Learning From China

The so called "war on terror" is entering a new stark chapter.

According to San Francisco Chronicle's report,

President Barack Obama steered the nation's war machine into uncharted territory Friday when a U.S. drone attacked a convoy in Yemen and killed two American citizens who had become central figures in al-Qaida.

It was believed to be the first instance in which a U.S. citizen was tracked and executed based on secret intelligence and the president's say-so. And it raised major questions about the limitations of presidential power.

Anwar al-Awlaki, the target of the U.S. drone attack, was one of the best-known al-Qaida figures after Osama bin Laden. American intelligence officials had linked him to two nearly catastrophic attacks on U.S.-bound planes, an airliner on Christmas 2009 and cargo planes last year. The second American killed in the drone attack, Samir Kahn, was the editor of Inspire, a slick online magazine aimed at al-Qaida sympathizers in the West.

...

"Anwar al-Awlaki is acting as a regional commander for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in August 2010.

What if the U.S. was wrong, Gibbs was asked, what recourse does a citizen have to save himself? The CIA had misidentified and imprisoned the wrong person before. Gibbs sidestepped the question.

The U.S. has been inconsistent in how it describes al-Awlaki. The Treasury Department called him a leader of al-Qaida in Yemen. FBI Director Robert Mueller called him the leader. On Friday, Obama called him "the leader of external operations," the first time he has been described that way.

When word leaked out that al-Awlaki's name was on the list, his family rushed to court to try to stop the government from killing him, saying he had to be afforded the constitutional right to due process.

The idea of killing an American citizen provided critics with fodder for all sorts of comparisons showing the peculiarities of national security law and policy. The government could not listen to al-Awlaki's phone calls without a judge's approval, for instance, but could kill him on the president's say-so. The Obama administration opposed imprisoning terrorist suspects without due process but supported killing them without due process.

"If the Constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have unreviewable authority to summarily execute any American whom he concludes is an enemy of the state," ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said Friday.

Indeed, one of the duty of the president is to protect and ensure due process for US citizens.  If according to his own judgement, he could have a US citizen killed, without explicit legal authorization, he is on shaky ground.

In order to be more responsible, the US would do better by learning from China.

After the international outcry against Chinese's secrete detention of high profile artist Ai Weiwei and the like, China now is proposing to overhaul the criminal penal codes, to legalize the secrete arrest and detention and disappearnces.

US and China have more similarities than most people think and we can be more like China, only if we keep pace with them.

Pink and Gray Landscape © Matthew Felix Sun

Granting Voting and Other Human Rights to Corporations

People tend to criticize Republicans for not being compassionate.  How wrong they are!  The Republican are expanding their compassion much further than average human being could have imagined - they are making overture to grant human rights to corporations, including voting right for sure.

In January 2010, by citing First Amendment and granting free-speech right traditionally associated to human beings to the corporation, Supreme Court rejected limits on corporate spending on political campaigns [Washington Post]:

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday swept aside decades of legislative restrictions on the role of corporations in political campaigns, ruling that companies can dip into their treasuries to spend as much as they want to support or oppose individual candidates.

In a 5 to 4 decision, the majority cast its ruling as a spirited defense of the First Amendment, concluding that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to political speech. Corporations had been banned since 1947 from using their profits to endorse or oppose political candidates, a restriction that the justices ruled unconstitutional.

And now, the compassion from the Republic Party just keeps growing.  Republican's presidential candidate, former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney made news by publicly, unequivocally claiming that corporations are people.  Bravo, Mitt!

Below is the New York Times story on Mitt Romney's assertion during his Iowa campaign:

“We have to make sure that the promises we make in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are promises we can keep, and there are various ways of doing that,” Mr. Romney said. “One is, we can raise taxes on people.”

“Corporations!” the protesters shouted, suggesting that Mr. Romney, as president, should raise taxes on large businesses.

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mr. Romney responded, as the hecklers shouted back, “No, they’re not!”

“Of course they are,” Mr. Romney said, chuckling slightly. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

It was a telling, unscripted moment for Mr. Romney likely to be replayed on YouTube. In an instant, he seemed to humanize himself by pointedly squabbling with the group of hecklers, showing flashes of anger and defying his reputation as a sometimes stilted, unfeeling candidate.

But at the same time, he seemed to reinforce another image of himself: as an out-of-touch businessman who sees the world from the executive suite.

Well, though I surely don't know where the money corporations take in go, I do think Romeny's compassion should not be brushed aside easily.  After all, America is a born-again evangelical Christian nation, isn't it?

Therefore, I heartily endorse Romney's assertion, and demand on granting all human rights to corporations, and most important, the voting rights.

However, it is a bit tricky, logistically, to have corporations to vote and to stand in as candidates.  But, we are a resourceful bunch; if we cannot agree on the details, we can always go back to the intentions of our Founding Fathers (not Mothers for sure). 

Since our Founding Fathers' intentions were granting voting rights to property owners only, therefore, it makes absolute sense to grant the most monied entities - corporations - voting rights.   For the unenlightened, there is a term called Originalism, or, Original Intent: Originalists think that the best way to interpret the Constitution is to determine how the Framers intended the Constitution to be interpreted. They look to several sources to determine this intent, including the contemporary writings of the framers, newspaper articles, the Federalist Papers, and the notes from the Constitutional Convention itself. [http://www.usconstitution.net]

I found some background information on History.org regarding the original intent of our founding fathers:

Typically, white, male property owners twenty-one or older could vote. Some colonists not only accepted these restrictions but also opposed broadening the franchise. Duke University professor Alexander Keyssar wrote in The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States:
At its birth, the United States was not a democratic nation—far from it. The very word "democracy" had pejorative overtones, summoning up images of disorder, government by the unfit, even mob rule. In practice, moreover, relatively few of the nation's inhabitants were able to participate in elections: among the excluded were most African Americans, Native Americans, women, men who had not attained their majority, and white males who did not own land.

John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence and later president, wrote in 1776 that no good could come from enfranchising more Americans:

Depend upon it, Sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end to it. New claims will arise; women will demand the vote; lads from 12 to 21 will think their rights not enough attended to; and every man who has not a farthing, will demand an equal voice with any other, in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to one common level.

Property requirements were widespread. Some colonies required a voter to own a certain amount of land or land of a specified value. Others required personal property of a certain value, or payment of a certain amount of taxes. Examples from 1763 show the variety of these requirements. Delaware expected voters to own fifty acres of land or property worth £40. Rhode Island set the limit at land valued at £40 or worth an annual rent of £2. Connecticut required land worth an annual rent of £2 or livestock worth £40.

Now, I believe that I just proved why it is so rightful and important to voting rights to the wealthiest entities, corporations.  But why stop there?  All the human rights!

All the entitlements a human being enjoys should be extended to our dear corporation brothers and sisters, such as AIG, Lehmann Brothers, HP, Shell, Chevron, Ford, Apple, Google, Yahoo!

They ought to be able to collect social securities - if they are old enough, such as Coca Cola, etc.  But do they have to retire, aka stop being actively churning out sugared cold drink?  Maybe not.  Many social security collectors continue to earn money on the side.  Medicare and Medicaid too, if they need them.

But, naturally, they have to pay social security and medicare taxes.  Well, so be it.  We want to fair, don't we?

I would also propose that when a corporation breaks laws, causes deaths and engages in other mischeives, we ought to jail it - forbidding the corporation to practice in the term, and even impose death penalty upon it when its crime warrants such ultimate punishment - forbidding the corporate to engage in any business transactions for ever.

Also, we ought to regulate marriages of corporations, in case the corporates want to get married to each other are of same sex.  Too bad too that we can no longer legally to deny the voting rights, or any other human rights, to the poor, the colored, or the homosexuals (excluding their marriage rights to the persons they love naturally) - therefore, we have to compromise a bit on our Founding Fathers' Intentions.   This actually proves that we are not as rigid as our opponents charge us to be.  We do compromise, only on our own terms.

All these endeavors can be done.  Our country have the most resourceful lawyers if nothing else.  And all the troubles are not wasted.  How wonderful it would be if the governors in our countries are not the likes of Mr. Jerry Brown, or Mr. Mitt Romney, but Mr. Google or Mr. Fidelity!  And why stop at governors' mansions.  Corporations can occupy the White House and the chambers of Congress as well. 

Our corporations deserve every dignity and entitlement a human being enjoys. Welcome, my corporation brothers and sisters.

Tomorrow, we are to vote together. I have several tens of thousands dollars and that's how many votes I shall have; while you, you ought to have millions upon millions, and billions upon billions votes.

Hurray! We are in a truly enlightened and democratic era. The sun rises, perhaps from the west?

Sisyphus © Matthew Felix Sun