Chinese man held for quake photos

Chinese man held for quake photos

A Chinese teacher has been detained for posting images on the internet of schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake, a rights group has said.

Human Rights in China said Liu Shaokun had been ordered to serve a year of "re-education through labour".

Mr Liu was detained for "disseminating rumours and destroying social order", the group said.

The 12 May quake killed nearly 70,000 people. Many of those who died were children whose schools collapsed.

The poor condition of the school buildings has become a sensitive political issue for the government, and grieving parents have staged numerous protests demanding an inquiry.

Many have accused local officials of colluding with builders to allow them to get away with cheap and unsafe practices.

"Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to re-education through labour to silence and lock up concerned citizens like teacher Liu Shaokun and others," said Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom.

No trial

According to Human Rights in China, Mr Liu's wife was informed by police last week that the teacher, from Guanghan Middle School in Deyang city, had been sent to a labour camp.

The "re-education through labour" system allows police to incarcerate a crime suspect for up to four years without the need for a criminal trial or a formal charge.

The system, in place since 1957, has been widely criticised by the UN and other organisations.

Starbucks sells coffee?

From The Killfile:

I remember when they opened the Starbucks on Lygon Street in Melbourne. It was the only shop that sold coffee on Lygon Street which was consistently empty. That always made me smile.

The crimes of Che Guevara

I am what you would call right of centre, a right-wing social democrat. Bit vague, and don't feel like going into it now, but a summary which will do for now is this:
1. Market-mechanisms are undoubtedly the best means of allocating resources. Where socially desriable outcomes (a subjective issue) are not met by the market, the optimal strategy is to design a market by fiat where shadow costs or similar reified concepts can be traded.
2. The market is often not, in its current state, the optimal place for looking after the disadvantaged, for providing justice, education, health or defence. But market mechanisms can often (but not always) be harnessed to provide some efficiency to goals that are viewed as desirable.
These are technical issues. They are about how to achieve something, not about what is right. So that is what many people would call right-wing. But I have a social conscience, and so there is the social democrat side of me.

Often I find myself arguing pro-left points of view not because I necessarily believe them, but because I find myself talking to someone who takes their right-wing point of view as a religion, rather than a debatable topic. Just because I disagree with you in words does not mean that I actually disagree with you.

Anyway, communist murderers is what I wanted to talk about here. I cannot be as erudite as others have been, so instead I will cite a few references:
1. mass-murdering communists, with particular reference to Che Guevara.
2. 180 documented victimes of Che Guevara in Cuba.
3. Che Guevara - just another dead thug.
4. 216 Documented victims of Ché Guevara in cuba: 1957 to 1959.

Chinese politics

I just had a Chinese student come by to consultations and start a political argument.
He asserted, as do most who take this point of view, that the western media are biased. As evidence of this, he cited the fact that all the western media were in support the Iraq war! I mean, what media is this guy talking about? What rock has he been living under? The only media outfit supporting the war was Fox news, but I think that they hardly qualify as reputable.

Then he said, wait for it: "just because we don't have elections doesn't mean that we're not a democracy". Then I just asked him to leave.