Global Voices Online

berlintwitterwall is a project organized by the city of Berlin to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of Berlin wall. The wall is now filled up with messages from Chinese twitterers against the Chinese Great Fire Wall which blocks Chinese Internet user from connecting with the outside world.

CDT translated some politically-minded tweets during the national holidays commenting on the military parade and celebrations.

Started by a group of bloggers in 2005, and then organized by ADCT since 2006, BoF(Birds of a Feather), aka Taiwan Youth Blog Festival, has become the major Web 2.0 event in Taiwan. This year, because of Typhoon Morakot that wreaked havoc in August 2009 in southeren Taiwan, BoF 2009 on 9/27 focuses on how online community, as a part of local society, should have leverage in the offline world under the theme “Clean UP!”. Besides damage mitigation, this year BoF also divide sessions for microblogging, blogger economy and family bloggers, observing how different trends and innovations change the landscape in the blogosphere. (Live broadcasting in both text and video here.)

The Kaohsiung Film Festival came under pressure from China over its decision to screen The Ten Conditions of Love, a documentary about exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer. As a result the Kaohsiung City Government decided to screen the documentary in advance of the film festival. Echo Taiwan criticises the Kaohsiung City Government for bowing to Chinese pressure. Guts United says that even the decision to put forward the screening harms Taiwan's freedom of speech (zh).

MOP forum posted a number of photos on some newly constructed residential buildings in Guangzhou. From a far, one can see some “artistic” white pattern. When getting a closer look, their are all cracks. These buildings have all passed the quality check.

Evgeny Morozov of Foreign Policy's Net.Effect writes: “It turns out that when you use Google Translate to translate (from Chinese to Russian) the expression “Vote for Yanukovych” (Yanukovych was Kremlin's favorite candidate), Google gives you “Vote for Yushenko” in the translated version. Global conspiracy orchestrated by Google!”

Beeside made (zh)a video of his “free hug for Taiwan” campaign after he saw so many tragedies caused by the flood everyday (translation): “At the beginning, it was like other netizens said, people there were merely watching, no one dared to give me a hug. But this situation did not last long after a mother came near with her child and told him that: ‘Come, let's give Taiwan a hug, because we love Taiwan, right?' When I heard it, my eyes behind the mask were red in tears.”

Southern Taiwan has been severely affected by floods associated with Typhoon Morakot (颱風莫拉克). Billy Pan posted (zh) a link to a Google Map showing the sites of the disaster (zh) and places where volunteers and assistance are required. On Twitter taiwanfloods is regularly tweeting the latest news about the situation in the south. The hashtag #taiwanfloods is also being used.

Asia Society released an old documentary about pollution problems caused by sulfur mining in Da Shu Xian, or Big Tree County, in Sichuan province. The documentary was produced in 1992.