There are many stories that will need to be told. No amount of censorship will stop the information from getting into the eye of the public. Many of these type of incidents are those that happened before the era of Internet being formed or in countries that don't have good Internet infrastructure to begin with!

I think that all countries will have their own stories that will eventually be told, that is part of any grievance and recovery process of communities and society in general.

We all pick on China because it has the highest amount of attention in the public media and technology space. How about other incidents like in 2004 , the Haiti coup d'État (revolt) ?? Hardly any news on the atrocities that happened there, even by the American MSM's. The question remains why is this so ? Was it just because they are allies to Haiti or did nothing happen ?? And then once again, is that not a form of censorship too ??

> the schoolchildren perished because they were ordered to sit down
> in their theatre seats so that Communist party officials could leave first

I would want to see confirmation of this before I internalise it as a fact, but in the UK it's commonplace to be told "In the event of an emergency, please stay calm, remain seated, and await instructions from staff" whereas in real life the most people will be saved if everyone dashes headlong for the exits.

you sure?

i tried en words "kalamay" and Chinese letters "卡拉玛椅" i got the fire report.

here the snapshot http://picasaweb.google.com/v0idy0un9/Screenshot/photo#5061457042921187122

sorry it is censored. i tried to serch "克拉玛依 大火", at first it shows more than 62 000 results, but when i click the search button again, there was to b 416 results/

Flower children falling like leaves. We can not forget the sorrows.
The officials should be in prison.

Children should never be treated like this. Such a tragedy.

ShellehS, the results are partly censored, not fully censored, so you will get some reports but not all.

> We all pick on China because it has the highest
> amount of attention in the public media and
> technology space.

Pd, I'd like to clarify that China receives the most attention here because it's the most drastic *Google*-related censorship, and this blog is about Google. By the way, I agree that there's also a lot of "implicit" censorship which happens when there's freedom of speech in theory, but in practice people only focus only on certain things and ignore other issues – and this kind of implicit censorship may be available in my country, your country, everywhere. Some people (I'm thinking of one in particular who I asked on the subject of China censorship but who didn't want to go on-record) are actually more worried about this type of censorship...

This incident shows that censorship is a part of larger often murderous power game. That's why you have to stop it before people get killed. Information can save lives. I remember when Poland was a dictatorship under martial law, media and telephones were switched off while a big flood took place. So many people died because they couldn't be warned on time that a flood is coming.

(plz del my prior posts)

the chinese search engine *Baidu* start "baidu.jp" somedays before. and now is blocked here, because japan is the biggest sexual production manufacturer（emm, i just think so）,the polity found lot of chinese people use "baidu.jp" as a high quality sex stuff search engine.

since Blogspot is unblocked for period, and look like all google services goes well here now, sometime i just ignore the fact *censorship*. turn to focus on google.cn 's defeat in china.

In fact, the officials also had chance to open the all safe doors.
The Karamay goverment promised, they will build a memorial, to remember the chinldrens. But now, just a square there.

Have a father, sitting in the extreme cold on the floor of his side was burned daughter, He has firmly His beard, holding a small hand, no tears, no crying, no unaccompanied. Leng Leng as straight on to sit for a whole day.

What is a leng leng? I have no Idea what is going on here.

Has Google (or the others) ever said anything about when they plan to stop helping enforce the CCP's censorship?

This bizarre urgency of nearly all Western institutions to cater to the CCP's whims is an omnipresent phenomenon in today's world. The Sunday Times story should have set off a wave of coverage of Chen's documentary and the buzz of anger on Chinese BBSes. But it has not. A few days later, Reuters Alternet (I never knew it existed either) produced a story, and all of one newspaper picked it up. Kudos to the Montreal Gazette.

Why such widespread silence on such a story? It makes no editorial sense. It is a story that would be well read in any paper. It is inherently sensational. But we get media silence.

People love to muse about Islamophobia these days. I would suggest that the Sinophilia demonstrated by this affair is a closely related phenomenon. Who, if anyone, controls these forces, and how is it that they are so thoroughly effective in creating censorship by ommission in so many news institutions around the globe?

> how is it that they are so thoroughly effective in creating
> censorship by ommission in so many news institutions
> around the globe?

From a business perspective, the Chinese gov't holds the key in unlocking a giant user base. Play by their rules, and your business gets a share of this user base. Don't play, and you'll suffer the "90%" problem Google faced (some institutions may decide that 90% is worth it if you don't commit self-censorship). But perhaps someday the key to this user base will be just user trust, without gov't interference...