Sorry, had to skip a couple of days but I'm back and today's Mack Attack is aimed at American software companies who are aiding China in its practice of the subjugation of free speech. With more than 100 million users, the Internet is booming in China.
American Web giants Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have all grabbed a piece of the lucrative Chinese market - but only after agreeing to help the government censor speech on the Web. In providing portals or search engines, all three companies are abiding by the totalitarian government's censorship of certain ideas and keywords, like "Tiananmen massacre," "Taiwanese independence," "corruption" and "democracy." Most foreign news sites are blocked. This year, Yahoo even supplied information that helped the government track and convict a political dissident who sent an e-mail message with forbidden thoughts from a Yahoo account; he was sentenced to 10 years in jail. "Business is business," said Jack Ma, Yahoo's chief in China. "It's not politics."
Microsoft also aided the Chinese government in locating and shuttting down a popular Chinese blogger who dared to criticize the government's fascist policies.But the one who gets the brunt of today's Mack Attack is Google. With our own increasingly-fascist regime knocking on their door with a subpoena for pornogrphy requests linked to their site (Yes Mediaman, I'm on it) Google, fighting the subpoena in federal court, wants to come across as the bastion of free speech advocacy. At the same time, they turn around and agree to censor their own search results for Chinese citizens at the behest of the Chinese government's free-speech restrictions. Google has agreed to omit content in China that the government finds objectionable. It will base its self-censorship on "guidance" from the Chinese government. What hypocrites.
Keep in mind, this is the same government that was reported in Wednesday's Washington Post to be cracking down on free speech in journalism as a whole. Freezing Point, a popular 4-page weekly feature of the state-run China Youth Daily was shut down by Chinese President Hu Jintao for offering alternative perceptions to the state-spewed national view of history. Is the almighty buck worth all this? What are the repercussions? Let's hear what you have to say.