Google, We Hardly Knew You (Int'l Herald Tribune)

Google, we hardly knew you
Frida Ghitis
FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2006

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/26/opinion/
edghitis.php

A few years ago, I walked into an Internet room in Tibet's capital, Lhasa. There were no Chinese soldiers in the room, and no visible government censors nearby. A sign on the wall, however, reminded Web users that even after entering the stateless world of the Web, China's all-seeing eye had not disappeared. ''Do not use Internet,'' the warning instructed crassly, ''for any political or other unintelligent purposes.''

Since then, China's ruling regime has perfected the science of controlling what the Chinese can read or write on the Internet to such a degree that it has become the envy of tyrants and dictators the world over. We might have expected that from a regime that has proved it will do whatever it takes to stay in power. What we never expected was to see Google, the company whose guiding motto reads ''Don't be evil,'' helping in the effort.

Google's decision to help China censor searches on its brand-new Chinese Web site is not only a violation of its own righteous-sounding principles and an affront to those working to bring human rights to the Chinese people. No, Google's sellout to Beijing is a threat to every person who ever used Google anywhere in the world. That means all of us.

That's no exaggeration. Google saves every search, every e-mail, every fingerprint we leave on the Web when we move through its Google search engine, or its Gmail service, or its fast-growing collection of Internet offerings. Google knows more about us than the FBI or the CIA or the NSA or any spy agency of any government. And nobody regulates it. When a company that holds digital dossiers on millions of people decides profits are more important than principles, we are all at risk.

Google will now participate actively in a censorship program whose implications, according to Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, ''are profound and disturbing.'' The Chinese government blocks thousands of search terms — including censorship. To be fair, Google is hardly alone in its decision to capitulate to Beijing's rulers in order to gain a Web share of 1.3 billion inhabitants. China's tantalizing market has tested the ethics of many a Western corporation — and almost all have failed the test. That is particularly true in the Internet business.

Just last year, Yahoo helped Beijing's Web goons track down the identity of a Chinese journalist who wrote an e-mail about the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre — a massacre of thousands of Chinese democracy advocates perpetrated by the same regime whose efforts Google now abets. The journalist, Shi Tao, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Reporters Without Borders labeled Yahoo an ''informant'' that has ''collaborated enthusiastically'' with the Chinese regime. Microsoft, too, plays by the dictatorship's rules. Bloggers on MSN's service cannot type words such as ''democracy'' or ''freedom.''

Internet users cannot read or write about anything that even hints of opposition to the ruling Communist Party. Even pro-Western commentary can trigger a block. And forget anything about Tibet or the Dalai Lama. Chinese blog gers, incidentally, must all register and identify themselves to authorities. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft claims to have higher ethical standards than the competition. The often-stated desire to ''do good'' and make the world a better place was one of the traits that endeared Google to the public. It was one of the reasons we trusted them to guard the precious and valuable contents of their thousands of servers. Now Google has become a company like all others, one with an eye on the bottom line before anything else.

The company has decided to help China's censors even as it fights a request for records from the U.S. Justice Department's investigation of online child pornography. Skeptics had claimed Google was resisting the request in order to protect its technology, rather than to protect users' privacy. That explanation now sounds more plausible than ever. We've long known about China's disdain for individual freedoms. But Google, we hardly knew you. It's definitely time to rethink that Gmail account and demand some safeguards from a potentially dangerous company. Perhaps at home, too, we will need to heed the Tibetan cybercafé warning, ''Do not use Internet for any political or unintelligent purposes.''

(Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs and is the author of ''The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television.'' This article first appeared in The Boston Globe.)

Madam President

News Source (various newspapers)

“I am happy, happy, happy, happy, happy !”
That was the reaction of a woman in a Liberian market when asked about Africa’s first elected female president. Jubilation also illuminated faces in South America this weekend, when voters in Chile—one of the continent’s most traditional countries—went to the polls and elected yet another extraordinary woman to lead their nation. And, as if we hadn’t had enough history-making moments in recent days, the first female chancellor ever to lead Germany made her inaugural visit to Washington last week.

A quiet revolution is taking place. Women have slowly made their way to the top spots in governments on all continents. They come from all points on the political spectrum. And in much of the world, the revolution is just getting started.

Once upon a time, women could come to power only if their husbands or fathers cleared the way for them. Then, only “progressive” countries, such as the Scandinavian nations, routinely chose women as leaders. The rest were exceptions, seldom repeated : a Margaret Thatcher in Britain, a Golda Meir in Israel, an occasional prime minister in a Western European country.

This latest crop of women leaders is different. The new leaders of Liberia, Chile and Germany all come from countries that only recently emerged from oppressive dictatorships. Each one of these women came to public view as the result of her own extraordinary efforts. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, who won the January 15 election, was imprisoned and tortured during the dictatorship of August Pinochet. She is a physician who speaks five languages and was minister of health and defense.

Perhaps her greatest feat of courage and skill, however, was standing up to the voters in a deeply Catholic country as an unabashed agnostic and single mother. And winning.

Liberia’s brand new president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, takes over a country that just came out of one of that battered continent’s most brutal conflicts. In a war spurred by greedy warlords and fought by teenage soldiers high on drugs and testosterone, more than 200, 000 Liberians died. When peace finally came after international intervention, few would have guessed a nation ruled by muscle and guns would turn to a woman, impressed by her brains and her heart. The candidate almost everyone expected to win was George Weah, a world-renowned soccer superstar. The retired child-soldiers rallied around the footballer. But Liberians looked closely at their choices, and they made the smart choice. Weah is charismatic and probably well intentioned. But he is a high school drop-out with no government experience.

Johnson-Sirleaf holds a graduate degree from Harvard. She was finance minister in her country and she held a top development job at the United Nations. When she talked of working to bring clean government and development to her country, voters realized she may just know how to do it.

She promises to bring smiles to the faces of Liberian children once again, but she’s not your typical grandmother. Not for nothing, she’s known as the Iron Lady.

Angela Merkel comes to the top job in Germany by way of the East. She grew up in Communist East Germany, in the home of a Lutheran pastor in a country under a government that viewed religion with a combination of disdain and suspicion. She holds a doctorate in physics, but she moved into politics, becoming involved in the democracy movement. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification, Merkel worked with Chancellor Helmut Kohl, gaining his trust and confidence, and gradually rising through the Christian Democratic Party. Lest anyone think all women are pacifists, Merkel took a strong stance in the lead up to the Iraq war. While most Germans—and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder—strongly opposed U. S. plans to attack Iraq, Merkel spoke out in favor of strong action to depose Saddam Hussein.

Once upon a time, idealists spoke of women leaders as the answer to the world’s problems. Women would be soft and smart. No testosterone, no war. As democracy takes root, the reality is proving a little different. When women stand for office, voters have more choices. Different women hold different points of view. These three new leaders face enormous expectations and they will be judged much more harshly than their male counterparts when all does not go according to plan.

Still, their election shows how much voters are missing in countries where women are still excluded from the political process.

One day, celebrations will come to places like Saudi Arabia and Syria and to the many countries where the thought of a woman-led government seems unthinkable today. There, too, the people will one day look at a leader they elected and find reason to smile.

Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs.

MiamiHerald.com | 01/17/2006 | 'Patience' allows Iran to win the game

MiamiHerald.com 01/17/2006 'Patience' allows Iran to win the game

Allow me to suggest a new game for our times. Simply go online and Google the words Iran and patience. The first thing you will discover is that the world is ''running out of patience'' with Iran's nuclear games. Next you will notice that the world's patience was already running out years ago.

When the world is at the end of its rope, it appears, what comes next is a lot more rope.

If the situation with Iran were not so dangerous, the world's handling of the growing crisis could earn a place in the diplomatic comedy hall of fame.

After the diplomacy debacle that preceded the Iraq wars, negotiators are hard at work on the issue of Iran. Since late 2002, the international community has worked together to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran insists its atom program seeks only energy, but the discovery of enormous secret nuclear facilities and Iran's on-again off-again cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency have fueled fears about Tehran's true intentions.

As far back as June 2004, the IAEA's Mohammed ElBaradei declared sharply that Iran's lack of cooperation was ''less than satisfactory'' and the world was, you guessed it, losing its patience. The matter was dragging, so ElBaradei, who has since won the Nobel Peace Prize, declared that the matter should be concluded in the ''next few months.'' That was almost 20 months ago.

In September 2004, a high-ranking British Diplomat told the London Times that Britain, France and Germany were, yes, losing patience with Iran's reluctance to curb its nuclear program. According to the unknown official, November (2004) was the deadline for Iran to stop nuclear activities and fully cooperate with the international community. Otherwise, the matter would be sent to the United Nations Security Council and Iran would face tough sanctions.

Washington has called for U.N. sanctions since the early days of the world's perennially dwindling patience. But Europe, ever devoted to talking, has managed to persuade the United States to give it time.
Iran continued talking, making and breaking promises. By August French President Jacques Chirac announced that he, too, was running out of patience. Iran must have shaken in its boots when Chirac warned that the Security Council might censure Iran if it didn't start cooperating.
Sanctions stalled

By then, Iran had elected a new president. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a name for himself as the first president of a U.N. member state to call for the destruction of another member. Calls for Israel's annihilation make the diplomatic follies over Iran's nuclear plans much less humorous.
Efforts to bring U.N. sanctions have stalled partly because Russia and China, with multibillion-dollar oil deals, don't want to antagonize Tehran's petroleum-soaked theocracy. The situation is complicated by Iran's location next to Iraq. Tehran could make life even more difficult for American forces there. Turning up the pressure on Iran carries risks for all sides. But the current strategy is an embarrassing and dangerous failure.

Diplomats seem impressed with themselves. They have managed to work together, just like in the old days, Europe and America on the same team. Only Iran does not seem to be playing well with others. That's why Iran is winning the game.

Last month ElBaradei declared that patience was ending. And last week, when Iran broke the seals of its uranium-enrichment plant in brazen defiance of the international community, Britain's Tony Blair expressed ''real and serious alarm.'' Russia's foreign minister spoke of ''deep disappointment.'' But Russia also said that Iran's actions were not illegal. Russia, it seems, does not fully share Europe and America's view on the danger posed by a nuclear-armed Iran.

Security Council

Back in August, when Chirac threatened the very scary censure, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator told an Iranian television interviewer, ''Thanks to our dealings with Europe, we managed to continue the work for two years.'' That's enough time, he said, to complete the uranium conversion facility in Isfahan.
European foreign ministers have met again, and again spoke of sending the issue to the Security Council. The time for talking and stalling and negotiating, without taking action, has to end some day. The nations that believe Iran must be sanctioned have waited long enough. Full sanction by the entire world would be ideal. But if some countries continue to stall, the moment is long overdue for ''sanctions by the willing'' as a first step.

More patience could prove catastrophic.
Frida Ghitis writes about world affairs.

A tragedy for Israelis and Palestinians | The San Diego Union-Tribune

A tragedy for the Israelis and Palestinians | The San Diego Union-Tribune

January 6, 2006

Hours after the news that Ariel Sharon had suffered a devastating stroke, I received a message from Israel, quoting one of those expressions the Yiddish language has forged from centuries of despair. Mensch tracht und Gott lacht: Man plans and God laughs.

Palestinians in Gaza celebrated the news that their old nemesis, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was unconscious and unlikely to recover. They have long despised the implacable foe that stood up to them for decades, often using the harshest of means in his unapologetic quest to protect Israel, whatever the cost. And yet, conceiving of the end of the Sharon Era – at this precise moment in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – is a tragedy for both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Sharon has always had a deep respect for the cruelties of history. That explains his extraordinary transformation. The general who led his armies across Israel's borders rose to the top job in Israel and discovered that military victories alone could not protect his nation from disaster. That's when the once champion of the settler movement decided it was time to uproot Israeli settlers from Gaza.

Sharon had made a dramatic move from the extreme right wing of Israeli politics to the center. In the process, he gave Palestinians sovereignty they had never in their history had. Land that had been ruled by Romans, Turkish Ottoman, British and other empires throughout history, was for the first time in the hands of Palestinian Arabs. Sharon, the man they despised, had made it happen at a time when nobody else could have pulled it off. And that bit of history came to pass just last year.

Had Sharon remained in power, there is little doubt he would have made other bold moves, without waiting for consensus on either side.

Not all Arabs are celebrating the news about Sharon. Some Arab leaders expressed the acceptable diplomatic sentiments. But more importantly, many Arabs, who understand and even share the bitter feeling against the old general, realize the cost to Palestinians. One Palestinian analyst, Ghazi al-Saadi, told al-Arabiya television that despite the suffering he inflicted on Palestinians, "A living Sharon is better for the Palestinians now." In Beirut, the managing editor of the As-Safir newspaper, Sateh Noureddine, worried that without Sharon the already unstable security situation could worsen.

With the Palestinian side in chaos, Sharon had decided Israel would take the "painful" steps required for peace. Nobody knew exactly what he meant. Eventually, we discovered he meant moving out of Gaza. But the next steps were his own personal secret.

Sharon came to dominate Israeli politics because the public trusted him. His muscular military background gave him the credibility that may prove indispensable for any future leader, as long as Israelis feel their country's very survival is still threatened.

The vast majority of Israelis believed Sharon when he said Israel could survive after narrowing its borders by giving back occupied territory.

When he pulled out of the right-wing Likud Party he helped build to put together the new Kadima (forward) Party, he immediately drew the support of major political and military figures. He also gained the backing of a plurality of Israeli voters. He never spelled out exactly what he planned to do. And, in the campaign to prove he was still in charge after his first stroke three weeks ago, he failed to name his choice for a successor.

The acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is nominally the second in command at Kadima. Olmert is well liked and respected. But he does not bring the charisma or the military credentials that made it possible for Sharon to lead a nation that feels threatened.

In Israel more than anywhere, politics is much too important to be left up to mere politicians. Israel, indeed the entire Middle East, needs real statesmen.

And yet, one of Sharon's great accomplishments, one that the younger warrior Sharon would have never believed, was moving the country to the political center.

If, after all, God is not laughing at the plans made by Sharon and his followers, somebody will step in and fill the void. Israelis will now have to find someone they trust to protect them and lead them to a safer future. Without that person, peace for Israelis and for Palestinians will have to wait.

Ghitis writes about world affairs. She is the author of "The End of Revolution: a Changing World in the Age of Live Television."

Forum: Peace (almost) on Earth. Really.

Forum: Peace (almost) on Earth. Really.

Forum: Peace (almost) on Earth. Really.
Strange but true, the world is less war-torn than you might think, reports Frida Ghitis
Sunday, January 01, 2006

Is it me, or has the holiday season taken on a gloomy tone in recent years? Among the New Year's wishes I received this year came some that sounded downright apocalyptic. If the world survives, the well-wishers seemed to suggest, then we can consider it a happy new year. The prevailing view, it appears, is that the world is on the wrong path, and headed for probable destruction. Wars everywhere, massacres, bombings, killings. Things have never been worse.

As it happens, exactly the opposite is true. The world, believe it or not, has never been a more peaceful place.

Turn on the television or read the newspaper. Death and destruction fill the pages and the airwaves. Take a step back from the explosions and the funerals, and scan the entire horizon beyond the soldiers and the war zones, and the picture is quite different.

That's what researchers of all stripes have been doing in recent years, and virtually all of them are discovering the same thing: peace on Earth. That's the trend in this troubled world of ours: less war, more freedom, more peace.

One of those studies, released a couple of months ago at the United Nations, concluded that the number of armed conflicts has declined by 40 percent since the end of the Cold War. And last year had the lowest number of civil conflicts in almost 30 years, according to the 2005 Human Security Report. That includes not only wars between countries, but civil wars and all forms of violent political conflict. Only terrorism is on the rise.

And in perhaps the best news of all, the study (funded by the governments of Sweden, Norway, Canada, Britain and Switzerland) found that the number of deaths per conflict is plummeting along with the decline in the number of wars.

This is all hard to believe when your own country is at war. When civilians, soldiers and journalists are dying in Iraq or Afghanistan; when terrorists are killing tourists in London, Bali, Madrid and Jerusalem; when genocidal armies are slaughtering civilians in Darfur, it doesn't sound like a world at peace. Death and war are resisting stubbornly, but peace and democracy have clearly gained the upper hand.

The U.N. report from last October, conducted by researchers working under Andrew Mack at the University of British Columbia, corroborates the findings of other studies. This spring, Monty Marshall of George Mason University and Ted Robert Gurr from the University of Maryland arrived at similar conclusions. The number of wars, they found, is trending down from a high of 49 at the end of 1991 to just 25 at the end of 2004, the lowest number since 1976. Ah, you say, but the number of wars is not what matters. It's the kind of war. Mr. Marshall and Mr. Gurr say fighting in many of the remaining conflicts is "low-level and de-escalating."

Many people will find it disturbing to even acknowledge the decline in armed conflict at a time when wars still rage. The authors are quick to point out the remaining -- and very serious -- risks, such as the possible emergence of new genocidal conflicts and the upsurge of terrorism. But ignoring what is a reversal in one of the most horrific practices in human history can blind us to the ways in which progress has been achieved. Mr. Marshall and Mr. Gurr warn against underestimating the progress as a disservice to those who have made the changes possible.

Diplomats, politicians and scientists offer a range of explanations for the astonishing drop in the level of worldwide conflict. Diplomats say it was diplomacy. The United Nations likes to highlight its peacekeeping operations. And many political scientists argue that the so-called unipolar world that came after the Cold War, with the United States left as the sole and overwhelming superpower, may be the key factor reducing the level of conflicts. No longer do we have proxy wars, with the two superpowers arming their satellites as adversaries. The United States has the muscle to persuade nations (say India and Pakistan) to hold their fire. And no nation has the strength to take on America one on one, even while Washington sends its soldiers to faraway lands.

Democracy, say many scholars, is the key factor in bringing peace. When the public has power, the public (eventually) pushes for peace.

The most encouraging explanation for the outbreak of peace comes well documented by Freedom House.

The non-partisan group has just published its 2005 global survey "Freedom in the World." The survey examines the status of civil liberties across the world, looking at indicators such as freedom of the press, the rights of women and the rule of law. Freedom House concluded that, "the past year was one of the most successful for freedom since Freedom House began measuring world freedom in 1972." The group's researchers found the most significant improvements in the Arab world, which still lags the rest of the globe in freedom, but is showing measurable movement.

Sure, there's a long way to go. To the families of the dead, surveys and global charts mean little. For the people of Darfur, still facing genocide, the improving global picture provides no protection. Freedom is a most personal matter. And yet, there is reason for optimism.

When people of all political persuasions agree that the world has become a more peaceful place, perhaps it's time to turn off the all-news networks just for a moment and contemplate what is happening: Truly, we may be moving towards peace on Earth.




Frida Ghitis, an international television journalist for over 20 years, is the author of "The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television" (fghitis@yahoo.com).