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China Releases Cyber Dissident
Ridgelift writes "Reuters UK has the story on the release of three 'cyber dissidents' just one week before a trip by visit by Premier Wen Jiabao to the United States. One of the dissidents, 23-year-old Liu Di, aka the 'Stainless Steel Mouse,' had been detained since November 2002. She wrote political satire about the ruling Communist Party and posted messages in Internet chatrooms calling for the release of online dissidents. She was never formally charged, but kept at Qincheng Prison for over a year."
How is it that some people get cool nicknames, like "the Stainless Steel Mouse" and "Iceman" and "Dozer." The best I could ever manage was Lunchbox...
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
This seems pretty high-profile and has piqued my interest; anyone have a link (ideally translated) to the "Political Satire" that was good enough to land this young woman in prison for a year?
RD
It's only a few cases like this, and everyone knows they're in prison.
OTOH, what good is served when chaps like RMS, Linus, Bruce, ESR etc. are all out in the open, yet can't achieve anything useful with just dissidence? To top it, we have some famous chaps from SCO on this side of the law, spouting their "Intellectual Property" claims!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Never formally charged! That's outrageous! When will those Chicoms desist from such tyrannical and autocratic practices and embrace democracy, a proper Bill of Rights and the rule of law like we have here in the good ol' US of A.
"Mitnick was held without bail for over two years before sentencing: he has said that he set some kind of United States record by being held for four and a half years without a bail hearing, while also held in solitary confinement for eight months 'in order to prevent a possible nuclear strike being initiated by me from a prison payphone'."
Kevin_Mitnick
So Qincheng is the Chinese word for Guantanamo, then? Good to know.
Money for nothing, pix for free
She was never formally charged, but kept at Qincheng Prison for over a year."
Just like the Guantanamo Bay prisoners?
A blog like any other.
...if not for the fact that it's probably just a PR move. It seems like every time the U.S. has something to do with China, human rights becomes the issue of the day. By releasing a couple of dissidents, China can say "Look, we respect human rights." It rings very hollow.
from the article:
"Liu was bailed out on Friday afternoon, the centre said, saying the move amounted to freeing her because political detainees are rarely, if ever, released on bail."
While China does not typically release political detainees, they are only releasing her on bail. They could still pick her up for the same thing some time later, or decide to officially charge her. It is also important to note that they convicted one of the 4 involved. This situation is far from being over.
Before we get all high and mighty, and conclude that we in the United States are so much better, superior, or luckier, remember about the prisoners the US is holding RIGHT NOW in Guantanamo Bay.
These prisoners of the US Government were held for a year or more.
Let's clean up our own act before we get all high and mighty about the Chinese, heh?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Imagine going to jail for such a comment! ROTFLMAO!!!
Yeah, that's all well and good that they let her go and all, but what about the ones they haven't released? The ones nobody knows of, or remembers? What about the people the Chinese government has abandoned over the years, all the young girls sent off to learn the joys of Communism in the 40's, then abandoned to their fates when they decided the project sucked? How about the way women are viewed as third-class citizens, slightly above slaves, by both government and society? It's a worthless gesture on their part. Yes, they're so cool, ignore the fact that they hate us, and our wonderful Republic. Ignore the fact that they produce many of our import goods, and that every dollar we give them is another dollar they put towards bringing us down. Remember folks, America is the Evil Empire because we promote trade and capitalism. We don't hold our women down, like the Muslims and Chinese do (anymore). We have abundant natural resources under our soil, but if we tap them, we're greedy bastards hell-bent on the destruction of the environment. We are infidels, heretics, heathens, and our love of freedom is a threat to the rest of the world. And to make matters worse, every day more of our own citizens side with those who would see us fall. Other nations can feel pride for being born in their country, but don't you dare, because if you do, you're an evil capitalist bastard who takes perverse sexual pleasure in the oppression you force upon the rest of the world. The only reason those countries hate us is because we have the basic freedoms they lack, and their governments realize this. They encourage their citizens to hate us because if they would stop to think, they would realize that they themselves want these freedoms. This is very dangerous to the control a dictator exerts over his subjects. I apologize for turning this into a political rant, and I know it's all basically flamebait, but this stuff gets me pretty worked up. But anyway, we've worked very hard to become the great country we are today, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let some jealous asshole take that from me simply because he's pissed that I have more than he does.
"I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with subatomic particles."
When I hear about things like this it reminds of just how unusual and fragile freedom is in the world. It also makes me fearful because so few people in America are dedicated to the preservation of freedom. Instead they're either disinterested in what goes on or dedicated to furthering some ill-concieved and short sighted political agenda that they usually don't even understand. The rights and freedoms this country was founded upon are far more important to our collective future than red-herring issues like abortion. The abortion debate iself is little more than a battle-front in the cultural wars between the loony left and the religious right. As long as there are unwanted children being conceived abortion will exist regardless of whether it is legal or not. Arguing about something that cannot be stopped is futile and even counterproductive. Its like arguing about how people should wipe their asses. Its impossible to force anyone to follow whatever conclusions are reached, so why argue about it? Laws against abortion will work about as well as laws against Marijuana or Alcohol. Marijuana can be easily grown, alcohol can be easily fermented and distilled, and an abortion is only a coat-hanger away. The laws regarding all are in reality little more than proclamations of what the government would prefer you do. People get all worked up over abortion because it is a stand-in for all the other issues that don't get argued about directly. Ideological points that have been disproven or discredited but which the left or right doesn't want to let go of. It doesn't suprise me that so many people have forsaken the political process. If the choice is between a closet communist and a someone who is either a theocrat or owned by a bunch of fat-cats, there isn't really any way to make a good choice. So people don't vote and in doing so forfeit the very power that MUST be held by the people for democracy to truly exist. Every time a person disinvolves themselves from the political process they're letting the fate of this country be determined by idiots and ideologues. People who are either stupid or crazy or both.
If things keep going like this then America is doomed to die from collapse from within. Unfortunately for all our "friends" in other places who would like to see that happen, America's collapse will likely pull them in with it, or at least place them upon the very precipice of collapse just like the collapse of Rome sent all of Western Europe into the dark ages, only this time on a global scale.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
As the article and summary both mention, the release comes a week before the Premiere's visit to the US. An article in Der Spiegel claims, however, that the release was primarily motivated by the visit of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
An AP version of the story mentions Schroeders visit (which the Reuters story linked to by the summary does not), but does not go as far as claiming as Der Spiegel does that "[the release] is a gift for Schroeder" (my translation). That particular quote is attributed to Frank Lu of the Information Center for Democracy and Human Rights, a Hong Kong-based watchdog group that is a primary source for both the AP and Spiegel articles.
You can't think of a better way to govern that many people than an authoritarian regime with no elections that proclaims itself to be the "People's Government" and has imprisoned and murdered tens of millions of people for disagreeing?
Not a very deep thinker are you? The US and EU combined are about half the population of China. Do you mean to say that if our populations were simply to double, our best option would be to abandon democracy, rule of law, elections, free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc., and demonstrate that anyone who disagreed would end up dead? That's really the best you can come up with?
You sound like a product of Chinese (re)education.
Of course, you could argue that we can do it because we don't have to have one government controlling all of those people. We have several governments, each covering only a portion of those people, each subject to independent replacement every election day.
Of course China doesn't have to do it all with one government either. The Tibetans, Uighurs, Taiwanese, Hong Kongese...would love to take some of the "burden" off those poor overworked murderers in Beijing. But Beijing is just like you. They can't think of a better way for them to keep governing than by doing what they're doing, either.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
- the US
- is never right about anything it does,
- Europe calls it a "crime against humanity" when the US executes 71 people in 2002
- groups like our faithful slashdot posters and Amnesty International constantly bitch and whine about how evil the US is, and
- basically ALL the problems of the world are America's fault
and,- China (in recent times)
- builds the great firewall of China,
- suppresses free speech,
- executes 1,000+ people in 2002 (over 14x the US total)
- conquers countries and actually FORMALLY integrates them into China,
- moves people in forced migrations, and
- commits various other human right abuses,
and the our "right-thinking left-wing friends" never say shit about it?I realize anti-Americanism is popular, but ...
I notice people are willing to fight for freedom for the Iraqis, for the Chinese, for every country imagineable but in the USA we want a police state to protect ourselves from the terrorists? I'm confused, someone please explain this to me. We pass the patriot act, and make it possible to toss anyone in prison who even resembles a terrorist with no trial, nothing. I'd be worried about the USA.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
or even Guantanamo Bay... last week in Miami there were hundreds of people locked up for protesting at the anti-FTAA demonstrations, many still there struggling for bail money.
When people came to protest at the jail, the police simply proceeded to arrest the protestors again to get them out of the way.
If you want an example of a "police state" just look at the USA right now, you don't need to look as far as China.
more arrests and jail info at
http://www.ftaaimc.org/ and http://www.stopftaa.org
the only two I ever got were billygoat and pencildick.
This space available.
Republican hawks believe that using Guantanamo Bay "sends a message of strength." They make no secret that they want to continually push the boundaries of acceptable U.S. military behavior in many respects, from ignoring international laws (remember, Reagan's Navy mined Nicraguan harbors) to the occasional unilateral invasion now and then (Granada, Panama, Lybia, Iraq, etc.), and to make a big show of it. In doing so, they lower the acceptable standards of behavior of the U.S. so they can get away with more when it serves their purposes.
Some of us in the U.S. consider that kind of thing dispicable and against everything this country was founded to protect, but most people don't learn enough to care either way.
Japan, up until the past year, was more-or-less the opposite, where politicians could score points by arbitrarily constraining the JDF in some abstract way.
I don't know anything really about Mumia, but Leonard Peltier is most certainly a cop-killer, and should have been executed years ago instead of stewing in jail soaking up my tax-money. Might as well free Charles Manson as any of them.
"I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with subatomic particles."
Why is that? Well, reasons depend on the country, I guess. Lenin was one such dissident in 1900's, and see what he did when he got the power... examples are plentiful. Today ex-dissidents in Russia are accused of treason, of selling out, of helping to steal national wealth...
This is not unique to Russia in any way. Look at Georgia, for example. They got Gamsakhurdia - and he failed miserably. They replaced him with Shevardnadze - and guess what, he failed miserably. They replaced him with ${don't know yet} and he will fail, probably. Same happened in Poland, same happened in Yugoslavia, same happens everywhere. This is because being a dissident does not really mean that you think better than other people; it only means that you think differently.
The point is, not all dissidents are "freedom fighters", and not all countries need, or want, the freedom, and not all societies can take the cold shower of total, uncontrollable, unrestricted freedom (North Korea is one.) I don't know much about this guy, he may be great. I just want to show you the larger picture (which was painted without my involvement, BTW, I am only an observer here).
Of course it is bad to jail dissidents just because they are thinking differently and talking about something. If your political system can't prove its benefits in an open discussion, then probably the system does not deserve to exist.
There is a catch, however, and the catch is called "populism". Basically, unwashed masses are told fairy tales, promised infinite wealth in no time, as long as they vote in a certain way or behave in a certain way (such as siege of Presidential Palace demanding resignation of the President). If a society is well controlled and sufficiently dumb, then this works. It worked before many times. This is exactly the reason why democracy fails in many countries - because the people of the country must be smart and active to vote right. This is often not the case, and quite possibly China is afraid that sweet talk of dissidents promoting ${some_other_system} can cause severe disturbance, maybe even a civil war. This is something worth avoiding, maybe even by jailing one person. Basically, the question is this: "How many people you are willing to kill to save 1 million people?" Dostoevsky gave a lot of thought to this dilemma, see his "Demons" and "Crime and Punishment" for details. And of course "Ringworld Engineers" touches this subject too.
it has been clear in all education on "rules of war" in the Swedish army for the last 20 years at least that there are "combatants" and "illegal combatants" or "bandits". And I have served in the army, so I know.
I, too, served in the Swedish army, and you are both right and wrong...
There exists a distinction between combatants and "bandits". But bandits (or illegal combatants) are criminals, and treated as such.
They are not stuck in a legal limbo, that is what Ashcroft invented.
Simply put, they are either combatants and criminals, there are rules for dealing with both.
Ashcroft just doesn't feel like following the rules, so he makes up an exception...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Washington post has additional information
"The same day, a court convicted a fourth writer charged in the case, Jiang Lijun, of subversion and sentenced him to four years in prison, his lawyer said."
Ruby on Rails Screencast
It seems that freedom has become an object reduced to a marchandise that is exportable and marketed by politicians to suit their needs.
c hi/lao.html
c lar.html
China also gave us Lao Tsu:
Quote
Why are people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.
Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.
Why do people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take life lightly.
Having to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.
Unquote
www.chebucto.ns.ca/Philosophy/Tai
Education is not indoctrination, it should rather be the pursuit of truth regardless of the individuals of nation, color, or creed.
From the declaration of inependence
"WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"
www.law.emory.edu/FEDERAL/independ/de
Any human being held in captivity without respect for his basic rights is a loss and insult for all of humankind and more insulting is when the crime of an imprisoned individual was only pursuing and trying to expose the truth.
www.truthinjustice.org/imprisoned.htm
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 9
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm
This is a test!
Instead they're either disinterested in what goes on or dedicated to furthering some ill-concieved and short sighted political agenda that they usually don't even understand. The rights and freedoms this country was founded upon are far more important to our collective future than red-herring issues like abortion. The abortion debate iself is little more than a battle-front in the cultural wars between the loony left and the religious right.
Before criticizing others for not understanding the issues, you might want to learn about them a little more deeply yourself. The abortion debate goes to the heart of the preservation of freedom. In short, here's the crux of the debate.
The left is influenced by the relativistic materialist philosophy that Lenin combined with with Marxism and Hegel's dialectics to create Soviet Communism. Relativism holds that there is no absolute truth or standard of morality, and that what is right and wrong is only what each society in each instance of history decides is right and wrong. Materialism holds that human beings are nothing but organic machines, and that whatever free will we think we have is a mere illusion. Every action we perform, every decision we make, is not a result of our own voltion, but rather a mechanical reaction to a complex combination of outside stimuli.
For example, if I decide to kill someone, it's not b/c I'm an inherently evil person, but rather b/c I have experienced a confluence of environmental stimuli that have essentially "programmed" me, or pushed the right buttons so to speak, which have caused me to inexorably kill a person. I am an automaton with no control over my actions, and free-will is merely the delusion of a mind unable to understand the complex and subtle stimuli that have caused my action.
Since people have no free-will (and no soul), and are simply organic automatons, then no individual human being is special or valuable in and of himself. All that matters is the overall happiness of society. Such is the relativistic end that justifies all means to the left, and Soviet Communism took that to its terminal conclusion by murdering or brainwashing all those that they thought detracted from the overall happiness of society, eg. people of Capitalist/bourgeousie bent or those who simply spoke or acted in ways not in accordance with state idealogy. In the USSR the tally came to around 40 million people. According to Relativism, murdering such people was not only not wrong, but right, b/c it contributed to the happiness of those who were left, and according to Materialism those individuals had no innate value anyway.
So, the Relativistic Materialist influence on the left leads them to the view that overal social happiness is the end that justifies the means, that no one is responsible for his or her actions b/c we're all just automatons, and that there is no absolute right or wrong. Therefore, abortion is merely a function of social happiness, and as such women who want it should clearly be allowed to "chose". Unborn babies make no contribution to social happiness (or economic production, which is one factor of social happiness), and since no individual human has value anyway, aborting an unborn baby is no more or less a transgression than clipping your toenails.
The right on the other hand takes the traditional Classical Liberal/Englightenment view, in that individual human beings have innate value and that there is an absolute truth and absolute right and wrong. Some on the right believe that value is endowed by God, (as America's founders did, hence "inalienable God-given rights"). Others are less religious and believe in the European Enlightenment and German idealist philosophies that man has free-will, and as such is an indenpendent, innately valuable individual, and that the protection of the individual against the tyranny of others is the highest goal of society. Regardless which method of reasoning is used, both agree that protecting the life of the individual is the en
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Nice series of straw men. First you equate lefties with communists, an unproven comparison (and one I disagree with), then you distort communism to make it seem more extremist and impersonal than it really is (or was), and then you conclude that because the right is the opposite of the left (again, not proven, and something I disagree with), they are therefore the good guys. I also love how you directly equate abortion to communism. Very innovative, for a troll.
Ofcourse, the fact that you use a enough of long sentences and big words disguises this quite thoroughly.
Not really, but considering our other options are Satan, a Republican, a nerd, three idealogical voids, Generic Southern Presidential Candidate #4572, and some minorities who'd just get shot on the way home from the innauguration, I'd go with the mutant with the neck that creates it's own weather patterns. And it's Dr. Mutant to you, Mister.
Although, of course, if this was still the heady 90s when you got to vote for who you wanted to win, I'd go with Carol, the only potential candidate from any party with any oratory skill whatsoever, but if I were willing to elect politicians irregardless of the near-certain inevitability of their assasination, I'd be asking Hillary or Teddy to run.
Please define "illegal combatant". If by this term you mean "person whom we suspect of involvement in 9/11 but may have been apprehended in countries such as Pakistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Gambia" (ie not just engaged in combat in Afghanistan) then you are totally justified. They may not deserve POW status as they are not being held for military action, but since they are being held in relation to crimes committed on US soil they should be subject to the laws and procedures of the US, as any other criminal would be. The idea that this crime was more heinous or that foreign nationality is relevant is a red herring. Timothy McVeigh had a trial, was he any better than these people? Oh, I forgot, he was an American, which apparently does make him better...
/ fu ll/llan.362.9383.talking_points.26874.2: //web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr5114120 036 3.html8 26939.html
Or are you saying that an accusation alone is sufficient justification to allow the removal of human rights? In that case, why should any alleged criminal be entitled to legal defence? Perhaps everyone, upon reaching 16, should spend 6 months in federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison, just to give authorities time to establish they haven't done anything illegal. That is the ultimate extension of the "we decide what laws apply and when" philosophy being espoused currently by the US.
The ugly precedent that you miss about this is that the US is deciding who is or isn't an "illegal combatant", and whether or not they were involved in combat even if they weren't actually on any battlefield. Technically, there is nothing stopping the US declaring anyone, anywhere in the world an illegal combatant (of course, the CIA has never fabricated evidence against anyone...) and holding them without trial for an indefinite time. Also, declaring a "war on terror", but then saying your enemy is engaged in "illegal combat" is totally hypocritical and indefensible to anyone who is capable of recognizing paradoxes.
No, I'm sorry, arbitrarily deciding BEFORE ANY KIND OF TRIAL that a person has no rights is precisely what other countries do. Exerting that principle by force in other sovereign nations is exactly what an imperialist dictatorship does.
Either human rights and rule of law are universal, or the notion of a "fair and free" country is a sham. You can't have it both ways.
For reference of human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay (although you may not have learned this from playing with kittens as a child, not all forms of torture are physical):
http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol362/iss9383
or
http
or
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_8415
or
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_
or just google. They're there, just get off your smug ass and find them and stop parroting CNN.