A few days ago, some Tibetan protesters - unhappy with the fact that Beijing is hosting the Olympic games this year - started getting a little touchy-feeling down in Tibet. The demonstration turned violent, and somewhere around ten or eighty people are apparently dead as a result.
The tragedy more significant to my daily life has been the subsequent blockage of YouTube.com, which began on Monday and remains in affect as I type this now. As Dan put it, "how the hell are you supposed to watch crappy music videos?" Exactly.
I had just barely resigned myself to three months without wikipedia; YouTube is going too far. On CNN tonight, the television would go black any time that the Dali Lama, Tibet, or protesters were mentioned. Sometimes for just ten or fifteen seconds, but sometimes for minutes at a time.
Sample:
If I was the Chinese government, I wouldn't just block the content, I'd replace it with something to make it less obvious that I was trying to prevent the dissemination of information. I'd put up a CNN logo saying "we're sorry, we're incompetent and have suffered a technical issue" or even better splice in a clip from another CNN segment, which would at least confuse the viewer into thinking that maybe it was CNN's fault, not the government's attempt to keep you from knowing things.
Blocking it entirely makes you look way more guilty, but what the fuck do I know?
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