My argument is to fight the fight that is being fought. andy will bruise his opponent with his hammer-like fists while ignoring his own intestines drizzling onto the pavement....
Ahem, if I am not strong, fast, and educated enough to win that fight without resorting to my opponent's tactcs, then I would rather be dead than give up my integrity.
I wouldn't save your lives now, by torture, if it meant that half the bbs would die later because of increased resistence, resolve amongst our enemies, and fuel hatred against the bbs. (This conversation has gotten strange )
Weren't they already riddled by human rights abuses when that occurred? We're talking China for God's sake!
We are talking China, and we start using the same type of tactics, and then the same rationale to justify it, alarms should go off. Once we behave like china we have lost our way.
You're comparing China's treatment of her own citizens to our treatment of enemy combatants who are terrorists... it isn't even close.
I think that may be the point of the original article (remember that ?). Not that it's fair...but that the more the US 'relaxes' its moral code (even if it attempts to justify why) the more vulnerable it becomes to attacks on its credibility.
It isn't the same, but it is still torture, and it is still the same excuse used to justify the torture. bnb is correct. I was never saying that we are the same as China, just that once we use the same practices something is wrong, we lose the ground to criticize others, while openeing ourselves up. If we want to be a moral beacon of leadership in the world we have to have a ground to stand on.
Considering the topic, and some of what I've experienced in another thread the last day or so, I thought this was most interesting. It is yet another example of some of the freedoms we tend to take for granted, and why countries like China (meaning the Chinese government) need to see where they plant their feet, before they start claiming the "moral highground." Reuters Mon Mar 21, 2005 06:58 AM ET BEIJING (Reuters) - China has blocked off-campus Internet users from accessing several bulletin boards operated by universities as part of a government clampdown on outspoken domestic Web sites. Shuimu Tsinghua, a popular bulletin board run by Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University, was among the sites sealed to outside participants last week, the Beijing Times reported over the weekend. "The Ministry of Education made the decision to shut the site because the bulletin board was only supposed to be a platform for internal exchange within the university," a Tsinghua University student who requested anonymity said on Monday. "Students are calm about it, but it seems that non-student users are angry because they can no longer get access." A note posted on the bulletin board's home page (www.smth.org) on March 16 announced the move and said it had been made in keeping with a new policy passed by the Ministry of Education. There were no further details. Internet bulletin boards at Wuhan and Nankai universities were also barred to outside users earlier this month, the newspaper said. Such university bulletin boards had become popular forums for discussion of everything from politics to pop culture between students, faculty, graduates and others. A ministry spokesman declined to comment when contacted by telephone. China has been cracking down on Internet content -- from politics to p*rnography -- but has struggled to gain control over the medium as more Chinese have got Web access and have used it to gain information beyond official sources. Yitahutu, a bulletin board operated by Peking University, was shut down altogether last September. China had 94 million Internet users at the end of 2004, the government said this month, adding that the number should jump 28 percent to 120 million this year. Beijing has created a special Internet police force believed responsible for shutting down domestic sites posting politically unacceptable content, blocking some foreign news sites and jailing several people for their online postings. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle....RBAEZSFEY?type=technologyNews&storyID=7958355 Keep D&D Civil!!
I love seeing things like this, because it reminds us how lucky we are to have the freedoms we do(Not that I love seeing other peoples freedoms being curtailed), and I would hope how important it is to keep those freedoms, or at least how much we have to lose should we give up those freedoms.
Gee, why wouldn't China value school resources and students' time, which can better be spent studying instead of chatting on BBS? I wonder what motive Reuters has to assume SMTH was shut down for political reasons instead of that above when hardly any content on that board is actually political. It could be, but Reuters would know as much as the village idiot whether that's the reason. Fact is, if that BBS was privately owned instead of by the university, the government wouldn't have said peep about it.
I think Reuters is going under the presumption that by the time students are at the age of attending a university they are old enough to decide how to manage their own time in terms of studying and the internet. If they aren't able to manage that time they are old enough to deal with the consequences when they are kicked out of the university for not making the grades. Of course Reuters can also compare the huge number of other universities which allows their students to manage their own time to the one's where the internet access is controlled and what types of govermental powers are assumed by the govt. in those places.
First of all Tsinghua is a very prestigious school. Best engineering school in China (7th overall) and anywhere from 6th to 25th best in the world (depends on who you ask). It's a very testing curriculum. So when students are spending too much time on leisure activities, they are already jeopardizing their future. I think it's good that the government is putting a stop to it. I think I should clarify the situation. In the past, Chinese universities were easy for the Chinese. It's not easy by international standards, just easier for the Chinese who have made it this far, after what they have gone through up to high school. So in the past students tend to slack as soon as getting in college. It wouldn't have affected them much because they still have built up enough good study habits in the past to get by. However, right now, with the ever increasing competitiveness in the Chinese job market, colleges are requiring even tougher curriculums than before, so students can't simply slack any more. The problem is, some students still do not heed this warning. The latest example involved Shanghai Jiaotong University. Some students were doing very poorly because they were spending their time watching movies and playing computer games instead of studying. The Unversity sent them repeat letters of warning for academic probation, which were ignored. So when it finally booted them out, they were shocked and scared. All of this could have been avoided had they just spent a little more time. And at a tough college like Tsinghua, you have to spend a LOT of time. We'd always like to think that students know well enough to manage their time, but sometimes they just need the kick in the butt to get them moving faster. I think my problem with the Reuters story is they made way too many assumptions. Certainly their explaination could be true, but they made no justification as to how they arrived at that theory. Just that the government shut down the school BBS, and then the government routinely monitors internet traffic. Do I see some leap in logic here? As I said, SMTH is not very political. They have more posts on hints to computer games than politics (which I guess is why they shut it down).
It's a stupid policy. That's all it is. Education department shut down outside access to public Univeristy's BBS. It has actually little to do with the intension/topic of this thread.
I'm not sure how schoolastic probation works in China, so I can't say for sure. But it seems like scarying the sutdents and shocking them means that it worked well. That should be the incentive they need to stop watching movies and playing video games. Once that was doen they could avoid failing more classes and get off of schoolastic probation. If that is true then there would be no need for government interference. If that wasn't enough to get them to stop watching movies and playing video games, perhaps they should go to a different university or try to find other work. It might mean they weren't cut out for the University they were going to. Again failing grades, and schoolastic probation should let students know that things need to change. Those students should be able to make the changes needed, or perhaps it means that they aren't studious enough to handle that University, and should seek alternatives either at a different university or job.
In any other country I'm inclined to agree. But understand, in China, there is such a vast pool of educated talent that college really is make or break. It determines the good life or life long low wage jobs (or whether you are going to have a job for that matter). And Tsinghua happens to be one of those schools that you don't easily get into. The chances are literally one in millions scale and is harder to get into than any of the Ivy League schools. So in any other words, anybody who makes it in can be consider a semi genius of sorts. And they are ruining their lives and careers over the likes of computer games? I know the whole you make the choice you live with the consequences argument, but the toughing of the school curriculums occurred at the earliest about 2 - 3 years ago. Old habits die hard and there just haven't been enough of a transition period for that. I'd say give it couple more years of tight control then drop it lower. If they are stupid enough to waste their time even then, it's their own loss. Oh and btw, those at Jiaotong were booted out after the repeated probation because they didn't take those probations seriously. It was literally the first time anybody ever got any probation, so they probably just assumed that the school did it before too but would never actually boot anybody out.
Regarding the BBS issue, I agree partly with MFW that it's more likely a campus policy instated by school presidents, and I understand there might be more related school displine problems than suppression of political freedoms. (OT, he blew the difficulity of studying in Tshinghua way out of propotion. One in million scales, are you kidding me?) But I do see some politicians and bureaucrats take pleasure as this a golden chance to shed off the worries to monitor the BBS conveniently. At the same time I would like to put this into perspective for americans to understand. This policy, though not welcome by students themselve, have more supports from society, especially from the parents. Just think about Yao Ming's parents, you will understand this kind of decision has little relationship with CCP dictatorship. And con- or uncon-veniently, the school has every right to make it an intranet as it's school property.
You are right. Instead of using the entire population I should have used just those of college age. Revised estimate, one in 10,000 I just realized I did real bad math too. Based on total population, it's one in 100,000, not million.
