China: Flickr filtered

The distinct 2.0ness with which an unprecedented environmental protest was carried out last week in southern China's seaside Xiamen city seems to have resulted, as of June 7, in the service of two websites key to the exclusive blog coverage of the event being disrupted: Bullog.cn, where live updates from the streets of Xiamen were being posted, and Flickr, where searches for keywords like ‘antipx’ and ‘xiamen’ bring back hundreds of images from the demonstration and later clashes with police and soldiers.

Lian Yue, columnist for Guangzhou‘s Southern Metropolis Daily and Bullog blogger had his personal blog blocked in early May, at the peak of many articles he wrote on the planned Px chemical plant.

Asks prominent bridge blogger and Fujian native Yee:

“Any reasons of baning this excellent photos share websites? So many! Especially in this June, like Xiamen people's march against PX project happened on 1st June and someone did a live report of the whole process on flickr.”

Buchong, one of the few bloggers who brought the Chinese blogsphere the Xiamen protest updates, at just before midnight Beijing time on June 7 writes on his Fanfou—a Chinese version of Twitter—of speculation that Bullog's having been blocked might not have been an official move:

【内幕】牛博遭到攻击,疑似方粉所为。罗方的粉丝都将拥戴对象的缺点全面继承、发扬光大了,且都有不理性的行为。这种事情发生在科学发展观的旗帜之下,真是莫大的讽刺。

[Inside story] Bullog has been attacked, fans of Fang Zhouzi [an IT professional living in the US who just the day prior was booted from Bullog following a personal spat with its owner, Luo Yonghao] are suspected. Fans of Luo and Fang are playing up their supporters’ opponent's shortcomings, blowing things out of proportion, all very unreasonable behavior. That these kinds of things happen under the flag of scientific development is really hugely ironic.

A look at ex-Bullog blogger He Caitou's personal blog shows a post today, via a far more detailed version at the highly-read wikipedian Shi Zhao's blog, telling readers how to get past the Flickr block:

根据经验,只要哥哥你耐心地等待哟,心上的人儿就会到来哟!这一次,是《半亩塘闲话》shizhao达人。他不单给出了让你自己看的办法,还给出了让别人看的办法。请访问:

《显示flickr图片的临时解决方法》

Tips:对于很菜的菜鸟

在XP系统中,Hosts文件的位置一般是在:C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

修改的时候,选择记事本或者写字板打开这个文件,你将看到:

127.0.0.1 localhost

然后请在下面加两行,加好以后应该是这样的:

127.0.0.1 localhost
farm1.static.flickr.com 68.142.232.116
farm2.static.flickr.com 69.147.90.156

According to my experience, Big Brother need only keep patient and wait and the people in his heart will be coming! This time it's Talk blogger Shi Zhao. He doesn't just let you see the way, but lets others see it too. Please visit here for a [Flickr] photo showing a temporary method for visiting Flickr.

In the Windows XP system, the Hosts file is usually located at: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

While you're making changes, open the file [Hosts] in either Notepad or Wordpad and you will see:

127.0.0.1 localhost

Then below that add these two lines so that in the end it looks like this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
farm1.static.flickr.com 68.142.232.116
farm2.static.flickr.com 69.147.90.156

Then save, presumably.

On top of Bullog being gone for the moment and Flickr photos showing up empty boxes, service was temporarily disrupted on June 7 at several English-language China-based blogs hosted by DreamHostBokane, Sinosplice and the China Blog List—as well as expat blog Sinocidal having seemingly been blocked the same day.

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