Chinese bloggers denounce censorship

Web censorship in China

The Web is currently the subject of a battle between Washington and Beijing. A confrontation caused by Google, which is planning to quit China after being the victim of cyber attacks. During a speech given last Thursday, Hillary Clinton spoke in favour of a free internet, incurring Beijing’s wrath.

This was the opportunity for many Chinese net users to make themselves heard and to denounce online censorship. On Sunday a blogger called for mobilisation on Twitter. He urged net users to flood the site with messages hostile to the great electronic wall, the name given to the web filtering measures implemented by Beijing.

 
Censorship which concerns sensitive political issues, pornography and video games. In this video, filmed in the virtual world of ‘World of Warcraft’, devotees of the game, currently unavailable in China, rise up against all of these restrictions.

Avoiding these filters or ‘jumping over the wall’ as Chinese net users call it, remains nevertheless possible. Several programmes allowing people to avoid censorship are circulating on line. And they are updated regularly, when censors reinforce filters.
 

Conversely, this application targets foreign net users want to slip inside the skin of a Chinese net user. It’s goodbye to Youtube, Facebook and Twitter: they can surf as though they were behind the Great Electronic Wall of China.
 

Meg Whitman : California's next governor?

Will the former director General of Ebay, Meg Whitman be appointed as the Republican party candidate for the November vote, which is to nominate a successor to Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California? According to Friday’s poll, she holds 45% of voting intentions, compared with 17% for her opponent, Steve Poizner.

However, on the web, the candidate is receiving a great deal of criticism. A site entitled, negmeg, has been set up to denounce her candidacy. It calls on net users to post negative opinions about the candidate, such as this animation which criticises the methods she employed while she was Ebay President.
 

In this video, supporters of Steve Poizner criticise the fact that she has not voted since 1974. They ask, ‘how can you vote for someone who doesn’t vote’?
 

And many bloggers are also broadcasting remarks by the President of Craigslist. During his trial against Ebay in December, the latter declared that there are two Meg Whitmans. Usually likeable, she apparently turns into a monster when angry.
 

But others defend the woman who participated in John McCain’s campaign during the last Presidential elections, such as this video blogger. A former Democrat, he asserts having become a Republican thanks to her and calls on net users to give her their votes.
 

Meanwhile Meg Whitman continues to run an active online campaign. A campaign mainly aimed at women, as shown by this video.