Archive for the ‘internet/free speech’ Category

One of these things is just like the other

Posted: November 19, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech
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China 2010:

A Chinese woman has been sentenced to a year in a labor camp for retweeting a Twitter post that mocked Chinese protesters who smashed Japanese products during a recent demonstration, her fiance said Thursday.

On October 17, Cheng Jianping, under the username wangyi09, added a few words to a message written by her fiance, before resending it on Twitter.

Eleven days later on the day the couple had planned to marry, Cheng’s fiance, Hua Chunhui was taken away by the police from his office in the southeastern city of Wuxi.

Well that’s horrible! It’s a good thing we live in America where the political class would never consider suppressing those who disagree with them…oh wait

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER (D-WV): “There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to FOX and to MSNBC: ‘Out. Off. End. Goodbye.’ It would be a big favor to political discourse; our ability to do our work here in Congress, and to the American people, to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and more importantly, in their future.”

Hillbuzz nails it:

If Senator Rockefeller is so casually saying things that 20 years ago would have had him run out of town on a rail, just imagine what these nuts are saying behind closed doors in their Leftist cloisters.

Expect the media to give this the attention it deserves sometime after Joe Scarborough endorses Sarah Palin for president.

Christopher Hitchens nails it in two sentences

Posted: November 14, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news, short films/interviews
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I am really going to regret when Christopher Hitchens is gone, and I confess it will be for my own loss of a person who’s writing gives me pleasure and his almost Cryanoistic honesty to his own beliefs (even when they are horribly wrong i.e Christianity) rather than for pity as he has lived a pretty interesting life and everybody has to die eventually.

The latest interview of him in the London Observer conveys all of the joy of reading Hitchens that I have but there is one line that is so important and so true and so totally ignored that it should be screamed from the mountaintops to everyone particularly to Thomas Freedman and the left:

As an aside on Mugabe, he makes one of those observations that are so precisely to the point that you wonder why so few other commentators ever get round to coming to it emphasis mine. “Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea, anywhere that the concept of human rights doesn’t exist, it’s always the Chinese at backstop. And always for reasons that you could write down in three words: blood for oil.”

This is the most vital part of the piece for two reasons. the first being that he cuts to the truth of the current world situation in two sentences, but the second is due to the interviewer Andrew Anthony unintentional indictment of the entire intelligentsia of the world who have not been willing or able to speak that basic truth.

Red China (and yes I use Red deliberately) has long supplanted Russia as the main focus of human rights abuse and supporter of same around the world. The rest of the world fearing their military and coveting their potential economic power ignore this truth but the reality is there. Hitchens is willing to say it. Nobody else dares because they see no personal profit in it, much easier to make a living hitting the United States.

As I said I’ll miss Hitchens when he is gone, and so will millions who stand up for freedom of speech around the world.

Not all on the left were silent!

Posted: November 12, 2010 by datechguy in blogs, internet/free speech
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Glenn linked to one other interesting piece today from one of the few people on the far lets on my blogroll, the Reclusive Leftist who said this:

Nobody has ever apologized to me. Not that it would make a difference, but still. Not one of those people who accused me of being a racist and secret wingnut has ever said, “You were right about Obama. I’m sorry I called you those names.”

What they do instead is claim that no one could have known how Obama would turn out. He seemed like cream of Jesus on toast, so how could they know? Nobody could know! And as for the uncomfortable fact that a bunch of people, including me, seemed to know exactly how Obama would turn out and were saying so loudly in 2008—well, that was just coincidence.

Get used to it Violet we on the right are constantly being accused of being racists for daring to disagree with the one or even with Deval Patrick

Anyway your willingness to see what others ignored and say it aloud earns you my respect.

Let’s hope this report about Ang San Suu Kyi is true

Posted: November 12, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech
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because is anyone out there deserves release is Ang San Suu Kyi:

Reports are coming out of Burma saying the military authorities have signed an order authorising the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Nobel laureate has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, and her house arrest term expires on Saturday.

Suu Kyi being Suu Kyi however is not about to settle for a half a loaf:

Earlier this week, he said Ms Suu Kyi would “not accept a limited release”.

“[It] must be unconditional. As we all know, she never accepted limited freedom in the past,” he added.

Nyan Win said she would meet with the NLD’s central committee, members of the media and the public once she was freed.

Let’s home and pray for the best.

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