Search News from Limbo

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Banned in China?

China is stepping up its filtering of "harmful information" from foreign internet sources, the AP reports. China encourages use of the internet for business reasons but is becoming increasingly controlling of "bad thoughts," whether pornographic, Tibetan Buddhist, Falun Gong or otherwise uncool.

There can be little doubt that Lifting the veil is on Red China's list of blocked web sites. Hell, it's even blocked in the U.S. from time to time... (If you have any information on such curtailments, please write me or give me a call [see above]. Lots of luck getting through...)

A British student paper's press run was seized because it quoted a visiting Palestinian journalist as saying the press was pro-Israel and "you only have to look at who controls the media." Sameh Akram Habeeb's comments were removed by a school official (or student editor?) named Jack Codd, according to Habeeb's newspaper, the Palestine Telegraph. The University of Leeds' student newspaper is protesting the censorship.

The Telegraph reports that a Jewish sub-editor who vigorously protested was ejected from the paper's offices at Codd's behest.

The world's top 40 press predators were named by Reporters without Borders yesterday, which was World Press Freedom Day. I went to the web site and found that some predator had hacked in and restricted easy access to the list. I found myself in a closed loop (the internet version of "the old runaround"), making it impossible to see the sketches of the top malefactors.

Commemorating World Press Freedom Day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blasted the baddies who get rough with journalists... Now, if she could just have a word with certain security gurus in the U.S. government...

Australia's net nanny controversy is still raging. Bella Counihan wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that the filtering measure is a "policy duck" with much more than meets they eye below the surface.

BTW, we learn that the government's idea to outlaw promotion of methods of outwitting the filters followed a Pirate Party lesson to a group of senior citizens on how to do just that.

I should have made clear yesterday that Sima Vaknin, Israel's chief censor, was trying to make clear that what Israel does isn't exactly censorship. She would prefer a better word to describe what she does, which in America is called prior restraint of press matter that must meet her approval before it can be released. Maybe she could use that term.

No comments:

Post a Comment