China, Tibet, and YouTube: Is China REALLY Ready for the Games?

It seems every week there is a new country blocking YouTube. When Pakistan did, it took out most of the world's access to the site, but now it's China's turn.

In addition to YouTube, most news sites are being censored with a keyword block. Any page that contains words such as “Tibet” or “Dalai Lama” are being blocked, as well as Google News, most major world news outlets, Flickr, and Wikipedia.

With only 143 days left until the Beijing Olympics start, China wants everything looking picture-perfect, and to the government, the issues in Tibet are a thorn in their side. They've already requested that Nepal block access to Mount Everest so that no one will be able to stage a protest near the scheduled torch run.

All of this is China's response to the protests that broke out last week and are believe to be the largest Tibetan protests in decades. The Chinese government claims that the protesters are supporters of the Dalai Lama, and the Chinese accounting of fatalities during their attempts to stop the protests differ greatly from the numbers being reported out of Tibet.

An anonymous translator has provided a Chinese version of Global Voices Online co-founder's Ethan Zuckerman's guide Anonymous Blogging with WordPress and Tor, which may be disseminated by word of mouth to citizens who are also looking to get news via an anonymous relay service. Nova Spivack posted the image I linked below that he received from a friend with a contact in Tibet. (Clicking on the image will bring up the full-sized image)

It's clear that my hopes that any hopes that the coming Olympics would lower the Great Firewall of China are moot. The only question now is how China thinks that this suppression of news for people under their control changes the world's image of a country who is supposed to be hosting a celebration of nations coming together.