TIME China Blog GFW-ed

It seems that the TIME Magazine China Blog has been blocked by the Great Firewall of China (GFW), or "GFW-ed" to use the industry nomenclature. The blog normally covers a full-range of issues, including topics and analysis that local media wouldn't touch with a 10 meter 棍, and as a rule, TIME tends to "err on the side of free speech." However, evidently the blog took things a step too far for China's censors, when on June 4th, all three bloggers (Simon Elegant, Bill Powell, and Austin Ramzy) wrote about the world's largest public square.

Although currently choked-off from their Chinese audience, the bloggers remain sanguine about the situation, as today's entry reads:

GFW-ed. That's what we have been. Blocked. Great Fire Wall-ed. Or Net nanny-ized. Or, as some Chinese netizens say in reference to their President's most famous slogan, "harmonized" (被和谐的), which has an authentically creepy Orwellian ring to it....or maybe it wounds more like "neuralized" from the Men in Black movie, which would make it more silly than creepy.

Anyway, no surprise this happened as all three of us had posts about that large square in the capital city where something happened in 1989. The machinery that blocks is automatic, evidently. Inside China, our blog still doesn't load right. No pictures and everything else awry. Be interesting to see how long it takes to come back to normal, ie when the offending posts disappear from the main page in the normal course of things, will the problems stop?

So have they "killed a chicken to scare the monkeys," or will this chicken be resuscitated? Until, then you can try a work around, and Shanghaiist will be keeping our monkey-fingers crossed that Simon, Bill, and Austin will be squawking again soon.