Archive for
April 27th, 2005


Stories

“Theory of Everything” focuses on Global Voices

A small portrait of the translator Ethan Zuckerman · 15:14 · About GVO , Participant news

Ben Walker's “Theory of Everthing” radio show is getting love from all over the blogosphere - Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing has favorably compared it to Ira Glass's excellent This American Life, one of the best programs available on American radio.

Ben's latest show, available for download as an mp3, was prepared as part of the 2005 Public Radio Collaboration, a broad effort to encourage public radio producers to produce a set of programs on a theme - this year, “globalization” - which will air on US public radio stations from May 16th - 22nd. Ben looks at whether the “global internet” is really global, and features several Global Voices contributors - Isaac, Jeff, Ory, Hossein, Rebecca and me - talking about ways the Internet can help make the world more globally interested. The piece finishes with an extended interview with Isaac, who talks in detail about internet filtering and censorship in China.

It's a great opportunity to hear the voices of some of the people working on Global Voices. And if you're a US reader, please consider calling your local public radio station and asking them to air Theory of Everything - available from The Public Radio Exchange - during the Public Radio Collaboration week.

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Isaac Mao's take on the China protests

A small portrait of the translator Rebecca MacKinnon · 07:50 · East Asia

Isaac Mao believes theres not more to the anti-Japan protests than just government manipulation:

Just in these two days, China gov tighten the control of internet to prevent from any callings on new protest. Yesterday, the spokesman of Minisry of Public Security warned that any online organizing or gossip on gathering are illegal. The official voices in these two days are mainly one point: all the people should keep stable as the first priority thing. It means that gov is worrying about the protest could evolve into anti-gov movement.

That's the myth in today's China. Gov wants to use civilian's protest to presssure on JP gov. They will also control the information to expose those only supportive to their policy and censor other opinions. Definitely, all the official media has been tamed to one tune already. They are trying a lot to do the same thing in cyberspace even with many so shortsight tricks. Anyway, it's obvious a mission impossible today, there rasied more reactions already in blogosphere(BBSs are totally controlled in these days), can be summaried into four types:

1. We common people can do nothing now, but only rely on gov
2. The gov is usefulless in solving the problem, they will eventually comprise and sacrifice people's benefit to keep their regime
3. The gov can do only limited things to reach real mutual understanding, the gap between people in the two countried will widen unavoidably
4. We won't trust the gov anymore, not just for this issue, many issues in this country are connected

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