What are they so afraid of?
Has anybody else in China noticed that The New York Times, the LA Times and the Washington Post remain blocked by The Great Firewall? And now I can’t get in to the best portal on the Web, Arts & Letters Daily! Some of the English dailies now appear to be blocked as well, and god knows how many other papers are now inaccessible.
This sudden blocking of so many news sites strikes me as unprecedented, though I haven’t been here long enough to state that unequivocally. At least I can get into the Boston Globe (where I’m delighted to see they are running a series of articles exposing the sins of the ultra-secretive company Bechtel), but that doesn’t mitigate the frustration. Yes, I know there’s a way to get around it, but it is tediously slow and a major pain.
So why do they do it? Do they believe this increases the public’s faith in the government and its infinite wisdom? Do they believe it achieves anything aside from generating ill will? A pox on those companies that took money to custom-build this censorship machine (are you listening, John Chambers?), and on the small-minded stooges who are now pushing the buttons.
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