UPDATED - Google: Kiss Freedom Goodbye

Google's censorship against Uruknet.info [see below, Google: Kiss Freedom Goodbye] and other anti-Zionist blogs and websites may better be understood by reading the following:

1) Israel News Agency Creates Israel 60 Birthday Website Resource Center

"In addition to illustrating the latest news and events listed on this Israel 60 mother of all blogs, we are optimizing this news and event blog as we do all news and feature content on the Israel News Agency. The Israel 60 Birthday Website will combat Palestine, Iran, Nazi and Syria sites which have started to attack Israel's 60th birthday by enjoying a stronger search engine optimization (SEO) marketing and public relations ranking on Google and appearing throughout the Net using all of the tools of Web 2.0."

(...)

A long list of celebrities will be coming to Israel for the Israel 60th birthday anniversary celebrations. They include: film director Steven Spielberg, US President George W. Bush, former USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev, ex-US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair, Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Le'vy, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former German foreign minister Joscka Fischer, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel, News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, social networking Web site Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

***

2) Facebook, Google founders to attend Jerusalem conference in May
By Guy Grimland, Haaretz Correspondent

Co-founder of internet giant Google, Sergey Brin, will join Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Yahoo president Susan Decker at a presidential panel on technology to be held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center May 13-15.

The convention, which was formed at the initiative of President Shimon Peres, will also be attended by a number of Israeli political, religious and financial leaders, as well as academics and cultural figures.

The panel will discuss issues facing technology in today's age and the future, in particular in regard to how it will affect Israel and the Jewish world.

Former UK prime minister Tony Blair will also take part in the conference, as will French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former prime minister of the Czech Republic Vaclev Havel, Nobel Prize Laureate Eli Wiesel, and Georgia President Michael Saakashvili

***

3) The following article was published by dozens of Zionist websites:

Google’s news and the hate sites by Islamic radicals: such as “uruknet”

Can anyone explain to me how did such a — pro Hamas terror and anti Israel hate — site manage to be bumped at GoogleNews?One of the typical examples of this crazy site’s language and “credibility” is such a title (in 2007) “Israelis enjoy torturing the Palestinians”.

No further explanation is really needed, it is against Fatah, it backs the GENOCIDE party of Hamas all the way as “martyrs” and presents its crimes against humanity — of using its civilians as pawns, especially their kids — as “heroic”. [continues]

***

Now enjoy Google: Kiss Freedom Goodbye

"Looking-glass, looking-glass, on the wall,
Who in this land is the fairest of all?" - Grimm Brothers, Snow White

Once upon a time, in a Land of the Free far-far away…

On April 24, 2008 Google Inc. has stopped (again!) indexing Uruknet.info as a news source.

This is the fourth time Google Inc. discontinues indexing Uruknet; in the past Google Inc. reinstated it following many complaints sent in by Uruknet’s readers. But this time we’re lucky: we may know the exact reason why Google Inc. did it directly from a Google News Help page.

On April 14, 2008 Uruknet posted an article by Malcom Lagauche, the pseudonym used by author and journalist Jeff Archer

The second paragraph of Lagauche-Archer’s article read:

My friend is a Shi’ite Muslim who grew up in Basra and gained his university education in Baghdad. Naturally, our conversation was mostly about current Iraq. Within a minute of our sitting down to chat, he said, "Those fucking Iranians. I never thought they would do this." Then, he told me how he has not made contact with his sister in Baghdad for eight months. He added that his uncle, an Iraqi Air Force pilot during the Iran-Iraq War, was murdered by Shi’ite militia people who were aligned with Iran.

Lagauche-Archer used “Those fucking Iranians” (using the inverted commas) as the title for his piece.

The same day, on April 14, one “Panda Gear” wrote to Google:

I was wizzing through the news and came across this title on news about Iran "Those Fucking Iranians". I find this kind of reporting to be offencive and racist despite the actual quote coming from a source by the reporter. This kind of heading should not be allowed, I care for freedom of speech but I also care for respect amongst all of us. Why has google allowed this to go ahead? and is this the level of reporting we are going to expect if there was a showdown with Iran this summer?

With all the propaganda directed against Iran one can find everywhere, including on Google News, it seems odd this "Panda Gear" complained against Uruknet.info for an article which reports on Iraq and whose title comes directly from an Iraqi testimony. Even odder, Google's reply, which came the following day:

Thanks for pointing this out, Panda Gear -- it should be taken care of now.

Keep in mind that in order to maintain our objectivity, we have an automatic system for crawling and indexing headlines. So if you see something that you think goes against our policy, please let us know! We just launched a nifty new form designed to streamline this process:

http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/request.py?contact_type=report...

Cheers to Panda Gear and others for the report :)

And “taken care of” it was indeed! In other words: first Corporate Amerika launches a war of aggression - the supreme international crime - against Iraq, using those notorious WMD that Iraq didn’t have against the civilian population and killing more than one million of human beings, making five millions more refugee. Now that Iraq is completely annihilated, the same Corporate Amerika censors what Iraq’s citizens say. Welcome to Politically Correctness’ World, much better than Disneyland!

Now, before someone starts to consider the 'pros and cons' of Google Inc.’s behavior – and since Voltaire seems to have been completely forgotten in these times beyond Orwell and Kafka – it may be useful to quote Noam Chomsky:

"If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise."

I was reminded of this quote by Mary Rizzo, Editor of Peacepalestine, who recently wrote: Censorship and Press Freedom: at home and away

Google, Google on the Wall… Who's The Biggest Censor Of All?