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Category

Human rights

• 01.16.10
  Global Online Freedom Act
  Free speech, Human rights (0)

  Google has to be feeling a lot of pressure from both sides of the issue of governmental censorship in China. Now would be an especially excellent time for Congress to pass the Global Online Freedom Act in order to support Google in its efforts not to be evil. There are those who sneer at Google for waiting until now to act, after its business interests have been undermined by hackers. They say it's profit more than heroism that's motivating Google. But I argue that it's good when the profit motive is aligned with the desire to ...
  
  
• 04.19.09
  Wrong message on torture
  Human rights (0)

  The other day I got an e-mail from democrats.com directing me to their "No Amnesty for Torturers" campaign. I'm not sure that these people have any official connection to the Democrat Party, but they do seem to identify with it. On the surface, one could get the impression that they are against torture: ...Torture is utterly immoral and un-American. It produced absolutely no useful intelligence . It recruited terrorists responsible for at least half the U.S. deaths in Iraq . And it endangered every U.S. soldier who may be captured in the future. And torture is absolutely illegal. The U.S. ...
  
  
• 02.16.09
  How the Stimulus package will damage human rights
  Human rights, Stimulus spending (0)

  SCSU Scholars explains how in exchange for financing Obama's big "stimulus" package, China will want a quid pro quo from the U.S. in the form of monetary policy. I would also expect some other pressures to be put on the United States: We will need to quit providing public support for dissidents in prison We will need to allow Cisco, Google, and Yahoo to support increased efforts by China to censor internet content and identify dissidents We will need to shut up about Tibet I would expect the Obama administration and the Democrats to be more than willing to help out with ...
  
  
• 07.22.08
  Bill Clinton’s conspicuous absence
  Clinton scandals, Human rights (0)

  The lead story in the pulp (paper) edition of today's WSJ is "Kazakhstan Corruption: Exile alleges new details." It's an amazing story. No, the corruption itself isn't amazing. What's amazing is that two WSJ reporters wrote all those words without once mentioning Bill Clinton. They mention Frank Giustra the Canadian businessman who is buddy to both Bill Clinton and to President Nazarbayev. They mention Nazarbayev, of course. He is the one whom his former son-in-law ratted on for the WSJ. But nothing was said about Clinton's controversial appearance with Nazarbayev in September 2005. The ...
  
  
• 07.05.08
  Unsafe Fourth
  Human rights (0)

  Before GWB, conservatives liked to quote Benjamin Franklin: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." More recently their tune has changed. Now, the only deciding factor on whether to enact warrantless wiretaps is whether they will make us safer. Whether they will make us freer is not discussed. Conservatives defend the right to gas-hogging SUVs for the sake of safety, never mind that they aren't so safe for soldiers who have to go overseas to defend our oil supplies. Once upon a time the Fourth of July was ...
  
  
• 04.01.08
  Pressures for change
  Human rights (0)

  "The Olympics will only intensify the 'pressures for change,'" they said. Matthew Continetti at The Weekly Standard ("Gold Medal in Tyranny") recounts this and all the other rationalizations as to why it was good that China would host the Olympics. And he points out how the results have been just the opposite of what was predicted. I think it could have worked out the way the apologists wanted. The trouble is, there too many people are so eager to make money dealing with China that they are willing to overlook or even cooperate in repression. It's to ...
  
  
• 02.09.08
  The Stasi and tax rates
  Clinton scandals, Human rights, Limits on government power (0)

  Wired magazine tells about a $30 million project to piece together a billion pieces of paper records that were torn up by the East German Stasi, but which they hadn't gotten around to destroying. And the destroyed records amount to only about five percent of its files: the agency had generated perhaps more paper than any other bureaucracy in history — possibly a billion pages of surveillance records, informant accounting, reports on espionage, analyses of foreign press, personnel records, and useless minutiae. There's a record for every time anyone drove across the border. The main reason we need lower ...
  
  
• 02.08.08
  Real ID and health care
  Health care reform, Human rights (0)

  The real problem with nationalized health care is not that it will decrease the quality of health care and raise costs, though it will do that, judging by how it has worked everywhere it has been tried. But some people are willing to accept that, in exchange for the benefits. No, the real problem is the threat to civil liberties. Here is an example of how it makes a tempting kudgel for the government to use to keep people in line: WHEN THE Department of Homeland Security came out with the final REAL ID regulations last month, a top ...
  
  
• 02.07.08
  Don’t think about Ezra Levant
  Bash the Messenger, First Amendment, Human rights (0)

  An article by Lee Harris in The Weekly Standard got me to checking for the latest news on the Ezra Levant case in Canada. Ezra Levant has a blog which he tells us is getting a lot of hits: in the past month, I've had 152,000 "unique visitors" of whom 49,000 are "returning visitors". According to Haloscan.com, I've had more than 1,500 comments. And then there's the YouTube videos, 471,000 views amongst them." (That happens to be more hits than this blog gets.) And a liberal MP (Keith Martin) has submitted a motion to remove the section of the Human Rights Code that allows the ...
  
  
• 02.01.08
  The Sacrament of Abortion
  Brave New World, Human rights (0)

  Since at least as far back as 1999 I've been referring to abortion as the Holy Sacrament of the Left. (I got this idea from watching the Senate Judiciary Committee, among other things.) For the Clintons, as for the rest of their party, keeping abortion legal supersedes all else: The Bill of Rights, our national security, all considerations of honor and truth, the safety of our children -- everything. Everything else is subordinated to the great and bloody sacrament of the left: killing fetuses. I even predicated that there would soon be ...
  
  

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