• Regarding the Gaza flotilla incident, please rest assured that we will not be suffering the consequences of our actions
• The initial tweet from @IsraelGlobalPR • Regarding the Gaza flotilla incident that’s got Israel in hot water this morning. Clearly modeled after @BPGlobalPR, it even parodies that Twitter account. “At least our Top Kill was successful, @BPGlobalPR,” they wrote about an hour ago. Not a good sign for your industry/country when this type of protest crops up. It’s incredibly effective. source

• Iran wants their diplomats back! The fate of hikers Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Josh Fattal has been under question for months, after they were detained last summer for crossing into the country. While they got to meet with their collective mothers last week, they’re still in custody and have been denied access to their lawyer repeatedly. Hillary Clinton has been calling for their release, too, and Iran may be willing to do a prisoner swap to get back some Iranian diplomats held in Iraq. We’ll believe it when we see it. source

• They claimed it was the result of restrictive new rules. GoDaddy, a domain-registration service, is one of those services that’s so broadly used that it’s hard to imagine an Internet without it. But China’s gonna get the chance, after GoDaddy balked at new rules for registering .cn domains, including color photos of those registering. As a result, they will no longer register new domains. Crazy. source

• Now Google suddenly wants to break its promise, and if it’s not satisfied it will criticize China for a worsening of the investment environment. This is entirely unreasonable. What has changed is not China’s investment environment. It is Google itself.
• Chinese official media source Xinhua • Regarding Google’s decision to move out of the Chinese market (a decision reported by the Financial Times today but not formally announced). To a degree, they’re totally correct. Yeah, Google changed. They decided that they couldn’t do censorship anymore, and were optimistic they could get China to bend for them. Not so much. source

• 133k number of workers Apple’s contractors, over 102 facilities, use to create their products
• 17 number of violations it found as a result of its own internal audits of contractors
• three number of cases it found of contractors purposely hiring underage workers; that’s bad source

• Well, that #(&(@&@ sucks. Screw them. China, currently kings of the sassy-kid-talkin’ “I do what I want” bandwagon, are forcing phone companies in the country to censor text messages with “illegal or unhealthy content,” mostly by suspending service to unwitting dirty-joke-makers. Just to make sure China blocks this post after we put it up:

china tiananmen square human rights porn sex sex censorship communism google xxx sexual content pornography tibet dalai lama playboy china tiananmen square human rights porn sex sex censorship communism google xxx sexual content pornography tibet dalai lamachina tiananmen square human rights porn sex sex censorship communism google xxx sexual content pornography tibet dalai lama

• There, that should do it. source

• +10% increase in Baidu’s stock this morning; they stand to benefit most from Google’s China pullout
• -1% decrease in Google’s stock this morning, after posting about the pullout decision last night source

• china The country, known for limiting free speech as well as economic power, was apparently behind a large cyber-attack that hit Google and many other companies, and tried to access sensitive information about human rights activists.
• google They noticed the hack, did their research and found the hack went far beyond them. They’re uncensoring their search results and considering leaving China altogether. Pardon our French, but this is fucking massive. source

• Fresh off his Nobel Peace Prize win, Barack Obama will speak at a Human Rights Campaign dinner tonight. Many are hoping he can make a dent in an issue that many gay-rights supporters have been hoping for. But Obama’s been distracted by everything else. Now that he’s finally giving it some attention, can he pull it off? Vote. source