What China has to deal with + Randy Blythe still in Czech prison

I have been saying it for some time now, but it should be fairly clear by now that many if not most of China’s right-liberals are not the sort of cute fuzzy harmless non-violent dissidents that the Western media enjoys portraying. The public (and, from all appearances, one-sided) street brawl between Wu Danhong and Zhou Yan demonstrates that public discourse in China has reached new lows, and liberals (even the supposedly cute and fuzzy ones like Ai Weiwei) are not only willing but eager to use fists and (supposedly) brickbats where their arguments, so supposedly rational, calm and convincing, fail to gain traction. As Zhang Heci, Australian-based Chinese dissident and blogger, put it:

I’m more and more disappointed at today’s intellectuals in China. Democracy fighter becomes synonym for gangster. ‘I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it’. They know the words by heart, yet they defend using violence….They have become a group that cannot be criticized, relying on asking others to choose a side. Whoever criticizes them, who is a Wu mao. Whoever criticizes the government less severe than they do, who is a Wu mao… Today, the word ‘public intellectual’ has increasingly become a derogatory term.

Or we could go with the more classic (and snarky) Metternich:

A people who can neither read nor write [well], whose last word is the dagger—such a people offers fine material for constitutional principles!

Expect more supposedly well-behaved, liberal-minded Western expat bloggers to cheer on just this sort of thuggery, as some already have. After all, nothing says democratic principles and universal values quite like a public flash mob and gang brawl! Great work, fellas and gals.

And meanwhile, on the international front, China keeps having to take threats from the usual suspects with regard to its stand on diplomacy in Syria. All I am asking for here is a little better behaviour, a little more civility on the part of my country’s leadership toward China, is that really too much? If right is on the side that Ms Clinton so avidly backs, why resort to these kinds of threats and backhanded insults rather than moral suasion?

Oh yes, and our consistent ally and glowing bastion of freedom and human rights, the Czech Republic, is still holding Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe in gaol pending charges of manslaughter, despite his having posted bail, for having removed a rowdy fan from the stage and then having been in the vicinity when he fell to the floor after having attempted to mount the stage again and died of the resulting brain haemorrhage. Guess nothing says freedom and human rights quite like holding a guy in indefinite detention for a ‘crime’ he demonstrably did not commit, either.