Google v. China: Shit just got real

It's a new day today. How can I tell? We've finally moved away from socialism to communism being the story of the day. Google has effectively pulled up stakes in China, moving its offices and redirecting its Google.cn domain to... another part of China. Hong Kong more specifically. Yes, Google finally got tired of China stealing their proprietary software spying, hacking, and censoring... beyond the parameters of the spying, hacking, and censoring they allowed the Chinese government to do through Google as part of their original deal. It's about the principle of the thing. If China can't hold to the agreed upon principles of dishonesty, then Google just can't trust them.

But now, with the move to Hong Kong and the domain forwarding, Google is effectively uncensored in China.... for about 15 more minutes until they revoke the domain name. They're kind of pissed. In that "trying to pretend we aren't pissed, saying nice things through a grimace and gritted teeth while holding a gun" communist way.

A bulletin from China's state-run news outlet Xinhua blasted Google in a post titled "China says Google breaks promise, totally wrong to stop censoring."
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"This is totally wrong. We're uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts," an official with the Internet bureau of the State Council Information Office, China's Cabinet, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

An op-ed by Xinhua published on the CCTV website accused Google of "groundlessly accusing the Chinese government of supporting hacker attack [sic]" and warned Google that it "should not continue to politicalize itself." The article continues,

"Regrettably, Google's recent behaviors show that the company not just aims at expanding business in China, but is playing an active role in exporting culture, value and ideas. It is unfair for Google to impose its own value and yardsticks on Internet regulation to China, which has its own time-honored tradition, culture and value."

Yes, Google is violating that time honored Chinese cultural principle of total government censorship. But judging by the tone of the Chinese statements, they have hired a 14 year-old American girl to write their press releases. We're one more 'totally' and an 'OMG' away from audibly being able to hear the sound of someone loudly chewing gum while they banged this release out on their Sidekick.

Google in China is not actually totally uncensored now, it's just that they've abdicated their self-censorship duties to the Chinese government, who, because of the move to Hong Kong, can only censor Google by completely shutting the search engine down. Which is exactly what Google wants so they can claim the moral high ground. They also technically get a PR victory in China because by forwarding the domain to Google.hk they technically haven't violated the deal to stop censoring Google.cn, which I'm sure will be explained in great detail to the people of China from the Chinese news services.

As of today, through Google.hk, Chinese people can search about Tienanmen Square. And porn. And internet gambling. One of those speaks to the true freedom of the internet, but I'm not sure which one.

So as the Chinese government and Google do battle on the largest stage in the most passive aggressive fight in human history, the Chinese people are caught in the middle of mommy and daddy fighting. And in the end, they probably won't end up better off because of it. But Google does get to make a stand over not allowing China to further their intellectual property theft and save face at a failing operation... I mean make a stand over censorship. I don't even know why I wrote the first half of that sentence. This is about free speech. Totally.

Goliath vs. an even bigger Goliath

I think we all remember the biblical story of Goliath and Goliath. Where two massive entities come to work together in order to increase their quarterly earnings reports and stranglehold on the information its subjects can view? I think Jesus was in it and there was something about a scorpion riding on the back of a frog in a river or something.

Anyway, such was the pairing of China and Google. But now that partnership is cracking under the weight of obvious conclusions that should have been eminently foreseeable for all. I don't want to alarm any of you, but it seems that China is an intensely oppressive communist regime that likes to control every shred of news or information its citizens try to access. I know that's shocking to you, but it seems that Google didn't know this information either. That's why it was shocked, shocked, to see that China was using all of the information controls and censoring blocks that Google put into its Google China search engine were used to spy on dissidents and businesses. That seems so unlike China. So Google offered an ultimatum: stop censoring information or we'll shut down Google China. Yeah, China's cool with that.

China made clear today that it will ignore an ultimatum from Google to relax internet censorship and reminded all companies that they must abide by state controls of the country’s cyberspace.

The authorities published a half-page statement in the People’s Daily, official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, signalling that Beijing has already decided that its 360 million internet users will have to manage without the world’s most popular search engine.
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Google plans to stand by its pledge to close its Chinese Google.cn service if the censorship is not lifted.

Who could have foreseen? How was Google supposed to know that all the information it was censoring, websites it was blocking, and monitoring and tracking information it was providing to China was going to be used for nefarious purposes? Censoring the internet for money usually carries with it such humanitarian goals. Who knew that China would try to overstep its already ridiculous internet censorship into trying to find out who was trying to access contraband information and suing that to persecute them? How could the brilliant plan of joint corporate and government censorship all have gone wrong?

C'est la vie. It looks like Chinese citizens won't have a nice user interface to go along with their government approved searches. Plus Google is really going to get some good PR. Because what's better than pulling out of China for ethical and free speech reasons? Not thinking about the ethical and free speech reasons Google went into China and set up a high tech censorship network for, that's what. It's a shame, I had high hopes for a Google China Nexus One phone that not only had a lot of cool apps, but also recorded all your phone calls. Oh well.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 11.09

Iranian student dares to criticise Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to his face
An Iranian student totally clowned an Ayatollah the other day, taking an opportunity he was given to ask Khamenei a question and turning into a 20 minute diatribe about all that stuff Khamenei has done. Of course the Ayatollah responded to this by saying "Nuh-uh" and leaving, making sure to give a press release saying they totally allowed him to ask that question because of freedom and stuff. Meanwhile, the student, Mahmoud Vahidnia, gets to dodge literal and figurative bullets because he chose to do it in such a public, televised place. Well done, sir. It's going to be such a shame when we find out you committed suicide by beating yourself to death with multiple police batons.

Hany Farid, Dartmouth Scientist, Says Controversial Oswald Rifle Photo Real
As if the past few days weren't weird enough, how does this strike you: that Oswald photo of him with the rifle that everyone says is fake...is real. So says an expert. Hmmm, so maybe Oswald did do it. It's all well and good, with so many conspiracies about things that are going on now and think it's time we put to bed some of the old classics. Unless Glenn Beck comes up with a way that Oswald shooting Kennedy ties into Barack Obama becoming President, perhaps through ACORN or Oswald himself planting fake birth announcements in Honolulu papers to legitimize our Kenyan sleeper agent President, then I think we might have to move on.

Gadgets and Ideas to Revolutionize Healthcare
Wired Science gives us a look and the TEDMED conference and some of the revolutionary ideas and gadgets that were shown, including wireless medical monitors, the chemical compound resveratol, and tissue engineering, that some see as the future of health care. Sadly no one at the conference had invented the one device that would revolutionize health care the most: a robotic whirling dervish or chainsaws, weedwhackers, and blowtorches that would be used against our elected betters in an attempt to make them pass single payer health care. Though one scientists from MIT did unveil a prototype device that would administer a 50,000 volt shock to Joe Lieberman's anus any time he got a "notion" about getting himself on the TV more.

A media orgy of rumors, speculation and falsehoods
Salon's Glenn Greenwald chronicles the latest failure of the TV media to provide accurate, relevant, and informed coverage on a breaking story, this time the Ft. Hood shootings. From numerous mistakes involving the number of shooters, to the fate of the shooter(s), to the background of Hasan, to the weapons used, to all sorts of other unverified miscellaneous claims, anyone actually watching the coverage would have struggled to even understand anything other than the fact that a shooting happened. Greenwald goes on to discuss how damaging this kind of thing is in creating false zombie narratives and dimwitted conventional wisdom that shpes public perceptions. But hey, who cares if it's all misinformation, it made for some damn fine TV. And isn't that the whole point of TV news?

Exclusive: I Was Kidnapped by the CIA
With the recent in absentia conviction of CIA agents in Italy for their rendition and torture program, perhaps it's best to actually take a closer look at what it was they were accused of. Mother Jones was prescient enough to have a full account of the case of the man, Abu Omar, that the CIA agents were convicted of rendering and torturing for their March/April 2008 issue. Congratulations America, this was done in your name! I hope you like it.

Picture of the day: Ahmadijinescared

From the good people at the International Society for Human Rights. Also, should you Twitter, we advocate switching your location to Tehran so as to better confuse the assholes trying to limit the amount of information coming out of that country during these protests.