S’true…

Top Yahoo officials on Tuesday were forced to defend their company’s role in the jailing of a Chinese journalist. They ran into withering criticism from United States lawmakers who accused them of complicity with an oppressive Communist regime.

“While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” Tom Lantos, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said angrily after hearing from the two executives, Jerry Yang, the chief executive, and Michael J. Callahan, the general counsel.

The journalist, Shi Tao, was sent to jail for 10 years for engaging in pro-democracy efforts deemed subversive after Yahoo turned over information about his online activities as requested by Chinese authorities.

Mebbe we shouldn’t be surprised, or be too judgmental, though, considering the close cooperation of the giant US Telecos in the Bush regime’s illegal, unauthorized data mining through the correspondence and communications of American citizens. Obviously, if they’d do it for the Chinese, they’d do it to us, doncha think?