They Shoot Chinese Dissidents, Don't They?

Yahoo collaborates with Fascists for third time (Guardian Unlimited)

Transnats and Fascists have always enjoyed a strong a relationship (Ford and the Nazis, for example), and so it is not as if we have any right to be surprised that Yahoo would betray yet another of its users to the Chinese authorities. What is surprising is that anybody who doesn't hate freedom would continue to use their services.

As individuals we often feel powerless in the face of megacorporate force; but the fact of the matter is, while the order to surrender Yahoo's user records no doubt came from the lofty top floor of their Sunnyvale headquarters, the tech who dredged up Jiang Lijun's name from the databases is no doubt going home to a fairly unremarkable Silicon Valley track-house and eating food that came from the same supermarket chain that we will no doubt pass on the way home from school or work. He will watch the same television news programs as his neighbors, on the same digital cable service (he has the bronze package, but hopes to upgrade when he gets his next pay raise - which he has every reason to believe will be very soon). I mean, of course, that he is indistinguishable from any one of us.

Our anonymous tech, just another cog in the siege engine of progress, probably feels powerless. He knows if he didn't type up Lijun's name, somebody else would have. Maybe it would have been the pretty girl at the opposite workstation that he hasn't yet worked up the courage to ask out. It's just dumb luck.

He isn't wrong. He's just chosen the wrong machine of which to be a part.

Jiang Lijun, Shi Tao, Li Zhi, I regret to inform you that our machines have failed you. Your freedom was worth less than fast porn results or free web-based email (which we could have as easily had from Google).

But if there is any one law that can be applied to all machines, it is that they will one day fall apart. Perpetual motion is impossible.

And even you, our anonymous Yahoo tech, when the machine fails, that is when entropy comes and cuts out your throat.

What kind of a machine are you?