Engineer
Major
Another fact that he conveniently ignored is that local police in China don't carry guns.
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Another fact that he conveniently ignored is that local police in China don't carry guns.
Engineer
Major
Exactly. The only people who enjoy innocents getting hurt and properties being destroyed are those who are trying desperately to justify similar violence in China. Pointing out hypocrisy is hardly Schadenfreude.
Quickie
Colonel
Another fact is there're also other riots in China. If what he said is true, a lot more people would have got shot by the trigger happy police, and this would be impossible to hide in this day and age and would spell big trouble for stability. Just doesn't make sense.
bladerunner
Banned Idiot
In an area long known for trouble, you dont think an exception would have been in place in case of outbreaks? They had them pretty handy that i wager
Can't place to much credibility on the likes of this guy who doesn't even realise the British monarchy doesn't govern the UK
China's got problems if it relies on support of Iranians who are clearly out of touch.
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bladerunner
Banned Idiot
Not if they stopped if warning shots are fired and as plawolf said at the outset of any firing, most rational people would stop their rioting and run like hell. and i betcha the guns may be out of sight but they arent far away?
Another fact people seem to have forgotten is in the Xinjiang riots the aiuthorities welcomed Foreign press in complete contast to the Tibetean riots, and actually gave them dail briefings with questions and answers as well as escorting them to the riot devasted places.
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plawolf
Lieutenant General
Well since the mods have stepped in to ask we not go off on a tangent any more, I will take myself out of this discussion and I suggest others do the same before the mods decide to take more serious action.
I think both sides have already made the bulk of their arguments and point-by-point counter arguments will not advance the discussion much more.
I think both sides have already made the bulk of their arguments and point-by-point counter arguments will not advance the discussion much more.
Engineer
Major
Local police in China don't carry gun, that is a fact. If you have solid evidence showing otherwise (that police shot protestors), I'm sure you would have post it already instead of resorting to pure conjectures. :roll:
Can't place much credibility on the likes of a guy who takes a single sentence of the entire article out of context and tries to justify violence where people getting hacked to death as peaceful protest.
The Iranians are doing a bloody brilliant good job at mocking the British government.
In other news:
The Australian said:
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AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Let's just remember the media is comparing this to the bombings during WWII. So they're trying to compare the disenfranchised youth without jobs in London with Nazis. Ironic how the "foreign" media is not seen as credible.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
Well when it comes to China, they preached liberty, internet freedom, the right to know. but when their own house is burning suddenly there is change of tune. Guess who has the last laugh?
David Cameron, Meet Hu Jintao
By James Fallows
Aug 11 2011, 4:25 PM ET
HuJintao.jpgIn my article in the current issue (subscribe!) about this spring's abortive "Jasmine Protests" in China, I mention how hard the Chinese authorities cracked down on social media, as a way of thwarting protests before they happened and of apprehending would-be organizers. In certain parts of Beijing and other cities, text-message transmission -- a main means of Chinese communication -- was blocked altogether. The "real" versions of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are banned, and the Chinese counterparts were heavily interfered-with.
Obviously constraints on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and similar social media were hallmarks of autocratic response during the "Arab Spring" protests as well.
Cameron.jpgDid David Cameron not read a single foreign news story this past year? Did he have no idea what camp he was placing himself in, with his call to block social media as a way of controlling violence in England? Du ("When people are using social media for violence we need to stop them" etc. "Free flow of information can be used for good, but it can also be used for ill."ring the Jasmine era, I read more or less those views, from Chinese officials, about the need to get tough.)
Let's stipulate that violence and looting are different from non-violent protest, and much more deserving of being stopped; that the United Kingdom, despite being more thickly covered with surveillance cameras than China, is overall a vastly freer society; and that unlike the United States, with its First Amendment, the United Kingdom has never had an absolutist commitment to freedom of speech.
Still, this was an obtuse -- and harmful -- thing to say. Obtuse because of the failure to pay homage to the liberty-vs-security tradeoff that is central to the social bargain of all free societies. (Compare the Norwegian Prime Minister's response after the horrific killings there.) Harmful, because for years to come any authoritarian government that blocks people's ability to communicate -- in Syria, Libya, Burma, China, wherever -- will have an obvious retort to any Western critique. This is just what the Brits did when things got tense, they can say. If it's good enough for the UK and the Mother of Parliaments, how can it be wrong for us? It's all nice to talk about liberty and privacy when things are going smoothly, they will conclude; but your governments, too, are ruthless when they feel threatened. We're really all the same. (For similar reasons, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and U.S. acceptance of torture and suspension of civil liberties over the past decade badly undercut America's ability to stand in judgment of abuses elsewhere.)
I can barely imagine the pressure on people of all sorts in England, but this was not a grace-under-pressure response.
Britain's U-turn over web-monitoring
English.news.cn 2011-08-12 19:32:46 FeedbackPrintRSS
BEIJING, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Following days of violent riots in Britain, speculation has grown as to why and how the trouble spread so rapidly.
Apparently the rioters used social media, like Twitter, Facebook and the Blackberry messenger system and Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday he's looking at banning potential troublemakers from using the online services.
The British government, once an ardent advocate of absolute Internet freedom, has thus made a U-turn over its stance towards web-monitoring.
Communications tools such as Facebook and cellphones also played a delicate role in the massive social upheaval earlier this year in north Africa and neighboring west Asian countries, whose governments then imposed targeted censorship over message flows on the Internet.
In a speech delivered in Kuwait in February, the British prime minister, however, argued that freedom of expression should be respected "in Tahrir Square as much as Trafalgar Square."
Learning a hard lesson from bitter experience, the British government eventually recognized that a balance needs to be struck between freedom and the monitoring of social media tools.
Cameron himself admitted that the "free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill."
"And when people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them," he told lawmakers Thursday.
We may wonder why western leaders, on the one hand, tend to indiscriminately accuse other nations of monitoring, but on the other take for granted their steps to monitor and control the Internet.
They are not interested in learning what content those nations are monitoring, let alone their varied national conditions or their different development stages.
Laying undue emphasis on Internet freedom, the western leaders become prejudiced against those "other than us," stand ready to put them in the dock and attempt to stir up their internal conflicts.
With no previous practice, the world is still exploring effective solutions to Internet monitoring.
"Technology has no morality," observed Emma Duncan, deputy editor of The Economist.
And the Internet is also a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. For the benefit of the general public, proper web-monitoring is legitimate and necessary.
Editor: Zhang Xiang
Related News
David Cameron, Meet Hu Jintao
By James Fallows
Aug 11 2011, 4:25 PM ET
HuJintao.jpgIn my article in the current issue (subscribe!) about this spring's abortive "Jasmine Protests" in China, I mention how hard the Chinese authorities cracked down on social media, as a way of thwarting protests before they happened and of apprehending would-be organizers. In certain parts of Beijing and other cities, text-message transmission -- a main means of Chinese communication -- was blocked altogether. The "real" versions of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are banned, and the Chinese counterparts were heavily interfered-with.
Obviously constraints on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and similar social media were hallmarks of autocratic response during the "Arab Spring" protests as well.
Cameron.jpgDid David Cameron not read a single foreign news story this past year? Did he have no idea what camp he was placing himself in, with his call to block social media as a way of controlling violence in England? Du ("When people are using social media for violence we need to stop them" etc. "Free flow of information can be used for good, but it can also be used for ill."ring the Jasmine era, I read more or less those views, from Chinese officials, about the need to get tough.)
Let's stipulate that violence and looting are different from non-violent protest, and much more deserving of being stopped; that the United Kingdom, despite being more thickly covered with surveillance cameras than China, is overall a vastly freer society; and that unlike the United States, with its First Amendment, the United Kingdom has never had an absolutist commitment to freedom of speech.
Still, this was an obtuse -- and harmful -- thing to say. Obtuse because of the failure to pay homage to the liberty-vs-security tradeoff that is central to the social bargain of all free societies. (Compare the Norwegian Prime Minister's response after the horrific killings there.) Harmful, because for years to come any authoritarian government that blocks people's ability to communicate -- in Syria, Libya, Burma, China, wherever -- will have an obvious retort to any Western critique. This is just what the Brits did when things got tense, they can say. If it's good enough for the UK and the Mother of Parliaments, how can it be wrong for us? It's all nice to talk about liberty and privacy when things are going smoothly, they will conclude; but your governments, too, are ruthless when they feel threatened. We're really all the same. (For similar reasons, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and U.S. acceptance of torture and suspension of civil liberties over the past decade badly undercut America's ability to stand in judgment of abuses elsewhere.)
I can barely imagine the pressure on people of all sorts in England, but this was not a grace-under-pressure response.
Britain's U-turn over web-monitoring
English.news.cn 2011-08-12 19:32:46 FeedbackPrintRSS
BEIJING, Aug. 12 (Xinhua) -- Following days of violent riots in Britain, speculation has grown as to why and how the trouble spread so rapidly.
Apparently the rioters used social media, like Twitter, Facebook and the Blackberry messenger system and Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday he's looking at banning potential troublemakers from using the online services.
The British government, once an ardent advocate of absolute Internet freedom, has thus made a U-turn over its stance towards web-monitoring.
Communications tools such as Facebook and cellphones also played a delicate role in the massive social upheaval earlier this year in north Africa and neighboring west Asian countries, whose governments then imposed targeted censorship over message flows on the Internet.
In a speech delivered in Kuwait in February, the British prime minister, however, argued that freedom of expression should be respected "in Tahrir Square as much as Trafalgar Square."
Learning a hard lesson from bitter experience, the British government eventually recognized that a balance needs to be struck between freedom and the monitoring of social media tools.
Cameron himself admitted that the "free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill."
"And when people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them," he told lawmakers Thursday.
We may wonder why western leaders, on the one hand, tend to indiscriminately accuse other nations of monitoring, but on the other take for granted their steps to monitor and control the Internet.
They are not interested in learning what content those nations are monitoring, let alone their varied national conditions or their different development stages.
Laying undue emphasis on Internet freedom, the western leaders become prejudiced against those "other than us," stand ready to put them in the dock and attempt to stir up their internal conflicts.
With no previous practice, the world is still exploring effective solutions to Internet monitoring.
"Technology has no morality," observed Emma Duncan, deputy editor of The Economist.
And the Internet is also a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. For the benefit of the general public, proper web-monitoring is legitimate and necessary.
Editor: Zhang Xiang
Related News
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