Tag Archive for 'Olympic Games'

Government uploads hypocrisy with internet censorship

Published on 10 November 2008 in General. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

My following article appears in today’s Melbourne Age:

Before this year’s Beijing Olympic Games, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd chastised the Chinese authorities for blocking full access to the internet for the assembled world media: “My attitude to our friends in China is very simple”, he said. “They should have nothing to fear by open digital links with the rest of the world during this important international celebration of sport.”

Although Rudd expressed no concern for the average Chinese web user being unable to view tens of thousands of banned websites, his intervention was nevertheless a welcome call for transparency and greater democracy.

But now the Rudd government is working towards implementing an unworkable filtering process in Australia that suggests a misguided understanding of the internet and worrying tendency to censor an inherently anarchic system.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told Radio National’s Media Report recently that the aim of the project is to “protect Australian families and kids from some material that is currently on the net . . . such as child pornography and ultra-violent sites”.

Conroy tried to assure a sceptical interviewer that although the idea had been ALP policy for years, “we are committed to work with the industry to see if it is technically feasible”.

He further claimed that similar kinds of filtering already exist in UK, Sweden, Norway, France and New Zealand and “there has been no detrimental effect on internet speed or performance”.

But Conroy is and ignoring the wider social, moral and political implications of the issue. A number of politicians, including Family First Steve Fielding and independent Nick Xenophon, have advocated blocking online gaming sites and general pornography sites. What next?

It is not hard to imagine a push to block sites that allegedly “support” terrorism. Take Hamas, the democratically elected party in Palestine and yet regarded as a terrorist group by much of the West. For many individuals around the world, myself included, Hamas is not a terrorist entity and should be engaged. But will over-zealous politicians make it illegal to view the organisation’s websites?

This is a feasible scenario, as US Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman this year successfully pressured YouTube owners Google to remove videos from “Islamist terrorist organisations”.

Many in the Australian gay community are equally concerned about the current proposals. The Australian Coalition for Equality (ACE), which advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, has called on the Rudd government to guarantee “websites will not be accidentally filtered out purely because they contain the words poof, fag or dyke”.

Technologically, the ability for internet service providers to successfully censor banned websites is arguably impossible. Three of the country’s leading players, Telstra Media’s Justin Milne, iiNet’s Michael Malone and Internode’s Simon Hackett, have all spoken on the record about the difficulties of implementing ISP-level filtering.

Hackett imagines a future where the government mandates a blacklist of IP addresses that by law an ISP is not permitted to serve to a customer. “Two problems with that”, he argues. “One is collateral damage. What if that IP address is a virtual host with 2000 web sites on it and only one of them doesn’t follow the government’s morality? The other (problem) is, what if it’s done by mistake? (What) if the IP address is just straight out wrong? Another obvious (problem) is that the internet is full of anonymous proxies. None of this stuff actually works.”

Numerous programs such as TOR are used by users in repressive nations to communicate anonymously and without detection and are likely to be used by people in Australia.

Perhaps most worryingly, should we feel comfortable with the idea of privately owned ISPs being the gatekeeper of administering the law of permissible and blocked websites? Telstra’s Milne rightly believes it should be the police implementing the rules of the land.

Furthermore, has the government even considered the massive financial burden on ISPs, especially the smaller ones, forced to play the role of Big Brother for Rudd’s obsession with “protecting the children”? It seems clear that the will of small, unrepresentative Christian groups, including the Australian Family Association and the Australian Christian Lobby, are increasingly able to dictate social policy to Rudd ministers with little transparency as to their real role and influence.

The government completed a closed trial of web filtering products at a Telstra laboratory in Tasmania in June. The results were largely negative and found that most filters could not identify illegal or inappropriate content. It is not surprising that many industry insiders fear the government’s moves are little more than populism dressed up as courageous social policy.

Colin Jacobs, chair of the online users’ lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said recently that Rudd’s “model involves more technical interference in the internet infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.”

This is certainly unnecessary rhetoric – I examine a host of authoritarian regimes in my book The Blogging Revolution, including Iran, and the Islamic Republic’s censorship is far more extreme and life threatening than anything proposed by Rudd. But Jacobs is right to raise the alarm about the path Australia appears to be embracing.

Free speech is never absolute in any Western country but vigorous public debate should be the pre-cursor to any profound shift in freedom of the internet. History teaches us that governments have an unhealthy tendency to ban material deemed inappropriate for groups allegedly exposed. In this day and age, young children are seen as the most vulnerable. Cynicism is the only healthy response.

Antony Loewenstein is the author of The Blogging Revolution, published by Melbourne University Press.

New ways to make news matter

Published on 26 September 2008 in General. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

My following article is published today by the Melbourne Age:

During the bruising Democratic Party tussle with Hillary Clinton in April, a citizen journalist recorded Obama saying that he understood why working-class voters in decrepit industrial towns were “bitter” and clung to “guns or religion”.

Despite being a paid-up Obama supporter, writer Mayhill Fowler worked for the Huffington Post’s Off The Bus program – around 1,800 unpaid researchers, interviewers and reporters follow the intricacies of the campaign and publish it online – and believed it was her duty to reveal the event.

It was a defining media moment, made even more significant because most of the mainstream press explaining Obama’s comments conveniently airbrushed Fowler’s work. A “real” journalist hadn’t recorded the comment and therefore could be ignored.

It was the kind of exclusionary attitude all-too-common in Western media offices. Editors tell themselves that only “professionals” should be allowed to contribute published or broadcast information to the daily news cycle. Thankfully, this broken narrative is disappearing before our eyes. Alternative models are appearing by necessity.

Participatory media could easily be adopted in Australia. What about leading media outlets utilising trusted and vetted citizens in marginal seats and giving them resources to write and investigate issues relevant to their communities? From corrupt councillors to government inaction, politicians will find it hard to ignore questions from voters in their own electorate.

Journalism skills are hardly rocket science and can be acquired with experience and a little training. These so-called amateurs could blog, maintain wikis, write articles and develop contacts that would exceed any professional reporter who simply can’t devote the time to one area.

Networked journalism both engages a wider slice of society and ensures that more segments of the debate, from conservative to the progressive end, won’t feel so unrepresented in the media.

The future of robust journalism is still being written but it certainly won’t emerge from ignoring the wishes of the masses. Off The Bus co-founder Jay Rosen defines citizen journalism thus: “When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another.”

The current debate in the West over the dwindling resources of the mainstream media remains mired in tired paradigms. Both print and online can survive, but the relationship between the professionals and their readers has to change. Print circulation is falling across the Western world and is unlikely to shift soon. Journalists have never been so mistrusted. Media owners, with notable exceptions, are not investing in investigative work.

The only answer is to connect interested parties from a diverse cross-selection and allow them access to the tools of the media elite. I agree with American media commentator Jeff Jarvis who tells newspapers: “Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.” In other words, know your strengths and don’t waste valuable resources sending journalists on stories that can be adequately covered by a few reporters. Readers will always be instinctively drawn to the best coverage (not sloppily re-written wire copy.)

Of course, these discussions are largely irrelevant in the non-Western world, the vast majority of the planet. Newspapers and television stations in authoritarian regimes are usually little more than propaganda-producing outlets (though interestingly in many of these states circulation figures are rising.) The internet is often the only source of alternative and reliable information.

During the research for my new book, I spent time in Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China to discuss with writers, dissidents, online gurus, citizens, bloggers and politicians the ways in which the net is challenging repressive regimes and forcing uncomfortable issues into public consciousness.

Torture, multi-party elections, an unfiltered internet, gender relations and female circumcision are just a small taste of what courageous bloggers and activists are discussing online. Even with the censorship of many websites, through the assistance of Western multinationals such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, dissent is growing in many of these nations. But are we listening to their voices?

We are only given a tiny glimpse of these worlds in the West. I remember speaking to many middle-class Chinese twenty-somethings who resented the ways in which Western journalists stereotyped their nationalism as dangerous and foreign. As many angry bloggers told me, is it really any different to Americans celebrating and defending their government in times of crisis?

The Beijing Games proved that an anti-China narrative was alive and well in the foreign pages of our media. If reporters thought of reading Chinese bloggers writing during the event, they would have found a multitude of opinions about human rights, Tibet, the Dalai Lama and Taiwan. I waited optimistically for the publishing of these blogger’s perspectives, but it seemed that only a Western journalist’s filter was allowed to judge proceedings.

The West and the rest may seem eons apart in terms of interests and desires, but everybody craves trustworthy news and views. It’s time to engage communities to find ways in which they can contribute making sense of a rapidly shrinking globe.

Antony Loewenstein is the author of The Blogging Revolution, published by Melbourne University Press.

Yes, it’s a dictatorship

Published on 19 September 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Don’t be under any illusion about China’s post Olympic Games attitude to human rights:

While the start of this week marked the beginning of the month of Ramadan for Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslims, China’s Communist authorities are reportedly cracking down on Muslim religious activity.

The Web site for the town of Yingmaili currently lists nine rules put in place to control the Muslim holy month in the name of “maintaining stability during Ramadan.”

The list includes barring teachers and students from observing Ramadan, requiring men to shave their beards, forcing women to take off their veil’s, prohibiting mosques from letting people from outside the town stay the night, forbidding retired government officials from entering mosques, and requiring restaurants to maintain normal hours of operation.

Beating the western drum

Published on 15 September 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

My following essay appears in the Guardian today:

During the recent war between Georgia and Russia, bloggers on both sides of the conflict provided searing accounts of atrocities and manoeuvres unseen by western journalists. In a country such as Russia the space for alternative and critical views are rare. The war showed an authoritarian regime’s narrative being challenged by a handful of insiders and outsiders. The government-run media looked staid by comparison.

This was merely the latest example of bloggers beating mainstream journalists at their own game. Online media have exploded in western nations, challenging decades-old business models and forcing reporters to answer questions about their methods and sources. But in repressive states, blogs and websites have become essential sources of information on topics – from women’s issues to sexual orientation, dating rituals to human rights – routinely shunned by channels for official propaganda.

These openings for citizens in the non-western world to be heard are far more empowering than the equivalent outlets in our own societies. But how often do we hear these voices in the west?

September 11, for example, should have been the perfect opportunity for the western media to listen to the grievances of the Muslim world. Alas, with notable exceptions, indigenous voices were excluded then and still remain largely absent from the pages of the world’s leading papers. It is as if only a western journalist’s filter can validate such perspectives.

Hearing local voices

In 2007 I travelled to Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China to speak to dissidents, bloggers, writers, politicians and ordinary citizens about how the internet is changing their countries. I wanted to gauge their interests, desires, frustrations and attitudes towards each other and the west. My new book, The Blogging Revolution, is a chance for these local voices to reveal how the web has democratised their minds – although it also reflects the fact that the vast majority of global netizens prefer online dating and downloading pirated films and music to challenging political orthodoxy.

Also addressed is whether multinationals such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco have played a part in assisting net filtering and censorship in China, Cuba and the Middle East. On the eve of the Beijing Olympic Games, Naomi Klein wrote that western firms were essential in “authoritarian communism – central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance – harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism.”

How much do we know about Yahoo’s or Google’s willingness to modify their behaviour to please paranoid officials? I discovered that the western executives of these companies have been more than comfortable with allowing their Chinese counterparts to self-censor thousands of sensitive keywords; far more than just “democracy” and “Falun Gong”. Moreover, they are ignoring disturbing developments such as Yahoo China’s decision earlier this year to post images of wanted Tibetans on its home page after the Lhasa uprising.

Democratic force

An important question the book poses is whether the web is an automatic democratiser, as is widely assumed in western media circles. The general consensus, across the globe, was that political and military meddling by Washington and London was making the job of real democrats much more difficult.

As one blogger told me in Tehran: “Most of the people I know are in favour of reform, not revolution, because people are too tired to experience another revolution.” I found the same message echoed throughout the countries I visited: the desire to experience incremental change without foreign involvement.

Take China. It has 250 million internet users – now the largest online community in the world, far surpassing America – based in both the cities and rural areas. Politics is often the furthest thing from their minds, but connecting with friends has become an essential part of life. I met very few bloggers who wanted to discuss anything political and most expressed general satisfaction with the regime’s economic policies. No great desire for “democratisation” there.

Mica Yushu, a blogger in Shanghai, told me that most of her middle-class friends didn’t crave political change. “We use the internet mostly for entertainment, sharing information, earning money or other fun,” she said. The sight of darkened internet cafes across the country was something to behold, with thousands of users gaming, watching soft-core pornography, blogging and instant messaging.

A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the vast majority of China’s web users expressed support for Beijing managing or controlling the internet, including the banning of “pornographic” sites. This is not to say that the Chinese desire authoritarian rule; but while they want change, curbing corruption and ensuring essential services are their top priorities, not the advances in human rights the west puts at the top of the agenda.

After the Beijing Games, Chinese bloggers fiercely debated the economic direction the country should take over the coming years. It was a far more robust debate than one would expect from coverage of China in the west, where the emphasis is always on rampant nationalism.

One anonymous blogger noted – after sarcastically praising the country’s free-market reforms as the “best system seen not just in Chinese history, but also in humankind’s” – that greater political development could only come with a “basic welfare system.” Such discussions on a massive scale were impossible in China before the internet. Equally important debates are occurring in every country I visited.

Allowing people to speak and write for themselves without a western filter is one of the triumphs of blogging. The online culture, disorganised and disjointed in its aims, is unlike that of any previous social movement. While some want the right to criticise their leaders, others simply want the ability to flirt and listen to subversive tunes. That is revolutionary for much of the world.

· Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based journalist, blogger and author of The Blogging Revolution

A different side of China

Published on 18 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

China is undoubtedly struggling to create an enviable atmosphere for the Olympic Games. Fun and sport aren’t exactly gelling.

So, in the spirit of not simply demonising China – something I wrote about last week – I’ve recently discovered this wonderful Chinese singer, Sa DingDing. Born in Mongolia to a Mongolian mother and Chinese father, her music combines traditional Chinese sounds with Western electronica:

Sports for the white man

Published on 17 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The Olympic Games, from a Palestinian perspective:

So let’s hope that in the next Games we’ll see contestants competing for a medal in events such as constructing a concrete wall, mixing cement, milking cows, cleaning stairs, and digging sewage ditches along the roads of the capital of the host country.

And boycotting China?

I’m not sure exactly what the Chinese did. In a general way, I know about Tibet, human rights and ceramics that break too easily. But I agree that a country that conquers another nation, uses military force to rob a person of his freedom, tramples human and civil rights, punishes entire populations and detains them without blinking an eye, discriminates against its inhabitants on religious grounds, arrests leaders of another nation and assassinates them and scatters their demonstrations with live fire – that is a country which definitely ought to be boycotted.

How would you like your repression?

Published on 16 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Welcome to our new Chinese overlords:

Police State 2.0 is being perfected in China and we can thank Western multinationals.

Let the patriot games begin

Published on 15 August 2008 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

My following article appears in today’s ABC Unleashed:

Before the Beijing Games launched spectacularly last weekend, the vast bulk of Australian media expressed general disdain for China, finding little positive to report. It was just the kind of coverage that played directly into the Communist regime’s hands; such is the widespread belief there that the Western media is unashamedly biased against the rising super-power.

Canadian writer Naomi Klein was thoughtful in explaining the Olympics should be seen for what they are; the celebration of a dictatorship:

“It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism – central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance – harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism.”

While many Western human rights activists are shouting about China’s atrocious abuses the voice of the Chinese themselves is virtually hidden.

After the opening ceremony, some Chinese bloggers questioned whether Mao should have been more central to the event while a Canadian/Chinese fencer was praised in the local media after she displayed a ‘patriotic’ banner. It was also announced this week that every Chinese gold winner would be awarded with a new stamp.

Conveniently forgotten in the rush to celebrate Australian medal-winners are the other voices in the global media mix (such as this fascinating article by the Chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan, worried that Beijing may be mimicking the 1936 Nazi Games.) We ignore non-Caucasian perspectives at our peril.

It should never be forgotten that many studies find Chinese people overwhelmingly satisfied with their lives, though the rise of the internet and satellite television has certainly increased the knowledge of social rights. McCommunism, as Noami Klein calls it, appears to be a popular ideology.

As I discuss in my forthcoming book, The Blogging Revolution, one of the key complaints of Chinese citizens, especially after this year’s torch relay debacle and pro-Tibetan protests, is the Western media’s insistence on trivialising Chinese nationalism. This recent essay, about China’s ‘neo-con nationalists’ in the New Yorker, was a notable exception. It is surely not too much to ask Western journalists, living and working in China, to try and understand the local people, rather than lecturing them on how their society should be ordered.

During my visit to China in 2007 there was an unmistakable pride in the upcoming Olympics. Writing in The Guardian this week, Muhammad Cohen explained why the Chinese overwhelming love the Games in their country:

“’I (heart) China’ serves as the Beijing regime’s succinct public response to foreign criticism of China’s human rights record: If our people love our country, then you meddlers from outside ought to just shut up.

“In China’s Olympic moment, foreign critics are focusing on all the country has failed to achieve, from its abundant air pollution to scant human rights. China’s citizens, on the other hand, see all that the country has accomplished after emerging from foreign domination and internal turmoil. They are proud of those achievements and resentful of foreigners pointing out China’s shortcomings, especially when those failings don’t bother the alleged victims.”

Like past Olympics, the Chinese media is projecting an image of uncritical adulation of its achievements, but this is little different to Sydney in 2000. Propaganda isn’t only created in authoritarian states.

Long after the Olympic spirit has left Beijing, the internet will be a central factor in continuing to shape China. Western engagement with these voices is essential if we want to avoid another Cold War. Leading blogger Isaac Mao recently revealed why the art of blogging is gradually prying open the dragon’s tight grip:

“China has a long tradition of people trying to fit into the group, moderating their behaviour to avoid standing out conspicuously – a culture reinforced by the man-made collectivism of the past half-century.

“Blogs have leapfrogged this tradition, acting as a catalyst to encourage young people to become more individual. So this and other grassroots media are now emerging strongly to challenge China’s social legacy.”

Endless foreign criticism of China will achieve little. Some Western humility during the Games would be advisable, along with legitimate calls for the state to respect human rights.

Bloggers I met in China last year almost universally told me that internet censorship didn’t bother them (a fact borne out by a recent study). They were far too busy thinking about downloading pirated movies, buying properties and meeting boys and girls.

Perhaps an appreciation of authoritarianism is an acquired taste.

Keeping the Zionist flame alive

Published on 15 August 2008 in Israel. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Poor, little Israel is blocked from selling death to a foreign country (albeit briefly, as Georgia seems to have been the lucky recipient of the Jewish state’s weapons):

Israeli security firms have been shut out of the Olympic Games in China and in the process lost lucrative contracts, industry sources said.

U.S. pressure blocked the Israeli Defense Ministry from granting export licenses for security equipment and training to Beijing to protect the Olympic Village, they said.

The sources said without U.S. pressure China would have ordered up to $1 billion in security equipment and expertise from Israel, Middle East Newsline reported. China was said to have budgeted $4 billion for protection of the games.

“It was a major opportunity wasted, but that’s what happens when your security and military policy depends on the United States,” an industry source said.

Israel is not an independent state.

The mother of all distractions

Published on 10 August 2008 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

How the American mainstream media prays at the alter of corporate China during the Beijing Olympics.

Welcome to Police State 2.0.

The king of kong

Published on 8 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Computer gaming as a legitimate sport at the Olympic Games?

I’d like to see that.

Being eaten by the dragon

Published on 6 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Can we trust the Chinese during the Games?


The Beijing Olympics: Are They A Trap?

Engaging, not hectoring, China

Published on 6 August 2008 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China:

The future of human rights in China after the Games will require constant negotiation and patience, writes Antony Loewenstein

The Olympics are nearly upon us (and dog is allegedly banned from sale during the event.)

Beijing residents are reporting a draconian crackdown on anything deemed “subversive.” “The dichotomy between what Olympics visitors will see and what residents experience”, writes Jen Lin-Liu, “may be most visible in the stadiums once the Games begin.”

There is no doubt that the departing New York Times correspondent Howard W. French is correct when he writes: “…Political change, however gradual and inconsistent, has made China a significantly more open place for average people than it was a generation ago.”

But the behaviour of authorities, both Chinese and the IOC, in the lead-up to the Games – insecure and petty – reveals a mindset that all-too-easily resents freedom of expression. Though it was amusing to read about Yahoo, one of the leading Western multinationals who has assisted the regime’s filtering system, caught out by promoting a picture gallery of the, “Tiananmen Square Massacre Remembered”, some commentators are comparing the Beijing Games to the 1980 Moscow event. Technology may have changed, but the nature of oppression is eerily similar. The Guardian explains:

“The similarities between these two coming-out parties are eye-popping: dissidents jailed; ‘social undesirables’ – mainly poor migrant workers – kicked out of town; three rings of police checkpoints surrounding the city; old buildings bulldozed; security so overwhelming as to squeeze all the fun out of the party.”

The China Model, furious economic development with general political impotence, is continuing (especially in the hi-tech sector). But it has its limits, not least the benefits brought by satellite television and the internet.

He Weifang, a professor of law at Peking University, says that China is slowly democratising, but at a vastly different rate to what the West thinks it deserves.

“Today, even the farmers in remote areas have satellite TVs,” Mr. He said. “So whenever they see an election, such as the one held in Pakistan recently, they may wonder why, even though we have approximately the same economic conditions, they can elect their top leaders, and we can’t even vote for the leader of a small county. I think a consciousness of political rights has increased more than anything.”

As a visitor to China in 2000 and again in 2007, it is patently clear that the country has become far more confident in its identity. Though a craving for global acceptance is key to understanding the recent nationalist surge, the Olympics are the ultimate opportunity for the regime to showcase its modernisation. It won’t totally succeed, and nor should it, because there is simply too much known about Beijing’s authoritarianism (and its denial of past revolutionary violence).

But human rights activists should not only damn the rising power. Nuance is the key, as is engagement. It’s hard to disagree with the conclusion of George Walden, a British diplomat in China during the Cultural Revolution, who says that the Games must be allowed to succeed:

“We need perspective on this. I was there during the Cultural Revolution, and I watched people being carted away in the streets to be shot in the back of the neck. About 3 million people died. I’ve been back often since, and each time there is a sort of incremental freedom, though sometimes it moves backward.”

I argue in my forthcoming book, The Blogging Revolution, that China’s internet may be the key to advancing the interests of its citizens. A regime can’t hide all the “subversive” material all of the time, no matter how hard they try. What was impossible only a few years ago – such as local citizens complaining online about corrupt, local officials – should give us hope that Chinese netizens are not the mindless drones often imagined by the Western media.

Technology and capitalism certainly don’t automatically guarantee democracy (something far too many neo-cons fail to understand) Until Western, IT multinationals are convinced that colluding with repressive regimes is not in their best interests, it will be close to impossible to change this current vicious cycle.

China’s entry into the world club will be a tortuous process, but respect is a two-way street.

How to massage the media?

Published on 5 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Did China fake its Olympic Everest summit?

No political content for the masses

Published on 5 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

China’s net market is booming, but censorship of its video-sharing sites is rampant. Western multinationals are licking their lips at the possibilities:

More cliches for China

Published on 4 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

A journalist’s guide to reporting the Beijing Games:

…Please remember: Chinese who love their country are called “nationalists.” Never use this word for Americans, French, Tibetans and other civilized peoples who love their country or territory. When demonstrators protest over Tibet they are acting in a heartfelt, spontaneous way, waving pretty flags you would be happy to see woven into your granny’s bedspread. When Chinese counter-demonstrate, they are always “bussed in,” the mood is “ugly”, and they are draped in intimidating red flags that can be made to look a bit Hitler Jugend-ish with the right kind of photo. (They probably did arrive in buses as this is the cheapest way of moving numbers of not-very-well-off people around, but you don’t need to prove the insinuation that the regime laid on the vehicles). Beijing is always a “regime,” by the way, and is not to be confused with western “governments”…

Filter me, baby

Published on 3 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Internet access and China, a tortured relationship at the best of times.

China clamps down on press freedom

Published on 1 August 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I was interviewed yesterday on the Australian current affairs program, The Wire, about China’s policy of internet censorship during the Olympics, my forthcoming book, The Blogging Revolution and the tendency of Western media to demonise the Communist state:

With eight days to go before the start of the Beijing Olympics, controversy continues to plague this celebrated event. The Western media are up-in-arms this week after the Chinese Government decided to restrict their access to the internet during the Olympic Games. Featured in this story: Antony Loewenstein, journalist and author of “The Blogging Revolution”, Zhen Ji, President of the Chinese Student Association in Adelaide and Professor Kerry Green, Head of the School of Communications at the University of South Australia.

Invisible Tibet

Published on 1 August 2008 in General. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Tibetan blogger Woeser, New Statesman, July 31:

Then there are the thousands of Tibetans in Beijing. Tibetan college students have been told to go home this summer, while students at Tibetan schools are not allowed to leave the school premises. The Tibetan Studies Centre has given its staff a rare long holiday: even those we call “Tibetans hired by the imperial court”, meaning those on the government payroll, are not trusted. A Tibetan tour guide who I know was detained for a month, with no explanation whatsoever from the police.

A Tibetan artist friend was interrogated for a day because Buddhist scripture in Tibetan was found in his painting. My good friend Dechen Pemba, an ethnic Tibetan who was born in London and has been studying and working in Beijing, was deported back to the UK for reasons that were never fully explained.

As for me, if I stay in Beijing during the Olympics, I expect to be put under house arrest. So, should I go back to Lhasa? Friends and relatives there tell me: “You’d better wait until after the Olympics.”

Real freedom bites

Published on 31 July 2008 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Are you feeling that sweet Olympic spirit yet?

The Chinese authorities confirmed today that the 20,000 foreign journalists covering the Olympic Games will not have unrestricted access to the Internet during their stay. Kevin Gosper, the head of the IOC’s press commission, admitted today: “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.”

Yesterday Gosper said the IOC’s key concern was to “ensure that the media are able to report on the games as they did in previous games.”

Reporters Without Borders condemns the International Olympic Committee’s acceptance of the fact the Chinese authorities are blocking access to certain websites at the Olympic Games media centre in Beijing. More than 20,000 foreign journalists are affected.

The organization also condemns the cynicism of the Chinese authorities, who have yet again lied, and the IOC’s inability to prevent this situation because of its refusal to speak out for several years.

Anybody who trusted a secretive authoritarianism regime (including the IOC) to keep their promises on this key issue was deluding themselves.

Let the Games begin.