On the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, President Bush met with eight bloggers and new media users from China, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Egypt and Belarus.

The White House said Bush planned to discuss “the challenges they confront in overcoming censorship.”

Six of the individuals met with Bush at the White House; participants from Egypt and Venezuela joined by teleconference.

The White House also highlighted the efforts of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to aid citizen journalists. BBG oversees international radio broadcasters such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and Radio Farda, as well as television networks like Alhurra and TV Marti.

BBG news outlets are getting reports out of heavily censored countries by getting citizen journalists to submit information from cell phones, SMS feeds and e-mails, and encouraging participation in its radio, television and blog discussions.

Partnering with nongovernmental organizations, BBG also has developed free anti-censorship software and technical tools that are available in English, Persian, Kazakh, Mandarin and Vietnamese. A BBG spokesperson said users can go to one of those language sites and sign up to get updates, which include information “alerting people to work arounds” for the ongoing battle with the state censors.

Did Facebook’s U.S. creators realize their social networking site where friends shared jokes, photos and personal messages would become a powerful organizational tool for political groups worldwide?

Web sites like Facebook can be edited by anyone anywhere – one of its 69 million users worldwide can create a group to meet fans of a favorite film and invite people to a house party, while another can set up a group with a political agenda to raise funds from thousands of donors and organize mass demonstrations.

Early on a January afternoon, a young Colombian civil engineer frustrated over the violence in his country created a Facebook group to protest the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). By the time he got home that evening 1,500 people had joined his group.

Discussions in that Facebook group during the next few weeks led to the February 4 “One Million Voices Against the FARC” march that drew thousands of participants and made international headlines.