Enemy of the State
The Glorious People's
Republic of China defended its new anti-porn software which has branded the
cartoon Cat Garfield an enemy of the state.
Chinese state media has had to
mount an unprecedented defence of newly required Internet filtering software
after it was revealed that the software was wide open to hackers. It was
also banning harmless pictures such as Garfield and piglets.
Put on the
defensive, state broadcaster CCTV announced on its noon news program on
Thursday that a "vast number of parents and experts" had endorsed the "Green
Dam-Youth Escort" filtering software that must be packaged with all units
sold in China.
None of these vast number were prepared to be interviewed and
if they were then you had to take CCTV's word that that they were not
ordered by the Party to say that sort of thing. You also had to trust that
they had not been put up to it by Oddie. The official Communist Party
newspaper Guangming Daily praised the software as a new breakthrough in the
drive for a "civilised Internet management and access".
If it was North
Korea rather than admitting it had made a cock up, the Party would have
added that Garfield was an evil capitalist fat cat who was probably
homosexual and should be locked up for the good of the people.