15.7.2009 von Jean Jacques.

China halts electric shock therapy for web-addiction

The Ministry of Health (MOH) on Monday issued a new regulation, banning all electric shock therapies for treating young people who are addicted to the Internet, and shut down a related clinic. The clinic, located in Linyi city of Shandong province, was taken charged by Yang Yongxin, a local psychiatrist who initiated the therapy in 2006. Yang’s treatments include electric shock of between one and five milliamperes and psychiatric medication. At first, he was highly praised by the Chinese media as he successfully treated over 3,000 patients who used to be addicted to online games, such as Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft. However, as more and more patients were talking about the feeling of pain and being tortured, experts started to question his therapy. “Electric shock therapies are suggested to be applied to those with severe depression and psychiatric disorders,” said Wang Xianglan, another psychiatrist from a hospital affiliated with Guangzhou-based Sun Yan-sen University. Many children said they had to experience huge pain like “millions of needles piecing through the brain.” “It’s inappropriate to treat these people like they are psychos as it’s not clear if web-addiction should be attributed to mental illness,” said Wang. A draft which intends to define people who hang out online over six hours per day as psychos was submitted to the MOH by The Military General Hospital of Beijing last December,but didn’t get approved yet.

Geschrieben in News, Web and bits | Keine Kommentare »

15.7.2009 von Jean Jacques.

The usual evening aperitif in Nova. Quite a few of my friends are away on holiday back in Europe. Plenty left though. Dinner at Papa Mario for a great pizza (#33). Never seem to eat anything else there. Bumped into Benjamin who invited us back at his place for a night cap (and what a night cap it was… thanks for the gin Benj…).

Spent most of Saturday at the pool…

Sunday was dedicated to shopping, shoes, electric fans for the appartment before meeting up with Lisa, Stuart and Wolfgang in another very nice area of town for a couple of drinks…

Had dinner in a great Italian restaurant in the area…

Geschrieben in All | Keine Kommentare »

15.7.2009 von Jean Jacques.

Ok there are ways around it, but I wish one did not have to do that. Kind of a nice feeling though to beat the system. I wonder how long this will last.

Geschrieben in All | Keine Kommentare »

9.7.2009 von Jean Jacques.

One of my favorite part of Shanghai. The French concession (here Fuxing Xi Road). If it was not for the Chinese signs, you’d really think you were in France.

Geschrieben in All | Keine Kommentare »

9.7.2009 von Jean Jacques.

Is that another Chinese story or is Facebook down? I have not been able to get in for the past couple of days. So no Mafia Wars for me.

In the meantime I found (and that was no mean feat” an article confirming what I suspected…

China Disables Twitter, Then Facebook, as Civil Unrest Ensues

BY Clay DillowTue Jul 7, 2009 at 11:49 AM

Next stop for the Twitter Revolution: China. But where the revolution goes, the crackdowns follow. The Chinese government attempted to disable Twitter across most of mainland China as ethnic violence erupted in Xinjiang province over the past few days, and now reports coming out of that country say Facebook has also been shut down. Even so, several photos have managed to leak out via Twitter in recent days, some quite gruesome, reminiscent of those used to galvanize support for opposition protesters in Iran recently.

At least 140 people have been killed and more than 800 injured as ethnic Uighurs in China’s westernmost province have clashed with state forces in recent days. The state cut mobile phone service and attempted to sever Internet access there, fearing protesters might use social networking tools to organize, much as protesters did in Iran after the recent disputed election there. The viral videotaped demise of Neda Soltan, a young woman shot by Iranian security forces while attending a protest rally in Tehran, shocked the Western world and became a symbol for the opposition’s cause. China wants no such symbol to emerge in the Uighur uprising.

China’s knee-jerk reaction to immediately sever mobile communications and Internet access at the first sign of unrest speaks to the threat, or at least perceived threat, that social media poses to authoritarian regimes. Political developments in Moldova and Iran have annointed Twitter and Facebook the social networks of choice for revolutionary political movements, allowing like-minded people to organize virtually before taking to the streets.

Can social networking ultimately open up the flow of free information to the point authoritarianism is unsustainable? Some have suggested it will, though Iran was eventually able to curb communication among protesters, and China has put the kibosh on social networking for the time being (though there are many ways for tech-savvy citizens to circumvent state controls). But clearly these regimes are feeling the heat from the likes of Twitter and Facebook. Whether social networks were helping rioters organize (and it’s unclear that they were), the fact the state cracked down on those sites so quickly is a testament to the power they wield and a sign the “Twitter Revolution” lives. To that, we say “vive la resistance.”

Geschrieben in All | Keine Kommentare »