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On the night of April 23, 2010, Houston police noticed a car driving without a license plate. The car did not stop and opened a gate and pulled into the Chinese consulate parking garage. Officers reportedly followed and arrested, handcuffed, and somehow injured the driver on the head and heck requiring him to be transported to a hospital.

Prior to the arrest, the driver told the police they were breaking the law by being on Chinese consulate grounds. The driver was a deputy consul named Yu Boren. Reportedly one of his family members, Ging Hua Deng, was in the car and observed the police brutality.
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Readers of our website know we’re concerned about the erosion of Constitutional rights in the United States. It’s commonplace for American governments to violate Constitutional and federal law protections for due process, equal protection under the law, unreasonable search and seizure, and innocent until proven guilty in cases involving alleged child abuse and divorces with contested child custody. But the erosion of civil liberties is spreading far beyond family law.

While researching another article I’m writing, I ran across an article from the Washington Post which really disturbed me. Whether you’re an architecture student or common citizen, you now have reason to be fearful of government oppression if you snap a picture of a building while taking a walk on a public sidewalk or a drive on public streets. Taking such pictures is in no way unlawful. First Amendment rights and court cases have established that taking photographs from public areas, especially outdoors, is lawful. But that doesn’t stop law enforcement and especially security guards who sometimes illegally impersonate police officers for intimidating and even assaulting photographers who are not breaking any laws.
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In her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, author Naomi Klein unveils her opinions on the perhaps not so surprising tactic of abusive governments everywhere: the use of coups, regime changes, and disasters to push radical agendas that could not be pursued during normal circumstances. She coins the phrase “disaster capitalism” to refer to this pattern of destruction or distraction paired with policies designed to transfer power or wealth to corporations.

Klein cites examples from regions and disasters across the world, including the United States and the 9/11/2001 terror attacks, the Southeast Asian tsunami, and the Hurricane Katrina destruction of New Orleans. She also covers examples of economic disasters created by government changes in countries all over the world, including Argentina, Chile, Poland, Russia, and China. Throughout her book, she lays the blame for nearly all of these messes used to spread bad government policies on economist Milton Friedman and his theories.
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