Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Google-Blogspot Censors Americans

Google/Blogspot deleted my Saturday post regarding the infamous cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad!

Given all the attention over Google signing a pact with the devil to censor what people in China see, perhaps we should worry also about how the people who say, "never be evil" trample on the First Amendment rights of Americans.

You can BET I'm not the only Google/Blogspot user they have gagged!

I'm also sending this to author and journalist Lewis Perdue who wrote about me in his latest book, Perfect Killer.

Perdue gets a little left-wing flaky for me some times, but I think he's also got enough gumption to let people know about this Google censorship. I'm contacting the ACLU as well to see if they're willing to help.

You can read the post that
GOOGLE CENSORED HERE


7 Comments:

Blogger Mark said...

I don't see why they pulled this. did they say anything?

2/07/2006 12:20:00 PM  
Blogger Clark Braxton said...

No word from the Google people, no response to my emails.

I believe I made several cogent points in an even-handed manner.

I believe they must be afraid.

And that makes me afraid for freedom of expression. Corporate censorship is certainly as big a threat as that from governments, possibly greater.

2/07/2006 01:04:00 PM  
Blogger Darrin Bell said...

I just don't get it. Nowhere in Google's terms of service does it say you can't give your opinion about any particular religion. You said nothing offensive. You weren't talking about all Muslims, you specifically were talking about those who've hijacked the religion for their own purposes, and you raised the notion that Islam may be going through the same stage of development Christianity went through a few hundred years ago.

I don't see anything there that violates Google's terms of service.

Could they have deleted it by mistake? Is this the only post they've deleted? I'm going to see if I can find out whether they've been censoring any other blogs. If they have, I'll have to comment on this in the cartoon.

2/08/2006 06:46:00 PM  
Blogger Clark Braxton said...

Darrin, thank you for talking a look.

Yesterday, when I saw the post had been deleted, I tried to re-post the message along with the image of the cartoons. It would not upload. They had undoubtedly blocked things.

I would be VERY surprised if I am the only one blocked.

I think we have to get C-Dog to get knock, knock, knockin' on Google's door.

2/08/2006 07:04:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Free speech is not a right when you are using a free service. The terms of service allow them to remove blogs and/or accounts without cause. You get what you pay for.

I had my account and all my blogs removed recently. They contained a fair amount of satire, some of it aimed at a certain 'Top Gun' of litigation.

I will bang my head against the wall that is blogger support for awhile longer, but I suspect to no avail.

2/10/2006 09:56:00 AM  
Blogger Clark Braxton said...

Melvyn: Yes, I agree that the ACLU is not going to touch Google's censorship issue. It doesn't seem to fit into their political universe ...

But as an independent moderate, I try not to rush to prejudge. I've never had any direct experience with the ACLU and thought they deserved a fair chance to act on what they supposedly stand for.

The ACLU is such a bete noire for the right, that I thought I'd give them an opportunity to show that they were better than represented.

They obviously flubbed that opportunity.

I wonder whether conservatives would be angry either, after all it's a corporation that's being evil here and not the government.

From by observations, the Right sees only the danger posed by government abuse (and not business) while the Left tends see evils in corporations and not government.

2/11/2006 04:52:00 PM  
Blogger Clark Braxton said...

Google/Blogspot has censored me and others.

The fact that they have configured their system to keep the cartoons from displaying large enough for anyone to make them out (on both my blog and Candorville.com) is proof enough for me that they are consciously blocking free speech and that this it not some sort of artifact of their flag system

Speaking of FLAGS, have you been here: (http://ideaworx.com/WE-ARE-ALL-DANES-HTML.txt) to get your Danish Flag?

2/13/2006 07:16:00 AM  

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