Citizens United

Well, democracy, such as it is in the US, was nice while it lasted.

The Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court says money is speech and corporations are entitled to free speech under the Constitution. I must have missed that part of the Bill of Rights.

The only real question is why the Court is addressing this particular previously-denied right for corporations. If corporations are people entitled to constitutional rights, how long before corporations are finally granted suffrage rights?

Politics was already corrupted by corporate money before today. The corruption will now be more direct, less opaque, and more omnipresent. Heaven help any elected official who tries to pass legislation that ticks off Exxon, Philip Morris or Blue Cross.

Obama & The Overton Window

There are all sorts of post-mortems on the Massachusetts Senate race today and what it means for health care reform. But Peter Daou, former Clinton internet operative, has a must-read post on the larger questions of how the Obama administration has failed to achieve its goals after one year. Daou concludes:

Progressive bloggers have been jumping up and down, yelling at their Democratic leaders that the path of compromise and pragmatism only goes so far. The limit is when you start compromising away your core values.

This is really key. Compromise is not a path to victory, nor is bipartisanship. Going out and starting a panel to cut social security and entitlement programs is not what the doctor is ordering. Passing health care reform, improving it immediately through reconciliation, and then moving on to a strong jobs and infrastructure package, on the other hand, is what is needed. The administration and Congressional Democrats need to show America what successful Democratic governance looks like…and that answer can’t be “similar to Republican governance.” They have to draw contrast, move the Overton Window to the left, and find new ways to make this country work.

Now China to Scan Text Messages for Content

Just when you thought the Chinese government’s surveillance of their citizenry through technology couldn’t get any more intense, we see this:

Expanding what the Chinese government calls a campaign against pornography, cellular companies in Beijing and Shanghai have been told to suspend text services to cellphone users who are found to have sent messages with “illegal or unhealthy content,” state-run media reported on Tuesday.

China Mobile, one of the nation’s largest cellular providers, reported that text messages would automatically be scanned for “key words” provided by the police, according to the English-language China Daily newspaper. Messages will be deemed “unhealthy” if they violate undisclosed criteria established by the central government, the newspaper said.

The increased surveillance of text messages is the latest in a series of government initiatives to tighten control of the Internet and other forms of communication. Since November, the government has closed hundreds of Web sites in the name of rooting out pornography and piracy.

Kan Kaili, a professor of telecommunications at Beijing University, called the routine surveillance of cellphone messages a violation of privacy rights and the Chinese Constitution.

“They are doing wide-ranging checks, checking anything and everything, even if it is between a husband and wife,” he said. “I don’t think people will be very happy about this.”

He said the government had established no clear legal definition of unhealthy content. He also said commercial authorities such as phone companies, even though government-owned, should not be involved in checking the contents of private messages.

“This is totally wrong,” he said.

This will likely have an intense chilling effect on communication by text message in China by democracy and right advocates, as well as within Tibet.

The notion that this spying is to crack down on pornography is simply absurd. SMS messages are person to person communication, not distributed publications. There’s just no reasonable explanation for how this effort would limit the spread of pornography (a whole other ball of free speech wax). This is about monitoring dissent and furthering bolstering the climate of fear that the Chinese Communist Party uses to maintain their tenuous hold on power.

Chinese Govt to Ban “Avatar”

The Times of UK:

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily reported that the state-run China Film Group had instructed cinemas nationwide to stop showing the 2-D version of Avatar from January 23 on orders from Beijing’s propaganda chiefs.

It is not just the desire to entertain the masses with a Chinese movie that has prompted the censors to step in and pull James Cameron’s hit from 2-D screens. The Government fears that too many citizens might be making a link between the plight of Avatar’s Na’vi people as they are thrown off their land and the numerous, often brutal, evictions endured closer to home by residents who get in the way of property developers.

The newspaper said: “Reportedly, the authorities have two reasons for this check on Avatar: first, it has taken in too much money and has seized market share from domestic films, and second, it may lead audiences to think about forced removal, and may possibly incite violence.”

China’s favourite blogger, Han Han, a twentysomething writer and racing-car driver, was among those who quickly spotted the similarity between the film’s plot and real life. He wrote: “For audiences in other countries, such brutal eviction is something beyond their imagination. It could only take place on another planet — or in China.”

Popular views of the film as an allegory for predatory property developers across China will not have gone down well with the Propaganda Department in Beijing. Blogs are buzzing with the news of Avatar’s imminent disappearance. The film opened on January 4 and soon drew lengthy queues despite one of the coldest winters in years. Box-office takings hit a record 56 million yuan for a single day and IMAX cinemas which show the full 3-D version are booked up for weeks. The film had been due to play until February 28, well past the Chinese new year holiday, which begins on February 14.

So Avatar, after having a successful two week run in China, is now being banned as “subversive.” Coincidentally, the beneficiary will be a domestic feature, “Confucius” starring Chow Yun Fat.  That benefit may be incidental as what the Chinese government is really scared of is not James Cameron’s movie, but the citizenry of China. They do not want their citizens to see a movie about people throwing off the oppressive yolk of a tyrannical, occupying force. Clearly there is resonance between “Avatar” and China’s military occupation of Tibet.  And, as we see above, there is also resonance between the film and the Chinese government’s forceful displacement of poor people to make way for development projects.

The simple morality play in “Avatar” is that it’s wrong to use armed soldiers to force people off their land and exploit their resources. The film is no indictment of any particular government (though it clearly isn’t a stretch to apply it to a few nations, like China).  But that the Chinese government clearly thinks “Avatar” is an allegory for their own behavior is more confirmation of how they know they have behaved than anything else. If “Avatar” is subversive, it is only because the Chinese government has engaged in and is continuing to engage in the exact same sorts of bad behaviors as the human military-corporate characters in the film. If you had any doubt, the Chinese government just confirmed it for you.

What Digby Said

Digby, writing on the penchant for some on the left to take a BURN IT TO THE GROUND attitude about politics and the policy course in Washington, has this to say about “those of you who are inclined to spend hours in my comment section throwing around snotty remarks drenched in puerile cynicism about how it is sillyto even bother, when everything and everyone is hopelessly corrupt.”

It’s indisputably true that the political system is run by wealthy plutocrats and much of what passes for democracy is kabuki. Same as it ever was, I’m afraid. But that’s not exactly the point. It’s still worth participating, doing what you can, containing the damage, stopping the bleeding, fighting the fight — for its own sake. After all, history shows that humans have managed, somehow, to actually make progress over time. You just can’t know what will make the difference.

If you don’t think that’s worth anything, however, you do have a choice. The obvious alternative, as PinNC wrote in TBOGG’s comments, is this:

If you really think that the political system is broken beyond repair, you have a blueprint from the 1770s to help you out.

Pick up your muskets, kids, or STFU.

Anyone who spends time hanging out with me in person knows that I can be as bitter, cynical and despondent as they come about the state of American politics and the fecklessness of Democrats, especially when it comes to helping enact progressive legislation. But I agree with Digby, this is too important to turn away from participation. If the current methods of influencing elected officials aren’t proving effective, then we have to try new models of organizing. Just like we did when we started organizing online and grew the netroots.

All is not lost, we may just have a different set of targets of our ire than during the Bush years. But don’t waste time mourning, organize!

Meaningless Vote Scores

Adam Bink is right.

What all of this says to me is that all of these aggregate vote ratings are a lesser standard of judging a candidate’s record than individual examples of merit. It’s not just Ford who doesn’t get that, it’s lots of politicians, but Ford is trying to pull a fast one over on progressives and New York Democrats by throwing a bunch of numbers- many distorted- at us. No one should be fooled.

When it comes to assessing candidates like Harold Ford, or for that matter, Kirsten Gillibrand, aggregated vote scores are meaningless. Candidates who rely on them to sell themselves to voters should be questioned on what, specifically, they have done to merit such a score.

More on Google & China

Josh Schrei has a truly excellent piece on The Huffington Post about why Google’s decision to end it’s partnership with the Chinese government should be a model for all Western companies doing business in China. The whole thing is worth a read, but this passage stands out:

While I applaud Google for their brave decision, their “discomfort” around having to censor should have been taken more seriously the first time around, because there are very few good places such a decision can lead. Once you go down that road, it will inevitably lead to places of greater ambiguity, greater ethical dilemma, and greater concern. Luckily, free thinking minds prevailed, before the unthinkable ( for example, the company NOT disclosing China’s shenanigans in favor of keeping the relationship strong) happened. Over the next few weeks I encourage the Google-folk to maintain the firm stance they did yesterday. Bending on these issues is not an option. Too much is at stake.

Hopefully Google’s actions will start to show some US companies — and our good President, for that matter — that they do have influence with the Chinese, they do have power in that relationship…. and that we can make change by living according to principle. Moving forward, other companies MUST follow Google’s lead. Restrictions should be put in place on selling the Chinese government technology, software, or hardware that enables surveillance and digital privacy invasion. And when Beijing plays foul, in any circumstance, companies have a responsibility to call them out on it, as Google has done.

It is easy, in the relative comfort of our modern lives, to forget the consequences of a few small actions. Censoring a few words here, limiting a few freedoms there, these are significant actions on the perimeter of what is quite literally — along with climate change — the defining issue of our time — whether or not we will live in a free future. The democratizing power of the internet, a truly profound development in the short span of my life, can quickly be turned on its head and used as a means to control a population and as a way to access — and eliminate — those undesirables who think thoughts and write words that are deemed dangerous to power.

Google’s actions in response to hack attacks and invasion of privacy by the Chinese government and Chinese (military) hackers gives lie to the falsehood that the mere presence of Western corporations will be a liberalizing force within the Chinese government. Just as the role of business as a moderating force for Chinese government authoritarianism has been a failure, so too is the passivism in the face of China’s economy that we have seen from President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton. It’s hard to say that the founder of Google has more conviction and courage than the President and Secretary of State, but that appears to be the case today.

I also want to highlight that Huffington Post has a live blog running of updates on what’s happening with Google in China.  It’s a great resource. Of note, they’ve flagged a Wall Street Journal report that shows that Google founder Sergey Brin was the driving voice for withdrawal of Google.cn from China, while CEO and long-time Google.cn defender Eric Schmidt opposed ending their relationship with the Chinese government. This isn’t really shocking – Brin had been publicly vocal about his doubts about this venture since 2006, shortly after Google.cn launched.

In June 2006, Brin stated that Google had “compromised its principles” in abandoning their “Don’t be evil” motto to partner with the Chinese government and launch Google.cn. In January 2007, Brin again spoke out against the decision, this time citing the site’s poor business performance. He said, “On a business level, that decision to censor… was a net negative.”

What’s clear is that this decision was a long time coming. And as I said when it was announced, this is exactly what rights groups like Students for a Free Tibet, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Reporters Without Borders have been saying Google should have done since Day One. It’s good that Google finally did the right thing, but it came at a high cost in their credibility, at least for many of us in the human rights community. That said, as Josh Schrei points out above, Google has now become a model for Western tech companies behavior in China. Hopefully others follow their lead and stop letting their tools and technology be used by the Chinese government to increase their control over the people of Tibet and China.

Google May Mean It

In an email circulating among China rights activists, BBC and Public Radio International reporter, Mary Kay Magistad reports:

I’m writing this at 10:30am on Jan. 13 in Beijing, where for the past hour or more a Google search for “Tiananmen” pulls up, at the top, graphic photos and descriptions of the crackdown, a Google search on “Falun Gong” pulls up videos of police beating and torturing Falun Gong members, and a Google search on “Tibet” pulls up the Tibet rights groups and documentation on the crackdown on Tibetans since March 2008. A Google search on “China” + “human rights” pulls up, as its first item, a news report that Google is threatening to shut down its operations in China after uncovering what it said were “highly sophisticated” cyberattacks, originating from China, aimed at Chinese human rights activists and at at least 20 other unidentified firms. As a result, Google has said that at the very least it will no longer censor its search engine in China.
Interesting times.
Mary Kay Magistad
China Correspondent
BBC/Public Radio International’s “The World”

I was skeptical that Google would actually pull out of China in full. That decision remains to be seen and will likely be made after negotiations with the Chinese government. I think Google is now showing the Chinese government they are serious about ending their partnership and allowing all information to appear on google.cn without prior censorship. The question will be how Google handles the Chinese government’s response. Will they hold firm for free speech and free information? It’s too soon to tell, but this opening is clearly a shot at the Chinese government.

Google Backing Out of China

Much has been made of Google’s blog notice that it may soon be shutting down Google.cn, a search engine built in partnership with the censorship requests of the Chinese government.  The post cites a major targeted attack on Google and twenty other top companies originating from China, with an apparent goal of hacking into the Gmail accounts of Chinese rights activists, as well as activists around the world working for freedom in China (I would guess that includes many of my friends and colleagues in the Tibetan independence movement). Senior Vice President David Drummond writes:

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

You know, had they listened to me or other folks from Students for a Free Tibet four years ago and not done this in the first place, Google could have avoided a lot of headaches.

I’ve seen some praise for Google for backing out of what seemed to be a successful business venture, citing Google.cn’s 29% market share. Before Google partnered with the Chinese government to launch Google.cn, their Chinese portal, http://www.google.com/intl/zh-CN/, was the #1 customer rated search engine and had the #2 Chinese market share (32.9%). And it wasn’t censored by Google – only subject to normal Chinese Firewall hurdles. So I’m not sure that this should be hailed as having been a huge commercial success.

In the  end, Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing notes that a key impetus was “the search giant experienced an internet attack aimed at Chinese dissidents’ Gmail accounts. The attack is presumed to have been the work of the Chinese government.”

Of course no one could have predicted that Google partnering with the Chinese government would fail to liberalize the Chinese government when it comes to free access to information online.

This is exactly what they claim to have wanted to avoid and any move now is a turn towards the company’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto which was forgotten four years ago.

What Greenwald Said

Glenn Greenwald:

The Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum writes a whole column today correctly observing that many Islamic extremists — including Terrorists — are well-educated, wealthy, sophisticated intellectuals — sometimes even quite Westernized — yet, to her apparent befuddlement, remain vehemently “anti-American.” Though she calls on the U.S. to fund programs to more actively promote “counter-arguments” to their animosities, there is, as usual, absolutely no discussion of why people like that would develop anger so intense towards the U.S. that it would cause them to give up their own lives to slaughter innocent civilians. It is, by definition, impossible to develop effective “counter-arguments” when one remains petrified even of acknowledging, let alone discussing and engaging, the “arguments” of the other side.

Talking about why people around the world are critical of the US unto committing violence is undoubtedly hard, but incredibly important. Without acknowledging what the arguments by those opposing the US through violent means are, it is impossible to win over hearts and minds outside the US. As long as there are still terrorist attacks being perpetrated against the US, we have an obligation to find ways to stop them. If some of this search to prevent terrorist attacks include evaluating our enemies arguments and finding ways to neutralize these arguments, then it must be done. That means engaging their critiques, recognizing where they are valid, and responding where they are not. Of course Greenwald is right that this cannot happen as long as the press or political leadership refuse to acknowledge the existence of substantive arguments against American policies abroad.