Mike Robertson on China
p2p news / p2pnet:- Linspire founder and chairman Mike Robertson has launched his own OpEd page and interestingly, in his first effort, he bites into " Chinese demands to throttle liberty in exchange for access to the Chinese market".
Not at all incidentally, Communist China has just announceds it plans to rigidly control what’s ‘healthy news‘ and what isn’t for the populace.
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Would You Send Your Mom To Jail To Make Money?
By Michael L. Robertson – Linspire
In a conference room at my office there’s a giant photo of a lone Chinese man standing in front of a row of tanks. It’s the classic photo from Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989, when 100,000 brave students peacefully assembled to protest the corrupt and repressive Chinese government. For their heroic actions many were crushed by tanks, beaten by soldiers, or jailed, and some of the protest’s organizers were forced to flee their homeland forever.
Sixteen years later, one can hardly pick up a business magazine without seeing a screaming headline about the importance of China. With 20% of all earth’s inhabitants and a migration from communism to capitalism China is a tantalizing opportunity for virtually any corporation. What’s rarely mentioned is that the brutal regime still in power continues to jail people for exercising even the most basic of liberties we take for granted in Western society.
Recently, technology companies who have opened shops for business in China are confronted with an ethical dilemma. In a quest for growth and profits, how much do they kowtow to the Chinese government, which tramples human rights and demands corporations to assist in continued crackdowns of freedom?
All the major search engines have given in to Chinese demands to throttle liberty in exchange for access to the Chinese market. Google has removed news listing from its popular news search to publications critical of Chinese policy such as Epoch Times, Voice of America and a dozen other publications. Microsoft has blocked users of its MSN site from using the terms "freedom," "democracy" and other concepts China has designated as "dangerous."
The argument in favor of corporate self-censorship is that the massive amount of information NOT filtered is slowly informing the Chinese populace about freedom, which is another way of saying that the good outweighs the bad. There may be truth in this, but at the same time it’s clear that the Communist oligarchy believes that they can extend their control of their populace with the cooperation of American businesses into the digital age.
Most disconcerting are recent reports that Yahoo!’s Hong Kong operation is turning over emails which helped convict a reporter. Journalist Shi Tao was jailed and sentenced to 10 years in prison for "illegally sending state secrets abroad." The secrets that he revealed were information his newspaper received from the state propaganda department about how they could cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was identified because he had used Yahoo!’s free email service for which Yahoo! turned over log files to authorities that were later tracked back to his computer.
It’s easy to brush off the matter as an unfortunate incident that happens in a corrupt government on the other side of the globe. After all, Yahoo! has to respond to court orders in China just as my companies would have to respond to court orders served on them in the United States. In addition, they have obligations to their shareholders to grow the company, not battle against government policies they might disagree with. It’s possible that Yahoo! did not know why the government was requesting the information or understand the implications of their participation. And maybe Yahoo!’s employees were even threatened themselves with jail if they did not comply.
Still, I wonder how they would react if the court order was for information to identify their Mom instead of a faceless Chinese citizen? If their mother was at the center of the controversy and risked a decade-long sentence in a Chinese prison where torture and hard labor are not uncommon, would they willingly provide the information?
It’s one thing to engage in self-censorship, preventing someone from discussing "freedom" and "human rights" or blocking news sources. In those instances nobody goes to prison. Nobody is tortured. Nobody is physically harmed. It’s an entirely different level to actively participate in turning over information which leads to jailing of citizens for the most basic freedom of press issues. It makes me wonder where the moral lines are when chasing a dollar. Would those companies turn over information that leads to executions for those that violate freedom of speech?
With the secrecy shrouding the Chinese government, it’s likely other companies have been forced to take similar actions. Yahoo! is in the unfortunate position of being the first Internet company to be publicly outed when they’ve cooperated with the Chinese in such a manner. Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft may act like they are powerless in this situation, bound by the laws of the countries they operate in, but that’s ridiculous. Surely they recognize the power they have in going public with this information – the power to reach the media, influence their users and bring diplomatic and political pressure on China. It’s no secret that as the host of 2008 Olympics in Beijing they are sensitive to public perception and scrutiny.
For Shi Tao’s sake, I hope we have not heard the final chapter of this story. I hope that Yahoo! is working behind the scenes to see that Mr. Tao does not spend the next decade in prison for sending an email message. It’s important for Yahoo! to come out publicly as well and say they strongly oppose the Chinese government’s actions and remind people of the basic liberties Chinese are still deprived of.
It’s even more important for the next Shi Tao. I hope he or she will have confidence that while American companies may be forced to cooperate in situations in which they do not agree, they do so under both public and private protest. I’m not naive enough to think that speaking out against the Chinese government won’t possibly provoke retaliation. It is rarely convenient to do the right thing. But I hope Americans, from the safety and freedom afforded us in the United States, will muster a tiny fraction of the courage of the man in front of the tanks and speak out.
– Michael
(Thanks, Sixto)
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See:-
healthy news – China online news clampdown, September 26, 2005
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If you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.
September 26th, 2005 at 2:39 pm
I used to be a solid Republican until a couple of weeks after 4 June 1989. I personally witnessed many horrors of a brutal government – I live under the government of East Germany until I was about 6. My family fled to the United States and remained in hiding until the Berlin Wall was destroyed. At that time, it seemed that the Republicans had a moral compass and understood the evils of tyranny.
Unfortunately, nowdays, the Republican party seems only interested in further enriching a few large companies at the expense of everyone’s freedom. I am appalled that out government passess oppressive regulations against manufacturers here in the U.S. while at the same time ignoring its constitutional duties to protect this nation against the flood of underprices goods via tariffs. Most of what Americans consume nowdays is produced by people under the iron hand of repressive regimes. This fact seems to sit well with both the large cartels as well as with the government of the U.S.A.
American workers are expected to compete pricewise with underpaid slave laborer in repressive countries. Not only are these countries flooding us with cheap goods that have devastated American industry, they are also spying on us and in many cases using our innovations against us. If the American people do not change their ways and stop electing Democrats and Republicans to federal office, America will not be long for this world. As much as I love America and the Republic form of government, I cannot say the same about the political party (Democrat-Republican) that is in office today. Yes, I blame not only the Republican side, but I also blame the Democrats as they have helped to make our borders less impervious to cheap, slave-made goods.
America is bleeding money, technology, and jobs. The lamescream press likes to refer to the remains of our economy as a service economy. What does that make Americans? SERVANTS!!!! We are not only servants, but we are well on our way to becoming SLAVES!!!
Many of us are hugely in debt to the banks, credit card companies, and hospitals. These entities have provided us with cheap goods and services at a steep price. Once we are out of money, will our enemy regimes that we have built up at our expense invade us? Very likely. Will the large multi-national corporations and various national governments enslave the world’s population? Very Likely!!!
Most countries or governments can survive war, famine, disease, and other major national disasters. However, one thing that hardly any government has been able to withstand is treachery within the government. When I became a citizen and when I joined the military, I took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC. This is the reason why I speak out. I will never again elect a Democrat or Republican member of the party to any federal office as long as their is a candidate running under a Constitution Party or Libertarian Party ticket.
If I do not see any people of these parties on the ballot, then I will go with the least known of all the candidates on the ballot. I will vote for the least known because I assume that those with less money (less bribed, and therefore probably less corrupt) have not been bought by the special interests and will be most likely to represent the interest of the people. I urge everyone else to do the same.
September 26th, 2005 at 9:57 pm
Why even keep logs? You can not be coerced or forced to turn over what does not exist. Even the most painstaking search through one’s possessions will not uncover an item that was never created in the first place.
Furthermore, this would simply save the entities that are getting bombarded with subpoenas for user ID information a great deal of money because they could simply say they do not keep logs of the information sought. Certainly, keeping a ephemeral log of the last 4 hours activity in a circular queue in RAM would likely be sufficiently useful for diagosing a network or other problem that crops up.
In situations like the China/Yahoo controversy and other similar circumstances, any logs (if they are produced) should generated and kept out of reach of despotic regimes, if at all possible.
Finally, I find it personally irritating that Yahoo will hop-to and fork over ID info to China like a good little puppy dog, when I can’t even get an answer as to why they deleted a Yahoo Group I moderated for those interested the history and development of animation (cartoons.) You can’t get past the switchboard operator or some know-nothing admin or PR person to talk to a staff member after dozens of e-mails are summarily ignored.
September 27th, 2005 at 6:23 am
Robertson likes to blow his horn, but he knows shit about China. As a chinese individual, sure I agree the tanks were a little too much. But, let’s put it into context.
Now, I dislike the fact the tanks rolled over a few people (not many as Robertson claims). Let me say this, it was STUPID to stand in front of a tank (which has limited visibility, not that I’m saying that was the cause, could have well been ENTIRE UN-INTENTIONAL), fighting for something you have NO CLUE ABOUT! Firstly, during that time, a minority were all “hyped” up about “democracy” (TM) — the same “type” of democracy that is being exported to Afghanistan and Iraq. All this talk about “communism” (the evil “one”) and “democracy” (aka capitalism, but more accurately called Capitalism), is just that — it’s just a name.
How many of you readers out there know the history of Marxism, and with extension Communism/Socialism?!
Let me ask you an interesting question…. What is significant about July 4, 1776?
It’s the day the United States of America gained it’s independence, you say?! You would be right. BUT, what OTHER event shares the same date?!
I’ll let you think about that one — I’ll give you a hint, it DOES have SOMETHING to do with “Independence Day” (TM). Do some research, you find it enlightening. For now, I’ll continue… There was this “organization” (let’s call them the “Money Changers” — historically this was actually one of the names they were best known as) that pioneered this new ideology called capitalism/democracry.
BUT, the problem was, to push this onto the people and to gain ‘legitimate’ power, they need a BIG, POWERFUL ENEMY (much like the big ELUSIVE Osama-Bin-Laden & his BIG evil Al Queda — Ooooooooh scaaarrrry, moooommmmyyyyy help me!!!). So they enlisted the help of ONE OF THEIR MEMBERS, a man named Karl Marx to help create this imaginary evil enemy. So, Karl Marx COVERTLY set off to write one of the most famous manifestos — the Communist Manifesto (much like the Hacker’s Manifesto) to get the masses of peasants rallying. In fact, for nearly 50 years, his name did NOT appear on the manifesto — only later did they add his name to the manifesto.
And so, the Czars of Russia were overthrown by the Boshelvic Communists and Russia become the Soviet Union. Now, the ‘Money Changers” were pleased. They enacted their revenge! Ha ha ha, Muuuwwaaahhhaaa!!! “How dare the Czars REFUSED to open up their BANKS to the “International Bankers” (another name associated with the “Organization”). And this BIG, RED COMMUNIST country was the perfect threat — in fact, a little too perfect. Communist Russia turned on its masters, and showed the rest of the world that it could act “independently.”
Now, this was BAD NEWS for the Money Changers — much like file sharing is bad for the RIAA/MPAA. When the PEOPLE are in control of their lives, that means those “in-the-shadows” don’t have the POWER to exact fees/dowry/money/tax/bribes/gold from the people. This pissed them off.
So what did they do? What would YOU do? The time-proven most effective way, is to “poison” the country from the inside. Plant a few dissidents, hire a few mercenaries, contact a few assassins, make riots, and sabotage — all from the inside. And the point is to make it seem authentic, to make it seem GRASS ROOTS.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Move on to 1989. The same thing. China is a growing “threat” (TM). Ohhhhh the biiiiggggg sssssccccccaaaaarrrrrryyyyy chinaman….. oooohhhhh mommy, don’t let them come near me, they might eat me alive….. ohhhh help, help!!!
Putting these childish and deadly games aside, China has learned an important lesson from that day. It has learned this “game”, the “big game”. And China and the Chinese people ALL OVER THE WORLD ‘UNDERSTAND” this game. Let me tell you this, we are the MOST UNITED PEOPLE’s of the EARTH — It is the main reason we are the OLDEST SURVIVING CIVILIZATION on the face of the planet! Ten thousand years is something too brag about (well not that long, but close!) — well, actually WE don’t like to brag….
….. we just want the “west” to leave us alone….. (PS: I’m both an American Westerner and Chinese, so I have a unique perspective
hehehe).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Anyhoo, to close up. I’d like to make an interesting point. The United States has LESS than 1/4 of China’s population. According to the United Nations records, except for 3 years, the USA had the HIGHEST number of PUBLIC EXECUTIONS in the ENTIRE WORLD. Yes, that’s right. And don’t say they deserved the death sentence (especially when you turn around in a flash, and be condascending on other countries for killing their citizens).
And most of them are BLACK. Now, don’t make that poorly vielled (to hide the fact that you are a closet racist) EXCUSE that BLACKS commit more crimes than WHITES! The proportion of BLACKS in jail GREATLY exceeds any justification…. mmmmm???? I wonder who all of the mass-murderers are?!! Are they Chinese? — Definitely NOT! Are they black?! — No. Now, who could they be? Who could the IMPERIALISTS, RAPISTS, EXPLOITISTS be???!!!!! mmmmm?????
I’ll let you think for yourself!
September 27th, 2005 at 6:28 am
Case in point— Hurricane Katrina!