Word: totalitarianisms
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That's why Google's decision to launch a censored website in China was so jarring. (See "Google Under the Gun," TIME, Feb. 13, 2006.) Doing a totalitarian government's bidding in blocking the truth in order to make a few extra bucks is practically the definition of evil. Google acknowledges that it's in a tough situation but says it ultimately has to obey local laws. "There's a subtext to 'Don't be evil,' and that is 'Don't be illegal,'" says Vint Cerf, an Internet founding father who now serves as "chief Internet evangelist" at Google. "Overall...
...really isn't just about the money. One of the pervasive myths of the information age is that the Internet is a kind of magic spray that when applied to totalitarian states causes democracy to spontaneously blossom forth. "Westerners saw the Internet as this garage-door opener that you could point at closed regimes and open them," says Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and co-author of the forthcoming book Who Controls the Internet...
...Ahmedinajad been a totalitarian tyrant, like Saddam, he would not have needed to play the nuclear card to disarm his domestic rivals: he'd simply have tossed someone like Rafsanjani in jail, or sent him to the gallows. As an elected leader hemmed in by the checks and balances of the parliament and the ayatollahs, Ahmedinijad needs to play politics in order to survive...
...Thailand, Afghanistan and Guant?namo Bay, Cuba. Holding prisoners in secret and denying them recourse to judicial hearings in a timely fashion are more than appalling. The Bush Administration seems not to understand that if you want to "export" democracy, you need to act like a democracy, not a totalitarian state. Say all you want about the ends justifying the means, the reality is that such actions undermine our stated reason for occupying Iraq. If President George W. Bush is intent on remaking Iraq into a democracy, he needs to start acting like a civilized leader. Malette Poole Kure Beach, North...
...about what he calls the two tears of kitsch. ?The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass. The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass.? Kitsch denies the earthy messiness of life. And ?totalitarian kitsch,? he writes, outlaws individualism, doubt and irony, because they risk exposing the beautiful lie it is designed to sustain. The gulag, Kundera argues, is ?a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse.? But in Pleasantville, of course, there is no mention of any gulag, only...