The OpenPower Foundation — a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to “drive innovation” — has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx. Together, they have worked to advance a breed of microprocessors that enable computers to analyze vast amounts of data more efficiently.
Shenzhen-based Semptian is using the devices to enhance the capabilities of internet surveillance and censorship technology it provides to human rights-abusing security agencies in China, according to sources and documents. A company employee said that its technology is being used to covertly monitor the internet activity of 200 million people.
IBM, of course, has always been perfectly fine with aiding in and profiting from genocide, so it’s not really surprising that the company jumped at the chance to aid the totalitarian Chinese regime’s genocide against the Uhgurs. Google’s involvement may be slightly more surprising since the company has no real presence in China, but I don’t think anyone should be shocked.
Many western companies choose profits over ethics in China, such as Apple, who aides the Chinese dictatorship’s massive surveillance state by handing over all Chinese Apple user’s iCloud data to the Chinese government. Since such anti-privacy measures are legally mandated in China, you can safely assume that any western technology company active in China is just as guilty as IBM, Google, and Apple.
Its not only the companys, most western countrys choose profit/market access over ethics in the china case, and since the people elect the politicians you could say most western people choose profit over ethics^^
Sadly, we are just as complicit. We Like our cheap phones and random bits of plastic made in china. Why, because it’s cheap! We, as consumers, turn a blind eye as a result
Be it electronics or that sports shirt you paid a small fortune for. They are made in conditions we would be unwilling to work in, and for pay on which we couldn’t sustain our lifestyle. The alternative is we pay more. As a society, we’d rather not.
Thom,
Really, I have nothing against bringing the past to enlighten what kind of creatures we are. Right now there is a wave of egotism sweeping the entire world. I still remember how it grew strong on USA by the 80’s, and from there radiated to the rest of globe. Granted, it was not the first time that it happened, it was not something original and is not something unique, but it showed a way to others on power positions on democratic countries with advanced social structures and protections, how to convince the rest of population to surrender rights conquered by hard fought just some years before.
Crimes against humanity is not an exclusivity of China, or Syria, or Russia, or North Korea, or the many brutal regimes around the world. My country is not an exception, Germany was not, USA is not, your beautiful country, as history denounce, also is not, as evidenced by your own opposition to face the past. And you expect that sub-societies, because that is what any group inside is, be different?
The “good boys” are few, sparse and (very) seldom raised to positions where they could spread social justice. Our unique hope is that economic progress brings with it more access to critical thinking schools and knowledge. That is what is happening in China, despite all the effort by their leaders to clamp it down. It transformed the life of more people than what lives in entire Europe. It is spreading also to other places in Asia so, collaboration with them has more nuances than what we may think at first sight. We lost power, employees are suffering on most of our countries and inequalities are growing over here, but history is moving, things are changing fast and many, many more lives are better there than they got worst here, and with an optimistic prospect to transform their societies to a more balanced one.
Should we close our eyes to their crimes, of course not, but as so we should teach history like it was, and we are not doing it. We can’t throw pebbles to someone else ceiling of glass without confront our own misdeeds because they are going to use them to hit us back and discredit whatever supposed high ground on ethics and moral we think we have.
Is it really the first time American Companies have done that?
https://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-history-the-u-s-supported-and-inspired-the-nazis/5439236
The Associated Press
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IBM
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IBM put the blitz in blitzkrieg. The whole war effort was organized on Hollerith machines from 1933 to 1945. This is when information technology comes to warfare. At the same time, IBM was supporting the entire German war machine directly from New York until the fall of 1941 ….All of the money and all the machines from all these operations was claimed by IBM as legitimate business after the war. The company used its connections with the State Department and the Pentagon to recover all the machines and all the bank accounts. They never said, “We do not want this blood money.” They wanted it all.
Ford
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In Germany, Ford’s anti-Semitic articles from The Dearborn Independent were issued in four volumes, cumulatively titled The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem published by Theodor Fritsch, founder of several anti-Semitic parties and a member of the Reichstag. In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as “one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters.” Ford is the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf. Adolf Hitler wrote, “only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews’] fury, still maintains full independence…[from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions.” Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said he regarded Ford as his “inspiration,” explaining his reason for keeping Ford’s life-size portrait next to his desk. Steven Watts wrote that Hitler “revered” Ford, proclaiming that “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany,” and modeling the Volkswagen, the people’s car, on the Model T.
Grand Cross of the German Eagle, an award bestowed on Ford by Nazi Germany
Coca Cola
Kodak
So many more….
You might want to check up on Philips’ deals with North Korea.