Sunday, June 12, 2005

CASHING IN ON TOTALITARIANISM

from the Financial Times via Roger Simon
Microsoft's new Chinese internet portal has banned the words "democracy" and "freedom" from parts of its website in an apparent effort to avoid offending Beijing's political censors.

Users of the joint-venture portal, formally launched last month, have been blocked from using a range of potentially sensitive words to label personal websites they create using its free online blog service, MSN Spaces.

Attempts to input words in Chinese such as "democracy" prompted an error message from the site: "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Other phrases banned included the Chinese for "demonstration", "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence

It's surprising how many people get rich in this country without understanding the element of freedom that got them there. A number of rich liberals are more than willing to defend monsters like Castro without considering what their life would be like in such a country. Now Gates is helping China deny people information that would help foster their natural right of liberty. What have greedy capitalists of the Right done that has caused more harm in the world than this?

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