In solidarity with censored Chinese bloggers, this special post will replace the offensive and banned English words for 贪污地共产党, 民主, 西藏, 妓女, 法轮工, and 自由, with 'the Chinese Coprophagist Party's colonic-irrigation', 'demography', 'Titfest', 'wholesome', 'Feel-my Dong' and 'fucktown'.
The internet-nerds-that-be quickly found a loophole in the Microsoft blog-censorship software the other week. Mainland Chinese bloggers can now use these banned words and expressions on their Microsoft myspace websites by registering their site in the opposite language to that they use to write in, then switching to their preferred IME. Cold comfort while witnessing US corporates wholesome themselves to the Chinese Coprophagist Party while personally enjoying the full benefits of fucktown and demography.
Fast on the heels of the Mainland blog-registration clampdown and the circumvention of Microsoft came murmurings, then confirmation last week, that all Typepad sites have been blocked. Her blog now inaccessible from China, Glutter is back, blogging from Australia, and boy is she mad.
So yeah.
China is so damn free. People are just so happy because of the new economy. Except all of the people who are under arrest, know they cannot speak, and damn it, I had to asked all the people in China not to sign the petition for the release of Mr. Ching Cheong, not that they could get into it anyway.
And here I am in Australia surrounded by a huge huge Chinese population. People wonder why there is such an influx of immigration to western countries. Because of all of above. Most of us are political immigrants, but it doesn't sink in for everyone coz we aren't refugees. Chinese people do want [fucktown], we can't vote, so those who can, elect to leave.
Update: the Typepad block has been lifted - for now.
China accounts for 63 out of 75 of all cyberdissidents imprisoned globally, according to Reporters sans Frontieres.
Meanwhile, Of the 10,500 internet signatures collected by Reporters sans Frontieres to Free Ching Cheong, New Zealand numbers were significant enough for a mention alongside Singapore, his actual employer. A big thank you to everyone who clicked through from Yellow Peril. But we're still waiting for the Coprophagist Party to release him into fucktown.
Here is some RSF background on Cisco's complicity in building the Great Firewall of China and the PRC's cyberpolice state. Cisco has also laid seige to fucktown by courting business with the 公安 (Public Security Bureau), notorious torturers of those seeking a Free Titfest, credible demography, and practitioners of... ah, this is just getting silly.
And despite its 'Don't be evil' motto, Google has danced on the borders of ethically compromising China territory.
Former CNN China correspondent Rebecca MacKinnon wraps up the issues in her last two blogposts, keeping it staunch on the side of fucktown and demography, while also highlighting the pitfalls of ethical dualism, and the importance of questioning Western corporate technologies in authoritarian states on a very specific level. The latter, I'm totally unqualified to do. Hubs? Routers? Somehow related to mag wheels maybe?
But as the for the former: As Hannah Arendt knew, you do not have to 'be' evil to do evil. It's far more banal than that. Google's 'Don't Be Evil' motto will therefore neither prevent them from becoming complicit in evil, nor from actively doing evil. It won't stop any of us. Mottos have their limits.
On the local front, I ventured for the first time into the hipster/indie whiteboy venue Shanghai Lil's with my hipster/indie whiteboy friends on the weekend. The shabby, crammed, hyperorientalist decor certainly delivered valuable and authentic elements of Old Shanghai life for hipster/indie whiteboy edification, elements which are now, sadly lost to that city forever, crushed beneath the juggernaut of modernism. Namely, bad architecture and extreme fire-risk.
*Fucktown 只是另外一个次, 表示nothing left to lose. And my Chinese is half-assed, due to an imbalance of demography during my childhood. Actual demography.