Month: October 2007

I noticed that BoingBoing took notice of Ars Technica’s article on the blocking of RSS feeds in China:

More recent reports tell us that the PSB appears to have extended this block to all incoming URLs that begin with “feeds,” “rss,” and “blog,” thus rendering the RSS feeds from many sites–including ones that aren’t blocked in China, such as Ars Technica–useless.

Woah, hold on there kids! So far the only RSS block I know is Feedburner – which has been blocked before. Meanwhile online aggregators like Bloglines and Google Reader remain unaffected. Hell, my aggregator is still passing along feeds to me that are from Feedburner! Anyway, Ya I Yee has pointed out that Chinese RSS giant Feedsky is an alternative. Which got me wondering:

Does Feedsky filter firewalled feeds?

Some quick experiments to see if Feedsky even acknowledges the existence of some feeds:

This blog’s Blogspot feed: Yes, it is filtered.

This blog’s Feedburner feed: Filtered.

My Flickr feed: No!

Ya, I Yee’s Feedburner Feed: No! Wait, what? Why didn’t mine go through?

The traditionally blocked BBC News Feed (which I get laundered by an aggregator): Yes, filtered.

The Flickr page of Jake Appelbaum, home of the notorious Oiwan Lam photo link: No, not filtered!

Jess Nevin’s LiveJournal: Yup, filtered.

A Google search for site:feedsky.com + blogspot or + flickr shows there are some Chinese bloggers whose flickr feeds are chugging right along through Feedsky, and at least one Blogspot blog that was feeding through Feedburner to Feedsky with no problems until September 24th, when updates stopped, roughly the same time Feedburner was blocked. Poor guy had Feedburner laundering Blogspot for Feedsky, only for Feedburner to get written off too.

Except for Ya, I Yee’s Feedburner. What’s up with that? The Fickle Firewall’s flightiness f**ks with us again.

Chinese bloggers are, unsurprisingly, just as into subspotting as the FAS. Here’s a few photo comparisons done by BBS members at Meyet.com, which is all about “military intelligence gathering, analysis, foreign policy, strategy and entertainment. Oh, and “polite language”. Sounds like the Chinese Danger Room to me. These are of the first sub spotted on Google Earth – if I can be bothered maybe I’ll drop them a note about Hans Kristensen’s new discovery. Also included is a rendering of the 094 from a Japanese magazine – reproduced on a Chinese news site.

Federation of American Scientist blogger Hans M. Kristensen has struck again, this time sighting not one but two Chinese ballistic missile submarines, this time at the Huludao shipyards. The first one was spotted at the Xiaopingdao shipyards in July, and it could be one of the two pictured here. Or there’s three. Whatever, the U.S. Navy has long predicted they’d build five. Innoculate yourself against the impending claims of China dominating the Pacific by reading ArmsControlWonk’s soon to be three part series on the 094 submarine and its limitations.

The New York Times says:

Mr. Zeng reached the formal retirement age of 68 this year, and party officials say he has stated repeatedly that he intends to step down.

Willy Lam says:

Considering that the age of 68 was set as the retirement age for Politburo members at both the 15th and the 16th Party Congresses

The Hoover Institute’s Lyman Miller says:

Most of these leaders will still be well short of 70, the age at which by apparent internal party norm leaders are expected to retire at the next party congress.

Covering the last Party Congress, the BBC says:

Politburo’s informal retirement age of 70

OK, I give up. Is it formal? Informal? 68? 70? Was it set during the 14th, 15th or 16th Party Congress? And if we can’t get this basic rule clear, what’s the point of placing bets on who’s in and out based on age?

On a more interesting note, someone has actually noted what might happen to Wang Lequan, who leads the Party, the Production and Construction Corps, and pretty much everything else in Xinjiang:

A political leader who has stayed in one position for ten years can no longer stay in the same position. Thus, three provincial Party Secretaries will have to leave their current posts. Wang Lequan, Party Secretary of Xinjiang and a member of the Politburo, has been in his position for more than a decade. Wang is usually considered a member of the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) Group because he once worked as Deputy Secretary of the Shandong Provincial Communist Youth League Committee between March 1982 and September 1986. He became Acting Party Secretary of Xinjiang in September 1994 and Party Secretary of Xinjiang in December 1995. He reached his ten-year limit in December 2005.

… Nie Weiguo, an alternate member of the 16th Central Committee of the CCP and Deputy Secretary of Xinjiang, is a good candidate for the post of Xinjiang’s Party Secretary. A native of Chongqing, Nie turned 54 in 2006 He has spent most of his working life in Sichuan, starting as an educated youth (zhishi qingnian) in Nanchuan, Sichuan in January 1969. He worked in the Peilin Prefecture (later Peilin Municipality and then Peilin District) for 17 years (1983–2000) and served as Deputy Secretary of Chongqing for three years (2002–5). He was transferred to Xinjiang in March 2005 as Political Commissar of the Xinjiang Construction Corps, Board Chairman of China New Construction Corporation and Deputy Secretary of Xinjiang. Notably, his predecessor, Chen Demin, was only a standing member of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regional Party Committee, but Nie was made a Deputy Secretary of Xinjiang. It is also possible that the Party Centre will transfer another individual from elsewhere to replace Wang Lequan. But whoever is the new Party Secretary of Xinjiang is unlikely to obtain a seat in the 17th Politburo. Wang Lequan’s career path is probably unique to him.

So it seems Wang is heading out the door. But wait! Wang Lequan is a Youth League man, and so Hu’s homeboy. Plus, he’s a lively 63. Aggh! I know this is a pointless game, but it’s so addictive!

According to the New York Times, yesterday was the 50th anniversary of a San Francisco court ruling that Allen Ginsburg’s Howl was not obscene.

Yet Ginsberg, who died in 1997, was heard online and not on the New York radio station WBAI-FM, affiliated with the Pacifica network, because the station, according to an article on Wednesday, feared that by broadcasting “Howl” it could run afoul of the Federal Communications Commission’s interpretation of indecency and incur bankrupting fines.

Janet Coleman, WBAI’s arts director, said that when the idea of airing the poem to test the law was proposed, “I said, ‘Yes, let’s try it.’” The radio station has a history of championing the First Amendment, having broadcast the comedian George Carlin’s “seven dirty words” routine that resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling on indecency. But after several harsh F.C.C. rulings in 2004 — against CBS for a glimpse of Janet Jackson’s breast during the Super Bowl halftime show and against Fox for curse words used during the Billboard Music Awards — “our lawyer felt it was too risky,” Ms. Coleman said. The commission can impose “draconian fines,” she said, that could put WBAI out of business.

Listen to the Pacifica broadcast “Howl Against Censorship” online, where, for now, the FCC can’t touch it.