A Happy Day for Americans and the World

Leadership makes a difference.

View from China with an Austrian School of Economics Perspective

Leadership makes a difference, and the lack or presence thereof has a huge impact on confidence in the future. This is probably true for any country anywhere, and it is certainly true for us in China.

On this day January 20th 2025, that’s what we got from the new American president. Not only did he deliver a clear vision of the path forward, but he backed it up with actions. These included not only a long list of executive orders with real world impact, but also the immediate release of over 1500 political prisoners.

It is a happy day to see so many political prisoners released in the US, including multiple dissidents sentenced to prison terms of 15 years or more for the crime of “sedition” – i.e. opposing the US government. These include Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio (22 years) and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes (18 years).

Many of the 1500+ victims were apparently confirmed to solitary confinement for long periods, a treatment which arguably constitutes a kind of torture.

Sadly, President Trump seems to have failed to keep his promise to free Ross Ulbricht on Day One, but Elon Musk has promised that it will happen tomorrow morning.

Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life imprisonment for creating a website.

We can only hope that this will happen.

Edward Snowden and Kim Dotcom, as well as countless other foreigners targeted by the United States are also still waiting. In 2012 Kim Dotcom was the target of a savage raid of his home in New Zealand by US marines flown in by helicopter from offshore in an attempt to kidnap him. His crime? Creating a file sharing website. When they failed to find him, they sprayed the house with machine gun fire before flying off again. Since then he has been fighting attempts by the US to officially extradite him from New Zealand. A US arrest warrant for at least one other of his colleagues remains in effect.

Will they be remembered?

And let’s not forget the thousands of Brits now imprisoned for expressing opinions publicly which the British ruling establishment objects to. Or the countless Europeans fined or imprisoned for such crimes as expressing support for Russia or calling a politician a fat lesbian. Alain Soral got 60 days in Switzerland for this special crime.

The savage and often vicious injustice of these Western “justice” systems is worth keeping in mind whenever one sees online pundits complaining about people imprisoned in China for offending or irritating the powerful. Yes, such cases exist, and of course most of us would prefer to live in a world where freedom of speech is a freedom in fact and not just in theory. But do keep things in perspective.

As we have discussed in earlier articles, China does indeed have a ridiculous set of policies regarding freedom of speech, at least in public.

However, cases of imprisonment are very very rare, and certainly no one gets punished here for calling someone a fat lesbian. Moreover, sentences of 18 or 22 years are absolutely unheard of. Usually the most that happens is your post gets deleted, or maybe your employer gets a call from the PSB with the suggestion to tell you to cool it.

It’s great to see things looking up in the USA. Maybe if we’re lucky China and other countries will take note.

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