There is a resemblance

[VhmSays]

This message has been intercepted by the NSA: the only branch of government that listens.

When the NSA starts putting noble prize winners under arrest for comparing trump to a cartoon well then I'll worry about them, most people sign over all privacy to put some filters or hearts on their photos. With the apps getting all the action I can see why the NSA might feel justified in grabbing some though I'd advise them to go legal and buy their info off apps which have permission to record voice and video with location any time they want or from google/FB.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

In Pooh-related news,

China Banned South Park After the Show Made Fun of Chinese Censorship

"Band in China," the second episode of the show's 23rd season, satirizes China's heavy-handed crackdowns on free expression. The kids attempt to make a biopic about their new rock band, only to discover that they need to sanitize the plot to appease the Chinese government. Meanwhile, Randy Marsh gets sent to a Chinese prison, where he meets Winnie the Pooh—a reference to China's odd attempts to clamp down on the beloved bear for its supposedly resemblance Chinese President Xi Jinping. The episode also castigates Disney for making artistic concessions in order to remain in Chinese markets. "You gotta lower your ideals of freedom if you want to suck on the warm teat of China," one character says.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Banning South Park and Pooh pics really isn't all that different from the EU saying that Facebook has to censor posts saying Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek is a corrupt oaf.

My Facebook post saying that has survived a day so far and a couple of my friends took the hint and also posted that Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek is a corrupt oaf.

Now to look for more places and excuses to say that Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek is a corrupt oaf.

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

An oldie but a goodie. 

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

In Pooh-related news,

China Banned South Park After the Show Made Fun of Chinese Censorship

Hah! The creators of South Park apologized.
 

Few stories are generating as much as heat and interest as the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, where mostly young demonstrators are taking to the streets to call for democracy, autonomy, and privacy from authoritarian leaders in Beijing. In just the past week, the general manager of the Houston Rockets basketball team caused an international incident when he tweeted support for the protesters. This was a big deal because the NBA is huge in China—in fact, there are more NBA fans in China than there are people in the United States! The Rockets' team owner and NBA leadership quickly apologized but not before the network carrying basketball in China announced it would not show any Rockets games this season.

The creators of South Park took a different tack: When an episode of their show mocking government censorship was shut down by the regime, Matt Stone and Trey Parker issued a caustic fake apology that read in part, "Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts….We too love money more than freedom and democracy."

 

[Grrr...]

Hah! The creators of South Park apologized.
 

  

Why don't you click through and read what Activision / Blizzard did to the Chinese E-sport player.  After he won the championship and $10k then mentioned Hong Kong in an interview, they took his prize money, kicked him out of the game, and FIRED THE PEOPLE INTERVIEWING HIM.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Why don't you click through and read what Activision / Blizzard did to the Chinese E-sport player.  After he won the championship and $10k then mentioned Hong Kong in an interview, they took his prize money, kicked him out of the game, and FIRED THE PEOPLE INTERVIEWING HIM.

OK but I never heard of Blizzard or Hearthstone before this incident.
 

Needless to say, these were drastic steps. Blizzard's aggressive, punitive action toward Chung's dissent makes the Rockets' reaction to a similar incident of pro-Hong Kong sympathy look positively courageous: The team's owner merely put out a statement saying the team's general manager does not speak for the Rockets franchise or the NBA. It may not get as much attention, but what Blizzard did is far worse.

Both organizations are private entities, of course, and aren't obligated to extend free speech rights to their employees and players. But fans can raise hell about the practices of their favorite sports teams and decline to reward those companies that go out of their way to aid the Communist Party of China's crackdown on internal dissent and external criticism. In this case, Blizzard didn't just make some unfortunate compromises in order to maintain good-enough relations with China—the company actively aided an authoritarian government's efforts to silence pro-Hong Kong sentiment.

My friend Zack Beauchamp, a writer for Vox and regular Hearthstone player, has decided to boycott Blizzard games until they make amends to Chung. This seems commendable—especially considering that Bizzard's headquarters in Irvine, California, has a statue and plaque that reads "Every voice matters." Employees of the company, unhappy with its treatment of Chung, covered up the plaque yesterday.

I can't boycott them since I never heard of them but glad to see they have some employees who know how to respond.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

The NBA's China Problem Gets Worse After 2 American Arenas Eject Hong Kong Supporters
 

...On Tuesday night, security guards at Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center ejected a pair of fans from a preseason game between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Guangzhou Loong Lions, a Chinese team. The fans had been holding signs reading "Free Hong Kong," and NBC Philadelphia reported that the fans were heard chanting the same slogan during the game. Video of the incident quickly circulated on Twitter.

...

Some creative types want to sustain pressure. In less than 24 hours, a GoFundMe page seeking to raise money for "Free Hong Kong" shirts has received nearly $3,000 in donations. The shirts will be distributed outside the Golden State Warrior's arena in San Francisco. Organizer Lee Bishop says he wants to "hold our American corporations accountable to our American values and liberty that should be spread across the globe."

The NBA and its constituent teams are, of course, independent corporations free to do as they please when it comes to allowing political messages to be displayed during games. But it's also right to point out that the league has a history of being involved in political causes, like when it withdrew its annual All-Star Weekend event from Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2017 to protest the passage of a state law discriminating against transgender individuals. Moving that event to New Orleans didn't hurt the league's bottom line. Severing corporate ties to China and potentially losing hundreds of millions of Chinese fans would be financially costly. This has led some people to the reasonable conclusion that the NBA is woke only when being woke makes financial sense.

Exporting American goods and values—including cultural interests like basketball—has helped make the world a more peaceful place. Sending American sports celebrities to China is good for the players, and great for Chinese fans of basketball. But the NBA cannot expect to kowtow to China's demands for censorship without blowback from the folks at home. America is the land of the free and the mouthy.

I could not possibly care less about the NBA but now I want to go to a game.

Wearing one of those t-shirts, of course. I might put Pooh on the back of mine. Gotta have some message back there as I'm escorted out, right?

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

It's not just Pooh that is censored in China
 

A funny thing has been happening on YouTube. For some reason, certain combinations of Chinese characters have been immediately removed from the platform within a few short seconds. No warning or reason would be given to the Mandarin-speaking moderatees. And it's not like they had been foul or freaky in a foreign tongue. The Hanzi Which Shall Not Be Named were merely 共匪  ("communist bandit") and 五毛 ("fifty cents").

Huh? Why in the world would YouTube want to immediately take down those particular phrases? Well, according to YouTube, they didn't. It's an algorithmic mistake, you see. The company told The Verge that upon review, they discovered this odd insta-deleting was indeed an "error in [their] enforcement systems" that is currently being patched.

How strange that this automated fluke would tend towards the direction of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) preferences. These terms might seem random to Westerners, but they carry significant political weight in China.

It's not nice to call someone a bandit, whether they are a communist or not. But in the Chinese context, the term 共匪 has a very particular meaning: it was used by Nationalist partisans led by the Republic of China's Chiang Kai-shek against the People's Republic of China's Mao Zedong and the reds. Today, it is considered a slur against the CCP and its patriotic supporters.

五毛 is a cleverer anti-CCP troll. It's basically calling a pro-CCP commenter a paid shill, albeit a cheap one. The joke is that human CCP NPCs get paid fifty cents for each pro-CCP post; ergo, the "fifty-cent army" or 五毛党.

...

Oops.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Hah! From the current LONQR thread.

View attachment 383465

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

 

[The Q]

You're all due a visit from The P.R.C. secret police....

The Paddington,  rRotection, Cyndicate

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

In China (and Disney) lacking any sense of humor news,

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Enes Kanter Freedom on China and Free Speech: 'This Is Bigger Than Basketball'

and shoes.

...
So we worked with this artist who had been oppressed by his government and he created the shoes. Free Tibet, Free Uyghurs, stop organ harvesting and surveillance camps. It was getting so much attention. I remember my first game. It was on ESPN, Madison Square Garden. The whole world was watching that game. I put the shoes on, I went out there, and I started to warm up and all the players were looking at my shoes. They're like, "This is very interesting. I've never seen this color," because it was so colorful and there was a flag on it and it was saying, "Free Tibet."

Right before the game, we sang the national anthem, we came in a huddle, and two gentlemen from the Celtics came to me and said, "You have to take your shoes off." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Your shoes have been getting so much attention. We've been getting so many calls. You have to take your shoes off."

I was like, "I cannot believe they're telling me to take my shoes off." It was a perfect moment because I was just getting ready for my citizenship test. I closed my eyes. I was, "OK. There are 27 amendments: First Amendment, freedom of speech." I was like: "No, I'm not taking my shoes off. I don't care if I get fined."

They said, "We are not talking about a fine. We're talking about getting banned." Literally they were threatening me with getting banned just because I was wearing those shoes.

At halftime, I went back to my locker room. I had thousands of notifications on my phone. I clicked on my manager's text message. He said, "Every Celtics game is banned in China for the rest of the year." I was like, "That shows my point."

There's 24 minutes in one half. It took China 24 minutes to ban every Celtics game on television. That's literally the censorship and dictatorship that I was talking about.

After the game, obviously there was a huge media storm and I told my manager, "I'm not going to do any media," because I didn't want my teammates to think I'm doing this for attention. For the next one or two months, we did not do any media.

After the game, I was getting calls from the NBA and the players association. They told me, "Take your shoes off. You're not going to wear this ever again."

I talked about the problems that were happening in Turkey for the last 10 years, and I did not get one phone call. I talked about the things that happened in China, and my phone was ringing once every hour, me and my manager's.

They were harassing us so much that I was like, "OK, I promise you I'm not going to wear Free Tibet shoes ever again." So the next game, I wear Free Uyghur shoes. They call me after the game. They're like, "You're a liar. You lied to us. You said you're never going to wear Free Tibet shoes." I was like, "I did not wear Free Tibet shoes. I wore Free Uyghur shoes." At that point, they understood that they're not going to handle me because they're not going to make me apologize or take my tweet down. They're not going to make me say, "Oh, I didn't know enough. I was not educated enough." I was like, "I'm going all in."

I wore Winnie the Pooh shoes. Winnie the Pooh is banned in China. People were making fun of the president, Xi Jinping—they were telling him, "You look like Winnie the Pooh." So he literally banned the whole cartoon in the whole country.

And then the next one we talk about Nike. And the next one, we talk about Hong Kong and Taiwan and stop organ harvesting. Everyone was asking me, "Where can I buy these shoes?" I was like, "I'm not going to even sell them because I'm literally doing this just for human rights."
...

The fact that Winnie the Pooh shoes are at all controversial is amusing and disturbing.

 

[Bristol-Cruiser]

Paranoia in China is just getting worse. My wife started doing a blog about our recent trip to Spain and France. It is on a social media platform that is popular with the 50+ folks, so not where the cool kids hang out or anything political is posted. When she went to publish a new post (the trip from Barcelona to Avignon she was told the site was down for 10 days because of 'technical issues'. Not coincidentally, ten days was the length of the Congress meeting that will reaffirm XI and announce the members of the hugely important Politburo. Thee big sites like We Chat and Tik Tok have a built-in censorship mechanism but this smaller, less significant one apparently doesn't so they just shut it down for a time.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

I wonder what they're afraid people might say?

 

[mikewof]

Paranoia in China is just getting worse. My wife started doing a blog about our recent trip to Spain and France. It is on a social media platform that is popular with the 50+ folks, so not where the cool kids hang out or anything political is posted. When she went to publish a new post (the trip from Barcelona to Avignon she was told the site was down for 10 days because of 'technical issues'. Not coincidentally, ten days was the length of the Congress meeting that will reaffirm XI and announce the members of the hugely important Politburo. Thee big sites like We Chat and Tik Tok have a built-in censorship mechanism but this smaller, less significant one apparently doesn't so they just shut it down for a time.

The true trick and skill of the anarchist is to use the tools that are available for the task that needs to be completed.

Tik Tok has robotic censors which will disable the whole video when certain words are used, or certain images are shown. But as a Chinese company, they don't seem to give a rat's ass to what anyone actually brings attention, as long it doesn't originate from inside China. So the anarchist can use the platform against the Hong Kong enforcements, and the Uyghur genocide, or against the Iranian regime. Other platforms, like YouTube, Facebook and Google are driven by math, rather than restrictions, so then Telegram, Tik Tok and Reddit can be used to leverage the archives of those for later use.

The anarchists drive the whole thing with "horizontal platforming" where the resources (i.e. YouTube, Facebook, TikTok) are spread wide, but controlled by a blockchain-driven gateway like Hive, which cannot be removed by anyone short of a 51% attack.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

The Chinese regime can't tolerate Pooh and that's pretty funny.

Now they can't tolerate blank pages because everyone knows what they mean.

In China, crowds of people line the streets. They are holding blank sheets of paper. There's nothing special about the paper; it's ordinary A4 letter size. The police nonetheless know what they mean. The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party know what they mean. The world knows what they mean.

By standing with empty pages in hand, the protesters' goal is to make manifest the implied violence that authoritarian states use to keep order. If you want control over me, they silently declare, you must violently take my body away, for the world to see, even though I have done nothing more than exist.

There's an old Soviet joke about this. A man in a train station hands out leaflets to passersby. When the KGB arrests him, it discovers that the leaflets are blank pieces of paper.

"What's the meaning of this?" its agents demand.

"Everyone knows what the problem is," he says, "so why bother writing it down?"
...

In college, circa 1999, a group of my friends thought it would be cute to circulate a meaningless petition—something impenetrable about Being and being from Heidegger, if I recall correctly—to see how many students would blindly sign. We marched with blank placards, shouting slogans like "We demand an end to demands" and "What do we want? Nothing! When do we want it? Whenever." To us, it was the end of history, and wannabe campus radicals deserved mockery. It was more performance art than activism—and not very good performance art at that.

Seeing dissidents in China do in deadly earnest what I playacted as a stupid teenager drives home the yawning gap between our countries, and how wrong I was about the pointlessness of symbolic protest. In the U.S., our protests are mostly straightforward and noisy, though the state still takes and breaks the bodies of too many, a point made loud and clear in 2020 after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. ...

Blank pages. It's really still kind of funny. And very not funny.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

Best use of Pooh so far this year.