Lunch Break: Dow Erases Yesterday’s Gains on GM, China News

• GM auditors worry about company’s future – Washington Post
• Wen boosts spending without adding to stimulus – The Guardian (U.K.)

Mexico – Our Own Little Slice of Pakistan?

According to the U.S. Joint Operations Command there are at least two countries in the world in danger of “sudden collapse”: Pakistan and Mexico.

Can you imagine a collapse of the Mexican central government?  Perhaps army units around the country would align themselves with regional leaders or drug lords.  Next would come the potential for armed rivals fighting one another for central control.  What we’re talking about is Afghanistan just after the Soviets departed where there weren’t two sides in a civil war, but several.  What we might experience is hundreds of thousands of refugees on our southern border.

Our armed forces are currently stretched to the limit due to the Iraqi adventure.  What’s available to secure our southern border or insert into Mexico to keep or restore the peace?  China has spent the past several years working on its relations with Central and South America, primarily in places with oil, like Mexico.  How soon could the Chinese have a division or two on the ground, in Mexico?  When would they leave?

So, there’s a little bit of the nightmare scenario.  Do I believe any of the above will happen – no.  Could it? Yes.

Why Does Google Kiss China’s Ass?

I’m one of those people who love Google – but fear Google.  The love is for the fact that they came out of nowhere and did something better – search – and more unobtrusively, that they changed the whole state of the art.  I love the fact that they used the core values and spirit of ingenuity that made them a successful search engine and monetized the net for the masses through their better ad program.  I love Google labs … the list goes on.

I hate the fact that they condone and act as China’s censorship police.  I hate the fact that they stand up for their values only in the countries like the U.S. where they have rights.  In its relationship with China, Google has lost the mantle of “revolutionary.”  Google’s principle of “don’t be evil” is rendered meaningless when it becomes, “do no evil unless it means missing a business opportunity in a huge market.”

For some years now, Google has been allowed to do business in the Chinese cyberspace because it allows the Chinese government to use the Google search engine to effectively block out news and other information from the Chinese people.  Today, Google and others said they were sorry to the Chinese government for the fact that some searches yield naughty links among their results.

Google is big enough and popular enough that it could tell the Chinese to go pound salt.  If the popular search engine and other Google apps were taken away from the Chinese people, perhaps they would bring them back through a popular consumer uprising.  Google would rather take the path of least resistance – even if it means doing the harm of being the handmaiden of an oppressive national government.

I was in a bookstore the other day and took note of the smut mags atop the magazine rack.  Although not a consumer of those magazines, it’s always comforting in a way to see even a mainstream bookstore keep a few around.  Why do they?  Because they can.  They’re just making a small statement that this is American and we don’t censor — and neither should an American company.

Being “not evil” means not helping others (Chinese government) be evil as well.