internet

Sorry about the last few days. Apparently the good people who monitor the web here in China have decided to create a more harmonious society and therefore blocked a whole shitload of the websites that I usually visit. This of course included the one I use to post my ramblings on. Thus I had no way to get my thoughts to you. I have asked some of the more enlightened chinese why the web is censored and they tell me it is for my protection. How can I need protection? I have lived in a country where censorship is a cardinal sin against my rights. One where the aclu will fight for my right to say anything I want. Where talk radio openly cheers for the failure of the sitting government. Yet here in china I need to be protected from something bad that someone may say. Its utter nonsense. It is really one of the few things that I have a hard time with here. It isnt the same as the spitting or the pushing and staring. I can understand those as a cultural difference. But the suppression of information and the passive acceptance of censorship is in no way cultural. Just easy on one hand and the continued propagation of the system on the other. But it isnt my country and so I try my best to bite my lip.