Free Frank Warner

Freedom in 2 years? China debates ‘universal values’

As the Chinese dictatorship prepares to re-shuffle its top leadership in 2012, the Chinese people are debating the need to recognize “universal values,” which in China are code words for democracy and freedom.

The dictatorship is so sensitive to “universal values” that its paid defenders expressed outrage when a Guangdong newspaper in 2008 cleverly worked the words into an article praising the government’s response to the Sichuan earthquake.

The government “honored its commitments to its own people and to the world with respect to universal values,” Southern Weekend, the newspaper, reported.

Repeated theme. This year, the phrase is reappearing more frequently. It already figured prominently in the public address of a Chinese banker and in a President Obama speech to the United Nations.

On July 19, Qin Xia, retiring chairman of the state-owned China Merchants Bank, told the graduating class of a top Chinese business school they should abandon the old politics and promote “universal values” like democracy and freedom.

The Economist reports that Qin said:

“Universal values tell us that government serves the people, that assets belong to the public and that urbanisation is for the sake of people’s happiness.”

Supporters of the “China model,” he added, believe the opposite: that people should obey the government, the state should control assets and the interests of individuals are subordinate to those of local development.

Emphasis on individual. Chinese hardliners argue against democracy by pointing to China’s two or three decades of economic expansion and claiming that the democratic West’s current weakness is the result of an emphasis on individual rights and freedom.

Liberals, however, note that China’s boom is directly related to the expansion of individual economic freedom. Embracing individual political freedom and the other “universal values” would only fuel further progress, they say.

So against this background, it was intriguing that, when President Obama went to the United Nations last week and reaffirmed America’s dedication to democracy and liberty, he slipped in the words “universal values.”

The right path. Obama didn’t mention China, but he said:

The idea is a simple one -- that freedom, justice and peace for the world must begin with freedom, justice, and peace in the lives of individual human beings. And for the United States, this is a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity. As Robert Kennedy said, “the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit.” So we stand up for universal values because it’s the right thing to do. …

As I said last year, each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its own people. Yet experience shows us that history is on the side of liberty; that the strongest foundation for human progress lies in open economies, open societies, and open governments. To put it simply, democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for our citizens.

Oppressors' keys. The message of freedom is resonating in China. Unfortunately, the oppressors themselves will have to decide whether to free the oppressed. The Communist regime’s term limits give the Chinese some hope, but there’s no guarantee a new set of rulers will smile on “universal values.”

Frank Warner

* * *

See also: Jackie Chan fears China freedom, but his words stir the idea.

Two cheers for President Obama’s ‘freedom agenda’

Foreign Policy has two cheers for President Obama for the “freedom agenda” he took the United Nations last week.

Why not three cheers? While presidential rhetoric matters, to have enduring meaning it must be backed up by action. As strong as it was as a statement of principles, President Obama's speech did not point to a policy course going forward. Tellingly, the first third of his speech in the “what we have done” section reviewing his first two years contained not a word on the cause of freedom. It was only in the looking ahead, “what are we trying to build” section at the end that he turned to human rights and democracy.

Obama’s words were probably his most impassioned comments in the defense of freedom.

One of the first actions of this General Assembly was to adopt a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. That Declaration begins by stating that, “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.”

The idea is a simple one -- that freedom, justice and peace for the world must begin with freedom, justice, and peace in the lives of individual human beings. And for the United States, this is a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity. As Robert Kennedy said, “the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit.” So we stand up for universal values because it’s the right thing to do. But we also know from experience that those who defend these values for their people have been our closest friends and allies, while those who have denied those rights -- whether terrorist groups or tyrannical governments -- have chosen to be our adversaries.

Human rights have never gone unchallenged -- not in any of our nations, and not in our world. Tyranny is still with us -- whether it manifests itself in the Taliban killing girls who try to go to school, a North Korean regime that enslaves its own people, or an armed group in Congo-Kinshasa that use rape as a weapon of war.

In times of economic unease, there can also be an anxiety about human rights. Today, as in past times of economic downturn, some put human rights aside for the promise of short term stability or the false notion that economic growth can come at the expense of freedom. We see leaders abolishing term limits. We see crackdowns on civil society. We see corruption smothering entrepreneurship and good governance. We see democratic reforms deferred indefinitely.

As I said last year, each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its own people. Yet experience shows us that history is on the side of liberty; that the strongest foundation for human progress lies in open economies, open societies, and open governments. To put it simply, democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for our citizens.

Great stuff. I have to wonder who wrote that section of the speech. I hope Obama came up with it on his own, but I know it’s not his forte. In any case, the president chose to deliver that message, and he represented us well.

At Foreign Policy, William Inboden says Obama should use his influence to advance freedom’s cause in several nations, particularly in China, Russia, North Korea, Egypt, Cuba, Belarus, Iran, Eritrea and Vietnam.

Ideas do matter. Each American president has a duty to serve the idea of freedom by preserving, protecting and defending it, first, by giving it voice, then by action. 

Frank Warner

‘Obama’s Wars’: Bob Woodward cashes in again

We can be as sure that Bob Woodward’s “Obama Wars” is objective and fully in context as we can be that Deep Throat was only one man.

Woodward has attracted a lot of attention to his newest book by releasing a few comments by President Obama that, out of context, were guaranteed to stir new charges that the president is cold and cynical.

The two most-quoted of Obama’s statements:

“We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever ... we absorbed it and we are stronger.”

And on his Afghanistan pull-out deadline: “I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

‘Bizarre’ hucksterism. Woodward was on TV yesterday calling “bizarre” Obama’s assertion that “we can absorb a terrorist attack.” Woodward was clever enough to say Obama might have meant the terrorists can’t win, and Woodward even lets us see Obama saying we’ll do everything we can to prevent another attack. But by then throwing out the word “bizarre,” Woodward kept the talking heads talking about his book.

Obama’s worry about losing the Democratic Party looks worse at first, but even that comment has an innocent explanation. His point might have been that he already can’t count on the Republican Party; he can’t lose his fellow Democrats, too.

Woodward has never been interested first in sober, balanced reporting. He always has focused on making his stories sound a little more interesting than reality, and he has not been reluctant to reorganize facts for the sake of sales. Just ask Deep Throats.

Frank Warner

Canadian-Iranian gets 20 years in prison for blogging his conscience

When a government claims it is guided by God, it tends to be tough on those who challenge its repression. Hossein Derakhshan blogged against Iran’s theocratic dictatorship. For exercising his human right to free expression, the dictators have sentenced the 35-year-old to 20 years in prison.

Derakhshan should be running for office in free elections, and the Iranian regime should be in prison. Punishing Derakhshan is a crime against humanity.

Frank Warner

Chavez' opponents win in legislature elections

The trouble is, the opponents of Hugo Chavez amount to more than half the popular vote, but are winning only a third of the seats in the legislature. What? Do they have a stupid Electoral College for legislative elections in Venezuela?

Thanks to this ridiculous formula, in spite of the majority against him, Chavez will continue marching Venezuela toward total dictatorship.

Frank Warner

Houston citizens’ True the Vote uncovers election fraud

It is a scandal that every election year the democratic process is intentionally corrupted by fake votes and fake voters. True the Vote, a Houston citizens group, did something about it.

They went out and looked at the fraud that was accepted too easily at the polls.

Most of the [True the Vote] findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Steve Caddle, who also works for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.

Caddle told local newspapers that there “had been mistakes made,” and he said he had fired 30 workers for filing defective voter registration applications.

Uncomfortable padding. Sorry, Steve, but if you are involved regularly in voter registration, you can tell when someone is padding the names and numbers. If you didn’t know about the bad registrations, you didn’t want to know. You didn’t notice 30 workers were juicing the registrations until an outside group told you? Right.

It’s time for some accountability on Election Day. Photo ID cards should be checked at polling places, and, unless someone can reveal a great reason not to, we should put up video cameras outside the voting booths, so the public can see who is going in.

Absentee ballots could be checked by making public a list of who voted by absentee ballot, with an explanation why each could not come to the polls. (In general, voting by mail should be outlawed. It ruins the secret ballot, and allows a manipulator to coerce fragile voters into voting according to the manipulator’s suggestions.)

A light on true numbers. Video at the polls wouldn’t tell us who voters voted for. But it would allow us to check who voted and how many times they voted. It would help guarantee a fair election. How about that?

Frank Warner

Hawaii governor race spotlights islands of racism

Neil Abercrombie defeated Mufi Hannemann last week in the Democratic primary for governor of Hawaii. That probably was a good thing. Hannemann ran a campaign that came close to suggesting it's time for ethnic cleansing in the Aloha State.

The Washington Post reported:

Abercrombie, the iconic longhair of Congress and college buddy of Obama's father, has positioned himself as the improbable post-racial candidate. His opponent in the Sept. 18 primary -- a rematch 24 years in the making -- is Mufi Hannemann, a supremely ambitious establishment candidate and former mayor of Honolulu of Samoan descent, who has appealed to the state's non-white majority by playing up his island roots....

Abercrombie's opponent has used abundant funds and political allies to wage a negative ad war depicting him as unqualified, unserious and un-Hawaiian....

In appealing to Hawaii's different ethnicities, Hannemann has found his base, but also political trouble. The former mayor sent out a much-discussed ["Compare and Decide"] mailer ...

Most explosive ... was the information under the heading "personal." Hannemann made clear he was born in Hawaii and married a woman with a distinctly Japanese last name -- a major plus with the powerful Japanese voters. By contrast, Abercrombie was identified as a mainlander whose wife has a haole (or white) surname.

'Look like you.' The Post failed to mention Hannemann's "I look like you" speech. It's heartening that the Democratic voters of Hawaii cast their ballots for better ideas and higher ideals.

Frank Warner

Medal of Honor: Obama says U.S. fought for freedoms in Laos and Vietnam

President Obama today posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor to Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Richard L. Etchberger, who was killed by North Vietnamese Communists in 1968 after he loaded three wounded airmen into a helicopter in Laos.

I wondered how the president would describe the Vietnam War and Etchberger’s secret Laos mission. He spoke well of the airman from Pennsylvania.

The greatest memorial of all to Dick Etchberger is the spirit that we feel here today, the love that inspired him to serve -- love for his country and love for his family. And most eloquent -- the most eloquent expression of that devotion are the words that he wrote himself, to a friend back home just months before he gave his life to our nation.

“I hate to be away from home,” he wrote from that small base above the clouds, “but I believe in the job.” He said, “It is the most challenging job I’ll ever have in my life.” And then he added, “I love it.”

Our nation endures because there are patriots like Chief Master Sergeant Richard Etchberger —- and our troops who are serving as we speak -- who love this nation and defend it. Their legacy lives on because their families and fellow citizens preserve it. And as Americans, we remain worthy of their example only so long as we honor it —- not merely with the medals that we present, but by remaining true to the values and freedoms for which they fight.

Spill-over war. Several news stories on Etchberger’s mission have noted that, under international law, U.S. servicemen were not supposed to be in Laos in 1968, just as Sen. John Kerry once said he and his fellow sailors were not supposed to be in Cambodia on Christmas that same year.

What these reports are neglecting to point out is that North Vietnamese troops were not supposed to be in Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam at that time either, and despite the tyrant Ho Chi Minh’s repeated denials, the North Vietnamese had invaded all those nations for the purpose of spreading Communist oppression.

Etchberger was in Laos trying to give the South Vietnamese a chance for democracy. About 50,000 other Americans also died for a South Vietnamese democracy, which the North Vietnamese dictators promised to allow in the 1973 Paris Peace Accords they signed.

Chains unbroken. That the North Vietnamese lied and invaded Saigon after the Americans left does not diminish the cause of freedom that Etchberger and the U.S. were fighting for. It simply reminds us that, for the average Vietnamese, the war never really ended.

Frank Warner

Google Instant is instantly annoying

Maybe it's just a warped first impression, but Google Instant seems to do way more than we ordinary humans want it to do. As you search for something, it starts showing search results by predicting what you're looking for.

One obvious problem with this system is that, if your search is based on something you see in your last search results, Google Instant throws out those earlier results before you're done typing out the new search.

You might see a name, a date or a street address in one list of search results, and then try to narrow your Google search using that information. But because Google Instant pulls the rug out while you type, you have to delete the words you haven't finished and go back to remind yourself of exact spellings or specific numbers. Yes, you could copy and paste from the first search results, but sometimes you just want to type your search words and move on.

Instant disabler? I'm surprised Google did not anticipate this problem and give us a Google Instant disabling button. Or have they?

Frank Warner

Ted Kennedy’s murder of Carter’s health-care bill is model of political sabotage

I’m a little surprised President Carter was so blunt about Sen. Ted Kennedy killing his 1978 health-care bill, but political leaders are never above sabotaging their opponents’ ideas, even when they would be good for the nation.

In 2005, President Bush proposed saving Social Security, in part by giving each worker control over up to one-third of his or her Social Security savings. Bush also said he was open to proposals from the Democrats. The Democrats immediately mischaracterized Bush’s proposal as an attempt to destroy Social Security. As a result, Social Security continued its bleeding, and it now is on course to cut benefits by 25 percent over the next decade or two.

Thanks for nothing, saboteurs.

Frank Warner