Ted Sorenson passed away this week. He was the famed JFK aide who helped the then-senator from Massachusetts with the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage. He served John F. Kennedy loyally and well.
We saw no profile in courage on the world stage this week. The Secretary General of the UN, South Korean diplomat, Ban Ki-moon, traveled to China. He met in Beijing with Chinese Peoples Republic President Hu Jintao.
Although the Secretary General says he has made human rights a priority for the world body, he did not take up the case of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, reports the New York Times.
This is odd. Since China sits on the UN Human Rights Council, you would think it the most natural thing in the world for the UN official to raise the issue with Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment with his jailers. Ban did not seek a meeting with Liu.
Nor did Ban even congratulate Liu on his Nobel Prize. China, we learn from the Times' spare reporting, has a seat on the UN Security Council. China can veto a second term
for Ban Ki-Moon. You wouldn't want to antagonize your voters, it seems.
It goes without saying that Ban Ki-Moon did not raise the question of China's "one child" policy with Hu Jintao. Under that brutal and inhuman policy, millions of Chinese women are forced to undergo abortions. Tens of millions of abortions have been performed on unwilling mothers -- with the connivance of the UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). The UNFPA has long been implicated in massive human rights abuses -- including forced abortions in China, and coerced sterilizations in India and Peru.
You would think America's "pro-choice" politicians and lobbying groups would loudly denounce China's denial of choice to millions of women. But their silence is deafening.
Since January, 2009, American taxpayers are being coerced into supporting UNFPA. President Obama issued an Executive Order providing funding for that group. He revoked the Mexico City policy of Ronald Reagan.
Under President Reagan's Mexico City policy, U.S. funds were restricted from funding the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the UNFPA. Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush maintained America's strong commitment to life in the international arena.
Under Obama, unfortunately, the floodgates were opened. U.S. funding has flooded to these human rights abusers. It should be one of the new Congress' first tasks to cut off funding from Planned Parenthood and the UNFPA.
Speaking of human rights, China continues to suppress religious freedom in their vast domain. This is in direct violation of Article 18 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Chinese Christians have been forced, in many places, to go underground. Some local Communist party cadres try to stamp out these "Jesus nests." Falun Gong, a Chinese religious minority, is also suppressed. Also denied religious freedom are the Buddhists in Tibet, the home country of the Dalai Lama. Chinese Communist officials deny Muslims in Xinjiang Province any religious rights.
We need to look very carefully at what Americans are being forced to subsidize at the UN. It does not make sense for our State Department to issue human rights reports and religious freedom reports, and then go ahead and fund some of the biggest abusers of human rights and religious freedom.
As the new Congress looks for ways to cut, cut, cut federal spending, let's hope that the U.S. contribution to the UN budget comes under the closest scrutiny. Our concern should not be what Ban Ki-Moon's concern obviously is. Whether this UN bureaucrat is re-elected as Secretary General should take a back seat to real human rights and real religious freedom. If he doesn't care about these vital issues, Americans do.
US conservative support for Saudi Arabia (a theocratic regime whose royal family funds Al Qaeda) is promoting religious freedom and gender equality in the best American tradition. US conservative silence on the lack of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia (except when rhetorically convenient) is respect for local folkways. US conservative support for Egypt (a brutal dictatorship) is promoting freedom.
Not *hearing* (not that we aren't saying, just not being heard) US feminists talk about any woman being forced to either have a child she cannot support or abort a child she does want is prima facie evidence that US feminists don't care about human rights.
Got it? When conservatives back a theocratic dictatorship that is promoting freedom.
We clear?
The Japanese tell the Russians to get off their historically owned islands that Russia captured during WW2.
And yet refuses to give back islands that historically belong to China.
The bulk of this difference is because of the "drug war." Californians built 12 prisons since that "war" began, but only one university. Given how fast we've been filling these gulags, you can literally project a time in the next few decades when everyone will either be a prisoner or a guard. (See http://judgejimgray.com/ for a Republican former Orange County prosecutor's clear-eyed repudiation of our drug laws, and the source for the above and many other awful facts.)
Let's remember this beam in our own eye the next time we're spending some time with the mote in China's, shall we?
That is a serious crime under the laws of most countries.
The UN Secretary Ban is truly brave in standing firm against dirty political extortion. Instead this week he did what he is supposed to, to encourage member countries to contribute more to world peace. Ban asked China to contribute more peace keeping troops.
Bravo Mr. Ban.
http://www.chinaheritagenewsletter.org/017/features/ConfessionRedemptionDeath.pdf
Wen Jiabao just called for democracy; 23 party elders just called for an end to censorship; Lt. Gen. Liu Yazhou just said "China must reform or die." Calling for democracy is a direct insult to the current system; calling for an end to censorship is a direct criticism of current policy. Saying China must reform or die could be taken as a statement of war.
Everyone knows Liu's incarceration is an outrage. As his friends and relatives continue to disappear, the CCP is just digging itself deeper and deeper on this one.
The CPC (hey, if you want to be a basher, at least get the name correct) appears to know exactly what it is doing, and that is why China is enjoying the best sustained growth rates the nation's enjoyed in a millenium.
China, under the CPC's capable leadership, has been the most reformed and reforming major nation on earth. The government's brand of careful planning (with the help of capable thinkers and think tanks) and capable execution of those plans, and the only remaining "dogma" being pragmatism, prove to be a very powerful combination for the good of the Chinese people.
Liu is a misguided ideologue that stands on the wrong side of history. If Beijing is silly enough (thankfullly not) to adopt what Liu and his ilk advocates, where would China be?
Just look next doors at India - 1/4 the GDP, 65% literacy rate, life expectancy 10 years shorter.
- 30 years of sustainable, almost double digit growth of the economy
- Peace - No more invasion by foreigners
- Longest life expectancy, Lowest infant mortality rate (compared to China before)
- Effective and caring responses during massive natural disasters
- Leaders that actually lead, instead of spending 60 or 70% of their time begging for money
- Fastest trains, fastest computer (for now), lowest cost nuclear power plants ($1,227/We)
- Highest literacy rate in China's history, highest number of college grads in the world, with 50% that in science and engineering to support more development
WHY would any Chinese not support the Chinese government?
NOW can we stop moving our factories there?
--Homer Simpson, on China
Very phony to link it to human rights,.
Some of of think it is a woman's human right to not be forced by circumstances to bear children that she then must watch starve and die.
And while we know of China's one child policy,
He offered no evidence of "coerced sterilizations in India and Peru.
Wanders into religious freedom, never mentioning the Christian right in the U.S.A. and their demand to have this nation declared "Christian," at the very definite exclusion of all other faiths or non-belief as is the case for some.
As a whole this article is a jumble of conservative nonsense.
They want more babies to grow old enough to be cheap labor, then die early.