Review on "Google bows to China's censorship demands" (The Sydney Morning Herald, 7/21/10)

What's the use of Google in China if users can't search and find everything they ought to be able to see?  Well, I'm not sure of what other search engines are available in China, and if they are as good as Google, so that's somewhere to start. 

When Google was banned in China for directing them to a mainland site in Hong Kong that was unfiltered, they only came back four months later, agreeing to all of China's demands. Google had promised to abide by the Chinese government, as well as "avoid linking to material deemed a threat to national security or social stability."

As I suspected, Google doesn't make nearly as much money in China as it does in other countries. The Chinese market accounts for "an estimated $US250 million to $US600 million of Google's projected $US28 billion in revenue this year." However, it is feasible that without "the China platform," Google would not be able "to profit from the expected future growth of the market." 

Review on "His Fans Greenlight the Project-Robert Greenwald Tapped a New Funding Source: The Audience" William Booth (Washington Post, 8/20/06)

"They got $267,892 in 10 days."

Wow. Jim Gilliam and Robert Greenwald must have a lot of people that like them enough to generate that kind of money...from the Internet!

Though the pair did generate larger donations, like $100,000 from an anonymous philanthropist and $82,000 from a medical equipment entrepreneur, "the rest, $185,000, came from 3,000 small donors giving an average of $62 each."

While the Internet has sometimes caused more problems than solved them, this is an instance where modern technology like the Internet is actually just a wonderful thing. Not everyone has Internet connections where they live, but most have access to it. And we're not just talking about the U.S., but on a much more global scale.

I'll admit, I don't think I've ever gone to see a documentary at a theater, or even bought one on DVD. However, once controversy ensues, I'd probably find a way to watch it if the topic interested me enough. The other thing about this is, while some people are totally against war, Iraq and a lot of political decisions, still, so many choose to stay in the dark about what's really going on. We've seen this so many times in history, whether it be Vietnam, the Holocaust, or 9/11, that people choose not to know, because they don't want to know how bad a situation truly is, or they even go as far to deny that certain events in history just never happened.

Anyway, I haven't seen Iraq for Sale, but it was uploaded to YouTube in 2010. The video has nearly 300,000 views, but that's 100x the amount of small donations that were given to create it! Baby steps.

Review "WikiLeaks and the Global Future of Free Speech" Michael Moore and Oliver Stone (NY Times, 8/20/12)

This op-ed is an interesting read! Filmmakers Michael Moore and Oliver Stone's support for WikiLeaks totally makes sense, as they claim that we, the news media, often fail to inform the country of "the uglier actions of our own government." WikiLeaks' mission is exactly the opposite.

Though WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange isn't really around to supervise, WikiLeaks is still in full throttle, producing more secret government documents for the country to see all the time. I wouldn't say Assange is a "high-tech terrorist," but I do understand why the government is calling him that. WikiLeaks can't win. Either they don't post documents and the public isn't aware of "the uglier actions" of their own government, or they do post them and are actually putting the public's lives in danger!

A bigger problem that is discussed in the op-ed is what would happen if Assange was prosecuted in the US:

"If Mr. Assange is extradited to the United States, the consequences will reverberate for years around the world. Mr. Assange is not an American citizen, and none of his actions have taken place on American soil. If the United States can prosecute a journalist in these circumstances, the governments of Russia or China could, by the same logic, demand that foreign reporters anywhere on earth be extradited for violating their laws. The setting of such a precedent should deeply concern everyone, admirers of WikiLeaks or not."

Free speech for the entire world sounds like it could be so easy if Britain and Sweden cooperated, but it's much more complicated to obtain, and is most likely to never happen at all.