Google and China

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the suicide (suicided? he took two bullets to the head) of Mark Webb, a San Jose Mercury News reporter who did yeoman work exposing the CIA involvement in the crack epidemic in the USA in the 1980s, events associated with our dirty wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the Reagan administration. As the linked article lays out, it can be very dangerous to report the news in USA.

We learn Google has taken a stand and threatens to withdraw its search engine business from China. The Wall Street Journal has three articles on the topic today, front page, op-ed page, and its always-read Heard on the Street column. This is big news, highlighting corporate responsibility and Chinese Communist Party oppression.

Friends of mine, escapees from the former Soviet Republics have told me a difference between USSR and USA is in USSR if you wrote anything critical of the government, you would be punished. In USA if you write anything critical of the government, it just will not get published and distributed.

Now some may object that in USA we are able to criticize our politicians as much as we like, in any way that we like, but as Herman and Chomsky lay out in the book noted below MANUFACTURING CONSENT, criticisms are only within a false dilemma framework, that is "govt health care" versus "big biz health care" when in fact they are one in the same. No one can get a hearing on free market, small business health care. Talk about deregulating medicine, and the ears glaze over.

An excellent observation of Herman and Chomsky is that the USA news bureaucracy formed to match the USA govt bureaucracy. The very act of gathering news has settled into news stars who hang out with the newsmakers, and duly slap a by line on the newsmakers press releases. Talking point are emailed out to the talk-show hosts, who flavor the content with whatever their particular schtick, such as Limbaugh and bombast. Think about it: the major news orgs all have their White House Correspondent, Pentagon Correspondent, State Department Correspondent, Pentagon Correspondent. These people are fed their stories at 3pm, add flavor and turn them in to be read on the six oclock news. The newsmakers and the news reporters live very structured easy life.

I listened to a panel of Politico.com "reporters" talking about how the web would shake out. Up until I saw this show (I think it was Charlie Rose) I imagined the powers that be would have to shut down the internet at some point, and go to an AOL (based in the same town as the CIA) closed system model. But as these fellows spoke, they pointed out how a website with the best production values and best news would rise to the top, and leave everyone else behind like crank newsletter writers of yore, with no influence.

Well, as we learn the Gloria Steinem, Ed Schultz, Cooper Anderson, Bob Woodward and countless others are all ex-intelligence agency actors. It is no secret many media publications were founded and controlled by the CIA. Just as govt took control of newspapers and TV, why would they not do just the same with the internet? Do they somehow now lack the will, or smarts?

Before when people watched TV or read a newspaper, the powers that be had no idea what you personally thought about what you saw or what you read. Now they can know what you read, time your exposure to what you read, and then know what you think by how you blog or email or twitter your views to others. With computers, command and control can get down to granular level.

How China rules itself is of no matter to the USA govt. USA traders in China are free to complain to the Chinese if their internet access is not what it should be. As a guest in China, it would be rude for me to criticize what my hosts have on offer.

But China, in particular the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China, have on offer Hong Kong, one of the freest places on earth. USA has nothing even close, where free markets allow cheap and plentiful everything, including news.

Perhaps before criticizing China, USA should allow a special administrative region as free as Hong Kong, and should allow free trade in news, and enforce a separation of business and state.

Back to Google: According to the Wall Street Journal, Google would get just one percent of it 2010 profits from China, although it has a 36% search engine market share in China. (Baidu, the Chinese Google, was founded by a fellow with the same ideas at the same time as google founders). Well, folks, Google has a whole lotta infrastructure to support a whole lotta searchin going on, for very little money. From a business point of view, Google moves seem a lot more about sound business practices than any ethical standards.

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