A Political Glimpse from Ireland

Bloggers Unite: Jail for Email

I mentioned two days ago about an upcoming blogging event however it is 20 minutes to 12am over here so I might be a bit delayed. This event is in conjunction with Amnesty International and the people over at Blog Catalog about a human rights issue that is pertinent to me. Given that I am as  geeky as they come, something that means alot to me is the freedom of expression. Sometimes people can abuse that though whether it be the ladies of code pink or some newspaper publishing a cartoon about the prophet Muhammad, where do we draw the line? I honestly don’t know, but I personally believe that the only information that should be regulated is information that relates to the national security of a country. Preventing people from accessing western media, images, or dialogue is simply wrong and I am not just pointing a figure at China here but at other countries around the world who censor the internet.

I am going to talk about China though and about the jailing of journalist Shi Tao in April 2004 for sending an email to a pro-democracy based organization in the USA. Can  you imagine going to jail for sending an email? If so I am sure we would all be in jail beyond our human lifetimes. I don’t understand how such censorship is beneficial though, some of my friends describe China as a democracy in progress but can anyone imagine the CCP giving up power to a President in the near future. I cannot imagine such an event occuring but the next best thing would be to let the media in China; local and foreign do what they want and publish what they want. From the Amnesty International Action Letter:

China has constructed an extensive system of Internet censorship to silence activists and journalists like Shi Tao. All Internet communications pass through government-controlled routers, and authorities are able to block access to many sites, to filter content, and to delete links or web pages considered “dangerous” or “subversive.”

There is the other side of the coin though, the PEW research center recently released a report about the internet in China stating that in 2007, over 85% of the respondents in the survey believed that the Government should control the internet. I find it startling that anyone would want to have their internet censored but Carolyn Marsan over at Network World has written a great article on the 10 ways that the Chinese internet is different from ours. She lists the following as positives as far as their internet infrastructure is concerned:

1. There is less pornography
2. Malicious activity such as botnets, phising scams and zombies are less common
3. China produces 4% of the world’s spam while the United States originates 42%
4. China’s internet is based on the next generation internet backbone aka IPv6

The negatives far outweigh the positives though in that if I lived in China I would not be able to acess this blog or any of the other blogs on my blog roll. The most important fact is that Shi Tao should not be in jail for something as silly as sending an email. People need to be free, and deserve to be free, it is a basic human right. If you would like to speak out about the jailing of Shi Tao, please send a polite letter to China’s Prime Minister asking him for the unconditional release of Shi Tao. The address is:

Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of China
Wen Jiabao Guojia Zongli
The State Council General Office
2 Fuyoujie
Xichengqu
Beijingshi 100017
PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Madam President

Well I just finished Suzanne Goldenberg’s latest book entitled: “Madam President - Is America Ready To Send Hillary Clinton To The White House?” It was quite a revealing book for me because I never knew too much about Hillary Clinton beyond my examination of her healthcare policy in an earlier article on this website. I knew Senator Clinton was quite popular in New York and that she was fairly famous because of her husband; former President Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was also my favorite American president in my short 25 years of life but I think I was too young to follow politics before President Clinton came to office so that may not be a fair statement.

Suzanne Goldenberg is an award-winning journalist for The Guardian and has been the newspaper’s US Correspondent since 2002. I never realized that British papers had a base in Washington but here is this lady covering American politics for The Guardian which is a fairly well-read paper in the U.K. The book is exactly 160 pages long and I finished it in just over a week reading over 10 pages a day. The book really starts on page 7 and ends on page 167. It is fairly small compared to the previous book I read by David Mendell but surprisingly captures the essence of Senator Clinton and her past few years in politics in an accurate and non-historical manner. It was an easy read without overt complexity and I believe anyone above the age of 12 could appreciate.

The book is also quite objective and discusses the good and the bad about Senator Clinton but concludes in the end that:

“…a safe pair of hands might be just what America needs.”

I found the conclusion, or the final line of the book fairly surprising considering that during my read of the book, I felt that the author viewed Senator Clinton negatively. I could be wrong but that might be due to my Senator Obama bias kicking in. Given that bias, I went through this book highlighting the portions that worried me about Senator Clinton as the potential presidential candidate or Senator Obama’s VP. She is willing to do whatever it takes to get elected; this showed when she was running for the Senate in NY. She has also adopted the centrist approach of her husband without elaborating to the general public what she stands for but tells people what they want to hear.

Don’t get me wrong, even with all these negatives, I still admire the Senator but I don’t think she epitomizes what I want in a President. I know what Senator Obama stands for which is why I support him and hope he will win in the general election. This is a great book and honestly if you are like me and want to know the essentials of Senator Hillary Clinton than I encourage you to buy this book. If we had to talk a rating, I would probably say 6 out of 10. Mainly because there were certain portions of Senator Clinton’s past that I believed the author skipped out on and that she didn’t really answer the question whether America was ready to send Senator Clinton to the White House. My favorite portion from the book which goes back to my earlier point:

“The problem was, it was never quite clear what those beliefs and ideals were, and at least some of that confusion seemed deliberate. As Charlotte Mull Young, a high school teacher and committed Democratic supporter in her 50’s, noted after an election meeting in the town of Council Bluffs, Iowa: “I think she is a good public servant. I am just not sure who she is serving yet.”"

The Edwards Theory

Well Senator Edwards endorsed Senator Obama last night in the most polite way possible without even insulting Senator Clinton in any way or form. That wasn’t good enough for some Hillary supporters on Hillaryis44.org who are quoted saying:

We never had much use for John Edwards. We never really bothered to write much about him. Only rarely during the campaign did we take note of his efforts.

If John Edwards had come out and endorsed Senator Clinton, well that might have been a different story and we would have never seen such a line on a democratic site but this proves the polarized nature of the Clinton supporters. Many political commentators in the past few weeks have talked about polling data which suggests that Senator Clinton’s following would be less inclined to vote for Senator Obama if he won the nomination. Some of my fellow liberal bloggers do not believe that and i would tend to agree with them except when it comes to the older demographic and the majority of older latino voters. That being said, Emilia over at eyesonobama.com has written an excellent piece on how Senator Obama is changing the way the Democratic party will win the general election. John King with that “cool” election LCD also demonstrated before Larry King yesterday on how Senator Obama could win the necessary electoral college votes. It was quite different from the traditional methodology of you “must” win PA, WV etc. I think that is what a lot of commentators have lost during the past few weeks in that Senator Obama is running a radically different campaign and he has a definitive plan on how to win and will probably do so.

My theory on the Edwards endorsement is that the Democratic Party leaders have had a meeting and said that Senator Obama is the nominee. In order to appease Clinton supporters and heal the party, they have allowed her to continue on but pressed the remaining Superdelegates and anyone with some political power to openly endorse  Senator Obama so that this drawn out process can be done by the end of May. What does everyone else think? To answer the question to what a alot of people have been asking; Yes, I think the endorsement does matter and it will help Senator Obama.

Part One of the John Edwards Endorsement

Part Two of the John Edwards Endorsement

(The actual endorsement is between 3min 50 and 4min 10 seconds)