…advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

What Google won’t say here, and I don’t know why, is this. Who besides the Chinese government has an unhealthy interest in the e-mail communications of Chinese human rights activists?  Those “third parties” Google mentioned were probably the Guoanbu and the MSS, two Chinese agencies that, if you’re a human rights activist (or a salvation-believing Christian), you do NOT want to mess with.

But Google is on the right track. Responding to China, saying they’re willing to shut down operations in China if the archaic Chinese governing class aren’t willing to cave on the issue of censorship, is a good move.  But why wait until now?  I was heartbroken when Google capitulated to China’s censorship demands in the name of the Almighty Buck.  I even chided Google as un-American.

So putting teeth behind this fiasco–great move.   I would advise the Obama Administration to take a cue from Google’s chief counsel, who wrote their official response, and grow some teeth of their own as Google has done.  Hillary Clinton’s response from the Department of State was neither as informed nor as smart.  In fact, I’d call it useless.

James Fallows adds that, at the end of the day, this decision doesn’t really hurt anybody except Google.  It doesn’t deal a real blow to China, in his opinion, because Chinese Internet consumers are, generally speaking, not going to work too hard to get around the government’s censorship.  As one Tweeter put it, it’s not Google withdrawing from China.  It’s China withdrawing from the world. To me, that means Google is finally, thankfully, just doing the right thing.

The Star gets it right when they lead into the article with an air of sarcasm.  Of course a cell phone is NOT a human right, but I think the Star needs another lesson in liberty.  The rest of the items on their list, food, shelter, and medical care, are things that that Star thinks the government should provide for all citizens.  When does it all end?

Apparently it’s OK for everybody to get food stamps, but a cell phone, nope.  Is it really that hard to see that people ought to be responsible for the food, shelter, and care of their own family?  Why is this neo-communist thinking so pervasive these days?