November 6, 2007
Yahoo to Jailed Journalist's Mom: "Um, Sorry"
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos threw down some serious shade today. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," he cried, shaming two senior Yahoo officials. Why? Because the Sunnyvale company named names, handing over private information about Chinese journalist Shi Tao's online pro-democracy action to country officials. (Or, as the New York Times so eloquently put it, their "complicity with an oppressive communist regime." Oh snap.) This landed the journalist 10 years in the slammer.
Lantos then demanded Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan to fork over a mea culpa to journalist Tao's mother, sitting directly behind them. Which they did. Both of them turning around and bowing to face Shi's mother, Gao Qinsheng, who then immediately (and understandably) broke out the water-works. Awk. Ward.
But Yahoo isn't the only company to get smacked in the rear like this for such behavior. Google and Microsoft have both been at the receiving end of criticism for "helping the Chinese government stifle the flow of ideas in exchange for greater access to the country's rapidly growing Internet market." But they've never had to apologize to someone's bereft mother for having him thrown in the clink. At least not yet, anyway.
image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images, via NYT
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Excellent bit of political theater by Lantos there. Bravo.
Money, Money
from the musical: Cabaret
"For money makes the world go around, the world go around,
the world go around.
Money makes the world go around,
the clinking, clanking sound
of Money, money, money, money,
Money, money, money, money,
Get a little, get a little,
Money, money, money, money,
Mark, a yen, a buck or a pound,
That clinking, clanking clunking sound
is all that makes the world go round,
It makes the world go round."
Or, as some of us prefer, the Python version...
I've got ninety thousand pounds in my pajamas.
I've got forty thousand French francs in my fridge.
I've got lots and lots of lira,
Now the deutschmark's getting dearer,
And my dollar bill could buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
There is nothing quite as wonderful as money,
There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash,
Some people say it's folly
But I'd rather have the lolly
With money you can make a smash.
There is nothing quite as wonderful as money
There is nothing like a newly minted pound
Everyone must hanker
For the butchness of a banker
It's accountancy that makes the world go round.
You can keep your Marxist ways
For it's only just a phase.
For its money, money, money,
Makes the world go round.
Money, money, money, money, money, money!
well, for a company whose financial worth seems largely based on their popularity, this could be a bad thing.
let's hope for a market correction.
and good on the judge-judying of that apology. they had that coming.
Shame on Mr. Yang!! Morality and integrity do not seem to be of much value at Yahoo!
Here is another China-connection that will further tarnish the image of this US web giant: through teir quasi subsidiary Alibaba.com Yahoo! is indirectly involved in the international shark fin trade.
Read this, and be sure to click the 'Celsia' link ("Alibaba,con and Yahoo! back the shark fin trade"):
http://www.1440wallstreet.com/index.php/comments/shark_fin_soup/