Chinese Medicine

If you say bad things about the Party or the government, if you are witless enough to protest, the police will pack you off to a psychiatric hospital where they will declare you schizophrenic and force you to take anti-psychotic drugs—and even electroconvulsive therapy. A BBC investigation has found a spike in abuse of the 2013 Mental Health Law which the government had brought in to address this problem, making psychiatric treatment illegal if it’s not voluntary unless the patient is a danger to themselves or others. But Covid turned the clock back and from teenage students angry about the harsh lockdown to factory workers asking for better wages, scores of people have been hospitalised on mental health grounds for protesting against party and/or government.

Doctors speaking anonymously acknowledged the existence of a category called ‘troublemakers’. Medical reports accessed by the investigation had phrases like “the patient once again made false statements on the internet”, “criticised the Communist Party”, etc. The party running this police state has admitted it is aware of the problem. But it hasn’t done much to deter abuse of the law. Why should it when both the law and its violation serve it fine?

A Tale of Two Pardons

MAGA Granny Pamela Hemphill, 71, won’t accept Donald Trump’s pardon even as most of the convicted in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot case have been celebrating. “We were wrong that day,” said Hemphill, having earlier pleaded guilty to the offence of entering the Capitol with the rioters. Her problem now? Nobody knows for sure if a presidential pardon can be rejected. But Hemphill is clear about her moral choices—believing she had made a mistake then and won’t make it again.

The darkest detail in the saga of competitive pardons from Biden and Trump is the case of Ross Ulbricht, the operator of Silk Road, the dark web marketplace that sold illegal drugs. Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 for a conspiracy involving narcotics and money-laundering. But then, overturning the conviction was always a textbook libertarian cause for which Ulbricht was a classic case of government overreach. With Trump’s blessings, “privacy and anonymity”, Ulbricht’s sort-of motto, gets a shot in the arm. Too bad privacy turns on its head when it comes to staying the ban on TikTok despite its links to Chinese intelligence.

Tracking Tehran

Iran is perhaps North Korea’s closest competitor for being in the news for all the wrong reasons. But at Davos, the Islamic Republic tried to pre-empt US pressure by denying, again, that it seeks nuclear weapons. But the UN had already warned that Tehran was “pressing the gas pedal” on weapons-grade enrichment. That can only invite the Trump administration’s ire, notwithstanding the mixed messages on the eve of the 47th president’s inauguration. Will peace get a chance in West Asia out of the smoke of war or is there much worse to come?

Donald TrumpgeopoliticsIranMental Health LawNorth KoreaPamela Hemphillpsychiatric hospitalRoss Ulbrichtschizophrenia