corporate WEAK-day three-the YAHOOs of the world (so to speak)

(ya know this is currently happening in china, BUT are WE that far away from it ourselves?) on a personal note, i don't know how much more of this (corporate WEAK) i can take. i end up all messed up after reading all of this and reading all of the other blogs as well (and i'm not even the one going through any of this shite-geeze what a damn grrrl i am). i am very simple minded. i cannot understand why the world has to be this way. i just can't. power and money? that's not a good excuse in my book

Yes, Master How Western companies are selling their souls for a piece of the massive Chinese market ..............Today, China employs approximately 30,000 cyber-police to monitor Web traffic and postings from the country's roughly 111 million Internet users. Writing articles "incompatible with the mainstream ideology" is prohibited. Posting messages that "damage the reputation of the state" can get you arrested. And publishing anything deemed to be a state secret can carry the death penalty. The list of banned websites now stands at 500,000 and growing. Even with the full weight of the Communist regime behind it, the censorship effort would have been futile without equipment and know-how supplied by Western vendors like Cisco Systems Inc., SunMicrosystems Inc. and Nortel Networks Corp. And with the world's three dominant Internet companies -- Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft -- in a blind rush for a piece of China's spectacular wealth, Beijing has found all the willing accomplices it needs to strip the Internet of its anonymity, its freedom, and to turn it into yet another tool of repression. Google and Microsoft have recently launched Chinese versions of their Internet software that block access to topics that offend China's ruling party, such as democracy and Tibet. Yahoo recently handed over a Chinese journalist to authorities after he posted information critical of the government on an Internet message board..................

SHAME ON YOU YAHOO SHAME SHAME SHAME

............But the questions of human rights and corporate ethics in China go far beyond a single industry and a handful of companies. China's emergence as an industrial and commercial power represents the biggest economic revolution in a generation, and in the rush to invest, critics say Western business is selling its soul, one ugly compromise at a time. This month, T. Kumar, Amnesty International's advocacy director for the Asia Pacific region, testified before the U.S. congressional human rights caucus, urging lawmakers to rein in big business before any more principles are sacrificed. "In the pursuit of new and lucrative markets, these IT companies are contributing to human rights violations," Kumar said. "Unless strong action is taken, this type of practice will not only increase, but is likely to move into other areas, which will lead to disastrous impacts on the Chinese people."..........

this is rather dry but it does have a lot of good links and information.

Defining Corporate Complicity in Human Rights Abuses by Bill Baue Business and Human Rights Seminar report maps the landscape of corporate complicity in human rights abuses, and addresses the dichotomy of mandatory laws versus voluntary codes. SocialFunds.com -- Researching and clarifying corporate complicity in human rights abuses is one of five mandates charged to Harvard Professor John Ruggie in a July 2005 appointment as Special Representative of the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations. Helping move this agenda forward in London in December 2005 was the convening of the third annual Business & Human Rights Seminar, organized by the steering committee made up of Amnesty International, Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, One World Trust, The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, Respect, and TwentyFifty Limited. Last week saw the release of a report summarizing the proceedings entitled Exploring Responsibility and Complicity, the theme of the event. .... ......... The Alien Tort Claims Act ( ATCA) case referred to was brought by 15 Burmese villagers alleging that Unocal (ticker: UCL) commissioned Burmese soldiers to protect its Yadana gas pipeline knowing they committed murder, rape, and forced labor. "That ruling stated that complicity involved three things: practical assistance being given to the perpetrator; assistance having a substantial effect on the commission of the criminal act, and finally the knowledge criterion." "But the decision was vacated because the parties settled the dispute, and so it has no current legal standing," ............. ..............Other Seminar participants advanced different modes of defining corporate complicity in human rights abuses, using actual incidents to illustrate the dynamic. For example, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan cited the cases of Yahoo (YHOO) revealing the identity of journalist Shi Tao to Chinese authorities, and Chevron (CVX) quelling a protest by calling on Nigerian Joint Task Force soldiers, who killed one demonstrator. "[T]hese are two cases where the state clearly had the primary responsibility and obligation to protect human rights, but it also shows the kind of complicity issues we are talking about, when a company itself does not commit an abuse, but benefits from an abuse committed by someone else, remains silent in the face of the abuse, or assists, aids and abets the state in committing abuse," Ms. Khan said. .................