Secession" refers to support for an independent Tibet or Taiwan.
I suspect that the Chinese Communist party would define Christianity as a "superstition." Sounds like Hillary's America.
“Jing” and “Cha” are round-eyes!
Coming soon to a computer near us, thanks to the Fairness Doctrine?
The book, Republic.com, suggested that people be forced by government to read all sides. Being narrow-minded is "dangerous for our democracy," you see. The book was very popular on the left so I guess we've met the ones who are to be forced and they are us.
Soon? It's already here.
Why?
They’re so adorable! She’s fresh from her latest forced abortion, no doubt.
It's for the children.
Euphemism for anything having to do with religion.
How ironic......liberals are actually the most one-sided, narrow-minded, pompous, and selfish group of people I have ever come across.
Yes, and we need only look at the close-minded attitude they have vis-a-vis anthropogenic global warming. It's what they do.
"A person with behavior patterns governed by a compulsion"
"An irresistible impulse to act, regardless of the rationality of the motivation"
Or, the most common definition of liberalism today, just flat mentally ill.
They know it and boy are they pissed -- they have no control of their feeeeeeeeeeeeeelings. It's what they do. It's so sad to see it on moron.org, dailycuss, Huff'n Puff Post, mediasmatters, and the many others.
And remember,Comrades....*NOTHING* happened in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.A search of "www.google.cn" will prove it.
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