February 04, 2004

• I'm really glad to read this. It's hard to imagine that many people being oppressed by so few.
• 30,000 web police are thought to be monitoring chatrooms and sites
• U.S. blunders with keyword blacklist
• Progress Report for Net Censors
• The strange, half-free condition of Chinese Web surfers
• Nigritude ultramarine. What the hey.
• Wolof, I didn't understand that link, but it sent me to the Hunger Site, which I'm grateful for.
• Beijing launches crackdown on SMS
• A blogger's tale: The Stainless Steel Mouse
• Google omits controversial news stories in China
• Naughty naughty Google.
• Yahoo 'helped jail China writer'
• Microsoft takes down Chinese blogger
• I'd been following that homunculus, as I was a regular reader on Anti's - I think there's definitely a lot in the dirty tricks by rivals Bokee theory - that was a despicable posting from them. The whole Beijing News thing has been very interesting too and I expect more to undfold over the next week or two. That could apparently alos be a case of political accusations being used for commercial ends.
• Yahoo implicated in 3rd China dissident case
• China Stands Firm on Censorship
• Which search engine censors the worst in China?
• HOWTO bypass China's Great Firewall
• China Jails Reporter Over Essays on Graft
• ... and what's the Chinese word for Halliburton?
• China cracks down on short Web films
• Oh man, i can just see the fun you could have doing a mashup of those old Communist films. "Sparkling Red Star". Yup, sign me up. Is YouTube banned in China, I wonder?
• No, it's not SB, as yet. People do indeed have fun making some killer spoofs of all sorts of stuff (and lots of pretty rubbish ones too). There's also several local clones of Youtube. Here's a post on the spoofing phenomenon, and here's a translation of a local response to the crackdown.
• Heh, the title of the latter translation is great: "The General Administration of Anxiety about Radio, Film and TV"! Also this great quote from your first link: "With the development of Chinese society and an increase in the amount of protein and vitamins taken in by young people, students on campus are no longer so quiescent." It's neat that they've come up with a neologism for spoofing. What are those two Chinese characters they mention in the article? (egao?)
• They're the first two characters in the title of that first piece Sb - 恶搞. 'gao' is a verb of doing, often in a slightly negative way, 'e' means naughtiness and evil and the like. Literally, 'deliberately doing an evil version of' I guess, or similar.
• Whoops, i meant the actual Chinese characters themselves (i can read Chinese on a very simple basis). I was curious which characters they were. (the characters show up as "??" in my browser, so is it just my browser that's not showing them?)
• Must be a browser or font problem SB - I pasted the characters into my post above. Here they are again: 恶搞 No doubt that'll just be question marks too.
• They show up fine for me, so it's probably browser/OS.
• The Chinese authorities are lucky. At least they don't have to worry about Cyber Terrorist Hippies!
• This is pretty funny, all i see are two question marks. I'll have to pokey around the OS ta sort it out.
• Hup, got it. I needed to download Asian language support via the Control-Panel->Regional Languages in XP.
• Meanwhile, next door: US citizen among 3 "cyber-dissidents" arrested in Vietnam.
• Wikipedia defies China's censors
• That one's FPP material, homie!
• China official: What 'net censorship? What jailed journalists?
• China nukes Marxists.org
• It was blocked from here for the longest time. My best guess is because it uses a version of Mao's collected works that was compiled overseas, so hasn't undergone the handy historical revisions of the received text here, plus it archives the work of Chinese Troksyists, like Chen Bilan. The Party are not keen on leftists using the works of Mao to criticise current policy directions, it seems. Stranger still, I read this news first having finally been able to access the site without using a proxy just the other day, so Christ knows what's going on. I try not to attempt to follow the arcane thought processes of the censors; that way madness lies. Last, I think the various mirrors will still work after Feb 1.
• China official vows to 'purify' Web
• China censorship damaged us, Google founders admit
• China treats Internet ‘addicts’ sternly. Leaders see ‘a grave social problem’; treatment includes electric shocks
• China Blocks LiveJournal
• But MoFi seems to get through.
• MoFi is unstoppable!
• Wife of Chinese Cyber Dissident to Sue Yahoo
• China: gov to expand "Great 'Net Firewall," censor web even more
• Meanwhile, in India...
• Chinese Cyber-Dissident and Wife Sue Yahoo
• China is using the 2008 Olympic Games as a catalyst for suppressing dissent in the name of stability, Amnesty International has said.
• Flickr not even flickering in China: Internet photo site says service is being blocked and hopes it's only temporary
• It seems to be because people were live blogging photos of a recent demonstration in Xiamen using Flickr. The block is weird - you can see your own pics and upload etc, but actual images on contacts' pages are blocked whilst the page itself is there. There's a Firefox add on that gets round it.
• Web censorship is failing, says Chinese official
• China: blog providers sign "self-discipline" act to nix anonymous blogging
• An Opportunity for Wall St. in China’s Surveillance Boom
• China's Great Firewall turns its attention to RSS feeds
• A “Journey to the Heart of Internet censorship” on eve of party congress
• I Was Only Following "Lawful" Orders--Yahoo!
• Yahoo Settles with Chinese Writers
• China In the Habit of Copying and Redirecting US Sites?
• The Great Firewall: China's Misguided — and Futile — Attempt to Control What Happens Online
• Great Firewall of China Faces Online Rebels
• Great firewall of China may hinder blogging Olympians
• In other news: Cyber-Rebels in Cuba Defy State’s Limits
• China blocks YouTube over Tibet videos
• Images and News of Tibet Riots Seep Onto Web, Despite Chinese Authorities' Clampdown
• A prominent activist who publicised human rights abuses across China has been convicted of subversion and jailed for three-and-a-half years.
• China's Censorship Seesaw: Wikipedia Unblocked and Hu Jia Jailed
• Espionage Against Pro-Tibet Groups, Others, Spurred Microsoft Patches
• Yahoo! in China: Lessons for all of us, everywhere.
• Ahead of Olympics, Congressman Pushes 'Global Online Freedom Act'
• Jailed Chinese Journalist Shi Tao's Poem Follows Olympic Torch's Route Online
• China's All-Seeing Eye: With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
• Chinese Censors: Yeah, We’re Still Here
• China’s Cyber-Militia: Chinese hackers pose a clear and present danger to U.S. government and private-sector computer networks and may be responsible for two major U.S. power blackouts.
• OTOH: Did Hackers Cause the 2003 Northeast Blackout? Umm, No
• Falling Short: Olympic Promises Unfulfilled as China Falters on Press Freedom
• Chinese Bloggers Score a Victory Against the Government
• That's actually a bit of over-egging the role of blogs by WSJ there, and strange as it seems to say, a bit of a disservice to the central authorities. IIRC initial press conference by a central official really wasn't a cover-up and they promised to look into events, but that part didn't make it to the blogs. They have now done that with the results you see. There really is little patience at the highest level for the worst abuses of local officials, and it really doesn't do to think of the government here as a monolith. Unfortunately the conservatives unwilling to adopt the measures which could actually serve as a safeguard against local corruption still hold sway. There are many in government who understand the only way to avoid this kind abuse followed by post hoc fire and rescue is a genuine separation of powers and enabling citizens to exercise proper oversight over government. There are rumours of further reforms to that effect come October once the two Olympics are done and dusted.
• Interesting. Thanks for explaining that, Abiezer.
• I might have that a bit wrong though, hom, and you can usually rely on rumours of good days to come to turn out empty. I tend to be a bit of a victim of the last analysis I read, and the last one just happened to be a bit optimistic. Of course, the non-open nature of politics here tends to leave you guessing.
• What?! I'll never trust you again.
• Digital China: Ten Things Worth Knowing about the Chinese Internet
• :D
• Oh, and here's something by a man who does know what he's talking about: China’s leaders and the internet
• Good link. Thanks! I guess I trust you again. For now.
• *eyes hom evilly, schemes ways to win his heart*
• Weng'an riots, push-up protests, fifty-cent party, astroturf...head spinning yet?
• China plunges into controversy with Internet backflip
• China’s iron Olympic grip starts to slip: Internet critics, made bold by their uncensored criticism of the Games’ opening ceremony, are seeking new targets
• The Chinese Censorship Foreigners Don't See
• A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous.
• Beijing issues warning over peace prize choice
• I'm sure the article is wrong in saying that Hu is under house arrest (and says itself he was jailed for three and a half years). The most recent thing I read by his wife was on the difficulty of travelling to visit him in prison in Tianjin.
• Hmm, that's a pretty serious error.
• Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales meets China's censors
• Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China
• Students Quarantined in University As Epidemic Unfolds
• Blogger Zhou Shuguang a.k.a. "Zola" barred from leaving China: "potential threat to state security"
• In a similar but more frivolous vein, Chinese Democracy banned in, um, China
• China blocks access to New York Times Web site
• China To Make Its MMORPG Players Register With Their Real Names And Government IDs
• China’s YouTube Block: A Tibet Connection?
• Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
• China carries on with censorship plan, as Google capitulates
• China's censorship blowback
• Chinese Government Closes In On Anonymous Commenters
• "There are no dissidents in China."
• China Green Dam web filter teams 'face funding crisis': Reports from China say a controversial government-backed software project to filter internet content could be on the brink of collapse.
• Sounds good to me!! China needs to benefit from the full depth and breadth of teh intarwebs, as we do. Let them have their LOLcats!
• ...and rickrolls.
• Nobel Peace Prize awarded to China dissident Liu Xiaobo China blanks Nobel Peace prize searches
• Chinese Twitter user seized after supporting Liu Xiaobo: Police arrest woman after she tweets her intention to march with a banner praising jailed Nobel peace prize winner
• Wikileaks’ China/Google bombshell
• China Tightens Censorship of Electronic Communications
• The Forbidden Citizen: Why 2012 will be a very bad year to be a Chinese dissident -- and what America can do about it.
• I see the whole US/China thing going more pear-shaped in 2012.
• Chen Guangcheng, blind Chinese lawyer-activist, escapes house arrest
• Chinese online censorship targets "collective action" posts: A Harvard team finds that China's Internet policy allows more than most realize.
• Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader: Many relatives of Mr. Wen became wealthy during his leadership New York Times blocked by China after report on wealth of Wen Jiabao's family
• Banned In China: Ai Weiwei's 'Gangnam Style' Video
• I don't know, banning is "Gangnam" anywhere really all that bad?
• Censored in China: ‘Today,’ ‘Tonight’ and ‘Big Yellow Duck’
• How China is trying to get its citizens to censor themselves
• Related (in my mind): While the US downsizes from Disney Stores to Disney Shops, Shanghai is getting the largest Disney Store in the world Because China is a much better Market...
• How the Chinese regime uses web censorship to strengthen the state: Far from being an unwieldy instrument, China’s system of censorship is a sharp tool which mines popular opinion to help make decisions