Some time ago in my sometimes Internet perusings, I ran across the web site of the Church of Satan. Okay, that kind of searching isn’t on my normal surfing schedule. And no, I’m not “investigating” said church in a formal sense, and it is really just a ridiculously secular, pop-philosophy church - of course, I suppose - despite its claim to having a penchant for “iconoclasm”. One amusing page at their web site details an ad they made in praise of Apple Computer, which ad Apple successfully sued to have taken down. The ad was of the Church of Satan’s founder superimposed with the Apple logo and “Think Different” slogan.

The closing counterpoint of the Church of Satan, against Apple for closing down the ad, is essentially “We thought these guys thought differently. Apparently not.” My counterpoint to that would be, no, their slogan is not “Think Evil.” It’s “Think Different”. And one of the founding tenets of Satanism, apparently, is to point out hypocrisy wherever it dwells. So examine this: they also advocate revenge (well - how righteous).

Here’s an idea for Apple. Supposing Apple created a “praise” campaign for the Church of Satan co-branding Apple with said Church, only changing the slogan for these ads to “Think Evil.” How would the Church of Satan respond? I doubt they’d be happy, though they might veil this with some relativist statements such as “We are not bothered - there is no evil.” Yeah right. They need the coexistence of evil and good; otherwise they can’t feign to declare being for what is “wise” (not good), or whetever. However the Church of Satan responded, I predict that it would reveal internal inconsistencies between their philosophy and their behavior. Either that, or it would be outright good - hey, good PR, right? - and lure more denizens into a world that will surely grow murkier the closer you get toward becoming a “Magister” or “Magistra”.

Or then again, here’s an idea for the Church of Satan to get a leg up in the world (if only Satan had a corporeal leg). Google’s motto is “Don’t be Evil”, right? But what is evil in this world? How about Communism? Fair target for the label? Maybe not - I understand the only reason some people dislike Hitler was because he turned against the Soviets. But on the whole in the Western world, it’s agreed. Communism = Evil. And what about that Communist government over there oppressing the people of China? Huge emerging international high technology market there, with that nation becoming more industrialized - one fourth of the world’s population in one nation. HUGE.

(This will be old news to a lot of nerds, and laypeople, but still..)

So try this. Try a Google Image Search, through the English Language Google portal, for “Tiananmen Square” - here is a link.

The first return at this writing is the internationally famous image of a Chinese student standing down a column of tanks in resistence.

Try the same thing through Google’s China portal - here is that link.

There, images of students in front of tanks are conspicuously absent. My search returns mostly downright cheery parade images.

Google has complied to the censorship wishes of China. Internet users in China, on government operated (and monitored) internetworks, will not find, via Google Image search, any images of Chinese students standing down tanks in Tiananmen Square. And so similarly is filtered out everything through the Google China portal that contains anything which could engender unhappy feelings toward the government.

Isn’t free speech the right which American cyberculture and pop culture sqaubbles THE MOST about and treasures ABOVE ALL? Wouldn’t we wish for the entire world to share in that right? Wouldn’t it be incumbent upon us to encourage it wherever possible?

Not according to Google. They report that the decision to comply with China’s censorship was “..agonizing.” Yeah right. Comply with our censorship and you’ll probably make billions and billions of dollars (hey - that goes full circle to this article about Apple and Carl Sagan). What an agonizing decision.

(I secretly wonder if I would be courageous enough to say to China, in the face of potential billions of dollars, “No, I value free speech, thank you. And by the way, Communism is evil.”)

So, finally coming to where you probably saw this was going, I propose that the Church of Satan begin a campaign “praising” Google, co-branding said Church with Google under the slogan “Be Evil.”