China: Medal Contender In The Oppression Event

China is up to its old tricks again and arresting dissidents. This time they've nabbed members of an underground Catholic church; several have been released but a few are still being held.

China is so often included in the ordinary rhythms of global politics, whether it be its participation in summits, trade organizations, or its hosting of the 2008 Olympics, that it is sometimes easy to forget that China is still a totalitarian regime that routinely violates its peoples' basic human rights. One need only to consider the plight of the Falun Gong, or the Tibetan community in exile, or any dissident bloggers to understand how important it is to China's leaders to crush dissent.

Until China ceases its oppressive and often times vicious policies towards dissidents, it must not be afforded the respect and recognition reserved for countries that do not see fit to brutalize their own people.

--Josh

More: Startling article detailing the belief held widely amongst our Asian allies that China could defeat the U.S. in an open war. Several astute comments from Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, explaining his reasoning: 'I believe America cannot win as it has a civic society that must adhere to the value of respecting lives'...he asserted that China would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Asian and American cities--even at the risk of a massive U.S. retaliation. The governor said the U.S. could not counter a wave of millions of Chinese soldiers prepared to die in any onslaught against U.S. forces. After 2,000 casualties, he said, the U.S. military would be forced to withdraw.

Granted, the Japanese and Chinese have hated each other for hundreds of years so Ishihara may well be exaggerating the threat, yet he is not alone in his opinion. It also seems that most here in the West are fashioning their plans for engagement with China around the belief that it will be forced to grant the political freedom that has historically accompanied economic freedoms of the type now allowed in China. Mr. Ishihara succinctly weighed in on that proposition as well: "I believe such predictions are totally wrong."

Kerry, Gore, Clinton, and Other Hawks

In the last few days it has been difficult to miss the new offensive the Bush administration has launched against the Iraq war critics' revisionism concerning the alleged manipulation of pre-war intelligence (read: "Bush lied, people died."). In a speech this week Bush chastised Democrats for their duplicity, quoting several high-ranking Democrats who before the war unequivocally voiced their opinion that Saddam had weapons that were a threat to the U.S. Donald Rumsfeld also produced today on CNN an embarassing assortment of similar quotes from Democrats (for more, click here).

This leaves the Dems with a couple of options: they can pretend they were stupid and/or gullible by re-playing the "Bush is a sinister mastermind (yet also a bumbling cowboy)" card. They could try and convince everyone that Bush actually had some sort of a secret, omniscient source (God?) that had informed him there actually was no WMD but that he should go ahead and make the case the rest of the world was making at the time anyways. This asinine piece actually flirts with that particular strategy, suggesting the administration knew more than the legislature because "It could have been (and no doubt was) predicted that very few lawmakers would take the time to read...the National Intelligence Estimate." Even if this assertion that lawmakers wouldn't be able to scrape together the time to read the "nearly 100 pages long" behemoth full of critical intelligence that could help them decide whether they would vote for a war resolution is true, now the legislators' irresponsibility is Bush's fault?

This all would merely be incredibly pathetic were the stakes not so high. It seems self-evident that these false claims can (and more than likely have) hurt the U.S. war effort, contingent as it is upon the resolve of the American people. Playing politics is fine, but not when it is characterized by such overwhelming disingenuousness as we've seen from the anti-war crowd trying to push these claims, and not when it hurts our ability to effectively prosecute the war on terror.

--Josh

Update: The Republican National Committee has created a video montage of bellicose statements directed at Saddam Hussein by Democrats before the Iraq War erupted. Here also is an article revealing then-President Bill Clinton's synopsis of the Iraq situation.

No more retards...

According to a new study, doctors can now detect Down's Syndrome in babies/fetuses in the crucial first trimester. This is good news, they say, because no woman should be forced to give birth to a retard. Earlier detection is crucial because, as Fergal D. Malone of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin admits:

By the time you're 20 weeks pregnant, most women will be feeling fetal movement. We wouldn't want to underestimate the psychological or emotional difficulty of undergoing pregnancy termination that late...

This article kinda speaks for itself, but here's another choice quote:

Screening women before the second trimester allows those who might opt to terminate a pregnancy to make that decision when doctors say an abortion is safer and less traumatic.

The casual way in which these doctors are applauding abortion as birth control is appalling to say the least. Perhaps "psychological or emotional difficulty" is a sign that something is wrong. One wonders what would happen if doctors started suggesting early abortions for other classes of babies: minorities, homosexuals, southpaws, um, Jews, etc...

- dane

Never Again...Again

Tragic article here from Hitchens concerning Darfur. It seems the killings have stopped, but only because there really aren't many people left to kill. I guess the anti-war crowd must be happy that the U.S.'s unilateral, imperialistic impulses were averted and diplomacy given a chance to work; I doubt whether the families of the butchered Darfurians are quite as elated.

--Josh

We'll Always Have Paris...Maybe

The rioting in Paris is showing no signs of abating as mobs continue to move throughout the slums torching cars, throwing rocks and generally causing upheaval. I can't imagine that the French government can be all that surprised by this, the non-integration of its immigrant community, specifically the Muslim population, has been causing concerns for a while now. It is a measure of the unrest that has been brewing that the rioting erupted over such a flimsy pretense: two boys were eloctrocuted to death while hiding in an electrical transformer station after fleeing from the police who may not have even been chasing them in the first place. Somehow the police were blamed for this, and the rioting (which has interestingly been described as "well-organized") commenced. I'll be interested to see if the Parisian peace-lovers might be willing to crack some heads to restore order.

--Josh

Oreos and Uncle Toms

This is perhaps the most infuriating article I have read for months. Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, who is black, is currently involved in a governor's bid in Maryland; for his pains, his political adversaries have publicly branded him an "Uncle Tom," pelted him with Oreos at speaking events, and caricatured him on a blog as a black-faced minstrel. For those of you familiar with how black Republicans are treated, for such Steele is, you probably aren't surprised that it is Democrats perpetrating these overtly racist acts.

I can't think of a better example of how Democrats cynically manipulate the race card for political leverage. They publicly crucify people at will for straying from the speech codes they have established concerning proper discourse on racial issues; they then engage in flagrantly racist activity and think it's no big deal--in fact, they think it's justified. Why? Because Steele is a conservative, so he deserves what's coming to him.

So where are Democratic defenders of racial tolerance and empathy? Why isn't there an uproar emanating from the Democratic National Committee over blatantly racist attacks on a black public figure? Why is the NAACP MIA? Where are the mass resignations from disgraced Democratic activists? Where are Jesse and Al working themselves into fits of poetic indignation? We are not going to see any of the above, for, as Democratic state Senator Lisa Gladden states, "Party trumps race." I think what she meant to say was that party trumps principle.

--Josh

Update: Two of the top three Maryland Democrats have opted to not condemn the racist attacks on Mr. Steele. I can only imagine the horror they could muster were this an example of Republican bigotry, but since it is black Democratic bigotry, apparently the rules have changed.
Note also how brilliantly the Democratic party has been able to equate being conservative with not quite being black (see the assertion that Clarence Thomas, as a black man, "deserves an asterisk because he arguably does not represent the views of mainstream black America." This is similar to the argument that woman do not count for diversity's sake unless they have a feminist outlook). What makes this such an achievement is that, one, Republicans are more closely aligned to the majority of mainstream black opinion on social issues; two, it seems their Democratic loyalty is not getting results, the black community's plight is worsening in key areas. As President Bush asked in a speech to the Urban League in 2004, "Have the traditional solutions of the Democrat party truly served the African American community?"

Plus, People Call Him 'Scooter.'

In an editorial that will probably get the entire staff of the New York Sun black-listed from the cocktail circuit on the Upper East Side, the editors call for a Presidential pardon of Scooter Libby. It seems that such a move would only open Bush to further charges of cronyism, yet, as the Sun contends, if the higher principle of protecting the Presidency from partisan attacks designed strictly to cripple a war-time President is at stake, perhaps it should be considered.

At this point, I would be content with a gag order placed on Joseph Wilson. It has gone beyond tiring to see him don the mantle again and again of the persecuted yet tireless defender of truth against the sinister manipulations of the Bush administration. Both a British and a bipartisan Senate report have concluded that Wilson is essentially a liar and that the intelligence Wilson attempted to discredit after his trip to Niger was, in fact, quite sound. I doubt whether Wilson will remember to mention that fact in his new book detailing his travails.

--Josh