aqumada

If there is one thing you should read at this blogsite this would be it. We are carrying this message in the same spirit that compelled the Reverend Martin Niemoller to articulate the following eternal quotable quote in 1945.

First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

A few months ago Google succumbed to the demands from the Chinese government to control what people in China could search from the Google search engines. The Chinese government which is desperately trying to control what sort of information its people will have access to, is now rumored to be helping out the authoritarian regime of the Ethiopian government to block out websites that the Ethiopian government deems critical of its policies. The following information was posted on one of these blocked blogsites that can not be accessed from Ethiopia. We encourage our readers to pass this information to as many people as possible via email or any other means possible to them, especially to people in Ethiopia who still want to have access to these sites.

Government Blocks Bloggers
Over the last two days, all blogspots blogs including http://www.seminawork.blogspot.com/ have been blocked in Ethiopia. Those who seek political quips from weichegud or intelligent analysis form other bloggers can't access the sites via the telecom servers. In addition, the government has blocked Ethiopian Review, cyber Ethiopia, quatero and "Free our leaders" websites. My sources (sources to "seminawork" blogsite) told me this is done by telecom authorities in Ethiopia with the advice and help of the Chinese. The "Seminawork" blog can't be accessed in Ethiopia so the following advice posted on "seminawork.blogspot.com" may not reach its intended readers. Other websites like Ethiomedia that haven't yet been blocked should carry the message to Ethiopian readers.
Readers can use an open proxy like this which allows to circumvent the blocks. Readers should click on http://securebar.secure-tunnel.com/cgi-bin/nph-freebar.cgi/110110A and enter the address that is blocked in the displayed box. Using the proxy we can access our beloved blogs and websites even though the government has censored them. The addresses you should enter to access the websites are listed below.

http://seminawork.blogspot.com/

http://weichegud.blogspot.com/

http://www.freeourleaders.org/

http://ethiopianreview.homestead.com/

http://www.quatero.net/

http://www.cyberethiopia.com/

http://coffeechillisun.blogspot.com/

http://ethiofilmsnbooks.blogspot.com/

One thing is for sure. Providing one proxy server is not going to solve the problem. The day telecom authorities block the proxy server we'll find ourselves back at square one. In the last few years Ethiopians have become politically savey and we feel it is time they start becoming computer savey. Here are 7 approaches to access blocked websites courtesy of http://labnol.blogspot.com

Approach 1: There are websites Anonymizer that fetch the blocked site/ page from their servers and display it to you. As far as the service provider is concerned you are viewing a page from Anonymizer and not the blocked site.

Approach 2: To access the blocked Web site. type the IP number instead of the URL in the address bar. But if the ISP software maps the IP address to the web server (reverse DNS lookup), the website will remain blocked.

Approach 3: Use a URL redirection service like tinyurl.com or snipurl.com. These domain forward services sometimes work as the address in the the url box remain the redirect url and do not change to the banned site.

Approach 4: Use Google Mobile Search. Google display the normal HTML pages as if you are viewing them on a mobile phone. During the translation, Google removes the javascript content and CSS scripts and breaks a longer page into several smaller pages. [link] View this website in Google Mobile

Approach 5: Enter the URL in Google or Yahoo search and then visit the cached copy of the page. To retrieve the page more quickly from Google's cache, click "Cached Text Only" while the browser is loading the page from cache.

Approach 6: An approach to access restricted web sites using Google language tools service as a proxy server. Basically, you have Google translate your page from English to English (or whatever language you like). Assuming that Google isn't blacklisted in your country or school, you should be able to access any site with this method. Here we asked google to translate from Arabic to English but since the orignianl text was in English it will just display the original article. Visit this site via Google Proxy

Approach 7: Anonymous Surfing Surf the internet via a proxy server. A proxy server (or proxies) is a normal computer that hides the identity of computers on its network from the Internet. Which means that only the address of the proxy server is visible to the world and not of those computers that are using it to browse the Internet. Just visit the proxy server website with your Web browser and enter a URL (website address) in the form provided.