More oppression in Tibet:
Clashes between protesters and security forces in Tibet’s main city, Lhasa, have left at least two people dead, according to reports.
An emergency official said that many people had been hurt and an unspecified number had died.
The US-based Radio Free Asia quoted witnesses who said they had seen at least two bodies on Lhasa’s streets.
Tibet’s government would “deal harshly” with the protesters, its Chairman Qiangba Puncog warned.
“We will deal harshly with these criminals who are carrying out activities to split the nation,” he told the Associated Press news agency, denying that police had opened fire.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency earlier said police had fired warning shots and used tear gas to disperse protesters.
Rallies have continued all week in what are said to be the largest protests against Beijing’s rule in 20 years.
Most people are for free trade with China – including President Bush – on the theory that the more we trade with them the more liberty there will eventually be in China. Others are opposed to free trade with China – labor unions leading the way here – because they simply don’t want to compete with China’s cheap labor. I’m with neither camp – neither free trader nor protectionist: I’m for freedom trade.
I’m sick to death with these tyrannical regimes which presume to have the authority to actually do what they do. We can’t get rid of them all, but we can certainly cut our ties to them. I’m for completely free trade, but only with other free nations – we should ditch all trade agreements with China, and open trade agreements with, say, India. It is time for the free people of the world to firmly and without question stand athwart the unfree nations – and stand with their enslaved populations.
UPDATE: The International Olympic Committee urges people not to boycott China’s Olympics over the Tibet situation. My answer: You miserable, truckling cowards at the IOC should have thought of that before you awarded the Olympics to an anti-human, totalitarian dictatorship.
Blogs For Victory 
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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…
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.
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet….
Are these guys expanding the Empire?
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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…
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.
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.
U.S Trade deficits with China getting smaller. A good sign!
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?
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.
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…
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.
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.