Caught this on the New York Times Website and with the focus of the international media on Tibet at the moment thought it might provide some hot debate.

As seen on http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/weekinreview/12kahn.html

This article is obviously looking at how Google has become in sync to the chinese state media.

But my question is with the reports of huge crimes against public rights - is this something we should be supporting this summer?

SO what does the Dalai Lama look like, anyway?

Chinese Tibetans or other Buddhists who might be curious could try finding images of the spiritual leader on Google.cn, a new search engine that Google tailored for China and is now, two weeks after its unveiling, on full display to local Web users.

Is he that guy with puffy cheeks wearing a Western suit? No, that's Liu Jianchao, China's foreign ministry spokesman, demanding that the Dalai Lama stop trying to split the motherland. What about that balding man leading a big delegation? No, that's Chen Yi, a late Chinese vice prime minister, offering grain to the Tibetan people.

Only one of the 161 images produced by searching in Chinese for the Dalai Lama on Google.cn shows the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet since 1940. He is pictured as a young man meeting senior Chinese officials. That was before 1959, when China's People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet and the Dalai Lama fled into exile.

For people outside China, or Chinese who can circumvent the Internet firewall, the 2,030 images on unfiltered Google.com favor the Dalai Lama of today. He is the genial-looking guy in the burgundy and saffron robe, here meeting President Bush, there speaking to 40,000 people in New Jersey.

Several of the biggest media and technology companies have come under attack for helping the Chinese government police the Web. Yahoo provided information about its users' e-mail accounts that helped the authorities convict dissidents in 2003 and 2005, Chinese lawyers say. Microsoft closed a popular blog it hosted that offended Chinese censors. Cisco has sold equipment that helps Beijing restrict access to Web sites it considers subversive.

But few have cooperated as openly as Google. Google's local staff works closely with Chinese officials to ensure that search results from Google.cn do not include information, images or links to Web sites that the government does not want its people to see.

Google.com, the company's main international search engine, is still available in China, though it often operates inefficiently because it produces links that cannot be opened inside China's firewall.

Google.cn, Google says, works faster and serves its users better — and Google places a blunt but discreet disclosure of censorship on the bottom of Web pages that include elided search results. Even so, critics say, the service violates Google's motto, "Don't Be Evil." They say the company has lent its expertise and good name to blocking information on religion, politics and history that the Communist Party feels might undermine its monopoly on power.

"It was one thing when you hit on links that did not work. You could see what was blocked," said Liu Xiaobo, a leading dissident writer. "The new Google hides the hand of the censor."

In other words, it's no longer possible to tell what the censors are hiding, only that something is being censored.

In some cases, the manipulations are fairly subtle. Students wanting to learn more about the "Republic of China" on Google.cn would be steered to information about the period from 1912 to 1949, when the mainland was called Republic of China and the Communists had not yet taken power. The same search on Google.com provides links to sites in archrival Taiwan, which still formally goes by that name.

In other cases, the omissions are glaring. Searches for photos of Tiananmen Square on regular Google produce many shots of a man blocking a column of tanks outside the square, the iconic image of the 1989 democracy movement and the later crackdown.

Google.cn features soldiers raising the national flag and tourists taking snapshots of each other in the square, the sun shining in a sapphire sky.

That made for really interesting reading.

It also reminds me of the Olympic boycotts of the early 80s with the Moscow and Los Angeles Olympics.

Of course I find China's suppression of information (and Tibet) deplorable but am not shocked because the information is electronic. Censorship of information is nothing new and we take our freedom of speech for granted but the shear scale of China's censorship is staggering and one can only wonder for how long they can keep it up.

Whether we should boycott the Olympics, I don't know because it will always come back down to money. If we boycott them, they will simply boycott us in London 2012. The question depends on how much we are prepared to give up to Tibet's cause and our ideals of freedom of speech.

You're right, Lesley. But I think it's time we take a stand for what is right, even if it costs us China's support at the 2012 Olympics.

Actually, the whole Olympic thing is about money...it isn't at all what it used to be. Or what it should be.

I find the way that China is censoring information absolutely appalling, however I can understand why Google has taken these measures. International relationships make good business sense, and lets face it, Google is a business - albeit one with a friendly face (what with its open source everything!). Also by only showing results that will not lead to a dead end in China, Google have made their search engine more efficient for those that use it, and given that access to the standard international one is still available (at least for the time being) they have not prevented anyone from seeing what is being censored. I see it as more of the fault of China if international searches become banned - Google are merely trying to provide a more accurate service to its Chinese users.

Anyway, I apologise, got a little distracted with techie stuff and went off topic, so on to the point at hand - The olympics to me don't really bring up the image that they used to as a child. Now every four years the event just seems to bring scandal about drug cases, rash money spending, even corruption. Most of what is so positive about the Olympics has been lost by everyone trying to make a quick buck. In all honesty I would have no issue with boycotting the Olympics.
However, I feel that to ban countries from hosting the Olympics because of their political beliefs would also be wrong. Just because the western world is built largely on a Democratic basis, does not mean that communism is always wrong. In an ideal situation it works - no-one is left out, wealth is (supposedly) shared equally, etc - however due to a human desire for wealth and prosperity the positive aspects of communism have also become lost.
I realise that some of what I've said may seem controversial, but I hope you understand that I am just trying to see both points of view. I was typing as I thought as well, so I apologise if it is not very cohesive!