IOC Admits Internet Censorship Deal With China

Dave writes "BEIJING (Reuters) — Some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive websites despite promises of unrestricted access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday. Persistent pollution fears and China's concerns about security in Tibet also remained problems for organizers nine days before the Games begin. China had committed to providing media with the same freedom to report on the Games as they enjoyed at previous Olympics, but journalists have this week complained of finding access to sites deemed sensitive to its communist leadership blocked. 'I regret that it now appears BOCOG has announced that there will be limitations on website access during Games time,' IOC press chief Kevan Gosper said, referring to Beijing's Olympic organizers. 'I also now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related,' he said." But yet somehow the mainstream media will ignore this because the Olympics are patriotic or something.

Comments

Re:No problem

[Wiarumas]

VPNs and proxies both work through China's firewall.

Re:Surprise...

[randyest]

Is your link supposed to show that communists don't try to suppress information? Or that Bush is a communist? Or something totally irrelevant like Bush also tries to suppress information? I'm so confused....

DELETE PARENT: Copyright violation

[JSBiff]

I hate crap-tastic 'news' websites as much as the next guy, but PLEASE do not EVER copy the entire text of a copyrighted article into the Slasdhot comments. You are inviting a lawsuit by the copyright holder against Slashdot. Slashdot can probably pass on the buck to you, maybe, but since you posted as anonymous coward, that probably leaves /. holding the buck. Setup your own damn website to violate copyright.

Re:DELETE PARENT: Copyright violation

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to contradict, but to my understanding you are incorrect.

They can not sue Slashdot for hosting this content: they have to ask Slashdot to take it down and then they can sue Slashdot if they refuse...

Re:Why...

[Moryath]

If you're making a complete report (instead of the biased nonsense the chinese want), you want to check what the current status is with the various reputable groups who are doublechecking on them.

And despite their horrible record on Israel/Palestine, Amnesty International are pretty reputable on almost all other issues.

Likewise, you'll want to check up on other sources - outside dissident groups (which Falun Gong is, not an "evil fake religion" as the chinese propaganda dept labeled them), Taiwanese gov't, etc.

That is, if you're doing fair and honest reporting. And not just being a chinese shill.

Re:Mainstream media is covering it.

[ringmaster_j]

Yeah, the CBC just had a very long report on this, including having their 'tech expert' give ideas as to how the media could get around the great firewall. Oddly enough, this year the CBC has been evenly split down the middle, between covering the games' greatness, and covering their awfulness. In past years, there was nothing controversial to report on (unless you count Athens' down-to-the-wire construction schedule.)

Re:Obama's shady dealings?

[Moryath]

For starters, his corrupt close relationship with a slumlord who's now in prison for bribery of Illinois officials, who just "happened" to then give Obama a $300,000 "deal" on a house and later another $600,000 "deal" on a plot of land next door to expand Obama's yard space.

And then there's the borderline illegal tactics Obama used to get into political office in the first place by preventing his opponents' names from being on the ballot, while Rezko was bankrolling his first campaign...

I've lived an hour from Obama's house. Trust me when I say I know him from the days before he went on this big campaign: the man is dirtier than a Lousiana mayor.

Re:Obama's shady dealings?

[randyest]

How's he supposed to cite when no one's reporting on it? ;) Seriously, here's one example. There are others, but I can't be arsed to bother. I sure hope the Boston Globe isn't "worldnetdaily or the like" in your mind.

Re:No problem

[Neodudeman]

Actually, VPNs aren't banned. VPN's are really important for companies situated in China to reach out to the rest of the world. The government knows this, and willingly lets any packets tagged VPN through. If they didn't, many vendors would complain, and quite possibly leave China; and the Chinese government doesn't want that

Re:Not Patriotism... Money

[mrogers]

Is anyone reporting on the fact that the US Congress has only a 14% job approval rating while Bush is at least above 25%? No? I wonder why - maybe it doesn't fit the biased story the MSM wants to portray.

Here's a Reuters story about it. Here's an ABC News story. Here's an MSNBC story. All from the first page of a Google search. Are those mainstream enough for you?

Well Said!

[Moryath]

And to answer the PP:

So, he knew a guy who had a company that had one big financial issue, and did 5 hours of work for him in the 6 years he was in office. And this suddenly makes him a huge criminal?

No, he:
-actually refuses to release the records showing how much work he actually did.
-is on record as naming the guy as one of his "best friends."
-Got nearly a million dollars' "discount" from the guy on his house in two deals, in addition to extremely sizable donations to every one of his campaigns.

So he went out there and checked to make sure that their signitures on the ballots were taken in a legal method?

No, he tied up the petitions to get on the ballot in legal maneuvering till the due-date expired. Plus, keeping people off the ballot is what they do in socialist/communist countries like China and Cuba and Venezuela, not civilized countries.

I have no problem with a potential president who wants rule by law.

I'd love to have one. Too bad neither the Democrats nor Republicans are running one.

How does that make him dirtier than a guy who takes openhanded bribes and hides them in his freezer?

It makes him just as dirty. And you should, as the above responder mentions, instead be asking the question: why are the democrats running a guy this dirty?

Re:Well Said!

[Moryath]

Media bias cuts both ways now, get over it.

Actually, you might be interested in real studies on the matter. Here's one from UCLA (hardly a right-wing place), which determines that drudge, fox news, etc are actually pretty damn even and not as right-wing as you claim, while the "traditional" media lean FAR left.

I should point out George W...

You don't have to convince me here. All I want to know is how much Mexican bribery money he and his cronies like Johnny Sutton get every year to keep the border open and turn our border patrol agents into political prisoners when they actually do make drug busts.

Rather was the only one he tried to make an issue out of it and he was destroyed...

Actually, Rather was destroyed by his own hubris and inability to double-check his source. He ran with a bad story, and rather than admit that he'd been snookered, he kept screaming about how obvious forgeries were "genuine" till CBS had no choice but to axe him.

We could switch to Hillary though she has shady dealings...

Again, you don't have to convince me there.

So I suspect the "media bias" you see these days is the "liberal" media is biting the bullet and embracing Obama because there just isn't anyone better.

Actually, there are many. Bob Barr would make a decent candidate. A number of the candidates on the Republican and Democrat stages would have been better, but the Media were caught up in the star power of just a few and wouldn't give the others equal time and exposure to make their case to the American people.

At least he is very smart, charismatic, a good speaker and is a complete change from the disaster of the last eight years.

Somewhat like driving a car that's on fire with the doors welded shut from the heat, and driving it off a pier into 50-foot deep water, but yes, a "change"...

If we keep playing the gotcha politics you are going to end up with someone with a squeaky clean record but who is totally incompetent

You mean like Jimmy Carter? Obama is dangerously close to him both in policies and experience level. And you remember the damage Carter did to us in just four years.

I don't like McCain, but I like even less someone whose response to an economic crisis is to hike my taxes.

And think about it this way: the last thing I should want is to let the Democrats have control of both the Congress and the Presidency. I mean seriously, the last time they had that, we had two years of fright (the "glory days" of the Clinton years didn't start until after the Republicans were in power in Congress). And before that, I grew up in them, so I can remember the Carter days quite well thank you very much.

Re:Well Said!

[demachina]

My God, media bias isn't something you can quantify in a study, its in the eyes of the beholder. You also have to decide where the middle is. The middle in the U.S. has moved dramatically to the right in recent years, since Reagan and especially since 9/11. The middle in most of Europe would be considered very liberal in the U.S. I think most of the world thinks the middle in the U.S. is now hovering dangerously close to right wing nut job.

The accuracy of the study was shredded when they said Fox wasn't biased. I'm sure when Fox is reporting generic wire news they don't have much bias, no one does, but everyone of their stars and commentators drips right wing bias, every time they cover politics they drip bias. Bill Kristol and Karl Rove are two of their star contributors, say no more. Rupert Murdock and Roger Ailes politics are well known and they created Fox News to carry news from their political perspective. They are constantly cheerleading the Bush administration and the Republicans. The night of the 2006 elections their entire election team was crushed because the Republicans got clocked and their run was over.

CNN was blatantly liberal biased when Ted Turned ran it, it was no secret. Since Turner was replaced by Time Warner and CNN was getting clocked by Fox their liberal bias completely evaporated, at least at CNN US. CNN International is still pretty liberal but its based in Europe, and Europe is extremely liberal compared to the U.S. I can barely tell CNN America from Fox any more, and the quality of their reporting has completely cratered. The New York Time is indisputably liberal, its one of the last liberal bastions, lucky for the right, newspapers are dieing. CBS and Katie I can't detect political bias because she is so fixated on human interest stories most of the time. Gibson and Williams again I can't see the bias, but maybe I'm biased, and there is so little editorial left on the network news anyway since Rather was beheaded.

"He ran with a bad story, and rather than admit that he'd been snookered, he kept screaming about how obvious forgeries were "genuine" till CBS had no choice but to axe him."

It wasn't a bad story, it was an accurate story which is how Rather tripped himself up. He knew it was true, he was desperate to influence the election and stop another four years of madness and stuck his neck out too far. The problem was all the original documents were destroyed by the Bushistas. They certainly were by the time Bush was governor of Texas since he controlled all his records as Governor of Texas. The forgery was described by the secretary for the Guard commander as being about right, it just wasn't the original unfortunately. The original was probably burned long ago.

"Bob Barr would make a decent candidate"

Excepting even the Republican party wouldn't nominate him because he is a Libertarian and a real conservative and the Republican party doesn't remember what real conservatism is any more, they've fallen so far. No telling what skeletons he has in his closet if he gets put under the microscope.

"You mean like Jimmy Carter? Obama is dangerously close to him both in policies and experience level. And you remember the damage Carter did to us in just four years."

Well, then like now the Republicans elected him by being so corrupt and morally bankrupt the voters were going to throw them out no matter who was running against them.

I don't remember Carter well enough to remember exactly how good or bad he was, and the post mortem on him is completely biased against him now. I remember the whole of the establishment, Wall Street, the military, Republicans hated him and worked to make him fail. They did the same thing to Kennedy, Clinton and Truman. Johnson destroyed himself with Vietnam. Unfortunately most of the people with the real power and money in the U.S. are conservatives and Republican's and they routinely do everything in their power to destroy liberal Presidents and they generally succeed because they h

Re:Obama's shady dealings?

[Reality Master 201]

Mmm. Well, first, the bit about "borderline illegal" tactics by Obama is just kinda bullshit. From the linked article:

Obama's challenge was perfectly legal, said Jay Stewart of the Chicago's Better Government Association. Although records of the challenges are no longer on file for review with the election board, Stewart said Obama is not the only politician to resort to petition challenges to eliminate the competition.

"He came from Chicago politics," Stewart said. "Politics ain't beanbag, as they say in Chicago. You play with your elbows up, and you're pretty tough and ruthless when you have to be. Sen. Obama felt that's what was necessary at the time, that's what he did. Does it fit in with the rhetoric now? Perhaps not."

So, by "borderline illegal," you mean, "a completely legal application of the electoral rules of Chicago that sounds fairly well in keeping with the political climate in the city?"

As for the Rezko thing, here's a better article (same author, more recent):
http://www.suntimes.com/news/watchdogs/757340,CST-NWS-watchdog24.article

A few months after Obama became a U.S. senator, he and Rezko's wife, Rita, bought adjacent pieces of property from a doctor in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood -- a deal that has dogged Obama the last two years. The doctor sold the mansion to Obama for $1.65 million -- $300,000 below the asking price. Rezko's wife paid full price -- $625,000 -- for the adjacent vacant lot. The deals closed in June 2005. Six months later, Obama paid Rezko's wife $104,500 for a strip of her land, so he could have a bigger yard. At the time, it had been widely reported that Tony Rezko was under federal investigation. Questioned later about the timing of the Rezko deal, Obama called it "boneheaded" because people might think the Rezkos had done him a favor.

So, there's the $300k under asking price sale from a doctor in Kenwood, not Rezko. The next door purchase of the vacant lot seems odd, but then of course, Obama did buy a bit of land for $104,500.

So your assertion that they gave Obama a deal on the house is merely untrue. That the gave him another deal on the plot of land next door is inaccurate - they bought it for ~600k, but he only bought a chunk of it. The most you could say is that the Rezkos somehow bought the land at full price to buy off the doctor to get him to sell Obama the house more cheaply, but that's at best a circumstantial argument.

Further, one thing I didn't see is any allegation of quid pro quo for the supposed payoff.

I've lived an hour from Obama's house. Trust me when I say I know him from the days before he went on this big campaign: the man is dirtier than a Lousiana mayor.

I fail to see why I or anyone else should take you at your word about Obama's supposed dirtiness. I see one bullshitty allegation, and one allegation that may be shady or may just be a stupid move that's relatively innocent.

Re:seriously... is anyone suprised by this?

[Shakrai]

Let's face it, we've replaced a military cold war with an economic one; where the competing powers now hold the capacity to destroy each other's economies

I don't buy this. How could they "destroy" our economy? What critical resource do we get from China that we can't obtain elsewhere? Cheap manufactured goods that can't be economically produced in the United States? There's lots of developing countries that would LOVE the chance to sell those types of goods to the American market. Latin and South America both come to mind. Heck you don't even need a trade dispute/war to make this happen -- I've heard quite a few different economists say that energy prices are starting to become a drag on globalization and trade.

There was an interesting segment on Newshour regarding this -- most of the experts they talked to disagreed about the exact number but all agreed that if oil rises beyond a certain point ($200/bbl on the low end, $300/bbl on the high end) that transportation costs will become prohibitive enough to start to rollback globalization. If that happens I think that China will be worse off then we will -- who else is going to buy that amount of cheap crap besides the EU and United States?

Re:seriously... is anyone suprised by this?

[Anonymous Coward]

A massive amount of foreign debt is in Chinese hands. If it were all called in at once, the US economy would collapse.

But then so would theirs. The Chinese like to talk about how much other countries need them, but they need us just as much.