The following is a transcript of a yogini acquaintance of mine who’s in China, clicked on a Facebook link to an article I wrote, and found that elephantjournal.com is censored (blocked).

Sarah

did you say something the chinese govt doesn’t like? elephant online is blocked

6:33pmWaylon

blocked in China? How do you know?

6:34pmSarah

i’m here

there

6:34pmWaylon

we do a ton of stuff on Tibet situation

6:34pmSarah

in china

6:34pmWaylon

what does it say?

when you try and see it?

can you send me a screen capture via email?

I’ll blog it!

ahahahahah

6:34pmSarah

i need a proxy server to look at it

6:34pmWaylon

that’s so funny

6:34pmSarah

pretty funny

6:35pmWaylon

slash sad

6:35pmSarah

sometimes they block the ny times too

i know

funny/sad

and annoying

6:35pmWaylon

google cooperates with China and others they kinda have to I guess but pretty weak.

6:36pmSarah

yeah i mean it is weak, but its understandable

they have to compete and there are no regulations here

so they just gotta do what the other people are doing to succeed

i wish it was another way

6:36pmWaylon

oh well, it’s not like Google can afford to be idealistic and mission-driven. Oh…wait…

6:37pmSarah

heheh

i have a friend here who works in PR for google’s competitor

and it sounds like the most evil job in the world

6:38pmWaylon

I’m gonna write that up I consider it a badge of honor though still sad Tibetans can’t google ‘independence’ ‘freedom’ ‘Dalai Lama’ etc…can you imagine censoring the word ‘freedom’!? That’s dark.

6:39pmSarah

i know its heart breaking

anyway i thought you might appreciate to know you got a block from the govt

you must be doing something right

6:40pmWaylon

Yah, like Paul Newman etc were always proud to be on Nixon’s Enemies List. Thanks for telling me, you made my Sunday night.

6:41pmSarah

sure thing!

hehe

6:48pmSarah

now i’m paranoid the govt will find out about this conversation

7:12pmWaylon

if they [spy on facebook] that’d be a huge story, you’d get famous and rich in the US