Freedom, China, and Wikipedia

You can listen to politicians hype the war against terrorism all day. That’s all a lot of them talk about. They try to spin our current battle into epic proportions-into a final showdown once and for all between good and evil, and the Arabs into the ultimate enemy. “They hate our freedom”. We’ve all heard stories about how they treat women, and the excessive power their leaders hold over them. I’ve got all that in perspective though. China just continued it’s ban on Wikipedia.

It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the numbers. Over a sixth of the world’s population is being blocked from unfiltered knowledge. I use Wikipedia every day multiple times, to quickly look something up that grabs my attention.

The Chinese civil rights violations of course do not begin or end with Wikipedia. All media goes through the government censors. People are not allowed to move freely around the country, and the people are not allowed to voice dissent against their government.

Do you know what is written in the White House schedule whenever the President meets with someone about the Iraq war? “President Bush Discusses Freedom in Iraq and Middle East”. Remarks that Donald Rumsfeld made in 2004- “The vast majority of the 25 million Iraqi people want freedom for their country,” “Those who oppose the Iraqi people’s transition to freedom and self-rule will not be permitted to derail it”. That’s what Iraq is all about, haven’t you heard? It’s all about freedom.

China just banned Wikipedia though. We aren’t fighting a war against them. We wouldn’t even need to use military force- if we imposed economic sanctions on China as a penalty for their rights violations they would be inviting UN inspectors inside the country to see their new reforms within a business week. The truth is we’re not only indifferent to violations in China- we’re looking into better ways to make money off of it. Slavery is illegal here in America, but in China you can still get a day’s labor for less than you spend on healthcare paperwork here.