Oh no! My new picture book "Why Mommy Loves the State" has only been
on Amazon a few days and already someone hates it! The first reviewer
calls it "preposterous" and even "juvenile"! How mean! He even seems
to think that Mommy doesn't love the state enough!
You can read the entire thing here (warning: the review contains SPOILERS).
...and of course you can download the book itself for FREE here.
If you go to YouTube and search "G20 police state Pittsburgh", you'll find a surprising number of videos that have been "removed due to terms of use violation." Check this out:
"G20 police state Pittsburgh" playlist
The pulled videos include a bunch of the now-famous Luke Rudkowski (of WeAreChange.org) bull-horning of the storm troopers. Videos straight from the WeAreChange channel though, seem to be intact:
I wonder what terms of use were violated -- or what the posters were told by YouTube. If anyone has time to look into this (I certainly don't), please post what you find out. Thanks!
Credit to Chuck Hicks who pointed this out.
So my sister is driving with her four-year old daughter, listening to the classical music station and at a news break, Barack Obama's name is mentioned. Her daughter, sounding excited at the recognition says, "Barack Obama!" And then here is how the conversation went...
My sister: What do you know about Barack Obama?
My niece: I don't know, but I think I've heard the name before.
My sister: He is our president... well, he's not MY president, but he is the president of the country we live in.
Niece: What's a president do?
My sister: Well, among other things, he likes to tell people what they can and can't do with their lives, and their money-
My niece: That's not good because he might think it's okay to do bad things, right? Like steal and shoot people!
My sister: Those are exactly the kind of things he does.
My niece: What does Rollin Paul think?
My sister: He thinks it's not okay to do those things. He doesn't think people should be allowed to steal or shoot people.
My niece: And, he's right! But Barack Obama is not right!
My sister: No, to be fair, it's not just Barack Obama that is the problem, it's the fact that there is a president at all that is the problem.
My niece: So, we just need to have no president. And then everything will be good.
Ann Lau, of the Visual Artists Guild sent out this note yesterday. She has a little more positive take on the demonstrations than I do. I hope she's right:
June 4, 2009 is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen
Massacre. For those of us who either witnessed it in person or through television and news report, what happened have left an indelible memory. When reporters went with President Nixon to China in 1972, they dutifully reported on how the Chinese people celebrated the Chinese Communist Party as if the Chinese were merely ants willingly give of themselves to the glorification of the State. The pro-democracy movement in the spring of 1989 found the Chinese people discoveringtheir courage to tell the truth of how they really felt about their government and shattered the myth so fervently believed by so many westerners - that the utopia of communism can be found in the Chinese people for these westerners wanted to believe that the Chinese are different from you and I.
Perhaps no westerner has been more influential in perpetuating such a myth than Edgar Snow, who visited China during the height of the Great Famine and reported that there was no famine. In fact, over 30 million people died during the famine of 1958-1962; it was the biggestman-made famine in the history of mankind. Edgar Snow did not live to see the 1989 pro-democracy movement but his widow did. When his widow tried to visit Ding Zilin, the founder of Tianamen Mothers, in 2000, she was prevented from doing so. It was only when she found herself being treated like a suspected dissident, that Mrs. Snow finally stopped being a collaborator of the myth.
The blood of Tiananmen became a salvation for the people in Eastern Europe. For on July 7, 1989, in the Hungarian capital of Bucharest, Gorbachev signaled to the Eastern bloc leaders that the Soviet Union would not use force to interfere with reform. Aware of worldwide condemnation of the PRC, Gorbachev did not want another Tiananmen massacre.
Just as the Tiananmen students began by asking for an end to corruption, the demonstrators in East Germany asked for the freedom to travel. The Tiananmen students showed the world the power of peaceful demonstration and the Eastern bloc took notice. By November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell.
We remember the dream, we remember the hope, we remember that time in the Spring of 1989 when the Chinese people, led by the students gave each other a gift, the gift of freedom, the freedom from fear.
May the memories of Tiananmen Spring live and will one day flourish.
Ann Lau
So my first thoughts, a couple of weeks ago when I realized what day it was going to be today, were “my God! Has it been TWENTY YEARS???” Twenty. Yes. Hard to believe.
I was renting a professor’s house in a small village next to the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I had just landed my first real journalism job, at a local business magazine, and was scheduled to start on Monday, June 6th. To make some money while looking for a job I had been teaching English at the Vietnamese refugee camps at night. On the night of June 3rd, I got home from teaching, late, and turned on the TV.
I remember sitting down on the floor, stunned and angry. I was desperate to “do something”, to write something that would change it all, but I had no idea what that might be.
The next day, June 4th, was a Saturday, and there was already a big demonstration planned in support of the demonstrating students. The previous weekend’s demonstration had flooded the streets with hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong’s “apolitical” residents. At least as many came out on June 4th, probably more -- despite rain, as I remember. This time though, they wore black armbands and carried signs denouncing Li Peng and Deng Xiao Ping. The demonstrations would continue for many more weeks, possibly months, until they eventually petered out.
I remember feeling at the time that the “good guys” would eventually win. They had to, right? I’m not sure when it dawned on me that they weren’t going to.
So today, seeing the commemorations and the media attention that will be gone by tomorrow, I feel sad, but I also feel that same anger and frustration. I keep seeing accounts of Chinese people who have no idea what happened twenty years ago. They’ve never even heard of it, or if they have, don’t know whether to believe the “rumors”. The “bad guys” won. They got away with murder and lived on to continue to rule by oppression. It shouldn’t be that way, and yet it is. The demonstrations haven’t changed a thing.
* * *
I’ve been back in the States now for nearly ten years, and here’s what has changed: I used to be very righteous in my condemnation of the Chinese government and, even more so, of the Chinese culture that seemed to accept tyranny so willingly. It’s a lot harder for me to dredge up that righteousness now.
Yes, the Chinese government is still evil. No, the US government does not yet practice anything quite as barbaric as the forced abortions of a “one-child” policy. But our government does imprison a higher percentage of “its” citizens than does the Chinese government -- a great many for crimes that are not real crimes. Much of our judicial system is a joke, and many many people waste years of their lives in prison because a judge or jury believed a police officer’s lies. And, as I wrote recently, “rule of law” seems to have been replaced by the brutality of “rule by man with badge and taser” -- what’s worse, most people seem to think that’s just fine. It’s getting harder and harder to point fingers at other cultures.
But I think what strikes me most today, twenty years after an event that all “right-thinking people” agree was horrific, is this: Waco.
When US government agents stormed the residence of the Branch Davidians in 1993, murdering over 70 people including 20 children, I don’t remember hearing any international outcry. I don’t remember anyone calling upon their government to boycott the brutal US regime, or to impose sanctions. Worse, I don’t remember many Americans getting incensed about it. I was living outside of the country at the time though, so maybe I missed the demonstrations that filled the streets back then.
The scale of the Waco massacre was much smaller than that of the Tiananmen massacre, to be sure. But one could argue that it was even less justified. The students and others in Beijing had at least antagonized the Chinese leadership with their demonstrations and demands for reform. While there is no excuse for the Chinese government’s response, there was at the very least something for them to respond to. A “crisis” in their eyes. The Branch Davidians were minding their own business on their own property. (Furthermore, had the authorities really been after David Koresh, there were plenty of opportunities for them to have arrested him while he was out in public prior to their siege.) The demonstrators at Tiananmen were there by choice, aware that they were risking retaliation by the government, while the Davidians were in their home -- many of them too young to even make such a choice. Yet when they were murdered in cold blood, the American people did not object.
I was at a screening of the documentary “Waco: The Rules of Engagement” a few years ago. The audience was mostly college students, and when the lights came up and people could ask questions, the most common refrain was “I didn’t even know about this!”
I don’t mean to deflect attention from the memory of those who died at Tiananmen Square twenty years ago. I do believe that they were heroic and brave people, fighting for a free society. They deserve to be honored.
But a couple of things strike me: First, that the moral line that separates the government of China from that of the US is a pretty thin one. Maybe it always has been and I just didn’t notice it so much until I was actually living here as an adult.
And second, demonstrations don’t really seem to change anything. I see that Victoria Park was packed again last night -- tonight -- and I guess that’s good. But what has it accomplished? Like sending off aid to African countries, only for it to be diverted to the thugs who keep those countries poor, demonstrations seem like an exercise in feeling good and righteous while accomplishing nothing. We get to feel like we’re “doing something”, speaking out against oppression or war. But does it really change anything? I wish someone would write in and prove me wrong about this. But I’ve never seen a public expression as moving and inspiring as the demonstrations in Hong Kong before and after the Tiananmen massacre. I’ve also never seen any evidence that they changed anything for the Chinese people.
Jack Spirko, in this LRC Podcast, makes a good point about "hoarding" -- in this case, food. The "Survival Podcast"er advises people to stock up on food supplies and to have at least a few months' worth on hand in anticipation of a worsening economy and even hyperinflation that could lead to civil unrest and food riots.
There is of course the economic argument for why hoarding something like food is beneficial: as more and more people buy up more and more of something, prices will go up, signalling producers to produce more of it -- which will then bring prices down again, but that's not the point. The point is that more of this thing people are valuing will be produced. That is not the point Spirko makes though. His point is that, if everyone took his advice, then when hyperinflation and associated economic calamity does hit, everyone will be well prepared for it, as opposed to a few days away from the (probably nonexistent at that point) soup kitchens, so no need for food riots. ...for a few months anyway.
So... if you want to help prevent food riots and related unrest, start stocking up now. And convince others to do the same.
I was on the road when my article on the police state appeared on the Campaign for Liberty site (see below), and pretty much upon our return, my husband and I set off for another trip -- our second to Louisiana to meet again with Dr. Collins. (I'll be blogging about that soon.) The upshot is that by the time I got around to checking out all the responses to my article, it was really too late to post responses of my own, and I would have liked to because there were some really great ones. This one in particular really stood out:
"I hear and have seen the results of the 'United States' increasingly
and ever expanding 'police state' for a number of years. For the past
few years, I've been keeping watch over the citizens who are stopped in
front of my house.
Most often, those 'non-white' people,
citizens or not, are routinely stopped for traffic issues and their
vehicles are searched (I have noticed how profiling is performed, just
by looking at the vehicles and the skin color over the years).
I
make sure the officers know I am watching by clearing my throat or
coughing. I've seen people ordered to lay on the ground while their
vehicles are searched. I've heard threats that their vehicles will be
impounded. While I watch and let my presence known, the orders become
softer and less severe threats are made. I call out to the officers to
offer to let the vehicles to be parked in my driveway when someone
lacks a drivers license; usually the 'perps' are allowed to call
someone who has a drivers license to come and pick up the vehicle -
since I've made my 'noise'.
It seems like my presence, and 'noise' does make a difference."
This is an amazing example to me of what every one of us who opposes the growing police state can do. It doesn't require belligerence or putting yourself in harm's way, all it requires is simply standing there and observing -- and making sure that the (real) perpetrators know that you're observing. As this guy can attest, it does make a difference in the officers' behavior. And while it may not seem like something that's going to eliminate the police state, I bet it makes a big difference to some of those people lying on the ground being threatened and yelled at.
From my latest article at Campaign for Liberty:
Ask anyone who has lived under a repressive regime and they can tell you how it changes people. There are the obvious things like the fear of the knock at the door in the middle of the night, the loss of control over even the most mundane aspects of one's own life and people using the apparatus of the state to settle personal grudges. But beneath all of these are deeper changes to the the way people behave and the way they treat each other. There is the unwillingness to smile or speak to strangers, or even to open up too much to friends for fear of information getting into the wrong hands. There is the widespread breakdown of trust between people, and then there is just the petty meanness that becomes more and more the norm.
Americans may not be living in a gulag state yet, but each day it becomes harder and harder to argue that we do not have significant elements of a police state. Along with this increased authoritarianism come the deeper cultural changes that have every bit as real an impact on the quality of our lives. For the costs brought by the loss of freedom cannot be fully accounted for simply by pointing to incidents of abuse or tallying up the economic damage. The deterioration in the quality of our relationships to each other is also a cost.
So I've been promising to start posting recaps of my show every week here. Here's the first one, for last Friday, May 1:
The topic was "swine flu, mandatory vaccination, civil liberties, genuine threats and mass hysteria."
I started by asking what, if anything, was different about Swine Flu that warranted the level of "concern" we've been seeing everywhere. I pointed to this article that quotes several epidemiologists, microbiologists, etc., as saying that at the present time it doesn't seem to be any more virulent or any more severe than any other strain of flu and that the only concern is that it could possibly mutate into something more dangerous.
A viewer (Dawn) pointed out that the Swine Flu seems to be killing young healthy adults, rather than the usual victims of flu who tend to be elderly, very young or those with compromised health to start out with. And yes, this does seem to have been the case in Mexico, where the disease first appeared, but not so elsewhere. From what I can see so far, there is no solid reason for fearing this flu any more than any "normal" flu strains.
I then talked about the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, which in case you don't already know about it, is a scary piece of legislation that (some variation of which) has been adopted by 44 states so far. In case you think that this is something only pure civil libertarians oppose, even the ACLU is against it!
Essentially, the Act gives the government power to force medical treatment and vaccination upon the population in the event of a broadly defined "public health emergency." This is very scary stuff for anyone who believes they own their own body and that nobody else has the right to tamper with it. It is doubly frightening for anyone who is skeptical of safety and efficacy of conventional medicine -- and of course even more so for those who know anything about how politicized medical science has become and what some of the more damaging consequences have been.
I did point out that hysteria can flow in many different directions, and that those of us who are concerned about this kind of legislation also need to be wary of the impulse to hysterics and hyperbole -- that what is most important is to be informed and to discern fact from fiction. In that spirit, and without, hopefully, sounding hysterical, I have to say that things like the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act scare me a LOT more than does the Swine Flu.
