China Blocks Access to Twitter, Facebook After Riots (2009)(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
China Blocks Access to Twitter, Facebook After Riots (2009)
https://techcrunch.com/2009/07/07/china-blocks-access-to-twitter-facebook-after-riots/
3 comments
Why posting an article from 2009?! Twitter and Facebook are still blocked by the China Great Firewall, we know it.
I already explained why:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35375320
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35375320
I find it interesting/amusing that a lot of the discussion about "China banning Facebook therefore we can ban them too" proceeds kind of ahistorically, as if China had blocked Facebook on a whim.
It's also interesting because it dovetails with the seemingly unrelated separate story of the so-called "Uyghur Genocide." In reality, the two stories are related:
>Following last weekend’s deadly riots in its western region of Xinjiang, China’s central government has taken all the usual steps to block citizens from accessing foreign web services: aside from crippling Internet service in general, the authorities have blocked Twitter, removed unapproved references to the violence from search engines and has now apparently moved to bar its citizens from accessing Facebook from most parts of Mainland China just now. Two weeks ago, the government had already blocked just about every Google service, including communication tools like Gmail, Google Apps and Google Talk.
Basically, China's argument is that Facebook was used to organize terrorism, and when they asked Facebook and Twitter to cooperate, they refused. Then they were banned.
The concern being, of course, that Facebook was being used by U.S. intelligence to organize terrorism within its borders, as seen in this NED tweet:
>@NEDemocracy, December 10, 2020 (https://twitter.com/NEDemocracy/status/1337063301113581568)
>To further #humanrights & human dignity for all people in China, the National Endowment for Democracy has funded Uyghur groups since 2004. #NEDemocracy #HumanRightsDay
And this then dovetails with Zbigniew Brzezinski's admissions regarding Operation Cyclone:
>According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980. That is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. [...] We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. _ ... That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. [...] What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1998.
https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/content/brzezinski-interv...
Pretty interesting stuff.
It's also interesting because it dovetails with the seemingly unrelated separate story of the so-called "Uyghur Genocide." In reality, the two stories are related:
>Following last weekend’s deadly riots in its western region of Xinjiang, China’s central government has taken all the usual steps to block citizens from accessing foreign web services: aside from crippling Internet service in general, the authorities have blocked Twitter, removed unapproved references to the violence from search engines and has now apparently moved to bar its citizens from accessing Facebook from most parts of Mainland China just now. Two weeks ago, the government had already blocked just about every Google service, including communication tools like Gmail, Google Apps and Google Talk.
Basically, China's argument is that Facebook was used to organize terrorism, and when they asked Facebook and Twitter to cooperate, they refused. Then they were banned.
The concern being, of course, that Facebook was being used by U.S. intelligence to organize terrorism within its borders, as seen in this NED tweet:
>@NEDemocracy, December 10, 2020 (https://twitter.com/NEDemocracy/status/1337063301113581568)
>To further #humanrights & human dignity for all people in China, the National Endowment for Democracy has funded Uyghur groups since 2004. #NEDemocracy #HumanRightsDay
And this then dovetails with Zbigniew Brzezinski's admissions regarding Operation Cyclone:
>According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980. That is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. [...] We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. _ ... That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire. [...] What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1998.
https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/content/brzezinski-interv...
Pretty interesting stuff.