Die, Yahoo!

You know how everything is so fucked up these days it's hard to know where to begin? How it's hard to distinguish one level of fuckedupness...really fucked up, for example, like when Google kowtows to a Chinese government desperate to apply democracy retardant to Market Maoism by agreeing to censor certain incendiary terms - among them, democracy and freedom - from its Sino Search Engine, from a whole other level of fuckedupness...mind blowingly, earth threateningly, Communist cocksuckingly fucked up, like when Yahoo assisted the Chinese Ministry of Information, aka the Secret Police in their recent effort to track down a journalist who forwarded an internal government memo (warning Chinese reporters against covering the upcoming anniversary of Tiananmen Square) to his colleagues in the West. As if fingering this freedom fighter wasn't enough, Yahoo then provided information that helped guarantee a conviction. His sentence for Yahooing: ten years in a Chinese prison camp.

It may be hard in times like these to make such fine distinctions, hard to point to a single instance of injustice and say, "Other things are fucked, but this so perfectly epitomizes the true fuckedupness of the world we live in that this must be our singular and unyielding point of attack," but we have no choice. We must prioritize, and having prioritized, we must be willing to point fingers and scream, J'ACCUSE!

So let's dig our conscience and our passion for justice out of the black hole we tossed them in years ago and commit to taking on these corporate Eichmans. Because this isn't about China persecuting a democrat. It's about an American company enabling that persecution. Or as Yahoo put it: "just abiding by local laws." (Sounds a lot like "just following orders" doesn't it?) If we don't put a stop to this, the future of freedom is threatened, and not just in China.

Now I don't Yahoo. I hate their name, their ads, their site and their search engine. But some of you do. Well... STOP! Cancel any and all services you have with the company, urge all your contacts to do the same, and let Yahoo know exactly why you are taking this action. Something along the lines of -

Dear Yahoo,

I don't do business with sniveling cowards who suck Communist cock. I don't do business with companies that enable dictatorships to crush democracy.

I once hoped the internet would break the back of totalitarian regimes everywhere by giving people unrestricted access to the marketplace of ideas. Little did I suspect Yahoo would come along and collaborate with the Chinese government in the same way the Vichy government once collaborated with the Nazis, turning over democrats to Chinese authorities just as Vichy once turned over Resistance fighters to the Gestapo. Little did I suspect that you would voluntarily sign the Orwellian "Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the China Internet Industry." Little did I suspect that you would go along to get along, in the name of profits.

If you had the name of that lone hero who stood down an entire column of tanks after Tiananmen Square, would you hand it over to the Chinese authorities if it was the difference between obtaining or not obtaining a lucrative contract?

I will be passing this information along to everyone I know, urging them to boycott your company and all its services, here and around the world. I sincerely hope that our protest, however modest it may now seem, chokes the life out of you, before you choke the life out of Chinese democracy.

Sincerely,

a nameless democrat