I was listening to C-Span radio yesterday morning driving to work, and heard something remarkable – an intelligent, articulate, honest politician.
Representative Chris Smith R-NJ was discussing China, and the mind-boggling human rights abuses that go on there. It is country of slaves, with slave labor, forced abortion and no free speech. They have a shortage of 25 million women as a result of government policies, which drives the global sex trafficking market.
He was incredibly articulate and knowledgeable, and ripped Obama a new one for his failure to confront China, and his abuses of power. He would be a great candidate for president, unlike the buffoons the Republicans normally nominate.
To hear an American (any American) speaking on human rights, a laugh.
Matthew 7:3-5
King James Version (KJV)
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
The US has done more for human rights over the past 250 years than any country in history.
Steven, I greatly respect your information on Science, but with all respect having travelled and worked widely, USA is not utopia, it is not even pleasant. Please come outside and look in.
I have lived in South africa in 1980s, and the worst racial discrimination that I ever encountered was in Dayton Ohio. (One example; Me “Why are there no black taxi drivers?” Taxi driver ; “we would kill the ***ker”)
You can have free speech, but only in certain places. You have the right to freedom of movement, but not within 100 miles of the borders. You do not have to work for pennies in your penitentiaries, but then you will never get out. You have the right to a fair trial, but unless you take the plea bargain we will add another 10-20 charges.
The easiest description of USA was arrival at JFK at 07:30 on a very cold Saturday. At the passport desks, they told all Non-USA passport holders to stand back whilst the “citizens” went through, regardless of small children and elderly or pregnant women, and then as each flight arrived, again, we had to stand back for the “Citizen” newcomers.
This entitlement is evident in everything that US says and does.
In Sofia Bulgaria, in Feb 2003, an American, obviously attached to some state department was talking to his Bulgarian breakfast companion. How Hussein “probably” had this and that and may have done something else, etc. Any question of “facts” was by his fellow breakfaster was met with “do you want to take the chance?”. It was so loud and so blatant that 60% of the diners got up and left in disgust. Some 12 million people worldwide protested against the coming war and said that it was both wrong in factual basis and immoral.
Since 2003, I cannot think of any example of USA doing a thing for human rights. You do not extend the rights that you claim to anyone else, you trample on your own citizens rights under any pretext, and you have thrown the finest constitution and government outline of all time, onto the trash-heap of history.
In my lifetime you have engaged as the aggressor in over 200 armed conflicts, and they keep on increasing every week.
Most of the rights that you claim were won in England from the Norman kings, and are to a much larger extent, still available to an Englishman. Anyone in Europe has much greater freedom than an American, live in Brussels, Vienna or Cluj Napocca for a year or two and learn what being free is about. Feel what it is to never have to be anxious about a policeman.
I admire many things about individual Americans, but there is much about “America” which is to be abhorred.
Instead of Jingoism, (at which the English are rather expert) please apply the analytical thinking that is applied to science, to the politics that is America as the world sees it.
My brother-in-law knows that guy! He’s disgusting. Other Dayton cab drivers say he doesn’t take showers and says vile things about his passengers. America needs to do something about him.
Your comment is why I love Steve’s blog. You are the first person I’ve heard who actually witnessed the outrage. It was all over the papers in Sofia back then but the scandal since faded. People still remember it but since last year it was overshadowed by Nigel Farage insulting the Bulgarians.
http://www.novinite.com/articles/148678/Open+Letter+to+UKIP's+Nigel+Farage+on+Insulting+Bulgarians
Hi Colorado, Sorry I cannot remember the name of the hotel, but the dining room was in the basement and seated about 80 people. At breakfast there were about 40 – 50, and yes, I was one of the ones that left.
PJ, this may sound like an isolated anecdote to some but it was an event of great historical significance.
You were right there at the center of it. You should write it down in full detail with a thorough background research and publish it. There has been very little academic research on the Bulgarians since the fall of the Soviet Bloc and the closing of the Bulgarian Research Institute in Moscow (Taganskaya Ulitsa). The archives are still there but it’s all shuttered or filed away in warehouses.
Some of us who are older are well aware that our Constitution is now used as lew paper by the Criminals in DC politicians.
This is probably the worst of the most recent stomps: “Anti-Occupy” law ends American’s right to protest although nothing can beat the Patriot Act and the loss of The Law of Posse Comitatus: Police and military powers once statutorily divided are swiftly merging
Unfortunately our Justice/Jury system that should provide a major check on these problems is very very broken. link
The worst racism I’ve ever witnessed was in central Australia. Australian co-workers vocally using the word “nigger”, talking about running over aboriginals, making jokes about shooting aboriginals etc. Even the most racist Americans (and there are some) don’t go that far in public.
It’s hard to find world statistics on this, but as of 2010 over 8 percent of marriages in the US were “mixed race”. This is double Canada (but to be fair the US has more people of non-european descent and has been aggressively pushing desegration, while in most of Europe they’re still keeping immigrants in, well, ghettos.
But how about that sky rocketing aids crisis in SA huh, the one causing young girls to get raped because having sex with a virgin will cure AIDs. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/1362134/South-African-men-rape-babies-as-cure-for-Aids.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_cleansing_myth )
Or Lesbians getting raped because sex with a man cures Lesbianism? Wanna talk about rates of violent crimes in Pretoria? (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/crisis-in-south-africa-the-shocking-practice-of-corrective-rape–aimed-at-curing-lesbians-9033224.html)
Oh, and did you guys stop necklacing people, or just stop broadcasting it?
As to “freedom” in Europe, bullshit.
Every country in Europe has less freedom of speech (advocate for Nazism in Germany. Speak against Islam in England. England and most European governments have Prior Restrain written into law. We do not.
We have codified our right to defend ourselves in our federal constitution. In England (and to lesser extents Australia, NZ and a few European countries ) that right has been stomped on. This isn’t *just* about firearms, but about the right to use overwhelming force to stop someone who is attacking you (the doctrine of “reasonable force” is crap outside of a fistfight. You break into my home or you attack me w/out reason on the street and I should be able to do pretty much anything that doesn’t involve “collateral damage” to stop you. I have no duty to expose myself to risk because you have no respect for other people.
The biggest problem with this notion of freedom is the confusion between entitlements (health care, jobs) and freedom. National/socialized health care isn’t “freedom”, it’s just higher taxes and restrictions (in Canada for example it is illegal for doctors to offer private practice, so rich Canadians come to the US. Americans will often travel to other countries for cheaper treatment or for treatments not yet approved in the US. And yes, that approval process is a restriction on freedoms, but almost every industrialized/modern country has something like it.).
Yes, in Europe the lords and masters provide limited health care and housing for their peasants. Then again, so did slave owners in the American South (slaves largely sold to us by Europeans).
How much time have you spent in Iraq?
I spent a year there, and the USG was right about *almost* everything. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, he documented them after the first gulf war, then could produce neither the documents, nor the weapons for inspection. Where did they go?
He had a nuclear program. He had a biological weapons program on hiatus. He had a chemical weapons program that was probably moved (at least the materials) to Syria, and they’re now being used on the rebels there. We found traces and remains of chemical weapons, and we found several bunkers on a military base filled with drums labeled (more or less) “insecticide”–at least according to a couple soldiers I talked to.
You know the difference between insecticide and nerve gas? Yeah, not much.
Saddam was subverting the oil for food programs on both sides of the system–funneling money to the UN Secretary Generals son and that jackass British MP (sorry, can’t remember the names off the top of my head). On his side he wasn’t spending the money on food, he was building palaces and feeding his enemies to his lions (well, not literally. Most of the bodies wound up in the ponds around his Palaces). Of COURSE European Elites were against it. They were against it and providing groups like ANSWER fodder for their street marches. Then again they (almost) all provided some troops. I met Australians (no, not Europens) and Albanians while I was there
How about the rights of them Marsh Arabs huh? Oh, and the Kurds. Yeah, Europe really gave a shit about THEM didn’t it.
So basically you’re full of it.
Oh, and one other thing about American Entitlement. When a tsunami hit Indonesia the closest consulate released a rather large sum of money from it’s local fund without even consulting D.C. Something like 100k *immediately*. Sailors and Marines spending their christmas in IIRC Hong Kong had their liberty (term of art) canceled and were steaming south as soon as they could be gathered in one of the most AWESOME relief delivery vehicles ever made (a US Nuclear Air Craft Carrier).
The USG contributed at least 100 million in additional aid, and the US *CITIZENS* reached into their pockets (not through taxes, but this thing we call “charity”) and gave over 3 billion US dollars to help non-white, non-christian, non-americans.
Heck, even the Iranian earthquake in (IIRC 2005) we were sending aid, and we were basically at war with them in Iraq.
William O. B’Livion,
You always have to be careful to separate the US government and the American people.
Americans are one of the most generous people in the world. At this point the politicians in DC…
I can’t think of words fit for public use.
William, You are entitled to your opinion, I spent 3 years in Kuwait (not swaggering around in a uniform) and the Americans were detested, by the Kuwaitis. If an American was stupid enough to eat in a Kuwaiti restaurant you literally “Ate S***”.
I hear everything you said, but you are wrong on so many points, You take a couple of nonsense stories and make out that it is SA. SA has had mixed marriages, 4 million people going back 300 years. Half your population believe that the world was created in 6 days, 5000 years ago.
I have lived in half a dozen European countries, worked in 7 African countries and in both North and South America (only short [several months] contracts) You once left the mighty USA to go and destroy a country.
You are the only person on earth who believes the the Nukes and WMD story please give it up. (WTC 7 fell down in sympathy with 1 & 2)
If it makes you feel better to think the things you do, then go ahead, but do not expect others, better informed, to agree with you.
Listen to “Network, what makes America the greatest country on earth” carry on dozing sport, reality has a way of forcing you to pay attention at some point in time.
OMG! Citizens are let through? No way!!! Let’s let all outsider in without any safeguards at all. And a guy talking loud in a restaurant? Say it ain’t so. My goodness, you’d think he was FREE to speak or something. The US is often the aggressor at the behest of those being oppressed. No country has freed more people than the US. This is a fact. If you can’t tolerate it, then imagine a world like the one in Iran where they are under Sharia law and just changing religion to one that isn’t Islam gets you the death penalty. How’s that for free Iran? Women are second class citizens at best.
Is the US trampling its constitution? Absolutely. Look at what the liberals are doing with climate change, gun rights, first amendment rights, etc. But the irony is that your anger seems to be targeted at the wrong side. You don’t dislike the US. It’s pretty obvious you dislike Republicans because you’ve been told things your entire life that aren’t true.
Since 2003, the US is in countries all around the world doing peacekeeping because they can’t get enough help from allies to do it. But they do it anyways because it’s the right thing to do. Canada, Australian, many European countries do help out, but their manpower is dwarfed by the US. If the US left those countries, the world would become destabilized not tomorrow, but right now. You really need to pull your head out and bring it where sunlight can reach it.
This is just wrong. It’s always the same:
The Bulgarians get thrown in for the sake of an argument. Then they are ignored again as if they never existed. The same thing happened to them through their long history. They’ve been used as chessboard pieces in the struggles among great powers by the Roman Empire, Attila the Hun, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Greater Serbia, the British Empire, the Vatican, The Soviet Union and the Third Reich, and now by PJ London.
If I were a Bulgarian, I wouldn’t stand for it.
Steve: The US has done more for human rights over the past 250 years than any country in history.
re: PJ London June 4, 2014 at 12:06 pm:
Steven, I greatly respect your information on Science, but with all respect having travelled and worked widely, USA is not utopia, it is not even pleasant.
I don’t see any connection between what you wrote and what Steve wrote; are you drawing up a strawman? Or perhaps English is not your native language?
.
What rights has the USA demonstrated to the world? What rights do you still have in the USA?
You live at the whim of the Judiciary and an increasingly thuggish police force. Many countries have better rights records and have far better judiciary records. Much of which I pointed out in the comment.
You claim to support rights, in Saudi, in Bahrain, in Egypt, in Ukraine, in fact anywhere that has resources that your corporations want, rights are waived in the pursuit of profit.
Even places like Iran has much greater freedoms now than under the US installed Shah.
One of the points that I was making, is that in America, the law says that there is Racial equality, but in my observation during my time there (Dayton) it was far less equal than SA, but carried out in a way that was both cruel and dishonest. (I only gave one example, but the divide in staffing, in restaurants and in services was far greater than in SA at that time. The general social divide between black and white was also far greater than in SA), The Mixed Marriages act was repealed in 1985 in SA but only overturned in US in November 2000 (Alabama) , yet some Americans ignore history and climb on a high moral horse to preach to the rest of the world.
In my limited experience, living in US (Approx 1 year) and working for US companies (approx 7 years) you pay lip service to rights and proclaim loudly how wonderful it all is, but in reality you do everything to undermine and bypass anyone’s rights in the chase after the almighty dollar.
Your one year taught you nothing. Let’s go with facts and screw opinion.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World
Does Nik have a brother across the pond?
Gator, in this case PJ London is correct.
I will NEVER EVER board a plane in the USA again because of TSA. I loved to fly and I have landed in foreign airports with soldiers with machine guns, however what is being done to Americans has NOTHING to do with security it is ALL about intimidation. It is about accustoming us to a police state.
The Israeli airport security solved the security problem and the USA could have followed their lead but didn’t instead they rather abuse little old ladies and crippled toddlers, while they leave our southern border wide open and turn lose five terrorists.
We have a major problem in this country and refusing to look at it is not helping.
It is not the government. As PJ London said our Constitution is one of the best. What is our problem is the people that end up in seats of power in our government and then abuse that power to twist our Constitution to make it say what they want it to say or just ignore it completely.
As that article on America’s Ruling Class said we now have a bureaucracy and government run by a privileged class united in having the same ideas, tastes and habits and a goal of POWER for themselves. A ruling class that is NOT supported by the public.
The author summed it up nicely:
Gail, the Israelis have a (relatively) small number of flights, and profile the living hell out of people. No, they won’t admit it, but people in my former industry familiar with their procedures, yeah, they profile.
That would NEVER fly in the US.
I won’t defend the TSA. Nobody who knows the first thing about security thinks that what they are doing significantly enhances security, and yes the net effect is that people are more used to “Papers Please”. But remember where this model started.
William O. B’Livion,
On TSA. If we really had a problem and the government ACTED like there was a problem, I could understand. But the US government only acts like they consider US citizens to be the enemy. There is ZERO indication that they consider outsiders to be a threat. Heck they even gave the Saudis a free pass link and most of the 9/11 terrorists were supposedly Saudi!
Comment on Napolitano and NOT defending the Southern Border
Comment on militarized police
SO excuse me if a smell a big stinking rat when it comes to the Patriot Act, losing Posse Comitatus, Militarization of our police with all the abuses, and TSA. It does not go well with the LACK of concern over illegal immigration, stripping border security personnel and national guards from our south border and Napolitano reneging on the promised border fence from the LAST time we had amnesty for illegals shoved down our throats.
Some of use can connect the dots and see there are two different sets of dots and they add up to Americans being in the cross hairs of the US government and not ‘Terrorists’ This latest move of Obummer’s is just another dot saying the same thing.
Gail, this is the comment to which I was referring…
“PJ London says:
June 4, 2014 at 11:16 am
To hear an American (any American) speaking on human rights, a laugh.”
Nik has a brother across the pond.
No Gail, PJ’s biggest problem is to smear all of 300. Plus million people from bits of anecdotal an meager experience. This would be akin to my extrapolating from my shit experience in SA, meager but more substantial than PJ’s. Did I find nice people in SA, of course. Did I find rectal orifices in SA, of course again. But to have the arrogance to generalize is moronic. No sub-group of humanity haas cornered the market on stupidity, except individuals drawing firm conclusions about the same.
To Deebrrr and all those “America right or wrongers”.
I was pointing out the hypocrisy of Americans, anyone who believes that America has any regard for human rights has been sleeping for the last 20 years at least.
In my comment I said “I admire many things about individual Americans”, but you and others ignore this and say that I am attacking 300 million people.
I gave individual examples of the general hypocrisy, there were too many to list, so I am accused of drawing generalities from specifics. To do so would be “moronic” but to claim that this is the case, without reading the threads, is truly moronic. One writer goes on about the abuses of other regimes (as though this excuses America) but fails to point out that these are the very regimes that America has installed and supports. Others raised Mixed marriages without the knowledge that the despised “Apartheid” regime repealed the law 15 years before America repealed the same law.
You and others wish to continue screaming USA, USA, USA without any effort to understand what you are shouting for. It is not the USA of Jefferson, Thoreau, Franklin it is not the USA of Twain, Mencken, Fred Reed and Hunter Thompson. That is gone dead and buried. It is the USA of Nixon, Clinton (who did not have sex with her) Bush (Mission accomplished) and just when the world thought that it could not possibly get worse, you gave us Obama.
Colorado dismisses what I say with condescension and sarcasm, James puts his fingers in his ears and shouts STFU, Jim doesn’t bother to read and says maybe English is not my native language.
Not one of them has discussed that America (and Americans) are not hypocrites.
I marched against the Iraq war, and hated the Pols who gave it to us, but that does not remove my responsibility for the evil visited on the people of Iraq. 500,000 children died from sanctions before the war even started but America felt it was a price worth paying.
You rail against Muslims, but not one in 10,000 could explain the difference between Shia and Sunni, never mind the difference between Wahabbi and Sufi, it does not matter to them, just call them all evil and that justifies murdering their children.
You are being led around by sheep and do not even try to see what is happening.
….. These are the report’s exact words:
War can be used to arouse human passion and patriotic feelings of loyalty to the nation’s leaders. No amount of sacrifice in the name of victory will be rejected. Resistance is viewed as treason. But, in times of peace, people become resentful of high taxes, shortages, and bureaucratic intervention. When they become disrespectful of their leaders, they become dangerous. No government has long survived without enemies and armed conflict. War, therefore, has been an indispensable condition for “stabilizing society.”
The organization of society for the possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer…. It has enabled societies to maintain necessary class distinctions, and it has insured the subordination of the citizens to the state by virtue of the residual war powers inherent in the concept of nationhood.”
1966 Report from Iron Mountain.
….
You do not care about the bad manners of officials and government, not until you get beaten up at a traffic stop. Not one person said at the Airport, this is wrong, to treat people even non-citizens in this manner is wrong. Your constitution talked about people not about citizens, but you now allow your courts and government to differentiate and say that it is OK to hold people without charge indefinitely. Well your turn as an American is coming in your own country, who will stand up for you then?
You not only tolerate (encourage?) immorality you insist that others share your lack of values.
“Rome tolerated every abominable practice, embraced every foul idea in the name of freedom and the rights of the common man. Citizens no longer carried on deviant behavior in private, but pridefully displayed it in public. It was those with moral values who could no longer freely walk in a public park without having to witness a revolting display.
What happened to the public censors who protected the majority of citizenry from moral decadence? Did freedom have to mean abolishing common decency? Did freedom mean anyone could do anything they wanted anytime they wanted, without consequences?”
? Francine Rivers, A Voice in the Wind
Before 2000, there were websites such as Freerepublic, where people discussed the Constitution and government in civilised tones, differing opinions were welcomed as a chance to express and debate, thereby enabling both sides to learn. Now every discussion turns into abuse of Democrats and Republicans, as though there is a scrap of difference between them.
You believe that you are Exceptional, well you are, but not in the manner that you would like to believe. Travel (live with) and meet the rest of the world, and you will return home humbled.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
? Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
I am truly saddened by the decline, as my children and their children are currently working and living in the USA, they are contributing to the wellbeing of Americans by being productive, (Americans could not match their skills and the US issued a Green Card) but fortunately, they spend their leisure reading reading classics and studying at one of the world’s finest universities.
Hopefully at least one person will read this and say “you know what, maybe, just maybe he has a point, I must think about what he said” but perhaps I set my expectations too high.
How do we confront China when they own us??
America unchained! 😉
Smith isn’t going to burst out of the New Jersey hermetic bubble without Paul Singer’s patronage, and Christie has that locked up.
I like the way Chris Smith on his site lists the laws he wrote, bills he wrote and bills he sponsored up front and center in large type. if you click it is all neatly laid out and arranged by category. This is someone PROUD of what he has done and willing to show it.
Compare that to two faced RINO Richard Burr link
When you try to find what he has done he links you to THOMAS(Dot)gov Legislative Information, Library of Congress or to a fine print chart of his voting record. Also there is NOTHING about the bills/laws he wrote.
You have to spend hours sifting through stuff to figure out what he has actually done and what his stand is.
I called Burr before his last election and asked his stance on the Food Safety Modernization act. His office said he was very much opposed to the bill. After the election I called and asked WHY he had not only voted for the bill but CO-Sponsored it and why they LIED? I was fed a real song and dance about the bill having been changed to protect small farmers. What a huge crock of Bovine feces!
William O. B’Livion says:
June 4, 2014 at 7:17 pm
For the proverbial record, Willy is an idiot.
Which still puts him a few limbs higher on the evolutionary tree.
I have lived in half a dozen European countries, worked in 7 African countries and in both North and South America
=========================================================================
Wear out your welcome rather quickly do you? Tell you what; when you can document in this country mass gay hangings, FGM, stonings, rape trials needing three male witnesses for the victim, death for leaving Islam and genocide for not converting, post’em up and I’ll agree you have a point. Until then, STFU
This country gave up 116,516 young men to save your ass from the Huns in 1917-18 and 405,399 to save your ass from Hitler and Tojo. All we asked for in return was a spot of dirt to bury our dead. If that’s not worth respect from you, I could give a $hit. Live out your miserable little life; I’ll celebrate mine.