\n
If there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever a doubt that the dollar carries more weight than the conscience, the global community\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good relations with China should put that doubt to rest.<\/p>\n
This morning, as I read about the latest <\/span>disgusting squeeze<\/a> that the Chinese government is putting on their press (endangering lives as a bonus), I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help thinking about a former co-worker of mine named Hao Wu. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been meaning to post about him for a while now.<\/span><\/p>\n Hao and I worked at the same company for a while, and worked together on a few projects. We weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t close, but he seemed nice enough, bright enough, and he worked hard.<\/p>\n He ended up leaving, heading back home to China to make documentary films. He also became an active blogger.<\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll link to his blog in a second, but let me point out that it stops on February 22nd. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because China\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s State Security Bureau (official thugs of the regime) picked him up on that day and have kept him ever since.<\/p>\n The charge? Oh, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t bother with details like that. A lawyer? Well, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve reviewed the case and decided not to let him have one. Release date? Are you joking?<\/p>\n He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s apparently spoken with his family since he was picked up, but they say it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t speak freely.<\/p>\n Which begs the question: can anyone speak freely in China? When you do speak freely, can you expect to be arrested and held, God knows where, for God knows how long?<\/p>\n Is he being tortured? Is he ever going home? Why doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t everyone hate the nasty, brutal dictatorship in China?<\/p>\n Long before I knew Hao, I took a very long train ride from Shanghai to the vast desert in the Chinese west. For hours, I killed time on the train chatting with students (and anyone else who spoke English). Across the board, though they recognized that China wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t free, they were satisfied with the pace that it was taking towards freedom. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not.<\/p>\n Free Hao Wu site<\/a><\/p>\n Hao\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blog<\/a> (current until the day he was abducted by his own government)<\/span><\/p>\n UPDATE: Hao is on the front page of the July 3rd <\/span>Wall Street Journal<\/a>. If there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever a doubt that the dollar carries more weight than the conscience, the global community\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good relations with China should put that doubt to rest. This morning, as I read about the latest disgusting squeeze that the Chinese government is putting on their press (endangering lives as a bonus), I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help thinking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nUPDATE AGAIN: <\/span>He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Free!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"