Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo Settles With Imprisoned Chinese Journalists
Terms of the deal are secret, but Yahoo has reached settlements with two Chinese journalists who were arrested based on information the company provided to the ruling Communist government. "[...] a source at Yahoo said the company has been 'working with the families, and we're working with them to provide them with financial, humanitarian and legal assistance.' Yahoo has also agreed to establish a global human rights fund to provide 'humanitarian relief' to support dissidents and their families. The source said that details still have to be worked out."
For the good of the people.
What I would like to know: have they reached a "deal" to stop cooperating with totalitarian censors in suppressing freedom of speech and political opposition?
Read Pynchon.
Has one of your loved ones been shot for treason? Disappeared for thoughtcrime? Or just had one of those spur-of-the-moment fits of altruism and volunteered to donate any and all needed organs to help a wealthy Party official?
Well, Yahoo! is here to help! Yahoo! has set up a humanitarian relief fund that to fund the families' share of the burden. For every family member shot, Yahoo! will supply your family with two cents to cover the cost of the bullet, and for every organ harvested, Yahoo! will reimburse your family for the costs of the surgery.
It's all in this Little Red "Y". Yahoooooooooo!
This is rich. Yahoo gets dissenters thrown in prison. Yahoo then generates PR by funding these organizations. Somewhat like MS spending so much time/money in Africa helping with medical problems...that are tied to the chemical plants that the Gates Foundation invests in. Generate your own PR opportunities. Genius!
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Original article (instead of Tomcat error)
In any case, the real judge is how they decide to act next time something like this happens...
--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.
Why does China deserve a big Fuck You, as you so eloquently put it? China is a sovereign nation
:D
Mod parent funny!
Really? Please define "hooliganism" for us, if you would.
No, really - you said they knew up-front what the laws were. So please define for us, exactly, what a law based on a subjective and ever-changing term would be. Incidentally, China has thousands of such laws, its citizens have no real right to a decent trial, and "subversives" can be detained for the rest of their natural lives without so much as being read anything approaching a Miranda statement, let alone get a trial.
Idiot.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
how about when the DOJ arrests a UK citizen, off an in-transit plane (outside customs entry into the USA) at a US airport on layover, that runs an online gambling site legal in the UK but not in the USA, using data the airline supplied under homeland security? Isn't that EXACTLY the same thing. Airline Companies not of US origin allowing the USA govt to arrest their passengers when they are still on that companies property via international travel should not get a free pass either.
If China wishes to continue the suppression of its poeple, that is their choice, but for Western companies to be helping them in this oppression is beyond the pale.
Your argument is rather like Burma's military junta defending their crackdown as simply a legalistic maneuver, and after all, Burma's a sovereign country, so why should we care? Say the same for Kosovo, for Darfur, for Apartheid-era South Africa? I mean, can any abuse of human beings be justified because "It's local law and custom"?
The US already goes after companies doing business in other parts of the world over activities like bribery, even when such activities are deemed as acceptable in the place the American companies are doing business. There's a key notion here that just because you head abroad doesn't suddenly mean you no longer can be scrutinized by the US government.
And besides, when did something being a law mean that it was unassailable? Heck, laws banning interracial marriage were found in a number of states. Would you have been going up to Mildred and Richard Loving and scolding them for violating local laws?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The loser = the guy in jail and Yahoo with the bad reputation.
The winner = US government who continue to tax Yahoo. And the politician who insulted the CEO in public.
This is more like US government vs US corporation. China has had the same law since the founding of the communist government.
is to be respected, if that nation does not respect the will of it's people
therefore, if the country is not democratic, anything goes: you as a citizen should not respect any law of your country
authority is not to be respected if authority is not accountable to the common citizen
if a government is accountable to theocrats, royals, despots, autocrats, or technocrats, that government is not to be respected, by its citizens, or the international community
because those governments certainly don't respect their citizens
only in a democracy are the will of the citizens respected, via the vote, so only in a democracy is the government accountable to its citizens, and only democratically elected governments are to be respected by its citizens and the international community
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but this was an ILLEGAL action in China and Yahoo China provided the legally required data under rules very similar to the USA PATRIOT Act here.
I believe there was some help from Yahoo US in locating the data in US servers. Here's the deal, how is this morally different from Big Box retailers propping up China's govt by paying their legal share of chinese taxes for the police that arrested these guys? Or for providing commerce to the regime?
How about when an airline provides a passenger list including passengers that won't be debarking then allows the plane to "land for repairs" causing them to get arrested for things like Online-gambling even when they don't get off the plane? How about those people that got arrested off the plane returning from the middle east and sent to Cuba? Can they sue the airline because they were illegally treated by the US and were ratted out?
It cuts both ways in spite of how Congress wants to be all high-n-mighty about it, they have passed dozens of laws that require US companies to do the same thing to both companies and citizens of foreign lands when it's convenient for them.
The fact is that laws have always been incidental to the Communist regime in China. The notion of the "rule of law" has little meaning for the leadership. Essentially, how it works, is you have a practically meaningless legislature; the National Peoples' Congress, and you have the real power brokers, the President, the Premier of the State Council and the Peoples Liberation Army. For all intents in purposes, they do as they please, the only checks being each other. To imagine that one need actually have violated a law in China to be arrested in detained is hopelessly naive. There are any number of laws which can be made to apply, and if you piss of the Chinese government, you'll be hauled in, go through a show trial and then sent off to prison.
The very idea that you can equate breaking Chinese laws, particularly those designed to shield the leadership and the organs of state from any kind of oversight by the people they claim to serve, with breaking the laws in a liberal democracy is just daft. The Chinese leadership simply has an entirely different view which isn't by any means the statutory view that you'll find in Western nations.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What don't you get? Anything is illegal in China that threatens the state. Anything. The notion that these people were breaking laws is nothing more than a pure formality. They were threats, in their own small ways, to the autocratic governing structure in China, and they were delivered like lambs to the slaughter by Yahoo.
As I've said, if China wishes to continue suppressing basic human freedoms, and the people of China want or have no choice but to go along with it, then that's fine. But I don't think an American company has any business helping them, whether it's Yahoo, Google and Microsoft selling out dissidents and journalists, or it's Cisco providing the hardware and support for the Great Firewall. Let China do its own dirty work.
Oh, and I thought "We were just following orders" had been dispensed with as a defense for violation of human rights and dignity some sixty years ago.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Dear sir or madam,
We apologize sincerely for aiding in your arrest and torture. We at yahoo do not agree with reasons given for your arrest but they offered us a lot of money. Please accept this Yahoo branded T-shirt, coffee mug, nose plug, cyanide pill and Testicle NumCream TM. I hope they will make your incarceration more bearable. We have also made a small donation in your name to Amnesty International. We know you would appreciate that.
Regards
Jerry Yang
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I couldn't find that video, but here is another.. http://youtube.com/watch?v=kxUZIG0Eea4
Or perhaps we should look at how China kills more people a year then every other country in the world combined. Especially their treatment of Falun Gong worshippers. They beat them to death and tell people they committed suicide. Then they take the dead body to the hospital for organ harvesting.
I found a video on that here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fkf2u1Umzi4 It's got nothing to do with hating china and when you use that line you sound like you're working for the Chinese government, because that is EXACTLY what their defence is to any allegations of abuse against its citizens.
Although America is a crap country in my opinion that I'd never want to visit, at least they don't bulldoze down people's houses and give them almost nothing in return. They don't round up the religious people they don't like, beat them to death, tell the families they killed themselves and then take their heart, lungs, liver and then cremate the body to hide any evidence.
Heck, even the dimmest rural Chinese citizen knows well the failings of the system (probably from bitter personal experience).
That requires them to have a basis for comparison (ie, what it's like elsewhere). Additionally, not knowing all of the things happening to other people across the country also helps the establishment.
The Chinese have historically done a very good job of censorship. When I was an undergrad I worked in a research group that was 80% Chinese, including a number of visiting scholars who were educated entirely in China. A bunch of us started talking about our respective countries once, and Tienman (sp?) Square came up. One of the Chinese scholars had never heard of it, and didn't believe it could have possibly occurred (understandably). A few of us found some articles on it, which he read. He was visibly shaken as he realized the things his country did while lying to the people. So believe me, they're very good propagandists.
What is the difference between the Chinese government forcing any telecommunications company, search engine, or whatever to give up consumer data and the US government doing the same thing sometimes without even a warrant? Or a business filing a subpoena because some anonymous person posted bad things about their company/products and they want to punish them? I suppose it is ok because anyone we do this to is obviously a terrorist and wrong so it is ok. While anyone any other 'axis of evil' country does this to is oppressing them.
They confirm that there was no massacre in the square, that almost all the students who had been demonstrating there for two weeks had left the square quietly in the early hours of June 4, and that the real incident was panicky fighting triggered by crowds attacking troops, initially unarmed, as they headed for the square on June 3.
In the process a still indefinite number of troops, students and civilians were killed and many military vehicles were torched. Call it a mini civil war if you like, with troops eventually getting the upper hand over unarmed insurgents. But that is not a deliberate massacre of innocent students.
Curiously, the photo that most media use to illustrate the alleged student massacre shows a row of blazing army vehicles, some with crews trapped inside, in a long avenue that clearly is not part of Tiananmen Square. Indeed, the U.S. Embassy material speaks of troops only finally entering the square after some students attacked and killed a soldier in a vehicle at the entrance. Most of the discussion you see here is doctrinaire (freedom, liberty, freedom, etc.) oligarch propaganda. The media-owning conglomerates/monopolists send their ready-made legislation and paid-for legislators to Washington, and what you see on TV is the party line that is to be toed.
"Oligarchy", now there is a label you basically never hear in the USA media even though it is the economic-political structure under which it operates. Journalists and activists who use it inside the borders get character-assassinated, whereas those who use it in foreign protectorates like Columbia and Philippines get murdered by US-supported "guerrillas" (terrorists). Meanwhile, the USA mouthpiece media wants you to see another of Bush's speeches linking Queda to 9-11, and another rehash about two murdered Russian journalists, and Tiananmen too; and you will still hear much about communism even though it supposedly doesn't exist anymore. But not oligarchy. Even "capitalism" is curiously infrequent, as self-examination of the system is discouraged.
What is the true difference between the USA and rivals like China and Russia? It boils down to USA enjoying the spoils of empire, creating political apathy officially labeled "peace and lawfulness" at home... while people on the frontiers burn and starve and those elements that not friendly to the military-industrial-legislative complex get drugs trafficked into their communities and a draconian "zero-tolerance" police state apparatus that sends more adult males to prison than any other country by far.
China is resource-strapped, hungry and crowded to the gills (though they can be thankful that US/UK forces have not fed their population drugs for many decades). And Russia has a waning civil war on its hands. Neither of them has had the luxury of sending their scoundrels abroad to rape and pillage, while playing potemkin village at home, for quite some time. And what makes either of them much different than India, for that matter, is beyond me... human rights violations abound with respect to all of the above.
What differs above all is the combination of selective blindness and hysteria generated in the pivotal Anglophone media. It will be interesting to see how their attitude changes as their influence abroad subsides... how much more cheerleading and demonizing will they be willing to do for the next conquest (er "liberation")?
> Terms of the deal are secret,
I bet you'll find them on Google...
Despite it all, the Executive is still constrained by Congress and the Judiciary. There is simply nothing in the Chinese power structure that resembles the checks and balances in the American system, unless you consider the way the President and Premier play the power dance with the PLA somehow similar to the Constitutionally constrained entities of the US government.
There is no real regularized judiciary in China, so saying that Chinese officials knocking on Yahoo China's door is the equivalent of the FBI or Scotland Yard knocking on your door is as piss-poor an analogy as there is. In China, the fact is that if they decide your a threat, there is no appeal, no fair trial, no guarantee of adequate representation. You're fucked, truly and completely, so Yahoo China selling out dissidents is significantly different than Yahoo in the States turning in someone because law enforcement has a warrant approved by a judge.
Yes, there have been abuses in the States, but the party largely responsible for it has lost control of Congress and, unless things change dramatically, looks about ready to lose the White House as well. The very fact that power changes hand in that fashion ought to preface any claim of moral equivalency between the US and China.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The level of abuse in China pales in comparison to even the worst parts of the PATRIOT Act. The comparison doesn't hold water. I'm no fan of some recent American legislation, but there are different shades of "bad", and China is very, very much further on the scale than even the most heinous of American laws.
Not to mention that "we were just following orders" was deemed a non-defense at the Nuremberg trials. Somebody writing a decree on a piece of paper does not absolve you of your personal responsibility to behave with due morality.
It cuts both ways in spite of how Congress wants to be all high-n-mighty about itThe parallel can be drawn, but they are not the same. The US has due process and the rule of law, both concepts do not exist in China. When a company is compelled to turn over information, a warrant is required (recent Bush shenanigans notwithstanding), official records exist that will be accessible after the conclusion of any investigations. The entire thing is (fairly) transparent and accessible to the people, including the accused. To do anything to the individual involved, even with this information, requires officially charging the individual with a crime (which has to be clearly defined in legislation, not just trumped up in some generic category like "treason"), and granting him a right to fair trial in a jury of his peers, selected through a rigorous process to ensure impartiality. Heck, undue influence of the jury can even result in a mistrial.
China? The process goes more like... Make trumped up charges based on vague, generic crimes not well defined in any sort of legislation. Compel companies to release confidential data with neither warrant nor proper, transparent procedure. Imprisonment without a fair trial - or use your control of the media to stage a laughable trial with jury members cherry-picked from party loyalists. Convicted "criminals" have no legal recourse, no access to a higher court of law, nor an appeals process.
While America has certainly taken a few steps backwards, one would be sorely mistaken to believe it's ANYWHERE near as bad as China in its current state.