God bless the contradictions. And thanks to the people who have volunteered as potential LRB authors. I've passed your info onto the editor.

Also worthy of a general read is this IHT article on how more countries are looking askance at YouTube. I remain convinced that it's blocking is only a matter of time in China, but I've felt that way for a year so far and circumstances keep proving me wrong. 

Finally, I got a good laugh from this article this morning. I suppose this makes me a tool of the devil, etc. To paraphrase David Lee Roth (thus proving the prior sentence true, I suppose), I don't feel evil. Caution: contains extreme right-wing hysteria. 

For the past year, China has been a minefield for American Internet firms. They just can't seem to get a break. EBay has retreated, and a deal to go into business with Tom.com seems to be fraying. Google just got through their IME mini-scandal, and they still lag behind Baidu. Most famously, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Cisco were all called before a US congressional hearing to answer charges that they are complicit in Chinese censorship and the jailing of Chinese dissidents. That latter issue has arisen again to cause more trouble for Yahoo, who have just been sued by the family of one such imprisoned dissident.

--more at CNET Asia-- 

23/04/2007
 
There has been much yammering about civilizing the Internet here in China for the past year. We've had it from Hu Jintao, we've had it very recently from the Ministry of Public Security. And we get it on a pretty much nonstop basis from the press. Unfortunately morality seems be outrunning the actual laws. It turns out that you can still have a more-or-less legal n*de web chat in China. Could this be a new sideline business for me?

--more at CNET Asia--