The BBC has an online article titled Blogging from East to West that talks about the important role that blogs have in promoting democracy.
"According to Reporters Sans Frontières, at least 63 bloggers [in China] have been arrested, and most of those are publishing articles outside of the country.
"These are people who are really resisting government oppression."
So why are authoritarian governments so worried about blogging? Perhaps it is because the internet is so virulent. In the same way that spammers can reach millions of people in an easy way, ideas deemed dangerously democratic by many regimes can spread faster than bacteria on a petri-dish.
Julien Pain, of Reporters Sans Frontières, says: "Blogging is a very, very important tool in terms of freedom of expression.
Mainstream media (MSM) is failing to maintain its role as the source of unbiased information necessary for democracy. Politicians are seeing the MSMs as just another marketing venue to push their "product." Although bloggers are certainly biased in their own right, the proliferation of blogging means that the blogosphere is considerably more difficult to control than NBC/CBS/ABC or NHK/Fuji/Asahi/Mainichi.
Dear Karen!
Long time no see you. I posted an article to my blog, today. This was inspired from your article.
I am sorry my today's article was written in Japanese, but I think you are an excellent bilingual, so I hope you will understand what I thought.
Anyway, I would like to say thank you for your impressive article, and if you leave your message, I am very happy!
Best regards,
People should definitely check out MarmotBaby's blog at: http://memoranda.egoism.jp/blog/archives/2005/04/post_42.html - it's all in Japanese, but Google translation should do a fairly good job with it.
I appreciate for your quick reply and for your TB!
And I apologize you that I quoted your article without your permission, even I translated it in my "bad Japanese".