Tyranny

China, State Capitalism, Tyranny

Official Chinese Growth Numbers a Lie 

The Party is founded on lies – 

For starters, Citi thinks China’s true real GDP growth rate is more like 4%, or even lower, not the 7% or so that the Chinese government reports. Their “global recession” call suggests that growth will dip to just about 2.5% by the middle of 2016. China’s growth hasn’t been lower than that since 1976, when Chairman Mao was still alive.

Via Business Insider.

Crony Capitalism, Cronyism, State Capitalism, Tyranny

Paper Capitalists

“China, despite what you may have heard is NOT now a capitalist country. It is a crony capitalist country. The chief cronies are the members of the old Communist Party.” Via China tells workplaces they must have Communist Party units (Remember when the FCC wanted govt monitors in newsrooms last year?) @ AgainstCronyCapitalism.org.

Tyranny

Intolerable

“…. the notion of tolerance is inapplicable to rights violators. If a man beats his wife, it makes no sense to say that we must be tolerant with him. When a government bans women from driving cars in public, it is even more ridiculous to suggest that we ought to be tolerant with public officials.…

Cato, Foreign Affairs, Libertarians, Liberty, Tyranny

Why Liberty? Freedom Abroad

Today, thousands of Venezuelans are protesting Nicolás Maduro government. Juan Carlos recalls his experience in Caracas, Venezuela witnessing the struggle for freedom and liberty. Juan Carlos Hidalgo is a Policy Analyst on Latin America at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute. Via Cato Institute Video.

Surveillance, Technology, Tyranny

Technology for Good

The long, ceaseless fight against state power takes many forms: ….Citizen Lab, the watchdog group Deibert founded over a decade ago at the University of Toronto that’s now orbited by a globe-spanning network of hackers, lawyers, and human rights advocates. From exposing the espionage ring that hacked the Dalai Lama to uncovering the commercial spyware…

Tyranny

June 3, 1989

The photo above is from June 5th, after many had already been killed and martial law in Beijing instituted.

Liberty, Surveillance, Tyranny

Greenwald’s Traditional Critique of a Radical NSA

….But it is a mistake (albeit a common one) to survey the NSA-surveillance controversy and to conclude that Greenwald represents the radical position. His writing can be acerbic, mordant, biting, trenchant, scathing, scornful, and caustic. He is stubbornly uncompromising in his principles, as dramatized by how close he came to quitting The Guardian when it…

Blogging, Censorship, Free Speech, Liberty, Tyranny

Vietnam Torments Another Blogger

(New York) – All charges against the blogger Pham Viet Dao, 62, should be dropped, and he should be released immediately and unconditionally, Human Rights Watch said today. Pham Viet Dao, 62, was arrested on June 13, 2013, in Hanoi, for allegedly violating Vietnam penal code article 258, which provides for up to seven years…

Blogging, Censorship, Crime, Liberty, Tyranny

Vietnam censors and represses, again

The 30 month prison sentence for Vietnamese human rights lawyer and blogger, Le Quoc Quan, was today upheld by a Hanoi appeals court. Quan, who has frequently blogged about human rights violations by the government, was convicted in October 2013 on tax evasion charges. He has been arbitrarily detained since December 2012. A crowd of hundreds…