Did the 58,000 die to protect your ability to buy cheap stuff at Buy N Large?
July 9th, 2008 at 02:34am Chuck Sweeny
Why were we in Vietnam? It was to stop communism’s spread, right? That’s what we all believed, at least those of us who supported the war. But this thought-provoking column by Harold Myerson in The Washington Post, about the out-sourcing of factory jobs from China to much-cheaper and more ironclad communistic Vietnam, suggests that the 58,000 Americans who died in that war — really died so that you could buy cheap stuff at the Buy N Large. What do you think?
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16 Comments Add your own
1. Right of The Star Blog | July 9th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Looks to me that we are doing clean up of those last redoubts of communism after our victory in the Cold War. (Like wrapping up the Japanese holdouts on deserted islands)
Kruschev said he would bury us without going to war because communism was the better system and our own working class would be our undertakers. Fortunately he was wrong. He failed to understand human nature — the working class wants to be upper class and need the sense of accomplishment from working toward success! That is the beauty of capitalism, as the Chinese and soon the Vietnamese, are learning.
Mr. Myerson calls himself a ‘cockeyed optimist’ but it seems like more of the negativism you get from the rest of the Washington media.
David
2. Right of The Star Blog | July 9th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Oh, in case capitalist economic systems wasn’t enough of a victory let me just add that the opening of the communist countries makes it much harder for them to get away with the abuses that lead to the hundreds of millions that died under communism.
China is finding it more and more difficult to control the flow of information that comes with freedom of choice and capitalism
David
3. John Biltmore | July 9th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I agree with David. I think the impact of economic opening of China is yet to be truly felt. As standards of living rise, so will expectations of freedom. It will not be possible to put those forces back into a box
4. redrover | July 9th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I have always suspected that the ultra-right wingers who support so-called “free trade” with communist dictatorships like those in Red China and Vietnam were corporate-sponsored traitors to American values.
Thank you, David and John Biltmore, for confirming those suspicions.
I suggest that you both read Loretta Tofani’s recent report on factory conditions in China and please tell me if what she describes there is part of what you call the “beauty of capitalism”.
“American Imports, Chinese Deaths”
http://extras.sltrib.com/china/
In that article, Ms. Tofani provides overwhelming evidence that, despite what you call our “victory”, the Red Chinese government continues to get away with murderously abusing its own people, specifically to the tune of the at least 200 million of China’s 700 million workers who are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals and life-threatening diseases in the sweatshop factories that have sprung up in China thanks to what you call “freedom of choice and capitalism”.
Perhaps you both would like to explain how anyone with a human heart can possibly approve of strengthening, through “free trade”, brutal tyrants who continue to persecute their own people in this despicable manner.
History shows that capitalists like yourselves just love to talk loud and long about “freedom” but have ALWAYS needed and used slaves of one kind or another to buttress your business practices. Now you’ve got them, in China and Vietnam – how proud you both must be of your great “victory”!
Well, here’s something you both can do to celebrate your success:
Down on the National Mall in Washington, on either side of the Lincoln Memorial, there are two black walls that commemorate the over 100,000 US soldiers who died fighting communist tyranny in Korea and Vietnam. Please feel free sometime to visit those walls and urinate upon them, because that is exactly what you are doing to the memory of those dead men with your support of communist tyranny and human rights abuses in China and Vietnam.
5. redrover | July 9th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Mr. Sweeny, Puhleeze!
Are you trying to pull my leg?
Since when did you ever care about the ethical downsides of doing business with communist dictatorships?
Our illustrious Congressman-for-Life supports the trade policies that you question here.
Why don’t you ask him the same question you ask us?
Specifically, please ask him this, and report what he tells you:
“Congressman Manzullo: Over 100,000 American soldiers died fighting communist tyranny in Korea and Vietnam. How can you support trade policies that strengthen those two brutal dictatorships without insulting the memories of those dead American soldiers?”
6. Right of The Star Blog | July 9th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Wow redrover, thank you for pointing out these glaring difficulties, for unwittingly reinforcing my point, and for actively making the system you decry work!
Your efforts should be applauded (minus the hyperbole that accuses everyone of being slave owners — that was a bit over the line, but still, congratulations!)
Think about what your doing, your using the markets the very way capitalist pigs like me not only approve of, but praise I am completely seriously, this is not sarcasm!
What type of pressure can be applied to China that would work? Force or financial pressure? The threat of an attack or the threat of internal strife from being cut off financially because of human rights practices? Market driven sanctions are far more effective at garnering change then are government mandated sanctions.
Today’s information age has greatly reduced the need for government intervention in the free markets. Praise to you and others like you for using these tools of modern capitalism to press for change. If it hadn’t been for the financial pressure of consumers and investors many companies would still find it acceptable to use child labor, as their customers would never have forced change by threatening the companies market position. There have been vast improvements worldwide as companies apply market driven pressure to their suppliers far more effectively then government ever could! Yes there are still abuses but the improvement is measurable.
Up to 35 million Chinese died when Mao ‘reformed’ the Chinese economy (up to 60 million total as a direct result of Chinese communism), often of starvation. Millions more suffered a drop in life expectancy due to lack of proper nutrition and access to proper health care and sanitation. Yet as the economy is reformed again the Chinese life expectancy has risen (an 11 year average increase 1982 (60) to 2000 (71) and a huge increase of 2 years to 73 years by 2005, and a projected rise to 85 years by 2050 as people are lifted out of poverty). That was only made possible by the influx of capital and by people using the capitalist system effectively the way you have!
Capitalism is a wonderfully motivating system for positive change as you have proven! It has built in incentives and rewards but it also has very effective market driven penalties that you have harnessed for good, working the system the way it was designed to work. This is why capitalism beats communism every time.
Thank you again! Even as you are forced to become that which you hate we do appreciate that sacrifice and your efforts.
David
7. Chuck Sweeny | July 9th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Let’s see now. Any elections in China?
Vietnam?
Didn’t think so. The fact that China now has freeways, cars and tall buildings doesn’t make it free. It’s more in the iron grip of communism than ever, just with a smiley face.
8. Right of The Star Blog | July 9th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Chuck, I don’t see where anyone said China or Vietnam were free.
Daivd
9. Bookworm | July 9th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
It’s nice that market reforms are enabling the Chinese to live longer. I am sure they will enjoy living out their old age with only one child and one grandchild to take care of two aging parents and four aging grandparents. Or maybe no grandchildren at all, given the pronounced shortage of young women in China (due to girls being aborted or abandoned because if you can only have one kid, you want it to be a boy). All the freedom to buy stuff in the world doesn’t mean beans if you’re not free to speak your own mind, practice your religious faith, decide whom you want to govern you, or even have a family with siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.
10. John Biltmore | July 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Chuck, you ask if there are any elections in China. As a journalist I am sure you know how to find an answer to that yourself. According to the Carter Center, “village elections occur in about 650,000 villages across China, reaching 75 percent of the nation’s 1.3 billion people.”
http://www.cartercenter.org/peace/china_elections/index.html
I am not in any way suggesting that China and Vietnam have somehow miraculously become Jeffersonian in their ideals. They remain brutal Communist regimes.
But let me ask you this: If they treat their people in the ways you describe….when the world is watching,…..what do you think they’ll do if they were to be isolated and alone, a la North Korea?
11. redrover | July 10th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Oh, come on, John Biltmore!
As a journalist, do you ever question the validity of your sources?
Jimmy Carter is in the human rights business. He also is a member of a political party that has been in the forefront of this nation’s Appease China foreign policy. Take a look at Carter’s report of his latest trip to China and consider all the schmoozing he did with Chinese Communist bigshots:
http://cartercenter.org/news/trip_reports/china_2007.html
And then take a look at the US State Dept.’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for China for 2007 and consider the sorts of human rights atrocities that these bigshots are guilty of:
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2007/100518.htm
Is Jimmy ignorant of the horrific abuses described by our own State Dept. or just indifferent to them? Can you really trust anything that this man and his “Center” have to say on real human rights and democracy in China?
Do you actually believe that any candidate who was not approved by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could safely run for office in the so-called village elections in China?
Of course not! That would entail a respect for the rule of law that the CCP despises.
As an example of what the CCP does to a Chinese citizen who attempts to invoke the rule of law in an unapproved manner, consider the case of Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught lawyer who filed a lawsuit in an attempt to protect his neighbors from being illegally forced to undergo sterilizations or to abort pregnancies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Guangcheng
Mr. Chen managed to prove his point but was thereafter set upon by CCP-sponsored thugs who beat him up, then arrested him and tried him on trumped-up charges. He is currently in jail, along with hundreds of other Chinese citizens like himself:
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1395758.php/Number_of_Chinese_political_prisoners_in_2007_"highest_since_1999%22
Listen, boys and girls, some of you may be too young to remember, but communists are goddam liars. If you believe for a minute the CCP’s statistics on mortality or on anything else they promote, then I have a bridge in Shanghai that you could buy for a song.
Why are we encouraged by the US corporate media to believe all those Red Chinese lies and ignore their ongoing human rights atrocities?
–> Because US corporations have made huge investments in China and are making huge profits from importing Chinese goods made by slave labor under conditions exposed by Loretta Tofani [see above], and
–> Because US corporations, run by greedy and racist capitalist pigs, control the political system in this country by means of legalized bribery.
Listen, David, what I had to say had NOTHING at all to do with capitalism. Capitalism has in it no guarantees of freedom, NONE!
In a purely capitalist society, free speech would be reserved for three kinds of people: the filthy rich, the sold out, and the brain dead. We are getting close to that point already.
American Capitalists and Chinese Communists have a lot in common. They both value power and profit and despise genuine human rights, civil liberties and democracy. That’s why they get along so well together.
David asks:
”What type of pressure can be applied to China that would work? Force or financial pressure? The threat of an attack or the threat of internal strife from being cut off financially because of human rights practices?”
It would be so simple, in a country not controlled by greedy capitalist corporations, to liberate the people of China from their oppressors.
Put tariffs on imports from China large enough to reduce China’s trade surplus to zero. Inform the Chinese government that these tariffs will be enforced “until political prisoners are freed and fundamental human rights are granted.”
That last is a quote from the Bush Administration’s Capitalist-in-Chief, Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez, in a letter to the Washington Post regarding trade sanctions against Cuba.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060801671.html
Please note that although he supports a trade embargo with Cuba because of its human rights abuses, his Dept. of Commerce actively promotes trade with China:
http://www.export.gov/china/
And you call Capitalism “a wonderfully motivating system for positive change”, David?
I will say this in closing, Capitalism is wonderfully motivating the CCP to do everything it can to steal our national security secrets. Please read:
Spy Cases Raise Concern on China’s Intentions
By Neil A. Lewis
The New York Times, July 10, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10spy.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin
12. Chuck Sweeny | July 10th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Some comments of my own:
Local elections in China! There’s a hoot. Vote fore the Communist official of your choice. Hoo boy!
Carter may have been friendly to ChiComs, but the Cheney-Rove administration, (official greeter, George W. Bush,) is positively in love with them!
RedRover is right: Capitalism is simply an economic system, as is socialism.
Capitalism doesn’t guarantee freedom, otherwise China would be a free country, and it certainly isn’t one.
Another thing: Why do we ban trade with Cuba, but fill our Wal-Marts with stuff from China? Hmmmmm.
13. John Biltmore | July 10th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Well redrover, i am not a journalist, but if you are asking me, do I place more credibility in an ex-president who has campaigned for human rights around the world over wikipedia…well, yes I do.
14. redrover | July 11th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Jimmy Carter has done his bit for what he calls human rights, but if you look more closely at the kinds of “human rights” campaigns his Center chooses to sponsor, you will find that they are all set up to promote “human rights” within the framework of corporate capitalism and its profit-oriented priorities.
Consider, for example, The Carter Center China Program
http://www.cartercenter.org/peace/china_elections/index.html
These so-called village elections, because they are carefully and completely controlled, are really a propaganda victory for the Chinese Communist Party.
By promoting these bogus elections, Carter and his Center are really helping to legitimize the CCP and its tyrannical rule.
Meanwhile, on human rights issues of real substance, like the brutal crackdown in Tibet that angered freedom-lovers all over the world, Jimmy Carter defends and shelters his CCP chums.
In an interview on ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos on April 13, 2008, Carter, who led the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, said that he opposes boycotting the Beijing Olympics because China’s 50 years of criminal occupation of Tibet are not as serious as the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Read and puke for yourselves at:
http://www.cartercenter.org/documents/This%20Week%20with%20George%20Stephanopoulos%20Transcript%20041308.pdf
Meanwhile, in beautiful neo-Capitalist China, a massive crackdown is underway. The CCP is rounding up and disappearing every and anyone it suspects of dissident activity or sympathies in order to keep them from contacting foreign journalists during the Games and informing them of the real human rights situation in the glorious PRC.
SEE:
China’s Silencing Season
Activist Journalists and Lawyers Jailed, Harassed in Far-Reaching Pre-Olympic Operation
By Jill Drew, Washington Post Foreign Service
The Washington Post, Thursday, July 10, 2008; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/09/AR2008070902170.html?nav=rss_world/asia
What does Peanut-farmer Jimmy have to say about this? Not a damn thing, friends, cause he knows which side his human rights bread is buttered on.
15. john Biltmore | July 12th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Redrover…
One of the things I like about the digital age of journalism is the ability for “readers” to express themselves. What I don’t like is when people get locked into a position, despite evidence to the contrary.
I’m not one of those people.
While I still believe that engagement is better than isolation in terms of totalitarian regimes….I would be a fool to not recognize that the items you have cited are deeply disturbing…unacceptable…clear violations of human rights…obvious examples of how much work there is left to do.
They are also strong counterpoints to the Carter items. I most definitely see your point
16. redrover | July 16th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Please, John Biltmore, look more deeply into what is happening in China today, what they are doing to us, and how that totalitarian state has compromised our nation’s security and its integrity, and tell your friends.
The Chinese people, who suffer under that regime, need all the friends and advocates that they can get.
Please be one of them, and examine critically any news items you see that suggest that things are going just wonderfully in the PRC.
Our nation should be on the side of those brave Chinese who are fighting for human rights and democracy, and not on the side of those who are persecuting them.
RedRover
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