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The irony of US Net freedom

By Philip J. Cunningham | China Daily | Updated: 2011-03-01 07:46

The irony of US Net freedom

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has assumed the role of an Internet evangelist on behalf of US President Barack Obama and a handful of big corporations. Although the WikiLeaks case found the US government awkwardly on the "wrong" side of Internet freedom, she has tried to downplay the obvious hypocrisy of her stance - in short, anything that serves Unite States government interests is enlightened Internet policy - while portraying her political team and its corporate allies as model global citizens on the road to human rights and freedom, never mind the bloody war raging on in the background.

It used to be thought that what was good for General Motors (GM) was good for America. GM, because of the decline of US manufacturing, is a shell of its former self, but Google has emerged as a national mascot, the new pet poodle of American high-tech evangelists. The US promotion of Internet freedom cannot be taken at face value, especially after the frantic efforts made to block and discredit WikiLeaks.

Instead, US official rhetoric about Internet freedom is rather code for "do it our way", which itself can be parsed to mean: "Do as we say, not as we do."

The irony of US Net freedom

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