Google's self-imposed dhimmitude is just one more outcropping of the same self-imposed dhimmitude that kept Western newspapers, formerly proud bastions of the freedom of speech and energetic warriors against censorship, from publishing the Muhammad cartoons, and that keeps mainstream media outlets, Left and Right, from speaking honestly about the jihad threat. That's why I am staying on this and will continue to stay on it after everyone else has forgotten it and Google is continuing on its merry jihad-friendly way.
It is now thirteen days since I first posted about how Google is censoring negative search suggestions on Islam, and seven days since the mighty Internet giant claimed that this was not dhimmi self-censorship, but a "bug," and would soon be corrected.
Thirteen days, and a week during which presumably the techie masterminds at Google have been on this case, and still Google can't seem to figure out how to wire their search box so that it pops up suggestions for "Islam is" that are comparable to the suggestions you get for "Buddhism is" or "Hinduism is" or "Christianity is." Try it for yourself. Search for "Christianity is" at Google and a host of negative recommendations pop up:
It's the same thing for "Buddhism is," "Hinduism is," etc. But when you search for "Islam is," no negative recommendations come up -- indeed, no recommendations at all:
The same "bug" appears at Google's YouTube.
What a coincidence that Google's "bug" would crop up in a way that shelters the world's most thin-skinned religion from criticism! The one religion shielded from adverse judgment at Google is also the only religion that has is currently engaged in an organized campaign to stifle honest discussion about its texts and teachings that inspire violence. In 2008 the Secretary General of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the largest voting bloc at the United Nations today, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, warned the West about "red lines that should not be crossed" regarding free speech about Islam and terrorism. For years now the OIC has spearheaded an effort at the UN to compel member states to criminalize what it calls "defamation of religions," but by which it clearly means any honest discussion of the texts and teachings of Islam that jihadists invoke to justify violence and supremacism. Interestingly enough, the OIC stepped up this campaign in the wake of the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper that touched off worldwide Muslim riots. Google, at the time those riots were raging, was dutifully removing from YouTube videos that depicted the cartoons.
Thus when the OIC has Google, it doesn't need international edicts muzzling free speech. Like many on the Left, Google seems all too willing to carry water for the Islamic bloc's war against free speech and to oblige the OIC's totalitarian and thuggish influences, by voluntarily refraining from doing anything that might offend Muslims. While its restriction of the automated search suggestions may seem insignificant, its overall willingness to conform to notoriously fragile Islamic sensibilities and deep-six criticism of Islam is anything but trivial.
Stay on it, Robert...keep their feet to the fire.
Has anyone tried to put a negative sting on "Islam Is..."?
We shoudl try that and see if it works!
If it doesn't work then we know it is Google's own policy and not merely that of the "alleged perpetrators of this hack".
We have to start a chain letter to all the Churches and Synagogues (and other houses of worship).
Get the emails of every Church's leader in your area. Send this information and ask that they pass it on.
We must demand that Google show equal respect to other religions by similarly censoring search results for other religions. Either that or drop the censorship altogether.
Robert,
Try to get some tech-savvy friends together and create a video that DEMONSTRATES (PROVES) that Google is self-censoring it's search results re: islam.
Put the Video up on YouTube. Of course, keep a backup on another site like Daily Motion or Live Leak.
Also, a website should be started with a daily counter.
LET'S STAY ON THIS!!!!!!
I think that is not voluntary.....WhaaaHaHaHahaaaaaaaaaa.
"Like many on the Left, Google seems all too willing to carry water for the Islamic bloc's war against free speech and to oblige the OIC's totalitarian and thuggish influences, by voluntarily refraining from doing anything that might offend Muslims."
It's not just like "many on the Left". It's like most people throughout the West -- Left, Right and Center. Indeed, if one bracketed out all the people in the West who are all too willing to carry water for Islam, there wouldn't be many people "left".
It's worse than this. New development. Go to http://j.mp/7Bbm5w and read portablebrain's first comment. It seems suggestions for Christianity are being skewed toward the negative, compared with actual search results. So it's a double-edged sword google is wielding: while islam is protected, Christianity is attacked. Google REALLY needs to provide an explanation and a resolution to this problem. It already has had enough time to do so.
Well, I get ten drop-down suggestions:
Islam is...
bullshit
peace
a lie
wrong
the light
false
nothing
google
fake
the best
http://imgur.com/0LuXI
mww:
Your image shows that you got them at "iGoogle." I don't know what "iGoogle" is or what its relationship is to Google proper, but if you go to the main Google page, Google.com, no suggestions show up for "Islam is."
I confirm that, in Italy, using Google.com (not Google.it) if I write "Islam is" I obtain false, not a religion, of the devil, etc. as suggestion.
I think the problem of Google is that "Islam" is a short word when Christianity, bhuddism, etc. are long words and end with "ty" and "ism". Also if you trunk Islam you have "Is"+"Lam". I bet this messed up the algorithms of Google.
Never think about a conspirancy or evil when stupidity and errors are probable.
The same problems happened in the past weeks about "Climategate", when it disappeared for a day or two from the suggestion (probably because become a famous term in few hours and activated the Google spam filter.
Hesp,
This seems to be your mantra lately, that there is little or no difference between Left and Right on Islam. It seems to me you have straight-jacketed yourself into a rigidly dogmatic approach to Islam, that unless one perceives the issue in stark, black-and-white terms, then one is essentially a dhimmi.
A realistic appraisal of opinions on the political spectrum should tell us all we need to know; of the few who can be found who DON'T carry water for Islam (Tancredo, Santorum, Malkin, Horowitz, etc), they are almost exclusively of the Center-Right.
By all means, pursue your intellectual crusade for clarity in the fight against Islam, but please consider exhibiting a little more tactical flexibility in the effort to build a broad cultural movement to assist the anti-Jihad.
"Islam is pure evil" returns 283,000 hits, many more than it used to return. While that is not related to the bug it is encouraging to see more and more people learning the truth about Islam.
I confirm that, in Italy, using Google.com (not Google.it) if I write "Islam is" I obtain false, not a religion, of the devil, etc. as suggestion.
I think the problem of Google is that "Islam" is a short word when Christianity, bhuddism, etc. are long words and end with "ty" and "ism". Also if you trunk Islam you have "Is"+"Lam". I bet this messed up the algorithms of Google.
Never think about a conspirancy or evil when stupidity and errors are probable.
The same problems happened in the past weeks about "Climategate", when it disappeared for a day or two from the suggestion (probably because become a famous term in few hours and activated the Google spam filter.
The problem is not that Islam is a short word, if you type "Islam" the suggestions are already filling the list, in fact with the letter i suggestions appear, and they update with the addition of each letter "is" suggests in place two "is lady gaga a man", and as you continue on the updates continue even to the point of at "islam i" many suggestions for "islam in" such as "islam in africa" but the instant you add the S the list goes blank!
Oddly enough, the Google search doesn't pop up with islam is "peace".
iGoogle is just a pretty front-end for Google - the search engine is identical.
The difference in results suggests to me that Google has indeed fixed the bug, but it takes times to propagate around the world.
For what it's worth, in the UK I'm still getting the blank suggestion box.
I'm experiencing a somewhat similar experience.
When I write comments connected to Islam on Emory University's internet site my comments are often not accepted. I also experience this a lot at UC Irvine's internet site. Shocking, eh?
(To address any questions...my comments are not over-the-top, but are being ignored for the usual reasons.)
Yes, that would be the way a true Islamic Search engine would work. "Islam is" would result in a long list of superlatives, true, peace, wonderful, etc., but any and all other religions would list false, evil, hate, etc. And any direct searches for "islam is evil" would return zero results.
Hey guys, did you check the Yahoo "bug" ?! lol
It seems Google has taken lying lessons from Obama. You can't argue with sucess - he lied like crazy and got elected president for it:
(http://www.sphere.com/article/opinion-obama-finds-few-friends-in-his-c-span-fight/19307887 )
He took Muhammad's "War is deceit" a step further to "Politics is deceit".
I think we will see more lies from public entities now that his example has shown the way.
This Google "bug" is a classic proof of the notion that criticism of Islam is widely self-censored, or rather, censored by the threats of thugs. It would be hard to imagine a clearer, simpler, more prominent demonstration of that. Dhimmitude sprouting.
@Robert if u have a google account & u look at the top u'll c links that says ur gmail acct address, IGoogle, Settings, then Sign Out - prolly what mmw was referring to.
@ Yankel, the video might be a good idea, but I think there's better ways to notify the churches than a chain-email - needs more sophisication. Most ppl delete any emails that has "FW:" in the subject line.
Personally speaking either we gotta Muslim hacker or Google's got a Muslim worker, or there's $$$$$$ involved. Maybe we Christians, Jews, & Hindus should put in some of our own belly-aching for our rights! *snarl*
I think they just recently fixed the "bug" (or at least partially so). I'm in the UK and "islam is" precipitates a number of suggestions, many negative. I typed it in on my google home page, and "iGoogle" is listed by the search bar; but all the same, it was this search bar that until today would give me *no* search suggestions with "Islam is." Further, the web address is simply "http://www.google.co.uk/;" I don't know how to get to another kind of google search bar that is not the "iGoogle" one. The search prompts after "Islam is" are not all negative, 3 or 4 positive ones ("is peace", "the best").
Robert, it's Google.co.uk. Try this:
http://imgur.com/kPRxC.png
"Islam is" even from the UK google has no suggestions when accessed from the U.S. Christianity is... presents a list of suggestions.
That is nice the way google UK puts the number of hits in the list, the U.S. google doesn't do that. When you see the number of hits listed it is more clear that the list is not based upon the number of hits, is it or should it be based upon the number of times the phrase is searched for, or is it just google's random selections, or in the case of islam is, non-selection?
I'm not sure what criterion they use to sort the list, Think Thrice.
I forgot to say, I've been following this story - and two days ago it was true that GoogleUK showed no suggestions for Islam is... It has been fixed very recently.
(I'm the Dan who posted several posts ago.) I just tried "Islam is" again (from the UK, on www.google.co.uk), and it is blank again (no search suggestions)! But if I type the phrase in in the google search bar that is built into the safari browser (in the top right corner), search suggestions *are* provided (mostly negative).
It would seem that whatever technique they are using to limit suggestion results for Islam they have not been able to cover all the bases. Apparently if the search is done from an embedded search bar the suggestions sneak through. Very sloppy work indeed! Someone at google is going to lose their job over this (not that they are limiting results for Islam, but that they failed to limit the results in all cases).
Painlord2k, how would you fit the suggestion list that comes up (empty) for 'sharia is ' to your theory?
Thanks for holding Google's feet to the fire on this, Robert. They seem to be trying to ignore it, hoping the fuss will eventually subside and go away. If the complaints go virile then eventually they'll have to come clean and fix it. There is someone within Google who knows the real story. Why doesn't he/she leak what it is, including the names of the people involved?
Muhammad is... returns suggestions including satan and the antichrist. So that is something anyway. Maybe they just missed this one. Or perhaps they decided it would be more disrespectful to The Prophet Muhammad if they put no suggestions at all like they do with Islam is or Sharia is.
A little bit of testing reveals that Islam and Sharia are not the only words that get no suggestions. Their entire program structure must have built into it some sort of "exclusion" list whereby any word or phrase in that list is automatically excluded from suggestions.
sexy does not get suggestions (but "sex is" gets suggestions)
slut does not get suggestions
whore does get suggestions including "whore is"
sh*t does not get suggestions
So it would appear that the entire programming bug is nothing more than "Islam is" and "Sharia is" having been at some point added to their most likely quite large list of words and phrases that do not generate suggestions.
Note to JW bloggers - try "mohammed is a...." and "allah is a.....".
Haram!
Maybe you've hit on it, TT. If so, then the censors in their zeal have inadvertently classified Islam with slut, whore and sh*t. Foot, aim, fire...LOL
I have tried several google site (.uk, .de, .dk, .com, etc) they pull blank when you type "Islam is " similar behavior when you search "prophet Mohammed is ". However, when you search "Mohammed is ", then many negative suggestions pop up.
Cornelius,
I had drafted a lengthy response, but my Firefox inexplicably stopped "responding" and I lost the draft.
For now, I won't try to reproduce it. But I will point out the crux: There exist in the West two pro-Islam stances:
1) the Leftist stance
2) the PC MC stance.
These are related, yet distinct in certain important ways. They are related in that the latter is a kind of decaffeinated version, mollified with added soy milk and natural sweetener, of the former.
They are distinct, however, in that the former, with its far more virulent anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism, is the crotchet of a small minority of Westerners; while the latter represents the solidly mainstream view of at least a great majority of Westerners on all points of the social and political spectrum.
PC MC, at least with regard to the issue of Islam, represents sort of the opposite of the "Pyrrhic victory" (defined as when someone wins ostensibly, but ends up losing more than he won) -- it is the victory of Leftism sociopolitically and culturally through having become sufficiently diluted and sweet to attract and sincerely convert millions of non-Leftists to certain values and givens -- even if, in the process, much if not most of hardcore Leftism has had to be sacrificed.
(Meanwhile, of course, the Islamorealist stance (with its own variants) remains a small minority, perhaps smaller than Leftism, though it's hard to tell. It certainly seems to be growing, but apparently only in amorphously imprecise ways, still incrementally, and still without any real organization or quality-control.)
I got plenty of negative results on Google UK.
It automatically sends me there due to my IP address when I type google.com
Islam is a lie 11,700,000 results
Islam is bullshit 3,900,000
There were also plenty of positive results
Islam is peace 36,900,000
Islam is the best 72,000,000
Maybe CAIR in the US have a huge warehouse full of unemployed muslims sitting all day typing positive hits into google.
I would say im being sarcastic - But who knows
Ken
Of all the threats we face from ISLAM, this one is the worst. With unincumbered freedom of speech we can not lose. Google's action are tantamount to subversion in my heart. This isn't China. Let everyone speak their mind, hate speech and all. When it is all said & done, the free peoples of the west will cast off the chaff of hate speech & retain the wheat that ISLAM is the most retrograde force in the world. It must be, over time, defeated in the hearts of all people's around the world. I am teaching my pre-teen son about the Koran, Suras & Hadiths along with his Bible verses. This fight will be going on long after I am dead and I intend to train my chidlren to carry on the fight.
Excellent for you! Keep up the good fight.
Remember the end of the Good Book...we win, they lose!
I can confirm that, as others have said, the 'Islam is' predictions on Google.co.uk are back to normal - the same as for other religions, and it changed back earlier today.
How about anywhere else?
'I can confirm that, as others have said, the 'Islam is' predictions on Google.co.uk are back to normal - the same as for other religions, and it changed back earlier today."
-Not sure what you mean by "normal", but google.co.uk is currently not giving results for Islam is. And the lesser publicized issue of "jihad is" (four positives, no negatives) is still intact.
How do we contact GOOGLE to raise hell??? It is unacceptable for them to be doing this and we should BOMBARD them with negative responses & press. Freedom of Speech IS the way to defeat ISLAM.