But WE Can See YouTube, China

China’s latest repressive stunt: blocking YouTube ‘coincidentally’ after a video was posted of the Chinese security force beating the fak out of some Tibetan protesters during last year’s clashes prior to the start of the Olympics. For some reason, I’m still not over the fact China was allowed to host the Olympics but we all know why China was allowed to host the Olympics. What a show indeed especially when it came to China’s sorry-ass attempt to show the world how host-worthy(ie civilized and democratic) it’d become overnight even though it still wanted to block the world press from unrestrictive internet access. Ah, China, you big control freak!

I think my favorite Olympic-themed story (and I mean story in a very fictional sense) was about Freedom Park, the façade China created to make it appear as if it’d embraced some form of democratic free speech. All of sudden China welcomed anyone to freely speak his/her mind – sort of because such a ‘freedom’ involved a system of parameters guaranteed no freedom of speech would take place – at least not without an arrest to follow. Sure, come speak your mind but first you must apply for a permit AND have it approved although you’d have a better chance of winning the lottery. If you hit the jackpot and scored a permit, you then had to make damn sure you were within the proper freedom zone(areas China designated as free speech areas). WTF – how free is that? Oh and if you successfully achieve free speech, you’d probably be arrested for it anyway. That’s the thing about China: you just can’t trust it to hold up its end of the bargain. Nothing more than a horse and pony show while the eyes of the world were upon the fak. Even through the thick smog of the country’s notorious air pollution, we could clearly see there ain’t no such thing as a free anything in China except maybe a beating if you act out of line.

So, the blocking of YouTube ‘speculatively’ over this Tibetan beating video nothing new really: just China being China and trying to cover up more proof of its total disregard for humans rights. You can watch the heart-touching video here and think you’ll agree it definitely wouldn’t be mistaken for a PR video produced by China’s National Tourist Office.

China, as expected, claims it’s not hiding anything. It’s merely experiencing technical difficulties; something unplugged somewhere. Just an oversight or a bad wire; a technician’s been assigned to it and will have it back up and running just as soon as he/she finds the cure for cancer, solves world hunger and helps me finish building this 3-D puzzle I was crazy enough to think I could handle on my own. Why would China, of all places, want to hide anything? It’s definitely not as per the official story. That’s why journalists and tourists are banned from Tibet. China’s not hiding anything so it must be sure to limit access to conceal that which it’s not hiding in the first place. Don’t you understand? The People’s Republic of Transparency it is not.

According to the spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, China’s not afraid of the internet. No, I’m sure it’s not afraid of the internet but rather people using the internet FREELY. I’m not afraid of snakes per se; I’m afraid of their bites.

I often wonder if China realizes those of us in the West are onto the fact they’re not exactly a democracy and don’t treat people like human beings whether those people are citizens or not. At least they don’t discriminate, right? I find it humorous they even bother with these petty attempts to conceal their fak-ups because surely their own citizens are very aware of what’s going on within China’s borders even if they’re too scared to say anything about it. I can’t imagine the Chinese population living in the dark even if the government toils every waking hour to hide its bad behavior from its own citizens and the world. After all, China’s people are subjected to the oppression in their daily lives. How could they miss that?

I mean, for fak’s sake, this is the country that’s hired bloggers to troll the internet for ‘bad press’ and then respond by spewing more propaganda. The government goes out of its way to smack down access to anything it deems ‘inappropriate content’ online to contain the beast that is the truth. I agree with them that the content of such videos is inappropriate. Beating protesters IS inappropriate so I guess I do agree with China that it’s inappropriate content but I have a feeling they don’t define ‘inappropriate’ content as I do. For me, the beating is inappropriate as are its overall limitations on freedom. For China, what’s inappropriate is other people seeing proof of its brutality.  It’s like when a husband cheats on his wife and tells her he’s sorry. The old saying goes: “Are you sorry you cheated or sorry you got caught?” China’s sorry someone managed to record it and post it for the world to see. Here’s an idea: if you don’t want people viewing your ‘inappropriate content’ – STOP being inappropriate and no one will feel the need to record it and broadcast it to the world.

China fails to comprehend the attention it calls to itself when it pulls one of these repressive maneuvers. It may be able to easily control and censor what its citizens may have access to but those in the free world still have a front row view and get mighty faked off when we see freedom being denied yet again by this monster state. Doesn’t China realize it’d probably better contain these controversial materials IF it just let freedom reign in the virtual world? The censorship only stirs the world media into a frenzy: “HEY EVERYONE, look at what China’s not letting its people do now”. So, it just calls more attention to the oppressive regime and makes the rest of us hate the Chinese government more than we already do. We probably wouldn’t even have known about the video to such a great extent had China not decided to block You Tube in the first place. It may be able to pull the sweatshop wool over its own people’s eyes with censorship and overall control but sadly, for China, its reach isn’t far and wide enough to pull the plug for the rest of us. I’m sure that’d be China’s wet dream of all time as it’s now even pushing for a new global currency since it doesn’t like the lack of control it has in a market gauged by the flaky US dollar. At least in this case, the US and European Union have told it to fak off.

Imagine how scary the world could become if China's allowed to have more of its way than it already does. Now that would be a fakin nightmare.