Doctorow 2007 flights
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Just to see if this works. <ref> hi there</ref> gogogo.
We're going to need to install https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Footnotes But I'm getting the same problems as reported at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mediawikiwiki/Extension_talk:MultiUpload#SVN_Problems
hehehe
Also might want to install http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/ParserFunctions/
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Statements about Climate Change
At a convention in Portland, to which he flew for a day, he ranted about his buddy Bruce Sterling's great idea that the only way to get people to care about their carbon footprint would be to market a really cool set of sunglasses that made it possible to see the carbon being emitted in the atmosphere.<ref>Audio from my privacy talk at the O’Reilly Open Source convention</ref>
At San Francisco booksigning he was asked about climate change and made his statement about how worried he is and his postings on boingboing, and the business about Bruce Sterlings hand-prints.<ref>Audio from last night’s launch at Borderlands</ref>
Tomorrow Part 3 and Part 5 had baffling references to carbon capture.
Another mention of carbon neutral travel plans at minute -54.<ref name="september12"/>
Cory Doctorow, Internet Inactivist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cory_Doctorow#Picture
Since he left the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the end of 2005, Cory Doctorow's career has experienced a meteoric rise. Paid-for air-travel to speaking engagements is clocking at least 200 k-miles a year and everyone loves the things he has to say, from his speech at Duke University in North Carolina entitled "From Myspace to Homeland Security: Privacy and the Totalitarian Urge" to the reading of his op-ed piece for Canadian radio called Copy killers.
This latter reading was done over the internet from his hotel room in Japan shortly before he went into China, the week after the cyber-dissident and Chinese blogger He Weihua was confined in a psychiatric hospital against his will for the second time in three years. His case was picked up by Reporters Without Borders.[1]
I found out about it by listening to the interview with Watson Meng, founder of Boxun.com, which was broadcast in the same program as Cory's Canadian radio piece. It turns out that Boxun has been hosted since the year 2000 in North Carolina, safely out of reach of the totalitarian urge of the Chinese Government.
It's possible that Cory didn't know about Boxun when he gave his "Totalitarian Urge" speech in North Carolina, where he could have called on his audience to become more active in supporting this important service which has broken many of the stories of uprisings that the Chinese Government doesn't want you to hear about. But then, he only happened to be the Fulbright Chair in Public Diplomacy at California University, meaning he didn't have the time to find out about it. All I was doing was researching a project about hypermobility.
The situation for bloggers in China, on the other hand, is common knowledge, so not knowing what was just happening counts as willful ignorance. Maybe you don't want to be bothered with it when you are being honoured with an invitation to the exclusive Young Global Leaders conference where you will meet -- if the World Economic Forum has selected them well -- the people who will, in the coming decades, have their fingers on the nuclear trigger while their other hand grasps the financial levers that ensure the planet's continued course towards environmental devastation. All the brightest CEOs and Royal Highnesses were there, and not a word was said that would have spoiled the party. The elite, as usual, smiled and told itself that everything was all right.
In my book a real internet activist with a celebrity status of the kind that means you are not going to get arrested or physically mistreated would have known about Weihua's case, or any of the other 52 Chinese bloggers now in custody. A real internet activist would have made a fuss and arranged to visit the abandoned wife now fighting for her husband's freedom. A real activist would have hired a psychiatry professor and barged into the hospital to get an independent examination of the victim. Such an activist would have made enough noise to ensure that the Chinese authorities understood that this problem was not going to go away.
I am not a public relations expert, but I believe that had Cory done any of these things it's very likely he would never get invited to another Young Global Leaders conference again, but Weihua would be walking free and the cause of free speech in China would have been pushed forwards significantly. These interventions work. There are experts at Amnesty International who could have advised Cory about it when he was chosen to contribute to their struggle for freedom of expression in cyberspace conference in the summer.
But he didn't do anything. It probably never occured to him. Crossing that line between being an expensive motor-mouth and actually doing something -- or even encouraging other people to do things -- does get in the way of life. Month after month touting yourself as a corporate adviser ready to teach business leaders how to make money and stay on top of the game in this changing world. It's not cool to materially contribute to the changes, is it?
Thanks, Cory. Your services to internet shopping are appreciated.
Old version
On his way into China last September Cory Doctorow, read his op-ed piece for a Canadian radio show about internet activism. Also on the show was Watson Meng of Boxun.us interviewed about how bloggers in China are being picked up and thrown into jail for what they have written. His website, Boxun.us, is located in North Carolina, supports and hosts the writings of Chinese bloggers. Cory didn't mention Boxun in his speech entitled "From Myspace to Homeland Security: Privacy and the Totalitarian Urge" which he gave when he flew over on a three day visit from Los Angeles to North Carolina in February 2003. This is a shame because Boxun.us is in North Carolina fighting an actual totalitarian state since 2000. He might have obtained a news-feed from them and discovered some things he could be doing on his tour around the world.
For example, the cyber-dissident and blogger He Weihua was forcably confined in a psychiatric hospital the week before Cory flew into China. Cory was going as part of the Young Global Leaders conference hosted by the World Economic Forum.
There the privileged world elite whose fingers will be on the nuclear trigger when they grow up had lunch in a very fancy hotel and discussed management theories.
As someone with a very visible platform, Cory could have broke from the his usual tedious rant and said a few public words about it Weihua, visited the hospital with an independent psychiatrist, contributed money to his now destitute wife, and threatened to keep the issue alive.
Throwing people in jails and mental hospitals for free speech is wrong, and it can easily be undone. It's not as hard as getting people out when they are accused of murder.
Almost certainly, the cause of free speech in China would be pushed significantly forward, and Weihua would not have drugs injected into his blood today if Cory put his weight behind a case like this, which was live at the time he went into China. This is what Amnesty International does. They have shown that it has an effect when you make it clear to the authorities that you disapprove of what they are doing. Incidentally, Cory spoke at an Amnesty International conference entitled The struggle for freedom of expression in cyberspace in June 2007, so regardless of what he said there, he was exposed to the issues.
Instead, all we get is talk from this guy who does nothing with all the attention he receives except fly around the world polluting the atmosphere. It's a waste of everyone's time. The term "political activist" ought to be reserved for people who do real things with the opportunities they're given. The only thing Cory wants to achieve with his life, apart from a very fine personal career in a world where everyone loves him, is cheaper iPods.
If we demanded more of him in order to deserve our respect, something good might come out of this character.
Old stuff
In September he made contribution to CBC Radio<ref>My CBC radio column on Digital Lysenkoism</ref> based on the article he wrote for The Guardian newspaper.<ref>Copy killers</ref> from his hotel in Tokyo. The article used the allegory of Lysenko's erroneous science Russia which was a contributory factor towards the great Stalinist famines. The same allegory had already been used by an earlier correspondent to illustrate the science of climate change denial.<ref>Faced with this crisis</ref> Cory probably didn't have time to listen to first half of the Radio program which included an interview with a Chinese internet activist based in Durham (NC) -- a city he had zipped over from California to visit in February to give one of his well-attended talks on copy-fighting -- who had been running the website boxun.us. The news was that one of the bloggers hosted at boxun had just been committed to a psychiatric hospital against his will, and his case was serious enough to be taken up by reporters without borders.<ref>Blogger confined to psychiatric hospital against his will</ref>
Too busy immersed himself into an ex-pat bookshop.
Now it's possible that the news was too fresh for the great internet activist to make any comments in time, but the situation in China has been going on for years, giving him plenty of time to show that he has noticed at least one of the 52 people currently in prison for expressing themselves too freely online<ref>China - Annual report 2007</ref> in a country that is undoubtedly the most important force in cyber-space today. The scale of the place, the deliberate and effective censorship, and the fact that every last bean of high-tech hardware now appears to be manufactured there, suggests that this is something to be noticed. But, while real life-and-death battles are being fought on the ground around his person, he accepts an invitation from Amnesty International....http://www.gginternet1.co.uk/amnesty/irrepressible01/
References
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