The Sweet Smell of Bullshit

The IOC would have the world believe that internet access in China, for the period of the Olympics, is more or less free and unfettered for the foreign journalists who are camped en masse there.

The IOC released a statement:

"The media should be seeing a noticeable difference in accessibility to websites that they need to report on the Olympic Games.

Open Internet access has always been assured by [Beijing Organising Committee] and the Chinese authorities, and the IOC is pleased to see these reassurances being upheld."

All very nice, except for one small problem.

It is bullshit!

Thousands of sites remain unavailable to both journalists and Beijing residents; including TypePad, LiveJournal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Technorati, parts of Wikipedia and the Huffington Post.

WebSitePulse.com has a "China Firewall test" tool, which lets users input a site's address to see if it's working in Beijing. Why not try it out for yourself?

Free Website Test tools by WebSitePulse

The IOC does not come out of this very well at all.

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Web Access in Beijing

The IOC have announced that Chinese and international organisers are working on a compromise to unblock censored websites for the foreign media.

Despite the fact that Beijing has unblocked a number of banned sites, including Amnesty International, there are others that remain blocked.

IOC President Jacques Rogge has promised free and unrestricted net access for foreign journalists during the games.

The IOC and the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, have set up a working group to determine which remaining censored websites can be opened up to reporters.

With nine days to go, they will have their work cut out!

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The Great Firewall of China II

For those who have problems in China wrt accessing the certain sites on the net, Amnesty International Australia have set up the Chinese Internet Censor Index for you to record you frustrations.

The Telegraph reports that politically sensitive sites, including those dealing with Tibet and Taiwan and the BBC (technical problems are blamed), are still blocked.

However, you can buy porn in the Games village bookshop, which sells erotic books featuring pictures of naked women with titles such as "Drawing book for the Nude".

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The Great Firewall of China

Those of you who are travelling to China for the forthcoming Beijing Olympics, who want to be able to access all of the web during the visit will need to use a proxy to get around the firewall.

When I go to China I use www.anonymouse.org. There are of course others, do a Google and look them up before you go.

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The "Unseen" Adverts

Amnesty International has managed, rather cleverly, to highlight an issue that vexes them without even resorting to an official advertising campaign.

Amnesty's French offices commissioned TBWA to create a series of adverts highlighting China's alleged human rights abuses, in the run up to the Olympics.

The adverts included images of a man being pushed headfirst into a swimming pool, a policeman walking away from a man who has been shot while lashed to an archery target and a woman chained to a dumbbell in the colours of the Olympic rings.

The tag line is:

"After the Olympic Games, the fight for human rights must go on."

Amnesty in the end decided never to show them, because they were too graphic. However, they were entered for a website competition and inevitably ended up circulating on the web even crossing the Great Firewall of China.

The adverts, despite never being officially shown, have caused a huge amount of controversy in China and resulted in a large amount of publicity for Amnesty.

There is one more irony here.

TBWA, which produced the advertisements, also put together a series of adverts aimed at the Chinese Olympics market, including a series for Adidas featuring local athletes and their fans.

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