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All you are doing is competing with your customers - Eckhard Pfeiffer, to Intel
Olympic Great Firewall protects China's youth
OLYMPIC ORGANISERS have told the world that the reason they sanctioned the censorship of the Internet during the Games was to protect Chinese kiddies.
According to AP, Wang Wei, the vice-president of organising committee BOCOG said that sites such as Free Tibet and those covering the Tiananmen Square Massacre were not accessible, for jolly good reasons.
In a moving-the-goal-posts comment worthy of Scottish football fans, he said that while organisers promised free access, there were a 'few websites' that jeopardise Chinese security and the healthy growth of our youth. Which youth he didn't say but we would have thought it was better PR to keep this youth off the Interent for a couple of weeks rather than spoil it for everyone.
Wei said it was up to the glorious and perfect guardians of the Chinese revolution to decide what was good for youth. Certainly not the world's press which seems to have got a bee in its bonnet about all this web freedom stuff.
The problem is that BOCOG had promised free access for the duration of the games when China made its bid. It seems to be saying that, now the games are running, it will do what it likes. After all, no-one is going to shut down the Olympics now are they?
IOC chief Jacques Rogge said that there would be a review of the situation after the conclusion of the August 8-24 Games when no one can really be bothered about it.
However, he said that he would not apologise as the IOC do not run the Internet in China. It was not its fault the Chinese were double-dealing, censorship crazy, totalitarians obsessed with controlling every one of their citizen's thoughts, but they didn’t appear like that when they were bidding for the Olympics. µ
L'Inq
AFP
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This was utterly predictable, and whatmore, we'll see China revert completely back to its old practices when the games are over.
There's a simple solution to this and even reviewing the problems after the case is effective:

The solution is to reduce their 'olympic' equality in future events. Whilst i don't believe that their actions would constitute a ban at the next games, it could be made so that China couldn't host the games again for the next 100-200 years.... or there could be stricter limits on how many entrants a country can bring to the games - seeing how many Chinese people seemed to be in the majority of events, only to be reduced to 2.... if only we had so many people :)
"that jeopardise Chinese security and the healthy growth of our youth"...

That'll be politician speak for "encourage free thought" then.
I understand what the China gov is doing, they are protecting their children from history so they can enjoy life until adulthood. Once they know the truth of the gov, their lives will not be so enjoyable. Much like when we (us peeps) grew up and found that bribes (lobbyist/companies) run the congress and senate and not the people.
China is very protective of its children, or at least the one child that each couple is allowed to have. The following children are forcefully aborted and the mother sterilized. 

Even Nazi Germany in 1936 was less evil than this, the difference being that the Chinese give "equal opportunity" to kill all, no matter their faith, ethnicity or health.

Then again, China is the West's darling, so they'll get away with it. As in 1936, there are plenty of Charles Lindbergs in the media and in politics to support them.


....shame the rest of the country is basically an open prison where the thought police will cut out your soul if you think the wrong things.

But did we really expect anything different .... nope...

Next they'll be claiming all the athletic participants are drug free, and we all know how absurd that would be.
I live in UK and this country has gone around the world splitting nations, stealing there resources, preventing education so the people cannot organise, etc etc. And we don't get taught this in school, we have to learn it afterwards.

This is what has always happened, lets not pretend our country is any better. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve, but lets be honest.

Even now we are partly responsible for killing over 300,000 civilians in Iraq. No wonder they have "insurgents", if there was a foreign army that came to the UK and had killed 300,000 British then I would probably be an insurgent, wouldn't you?

If you're from the USA and a foreign army was in USA and killed 300,000 Americans, what would you do? If some of your family, cousins and friends were dead, how would you feel?

Keep the feelings high, direct them at different factions and put them fighting each other. The the foreign army can secure the oil. This oil should be rebuilding Iraq, new hospitals, schools, roads, and healing rifts in the communities.

We all know it's about the oil, and we know that the contracts are in place so that USA gets 80% of oil value from Iraq for the next 40 years. So please can we just stop wrecking more families and give their country back to them. I realise that by detroying their community, turning them on each other, starting religious-based civil war will help to keep them down and make it unlikely they will regroup, organise and approach the UN etc about the 80% of oil value going to USA, but is it really worth it?

And are we saying that Saddam could keep the peace but we can't?

The Chinese preventing access to some websites is small in comparison to this. Without China almost everything we buy would be more expsensive. With the slow down in our Western economies I doubt much action will happen re: China.

IOC could have a contract with penalties if terms are not met. Easy solution.