Amnesty Calls Shenannigans on MS, Sun, Cisco

ZurichPrague writes "Amnesty International is claiming Microsoft, Sun, Nortel and Cisco, among others, have broken the law by selling filtering technology to China, helping that country implement its censorship. Is Amnesty right? Making the technology is fine, but if we know that it could be used for ill, aren't we bound to not sell to some countries and companies? C/Net has the story here."

Comments

Re:Of course not.

[jafac]

You must understand (and I'm not trying to justify it - only trying to explain why) - that America has gone through this enormous turmoil in the past 50 years, fighting communism. There have been huge propaganda campaigns to head off the growth of communism, and eliminate communist sympathies here in the US. Examples:

The McCarthy witch-hunts.
"Under God"
"Centrally planned economies don't work"
Private enterprise will always do a better, cheaper, faster job of something than government can.
Anything which hinders or limits the freedom of business, impairs it's ability to compete against foreign business (and is therefore unAmerican).
Only self-interest motivates people to do their best.
People who are rich became rich through hard work and good old-fashioned American know-how, and therefore should remain "in control", because they've already demonstrated that they can be successful, so they can't possibly lead us astray.
MBA's are required to take ethics courses, so you don't have to worry about fraud or abuses.

All of these statements and philosophies are taken as absolutes, because if you question them, or dilute their meaning by saying "sometimes" or even "in most cases" - you're unAmerican, pro-Communist, anti-Freedom, a liberal, and want to destroy everything our Founding Fathers set out to build.

There are a few free-thinkers, but the majority of us are brainwashed from an early age - in school, and from the Media - to accept this anti-communist propaganda. Now that communism has fallen, you'd think that some of this would drop away as unnecessary. But that only has strengthened this "movement". Look at the popularity of the right-wing extremist talk shows out there. Look at the latest election results. Americans are TERRIFIED that those dirty democrats are going to take away our SUVs, and turn everything into a "government project" and make us the next communist state.

I'm just trying to explain where we Americans are coming from - to outsiders who have no idea. It was the fear of communism that drove us all willingly into the arms of our corporate masters.

I personally am very pro-freedom, I love my country, and I don't think that government intervention is always the best solution. However, being absolutist about it is simply wrong, and is what has led us so far astray. There are some jobs which are necessary for the functioning and well being of society, the preservation of our values, that just simply cannot be done by private enterprise.