Daily Archives: October 16, 2019

This month, China celebrates 70 years of Communist party rule. They marked the occasion in Beijing with painstakingly choreographed military parades and displays of new weapons, such as hypersonic drones and intercontinental ballistic missiles. But in Hong Kong, long-suffering protests turned violent and worked directly against Chinas power show of unity and strength.

Protests in Hong Kong have been marching on since late last March, originally fighting against an extradition bill which would have allowed for criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China, according to the BBC. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets and, eventually, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said the bill would be suspended indefinitely. Protesters werent having it and demanded the bill be permanently withdrawn. It eventually was in September.

But the response of Hong Kongs police force and the hardening response from mainland China have only bolstered protesters. Protesters have demanded many things, from the withdrawal of the riot description given to protesters, universal suffrage for the elections of Hong Kongs parliament or the resignation of Lam. The protests came to a head last week when a protester was shot with a live round for the first time.

Celebrating a false, demoralizing sense of unity in China and its territories is nothing short of barbaric. Its the pan and circus of the modern era, distracting society from their overbearing death and destruction with carefully programmed, ready-for-public demonstrations of might and power.

People have been marching for months on end, suffering shots from rubber bullets, tear gas, losing their jobs and, in the worst cases, being arrested and thrown in jail; all while the political and wealthy elite celebrate the corrupt system that placed them in those positions of power. They demonstrate that power with military and police, showing off their overwhelming might with monstrous force.

President Trump wrote an off-color tweet congratulating China on its 70-year celebration, going to show how backward and divided opinion has become about Chinas Communist party and treatment of its citizens. Americans, and specifically Republicans, have been against the very notion of communists for more than half a century, especially when there is overwhelming evidence of that Communist nation cracking down on personal freedoms and expression.

China is better at nothing than the repression of personal freedom, from outlawing images of ghosts and homosexuality on screen, to the repression of its Muslim citizens and the protests still in full swing in Hong Kong, which only continue to grow more violent.

The birth of Chinas communist nation bore only sorrow and death. None [of all the planned utopian economies of the 20th century] was more deadly or dehumanizing no government has murdered, tortured, imprisoned and terrorized more of its own people than communist China, according to the New York Post. Its economic status may be on the rise and its GDP second only to the United States, but Chinas demonstration of old fashioned, 1950s era military power and crackdown of personal freedoms is nothing short of reprehensible.

The only silver lining here is the fact that the extradition bill which sparked these protests in the first place has been officially withdrawn. Maybe there can be a future in China where peoples voices are heard; where change can be made. For now, that change is regulated to Hong Kong, where the laws of China are shaky, and its citizens wary of their oppressor.

Maria Pawlak is a political science and English double major freshman who was always the penultimate runner when she did high school cross country.

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Celebrations in communist China hide realities of violence and oppression - Lamron

President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday stressed the importance of the role the public played in the countrys democracy and promised the governments support in achieving better democracy.Speaking at a ceremony in Busan to commemorate the Busan-Masan Democratic Protests of 1979, Moon also stressed the need for the governments power organizations not to lose sight of democracy, an apparent barb aimed at the prosecutors office.

Our democracy has ceaselessly improved, and grows ever larger. Every time democracy faced a crisis, the people revived democracy through action, Moon said, adding that the democratic processes are now spreading to the workplace and homes.

The Busan-Masan Democratic Protests began Oct. 16, 1979, sparked by a series of events that began earlier that year. At the protests, students and citizens called for an end to political oppression and to the dictatorial rule of the Park Chung-hee regime, and on Oct. 18 former President Park Chung-hee responded by declaring martial law in the region. In the process of suppressing the protests, more than 1,500 people were arrested and more than 100 citizens tried in military court.

Last year, Oct. 16 was designated as a national day of commemoration, and this years ceremony was the first national event to remember the Busan-Masan Democratic Protests.

The Busan-Masan Democratic Protests were a great struggle that opened the dawn of democracy by overthrowing the Yushin dictatorship, Moon said, describing the period as the longest and harshest dictatorship in Korean history.

The Yushin dictatorship refers to the latter part of Parks rule, from 1972 until his assassination in 1979. Under the Yushin Constitution imposed by Park, the president had sweeping powers.

In his speech, Moon also stressed the need to reform government organizations.

No authority can rule over the people as long as we have the great history of democracy movements, Moon said, going on to list various democracy movements of the past, including the candlelight rallies that led to the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye.

Saying the public is demanding better democracy, Moon went on to stress the importance of reform within the government.

All power organizations must bear in mind that they exist not for the sake of the organization but for the people, Moon said. The term power organizations refers to government bodies that wield power over the public, including the prosecutors office.

Moons comment has been taken by some as being directed at the prosecutors office, which has been accused of wielding unbridled power. In recent weeks, the prosecution has also been accused by some of using its powers to attack former Minister of Justice Cho Kuk.

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)

Link:

Moon stresses peoples role in democracy - The Korea Herald

Sometime ago, before Turkey chosefirstto lurch further into the deadly embrace of Islamismand later under the growing dictatorship of Recep Tayip Erdogan, I received a plea from ahighly educatedKurdish friend who was supportive of Israel's epic struggle to survive among its hostile Arab neighbors. He was devoted to the Jewish people for he knew ofboththe sharedvalues and evenethnicities existingbetween Jews and Kurds dating back millennia.

Here is some of my Kurdish friend's impassioned letterfrom ten years ago, whichwas in reply to my American Thinker article of June 2010 titled,Israeli and Kurdish victims of Turkey.In his reply, heuncannily warned againstthe thenalliance of Israelwith Turkey:

"I wish the Jews in Israel and abroad would know better about the policy of their leaders concerning the Kurds, because it happens in the name of Israel, and that should matter to all Jews. Turkish oppression of the Kurds is unknown to most Israelis. It is hard for me to understand how Israel's cooperation with Turkey does not take into account the misery that it imposes upon the Kurdish people who yearn, as the Jews have for centuries, to be free from terror and persecution?

in 1966, Mustafa Barzani, told a visiting Israeli emissary, Arieh Lova Eliav, that. In truth, only the Jews cared about the Kurds."Not so long ago, the Jews in Europe endured the Shoah (he used the Hebrew term for the Holocaust - VS) and they know better than anyone else the horrors of that experience.

He went on to add the following:

"Of course it's not only Israel but the whole world that is pro-Turkish and anti-Kurdish. It is not fair to criticize Israel only, but given the history of the Jewish people, there should be a heightened sensitivity towards Kurdish suffering.

"We Kurds have shared so much culture together and we still remember fondly the Jews who lived with us for centuries. But the Turks waxed and waned in their attitude towards the Jews; sometimes they were tolerant and sometimes hostile. There are many Turks today who share Islamist ideas and proclaim hostility towards the Jewish state. Within Turkey lies the same anti-Jewish pestilence that exists throughout the Arab and Persian world.

"I remember your moving article (Who truly deserves a state? The Kurds or the Palestinians?American Thinker, February, 2012) in which you categorically made clear that the people who truly deserve an independent sovereign state are the Kurds; not the Palestinians. I also feel deeply that one day there will be an abiding and honorable alliance between the Jewish state and a free and independent Kurdistan. But arming Turkey, our people's oppressor, is morally and geographically not to Israel's advantage.

"Israel's cooperation with Turkey is, in reality, a misguided support for political Islam and its oppression of the Kurds. It undermines Israel's credibility with the only true friend it has in the Middle East."

Now in hindsight, it is glaringly obvious how correct my Kurdish friend's warningthoseten years agowas.Erdogan has sought every opportunity to break Turkeys erstwhile friendship with the Jewish state and now he seeks a veritable caliphate in the Islamic world while garnering to himself those, like Hamas, who harbor deep hostility towards Israel.

Turkey is an enemy of both Israel and the Kurdish people.Returning to ten years ago, my friend was writing asTurkish troops were invading Kurdish territoryand jet aircraft were bombarding Kurdish villages. At that time,just as now, Turkish tanks were rolling into Kurdish held territory and Kurds were dying. (Erdogans Not-So-Sublime Porte.American Thinker, September 2011).

He wrote withmore pointed criticism of the Israeli leadership's shortsightednessduring that period often years ago.He defended without question what he called Israel's cause and the undying truth that Jews are the rightful owners of the historic Jewish lands - now partially occupied by thefraudulentArabswho call themselves Palestinians. But he also pointed out that, "the legitimate arguments and rights Israel has are the same rights and truths it denies in its official policy towards the Kurds. For now and for the future, everything looks black. I fear the worst for us. The whole world is against us, and on the Turkish side there is no change...."

And as todays events are taking place, with Turkey onceagain invading Kurdish territory, this time in northern Syria, things do look black. During Menchem Begins premiership, military humanitarian aid was given by Israel to the Kurds for several years from 1965 and the United States also provided such aid. But suddenly the U.S. Government proscribed any further such assistance from both the U.S. and Israel in 1975.

Indeed, from 1961, the Jewish state was the only nation to actively support Kurdish aspirations. According to Mordechai Nisan in his booke, Minorities in the Middle East, published by McFarlane in 2002, the Kurdish leader in 1966, Mustafa Barzani, told a visiting Israeli emissary, Arieh Lova Eliav, that. In truth, only the Jews cared about the Kurds.

During the period when a succession of left-leaning Israeli governments were in power, Israel supplied Turkey with UAVs, which were used against the Kurds. This was admittedly before the increasingly Islamized Turkish regime turned on Israel. Under leftist Israeli leaders, including Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni, the Jewish state had sadly copied the mendacious policies of other mostly European nations namely putting political and commercial expediency above morality. These leftwing leaders should have known of the agony the Kurdish people were enduring, then as now, not only from Turkey but also from Iran, Iraq and Syria.

I remember an article by the wonderful Ruth King condemning Turkeys appalling decision in 1941 during the height of World War 2. The Struma, which wascarrying 769 Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazi German killing machine, wasforbiddento landits terrified men, women and childrenin Turkey. Instead the ship was cruellyforced to remain as a rotting and leaking hulk drifting off the Turkish coast. It was eventually torpedoed, presumably by a Russian submarine,with appalling loss of life.

With the reality of Israel's reconstitution as a sovereign nation inherancestral andBiblical homeland has come the equal reality ofheruniqueness within an oftenhostile world.Israel shares with the Kurds a familial fate. Both endure relentless aggression from their neighbors. Even thoughIsraellives in a terrible neighborhood and desperately seeks friends,shemust neverevadeherunique responsibility towards the Kurdish people, who also suffer from the depredations of their hostile neighbors -byIran, Syria,Iraqand,last but not least,byTurkey.

Ialsoremember an article in theNew York Sunon 6 July,2004 titled "The Kurdish Statehood Exception," in which Hillel Halkin exposed the discrimination and double standards employed against Kurdish aspirations of statehood. He wrote:

"The Kurds have a far better case for statehood than do the Palestinians. Kurdish people have their own unique language and culture, which the Palestinian Arabs do not have. They have had a sense of themselves as a distinct people for many centuries, which the Palestinian Arabs have never had. They have been betrayed repeatedly in the past 100 years by the international community and its promises, while the Palestinian Arabs have been betrayed only by their fellow Arabs."

During the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds were gassed and slaughtered in large numbers. They suffered ethnic cleansing by the Turks and continuedto beoppressedby thethenTurkish government, whose foreign minister at the time, Ahmet Davutoglu, had the gall to suggest, at a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that Turkey supports the oppressed of the world. He ignored his own government's oppression of the Kurds,but predictably named the anti-JewishHamasthugs in Gaza as "oppressed." On the basis of pure realpolitik, the legality and morality of the Kurds' cause is infinitely stronger than that of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.

In contrast,after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds displayed great political and economic wisdom.How different from the example of the Gazan Arabs who, when foolishly given full control over the Gaza Strip by Israels Ariel Sharon, chose not to build hospitals and schools, but instead bunkers and missile launchers. To this they have addedtunnels andthe imposition ofIslamic Sharia law, with its attendant and barbaric denigration of women and non-Muslims.

The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory's current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world.

The Jewish statemust now, more than ever, not ignore the35-40 millionKurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries,nay millennia,but have been denied;an independentKurdishstate of their own.

According to an article titled "Can Israel make it alone?" written some years ago by James Lewis in theAmerican Thinker, Lewis wrote: "Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests - like survival."He realized that with the stark realityof a profoundlyunfriendly Obama Administrationtowards the Jewish state,creating facts on the ground was moreimportant than ever. He wrote:

"If the United States abandons the Jewish State, Jerusalem will have to seek new alliances."Fortunately that is what Prime Minister Netanyahu successfully and largely has achieved. Since then Israel enjoys the friendliest American President it has ever experienced, but there is never any guarantee that a president will succeed to a second term.

Turkey has now chosen to break its alliance with Israel and instead has sought alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria, along with the Hamas occupied and terrorist infested Gaza Strip.Under Erdogan it has turned on Israel with a viciousness that isquitedesolating. It is a nation turning its back upon the Ataturk secular revolution of the 1920s. Instead, it is sliding remorsefully back to the 7thcentury mindset and cesspit that so many of its neighbors wallow in.

Israel shouldadvancethe restoration of a profoundly just, moral and enduring pact with the Kurdish people, and assistance towards creating a future independent State of Kurdistan.An enduring alliance between Israel and Kurdistan would be a vindication of history, a recognition of the shared sufferings of both peoples, and bring closer the advent of a brighter and strategically stronger future for both non-Arab nations.

Victor Sharpes four volumes ofPoliticde: The attempted murder of the Jewish state,areavailable at LuluPress or on Amazon.com

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Israel and Kurdistan - time for an alliance of the ages. - Arutz Sheva

(Pixabay)The governor of Tennessee has issued a proclamation. Approximately 49 other governors would do well to follow his example.

Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee has proclaimed today a day of prayer, humility, and fasting. There are, by my count, approximately 49 other governors who would do well to follow his example. A president, too.

And 327.2 million Americans.

The proclamation reads, in part: We seek forgiveness from our transgressions; from acts of discrimination, oppression, and injustice; and inaction caused by greed, pride, and indifference; for these and many more we ask forgiveness. ... The people of Tennessee acknowledge our rich blessings, our deep transgressions, and our complex challenges, and further acknowledge the need to give thanks to God Almighty, to turn from our transgressions and ask for Gods forgiveness, and to humble ourselves and seek Gods wisdom and guidance.

The carefully ecumenical wording of the document (insufficient to prevent predictable and predictably stupid criticism) is modern in its sensibility, but the governors proclamation is connected to an ancient tradition, an honorable and intelligent one one that is of particularly urgent relevance at this moment in our national history. Humility is a rare commodity in the halls of power. So is wisdom, even the modest wisdom necessary to comprehend the need for greater wisdom.

In the Bible, God from time to time threatens His people with bad political leadership, known as a curse then just as it is here in our own time. God threatens to deprive His people of the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient ... the honorable man, and the counselor. Instead, He thunders: I will give childrento betheir princes, and babes shall rule over them. The following lines contain a word that recurs throughout Scripture: oppressed. The people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbor: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honorable.

Oppressed in this usage often means the domination of the weak by the powerful: The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble; He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry; He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor. The good man is commanded: Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. The oppressed are the poor, the orphans, and the widows those who have no friend to plead their cause for them and no strong hand to secure justice and their rights. The Bible foreshadows a certain strain of modern libertarian rhetoric by characterizing the treatment of the oppressed as robbery. No doubt the robbery of that time was more direct and literal than the softer modes of oppression experienced in modern democratic states. But the way in which, for example, certain municipalities use the poor as cash cattle, plaguing them with excessive court fees and fines for relatively petty violations (and charging them high interest rates on payment plans) fits snugly into the pattern of oppression that Isaiah condemned.

Perhaps it is the case that God has made good his ancient threat not on the original Israelites but on us, the little startup republic that had the temerity to model itself on their kingdom. If we are governed by children, they are very bad children, indeed. (Bad, bad, elderly children.) It is not the case, as the proverb insists, that in democracies the people always get the government they deserve. But we do get the kind of government we will tolerate. Our dueling partisanships are intoxicating in both senses of that word: pleasurable and poisonous. But like any other addiction, it holds power over us only to the extent that we permit it to do so. Addictions can be very difficult to break getting over them may be hard, but it is not complicated: You put the plug in the jug.

We are a strangely ungrateful people. We talk about the carnage of the American condition as we live lives of wealth and ease that John D. Rockefeller could not have imagined. If you want to see carnage, fix your eyes, if you can stand to, upon the Kurdish allies we have just abandoned to massacre at the hands of the Turkish dictator in an act of shockingly dishonorable cowardice.

Theyre doing penance in Tennessee today. So should we all.

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A Day of Prayer and Fasting - National Review

The US has blacklisted 28 Chinese public security bureaus and companies over Beijings treatment of Uighur Muslims and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities. (Reuters file)

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In July 2009, days after violent riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighurs, Chinese authorities took the drastic move of shutting down the Internet and all other communications. For 10 months, the entire regionlarger than Texas and home to more than 20 million residentswas cut off from the world.Ad Policy

A decade later, just across the border, Indian authorities cut Internet, mobile, and even postal communication in Muslim-majority Kashmir as they stripped the state of its special autonomy. Despite their allowing, on October 14, a limited number of mobile phones to function, Kashmir for the most part remains isolated to this day, and no one knows when communication will be restored.

The current Kashmir shutdown, and in particular the turning off of the Internet and communications, is awfully similar to the one in Xinjiang post-2009 riots, James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University and an expert in Central Asian history, said. One wonders if [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi is taking a page from the Chinese book there.

In fact, Kashmir and Xinjiang, which are separated by the Himalayas, share many worrying similarities. The 2009 Xinjiang shutdown was just the start of a series of horrors for Uighurs. Under the guise of anti-terrorism after a series of attacks and, notably, a 2008 incident that killed dozens Chinese policeman in Kashgar, the space for Uighurs expression and freedom has gradually shrunk, as all aspects of their cultural, social, and religious lives have come under the control of Chinese authorities.

Today, the region is host to a techno-digital dystopia, with massive surveillance policing nearly every aspect of Uighur lives. Since 2017, the repression has taken an even darker turn, with the building of massive concentration camps hosting upward of 1.5 million Uighurs, few of whom have been charged with any crime.

Kashmir and Xinijang have many parallels, Ovais Sultan Khan, a human rights activist and director of Future Council, a Delhi-based think tank, said. Uighur Muslims are facing genocide by the Chinese state, and both India and China are using their own tactics to oppress Uighur and Kashmiri people.

It was unfortunate quirks of colonialism and history that led each Muslim majority region to become an unwilling part of a larger neighbor. Kashmir became part of India in 1947 in a move that remains contested, while Xinjiang became part of the newly founded Peoples Republic of China in 1949, after a military invasion that ended a short-lived independent Turkic Muslim state. Neither have had referendums or any form of self-determination, making them de facto modern colonies.Current Issue

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They are both Muslim-majority places that have, through the processes of the 20th century, ended up in nonMuslim majority countries, and that identity has been a source of some of the problems, Millward said.

Not surprisingly, over the past decades, both regions have seen waves of militarism, conflict, and repression. More recently, though, it is the rise of global ethno-nationalism, a phenomenon seen in the West too, that is driving more fierce state-led oppression.

There is a broader, global parallel to whats happening in Xinjiang and Kashmir, the global nativist trend, Millward said, pointing to the rapid rise of Hindu nationalism in India and the shift, under Xi Jingping, away from multiculturalism and toward a unified singular Chinese identity, meaning forced assimilation for ethnic minorities, especially Muslims.

In fact, Islamophobia and online hate against Muslims has been rising in both countries. India has been seeing rising hate crimes, including the growth of vigilantes and lynch mobs, targeting Muslims across the country. In China, you cannot find discussions about topics like the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, photos of the Dalai Lama, or even photos of Winnie the Pooh because of censorship, but you can find plenty of anti-Muslim content.

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Underpinning this identity rhetoric in both regions is an emphasis on national security and counterterrorism. Like in Xinjiang, terrorism has played a role in Kashmir. The current crackdown is linked to the March 2019 attack on a convoy by an Islamist suicide bomber in Pulwana, which killed 40 police personnel.

In Kashmir, surveillance technology, some of it possibly sourced from the very companies enabling Chinese repression in Xinjiang, are creeping in. While the Xinjiang model is still the cutting edge of the digital authoritarian state, Kashmir may not be that far behind. Hikvision, a Chinese state-controlled company and one of the worlds largest developers of sophisticated CCTV surveillance systems, had contracts with Chinese police in Xinjiang, and is now exporting technology to India, according to a recent report from the Carnegie Endowment. Alongside CCTV systems, the use of drones and other aerial vehicles to monitor mosques and the movement of Kashmiris has become pervasive, and theres even a smart border that resembles Chinese efforts to limit the movement of people along the Xinjiang and Tibet borders. Limited access to Indian police and military procurement documents means it is difficult to directly connect Chinese surveillance giants to Kashmir. The shutdown only makes this harder.

In Kashmirwe dont know all the technology and what theyre deploying there, Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia policy director at Access Now, said.

Beyond the shutdown and the growing surveillance network, there is also worrying rhetoric from Modis far-right Hindu nationalist government. There is talk about moving Hindu migrants to Kashmir and allowing Indian and foreign businesses to exploit the resource-rich region, enabled by the removal of laws that forbid non-Kashmiris from owning land in Kashmir. This echoes what has happened in Xinjiang. Encouraged by state policies in the 1950s and 60s, and by economic opportunities in more recent years, Han Chinese now nearly equal the Uighur population in the region, and vastly outnumber them in the capital, Urumqi. Chinese businesses have invested billions in exploiting natural resources.

There is even chatter on Indian social media about Hindu men marrying fair-skinned Kashmiri womenmimicking the increasing number of stories about forced marriages between Han Chinese men and Uighur women in Xinjiang.

For now, the best hope for Kashmir lies in the fact that India has not yet gone as far down the authoritarian path as China. There remains a civil society, albeit one under increasing pressure, some free press, and a supposedly independent judicial system; there are several cases going through various stages of the court system that seek to force the government to end the shutdown, and respect Kashmiri human rights. But none of them will come to fruition overnight, and some worry that the courts are slowing things down deliberately, perhaps because of pressure from the Modi government.

Just a few years ago, the Indian Supreme Court said that Indias fundamental right to free speech applies online, and any government restrictions had to pass strict constitutional tests, Chima said. The fact that the courts have been slow in providing relief on this have is extremely concerning.

If Indias courts do not limit the Modi governments use of national security to cut off an entire region, it could embolden them to further implement draconian, tech-driven surveillance to repress Kashmiris and cement Indian control over the region. Then, other parts of India, which has the second-largest Muslim population in the world, could follow.

The bigger danger is that this new normal in Kashmir becomes the new normal for the rest of the Indian republic as well, the idea that if you believe you have a national security justification, you can do anything you want, Chima added.

As Chinas other ethnic minorities, such as the Hui, Tibetans, Kazakhs, and even Hongkongers are seeing, repression and authoritarian technology does not stay in once part of a country, or even region. Rather, it expands and spreads. Ten years ago, it was Xinjiang. Today, its Kashmir. Tomorrow, it could be whatever remains of Indias democracy.

Link:

China Is Exporting Its Anti-Muslim Strategy to India - The Nation

The embarrassing spectacle of the NBAs millionaire players and billionaire owners doing the bidding of Chinas communist rulers, and even attacking the United States in the process, has forced Americans to ask questions about our national culture.

Many have asked if the case for free trade was a fable, and that instead of us exporting American liberties, we are importing Chinese oppression. Others have pointed to the hypocrisy of woke NBA celebrities, such as Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich, brave when defending elite morality in America but abject cowards when faced with actual cases of oppression that potentially conflict with their financial interests or contractual obligations.

But theres a subtler point that it's easy to miss: The censorious arguments from Beijings defenders sound like they could come from the mouths of campus leftists or appear on the pages of America's liberals magazines.

Take the letter from Joe Tsai, the billionaire who owns most of the New Jersey Nets. The first part of the letter conflates, again and again, the demands of the Chinese state to silence opposition with the demands of "fans."

Chinese fans have reacted extremely negatively to a tweet put out by Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey," Tsai begins. "The Rockets are now effectively shut out of the Chinese market as fans abandon their love for the team," he adds later. "Fans in China are calling for an explanation," Tsai goes on.

Tsai then adopts a stance that is very familiar to those who have tried to host a conservative speaker or even a debate on a liberal campus: Free speech isnt for sensitive topics that affect certain cultures.

[T]he NBA has been very progressive in allowing players and other constituents a platform to speak out on issues, Tsai writes. The problem is, there are certain topics that are third-rail issues in certain countries, societies and communities.

Supporting Hong Kong independence is out of bounds for all citizens in China, Tsai claims. This issue is non-negotiable.

He writes as if increasing Hong Kongers rights or, by implication, granting independence to Taiwan would demolish Chinas territorial integrity.

This echoes the specious left-wing tactic of declaring opinions as intolerable if they deny or question my right to exist. This argument is constantly rolled out against arguments that certainly do not deny or question anyones right to exist.

Tsai also justifies this censorious mindset by telling the timeworn tale that China's government uses to justify its current belligerence. It all goes back to colonial oppression and China's "century of humiliation," with the blame mostly falling on the British. The Chinese communists use this as their sob story when trying to win sympathy for their own illiberal behavior.

Thankfully, it doesnt seem to be working. The American Left is no warmer to China's strong-arm efforts than is the American Right. American liberals who cheered the political activism of NBA celebrities are now audibly lamenting their silence, and good for them.

There's plenty of reason to worry that parts of the American Left are abandoning the principles of pluralism, tolerance, and free speech. Here's hoping that some censorious intolerance from China is stirring up these old principles and putting the liber- back into American liberals.

Original post:

Censorious Chinese talk the language of US campus liberals, hopefully horrifying them - Washington Examiner