God damn you 2020

We don’t, but it is likely someone just misconfigured a file somewhere at microsoft. All the search providers that operate in china are not allowed to show any of those pictures or talk about Tianamen square in any terms, other than it was a terrorist activity by potential rogue states that was put down by the army… and that’s the MOST you’ll get. Most times you’ll just get rosy photographs of the square and flowers and a few statues here and there.

If you were to travel to China and search for “Tank Man” or “Tinanmen square”, as one of my coworkers did, you’ll get an extra special meeting with some people who will then escort you to the airport, put you on a plane, and fly you home. Your luggage will arrive two to six weeks later, but I would suggest throwing away any electronics you had. We picked out bugs in his laptop and cellphone.

4 Likes

:face_with_raised_eyebrow: “Tank Man” I can see, but “Tiananmen square” can’t possibly be a banned or suspicious search term in China. It’s a place in the middle of one of their biggest cities and full of people. They take tourists there and show them the monuments and talk about how it is the largest public square in the world.

They for sure don’t want people to know about what happened there in 1989, but that’s not the first thing that will come to mind when you name the place, just like in America if I say “Detroit” not everyone thinks of what happened in 1967.

6 Likes

Did you read the rest of my post? I said that if you search for Tinamen square, you’ll get rosy pictures of the square, but my coworker didn’t do that. He searched for “Tank man” too. That , and the fact that chinese authorities monitor foreign travellers internet use excessively, put him on the list of “we’re just going to revoke your Visa and send you home” list.

2 Likes

I can remember trying to explain to an exchange student coming to stay with us about where Chicago was, so I went on Baidu (this was before Google in China) to pull up a map of the U.S. and discovered that what they were allowed to see was the coastline of North America with the three capitals shown but no country borders, internal bodies of water, etc.

No wonder she didn’t understand markers like ‘at the tip of Lake Michigan’. The Great Lakes weren’t on any map she could see.

12 Likes

Yeah, same here. It’s a remarkable demo of the Streisand Effect in action. But as the Gizmodo article points out companies like M$ are all up in the PRC market, just like G building censored versions of their search engine, so they call it a mistake but… :man_shrugging:

4 Likes

With regards to Bigoted teacher uses God as excuse for disrespecting his trans students | Boing Boing, the forum topic is locked so I’ll just leave this here:

3 Likes

Once again, religious freedom equals the freedom to force your religious beliefs on others. The judge’s comments make it clear that he does not understand where the lines between personal belief and professional behavior lie. I wonder what this teachers’ union has to say.

3 Likes

Beau covered this yesterday. Sounds like the board was trying to be proactive, but forgot that we frown on proactive protection here, you actually have to hurt someone before you are subject to discipline.

7 Likes

It doesn’t help that the teacher said he would maliciously comply and refer to students by name only.

5 Likes

It’s occurs to me that governments (such as the UK and US) trying to deport people from the country of their birth to whatever countries the deportees’ parents came from are engaging in human trafficking, forced migration and contempt for the sovereignty of those countries.

If those same xenophobic racists were told they had to accept migrants born in other countries because one of their parents was born in the US or UK, they’d balk (at least after they checked the melanin content of the forced migrants’ epidermises, their true goal being apartheid ethnostates).

14 Likes

Yeah, you’ll not find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy as the Home Office.

6 Likes

I know of one case in the 1990s where the Home Office made a decision that the father had to go back to the Middle East (where the best he could hope for was compulsory re-education back to the Islamic fundamentalism he had run from, if they didn’t just kill him.), the mother had to go to Eastern Europe, the oldest son (still preteen) had to go to North Africa, but the youngest son was allowed to stay in the UK.

It worked out for the family in the end, but I don’t know what the civil servant dealing with the case was thinking.

13 Likes

I didn’t think it could get much worse than the Home Office with that haunted authoritarian cadaver at its head but this one is doing its damnedest to exceed the former’s cruelty.

6 Likes

Anybody born in the U.S. is a citizen, it’s been in the Constitution since 1868

7 Likes

Not that there aren’t certain gentlemen hell bent on changing that, but for the time being…

12 Likes

I don’t know why they’re deporting British citizens in the UK, but I guess that’s why Charlie’s upset

5 Likes

I’m aware of that, which is why I said trying. The dog-whistle of “anchor babies” has many on the right clamoring to change that, and the mainstreaming of Birthirism conspiracies was and continues to be a sustained assault on the US Constitution. And given their obvious demonstrable contempt for the Constitution, we can’t count on them when in power to obey it.

7 Likes

OK sorry, “are engaging in human trafficking” sounded like you were talking about something that was actually happening, currently open cases, people being detained with lawyers arguing about their fate

There are lots of people like that but supposedly none of them were born here

5 Likes

Not only that though. I think his point in highlighting it is that those who don’t stand up for refugees could be and maybe already are the next targets of the racist fanatics.

8 Likes

I should have elaborated on the multiple interrelated topics to which I was referring.

Not US citizens, but Gitmo still has political prisoners never charged with a crime which the US government tried for years to traffic to reluctant countries. Whether by now they’ve just given up on the remaining prisoners and decided to lock them in indefinite limbo I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Given the US government’s willingness to commit extrajudicial murder of US citizens abroad, I’m far from confident the Constitution will necessarily protect us from extraordinary rendition.

6 Likes