Yeah, he and his family need to get the hell out of there.

This is what's known as a diplomatic solution.

Back when I was 10, people used to say "FACED" when they'd pull off an awesome sports move of some kind. Nobody says that anymore.

nekom: What about his family? Sounds like they are in every bit as much danger as he is.

They are leverage for the state to keep his mouth shut when he is abroad.

Great, now China has to find some other helpless shmuck to beat up.

Magorn: xenophon10k: I know what you're trying to do there, subby. But in this case, the guy really does want to study law.

really? Then there's a good chance he'll be headed to my Alma-mater in Chicago, they had an exchange program between their law school and the Univeristy of Beijing's. It really was fascinating to take Con Law with those guys. A lot of things we regard as the best things about our constitution, like say, the 1st amendment, they regard as counter-productive, if not actually morally wrong, since they allow a single person to disrupt the harmonious order of society as a whole.

Ingraining it into a culture is much more effective than a law and with their population size its the only way to keep some peace...

hdhale: Yeah, he and his family need to get the hell out of there.

Agreed, if they only let him go, the offer is pretty much worthless.

It kind of sucks that the sort of people who care about others enough to fight a system like that, can be coerced by threatening those they care about.

/Maybe we need more Sociopaths going into activism?

Hope he gets his wish to "escape" his current situation (along with his family)...


...not looking forward to Hillary parading around like she's Henry Kissinger and has saved all of China from oppression afterwards, however.

cgraves67: This is what's known as a diplomatic solution.

It's definitely a pretty good solution. China saves face, the guy (and presumably his family) gets to come to the US. In addition, China knows that dissidents that leave the country usually fade away. So that kinda gets him out of their hair.

As an aside, I'm amused by all the armchair diplomats out there bashing the state dept immediately. I mean like Obama or not, you gotta understand that any dealings directly with China are tricky. Give it at least some time to see what happens.

Anyway, best of luck to Chen and his family.

Magorn: xenophon10k: I know what you're trying to do there, subby. But in this case, the guy really does want to study law.

really? Then there's a good chance he'll be headed to my Alma-mater in Chicago, they had an exchange program between their law school and the Univeristy of Beijing's. It really was fascinating to take Con Law with those guys. A lot of things we regard as the best things about our constitution, like say, the 1st amendment, they regard as counter-productive, if not actually morally wrong, since they allow a single person to disrupt the harmonious order of society as a whole.

Yeah, taking philosophy classes with Chinese students was always interesting in the way it revealed the homogeneity of cultural assumptions in Western schools. For all that we talk about multi-culturalism, at least in Canada, I don't think we actually experience much. Immigrants, again for Canada, tend to be self-selecting and interested in fitting in.

Magorn: xenophon10k: I know what you're trying to do there, subby. But in this case, the guy really does want to study law.

really? Then there's a good chance he'll be headed to my Alma-mater in Chicago, they had an exchange program between their law school and the Univeristy of Beijing's. It really was fascinating to take Con Law with those guys. A lot of things we regard as the best things about our constitution, like say, the 1st amendment, they regard as counter-productive, if not actually morally wrong, since they allow a single person to disrupt the harmonious order of society as a whole.

That's the great thing about Klackons. The Hive Mind means a lack of even the desire for that kind of outspoken dissent.

Not a bad compromise for him. I figured whatever brought him to the hospital in Bejing was for sure going to end up being "fatal." I'd take the chance to get the fark out of dodge, if I were him.

Virulency: Magorn: xenophon10k: I know what you're trying to do there, subby. But in this case, the guy really does want to study law.

really? Then there's a good chance he'll be headed to my Alma-mater in Chicago, they had an exchange program between their law school and the Univeristy of Beijing's. It really was fascinating to take Con Law with those guys. A lot of things we regard as the best things about our constitution, like say, the 1st amendment, they regard as counter-productive, if not actually morally wrong, since they allow a single person to disrupt the harmonious order of society as a whole.

Ingraining it into a culture is much more effective than a law and with their population size its the only way to keep some peace...

How ingrained are those ideas really? For all our talk about the BoR, you're still pretty damn likely to get your head knocked in and spend a night in lockup if you participate in any protest of decent size, whether it's a "legal" protest or not. And while on the subject, what does it really say about how seriously we take the 1st when you must be granted a permit (which can be refused at the discretion of city officials for any reason) to practice it, and even then can only do so at certain places? One only needs to look at the reaction to the Occupy movement by those in authority to see how little regard there is for the 1st Amendment as a practical, practiced thing instead of as a platitude. Then there's the matter of how journalists who report stories the gov doesn't like tend to get harassed by the government in all manner of annoying and threatening ways, particularly if they travel over seas.

Under our current juris prudence, spending money = speech and publicizing government criminality and waste is a felony that can earn you years in prison; not exactly what the Framers intended according to the Federalist Papers.

poisonpill: cgraves67: This is what's known as a diplomatic solution.

It's definitely a pretty good solution. China saves face, the guy (and presumably his family) gets to come to the US. In addition, China knows that dissidents that leave the country usually fade away. So that kinda gets him out of their hair.

As an aside, I'm amused by all the armchair diplomats out there bashing the state dept immediately. I mean like Obama or not, you gotta understand that any dealings directly with China are tricky. Give it at least some time to see what happens.

Anyway, best of luck to Chen and his family.

Something the press has underreported in their rush to paint the administration as cynical on human rights is Jay Carney's remark that the goal of US diplomacy throughout has been to help Chen "accomplish his own goals." That surely entailed getting his family out of China, which would not have happened if the US had just said "sorry, we're keeping him."

In short, this is more than a "good compromise." This is an absolute triumph for Obama administration diplomatic efforts on behalf of human rights. It shows the kinds of things that can be accomplished if you don't swagger around swinging your dick saying "yer with us, or yer with the turrists."

But thanks to conservative, pro-Republican media bias, it will just be reported as a "good compromise," that the administration was "lucky" to get.

Wow, this is a hell of a diplomatic victory. If I was Clinton, I would've gone over there and said "Hey, this looks bad for both of us. What sort of situation can we create where we both walk away looking good?"

DontMakeMeComeBackThere: Hope he gets his wish to "escape" his current situation (along with his family)...


...not looking forward to Hillary parading around like she's Henry Kissinger and has saved all of China from oppression afterwards, however.

Hillary has actually been an excellent, hard working, Secretary of State overall. As somebody who opposed her rather strongly in the primaries in 2008, this has shocked the heck out of me. She's easily the best cabinet member in the Obama administration. It will be a loss for the country if she leaves in Obama's second term like she says she will.

Now, if we can just get Best Korea to negotiate in a rational manner.

edmo: poisonpill: It's definitely a pretty good solution.

They had a good solution before but China didn't honor it. Are you sure they will this time?

My understanding is the Central Government is totally in the "we give zero farks" about this guy stage. However he has beef with some province level people. So basically the Central Government promises him something to shut him up and get him out of the media, and then the province level folks don't honor the deal. From the sounds of that the Central Government is totally onboard with "Yeah go to UCLA or something and claim asylum. Whatever, just go away.".

StaleCoffee: Klac

I always liked the halflings for the extra food production and the slingers

Heron: Virulency: Magorn: xenophon10k: I know what you're trying to do there, subby. But in this case, the guy really does want to study law.

really? Then there's a good chance he'll be headed to my Alma-mater in Chicago, they had an exchange program between their law school and the Univeristy of Beijing's. It really was fascinating to take Con Law with those guys. A lot of things we regard as the best things about our constitution, like say, the 1st amendment, they regard as counter-productive, if not actually morally wrong, since they allow a single person to disrupt the harmonious order of society as a whole.

Ingraining it into a culture is much more effective than a law and with their population size its the only way to keep some peace...

How ingrained are those ideas really?

The idea of morality as "that which creates, promotes, or maintains harmony in society, particularly as concerns the state" predates the current government of China by literally thousands of years. It has been popular with the various governing bodies of that region for pretty much all of that time, and runs strong in most of the major philosophical schools of thought native to the region.

Needless to say, this is quite convenient for totalitarian regimes. Those who oppose them become villains seeking to suck all the order out of life.

oops wrong thread

Your Zionist Leader: StaleCoffee: Klac

I always liked the halflings for the extra food production and the slingers

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff slingers

I would pretend I was bombing halfling planets to radioactive dust in MOO2 when I went in to wipe out Gnolam colonies. Diplomacy was boring. The Sakkra always out-bred everyone anyway, better to bomb them too and break the diplomatic victory in favor of total military dominance.

Obama needs to research Powered Armor and Optronic Computers.

Magorn: Heron: Virulency: Magorn: xenophon10k: I know what you're trying to do there, subby. But in this case, the guy really does want to study law.

really? Then there's a good chance he'll be headed to my Alma-mater in Chicago, they had an exchange program between their law school and the Univeristy of Beijing's. It really was fascinating to take Con Law with those guys. A lot of things we regard as the best things about our constitution, like say, the 1st amendment, they regard as counter-productive, if not actually morally wrong, since they allow a single person to disrupt the harmonious order of society as a whole.

Ingraining it into a culture is much more effective than a law and with their population size its the only way to keep some peace...

How ingrained are those ideas really? For all our talk about the BoR, you're still pretty damn likely to get your head knocked in and spend a night in lockup if you participate in any protest of decent size, whether it's a "legal" protest or not. And while on the subject, what does it really say about how seriously we take the 1st when you must be granted a permit (which can be refused at the discretion of city officials for any reason) to practice it, and even then can only do so at certain places? One only needs to look at the reaction to the Occupy movement by those in authority to see how little regard there is for the 1st Amendment as a practical, practiced thing instead of as a platitude. Then there's the matter of how journalists who report stories the gov doesn't like tend to get harassed by the government in all manner of annoying and threatening ways, particularly if they travel over seas.

Under our current juris prudence, spending money = speech and publicizing government criminality and waste is a felony that can earn you years in prison; not exactly what the Framers intended according to the Federalist Papers.

But that's the thing: All your questions stem from the original suppositions that these limitations o ...

I see what you're saying; if we didn't popularly view those things as desirably, we wouldn't see the abuses I list as wrong.

As to how the Chinese view the issues I think it's really changes from one individual to another. You've dealt mostly with Chinese law students and from your experience they tend to downplay individual rights. In my experience, dealing primarily with Chinese engineering and comp sci students, they seem to generally like "Western" views on personal and civil rights, but take government interference as an inescapable nuisance that is best avoided by not sticking your head up too far. Coincidentally, this also means I've never encountered a bigger, better, more dedicated group of petty scofflaws as Chinese engineering and cop sci majors.

Millennium: Heron: Virulency: Magorn: xenophon10k: I know what you're trying to do there, subby. But in this case, the guy really does want to study law.

really? Then there's a good chance he'll be headed to my Alma-mater in Chicago, they had an exchange program between their law school and the Univeristy of Beijing's. It really was fascinating to take Con Law with those guys. A lot of things we regard as the best things about our constitution, like say, the 1st amendment, they regard as counter-productive, if not actually morally wrong, since they allow a single person to disrupt the harmonious order of society as a whole.

Ingraining it into a culture is much more effective than a law and with their population size its the only way to keep some peace...

How ingrained are those ideas really?

The idea of morality as "that which creates, promotes, or maintains harmony in society, particularly as concerns the state" predates the current government of China by literally thousands of years. It has been popular with the various governing bodies of that region for pretty much all of that time, and runs strong in most of the major philosophical schools of thought native to the region.

Needless to say, this is quite convenient for totalitarian regimes. Those who oppose them become villains seeking to suck all the order out of life.

People take that argument a bit too far, I think. For starters, there's the fact that we really don't have much of Kong Tzu's actually writings, but rather interpretations of them written by the Legalist scholars popular with the first warlord to stabilize the North China plain and establish another "empire" to follow Tzu's death. Secondly, what we do have is far less corporatist than is often portrayed by later commentators and places an emphasis on personal ethics, general political freedom for the populace, and the necessity of those in positions of authority listening to those they rule that is often over-looked. Thirdly, Chinese "dynasties" were historically less totalitarian than most people think. That isn't to say they were nice, or democratic, or that they weren't primarily exploitative, but rather that they were far less cohesive and far more dependent on regional leaders "buying in" to the central regime than we tend to acknowledge. Similarly, the concept that there has been a single, unbroken political system ruling China since the days of Qin is simply a myth. Qin's role in later Chinese history was more akin to that of Charlemagne inventing the idea of "Europe" or Ivan the Great inventing the idea of "Russia" than as the founder of a long-lasting political system.

More broadly, I think it gets the relationship between philosophy, government, and physical conditions backwards. I would argue that the physical conditions in the North China Plain were conducive to high populations and sprawling expansion, leading to war and to the centralized administrations necessary to win wars. These central governments then promulgated totalitarian philosophies that justified both their policies and their corrupt abuses while persecuting moral teachings that emphasized personal ethics and equal justice. As the large state of the North China Plain expanded into the central, then southern river valleys, then into the Western mountains and southern island chains, they took that propaganda with them, forcing it on the native populations. So it isn't that the Chinese are more acquiescent, but rather that they've had large, centralized States that exist purely for to perpetuate themselves sitting on their heads for a longer period of time, and that these regimes, much like similar ones in the West, propagate philosophies that valorize obedience and vilify dissent.

If this was Hillary's doing, then, dammit, I would have loved to see what she would have done with Elian Gonzalez.

/unless the raid was also her idea

cgraves67: This is what's known as a diplomatic solution.

I know. What gets me is how appropriate & simple it is.