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International News Title: Google Imposes Worldwide Ban On China Critical Website Space War accuses company of selling out to "boys from Beijing" Google Imposes Worldwide Ban On China Critical Website Space War accuses company of selling out to "boys from Beijing" Paul Joseph Watson/Prison http://Planet.com | February 24 2006 For the first time in what some fear will signal a growing trend, Google Inc. has banned and removed a mainstream news website from all its worldwide search engines, seemingly due to the website's reports on China's geopolitical affairs and military technology. Google came under fire last month for agreeing to install government search filters on its Chinese based search engine. The company that was founded on the motto "don't be evil," claimed that some censorship was acceptable because in the long term the Internet would be opened up to a wider audience and freedom of speech would expand. That excuse can today be put to bed because Google has banned its users inside the US and the rest of the world from accessing the Space War website from its search engine. Space War is a reasonably tame mainstream website that focuses on geopolitical affairs and satellite and military technology advancements. It is based in Australia and carries articles from AFP and United Press International. In a statement posted on its website today, the President and Publisher of Space.TV Corporation Simon Mansfield released the following comments, "Google Inc. has banned SPACEWAR.COM, a news site covering military space. Reasons for the ban by Google are unclear. The company did not communicate with Space.TV Corp., the owner of SPACEWAR.COM, prior to its action, and Google representatives did not respond to requests for comment." "Google Inc.'s preferred method of banning a site is to delist its primary domain URL - http://www.spacewar.com - from the Google search index. Google also can reduce a site's page rank, or eliminate it entirely, as it has done to http://SpaceWar.com." "Google Inc in the wake of pressure from the Chinese government has begun blocking access to various websites deemed unfriendly to the "Boys From Beijing" (TM)." "At this stage we have no evidence to suggest this is the reason why Google has banned SPACEWAR.COM. The lack of any forewarning that SPACEWAR.COM was operating in violation of Google's increasingly strict search engine compliance requirements, however, leads us to suspect the ban is politically motivated." "Google Inc.'s corporate mantra is "Do No Evil." Obviously, this is not true given Google's willingness to submit to the censorship requirements of the Chinese government." It is important to stress that Space War is not even outright hostile to the Chinese government, it simply reports on publicly available information about its military progression and relations with other countries. This sets the precedent for Google to ban any website that is even mildly critical of the Communist dictatorship in China. Much to our surprise, the website you are reading now is still accessible in most areas of China but we don't expect it to remain that way for very much longer. The Chinese government is held aloft by the UN and others as the model of the New World Order. The country is no less totalitarian than it was when the PLA massacred as many as 2600 protesters and injured 10,000 more at Tiananmen Square on June 4th 1989. Political dissidents and peaceful practitioners of the Falun Gong religion and even the lawyers who defend them are subject to mobile execution vans or if they're lucky, hauled off to permanent detention camps. US companies like Microsoft and Yahoo have been complicit in helping the Chinese government locate and arrest Chinese bloggers who post even mild criticism of the government. Space War is inviting its readers to complain to their political representative. We urge you to support them by following this link and ensuring that the practice of worldwide censorship of websites critical of the ChiComs ends now.
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