Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo (1955-2017) Dies at 61

Here is a writeup and an overview. China needs more like him. I'll leave you with the indelible image of his empty chair at the 2010 Nobel ceremony that China's leadership did not permit him to attend, for it had imprisoned him the year before. Oh, and do take a look at his lecture.

China to End One-Child Policy

Well, good, because it was a stupid, evil, destructive policy in both the short and long term that has caused untold amounts of human misery and social damage.

A Christian Convert in Afghanistan

On the run.

Forgetting Tiananmen Square

It's been 25 years, and three new books consider how it has been suppressed.  If you're in a hurry, you can jot down the titles of the books and take a look later:

• The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited, by Louisa Lim, OUP USA
• Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China, by Rowena Xiaoqing He, Palgrave Macmillan
• Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China, by Evan Osnos, Bodley Head

Well, here we're not forgetting!  Please take a look at:

• NatGeo's story of two photographers (twin brothers!) who were there
• (still imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner) Liu Xiaobo's poem from his collection June 4 Elegies
• Another poem inspired by those events
• How a gangster became a savior: the story of the Triad who helped smuggle 100+ dissidents to safety after the massacre
• Footage of Tiananmen survivors telling their stories at the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee; one is Chai Ling, founder of All Girls Allowed, an organization combatting gendercide in China.
• The world's first Tiananmen museum that has opened in Hong Kong
• Demonstrations in Hong Kong and Taiwan

25 years ago I was only a child watching the news on TV, and from that year I remember two overwhelming feelings that were so intense that they probably shaped my adult take on foreign relations more than I realize: 1989 was defined by the joy of the fall of the Berlin Wall with all its jubilant crowds ... and the absolute, stomach-churning horror of Tiananmen Square.  God, what kind of monstrous, despicable, (what the hell, let's use the word and call a spade a spade) evil government sends its tanks and troops to mow down unarmed students?  And you wonder why I practically have an allergic reaction to people saying that Taiwan should be part of China. 

UPDATE: The Onion nails it again.

Cuba Libre Is Only A Drink

It's not a location. Stalwart journalist Michael Totten reports from the land of Fidel (via Samizdata).  His account is full of fascinating information, but I was especially struck by this observation:

I had to lie by omission every minute of every hour of every day just like the Cubans.  A person could get used to this sort of thing, I suppose, but that does not make it less alienating.  That’s the counterintuitive thing about totalitarian systems.  They herd people into Borg-like collectives, yet every individual is savagely atomized. 

I never felt so alone in my life.

Forced Student Labor in China

"Working your way through school" takes on a whole different meaning.  Even worse, some of the students are underage.

The Ongoing Persecution of Christians in the Middle East

Alas even as there is almost no voice raised in their defense by Western politicians:

" ... in a vast belt of land from Morocco to Pakistan there is scarcely a single country in which Christians can worship entirely without harassment."

Perverse Consequences and China's One-Child Policy

The entire policy is a barbarous atrocity.  

Quote of the Day (Non-Syrian Edition): Chinese Dream

The always-readable View From Taiwan blog notes this thought by a Sina Weibo user:

“Taiwan is a place where the people call the shots.  National leaders there must make decisions that reflect the values of individuals in society, rather than simply corrupting and oppressing vulnerable groups.  In Taiwan they’ve protected Chinese culture, human rights and freedom of speech. ... Why in the world would the Taiwanese people ever want to return to the motherland?  The Chinese Dream is actually in Taiwan.”

Human Rights Watch Reports: China Relocating Tibetans

BBC has the story.

Another Year, Another Tiananmen Censorship Drive

But we do not forget.

Reading Hayek in Beijing

Mao, Hayek, and journalist Yang Jisheng.  Do read.

Religious Freedom Around the World: the 2013 Report

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s annual report is out (in PDF).   I'm just going to quote part of its assessment of China:

The Chinese government continues to perpetrate particularly severe violations of the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief. Religious groups and individuals considered to threaten national security or social harmony, or whose practices are deemed beyond the vague legal definition of “normal religious activities,” are illegal and face severe restrictions, harassment, detention, imprisonment, and other abuses. Religious freedom conditions for Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims remain particularly acute, as the government broadened its efforts to discredit and imprison religious leaders, control the selection of clergy, ban certain religious gatherings, and control the distribution of religious literature by members of these groups. The government also detained over a thousand unregistered Protestants in the past year, closed “illegal” meeting points, and prohibited public worship activities. Unregistered Catholic clergy remain in detention or disappeared.

Escaping From Oppression

Here is a collection of 6 TED talks, beginning with Hyenseo Lee's escape from North Korea.

Geek News: Revolutionizing Digital Privacy

There's an app for that!  Read the whole thing. There is a related thought. I also couldn't resist making this:

Here's a nice little Quote of the Day from Silent Circle CEO (and former Navy SEAL, by the way) Mike Janke: 

"We feel that every citizen has a right to communicate, the right to send data without the fear of it being grabbed out of the air and used by criminals, stored by governments, and aggregated by companies that sell it."

PREACH.  Surveillance society snooping pushing you?  Push back.  The fact that I have nothing to hide doesn't mean that you get to look at my stuff just because you can and feel like it.  The app launches on February 8.

Exposing North Korea's Secret Prison Camps

Pyongyang can issue all the denials it wants, but Google Earth satellite imagery tells its own damning story.  You may remember this harrowing account and this.  Arguably the entire country is one vast prison camp.

Quote of the Day: David Mamet on Communism

Playwright David Mamet has just written a piece for the Daily Beast.  It's all worth a look, and it gives us the quote of the day:

Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.  

For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and abilities” are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to “the State shall take, the State shall give.”

It's depressing just how readily this historical fact has been forgotten/buried by statist educators, activists, and politicians.

Meet Shin Dong-hyuk, North Korean Refugee

Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a North Korean prison camp and escaped at age 23.

 

His story, Escape From Camp 14, is here.

Book Review: "The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza" by Eyal Weizman (2012)

The book (or at least its intent) sounds interesting, and this review even more so since it actually uses the delightful and grossly underappreciated word "defenestrated" a few paragraphs in. Anyway, here's a blurb:

For Weizman, instead of regulating or limiting violence, international humanitarian law (that is, the laws of war) actually legitimates certain manifestations of it. This is due to the utilitarian logic that pervades our thinking about violence caused by states and their agents, reasoning that sees “the sphere of morality as a set of calculations aimed to approximate the optimum proportion between common goods and necessary evils.” According to Weizman, deeming certain evils “necessary” provides the conceptual cover for further acts of cruelty. What begins as a “pragmatic compromise” between two terrible choices becomes an acceptable logic in less than exceptional circumstances. The logic of the exception is widened; the infliction of suffering is made civilized and inevitable. Weizman focuses largely on the concept of proportionality.

At the UN: Birth Control 1, Actual Human Rights 0

The UN is beyond parody these days.