Tag: tyranny

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Common Sense crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people too much government

At Least We’re Not Turkey

Merve Büyüksaraç

Whenever I feel discouraged by the steady drumbeat of domestic assaults on liberty — from Obamacare to parents being accused of “child neglect” for letting their kids return from a playground by themselves — I try to remind myself:

Things Could Be Worse.

World history provides plenty of support for this dictum, but so does a glance at the newspaper. Like the story of how a single satiric Instagram post “could end up sending a former Miss Turkey to jail.”

An Istanbul prosecutor has been threatening to imprison Merve Büyüksaraç for up to two years for the heinous deed of insulting an official. Last summer she excerpted a satirical piece called “The Master’s Poem” that originally appeared in the magazine Uykusuz. Uykusuz has a habit of mocking Turkish politicians, including President Erdoğan.

“I shared it because it was funny to me,” she says. “I did not intend to insult Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.” Regardless of her motive, her post should not have put her at legal risk.

Buyuksarac is popular on social media — 15,000 followers on Instagram, double that on Twitter — a presence that makes her a target. The Turkish government doesn’t care whether she is an ardent dissident. They obviously just want to intimidate others with a readership who are inclined to ruffle the feathers of the powerful even a little.

So yes, things could be worse. Lots worse. They could also be a lot better. That’s what we have to fight for.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment

Your Local Vortex of Despair

I don’t know about you, but through the years I’ve received my share of traffic tickets and parking citations. Minor stuff overall, seventy dollars here, a hundred bucks there, a couple hundred smackeroos if caught in the wrong speed trap.

Sometimes the cost made me say ouch. But like most folks I just pay the tickets. And try to slow down.

But if you are poor, struggling, climbing the ladder from one of the bottom rungs?

Different story. And a speed trap set up by your local police or the state troopers, then, has a much different punch to it.

Could traffic tickets be instruments of tyranny?

Well, the $150 some of us can pay with a mere wince another simply cannot pay, or can only pay at the expense of a child’s supper, or replacing a balding tire on the car, or … worse.

And those who cannot pay, despairingly, often shirk the “duties” they cannot perform. Like coming to court to pay the fines they can’t pay. And then they get arrested. And then serve time.

A few more “and thens” and their lives are wrecked. Along with the lives of their children.

Radley Balko tells several such stories in his recent article, “How municipalities in St. Louis, Mo., profit from poverty.” He explains the very human costs of speed traps and other penny ante scofflaw “services” the police inflict all around Ferguson, the scene of last month’s protests and violence.

Balko quotes one observer, who describes the whole system as a trap for the poor, sucking them into a “vortex of despair.”

Stop punishing the working poor with excessive fines. Vanquish the vortex!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Don’t Empower Venezuelan Government

If you run a company that buys oil from Venezuela, stop.

If you purchase fuel from a company getting its product from Venezuela, stop.

If you run a government that imposes lots of arbitrary restrictions on the exploration, development, and/​or transport of oil, stop that also. 

But don’t wait for the last to happen if you can do the first. Or second.

And the second means: Don’t buy gas from Citgo.Leopoldo López

We have long had more than sufficient cause to refrain from financially empowering Venezuela’s autocratic regime, and to make it a lot easier for domestic buyers and sellers to shun dealings with dictators who happen to be sitting on a lot of oil. These reasons didn’t fade after the death last year of Hugo Chavez.

News from the communist country underscores the viciousness of the Venezuelan tyranny. Organizations like the Human Rights Foundation have called attention to the plight of all those detained and abused for peacefully protesting the regime by formally declaring opposition leader Leopoldo López, detained since February, to be a prisoner of conscience of the Maduro government; and by vocally condemning the government’s torture of student protestors Marco Aurelio Coello and Christian Holdack, also detained since February.

Communist governments steal everyone’s stuff; that is the pain that everybody who works for a living sees and feels. They also tend to resort to repression and torture of any who dare object to their repressive policies. Persons free to boycott such tyranny should boycott it. Now. In order to do so, we need not wait for a government or even have the support of our own government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

Too Much Truth

Both what to report and when to report it can be legitimately debated in an editorial room. But not whether to accept demands to conceal “unflattering” truth for the sake of being allowed to report at all.

That’s the “dilemma” some news organizations face when they wish to report from within a country whose government will deny access unless they toe the line.

The reportage by longtime Reuters journalist Paul Mooney, who specializes in China, has apparently been too candid. The Chinese government has denied him a visa. His career there may be over. What should Reuters do?

Not what Bloomberg News did when its reporting incurred the displeasure of Chinese officials. Bloomberg spiked an investigative report about the financial ties between billionaire businessmen and Politiburo officials, for fear of being ejected from the country. Bloomberg insists that it has merely delayed the story. But the motive is clearly a desire to appease the Chinese government, which has already blocked the Bloomberg News website inside China and refused new visas to Bloomberg journalists.

Instead of killing or deferring disapproved journalism, any news outfit threatened with expulsion by an authoritarian government should publish its honest reports and let the chips fall where they may. If kicked out, it should seek other ways to report on the country. Covert communiqués from careful Chinese citizens. Secondary sources if necessary. That’s better than actively cooperating with wrongdoers to hide their sins.

It’s really not too different from crime reporting. Crime bosses don’t like a nosy press, either.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall term limits too much government

Don’t Copy Chávez

Americans eager to weaken various limits on political power here at home should pay closer attention to news from abroad.

Around the globe, killing presidential term limits is high on the to-​do list of aspiring presidents-for-life.

Autocrats also dislike the right of citizen initiative. Even when they abstain from trying to kill initiative rights altogether, they often seek outrageous restrictions on them, or even stoop to harassing petitioners and voters.Hugo Cloned

One such enemy of the people was Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, now dead. Chávez was an equal-​opportunity attacker of citizen rights. He expropriated businesses, bullied media, once even ordered soldiers to fire on anti-​Chávez protesters (they refused). He also succeeded in eliminating presidential term limits.

In 2003, his government arranged for the public release of the names of Venezuelans who had signed a petition to recall Chávez. The names were stolen from the office charged with overseeing the petition drive and leaked to a pro-​Chávez legislator, who then published them on his website. Many signers lost jobs, loans, and other opportunities controlled by the state.

American foes of term limits, initiative rights, and other constraints on concentrated power may think there’s no comparison. But every chipping away at protections against tyranny is dangerous.

While it is true that no single limit on power can substitute for all the cultural values and ideas that underlie our rights as free citizens, it is also the case that institutions and culture reinforce each other. The foundation of a building has more than one cornerstone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom

Libre from Cuba?

Some Cubans will soon be free to escape the Cuban dictatorship.

The Cuban government recently announced it would end exit visa requirements by mid-​January. After which, Cubans wanting to go abroad will simply need a passport and a visa from the country they’re headed to.

Some of them, at least.

Cuba won’t simply let its people go. Emigration will remain a privilege — one more often accorded now, but still a privilege — not a right. A privilege the government may revoke at will by invoking, for example, “national security” to stop dissidents who might cause trouble abroad. Skilled professionals may be kept to “preserve the human capital created by the Revolution” — you know, on the “You Didn’t Build That” principle.

For a government (whether a dictatorship or a prelude to one) to treat rights as mere provisional gifts is nothing new. The Weimar constitution of 1919 held the rights of the individual to be “inviolable” — unless a law were passed to violate them. (Article 114.) The German’s home was “an asylum and inviolable” — unless a law were passed to violate it. (115.) Freedom of speech, freedom of movement, etc., were all guaranteed — except when the state deemed otherwise.

Yes, Cuba’s loosening of emigration rules will be a boon for those Cubans free to leave under the new rules. But the situation resembles that of a prison in which everybody is wrongly incarcerated, from which half the inmates are one day graciously released. Well, great, except … shouldn’t they all be released?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.