Even the Internet Nanny in China accepts that enough is enough and now I can access my blogspot.com blog. I have tried it out this week and found that it offers better control over the placement of photos and text. So I will move back there.

And I don't have to do the HTML <> stuff anymore! See you at http://robertg69.wordpress.com Many blog stars, Winer, Scoble et al, are now posting regualrly at WordPress.com. Try it, you may like it!!

Well the big news last week according to the official propaganda newswire in China was that MSN China had been formed by including some Shanghai based media partner or two or three!

The week is just over and we are into the reactions to that big news from the Redmond-based Giiant $$ machine. And here is the new lede not from China this time.......

"The Financial Times is reporting that Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal has banned the words "democracy" and "freedom" from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing's political censors."

Posters on Slashdot are, predictably, blaming Microsoft here -- and it sounds reasonable enough, especially if (like most people on Slashdot, the internet in general, and perhaps most users of Microsoft products) you don't like the company to begin with. To be fair, though, they can't be blamed here: China's Great Celestial Nanny is a capricious beast.

Words that are fine one week will be blocked the next, and sites that are acceptable in Shenyang may not be in Shanghai. Microsoft's removal of what it fears may be red-flag words is an attempt to play it safe (perhaps too safe -- 'democracy' and 'freedom' can be found in any number of governmental documents, to say nothing of the collected works of Mao Zedong) in an environment characterized by uncertainty. MSN is an important part of their internet presence, and if they don't want it blocked at the whim of some pimply-faced 'netcop in Zhongguancun, who can blame them?

So Microsoft isn't the bad guy here. Who is?

Well, for starters, there's Cisco and Nortel. They're the ones who sold routers and firewall tech to China, helped them set it up, and provided and continue to provide technical assistance in the construction of the most advanced real-time filtering system in the world. "

Oh well, who gives a damn which Western based company is the calloborator in the maintenance of this "authoritarian state" definitely not "free" and definitely not of the demos! As if the Internet ever was a place for the expression of "free thought" or "a beacon of liberty". After the Republican Party doen't control the Internet, yet!!