Chinese beat blogger to death; ban Paul Walsh for reporting it

Yesterday, Paul Walsh reported that Wei Wenhau, 41, a Chinese construction company executive, was beaten to death by Chinese authorities for unauthorized video blogging. This, he reported has led to thousands of Chinese expressing outrage on internet chatrooms. He also admonished Google's "disgraceful behavior" in it's policy of complicity with the Chinese government while touting a slogan of "Do no evil."

Today, Paul reports that his blog, Segala has been banned in China. Paula writes that he is doing precisely what many Chinese bloggers do. He is using a proxy server to bypass the Chinese censors.

But there may be a curve ball, that would be a new one on me. I just tried to subscribe to Segala with my Google Reader and could not.  This could be some sort of tech glitch, but I tried three times. Coincidence, perhaps. Perhaps not. A few weeks ago, when I was writing about Egypt's Wael Abbas, who posts videos on YouTube about police briutality, YouTube temporarily took his videos down before restoring them. youTube is of course, owned by Google.

Comments

[Mihaela V (prprof_mv)]

I just tried subscribing to Segala and it worked for me. I'm disappointed, I'm working on a post on the consequences of corporate ownership of public conversation spaces, and this would have made a good example.

[Michael Flanagan]

I've just successfully subscribed to the Segala blog using Google Reader.

[shel israel]

Very strange. It still does not work for me. I just tried subscribing to another blog and GR worked fine. I went back to Paul's and after clicking on Subscribe, it does not show a batch of Segala posts. It still does not work for me.

[B.L Ochman]

i just subscribed to Paul's blog thru Google Read with no problem.

[Peat]

I don't want anybody to understand that wrong, but I think it is totally normal and understandable for youtube or google or whatever, to take down a Video, within the country of china for example, if it is against the chinese Law.
Thats not because of the video but because of google/youtube/whatever wanting to stay there and keep their business up. Otherwise they might also be banned from china.

[shel israel]

For the record Peat, there is no record that China or Egypt ever asked Google to take anything down. Google has never commented but sources who are close to it, say that in both cases Google voluntarily took the action that they took.

[shel israel]

If anyone from Google or YouTube would like to step up and correct me on this, I most certainly welcome it.

[Peat]

Yes thats right, I didn't say that either, that china or whoever asked google.
I am just saying that google knows about what was going on and they took it out, just to stay out of trouble with china.

[shel israel]

Pete, And would you characterize that as doing no evil?

[Peat]

Well I think we have to look at this from 2 sides, on the one hand, yeah I totally agree with you it is "evil". they should not do that, because everybody should express himself the way he likes.
On the other hand you have to see the point that youtube /google is an international company, and for them, china is a big market for them as well. Now would you like to piss off one of your costumers by fucking his secretary?
Do you understand that, I am not saying that what they did is right, but I can totally understand the step they did.
China is a god damn republic and they do censor. But we can't change that so easy. And Google also has to handle this. If this is right for the rest of the world is another aspect, but it was maybe the right movement for google.

[Marley]

How barbaric of the Chinese to beat a man to death for expressing his views on the internet?

And the US is making trade agreement with them that end up killing our children with tainted toys?

What has this world become?