Re: China and DeLay

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On Thursday 05 June 2003 12:16, Andreas Pour wrote:
> > but it isn't just tanks running over people in China. it's things like
> > suppression of the free press, dissapearings, etc...
>
> How many people does this effect? 

i'm of the opinion that supression of free speach, press and religion effects 
everyone in a society. the act of silencing a point of view removes it from 
society, and thereby robs everyone in said society from the opportunity to 
benefit from it (or ignore it, if that's their personal wish =)

> For example, what percentage of the 
> people in the US get a freer (or, shall we say, more critical of the
> government, or more "honest") press compared to people in China?

i really don't know. neither country's press is all that impressive these 
days. =(

> Sure, in China you go to "re-education" camps for calling for the overthrow
> of the government.  But what paper in the US does that?  None I have ever
> seen.

no major papers that i know of, but many smaller (and some of them aren't so 
small) publications do =)

> I just don't see the difference in as stark a terms as the propaganda
> portrays it, and in fact I see China liberalizing and the US becoming
> fascist

i would agree with the general trends you depict, yes... 

> Hmm, would be nice if you can remember the name of the paper :-).  Of
> course things like that unfortunately happen everywhere - isn't Canada
> currently holding a Mr. Zuendel in solitary confinement for publishing
> historical viewpoints different from the mainstream and isn't Candada
> trying hard to get his website shut down?

Zuendel is publishing hate literature. which is a different topic, though an 
interesting one. however, his incarceration is quite different than burning 
down the offices of people who support him and having him assasinated. so I 
wouldn't say that the Zuendel affair is anything like the cencorship of 
antiState messages by violence.

> > another example is their treatment of religious orders and their leaders
> > such as in Tibet and the Dali Lama.
>
> Well if you look at the whole China, you are looking at 1 billion people. 
> Now look at any other group of 1 billion people in the world and show me
> where human rights are better.

1 billion people, but one government. and either way it really doesn't excuse 
anything, of course. especially when the violations are so egregious and 
downright silly.

> I don't mean to excuse what China does, I just think when you hear rants
> like from DeLay it is ridiculous since the same criticisms could, if he
> were honest, be directed against the US and his own Congress, yet, he does
> not do so.  I would much rather he did and solved our problems; and let the
> Chinese solve theirs.

agreed ...

- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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