By way of zenicurean I learn that Google has announced its horror that the Chinese regime has, in fact, not much respect for the right of political dissent.

There’s a sort of underground, which is perpetually trying to draw attention to the fact that various corporations from the United States and elsewhere provided support for Nazi Germany prior to relevant nationalizations or declarations of war. For example, IBM supplied information technology, which was subsequently used for such things as tracking-down Jews.

But the Nazis didn’t have the first or the last regime to violate human rights, and the firms that sold the means for them to do so weren’t the first or last folk to try not to think too hard about whom they were helping. American firms sold war equipment to both sides during the First World War. After the Second World War, businesses sold resources and technology to repressive regimes, variously communist or anti-communist; the United States government often subsidized or otherwise promoted such sales, depending upon what soul-less pragmatists thought to be in the national interest. And it isn’t as if American sales have to be to foreign states to support repression.

We need to judge the present and the past with a perspective that doesn’t lose sight of either, to understand that doing business with Hitler or with Stalin is part of the same sort of behavior as doing business with Hu or with Putin, and vice versa. We need to see that there isn’t some simple discontinuity of acceptability that places Hizzoner on one side and der Führer on the other.

I’m not here telling anyone whom to condemn and whom to excuse. Rather, I’m saying that one should be reluctant to try to draw lines of any sort on slippery slopes. As to one’s own behavior, I suggest that a line be drawn before one is on the slope at all.

Some of my searches on Google are resulting in a 403 error return (Forbidden) from Google itself, with this message:

We’re sorry…

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

If you’re continually receiving this error, you may be able to resolve the problem by deleting your Google cookie and revisiting Google. For browser-specific instructions, please consult your browser’s online support center.

If your entire network is affected, more information is available in the Google Web Search Help Center.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.

This is, of course, a bit annoying. But it is also interesting, as it says that Google is acting to stop the use of their system by malware. However, I don’t see how spyware per se would make use of Google.

The searches in which I’ve engaged which have triggered this have used the Google site operator, and have looked for a PHP-generated page. Further, the 403 error return is more likely to come after I have moved through multiple pages of results.

My inclination is to think that what Google is really trying to block is some sort of zombie searching for vulnerabilities in the sites to which it provides links.

Quoth Google:

Results 1 – 17 of about 5 for "robby robertson" discography. (0.23 seconds)

Google has discovered this 'blog.