Google Spells Censorship in China

Thoughts?

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Stop enabling repressive regimes!

What sellouts. :(

Yeah, it looks bad, but we'd all probably do the same thing in their situation. Nobody can afford to ignore China OR get them mad at this point because of its huge part in the world economy (that we gave them - that was the big mistake, allowing them to ever begin the ridiculously cheap exports to the US and other places). Heck, nobody can afford to impose economic sanctions on them as a way to change the government - Americans wouldn't allow the US to do that, because even though their jobs have been stolen by cheap Chinese goods, we really like our cheap Chinese goods.

Google's not in a position to change China. If they said "we're not doing it," you'd never hear about it, China certainly wouldn't care (the Chinese people would, but they wouldn't hear about it 'cause of the censorship), and the stockbrokers on Wall Street would be wondering what on earth was taking them so long.

It's all about the money. All of the other search engines opening up in China have done the same thing. Right or wrong, they can't afford not to. :|

and now the Europeans want to lift the arms embargos against China. The US is throwing fits. the thing is, the US can throw fits all they want, but they can't stop individual countries from selling arms to China because all the individual countries put those embargos in place-it's not a blanket, UN-sanctioned embargo.

I abhor the Chinese government.

Okay, saw the last comment, an wanted to brind some facts into it. First: Don't refer to the European Union as the Europeans. The EU is not homogenetic and consists of different states.

And, second: Yes, last year there was the thought to lift the embargo, especially France encouragend it, but other countries were against it and so far it was decided not to lift the embargo. As ist seems was the US-government very clear about that to the EU and most states didn't want to risk further probs with the Bush-administration.

I hope I was not too harsh. :)

I am quite aware that the EU isn't homogenius. I am also quite aware that nearly all of the big gun nations in Europe wish to begin selling arms to China again. This is not a UN arms sanction-nearly everyone enacted INDEPENDENT arms emargos agaist China due to the events in Tienneman. France can chose to lift their individual embargo if the wish-but they also have to contend with the fallout that would create in their already strained relationship with the US. And its not just the French that want to lift their respective embargos.

I personally find it REPULSIVE that anyone would want to sell arms to a bunch of represive anti human rights leaders like the Chinese. Maybe, MAYBE, when they finally admit to what they did that June, but until then, absolutely not.

I never said that it was only France that wanted to lift the embargo, I just wanted to point out that it wasn't Europe that wanted it and that the EU declined it.

And I fully agree with you that stopping the embargo would be very wrong for several reasons.