40 Comments

• 1. Arctic Fox  |  March 15th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

  So… the computer you wrote this on was mostly made in China, using software from CDs made in China, possibly sipping coffee made from a coffee maker that was assembled in China - do you see where I’m going with this?

  If America wants cheap goods, it has to deal with China. If it doesn’t one of the first things it has to do is pay back all the money it already owes China.

  All very well for you to get on your Christian high horse about how the Chinese treat people, but America has been reliant on China’s goods for years, and when push comes to shove you’re not going to find an American willing to give up all their Chinese and Tiwanese luxury items just because you feel a bit guilty about the way the Chinese are acting.

  Oh, and by the way, before you say how badly the Chinese are acting, shouldn’t you reject waterboarding as abhorrent too?

• 2. Mark Noonan  |  March 15th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

  AF,

  No - the very rare instances where our side has used waterboarding was to obtain information vital to the successful prosecution of the war, and not a single person suffered actual physical harm - let alone death - because of it. This is far different from the routine torture and judicial murder practised by the communist Chinese regime.

  Also, my computer is made in Malaysia - and we don’t have to deal with China if we want cheap goods…we can obtain such from the free people of India and other poor but free nations. And I have a plan for implementing “freedom trade” - a ten year program of increasingly high duties on Chinese goods coupled with increasingly reduced duties on goods from third world democracies…the money will flow from China to such countries, building the factories necessary to provide the consumer goods we demand.

• 3. Arctic Fox  |  March 15th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

  Don’t you DARE tell me that nobody has “suffered harm” from waterboarding until you’ve had it done to you. You don’t have to have broken bones to be harmed. PTSD is a good example of that.

  Torture is torture, whether Americans waterboard somebody or whether Chinese harm monks. And we only have the administration’s word for it not being routine, which I for one don’t trust. Torture is also unChristian. You can’t say you’re a Christian on one hand and condone ANY form of torture on the other. Christ said “What ye do unto ANY of these, the least of my brethren, YE DO UNTO ME”. So, Mr Noonan, can we gather from this that you think it’s fine to torture Christ for “national security” purposes?

  India is also far from clean when it comes to exploitation; they still use child labor to keep costs down in order to supply America with cheap goods. Do you therefore condone the practice of child labor because the Chinese torture?

• 4. Mark Noonan  |  March 15th, 2008 at 12:52 pm

  AF,

  I said no physical harm - if you’re alive, then you can recover from PTSD…if you’re dead, as you woud be in China, after the torturers got done with you, then there’s not much hope of a cure for any stress related problems, now is there?

  Do I think that India is perfect? No, but they are free there - and while all the protests in the world won’t convince the Chinese slave-holders to ameliorate the conditions of their slave laborers, protests can have an effect in India because there is a free press to talk about them, and democratic political parties to make hay over the need for reform.

  As for what is Christian - indeed, what you do unto the least of these, you do unto Our Lord…including foolishly allowing children to be blown up because one is squeemish about applying force to men bent on doing evil. Its not a perfect world, AF.

• 5. Arctic Fox  |  March 15th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

  It’s not a perfect world, I agree, but again, torture is torture. As for recovering, again, spout this rubbish AFTER you’ve allowed yourself to be waterboarded; I guarantee you that you won’t see it the same way.

  Christ made absolutely no distinction. Waterboarding is a form of torture, and anybody who does it to anyone else is torturing Christ. You cannot define different levels of cruelty and say that one is right and one is wrong. They are both wrong. Whether you let someone live on with a shattered mind, forever aquaphobic from the memories of being waterboarded, or whether you end their lives, you’ve still done wrong in the eyes of the Lord.

  Christians do not torture. Christian COUNTRIES find torture abhorrent. Those who allow torture for whatever reason, have fallen from Christs teachings.

• 6. Michael  |  March 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

  Breaking ties with China is exactly the wrong thing to do. The more they rely on us as a consumer base for their products the more influence we have over their conduct in many areas. The threat of boycotts, tariffs, etc., is much more effective and should be used to convince them to change their ways.

• 7. phnx  |  March 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

  “AFTER you’ve allowed yourself to be waterboarded; I guarantee you that you won’t see it the same way.” arctic Fox

  guarantee ????

  Are you a present or former terrorist on whom this tactic has been employed? If not you blowing smoke with your feigned indignation.

• 8. Mark Noonan  |  March 15th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

  AF,

  You seem to think that I don’t understand how horrible water boarding can be - of course I do. Tell ya what; find yourself a hard wooden or metal chair - the kind which has a fairly sharp edge around the seat and no cushion on it.

  Now, go sit on it - and scoot yourself as far forward as you can…further and further until your rear end is just teeter right on the sharp edge of the chair. Now - sit there, without moving, for as long as you can.

  Why do this odd exercise? Because it is a form of torture used by the NKVD in Stalin’s time…doesn’t sound too bad, but just go ahead and try it and remember while you’re doing it that were you in a Stalinist dungeon being commanded to sit like that, you’d be severly beaten if you stood up or even fell off.

  Solzhenitsyn, in his book Gulag Archipelago, described that form of torture - and noted that the casual reader might not think it too bad, just advised the reader to go on and do it, and see how it felt. I did go on and do it - and the pain was rapidly excruciating.

  So, while I’ve never been waterboarded, I have tried to physically get into the seting of someone being tortured - and it is a wickedly horrible position to be in. I in know what say that waterboarding is harmless - but when we’re dealing with men bent on the most wicked deeds who won’t come clean with what they are up to, what are we to do? Allow innocent people to be horribly killed and maimed because a person desiring evil is hiding behind our customs of gentleness with prisoners?

  Our Lord said that is someone were to strike him on the cheek, he would turn to him the other…left unsaid is what Our Lord would have done if someone had tried to strike one of his lambs…

• 9. BARRASSO  |  March 15th, 2008 at 1:44 pm

  AF

  You are forgetting the rule of conservative cowardice, anything that makes a conservative feel safer is legal and no amount of money, lives, or effort is off limits. America has a military that is larger than all the other countries on earth put together, but conservative Americans still cannot feel safe unless we spend more, Tiny countries that are no threat must be invaded to make us feel safer, we must torture to make us feel safer, we must give up our freedoms to make us feel safer, in fact the only right we cannot give up is the right to bear arms, which is the only right that makes us feel safer!

  Of course these things might not actually make us safer that doesn’t matter only how conservatives feel.

  Cutting off China from trade will collapse their evil regime quickly, just like it did in Cuba.

• 10. Eric T  |  March 15th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

  Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet….

  Are these guys expanding the Empire?

• 11. Mark Noonan  |  March 15th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

  Michael,

  I used to believe that, too - but the Chinese government seems to have figured out how to combine economic openess with the most horrific forms of persecution. For me, I’ve had it - we should have nothing to do with tyrants. Let the Chinese people free themselves, and we can be as open as we like with them…and if they prove themselves too cowardly to fight for their freedom, then that will demonstrate that no matter how rich they become, slaves they will remain.

• 12. Mark Noonan  |  March 15th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

  Barrasso,

  I don’t care if it harms or helps the Chinese regime - I just believe that we shouldn’t be helping them to be wealthy tyrants.

  And as for freedom - no one on the left has even the least conception of what liberty is. You on the left think that getting laid is freedom - we on the right know what real freedom is, and we are willing to fight for it.

• 13. Arctic Fox  |  March 15th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

  “no one on the left has even the least conception of what liberty is.”

  Liberty is the right to due process, to know if you are accused by somebody what the accusation is, and to have that accusation and your defense put before an independant adjudicator (normally called a judge) and where applicable a jury.

  All rights stripped from anyone deemed an “enemy combatant” who might not even know why or who has deemed them that. And before you say that’s irrelevant, mistakes HAVE happened, and been documented, where the wrong person has been deemed an “enemy combatant” due to mistaken identity.

  Go tell them that they still have liberty.

  You see this is where the country is falling apart. The right demonizes the left, the left demonizes the right. Somehow whoever is in the opposing political faction “doesn’t know” what you know because they are somehow lesser beings, either lesser in intelligence or lesser in morals or whatever. And you get the spiral down into darkness we’ve seen this last few years in America, where even those who claim to be Christians throw away the Bible if their own political faction says that something that DIRECTLY HARMS Christ’s brethren is okay to do.

  “Do unto others as ye would have them do unto you.” I’m still waiting for you to volunteer to be waterboarded, since you seem willing to “put yourself in the mindset”. Please take along a video camera and afterwards record your thoughts, we would all be fascinated to hear them.

  But please, don’t tell us that it’s fine to wateboard somebody else NO MATTER WHO THEY ARE before you are prepared to suffer the same yourself. That or stop claiming you’re a Christian, because right now you’re NOT following Christ’s teaching.

• 14. Mark Noonan  |  March 15th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

  AF,

  Actually, there hasn’t been a documented case of a person entirely innnocent being taken into custody at Gitmo - in fact, so gentle are we and concerned with due process that plenty of terrorists have been released from Gitmo for lack of evidence, only to turn up again fighting us on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

  You’re being paranoid and foolish - and, once again, you don’t understand what liberty is…its not a set of procedural rules…its not your access to porn and the privacy to do so…its the ability to freely choose to do the right thing even when its hard and everyone disagrees with you.

• 15. Diana Powe  |  March 15th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

  It is the mindset of the most abject slaves that allows someone to accept only the word of a government official that torture was only applied to someone who was “bent on the most wicked deeds”. How do we know they were so bent? The government official told their credulous followers that it was so and questioning the government is wrong, isn’t it?

  Not that the fanciful scheme of stopping trade with China, however positive a development that might be, is going to happen. However, if it did, the small problem is that the last seven years of full-blown governance on the Chinese credit card means that China is holding a financial gun against our head. We attack their economy; they call us on all our indebtedness to them.

• 16. Mark Noonan  |  March 15th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

  Diana,

  And it the mindset of a paranoid America-hater which would presume that the government is lying until proved otherwise. You demonstrate to me a case where a completely innocent person was taken to Gitmo and waterboarded, and then you’ll have something.

  Back to the topic:

  As for American notes held by China - still only about 50% of the American notes held by Japan, so why don’t you say we’re fighting the war on Japan’s credit card? Because that doesn’t sound bad, and the only thing you on the left care about is appearances…especially if things can be made to appear bad. I doubt much, Diana, that you even bothered to look up how much debt China holds, and how much this is in relation to other nations, and how much it is in relation to the total US national debt, and how much it is in relation to US GDP. You’re a mindless, Bush-hating fanatic Diana…

• 17. Diana Powe  |  March 15th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

  So you believe, Mark, but believing doesn’t make it true. I must admit that even I’m a bit surprised at your slave-mentality that puts the burden of proof on the people to show that the government is not engaged in wrong-doing. That is so inconsistent with the outlook of the founders and true conservatism that I would have thought even you couldn’t go that far. However, that’s what membership in the Bush Cult of Personality will do for you, I suppose.

• 18. Mark Noonan  |  March 15th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

  Diana,

  Heck, a quick check shows that - of the total US national debt:

  52% is held by the US Government (yes, we owe half our debt to ourselves).

  From there, the owners of US debt go, in descending order:

  Japan, State governments, individual US investors and brokers, China, private pension funds, United Kingdom, mutual funds, holders of US savings bonds, insurance companies, banks and credit unions, oil exporting nations…

  You’ll note that China works out to be the 5th largest holders of US debt…hardly the monster crisis you make it out to be, and these facts are entirely at variance with idiot leftwing talking point that the war is financed by borrowing from China…

• 19. Mark Noonan  |  March 15th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

  Diana,

  Nice try at keeping it off topic - but please address China and actual issues related to that, not your foolish, paranoid concerns about black helicopters taking people away to re-education camps at Area 51.

• 20. Diana Powe  |  March 15th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

  Why is that we’re doing anything on anyone’s credit card? Because we’ve been on an endless binge of deficit spending. Who started that? President George W. Bush.

  Mark, nice try at imputing nonsense about black helicopters and Area 51 to me since I’ve never mentioned either one. There are no black helicopters and Area 51 is just a spot on the map. However, I note with interest your unresponsiveness to the issue of your unquestioning fealty to the government.

• 21. Eric T  |  March 15th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

  U.S Trade deficits with China getting smaller. A good sign!

• 22. Eric T  |  March 15th, 2008 at 5:53 pm

  Hindsight is always 20/20. If you could go back in time. 20 or 30 years ago when Toyota was just starting to grow here. Tariffs and other steps taken to keep the price of their cars in-line with U.S models. Would you have saved jobs? Is the story of Toyota a success, surpassing all U.S automakers and building new plants here, while Big 3 are closing them down and laying off workers by the thousands. Maybe Toyota will buy Ford or Chrysler soon. Would Wall St celebrate the news with a rally?

  Maybe you’ll talk about competition beign great for customers, but was it great for American workers and their families, American Companies, American small business like tool and die shops or restraunts by the plants???

  With China, do we wanna look back 30 years from now, and see every farm, factory, hospital, bank, tech company owned by Chinese firms, because our firms were not competitive enuff?

• 23. Michael  |  March 15th, 2008 at 6:13 pm

  I used to believe that, too - but the Chinese government seems to have figured out how to combine economic openness with the most horrific forms of persecution.

  They’ve been horrible persecutors for a long, long time, thanks to communism. Their recent economic success is partly our fault. If what you say is the right way to approach this, we should never have started trading with them in the first place. They haven’t become more tyrannical; perhaps even less. And the average income for Chinese workers is rising rapidly. The more affluent they become, the less likely they are to submit to the tyranny. Cutting off trade with them now dooms those workers and does not punish the government at all.

  For me, I’ve had it - we should have nothing to do with tyrants.

  Do you mean all tyrants? I’d have to see your definition of a tyrant. I consider the Saudis tyrannical to a large extent - do we break with them? Until recently we did business with Hugo Chavez gobbling up his oil. He put and end to that. Do we refuse to buy his oil once he gets to hurting for money (some say he already is)? Do we have different “have nothing to do withs” for different degrees of tyranny? This way lies monsters…

  Let the Chinese people free themselves, and we can be as open as we like with them…and if they prove themselves too cowardly to fight for their freedom, then that will demonstrate that no matter how rich they become, slaves they will remain.

  If China is truly an oppressor and a tyrant (and I will assure you that they are both), the people have little to fight with. They cannot possess arms, communications equipment or anything to fight the millions of well-equipped soldiers who would murder them by the millions without blinking an eye. Capitalistic success, with hoops they must jump through to achieve it is the way forward in China. And in my mind it would be win-win.

• 24. Pain  |  March 15th, 2008 at 9:38 pm

  The truth is Noonan considering how much US debt is held by the PRC American can do little more than boycotting the Olympics. Hu jintao is not about to ruin the “Long Plan” because the Americans did not show to his party. He will just double down and wait for his successor to begin the “Last Phase” where China ascends to the status of superpower. At that point the American bill will slowly over 50 years or so come due. By then China and Europe will be full in bed and the remains of the US as a superpower will be diminished. The only power America will have by 2058 will be the power to destroy all life on Terra. A rogue is not a superpower.

• 25. bagni  |  March 16th, 2008 at 10:37 am

  markina
  the alienistas hover over your site from time to time
  you accuse others of delusion and non sensicality
  this time however
  the radarian reflectors wonder if you should be staring in a mirror
  your bold claims of breaking ties with china
  are the epitome of irony
  don’t break ties
  just keep pumping in democracy
  from both sides….repub and democratic
  if you’re patient it will transform them
  and if you’re not….well, then you can waterboard them
  that’ll turn them around?

• 26. Eric T  |  March 16th, 2008 at 11:38 am

  Bangi

  Micheal posts this in #23

  “And the average income for Chinese workers is rising rapidly. The more affluent they become, the less likely they are to submit to the tyranny.”

  Is the opposite happening here? Mass layoffs Jobs cutting pay in half, eliminating pensions, cheesy health insurance plans. It looks to me as if we are outsourcing the prosperity here.

• 27. Eric T  |  March 16th, 2008 at 12:07 pm

  Bangi-

  When you take away a guy’s job. He becomes dependant on unemployment, welfare, food stamps, state aid. And he is at the mercy of the government.

  I’m not sayin end all trade. But we are buying five times what we are selling to these guys. Slow it down and Even it out. Keep some work over here, for us. Dependence on Chinese manufactured goods, could become like dependence on oil. Keep the manufacturing sector here, and strong.

• 28. Fredrick Schwartz  |  March 16th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

  Eric T,

  You are telling people to stop buying stuff?

  And when the recession turns into a full on depression because trucking companies have to lay people off and so does Wal-Mart which equals 11% of the consumer economy or 1.45 trillion in cash flow what would you have the common bloke do then eh?

• 29. Eric T  |  March 16th, 2008 at 4:27 pm

  Fredrick -

  My idea of conserving jobs is not something that needs to be done overnight. More of a long term target. If they bought more of the stuff we PRODUCE or MANUFACTURE. how do you see that as bringing us into a depression?

  I think George Bush’s economic stimulus package could deflect a recession. Who knows, it could produce a incredible surge in the market.

• 30. Eric T  |  March 16th, 2008 at 4:38 pm

  I think some of this is seasonal,

• 31. Almiranta  |  March 16th, 2008 at 4:43 pm

  I love the economic ignorance of the Left. They seem to think that when China, for example, buys US bonds (which is what the debt is..) they somehow gain a secured interest in the United States.

  No, they invested. Period. They bought US bonds because they thought they would be a good investment.

  “……..one of the first things it has to do is pay back all the money it already owes China.” ??????????
  “…..they call us on all our indebtedness to them.” ????????????

  These people simply do not know how bonds work. People buy bonds, based on the assumption that they will receive a certain percentage of return on those bonds. They might—or they might not. If they do, the bond rating remains the same, or even goes up. If they don’t, the bond rating goes down. The worst that can happen is that fewer will want to buy bonds in the future.

  You don’t “call” bonds. They are for a fixed term. You don’t “pay back” those who have invested in those bonds.

  The goofball attitudes these people have about economics is simply amazing. Yes, I know they are fed this garbage by radical Lefty sources, some of which are equally ignorant but some of which know the truth but prefer to send their footsoldiers out to engage in battles of wits, unarmed. But wouldn’t you think at least some of them would bother to check out their mindless bleatings before repeatedly posting them?

  As I have said, if I buy San Diego bonds because they have a good rating, and then S.D. defaults, I don’t get to go to the San Diego Zoo to pick out a penguin to repay me. I don’t get to stake out a lot on Mission Beach. No, I just lose my money.

  And San Diego has absolutely no way to “pay me back”, nor do I have any right or means to “call” the debt. It’s a simple contract: I invest X number of dollars in San Diego, and for X number of years they pay me X amount of interest.

  As for waterboarding, those who administer the treatment are required to first experience it. Yep, the waterboarders have been waterboarded.

  To hear the Lemming Left bleat, waterboarding is commonplace. “Shall we ask him a question, or just waterboard him?” “Damn, I’m tired. I’ve been waterboarding guys all week and my hands are pruney.”

  In fact (a word they hate…) it has been used very very seldom, only in exteme cases. Yes, if you are a dedicated America-hater, you can sneer that it is folly to believe what the American government tells you—how convenient. (Yet it is apparently a sign of intellectual superiority to automatically dismiss what the country says as false. Again, how convenient.)

  You notice that they have no facts or figures or testimony to bolster their feelings that it must take place all the time, must be a staple of all American interrogations. Nope, their position is just based on the FEELING that if it is nasty and evil and cruel, of course the American government is doing it.

  I don’t know enough about international trade and diplomacy to know if it is even feasible to cut off trade with China. I can see how it would apply a lot of pressure to them, as we are a main market for them, but it takes a lot more intimate knowledge of the situation than I have to be able to make that kind of determination.

  I do think that we should apply all the pressure we can, undoubtedly to the outrage of the Lefties here who don’t think we should ever intervene in any foreign problem.

  Unless we didn’t intervene, and then we should have.

  For now, I’d be happy to have an acknowledgement from the Left that communist and socialist countries do tend to use violence to subjugate their citizens, and that a lesson can and should be learned.

• 32. Almiranta  |  March 16th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

  I WOULD back a boycott of the Olympics in response to the actions in Tibet. I think that would be appropriate, powerful, and embarassing to China.

• 33. Eric T  |  March 16th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

  Almiranta-

  The Olympics has got to be a time for China to be proud of. A peaceful event that takes focus off politics, wars, ect.. It gives people a chance celebrate and compete for the honor of their country. The empire building may be a frighting thought to some, but Look At Nam, Korea. Jumping in to protect Tibet could be a real adventure. And We may look rather hypocritical with Iraq and Afghanistan lingering.
  The unstability of our country going thru the election, and fragile economic conditions would make me back off from boycotting the Olympics and creating any offense or sending any shock their way.

  You and Mark taking a stand is the right thing to do. I’m just feeling peaceful and tired today.

• 34. Almiranta  |  March 16th, 2008 at 7:27 pm

  Eric, I am not worried about “creating any offense”. The courage to do what is right doesn’t have anything to do with worrying about offending the bad guys.

  But attending an event held by a nation engaging in this kind of tyranny is basically validating that nation, and sending a message of approval and that there are no consequences for evil acts.

  Yes, it WOULD be a huge insult. That is the point. It is standing up for a priniciple, and not rewarding wrongdoers.

  We are not “unstable” just because we are going into an election. There is a lot of fussing and fuming, but the country is stable. And our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing whatsoever to do with our taking a stand on the allowing of the freedom of another country. We are fighting for the rights of Iraq and Afghanistan to be free—it is totally consistent.

  “Jumping in to protect Tibet could be a real adventure.” I don’t understand what you mean by that. I am against “Jumping in to protect Tibet…” but I am in favor of expressing as much diplomatic displeasure as possible regarding China’s actions.

  And as for something being “… a real adventure….” well, there are plenty of trolls here on this site who would have a fit at describing any intervention in any other country as a “real adventure”.

  I am proud that we are trying to help the Iraqis and Afghanis establish free and representative governments, and free societies. I will always be proud that I supported these efforts. I will be proud of this country if it puts pressure on China to make the same things available in Tibet. There is so much about this country to be proud of…… But I’m not for “jumping in” and I think an Olympic boycott would be more along the lines of strong diplomatic pressure than anything else.

• 35. Consul-At-Arms  |  March 17th, 2008 at 3:51 am

  I’ve quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2008/03/re-another-reason-to-break-our-ties-to.html

• 36. js  |  March 17th, 2008 at 6:58 am

  What people dont really grasp about China is that thier entire industrial base is mostly owned by the governments military. Retired and active members are kept in control of the production abilities, and are capable, at a moments notice, of altering thier production toward military use.

  They have stolen trade secrets to drive US based manufacturing out of business. Our industry cannot compete, so our government has nothing to convert to support war, because manufacturers went out of business or left the country. The equipment, for the most part, left with them or is sitting in empty warehouses rusting away.

  Its so easy for them to create the illusion of value. Kind of like making beads for the Indians, which in turn, you can buy nations with….

• 37. Eric T  |  March 17th, 2008 at 7:12 am

  Almiranta-

  What I said about jumping in could be a real adventure.

  Challenging the might of the Red Army is what I was referring to.

• 38. Amanda  |  March 17th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

  #14

  Mark,

  Lies. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/28/AR2007042801145.html?nav=rss_print/asection

• 39. phnx  |  March 17th, 2008 at 6:13 pm

  Amanda, what’s your point??? These 85 prisoners are being held in Guantamamo because they either don’t want to go back to their countries of orgin, or their countries of origin will not accept them without agreeing not to torture them. Do these sound like girls scouts to you?

• 40. phnx  |  March 17th, 2008 at 6:14 pm

  OBTW, no other country will agree to accept them either. Do you wonder why?

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