photo credit: Eric Paul Owens

Look: I’m not a politician. I’m just an American looking at the world through a dirty set of glasses, muddied by 8 years of waste. I’m scared that the Republican party is going to pull the same dirty trick they pulled in the 2000 election, a time when the Republicans capitalized on Al Gore’s intellect going over people’s heads, thereby alluring them to the clearly-failed policies that George Bush, Jr. would come to unleash on the American people.

In 2008, the Republicans are turning to a pinch hitter to allure people into believing that the failed policies of the Bush administration are worth hanging on to for another four years. We’ve gotten exactly what was promised, a pitbull with lipstick, one who is tough and resourceful and, to a large degree, extremely frightening.

As much as I dislike what she stands for and who she is, Sarah Palin is an ideal weapon for the Republican party to use as a boost to the unsexy, often unpalatable personality of their Presidential candidate, John McCain. She represents a smokescreen for the policies and ideals that the party stands for. She lacks a real and clear understanding of what she would be inheriting should she become President, evidenced by her first televised interview on ABC News tonight.

When I listen to her talk, I do not hear conversation about issues. I hear a confident, sexy, organized, tough opponent in her voice. I hear the desire to improve. I hear the wish to be capable of seeing through the past eight years of monstrous excess, failure, loss of life and economic turmoil. But it’s clear to me, in spite of my respect for her dynamic personality and her go-get-em attitude: she’s wrong for America in so many ways, I’d have to take off your shoes and mine to help me count them all.

The question of “The Bush Doctrine” came up in the interview and Sarah Palin was clearly unprepared to clearly state her position. She demonstrated something very important to recognize in that interview, something very telling: Sarah Palin is exceptionally smart, but more importantly, she knows how to “work it” when she gets stuck. Sarah Palin’s greatest asset, from the perspective of a viewer who (like you) was unfamiliar with her three weeks ago, is her ability to be resourceful in using her charm to manipulate a conversation to her advantage when the answers to questions are not handy. My father used to mention an old saying to me to describe situations like this — “If you can’t beat them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

Does this sound like anyone in our current White House?

The Associated Press is reporting that actor Heath Ledger was found dead today in his SoHo apartment by a housekeeper. The 28-year-old actor was believed to have died as a result of a possible drugs overdose. Reports from Manhattan indicate that Ledger was scheduled for an in-house massage. When he failed to respond in a timely fashion, a housekeeper entered the apartment. Ledger was found, according to MSNBC, “surrounded by pills” (which we have since learned are over-the-counter sleeping pills, non-prescription) at around 3:35pm EST.

UPDATE: The New York Times City Room blog has provided the following additional details –

At 3:31 p.m., a masseuse arrived at Apartment 5A in the building, at 421 Broome Street in SoHo, for an appointment with Mr. Ledger, the police said. The masseuse was let in to the home by a housekeeper, who then knocked on the door of Mr. Ledger’s bedroom. When no one answered, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened the bedroom and found Mr. Ledger naked and unconscious on a bed, with pills scattered around his body. They shook him, but he did not respond. They immediately called the authorities

UPDATE 5:50pm EST: The New York Times is now reporting that the possibility exists that this was a suicide, though the M.E. has made no official ruling as to the cause of death. Foul play, however, is in no way suspected. CNN is now reporting that the drugs in question are over-the-counter sleeping pills.

UPDATE 6:08pm EST: The New York Times has retracted their earlier statements regarding ownership of the apartment by Mary-Kate Olsen.

More details as they become available.

freshbake and g. dellous // “So I’m Told” // house mix feb 06 (via Jazztruth)

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Duncan Lawrence Callaway, 24, died December 22 at home, following a lengthy illness. A DJ extraordinaire, his friends will gather at the Full Moon Club (where he had been scheduled to play) on Friday night to celebrate his life and talent. Our beloved son is survived by his parents, Gil and Becky Callaway; his brother, Jordan, and his grandfather, Dr. James T. Duncan, Jr., along with three uncles, three aunts, and many cousins. Our hearts are well and truly broken. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Doctors without Borders or the charity of your choice. Visitation will be held at 12 Noon at Canale Funeral Directors to be followed by the funeral service at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, December 26, 2007. Canale Funeral Directors 901-452-6400

Thank you to Jen for reminding me how much he loved this song. I was talking to our mutual friend Chris online a few minutes ago and we both agreed: when we hear this song, it’s as if he’s still here. He’s right there in the words to this song.

Duncan Callaway, we will all miss you.

Octave One – Blackwater (Octave One Strings Vocal Mix) (download via zShare)

close the doors to temptation
open wide, the gate of love
don’t let them tell u
war is the answer
search deep inside
for peace of mind

they only want u to see
what they want u to
but you’ll be sad & blue
so chase those blues away

chorus
just open your heart
just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine
but rivers run deep
and valleys go dry
like blackwater, a, oh, oh, oh
just open your heart
just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine
but rivers run deep
and valleys go dry
like blackwater

reminisce
about the good times
don’t let bitterness eat away
let no resentment
hold back your future
have faith in yourself
you’ll find away

they only want u to see
what they want u to
but you’ll be sad & blue
so chase those blues away

chorus
just open your heart
just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine
but rivers run deep
and valleys go dry
like blackwater, a, oh, oh, oh
just open your heart
just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine
but rivers run deep
and valleys go dry
like blackwater, a, oh, oh, oh
just open your heart
just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine
but rivers run deep
and valleys go dry
like blackwater, a, oh, oh, oh
just open your heart
just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine

deep in the desert
when the rivers run dry (the river runs dry)
leaves one man thirsty
leaves another to die (another to die)
hold on to your vision to help your friend
don’t u listen to those echoes
do what u can
cos u know
u know

they only want u to see
what they want u to
but you’ll be sad & blue
so chase those blues away

chorus
just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine
but rivers run deep
and valleys go dry
like blackwater, a, oh, oh, oh
(open) just open your heart
(your heart) just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine
but rivers run deep
and valleys go dry
like blackwater, a, oh, oh, oh
(open) just open your heart
(your heart) just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine
but rivers run deep
and valleys go dry
like blackwater, a, oh, oh, oh
just open your heart(open)
just open your mind (your heart)
and let your love flow like the sunshine
but rivers run deep
and valleys go dry
like blackwater, a, oh, oh, oh
(open) just open your heart
(your heart) just open your mind
and let your love flow like the sunshine

Well Merry Christmas everyone. You probably thought you’d never hear from me again, but I just didn’t have anything worth saying for a while. I’ve been busy, you have too. Time for me to talk about this Will Smith debacle that when I read about it made me say, “Oy vey!”

As you probably have heard if you’re reading this, Will Smith was quoted in Saturday’s Daily Record as having said the following:

“Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘let me do the most evil thing I can do today’,” said Smith. “I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good’.Stuff like that just needs reprogramming.”

When I read this quote, I didn’t think to myself, “Hey! Will Smith is an anti-semite! You evil horrible bastard, you who have been graced with the gifts bestowed on you by the entertainment industry, an industry replete with Jewish people who will be offended!”

But apparently, I was alone in this way of thinking for a day or two, particularly when said newspaper ran the headline SMITH: ‘HITLER WAS A GOOD PERSON’.

Within minutes, Will Smith was slandered and libeled in a potentially irreparable way by any number of major news sources, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith (who called for a boycott of his movie I Am Legend, a film which should be boycotted not for this reason but because it’s horrible), and even Page Six took a swipe at him, saying:

“Will, you’ve broken our hearts. It’s you that needs reprogramming.”

Now, I don’t know about you folks, but I have a brain and I have a heart. Sometimes, I think with my brain and other times I get emotional and try to think with my heart. When heart dominates over brain, I occasionally fall short of my marks on things. All of these people got so emotional, so over-the-top about this headline that they didn’t read the fine print and use the logical mechanisms they’ve been entrusted with to figure things out.

This is Will Smith we’re talking about. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, people. He gets jiggy wid’it. He’s not Mel Gibson who, by all published accounts, actually did launch an anti-semitic tirade and will now spend the rest of his life trying to recover from it.

If you’re still confused, well you’re not alone. Will Smith issued a statement through his publicist which read:

“It is an awful and disgusting lie…It speaks to the dangerous power of an ignorant person with a pen. I am incensed and infuriated to have to respond to such ludicrous misinterpretation.”

“Adolf Hitler was a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet.”

And there, of course, is the loving father and husband that we have all come to know and respect. So if you’re still thinking that he said something anti-semitic, let me ‘splain for you what he was talking about, k?

When I was in acting school, we had an entire acting class dedicated to talking about Adolf Hitler and about how we would seek to portray the character of Adolf Hitler in a play or movie should such a challenge ever arise. Adolf Hitler, we all knew, was an evil and horrible man, a man whose atrocities were too numerous and horrific for the mind to contain them. But the challenge was in getting that message across to an audience in a performance. It didn’t matter how we individually or collectively felt about Hitler; for this acting lesson, we would have to play Hitler. To become him, what tools would we use? How could we deliver the message of who he was in a performance?

And the turning point came when our teacher said, “Now, consider this. Which one is more frightening: to think of Adolf Hitler as the horrible, evil dictator that we know him to be, or is it more frightening to think of him as a person who believed that what he was doing was right?”

A collective sigh went through the classroom as the reality sunk in: it’s far more frightening and disgusting to consider that Hitler believed what he was doing was “good”.

As someone who has considered this logic many times over the years, I couldn’t begin to fault Will Smith for having the same conversation that I’ve had hundreds of times with countless friends. As for the shame and guilt associated with the comments, cut The Fresh Prince a break. If anyone should be ashamed, it should be The Daily Record. Whoever chose to run with that headline ought to be hitting the bricks.

But, oh, wait — headlines like that sell papers. Well played, assholes.

(sources: CNN.com, TMZ.com)

There is some delicious irony to stuff like this, but you can’t really taste it. I guess Senator John McCain should screen his applicants more carefully before hiring them.

http://365gay.com/Newscon07/07/071207mccain.htm

Washroom Sex Bust Blow To McCain Campaign
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

Posted: July 12, 2007 – 5:00 pm ET

(Titusville, Florida) A co-chair of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign in Florida has been busted for trying to pick up an undercover male police officer.

State Rep. Bob Allen (R), a foe of LGBT rights in Florida, is charged with offering the cop $20 for oral sex in a washroom at Veteran’s Memorial Park in Titusville.

Police said that Allen, 48, was seen coming in and out of a restroom three times before approaching the officer.

Allen has been charged with solicitation for prostitution, which has a maximum penalty of one year in jail.

The state lawmaker is one of six co-chairs of McCain’s Florida campaign. Allen posted a $500 bond and was released pending trial.

Ironically in the last session of the Florida legislature he sponsored a failed bill that would have tightened the state’s prohibition on public sex. He also has been a supporter of amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage and has opposed a bill to curb bullying of gay students.

Allen resigned Thursday from the McCain campaign.

Meanwhile, two McCain strategists abandoned the campaign in Iowa on Thursday. Ed Failor Jr.and Karen Slifka longtime GOP operatives with deep ties in Iowa.

The three withdrawals Thursday will hurt McCain’s campaign already damaged by money problems.

SPREAD THE WORD. PLEASE REPOST THIS MESSAGE EVERYWHERE.

This is really disheartening news. If you’re reading this, you must stand up and speak up if you want internet radio to survive. Dozens of webcasters, from WOXY to Soma.FM and on and on will collapse under the weight of the Copyright Royalty Board’s royalty rate hikes.

Your silence now will lead to even more silence when net radio disappears into extinction. Please read the following and take action.

IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED FOR THURSDAY, JULY 12TH

Greetings,

Time and options are running out for Internet Radio. Late this afternoon, the court DENIED the emergency stay sought on behalf of webcasters, millions of listeners and the artists and music they support.

UNLESS CONGRESS ACTS BY JULY 15th, the new ruinous royalty rates will be going into effect on Sunday, threatening the future of all internet radio.

We are appealing to the millions of Internet radio listeners out there, the webcasters they support and the artists and labels we treasure to rise up and make your voices heard again before this vibrant medium is silenced. Even if you have already called, we need you to call again.

The situation is grave, but that makes the message all the simpler and more serious.

PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES RIGHT AWAY and urge them to support the Internet Equality Act. Go to http://www.capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/alert_9738601.html to find the phone numbers of your Senators and Representative.

If they’ve already co-sponsored, thank them and tell them to fight to bring the bill to the floor for an immediate vote. If the line is busy, please call back. Call until you know your voice has been heard.

Your voices are what have gotten us this far – Congress has listened. Now, they are our only hope.

We are outmatched by lobbying power and money but we are NOT outmatched by facts and passion and the power of our voices.

Again, please go to http://www.capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/alert_9738601.html to find the necessary phone numbers and make the call today.

Thank you,

The SaveNetRadio Campaign

Someone named TJ (Teresa) Searcy was kind enough to have invited me to attend a BurnLounge function here in Memphis on Wednesday night at Holiday Inn Select – 2nd Floor Ballroom 5795 Poplar @ I-240, Memphis on Wednesday, May 23, 6:30pm. After receiving the evite, I responded that I might be attending. I got frustrated with her emailing me the same evite repeatedly (four times in 12 hours). So after I had already responded saying I might attend, I did some research that I think people should check out. You see, folks, BurnLounge is a giant scam and they’re using some big names to try to convince you that they’re for real.

Memphis is a city filled with individuals who make art desperate for a chance to earn a living from their art. BurnLounge being a giant pyramid scheme, what better place to take advantage of people’s greed and ignorance than the city where stands a giant pyramid as a looming suggestion of how easily people can be manipulated. Everyone around here is desperate to make a buck, so who better to use as “marks” in the scheme than your own friends and family (or people who dream of making money on the internet)? When you see “Justin Timberlake Enterprises” and “Elvis Presley Enterprises” as people included in their “store owners”, you might be able to suspend your disbelief long enough to pay the fee to, as you would be led to believe, sell music. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Fine Print (or what the hell is wrong with these people):

1) BurnLounge uses interchangeable language to sell you on their “store owner” concept. People are led to believe that they can sell music through their store; however, BurnLounge’s financial schematic doesn’t really revolve around sales — it revolves around what all MLM’s revolve around, signing people up under you as “store owners”. They use the language of the music industry as a ply to get you to come on board and be involved. If you replace their references to the music industry in their pitches with any other industry — vitamins, time shares, cleaning products — you will get the exact same pitches used by notorious MLM’s like Herbalife, Amway, and many many others.

2) Up until recently, the format of the songs you could purchase were only good for people who are running Windows and are using Windows Media Player. No brainer, it’s not a tech-savvy site because, think about it, they don’t care if you sell/buy anything or not. Even though they now sell MP3′s, it changes nothing. The reason they made this change was to continue to look like they are “developing strategy” when, in reality, they’re just changing their tune to fit the model.

3) The only way someone can find your “store” is to search from within the BurnLounge interface — there are no direct links to your store that you can give to people, you can’t find your store in Google by searching for it, and you have to email people to get them to join you — which fits directly in line with the MLM model. Edit: They have direct links to stores enabled now and people have dedicated sites that merely redirect you to their BurnLounge stores.

4) Most Many of the songs (it is widely reported) are horrible quality, don’t work on your iPod, and/or are off-brand versions of the originals – and if you email their support team about it, you will get slow or no response to your issue, something you don’t find happening with iTunes. Among these many versions you will find many karaoke versions of well-known songs, instrumentals, and the like. Why is this? Because they’re not actually making the partnership deals with the major labels that they promise they are. The labels are all hip to what BurnLounge is and are unwilling to license their premium content to BurnLounge because of what it is: a top-heavy scam.. Edit: Major labels do license their content to BurnLounge, however licensing agreements are not the same as partnerships.

5) Representatives use misinformation to get you to buy-in to their plan. I have been approached by more than one person with a BurnLounge store who repeatedly denies that what they are doing is in any way a pyramid scheme. If you look at their model and what it is, there is nothing else that it can be.

6) You can make money, but not necessarily from sales of yours/other people’s music. You can make money either by signing people up as store owners or by selling songs. The primary method of generating income (as with all MLM’s) is how many people you sign up underneath you. Edit:You may have to complete a “sales quota”, but this is only so that you maintain a regular financial contribution to the downline.

7) They are quick to tell you about their affiliations with celebrity names in order to get you interested in making money with them. What they don’t tell you is that these people are all top-levels on the pyramid and you, who end up on the bottom rung of the pyramid, are not getting the same residuals as Rick Dees, Shaquille O’Neal, MC Lyte, Ted Nugent, and the others whose names they throw around. See, those people have thousands of contacts to place in their own downline. If you don’t, then you don’t earn any money.

This is network marketing that attacks the very fabric of Memphis’ music underbelly, manipulating and feeding on the hopes that you’ll get some mailbox money for your work as an artist. There is nothing I can say to you to make you stop what you’re doing, Justin Timberlake (why is Futuresex/Lovesounds is all but absent from BurnLounge even though you have a store?), but know that the Federal Trade Commission is keeping an eye on BurnLounge even though they’re trying to now manipulate people into believing their site is another social networking site for music fans in yet another attempt to create new marks for your so-called business.

Detractors say, “What’s your problem, E.J.? Are you against making money?” I’m all for making money in the music industry through doing what you’re supposed to do: making good product. If you agree with me, perhaps you should show up to this function and ask the tough questions like “Who do you think you’re fooling?” I’m all for competition with iTunes, but this is not the model, not the way, and not a smart investment for anyone looking to make a living off of their own music.

Additonal Reading:

BurnLounge is doomed to failure @ Puramu’s ITtoolbox Blog
Everything Just So
Flutterby
Wikipedia Entry on BurnLounge
Google Search for BurnLounge scam

Oxford, Miss. (TLV) -While the proposed ordinance to ban smoking has been getting all the attention lately in Oxford, another proposed amendment to a city ordinance is outraging local artists, musicians, and concert promoters alike. On October 17, 2006 the Oxford City Government will most likely vote on a proposed amendment to levee steep fines for poster artists in Oxford.

City officials are restructuring the flyer ordinance, which prohibits the posting of flyers, signs, posters, handbills, stickers, or other forms of advertisements on publically owned property. Flyers can currently be taken down by law enforcement or city officials and the owner of the sign must pay $50 if they want it back. Under the existing ordinance, police officers must catch a person posting a flyer on city property in order to prosecute them.

The proposed change in the ordinance will allow police officers to track down the artist, musician, or bar owner (or possibly all three) and prosecute them based solely on the information on the flyer. The proposed new fine for violating the new flyer amendment will be $1,000.00 for each violation. With the proposed fine for smoking in a bar being only $50.00, jail time is not out of the question for local artists and musicians struggling to make a living in Oxford.

“First of all, how will they know someone else didn’t take my flyer and stick it up just to get me in trouble?” said local musician Joe Nettles, lead singer and guitarist of Goodmorning Powerheart. “I take pride in my flyers. They are works of art.”

The exact wording of the proposed amendment of the ordinance is unknown to the public as the City of Oxford has posted no information on its website, nor has it posted the minutes from any Board of Alderman meeting since May of 2006 (unlike the smoking amendment, which can be downloaded on www.oxfordms.net). In fact, it is only because of the controversial smoking ammendment and the shear number of locals who attended the last City Council meeting that any information regarding the proposed flyer amendment has come to light.

According to locals who attended the October 3, 2006 City Council meeting, Mike Martin, assistant chief in the Oxford Police Department, spoke on behalf of the proposed flyer amendment and was quoted as saying band flyers were “litter” and “make Oxford look bad.”

“That’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Joe Nettles. “Apparently, we need to litter this town with cigarette butts to show them what real litter is. We’ve got more and more rich people coming in here to die and the people who live and work here can’t afford it anymore. Oxford is turning into a fascist state. They call this the ‘cultural Mecca of Mississippi?’ What a bunch of sh*t!”

According to local musicians, there has been a “flyer war” going on the streets of Oxford for several years.

“There already isn’t enough space for everyone who has a flyer to post a flyer on the three bulletin boards on the Square,” said Gentry Webb, artist and guitarist of The Cooters. “Many cities across the country provide fairly large kiosks for their citizens to post flyers. If they are going to tinker with the law they need to provide alternatives instead of criminalizing an artform and free speech.”

The third and final reading of the proposed amendment will occur on October 17, 2006 at 6 PM and the City of Oxford’s Board of Aldermen can then vote to approve or deny it.

First, a link to the story that set these thoughts in motion.

Click here to read that story about Amnesty International’s campaign to learn what has been censored by search engnes in China.

Technology serves a purpose to mankind that is far greater than mankind’s cumulative understanding of technology. Technology gives us tools to reach across cultural barriers, through taboos, half-whispered stories, through lives and lives lost, and through lives yet to be lived. It provides us with new ways in which to discover ourselves in the world in which we live and, ultimately, to learn from others. Our understanding of the world we live in and the varied cultures which make up that world is limited to the way in which we were brought up, from our individual level of learning about what our common ground is and with whom we can or cannot relate, much like the way we each understand technology. Computers and the internet are, in their own way, a culture unto themselves on which we all rely and in which each of us reading this participates.

Many of us cannot remember what the time was like when this machine called the computer was not in our lives in one way or another. Be it video games. ATM machines, cellular phones, even word processors and the electronic gas pump. We’ve never been removed from the freedom that access to these devices present to us. If we have been, when we return to those devices and the powers they provide we forget what it was like once again not to have them. Technology is taken for granted until it is not in our grasp, and then only for a short time.

The internet represents a sort of technocracy to its minions, representing the freedom of ideas and the ease with which one can maneuver to find answers that once took days to research. It is a teacher, it is a student, it is interactive, and it both represents the idea of true freedom and is a freedom in and of itself.

Yesterday, several companies, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google were challenged to reveal their lists of words or phrases banned from their search engines in China by Amnesty International. While I’m quick to applaud AI for their resourceful and considerate campaign which, ultimately, is to open dialogue for seeking a representation of the net freedom experienced by the Chinese people before these restrictions came to be, I have to stand back and recognize the cultural dilemma that the Communist-operated government must be experiencing in dealing with these new found freedoms and their potentially damaging affects on their rule of law.

But my concern is this: why should we continue to attempt to Westernize their culture if they are satisfied with their culture as it exists? If they are satisfied to participate in censorship, who are we to protest that? As it applies to our own culture, it can be a valid example of the direction that censorship can take, one from which we as a free society should learn and apply to working to save our own shrinking freedoms.

Ultimately, the government in China forms their own rule of law, frequently to the dissatisfaction of Western cultures which differ dramatically from their own. As a company or as a traveler, we are merely visitors in their country. They have opened up opportunity for trade with their people, many of whom have lived in China all their life. They do not know a different way not because, as it has been suggested, they are being kept in the dark. It is merely part and parcel of their daily function to live in a way of simplicity that no Western can comprehend fully.

The thought that some of those people may not be ready to experience the freedom offered by the internet seems to me as real as the thought your own parents had the first time you went out on a date. It is as real as your first kiss, learning to ride a bicycle, and in some cases just that simple. The way towards the peaceful continuation of not only financial trade with China but our relationships with that which we admire and respect about China and its long history should be directly reflected in a Western acceptance of the joys of our differences of culture while taking note of those things which upset and disturb us about their ways and deciding what power we, as Westerns, truly have in changing them. The message we wish to send is not heard there so much as it is heard by those elsewhere who share our joys or disillusionments.

I believe that If we were to focus on the purpose of recognizing our feelings about this issue as one of educating people in our own country regarding the technocratic realities rather than continuing to believe, incorrectly, that we can affect a change, we may succeed in strengthening our own resolves rather than dismantling the resolves of the Chinese government. The change we may desire to affect will more likely occur through example than through blind outrage.

The thought, however, goes further with the Chinese government’s interpretation. Protestors equate the methods of Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo as censorshp. While they might be correct, it is not our information to choose to manipulate or present.

They rightly equate the internet with what is damaging to their historical beliefs and their modern culture, too much influence over decisions or lifestyles from the West which are totally counter to their own culture could inevitably cause unrest in a country that seems to have a majority position on the traditions of their culture and how they are carried out through government rule. I like to think of that sense as similar to having a frank conversation with your child about sex or arguing with your child about what clothes they wear, whom they hang out with. Acting as parents with a rule of law in place, the government feels compelled to work with these companies rather than to deny them access entirely.

There is, for every freedom, a cost which is much deeper and broader than a denial of the things we in the technocracy recognize as normal and salient. There is also a peace which those of us who know so much about technology and the internet’s power can no longer experience. As a culture, the technology-driven world has crossed a line from which no return is possible.

And so, this border of innocence to some of the information the internet provides that protesters are eschewing their sense of necessary availability to the Chinese people over really reflects the extent to which Western culture, in some way, wants to pave the way for that innocence to be lost. Are these people necessarily going to be a happier and more fulfilled people because of the information that they are being denied? Will it serve any purpose other than to shackle their desires to those of Western civilization and the adamant push to spread freedom and democracy at any cost? I think this is wholly unfair to the great and industrious people of China, whose ideas and lifestyle we attempt to emulate in Western society while shunning the precepts from which that respectable industriousness was borne.

Revolutionary thoughts and ideas do not disappear merely because they have been outlawed. In fact, those ideas and thoughts have a place in which to gestate when rule of law denies their right to exist. The revolution, as Gil-Scott Heron said, will not be televised.

In the same way that we have the right to be concerned about the boy our daughter is dating or the time she spends away from us not knowing where she is, so should we allow the Chinese government the right to make application of their fears with those whom they do not completely understand. We are strangers in their country, after all.

The real issues that this need to fight these internet providers represents is a desire by the West to give a freedom of information to the Chinese people that we in the west already enjoy. It’s an attempt to spread democracy through the search tools of the internet which to us are as popular and common as our reflection in the mirror, to give people a sense of even momentary freedom from the right to gain knowledge that is taken for granted in our Western technocracy. It is not about the companies bowing under pressure so much; it seems to me about a general feeling of concern in the West over the Chinese people’s relationship with their own government and with each other. The way in which they can access the internet being stifled is representative of Western fears and misguided notions of Chinese culture, the laws which the Chinese may fear would be irrevocably lost or altered by Western intervention through information.

I have to say that our understanding of their government and culture, though fueled by fact, is based in a fear — either that we will not have the opportunity to learn from them how the internet functions in China or that they will not ever experience the freedoms we know from our own access to what the internet offers.

If Amnesty International wants to be effective in sending a message to those companies, they should clearly be willing to temper their rage at those companies willingness to work with the Chinese government to allow a portal to western thinking that is censored to meet the Chinese government’s standards. Their standards, after all, are not our own and not ours to control. To express outrage and disgust is to focus on the problem rather than to focus on a solution for that problem. I believe firmly that these companies were unswayed by their feelings because they recognize that any level of technocracy existing in a country so tightly guarded as China can only lead to the Chinese people making decisions for themselves and their families as to what is right within the boundaries of their own cultural norms.

We should not use this as a chance to pass judgement on the cultural norms of China, but as an assertion of the example Western culture sets in their own responsible use of the internet for its many freedoms of information at our fingertips.

Leave the big companies alone, I say. It is to everyone’s benefit to have any presence at all in China and other countries where the internet is tightly controlled. It is far better to learn about these cultures and develop a respect for the parts of the culture that we like than to focus so vehemently on the negative aspects, many of which may never change in any of our lifetimes.

Real knowledge is rarely found when sought out. True knowledge of self or otherwise has always come to me when I’m not expecting it. I’ll never find that true knowledge in a Google search or on a blog or on a website. I had a teacher who used to say, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” I think what she meant is that people who are blissfully ignorant are often the happiest among us. Who are we to determine whether or not our desire to seek out knowledge will make someone else happy?