I suppose it could have been worse. China could have sentenced “a veteran Chinese human rights campaigner who challenged the central government over the faulty construction of school buildings that collapsed during last year’s Sichuan earthquake” while Obama was still in the country. Instead they waited a week to throw the activist into jail for three years for “possessing secret state documents.” That’s what you get when a U.S. president downplays and downgrades human rights. Obama’s wimpiness has not gone unnoticed by human-rights activists:
Jiang Tianyong, described in a telephone interview how he was taken in for questioning by police Thursday, while walking his 7-year-old daughter to school, and detained for 13 hours before being released. The previous day, Jiang said, he had tried to approach the U.S. Embassy because he had heard that Obama might meet with human rights lawyers. But he was taken back to his house by police.
Jiang expressed disappointment that Obama had not met with human rights activists during his trip.
“There are a bunch of people in Chinese civil society who have enough courage to talk with Obama about the human rights issue in China,” Jiang said. “But Obama is not decisive enough or doesn’t have enough willpower to talk with the civil society.”
Despite his mention of “universal rights,” Obama, in the view of rights activists, “didn’t strike as hard of a tone on human rights as some of us had hoped for,” said Sam Zarifi, the Asia-Pacific director for the London-based group Amnesty International. “It’s tough to wag your finger about human rights when your hand is stretched out for more money.”
And what did we get for downplaying human rights in China? Nothing — well, there’s always the contempt of the government that knows it can act with impunity. We shouldn’t be surprised if we see more of the same, not only in China, but also in Cuba, Iran, Russia, North Korea, Syria, and other thuggish regimes. Despots in those countries will also see that they too can crack down on their own people without suffering many, if any, adverse consequences from the Obami. Maybe they’ll even get a state visit, one without uncomfortable interchanges between the U.S. president and human-rights activists.
The silliness over the patently unqualified Barack Obama proves that we getting closer to our British cousins. We simply have to get over our feelings of “white guilt.” Years ago the people of Great Britain were infatuated with Mahatma Gandhi, one of the silliest human beings who ever lived. Things rapidly went down hill after that.
We better get our act together as quickly as possible. The reprehensible David Duke and his buddies will not hesitate to take advantage of the disintegration of Western Civilization. Our society may be similar to that of Germany of 1931-32.
The danger is that this will set a bad precedent for other ethnicities to demand separate legal systems. Moreover, Muslims in Europe are already having difficulties integrating into society. This will just make things worse.
Moderate and secular Muslims will be pressured by their neighbors to use this system. Women especially will be pressured by bullying men.
Picking up on Mr. Totten’s comment, what is especially odd (not to mention self-destructive) is the extent to which Western countries have encouraged radical elements at the expense of moderate forces within Islam. Lots of examples, and here’s a few:
1. The lionization of Tariq Ramadan.
2. Refusal by many governments and media to stand with the right of Danish publishers to satirize Islam.
3. The wholesale abandonment of neighborhoods to radical elements in Paris, London, and Stockholm.
4. In the US., the treating with CAIR as a representative Muslim institution when in fact, it is not membership driven at all, but rather, is foreign funded.
5. Also in the US, the installation of Muslim only prayer rooms and Wudu basins, which, religious issues aside, appear to validate the radical elements in these communities that call for separation from the kuffar.
The other ethnicities will emulate Caucasians, in their “white flight.” Nobody is going to stick around when the mohammedans gain control. So besides Europeans fleeing to Australia, New Zealand and the United States, whatever non-muslim ethnicities that exist in Europe will flee too.
A case can easily be made that the worst event in Western history is occurring right now, and that’s the movement of scores of millions of mohammadans to Western and Eastern Europe. And North America as well.
Future generations will be thunderstruck by the sheer insanity of the idea.
The archbishop is absolutely right in his prediction. Islam is now an established British religion with millions of active and activist adherents who are going to become continuously more numerous and politically influential. The British government knows this perfectly well and must have known it would happen when it surreptitiously encouraged the mass Muslim immigration of recent years. British leaders willed this dilemma. Does anyone seriously imagine that the political parties in Britain of either Left or Right will refuse to do deals with Islamic leaders over Muslim rights when it becomes necessary to do so for their survival in power. One suspects that the official outcry is not because the archbishop was wrongheaded but because he spoke too candidly too soon.
This would be a topic of largely academic interest, and scarcely a matter of Western security, had it involved any religion but Mohammed’s. Much of the West obviously still refuses to acknowledge the jihadism latent even in so-called moderate Islam, or else it rationalizes inaction by claiming it is too late to do anything. Then, too, there are still plenty of Communists or “post-Marxists” around, especially in Britain, who want to destroy the democratic capitalist order, hence have little compunction about allying themselves with Muslims. In fact it’s a wonder that Britain’s hard-left doesn’t simply convert en masse. I assume giving up beer is the main sticking point.
mr halpern is also absolutely right. warm beer always trumps mere principle in the benighted isles.
We watch and bemoan events in Europe but when it comes to control of immigration to our country we are unable to act. Thousands of unidentified people come across the borders each day, and additional thousands who arrive on visas are planning to overstay those visas because there is no effective enforcement. The very occasional convicted felon who is actually deported is unfazed because he or she can simply walk back across the border confident that there will be no punishment for re-entering beyond the inconvenience of another round trip across the border.
Sheer madness.