Google, China & Haiti

This is not going to be about gaming. Sometimes, it's a bit more important to post stuff like this rather than what all has been going on in AION and keeping me from updating this regularly. Real life > gaming, with stuff like this. This is being cross-posted from my personal blog, hence the mention of shitty things in my personal life.

You know, a lot of bad shit has happened in my life since I last updated this journal, some of which has gone down in the last 36 or so hours. I could rant about it, take all the sorting out I've done in my head and put it down here, but I realize that about 95% of it is trivial shit compared to what else is going on in the world this week.

Let's start with Google and China, and how the globe needs to unite.

Call me a radical, but I agree with France - we need to define some basic rights to the internet and information technology that all humans should be allowed. The ability to use the internet is not just a convenience in France, it's a basic human right now. With how digitized our world is getting, more countries need to look into this sort of thing, as does the UN; some information that is found online is not found on printed media and will not be found on such unless someone prints it off on their own printers. Granted, I don't think the way France set up their laws on it were perfect, and they need to have some tweaking done to them, but the bottom line is that people should be allowed to have mostly unfettered access to the internet (I say mostly because I'm against children being able to look up porn, for example).

I've been vaguely aware of the fact that Google has been following the demands of the Chinese government in regards to what their version of the search engine can find and have accessible to Chinese citizens. I never really found it right, but I was one of those people who thought that it was better that there be some access to the powerhouse that is Google's search engine rather than there being none. However, as time's passed and more information has come to light about it, I was less and less okay with it.

Then this week happened.

China basically has been trying to use Google to track down activists who disagree - 99% of the time, peacefully - with their government so they can arrest them, paint them as treasonous bastards and then execute them to scare their citizens into behaving?

Whiskey.

Tango.

Foxtrot.

I really don't care whether it soley was a human rights decision, a combination of HR and business, or a purely business standpoint - I'm glad Google said the same thing, and essentially made a bold move that told those Chinese sons-of-a-bitches to shove their bullshit back up their asses (note: I mean their government, not the people in general <3 Jimmy Chi!). It doesn't take a business or social analyst to know that China is going to look at they're "Hey, by the way, that censoring thing? HELL NO!" move and not agree with it, because their entire regime would crumble pretty damn fast with free information flowing into the country.

However, just booting them out of the country isn't going to make things better for China, as it's probably going to draw attention to the fact that there is that much censoring going on, and with as many people who use Google.cn in the country, they may end up with a social problem on their hands that their internet spin doctors might not be able to contain. Which is, in the end, a bonus - there's socialism and Communism, and China's on the wrong side of the fence. They really need to get up with the times in regard to humanity and what it means to lead people rather than just scaring or brainwashing them into compliance.

This issue has the potential to not only draw attention to the bad practices that come with dealing with China, but it may help in blowing open the whole rights of the internet issue at large.


The second thing going on this week that makes anything that happened here in PA seem trivial is the ginormous earthquake that hit Haiti. Unless you live under a rock, you can't not have heard about this - given that I pay very little attention to the news and I'm aware of it, that leaves no excuses.

Since the earthquake hit, my mother's been updating me on a friend of the family's situation: Tia, a woman who was once my babysitter and is amazing with kids, was in the process of adopting a little boy from Haiti. Rather than lamenting not having a kid, she had the spine to say "You know what, it my not have my genetics, but an adopted child is worth just as much as one I might give birth too", which is a huge thing to me considering I've had boyfriends break up with me because they found out I really cannot have children.

Unfortunately, she's been unable to contact anyone from the orphanage, which was relatively close to the palace in Port-au-Prince. The palace and most of the surrounding buildings are flattened, and seeing the first images of that had to be rough on her.

After watching movies tonight, I wanted a distraction, and decided to look up something more about this - a lame attempt at helping as it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. But as I read more and more articles, the more and more I was horrified and amazed.

Preval said he himself had not been spared. "I cannot live in the palace; I cannot live in my own house," he said. "The two collapsed." He added that he did not know where he was going to sleep Wednesday night, but was not worried. "I have plenty of time to look for a bed," he said late in the afternoon. "But now I am working on how to rescue the people. Sleeping is not the problem." - Haiti president says estimates put quake death toll in thousands, CNN.com

That, ladies and gentlemen, is one hell of a president. The man doesn't have someplace to sleep, his home is destroyed, and he could have easily gotten away with arranging shelter for himself and just overseeing this from afar, but instead he's not even worrying about himself - he's worrying about his people who are trapped in the rubble. That right there made me wonder whether any of our Presidents would get that down and dirty in a nation wide crisis...sadly, I doubt few of them would do so, and even fewer would truly mean it.

Amid my digging, I was pretty shocked to find that "Heroes" star Jimmy Jean-Louis had started an organization to help out underprivileged kids in Haiti, where he's originally from (hence him playing the Haitian on the show, obviously). The focus of that organization has temporarily changed, having mobilized to help out with the disaster. Jean-Louis drew attention to something I don't think people really are going to think of immediately, and my misinterpret unless they actually stop to think about it: sending items to Haiti at this point is a bad idea, even if you're filtering them through an organization like this or the Red Cross. There's going to be such difficulty getting them to Haiti and through the area right now that the best thing that can be done is monetary donation; these donations can be put towards major things that are going to be more easily transported like medicine, something that the country is dangerously low on with the number of hospitals ruined vs. the number of patients that they have. Medicine and clean water are probably the two most important things we need to get to them, with food coming up in a close second.

And yes, I know he's looking for his own family amid the mess, but he's only human. You can't fault him for that.

Mom found a little site that helps you put a Haitian flag on your Facebook profile picture to show your support for the disaster relief. Yeah, it's not a whole lot, but not everyone can spare cash or items right now, or even know who to get them to. And it does give some comfort to people outside of Haiti who use Facebook, because it lets them know that other people care too.

The orphanage that Tia was going through has a Facebook page. If you can, please go there and fan the page to show your support. They're having difficulty contacting anyone inside the country, for obvious reasons, and all updates they have are being posted here as well. There is also a link and instructions on how to donate directly to the orphanage; there are way to many children that got hurt or killed between the two orphanages that went down, so it's unclear whether or not her son-to-be was one of them. I rarely ask people to do something involving faith, but if you can, please pray to whatever God you worship or send out the good vibes into the universe and ask that as few kids as possible were killed, and that hopefully Tia's son survived - and that those who did survive will continue to live, since water is so scarce right now.

My friend Alicia posted this as a status earlier: Text the word Haiti to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross. Text the word Yele to 501501 to donate $5 to the earthquake fund. The average Haitian lives on $60 a month, your money will go a long way. Will you please donate? You'll probably hardly even notice it on your cell phone bill. 100% of your donation goes through- cell carrier keeps nothing.

Yes, this is applied to your phone bill. If I weren't on someone else's plan, I'd have done a text in to both.

I know a lot of people freak out over Americans donating money to emergency funds like this when we have so many problems here in the States; many people who do don't even bother making donations to American humanitarian organizations, so they really don't have room to talk in the first place. The down and dirty of it is that with this situation, people will die a lot faster and in a lot greater numbers without help from larger nations and their citizens, and it's the right thing to do. Maybe it's just because I find the whole lack of helping each other when political, social or geographical bounds thing to be rather stupid...shit like this is not the kind of thing you ignore, nor is it something you degrade just because you don't feel like giving up an MMO or a couple of movie nights for a month. I'm horridly poor right now due to waiting on disability, and I'm giving donations so these people can live.

Which is saying a lot given most of the time I'm pissed off at the way humanity as a whole acts. >.>

Anyways, these two things made me realise that as much as the last 36ish hours of my life have kinda sucked and got me questioning life and people, there's a lot more going on out there that takes precedence over it.