Shi Tao, Oppression and US firms

[padren]

I just found out about this article from Sept 05, so it isn't exactly timely, but it really upset me actually.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4221538.stm

 

 

I've disliked the censorship that we've aided the chinese in implementing, but for a US firm, and people working at that firm in the US, who get to pay lip service to how much they love freedom and put yellow ribbon magnets on their cars and all that good stuff, then turn around and help send a guy off to jail for 10 years who simply tried to get information out about how bad they have it.

 

Honestly I don't care if the US legal system required an employee at Yahoo to hand that info over to the Chinese - how can anyone that respects the society we have be willing to be so complicit in the oppression of people elsewhere?

 

It really upsets me, and I've never had any respect for our arms sales to dictatorships and whatnot, and I know this isn't an isolated case. I just don't understand how someone can live with themselves when they comply to help suppress people and imprison them who's only crime is to want a society one iota closer to the one we live in and claim to respect and value.

 

It just feels so much worse than the decadance of the late roman empire that I can't even imagine how history will remember it.

[Pangloss]

Yeah it's pretty crummy. I'm just not sure what can be done about it. This is the flip side of the "sanctions don't work" card, after all. If these companies refuse to help, other companies, created by those states, do the job instead, and then we lose the cultural trump card.

 

I don't know what the solution is, but it does seem to expose the hypocrisy of the naive "don't be evil" corporate culture.

[Sisyphus]

For the record, it's only Google that claims it isn't evil...