Before the Internet, this would never have been possible in China:
Whenever people want to bring more regulations to the Internet, chances are, they'll end up giving the government more power to suppress content that is damaging to it.
Video footage of a Chinese official's drunken attempt to force himself on an 11-year-old girl has triggered a police inquiry and a torrent of online criticism, state media reported Tuesday.Indeed, as the user points out, organized crime is often a lot more circumspect in its dealings with the community than the government is. After all, they may be criminals, but they're also businessmen after a fashion and it's bad for business to turn one's marketplace into a war zone. The economically unproductive government, however, doesn't really tend to pay attention to such things until it has the potential to lose face or create a widespread lack of confidence in it.
Lin Jiaxiang, party secretary of the Shenzhen maritime bureau in southern China's Guangdong province, allegedly grabbed the girl by the throat after she gave him directions to the toilet in the restaurant where he was eating.
"It looks like organised crime and the government should swap places, in this case organised crime seems more righteous than the government," an online user said on sina.com.
Whenever people want to bring more regulations to the Internet, chances are, they'll end up giving the government more power to suppress content that is damaging to it.
"...in this case organised crime seems more righteous than the government,"
And in one phrase, this Chinese commenter sums up why Hamas won the election in Palestine.
Only now that they've been forced to live at some of the most extreme poverty levels in the world, and have almost no access to much of the Israeli economy, Fatah is looking pretty good in hindsight.