Chinese Nobel Prize-Winner Says We Need Censorship Like We Need Airport Security
from the super-silly-or-super-subtle? dept
This year's winner of the Nobel prize in literature, the Chinese writer Mo Yan, was a controversial choice. Some saw him as too close to the Chinese establishment, and thus insufficiently heroic -- unlike the previous Chinese Nobel prize-winner, the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo.
While Mo was in Stockholm to pick up his prize, he gave a press conference where, inevitably, he was asked about this:In addressing the sensitive issue of censorship in China, Mo likened it to the thorough security procedures he was subjected to as he traveled to Stockholm.Some will see this as confirming his supine attitude to state censorship. But maybe it's just an extremely subtle attack on airport security...
"When I was taking my flight, going through the customs ... they also wanted to check me even taking off my belt and shoes," he said. "But I think these checks are necessary."
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Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech, mo yan, security
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Na
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This is what's so sad about states that censor or do mass surveillance on their people. After about 2 decades or so of doing it, the new generations are born with it, and the whole society will start believing that they are good things, and never were bad things.
And this is the danger that is running in US right now, too. A whole generation growing with things like TSA, Patriot Act, and warrantless spying, and thinking those things have always existed and it's a necessary thing that the government needs to do to keep them safe.
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150 year copyright
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Come on....
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Re: Come on....
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Re: Come on....
Wait, no, that's not right.
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We need censorship like...
See 1 minute 25..
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Tongue in cheek?
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Censorship is one of the biggest evils of the human race. I'm not talking about censorship for children or when you tell a white lie to not be rude, I mean Government and Religions!
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The important part is clear
After all, few of us are extremists. Most of us believe that some security is necessary at the expense of some convenience, for example. It is scalar, even if the spectrum on techdirt is likely to be at the more liberal side.
However, almost all of us put less emphasis on the undesireable elements of own culture than we put on the undesirable elements of other cultures.
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I agree
Yes, I'd love to go back in time to the 70s when you could walk up to the gate, buy a ticket and hop on the plane minutes before departure time. I argue that we're no safer today than we were then.
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Stupid
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