Stallman boycotts China, should you?

Random clicking today led me to the page of one of the most notorious egos in the world of open source software. Sorry, free software. Oops, no I mean Free software. Free like Freedom, not free beer. Free like my freedom to call it open source software without a billion zealots pouncing on me.

If you scroll down you can find his list of “long-term action items,” a list I once thought existed only in Chuck Palahniuk novels. The line that chapped my ass was this: “Join the boycott of Chinese products to support human rights for Tibetans and Chinese.”

(Update: Stallman has since removed this action item. You can still see it in this Wayback Machine cache.)

The logic of this one is hard to follow.

Allow me to present the real world situation:

Overseas people demand products. Factory hires Chinese workers to make products. Chinese workers make products. Chinese workers get paid. Chinese workers use their pay to buy shelter, food and cell phones.

And now the version that Stallman advocates:

Overseas people have no demand for products. Chinese factories close and fire all their workers. Chinese workers do not get paid. Chinese workers are unable to buy shelter, food and cell phones.

What was one of those major things in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights? I think it went something like, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Not eating and not having a roof over your head can certainly fuck with two of those points in a big way.

For all the readers who are just foaming at the mouth right now, what exactly would you have these people doing instead? China has at least 1.3 billion people. If the manufacturing sector were to vanish, what would they all be doing? Unemployment is a big issue here. Sure there are issues of shady southern companies using child labor, but at least the children are getting paid. That puts them a step above Wikipedia.

I went to the Web site to which Stallman linked, boycott made in china[sic]. It’s a simple site that tells how China and everything from China is evil, and how if you buy it you support evil, which makes you an evil, guilty, fascist fuck.

So, unlike most readers, I did a little more digging. Every page of the Web site pushed one book, Buying the Dragon’s Teeth by Jamyang Norbu.

Norbu, for those who don’t know, is a Tibetan “activist” who escaped Tibet with the Dalai Lama when they realized their Gelug Sect would not longer have total dominance of spiritual and political power in the region. He now lives in India like the rest of his crew.

Truly an unbiased man who has nothing but the best interests in the human rights of all people in China at heart.

But one man cannot publish a book. That takes money and a publisher, both of which came from the Rangzen Alliance, better known as the World Council of Tibetans for an Independent Tibet — the Tibetans in exile who have mastered playing the Western media’s fervent hatred of anything China and its love of “victims” for ends that are anything but pacifist.

Coincidentally, the Rangzen Alliance is the group behind Boycott Made in China.

I’m not going to rip into the history of Tibet as it is not taught in the West. I have already done that in great length. I will say that I am getting tired of these fake do-gooders trying to brand their cause as saving all the people of China when it is nothing but a thinly-veiled attack on the Han ethnic group.

Sadly, unlike activists, I have to work for a living and have exhausted what time I could spare to update my Web page.

I will say this though: if you plan to champion a cause, at least get off your fat ass and find out who is spearheading the effort, and ask yourself — honestly — what personal beef do they have with the target they have selected to attack.

The Rangzen Alliance has all the cattle of India.

Other posts of interest

• Inmate plays most dangerous game, dies
• Wallpaper Wednesday!
• Entering dragon land—the Loongson laptop