Tag Archives: Barack Obama

News

How does the communist government in China treat its citizens?

2 Comments

Mary found this moving article in the Wall Street Journal that talks about what the state police can do to private citizens today in China.

Excerpt:

On Dec. 23, the United Nations International Convention for the Protection of All Persons From Forced Disappearance came into force. China has declined to accede to this convention. My experience that same day is just one of many examples of how the authorities continue to falsely imprison Chinese citizens.

That evening, I was in the Xizhimen area of Beijing chatting with my colleagues Piao Xiang, Xu Zhiyong and Zhang Yongpan. Ms. Piao had been disappeared after she and I went to Dandong on Oct. 7 to argue the court case of Leng Guoquan, a man framed by the police for drug trafficking; she had only been released on Dec. 20. Her abductors had been officers from the state security squad of the Public Security Bureau. I asked her to narrate the entire process of her disappearance in detail.

Later, I suggested to Mr. Zhang, “Let’s go and see Fan Yafeng’s mom.” The day before, we had contacted fellow human rights lawyer Fan Yafeng and found out that he was under strict house arrest. But he had said that his mother was going to be alone at home in the evening and so I thought we should go see her.

Because I used to go there frequently I remembered clearly where she lived. As Mr. Zhang and I entered the block of flats and started walking up the staircase, I had a feeling that someone was following us. Observing that we went to the third floor, a young security guard asked us whom we were visiting. We said, “We’re seeing a friend.” Immediately, he called out for someone else to come up.

We knocked on the door and were greeted by Mr. Fan’s mother. But as we entered the flat, the security guard came with us, and a person in plainclothes stormed in just behind him. The man in plainclothes demanded to check our IDs in a very coarse manner. I asked him in a loud voice, “What sort of people are you? How can you enter a private residence without permission?”

The plainclothes man said, “I am a police officer. We want to check your ID cards.” “You’re a police officer? I want to see your police ID.” “If I am telling you I’m a police officer, then that’s what I am. What are you doing here?” “Is that your business? How can you prove you’re a police officer if you don’t show your police ID card?”

The situation was escalating. I ducked my head and used my phone to send out a message on Twitter, and Mr. Zhang made a phone call to a friend. It was then about half past eight. The plainclothes guy made a phone call asking for reinforcement. Later I learned that at that moment our own reinforcements were mobilizing.

Two police officers showed up. One of them showed us his police ID. I asked Mr. Zhang to note down his police ID number and name, Shi Ligang, and pass it on to our Twitter friends. Then they wanted to check our IDs. I said, “According to Article 15 of the National Identity Card Law you have no right to check them in the present situation.”

He said, “We are conducting an investigation in accordance with the People’s Police Law.” I said, “You can only question people who are suspected of having broken a law. We’ve just come to a friend’s home for a visit, so you have no right to question us.”

We quarreled for some time, and that state security squad officer in plainclothes kept making phone calls asking for more people to come over. The situation was getting worse, so I sent another Twitter message.

I talked to Mr. Fan’s mother and the older state security squad officer told her not to speak to me. I got angry. “You’re not even disclosing your identity, do you think you can enter other people’s flat as you please and order the flat-owner about—not to mention that that’s illegal, it lacks every human feeling!”

“You should think more clearly. Don’t talk so much about the law with me. Do you know where we are? We are on Communist Party territory!”

The whole thing is a must-read, and it gets much, much worse. It will open your eyes to the dangers of the big government – and specifically atheistic big government. I find it ironic that Americans living in the freest country in the world would put on shirts that celebrate communism.

In case anyone wants to read a good book on where communism comes from and where it leads, I recommend “The Road to Serfdom” by F.A. Hayek, a Nobel-prize-winning economist. I have read the book four times, myself. The one-line-summary is this: if you let government control the free market such that it regulates businesses and workers, profits and earnings, you will lose every single freedom you have, including the precious freedom of religious liberty. If I had to point to one book that helped me to make the connection between economics and Christianity, this was the book. The book was recommended to me by Jay Richards himself, along with many books by Tom Sowell.

News

Socialist Hugo Chavez begins to use his new dictatorial powers

Leave a comment
Are Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez very different?
Are Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez very different?

In Venezuela, Obama’s buddy Chavez is enjoying his new decree powers.

Excerpt:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made his first use of new decree powers on Sunday to create a $2.3 billion fund for reconstruction after widespread flooding that left more than 130,000 people homeless.

The South American OPEC member nation’s socialist leader has infuriated opposition parties and been criticized as a dictator for assuming fast-track powers for the next 18 months that will enable him to rule by decree and bypass parliament.

Chavez has justified the measure as necessary to enable the government to respond to recent torrential rains that swept away houses, smashed bridges and roads, and also killed around 40 people in the nation of 29 million.

But critics say the president has cynically exploited the disaster as an excuse to outwit opposition parties who were due to take a larger share of seats — 40 percent — in the incoming National Assembly which convenes on January 5.

The problem with socialists is that they think that the people who actually make money will just keep on making money even though the government keeps confiscating a larger and larger share of it. Think about it. People on the left in academia, in government, or in the voluntary poor (single mothers, drug addicts) are basically subsisting by confiscating the wealth produced by others in business who have to start and run businesses or work in those businesses. They actually have contempt for people who take risks and take responsibility, because they think that those people are “stupid”.

What you have is one group of people with a tenuous grasp on reality who are acting as parasites on an increasingly over-taxed and over-regulated host. Eventually, the host gives up working – why work if you are constantly being abused by taxes and regulations? And that is why the policies of Obama and Chavez lead to catastrophes like North Korea and Zimbabwe. They don’t understand that their ability to spend money depends on the very people they hate the most, and understand the least.

I actually had one woman in academia recently telling me how she deserved to receive more money from businesses and workers to support her Ph.D studies in a non-engineering and non-scientific field. She also thought that the Comedy Channel was more reliable than Fox News. I produced two studies from UCLA and Harvard showing that Fox News was dead center in terms of news bias. I produced a survey showing that mainstream journalists donate almost exclusively to Democrats. She produced no evidence, but urged me to show more “critical thinking”. “Critical thinking” is the word that people on the left use to mean uncritical acceptance of whatever counter-factual assertions their inexperienced professors tell them about the world. They have to believe in these high-minded delusions – otherwise they cannot get research money, scholarships, or degrees. That is called “critical thinking”. And they want you to pay more to support them in their “critical thinking” so that they can have money to research how up is down, left is right, and hot is cold.

Commentary

Why do feminists ignore the plight of women under Islam?

7 Comments

Here’s an opinion piece from the Jerusalem Post. (H/T ECM)

Full article:

In 1995, then first lady Hillary Clinton spoke at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. There Clinton seemed to embrace the role of championing the rights of women and human rights worldwide when she proclaimed, “It is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights…If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all.”

Yet as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton – like her fellow self-described feminists – has chosen to single Israel out for opprobrium while keeping nearly mum on the institutionalized, structural oppression of women and girls throughout the Muslim world. In so acting, Clinton is of course, loyally representing the views of the Obama administration she serves. She is also representing the views of the ideological Left in which Clinton, US President Barack Obama, the human rights and feminist movements are all deeply rooted.

Since the height of the feminist movement in the late 1960s, non-leftist women in the West and Israel have been hard-pressed to answer the question of whether or not we are feminists. Non-leftist women are opposed to the oppression of women. Certainly, we are no less opposed to the oppression of women than leftist women are.

But at its most basic level, the feminist label has never been solely or even predominantly about preventing and ending oppression or discrimination of women. It has been about advancing the Left’s social and political agenda against Western societies. It has been about castigating societies where women enjoy legal rights and protections as “structurally” discriminatory against women in order to weaken the legal, moral and social foundations of those societies. That is, rather than being about advancing the cause of women, to a large extent, the feminist movement has used the language of women’s rights to advance a social and political agenda that has nothing to do with women.

So to a large degree, the feminist movement itself is a deception.

I am strongly opposed to third-wave feminism, but I certainly care more about women than Hillary Clinton does. I actually speak out against the oppression of women in Muslim countries. Clinton is a coward and a sell-out.