Google+ Unblocked In China; President Obama's Page Flooded With Comments 187
An anonymous reader writes "Google+ has recently been unblocked in China and Chinese netizens have found their way to President Obama's G+ page. The result is that topic after topic has hit the limit of 500 comments, most of them in Chinese. Some express political views, but many are just everyday banter or showing off."
500 is a lame limit (Score:5, Interesting)
(it's per post though).
pretty nice way of "occopying" something though. one comment explaining something..
We have no chance to occupy our president Hu. He hates Internet and has no account on any sns website, so we can just occupy Obama, forgive us.
Re:Widespread interest (Score:5, Interesting)
I blame this on only having two political parties. Since each party only really has one competitor, it boils down to us versus them rhetoric.
With a viable third or fourth party, I think we'd see less "that party wants to eat your children" attacks and more stands on what they believe in. Because it's much harder to go on the attack against two or three opponents, the merits of a particular stance would have to take center stage or least get out of the back alley behind the concert where it's drinking it's cheap whiskey and crying itself to sleep.
But, for that to happen we'd need to have less of a winner takes all approach to our election system.
Re:Widespread interest (Score:4, Interesting)
I can only speak for me, but I wage that it helps to a lot of other Brazilians. Your politics reflect on ours.
Recently, one of our center-right parties renamed themselves Democrats (yeah, you read right, center-right) and have tried to mirror the Democrats politics here. And even without taken them into considerations, a lot of politics and companies keep an eye on what is going on there to try to mirror it on national legislation. Thing about things like SOPA, had it passed, there would be a hard push to implement similar language here. So your politics directly influence ours indirectly. And also directly.
Let's say for example that Grinch becomes president and he works on his campaign promise to invade Iran. Suddenly it is a new Middle East war and again we are thrown on the Iraq war cycle of problems on the international scales. So yeah, we need to pay lots of attentions to your politics.
Re:Widespread interest (Score:5, Interesting)
If your government and corporations didn't interfere with the rest of the world's nations, believe me, we wouldn't give a shit about American politics.
Re:Widespread interest (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, it's a form of voyeurism for a lot of us non-Americans. How badly can you fuck things up this week? Tune in 24/7 for as much as you can read!
The really scary thing is watching our own governments follow your mistakes after :(
Re:Widespread interest (Score:4, Interesting)
If you had five parties running, the winner might win with 22% of the voting population's support, and then the 22% would be able to impose their political views on the remaining 78%
That is indeed what happens with "winner takes all". If instead the winner wins a 22% stake (say, 22 seats in a 100-seat house) then the result is representative of the electorate.
So a multi-partisan system for Congress and the Senate would not have to be undemocratic at all. The Presidential election would, by your definition, but if the President is able to "impose their political views on the remaining 78%" then that's a flaw with the Presidential powers, not with the election process.
Re:Widespread interest (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of this is because of the influence the U.S. has on our countries. I guess we need to keep an eye always looking at you to know if you are planning to sign a free trade agreement with us, change the amount of monetary aid you send our way, pass some law that makes us outlaws, try to change our style of government or just bomb us. You have the power to change our lives maybe more than even we do.