Congressional Commitee Rips Yahoo Execs 293
A number of readers sent word of the hearing by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee in which committee members raked two Yahoo execs over the coals. "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," the committee chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said angrily after hearing from Jerry Yang and Michael Callahan about Yahoo's actions that resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a Chinese dissident. In 2004 Yahoo turned over information about journalist Shi Tao's online activities requested by Chinese authorities. In Feb. 2006, Yahoo's General Counsel Callahan testified that he had not known the nature of the investigation the authorities were conducting. He later learned that several employees of Yahoo China were aware at the time that the investigation involved "state secrets," but Callahan did not go back to Congress to amend his testimony. Committee members were withering in their disdain for Yahoo's refusal to help Shi Tao's family after his arrest.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Bring on the blood diamonds! Who the fuck cares who gets abused! Money is the only thing worth consideration.
Re:I'm sure this is redundant already (Score:5, Interesting)
"What if the law in the US says you cannot follow the law in China?"
Sovereignty means the country establishes the rules within their boundaries. If the US doesn't like it, they can always go to war with China. It will be the quickest war ever - China immediately dumps their vast US currency holdings on the open market, the US dollar becomes (even more) worthless within 1 minute due to programmed trading, etc.
China and Japan (and pretty much the rest of the world) are already looking to divest themselves of their reserves of US dollars, since Barneke has made it clear that he will destroy the dollar's value in a stupid attempt to delay the consequences of the collapsed housing bubble as long as possible, which will only make it worse when the time of reconning arrives,
The USD is no longer a "reserve currency". This has broad implications for the US' ability to "project force", and its loss of superpower status.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
It's quite simple really. If you're "with us", you're not breaking the law(when the president does it, it's not illegal). If you're "against us", you are.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
They aren't doing it to change anything, they're doing it for show. The Congress has been instrumental in letting the U.S. become China's bitch since Nixon began relations with China. We need to put the boot on the neck of Congress to do something other than tell us what we already know in hopes that it will entice us to vote for them.
It's hard to imagine anyone but laissez-faire crackheads actually looking at the amoral structure of corporations and thinking it's for the best. The drugs are powerful in Libertopia.
Re:PKB (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because a congressman might be hypocritical, doesn't make their arguments any less valid.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Would that work for you, Mr. Philosopher, because you seem more interested in the moral relativism of something rather than the fact that it violates some fundamental precepts of human dignity?
Why trash the pygmies? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see a Congressman get away with substituting in Black/Jew whatever and lasting out the day.
Re:PKB (Score:2, Interesting)
Very nicely done. But think that only illustrates the point; both can kill, just one's death toll is much larger than the other, even though individual victims of the latter may be more notable.
Likewise, Congress passes laws that affect literally millions of people, many in a negative way, and yet here we have a congressional committee upbraiding a company for ruining one person's life with their policy. It's not that Yahoo!'s actions are qualitatively less repugnant than Congress's...it's just that the relative quantities defy reasonable juxtaposition.
Re:PKB (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it can. This is not a logical syllogism situated in the abstract we are talking about, but rather an issue in which Congress no less than Yahoo! (and probably much more) has a role to play. If a Congressman upbraids a corporation for undertaking acts that are morally repugnant, did that Congressman also introduce or vote for legislation that would make such a stance a practical option for that corporation? Did congress rattle sabers over protecting Yahoo! China's executives if they were to defy Chinese law to aid the dissident? Threaten trade sanctions? Place restrictions on how and in what manner Yahoo!'s international subsidiaries can aid foreign governments? Any of those would have aided Yahoo! in making such a choice palatable to its board of directors and its shareholders, and given cover if Yahoo!'s executives wished to do the "moral" thing.
If Congress had in its power the substantive means to encourage Yahoo! to do the moral thing or at least give it legal cover to do so, and failed to so act, Yahoo! can indeed say "you too, asshole" and not be staking out a morally vacuous position. It might also help if Congress wasn't green-lighting retroactive immunity for similar crimes domestically; one might argue from that that Congress has shown it doesn't so much care about the rule of law when it comes to corporations complicit with government orders.
ad hominem tu quoque is not automatically a fallacious argument if the agent so identified is culpable in the very same matter (and not a merely equivalent matter) as the subject.
Re:Why trash the pygmies? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)