scaramouche

Saturday, 02 August 2008

The China syndrome: The HRC system was established back in the days when one could silence a White Power creep by, say, shutting down his anti-Semitic phone message; one could then pat oneself on the back for a job well done (because, the thinking went, if you didn’t extinguish his brushfire of hate, who knows, it might well turn into a raging blaze). These days, however, the existence of the Internet makes putting out such brushfires a far trickier—one could even say an impossible—proposition, as the censors in China are discovering to their dismay. From informationweek:

Free people and journalists everywhere are expressing outrage today on the heels of news that 34-year-old Chinese Hu Jia will be jailed for another 3-1/2 years (in addition to the year that he's already spent in prison) for broadly distributing his views on democracy and criticisms of Chinese policies via the Internet. In this day and age of the Internet, did China get way more than it bargained for when it lobbied to bring the Olympics to Beijing?

For a government that's betwixt and between business globalization pressure from Taiwan and Hong Kong, the spotlight on Tibet, and the growing tide of dissidence amongst its own citizenry, the Internet has proven to be a difficult beast to tame.

Never before has the world gotten a better insider's look at the lengths to which the Chinese government will go to preserve its impositions on freedom as well as the will of the Chinese people to effect change.

China wants it both ways. Its rulers want to tap into the lucrative trends of globalization. But as willing as it is to import cash from the free world, it prefers to silence the democratic baggage that comes with that cash as well as any internal dissidents who are willing to receive that baggage (and amplify it). Before the Web and the Internet, the Free World didn't even know who those dissidents were or how many of them were out there. But now, thanks to their Internet tenacity, dissidents like Hu Jia are getting their much-needed 15 minutes of fame.

The Internet already was an unwanted thorn in the Chinese government's side. Life styles of the rich and famous (commonly associated with democracy) leaks in, while news of what really goes on behind closed doors leaks out. Armed with the sort of information it never had before, the Free World has been able to apply more leverage than ever on the Chinese government in an effort to bring about change. In some cases, like with Tibet, much to the despair of freedom advocates (and mostly to that of the People of Tibet), that leverage sometimes feels as though it's not working.

But look again.

Thanks to the Internet and Jia's 15 minutes of fame on the world stage, he is being silenced in a very different way (jail) than he might have been during the pre-Web era. The Chinese government knows that the lines it crossed before simply can't be crossed now. The Free World, particularly the parts where elected officials rely on the support of their constituents, won't stand for it. It's not that the Free World should accept the jailing of free thinkers and speakers like Jia. it's just that China knows exactly where the line currently is and how to gingerly walk it. Today, that line isn't exactly where some of us would like it to be. But in terms of who can really apply leverage on China (e.g., the U.S. government), it is where it is…

If the Chinese, who are masters at censorship, can’t get a handle on the Net, what makes Canada’s Jewstablishment think it can? And if it can’t “control” the World Wide Web (and, clearly, it can’t) what’s the point of using censors to stomp out brushfires in Canada via “human rights” cops and courts? Isn’t it senseless, not to mention dangerous, since clamping down on “hate” (which, these days, often isn’t “hate” at all, but rather criticism of the global jihad and sharia) comes at the cost of our most precious, our most vital freedom—free speech?

Some food for thought, not that I expect the Jewstablishment will soon chew on it.