Say it isn't so Pooh

Drudge links to a story that Winnie the Pooh is now a symbol for Chinese dissadents and jokesters who ridicule their beloved leaders. (/s).

The blocking of Winnie the Pooh might seem like a bizarre move by the Chinese authorities but it is part of a struggle to restrict clever bloggers from getting around their country's censorship. When is a set of wrist watches not just a set of wrist watches? When is a river crab not just a river crab? Inside the Great Firewall of China of course.

the article discusses the way that locals try to get around government censorship and the Great Firewall of China.

a typical way to ridicule the government is to show Winne and friends in a similar pose:

The article describes the crackdown as part of Xi's grab of power and attempts to crack down on corruption. Well, good luck to that, but why do I suspect that a sardonic teenager will be more likely to be the victim than a crooked billionaire?

and if you live in China and upload to "the Cloud", American companies like Apple and Amazon have data centers in that country. 

but Chinese who do this don't have to fear that their government will spy on them, insists Apple:

Even though it's working with a government-owned company, Apple sought to reassure customers in China that the arrangement won't compromise their privacy. "As our customers know, Apple has strong data privacy and security protections in place and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems," the company said in a statement. What's more, Apple says it will hold to the security keys protecting the data that people routinely back up in iCloud accounts.

Right. One rival computer security expert is quoted as saying it's like letting the fox into the henhouse.

Cyberwars have been going on for quite awhile, but the press hasn't noticed.

Now, if we could only get the US government to take it's own computer information that seriously... I had my Federal personnel file hacked (presumably by Chinese hackers) two years ago, along with a couple million other employees. And we won't even mention Hillary's emails...

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more HERE about how Chinese dissadents and joksters use puns and symbols to annoy the censors, including the R rated pun of "Grass mud horse"....