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February 10, 2006

First Winner: Ugly Bird Award

“Quisling” doesn’t begin to do justice

 

 

Winner of the Ugly Bird Award this time is Yahoo! for lending its hand in crimes against humanity.

 

The dateline this time is China, where Yahoo! stands accused of the unthinkable: of helping the brutal Communist regime of Beijing find a political dissident so that he could be abducted by Communist jack-boot thugs. Yahoo! assisted in this travesty by willingly handing over to the government information that helped the repressors identify Li Zhi, who had dared exercise his freedom of speech as a writer.

 

Yahoo! defended its complicity in the crime by saying it had to abide by local laws, but declined to confirm or deny it furnished the government with the information, according to one report.

 

But this holds little excuse - not if the local laws call for human rights violations - or have we sunk that far? Would Yahoo! cooperate with Nazi Germany to locate Jews it knew about? Based on what we see here I doubt we could have trusted the internet company had they been around then. Certainly it is also reasonable to say that if this prisoner is tortured (which he probably will be) or dies, then his blood (and his family’s loss) is on the hands of Yahoo!.

 

This all has come to light of course only a short while after Google was caught restricting the free access of Chinese citizens to the internet in cooperation with Beijing, while all the while refusing to do so in Europe at the EU’s request claiming censorship.

 

But if Google has proven it is nothing more than a dictator’s shill, Yahoo! has shown us it is nothing more than a dictator’s oberkapo.

 

This is criminal by any decent standard of human dignity and decency and heads at Yahoo! and others who take a similar course should roll.

 

The Ugly Bird Award is given out at different times to a person, group, corporation or a country engaged in supporting cruel dictatorships or terrorist states (really, the same thing) that egregiously violate fundamental human rights.

 

RELATED: Birds of a Feather

 

Posted by Martin at February 10, 2006 12:00 AM

Comments

You should see gaaagle.com
We've got great protests against Google and censorship.
Don't be gaaagled.
the url is http://gaaagle.com
and the video blog is:
http://gaaagle.com/blog
Thanks,
-Gaaagle Central Office

Posted by: Gaaagle at February 10, 2006 07:26 AM

Gaaagle is an excellent site, it's painfully witty. The pain of course having to do with the truth of Google and CCP China. I recommend everyone go check it out.

Posted by: Martin at February 10, 2006 01:46 PM