Naomi Klein and city of Shenzhen-China

Naomi Klein, city of Shenzhen-China and police states In yesterday’s Guardian Naomi Klein again threw up her hatred for a climate, free market economy and liberalism, which allows her to access unrivalled freedom of speech by any standard. She claimed that having CCTV cameras in the major industrial city of Shenzhen-China can be seen as the move toward a police state, but what she forgot is that communist China is a police state already and all what it is doing is using available technologies to monitor the movement of every citizen in China whatever the origin of technologies is. Of course what she is implying is that installing CCTV cameras in western cities such as London can be a prime factor to change a liberal democracy into a police state! this is a nonsensical argument. Liberal democracies have proper effective mechanism to maintain liberties.

The story starts like this: Shenzhen is a Chinese city hosting thousands of successful high-tech collaborative manufacturing businesses between China and Western Corporations. Klein claims that over a million CCTV cameras have been installed in the city and that to Klein is enough proof for consolidating a police state, but again what she forgets is that billions of dollars businesses need protection rather than seeing it as an evidence of a start of a police state (China) which is a police state already.

Pompous writers like Klein need a taste of Saddam’s brutal police state for example to appreciate what she has in the West and not to blindly supporting dictatorships just to attack liberal capitalism. This shouldn't be understood that we shouldn't criticise the liberal west, but Klein and the like shouldn’t present the West as the worst place on this planet and even side rotten dictatorships to prove an anti-capitalism political point of view. Klein and the like should be equally critical of rotten dictatorial regimes and any negative aspects of liberal democracies. But unfortunately those western radical leftists are more interested in criticising the liberal west and say nothing about the brutality of dictatorships around the world; on the contrary they praise these dictatorships to support their criticism of western democracies.

Once and on Big Brother programme the one I dislike most Goerge Gallaway was asked if the people of Iraq loved Saddam Hussein and his reply was yes they did; a complete lie. These lies propagated by some leftists are quite damaging and may justify the oppression and brutality of those dictatorships. Klein and the like is guilty of such crime. When I was 17 years old young man and in conversation with family German friends visiting us in Iraq I was asked: what would I choose if I had to choose between freedom of speech and the daily necessary meals and my reply was freedom and I still believe so. But pampered people like Gallaway praising Cuba for its educational and health systems as if human beings are designed to accept being stripped off basic rights such as freedom of speech if offered good education and health. What a stupid argument?

I wish to see a new generation of western leftists who invest the same amount of efforts and energy to criticise the liberal west's negative issus as much as exposing the brutality of despotic regimes and work effectively toward ending them.