Dear Friends,
On a list the other day I was confronted by a member who supported Google, yahoo, Microsoft and Ciscos’s censorship of the internet in China which benefits China’s continuing oppression of it’s citizens.
This whole discussion regarding allowing multinational companies to assist in the oppression of others by oppressive regiemes reminds me of Niemoller.
Niemöller was placed by the Gestapo and interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945.
He is most known for a single quotation – "First they came…" – a warning about the consequences not opposing tyranny at the first instances of its rising which has many variants, but are based on his original:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out.
—Pastor Niemöller
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller