Han Han, on the other hand, does not receive anything from the government, he is also a victim of the Chinese system. He has his magazine banned and many of the posts he does are erased. Not to mention that he could be earning money if magazines were allowed to posts his articles an an op-ed, or as a professional blogger like Yglesias, etc, in the States.

How many famous American writers and journalists supported the Irak war, and how many of them were then condemned by the public/critics? Here is your answer: none. Even notorious hawks like Friedmann are still held in high esteem.

Many people did and still do expect people with certain public standing (not necessarily or only writers) to take stands, fight the system, stand up for justice, rights, etc. There was a great deal of pressure on a figure like Michael Jordan to make any kind of comments about Nike, or work behind the scenes to do anything, when it started to be slaughtered on the national/international scene over its treatment of workers. The parallel was drawn with Muhammad Ali who refused to fight in to Vietnam war, “I Ain’t Got No Quarrel With The Viet Cong” morphing into the consumer/corporate world of the 90s “Republicans buy sneakers too.”

Some people do expect/hope/require. And yes, many have signed a compact to drive us into consumerist slumber.

No, this has nothing at all to do with capitalism, really.

It is simply about strong countries using their power to take advantage of weak countries. I am not a crazy alarmist, I think the sitation is slowly improving and the World is much better now than it was 50 or 100 years ago, and yes probably we are going in the right direction.

But the Chinese can say exactly the same of their country internally, and there is nothing in our Foreign policicy that warrants our selfrighteousness and our idea of moral superiority to judge the Chinese. Our internal policies ARE clearly morally superior to the PRC’s, but our Foreign Policies are not. To be morally superior we need to be so in all fields, otherwise we are cheating ourselves.

Not to get me wrong: we can, and we SHOULD criticize the CPC, but in the same way as we criticize Bush’s Amrica, for example: with a bit of tact, and not with a self-righteous, sacrifice demanding, unbearably patronizing discourse.

America is the most obvious example because of its power but in essence we are all doing the same. Bombing a place is not the only way of being unjust. Forcing unfair trade deals can have an even more deadly effect.