William J. Clinton Foundation Has Taken Money From Chinese Internet Company That Helped Government Crackdown on Tibetan Protestors And Helps Enforce "Great Firewall"

For a speech that former president Bill Clinton gave at Alibaba Inc., his foundation received an unspecified amount of money from the corporation that works Yahoo's Chinese arm.

Excerpt LA Times report "Bill Clinton, China linked via his foundation":

As Chinese authorities have clamped down on unrest in Tibet and jailed dissidents in advance of the 2008 Olympics, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken a strong public stance, calling for restraint in Tibet and urging President Bush to boycott the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing.

But her recent stern comments on China's internal crackdown collide with former President Bill Clinton's fundraising relationship with a Chinese Internet company accused of collaborating with the mainland government's censorship of the Web.

Last month, the firm, Alibaba Inc., carried a government-issued "most wanted" posting on its Yahoo China homepage, urging viewers to provide information on Tibetan activists suspected of stirring recent riots.

... 

 The former president's charity has raised more than $500 million over the last decade and has been lauded for its roles in disaster response, AIDS prevention and Third World medical and poverty relief. But his reliance on influential foreign donors and his foundation's refusal to release its list of donors have led to repeated questions about the sources and transparency of his fundraising -- even as Hillary Clinton has talked on the campaign trail about relying on him as a roving international ambassador if she is elected president.

...

"A former president of the United States received a donation from a Chinese firm that is involved in censorship, and now his wife is running for president. This is a shame of the U.S.," said Harry Wu, an exiled Chinese activist based in Washington.

 ...

Last year, Yahoo's senior executives were scolded by a congressional committee for the company's dealings with Chinese authorities. In a legal settlement that followed a lawsuit by attorneys for Shi Tao and another jailed dissident, Yahoo also agreed to provide financial aid for their relatives and press for their release.

"We've met with the State Department and met with Chinese officials to ask for assistance in securing the release of some of these individuals," said Michael Samway, a Yahoo vice president and the firm's deputy general counsel. "We're hopeful that with the Olympics approaching there will be progress."

Human rights activists complain that Alibaba has not followed Yahoo's lead. Jack Ma, a former official with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade who built Alibaba, has often dismissed concerns about his firm's scrutiny of the Internet for the Chinese government. "As a business, if you cannot change the law, follow the law," he said the morning after Clinton's 2005 speech. "Respect the local government."

Ma has insisted that Alibaba operates independently from the Chinese government. But Ma's official background and China's tight oversight of its homegrown Internet and e-commerce firms are examples of the "blurred line between government and corporation," said Jonathan Zittrain, an Internet regulation expert who teaches at Oxford and Harvard universities and is co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

"A Chinese government official doesn't have to order a local Internet operator to censor something," Zittrain said. "They might advise them that a certain article on their site doesn't look too kosher. It's communicated in code." The result, Zittrain said, is "the great firewall of China." 

 Didn't the foundation loan the Hillary Clinton campaign c. 5 million dollars?

Is this important?   A look at how much The Clintons did, to the detriment of the rest of us, for the Wall Street and Big Energy companies that helped her fund her Senate runs and this presidential bid is not encouraging. 

tags: bill clinton  hillary  clinton  china  tiibet  alibaba  yahoo  clinton foundation  clinton library  human rights  

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