Chinese Internet Dissidents

Today’s New York Times has a very interesting article about some of the internet dissidents in China who are discovering, creating, and publicizing ways to get around China’s Great Firewall. What’s particularly interesting is the way the article documents how people who were otherwise non-political were driven to activism in the face of repression.

In almost every instance, the resistance has been fired by the surprise and indignation when people bumped up against a system that they had only vaguely suspected existed. “I had had an impression that some kind of mechanism controls the Internet in China, but I had no idea about the Great Firewall,” said Pan Liang, a writer of children’s literature and a Web site operator who first learned the extent of the controls after a friend’s blog was blocked. “I was really annoyed at first,” Mr. Pan said. “Then the 17th Party Congress came, and I received an order that my Web site, which is about children’s literature, had to close its message board. It made me even angrier.”

Like others, Mr. Pan used his Web page to post solutions for overcoming the restrictions to some banned sites…

The article also makes clear that the levels of internet censorship are rising as the Beijing Olympics approach. Access to information is tightening, more Chinese internet police are being deployed, and the PRC government is cracking down on dissidents. The Olympics has had the opposite effect from what was promised by the IOC and the Beijing government: there is more censorship and less freedom as the government increasingly fears that the world will see that China is anything but a “harmonious society.”

What is sad, though, is that the Olympics could have been a moment for China’s communist government to genuinely liberalize, to open up their country to the democratizing forces of free speech, free press, and access to a free and open internet. Instead, they have promised that while arresting more and more dissidents, writers, and critics. The Chinese government has shown more of themselves in their illiberal actions than giving the world a candid view into their country ever could have.

Update:

The NYT also has a blistering editorial criticizing China’s march away from freedom in advance of the Olympics.

Eli!

Eli

Victory!

Enjoy that champagne, 1972 Dolphins.

Update:

funny pictures

ESPN (rough transcript):

“All season the talk around the NFL was about whether the Patriots were the greatest team of all time. Turns out they weren’t even the best team Sunday.”

Update II:

I’m having server problems that’s preventing me from posting new content. My server thinks it’s October 29, 1973. I have a couple good posts queued up which you can read in 35 years or when I get this bug fixed, whichever comes first.

Harry and Louise

It strikes me as much easier to scare people about government-run health care than it is to muster the leadership to get universal health care (or, in the current iteration of Democratic proposals, universal access to affordable health care coverage) passed. As no one is actually proposing universal health care, I think the explanatory barrier to overcome fear mongering from any side is actually higher now than it would be with a simple Medicare-for-All proposal. Fear mongering is going to be more effective when the plans being proposed are complex and complicated.

Questions about MoveOn’s Endorsement of Obama

Yesterday’s MoveOn member poll showed Barack Obama winning decisively over Hillary Clinton, 70% to 29%. Matt Stoller has the news at Open Left. MoveOn had set the threshold for endorsement at 66% and Obama comfortably got enough votes to meet that standard.

But there are a number of questions that I would be curious to see answered.

MoveOn cites the votes totals as Vote results:

Obama: 197,444 (70.4%)
Clinton: 83,084 (29.6%)

That’s a total of 280,528 votes cast in 24 hours, a very impressive number. But MoveOn has 3.2 million members. Only 8.7% of them participated in the poll. Only 6.17% of MoveOn members voted for Obama, yet he will receive their endorsement and support.

Now, comparing vote totals to total membership is not exactly a fair comparison to adjudicate the merits of the endorsement. But it’s the information I have at hand.

What would be more helpful to know in evaluating these numbers is this:

  1. How many people opened the email?
  2. How many people went to the voting landing page linked in the email and decided not to vote?
  3. How many people previously participated in MoveOn’s Virtual Town Halls on Iraq and the environment?

Knowing the answers to these questions would give us a better sense of how MoveOn members thought about the vote between Clinton and Obama. I don’t expect to find out #1 and #2, as most organizations keep that information secret. I asked for the answer to from #3 by Ilyse Hoque of MoveOn, here’s what she provided me with:

Iraq Town Hall: 42,896 votes cast

Climate Town Hall: 95,284 votes cast

She also provided me with the individual candidate breakdowns for both votes, but I don’t think those numbers are relevant to the question at hand. It’s the totals that concern me.

MoveOn saw a 294% increase in participation in the straw poll from the larger virtual town hall to the endorsement vote. That huge increase makes me think that concerns about participation in proportion to list size for the endorsement vote are not valid. They clearly had a major portion of the active members of their list participate and the result was clearly decisive.

I’ll be curious to see how MoveOn members work to help the endorsement have an impact beyond a press release. Will Obama be able to count on nearly 200,000 MoveOn members to man the phones for him in the coming days and weeks? Will MoveOn ask their members to donate to Obama’s campaign? Will Obama’s campaign try to do an acquisition email to MoveOn’s members who voted for him? I’ll be looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

Jim Himes Beats Chris Shays in Money Game

This is huge news. Jim Himes is a progressive Democratic challenger to long-time Republican incumbent Chris Shays in my home district, the CT 4th. Shays has been one of Bush’s biggest cheerleaders, from the Iraq war to taking the side of Blackwater contractors.

It’s now clear that not only has Himes outraised Shays, they have more cash on hand than him.

Congrats to the Himes team, which is populated by a number of Lamont veterans.

Check out Himes at his campaign website.

Facebook Causes Giving Challenge Post Mortem

The Challenge is over and Students for a Free Tibet came up just short. 4,522 individuals donated to SFT at least once over the course of 50 days. Remarkably, over 2,500 of those donations came in the final 24 hours. Even more remarkably, SFT received between 500-600 donations in the final hour, a number that would have put them somewhere between 7th and 12th place for the entire competition, had they received no other donations.

All told, SFT raised $93,944 over 50 days through small dollar, grassroots supporters around the world. At least a third of that money came in the closing 24 hours and they are still to receive a $25,000 donation from the Case Foundation for coming in second place for the competition. That total – $118,944 – is over 25% of the money SFT raised in their last fiscal year.

The whole process was a phenomenal success for SFT and the Tibet movement on whole. They proved that they are just about the most savvy online organizing group on Facebook, turning a student network into a major fund raising source in a matter of days and keeping pace with an organization that is at least four times larger. Kudos to all the SFT staff, Board, volunteers and supporters who turned this into one of the most – if not the most – successful and memorable giving campaigns in the organization’s history.

Thanks to all my friends, family, and readers who took the time to donate as well.

Huge Facebook Causes Growth for SFT

final hour

This is incredible. In the last 23 hours, Students for a Free Tibet has had at least a 100% increase in their total number of donors in the Facebook Causes Giving Challenge. It took 49 days to find the first 1,943 donors. The next 2,082 were found in just over twenty-three hours. This is remarkable, viral, grassroots work being done online.

If you haven’t given yet, please take a moment to donate $10 to help SFT win $50,000. The contest closes at 3 PM Eastern and there’s $50,000 at stake. I’ll tell you right now, this will go down to the final minute. Your donation could make all the difference.

Donate to SFT through Facebook Causes: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/47691 

Thanks,

Matt

Big Media Jessica

Another day, another friend in the New York Times. Today the Times profiles Jessica Valenti, author and blogger at Feministing. The article is in the context of how feminists are dealing with presidential politics, but it’s a great tribute to the impact Jessica has had in contemporary feminism that her work and her efforts at Feministing are a key example of how feminists are responding to this year’s campaign. To make things even better, the Times article actually does a good job of showing how hard Jessica works as a blogger and how thoughtful and important the commentary written by her and other authors at Feministing is to contemporary debate.