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The ‘Tank Man’ image which has been altered to replace the tanks with large yellow ducks (Vincent Yu/AP).
A POPULAR CHINESE microblogging service banned searches for “yellow duck” after users circulated a mocked-up image of a famous 1989 Tiananmen square tank protest with the military vehicles replaced by plastic ducks, results today showed.
The picture, a parody of the iconic “Tank Man” photograph of a civilian staring down a long row of tanks, circulated yesterday, the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests’ suppression.
A large yellow duck artwork is currently on display in Hong Kong, and imitations have been put up in several mainland cities.
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The fake image that has been making the rounds on Weibo (Image: Sina Weibo).
Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging site, blocked searches for “yellow duck”, with attempts to do so returning a message reading: “Due to relevant laws and regulations… the search result is not displayed.”
Other search terms banned by the service include “1989″ and numerical formulae such as “63 + 1″, used to refer to the date of the crackdown – “6.4″ in US-style date order, which is also blocked.
Discussion of the Tiananmen crackdown, in which at least several hundred people died, is strictly controlled by China’s ruling Communist party, which is wary of challenges to its authority.
Reports say that Sina, the company which runs Sina Weibo, employs teams of censors to delete posts, generally exercising self-censorship rather than receiving direct instructions from the Party.
@west awake: they’re waiting in the side lines to announce the ever selective climate “change” hysteria. You know that change thing that only effects summers (not winters funnily enough). Yet still does not effect summer berries etc arriving on cue every year too.
Instead of trying to investigate the why and the how of these forest fires they just cackle a cult like tune of “it’s man made climate change” in unison. If you challenge their so called science (new age version) you are called a trump fan or something (like juvenile toddlers)
@west awake: what about the unusual heatwave in Asia where they are facing the highest recorded temperatures in history for a month of April or what about the severe droughts faced by the likes of Morocco? Maybe that is where these pundits are, informing themselves.
@ForrestG45: @ForrestG45: yeah it’s always warm in those places. Natural climate. However ….. add exaggerated temperature testing and a big dose of hysterical reporting / media propaganda (George Lee anyone ?) and hey presto we have “climate change” narrative for naive people to latch onto.
Denyers be denying. I love these chats re the weather though. It shows how far we’ve all come. Moore’s Almanac said it best when it said… there’ll always be weather, whether or not we weather it. Ok I made that up.
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