Wouldn’t want to offend China

Neither President Barack Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has singled out China for public criticism over the latest wave of arrests, though both have said that they always raise human rights in their private conversations with Chinese officials.

Which makes them just like every administration, Republicans and Democrat.

Artist Ai Weiwei, who collaborated on the design for Beijing’s Olympic stadium, is the latest high-profile critic of the Chinese government who was reported detained. He was stopped at Beijing’s airport on April 3 as he prepared to fly to Hong Kong, and his whereabouts since have not been disclosed by Chinese authorities. …

Wolf said he doesn’t expect much from his colleagues in Congress either, where he said neither party “has the heart to take this issue on” or to press China to change its human rights record by threatening punitive measures on trade or currency.

American foreign policy — inconsistent and unashamed.

when will obama speak out on human rights?

China has detained several dissidents ahead of the president’s visit, and it’ll be interesting to see if he takes note. His silence on human rights abuses has disappointed.

(Commenters, please refrain from the hyperbole consistent with Obama Derangement Syndrome.)

whatever happened to human rights?

They are not a priority of President Obama, who, in his first nine months on the job, dissed both the Iranian revolutionaries and the Dalai Lama. I understand the rationale, but, as Leon Wieseltier writes in the upcoming New Republic, compromise isn’t always the answer.

“The demotion of human rights by the common-ground presidency is absolutely incomprehensible. The common ground is not always the high ground. When it is without end, moreover, the search for common ground is bad for bargaining. It informs the other side that what you most desire is the deal — that you will never acknowledge the finality of the difference, and never be satisfied with the integrity of opposition. There is a reason that ‘uncompromising’ is a term of approbation.”