U. S. Tech Firms Help Squelch Freedom in Middle East

Thurgood Marshall, late Supreme Court Justice, on the 1st Amendment

Click here to view the Press Freedom Map, and you will see a world that is half colored in red.  It depicts countries which have severely restricted their citizens from enjoying freedom of the press and the use of the World Wide Web by employing U.S. designed and marketed Internet-blocking software.

This partitioning of freedom by country, as you can see from the map has created an East/West gulf in which entire continents – look at all those colored in red – are largely cut off from the rights which we enjoy in America under The First Amendment.

A quick glance shows a startling picture of the world, in which freedom of speech and of the press – while prevalent in locations such as North America, Western Europe, Australia, Japan, and South Korea – is heavily censored in many other parts of the globe.

 Rulers elsewhere, especially in the Middle East, Russia, China, and most of Africa have essentially shut off their populations from access to information, either partly or completely.

The only two ‘green’ countries in the Middle East with freedom of the press are Israel and Cyprus.  Lebanon is depicted in yellow as ‘Partly Free.’ 

Click on the ‘Middle East’ tab of the world map to hone in on the Arabian Peninsula, and you will find nations colored blood red, such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, just to name a few. 

The Newseum in Washington, D.C. memorializes the growth of journalism.

This underscores that you don’t have to second guess why those nations have recently taken repressive police actions to hold down public demonstrations in their midst.  People everywhere yearn to be free.

Feeding this monster of intolerance is the fact that American Internet security companies such as McAfee and others are selling certain countries software originally originally intended to keep information networks and your home PC safe from intrusion – not government-enforced censorship.  McAfee is owned by Intel, the world’s leading chip maker.

The Wall Street Journal, in a front-page story on Monday, wrote that, 

“A (government) regulator in Bahrain, which uses McAfee's SmartFilter product, says the government is planning to switch soon to technology from U.S.-based Palo Alto Networks Inc. It promises to give Bahrain more blocking options and make it harder for people to circumvent censoring.” 

Consider this:  Why is the Obama administration participating in a costly, militarily enforced no-fly zone in Libya, while simultaneously permitting American companies to sell technology that helps to keep other Middle East repressive regimes in power?

(Click on the images to better read the inscriptions, especially the one on the outside left wall of the Newseum.)