BIG BROTHER is Da Gege!
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May 19, 2008 at 5:45 pm #5056
Rob_Hugo@PortNW
KeymasterGeorge Orwell is alive and well in Shenzhen.
The latest issue of "Rolling Stone", May 29, 2008 [1053], contains a dynamite article "China's All-seeing Eye", by Naomi Klein.... it is a long and well-researched piece.
It describes how "...China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state...with the help of U.S. defense contractors."...in Shenzhen.
Thirty years ago Shenzhen was a collection of small fishing villages. Now thanks to capitalism, Deng Xiao-ping's "special economic zone", and international investment, it is a city of 12 million.
Klein describes how the state security police have been installing surveillance cameras all over China...including Lhasa.
She describes how the government manipulated images from Tibet to only show the Tibetan violence against Chinese and block all images of the deaths of over 100 Tibetans, blocked cellphone and internet access to and within Tibet and foreign reporters. This created a big backlash in China against Tibetans and the foreign press that published the truth.
"Shenzhen is serving as a laboratory for a vast social experiment: a potent hybrid known a as"Market Stalinism'". In 2000 a British reseacher, Greg Walton, wrote a paper "China's Golden Shield: Corporations and the development of Surveillance Technology in the People's Republic of China" detailing the origins of this program.
Klein goes on to write"...The security camers are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship progam known in China as 'Golden Shield'. The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology-- thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell, and General Electric---to create an airtight consumer cocoon: a place where Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cellphones, McDonald's Happy Meals, Tsingdao beer, and UPS delivery ( to name just a few of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) can be enjoyed under the unblinking eye of the state without the threat of democracy breaking out."
"...With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the suveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement like the one that grabbed the world's attention at Tiananmen Square."
This is a very important article that should be read by everyone concerned with democracy in China, the U.S. and elsewhere in the world![Edit by="mwhittemore on May 21, 1:33:05 AM"][/Edit]
[Edit by="mwhittemore on May 21, 3:38:01 PM"][/Edit]May 31, 2008 at 10:30 am #29101Anonymous
GuestThis reminds me of a book that I picked up a few months ago at Costco by Jonah Goldberg, "Liberal Fascism." It’s an excellent book that presents a different historical viewpoint of the Left. It's actually kind of frightening to consider some of the parallels drawn by the author between fascism and the America Left. He starts with the French Revolution. I think it is a very good read for social studies teachers.
The fact that the Chinese are learning surveillance techniques from U.S. contractors makes it obvious that they are not be the only ones concerned about a police state. Have you been downtown L.A. lately? There are surveillance cameras around the neighborhood near Staples Center. And, I recently read that some school districts are considering the installation of cameras on campuses as a deterrent for bad behaviors. Generally speaking, surveillance cameras have proven to reduce crime and as a result are installed as a crime prevention strategy. Who does not want to reduce crime and therefore be safer, right? Looking at how China is implementing the cameras, we should all be asking the question, safer from whom?
Valerie
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