Sign The Pledge!

[johnrh]

All readers and members, please do this. Click the link....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5020788.stm

Go to irrepressible.info and sign up. Everyone should do this now!

[clokwise]

Go to irrepressible.info and sign up. Everyone should do this now!

I wonder how long will it be before that site is blocked in Thailand?

[Crushdepth]

I wonder how long will it be before that site is blocked in Thailand?

Well, seeing as they are now blocking new sites before they've had any content uploaded, probably not very long!

[elkangorito]

All readers and members, please do this. Click the link....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5020788.stm

Go to irrepressible.info and sign up. Everyone should do this now!

I signed it. I just love 'people power'

[johnrh]

I wonder how long will it be before that site is blocked in Thailand?

Well, seeing as they are now blocking new sites before they've had any content uploaded, probably not very long!

For anyone interested in looking into this a bit further, the ONI map website http://opennet.net/map/ is worth a click, although so far it only covers a few countries.

[britmaveric]

Don't think those that censor really will care much about a petition.

[elkangorito]

Don't think those that censor really will care much about a petition.

Every 'drop in the ocean' counts.

[Artisan]

Don't think those that censor really will care much about a petition.

That's for real, isn't it? Countries like China, Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, persecute and imprison people simply for criticising their government, calling for democracy and greater freedom of the press or using the Internet to exposing human rights abuses.

But it's not only about governments. The IT companies of the USA have helped build the systems that enable surveillance and censorship to take place. Yahoo! have supplied email users’ private data to the Chinese authorities, helping to facilitate cases of wrongful imprisonment. Microsoft and Google have both complied with government demands to actively censor Chinese users of their services. It's these mega-companies that should be targetted with anti-repression petitions, lobbies and boycotts.

[Toni]

All readers and members, please do this. Click the link....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5020788.stm

Go to irrepressible.info and sign up. Everyone should do this now!

I strongly recommend reading the story in Bangkok Post (Thailand) under Opinion and Analyses dated September 20, 2005, written by Alan Dawson.

I read in OPINION & ANALYSIS:

ANALYSIS/MEDIA CENSORSHIP IN CHINA

Yahoo feeds great firewall of China

Internet site bows to pressure and delivers a journalist into the clutches of the Chinese police

“In one of the greatest developments of the digital age, the leading worldwide website Yahoo fulfilled the dream it shared with millions of young internauts and launched the first new style of modern news coverage since the invention of the TV camera.

Then in an instant, Yahoo proved it is unworthy of any trust, a fifth column in the ranks of press freedom, and willing to sell out journalists and reporters at the drop of a dollar bill.

Blame globalisation, the tortured (we shall return to that word) difficulties of doing business with many governments, the complications faced by internet companies.

Blame the 250 national laws that often – usually – conflict on important matters, but actually what happened was quit simple.

Yahoo opened a new site (hotzone.yahoo.com) where a young, hotshot and extremely digitally endowed correspondent, Kevin Sites, is to produce the first news of, for and financed by, a major all-internet company.

And Yahoo also picket out a young, hotshot and dedicated journalist, Shi Tao, and shopped him to the Chinese police who immediately arrested him, took him somewhere no one could see what happened next and, eventually, took him to a judge who sent him to jail for ten years for the crime of being a young, hotshot reporter.

So far as we know, and it must be noted that we may not know everything because of the way China throttles and intimidates the media, Mr. Shi was a reporter for Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News) of Hunan province.

Like all Chinese newsmen, he was called last year to a conference with the Chinese secret police for instructions on how to cover the 15th anniversary of the massacre of democracy advocates at Tiananmen Square, which boils down to “not aggressively”.

Mr Shi, who believes (or believed) in freedom of press, emailed this printed document to a friend in America – the court sneered that the friend was a counterrevolutionary, aka dissident – who posted them on a website.

The secret police served a notice on Yahoo Hong Kong to provide all details of e-mail accounts that might be tied to Mr. Shi, and Yahoo immediately did that, because Yahoo keeps all such records on everyone’s e-mail.

Mr. Shi was imprisoned last April on the basis of the information Yahoo provided, for “revealing state secrets”.

Remember, the information was an instruction to newspapers on how to cover their news – and it is easy to see why China would want to cover up such exceptionally blatant censorship that stomps on freedom like a cockroach.

We return to that word torture, because it is unclear just why and how the Chinese approached Yahoo Hong Kong with a precise “request” for details of Mr. Shi’s accounts and records of his e-correspondents.

Amnesty International provided possibly helpful clues in its most recent summery of how Chinese invite arrestees to cooperate in state enquiries.

“Tens of thousands of people continued to be detained or imprisoned in violation of their fundamental human rights and were at high risk of torture or ill-treatment,” Amnesty notes.

“Thousands of people were sentenced to death or executed, many after unfair trials.”

Mr. Shi was not sentenced to death, and is possible he never was tortured. And it is also possible he was persuaded to disclose the Yahoo e-mail address by an approach other than polite police questioning.

All of this is horrible, and Mr. Shi would be worthy of protest by free-press advocates around the globe, if China had arrested and railroaded him into prison without the help of an American company, out of the other side of its mouth, is celebrating its entry into journalism.

Yahoo did this to Mr. Shi willingly, without the slightest compunction or shred of protest or legal action, even though the venue for its poltroonery was Hong Kong which, to Beijing’s distress, still has courts and lawyers.

Yahoo did not attempt to use the legal system to oppose the Beijing order.

It did not attempt to use the Hong Kong press to publicise what it could have claimed was its plight in shopping a journalist, although it is highly likely Beijing would have backed away if Yahoo had done so.

On the craven contrary, when the publicity became too intense to wave off with more no-comments, the Yahoo founder and aspiring publisher Jerry Yang uttered the 69 words of the most pusilamous statement in the history of American journalism, even taking into consideration Yahoo is America’s newest journal.

“We did not know what they wanted information for, if they give us the proper documentation in a court order we give them things that satisfy local laws. I don’t like the outcome of what happened with this thing, we get a lot of these orders, but we have to comply with the law and that’s what we need to do.”

Then he refused to say more because, he falsely claimed, “I cannot talk about the details of this case.” Of course, unlike Mr. Shi, he can talk about it all he wants, without fear or personal harm.

What he would have to say, however, is that at the drop of a coin in a nation where Yahoo dreams of 1.2 billion clicks on his advertisements, Yahoo was on its knees scrambling to turn over a newsman to the so-called Chinese “justice system”.

That happened at a trial which was secret because if Mr. Shi’s own newspaper had even mentioned it, many more employees would have joined him in the chain of arrest, torture, kangaroo court and incarceration that makes the Chinese media pitiable but a laughingstock anywhere the phrase “freedom of the press” is mentioned.

Google and Microsoft are also complicit in Chinese censorship. The Chinese versions of their search engines block sites which have filthy phrases like “Chen Shui-bian” and “communist thieves”

The Microsoft weblog site stops anyone from using a headline with gutter words like “democracy” and “elections”. Cisco Systems provides censorious internet routing hardware to prevent access to pornographic websites such as CNN.com and the Thai Embassy in Germany.

The American media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV does not carry the prejudiced, anti-Beijing BBC newscasts near China. All these companies help to support the suppressions of the great firewall of China, but only Yahoo has helped to secretly arrest and imprison a newsman (so far).

Yahoo has long been an internet portal for news and opinion worldwide, and there is no evidence it ever has changed or withheld a story from an outside source. But as Yahoo becomes a news provider, the shoe shifts foot. Now Yahoo executives become responsible for its content like, say, the editor of the Bangkok Post.

Hollywood old-media veteran Terry Semel was appointed chairman and chief executive of Yahoo in 2001 to help to make the internet company an original-content producer.

On its site introducing its combat correspondent Mr. Sites, Yahoo makes splendid promises.

It “will deliver stories via a five-fingered multimedia platform of text, photography, video, audio and interactive chat”, and it “will be aggressive in pursuing the stories that are not getting mainstream coverage and we will put a human face on them”.

Yahoo promised that in generating news, it will follow the ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists.

But with its part in Mr. Shi’s case, the corporate Yahoo has already broken all four ethics it lists: to report the truth, independently and accountably, while minimising harm.

“We also pledge”, Yahoo promises emptily at the new content section, “an honest and authentic accounting of both our failure and successes, to pull back the curtain on our editorial and technological process”, which is precisely what Mr. Yang refused to do.

Kevin Sites, is a seasoned and experienced reporter, with a reputation, and scoops to his credit.

Now he goes to work for a wannabe publisher which both recently and currently displays the backbone of a snake and a strong commitment to currying favours with violent dictatorships way ahead of supporting freedom of information and the front-line journalists who make it possible.

According to his preview page, Mr Sites is to travel the world – Indonesia, Iraq, Chechnya, possibly Thailand – reporting on violent conflicts in ways that will upset some governments, some of the time.

Yahoo will be paying his expenses and salary, but he may want to consider always keeping an alternative route out.

And he definitely should find a more reliable, customer-friendly e-mail provider.”

“Care your principles but leave them home”

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL QUOTED:

“Tens of thousands of people continue to be detained or imprisoned in violation of their fundamental human rights and they are at high risk of torture or ill-treatment.

Thousands of people are sentenced to death or executed, many after unfair trials.”

My personal conclusion: put the clock back again and send your confident matters through ordinary and old-fashioned mail again! Thank you ##### !

[Toni]

Don't think those that censor really will care much about a petition.

That's for real, isn't it? Countries like China, Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, persecute and imprison people simply for criticising their government, calling for democracy and greater freedom of the press or using the Internet to exposing human rights abuses.

But it's not only about governments. The IT companies of the USA have helped build the systems that enable surveillance and censorship to take place. Yahoo! have supplied email users’ private data to the Chinese authorities, helping to facilitate cases of wrongful imprisonment. Microsoft and Google have both complied with government demands to actively censor Chinese users of their services. It's these mega-companies that should be targetted with anti-repression petitions, lobbies and

boycotts

.

they only laugh at you! I had problems with Yahoo and with Microsoft but they are too strong and too big to care! And not only these mentioned: when you must have a problem solved by a big company you mostly can forget it. By the way as we are always complaining about bad service delivered by uninterested anonymous staff doing their "job" might be nice to start a topic: I experienced there and there a fabulous treatment whatsoever!

…….”Be careful with your email provider or open and read first their warning on privacy!.....

……….”A new era of “Big Brother is Watching You” started which seems to be a never ending story.”……….

………..”Now we are facing the Yahoo-scandal which is really awakening the world. Although Yahoo invites you very clearly to visit their “privacy” warning, who is doing so? Or am I the only idiot in this enlighten world having too much confidence? I am afraid so.”…………

……………“But that companies like Yahoo are so vulnerable to pressure, or might be even to blackmail (or is it “only” the big money they might loose on a certain market?) from the side of a government of a country is at least very frightening.”………..

Some quotes from my earlier publications in 2005

[elkangorito]

It's about time the 'stock market' was abolished. Afterall & as is suggested, Yahoo was looking after it's monetary interests...'stockholders'.

In Australia & in the past 5 years, I've seen some (not many) discussions on the affect of the global stockmarket upon the quality of life & the freedom of, individuals. Essentially, there appear to be few financial experts who wish to endorse greater restrictions upon the global stockmarket, for obvious reasons.

Nonetheless, the 'lust for money' seems to speak louder than the begging for the least bit of fairness. Shareholders & 'fatcats' perhaps don't realise that they inadvertantly contribute to these extremely inhumane & otherwise undemocratic situations?

As an American Indian once said, "When white man has polluted the last river, eaten the last fish & cut down the last forest, he will then realise that you can't eat money."

[Toni]

All readers and members, please do this. Click the link....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5020788.stm

Go to irrepressible.info and sign up. Everyone should do this now!

"

when you want to JOY:

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

"If you live in one of the following countries, you can join online"

"THAILAND Go"

Not possible!:

"The page cannot be found

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable."

"Alternatively contact Amnesty International in your country"

Succeeded!:

"THAILAND

Web site www.amnesty.or.th

Telephone (+ 66) 2938 7746

Fax number (+66) 2938 4756

Address 641/8 Ladprao Road

Ladyao Jatujak

Bangkok

10900

THAILAND"

[elkangorito]

All readers and members, please do this. Click the link....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5020788.stm

Go to irrepressible.info and sign up. Everyone should do this now!

"

when you want to JOY:

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

"If you live in one of the following countries, you can join online"

"THAILAND Go"

Not possible!:

"The page cannot be found

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable."

"Alternatively contact Amnesty International in your country"

Succeeded!:

"THAILAND

Web site www.amnesty.or.th

Telephone (+ 66) 2938 7746

Fax number (+66) 2938 4756

Address 641/8 Ladprao Road

Ladyao Jatujak

Bangkok

10900

THAILAND"

Good on ya, Toni. At least there are few of us 'optimists' here that believe in 'every drop in the ocean' counts.

[Toni]

All readers and members, please do this. Click the link....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5020788.stm

Go to irrepressible.info and sign up. Everyone should do this now!

"

when you want to JOY:

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL

"If you live in one of the following countries, you can join online"

"THAILAND Go"

Not possible!:

"The page cannot be found

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable."

"Alternatively contact Amnesty International in your country"

Succeeded!:

"THAILAND

Web site www.amnesty.or.th

Telephone (+ 66) 2938 7746

Fax number (+66) 2938 4756

Address 641/8 Ladprao Road

Ladyao Jatujak

Bangkok

10900

THAILAND"

Good on ya, Toni. At least there are few of us 'optimists' here that believe in 'every drop in the ocean' counts.

Optimism

"It doesn't hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later."

- Lucimar Santos de Lima -

[Artisan]

Murphy was an optimist.

[Toni]

Murphy was an optimist.

Murphy's law?? THAT doesn't sounds very optimistic!