I’d like to add a couple of things to Jill’s post. In the current issue of the magazine, I have an interview with Chen Guangcheng. He of course feels a burden of responsibility for the CCP’s retaliation against his family. But he also talks about the importance of pressure: When you pressure the Party, they cease and desist. He says that international pressure had a lot to do with his own survival.

Then there is Liu Xiaobo and his brother-in-law, Liu Hui. Liu Xiaobo is, of course, the 2010 Nobel peace laureate. The 2009 peace laureate is our president. I wonder whether the 2009 laureate has been speaking about the 2010 laureate to that laureate’s jailers and persecutors. Ordinarily, there is solidarity among peace laureates. (There was in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, for instance.)

Fans of Edward Snowden, Guardian of American Liberty — or would that be the Guardian? — may want to ask their hero, “Will you call on your new hosts to be a little less beastly? To respect human and civil rights? Maybe torture fewer Falun Gong practitioners to death? At least limit the murder-by-torture of the old ladies among them?”

We know how exquisite Snowden’s, and the Guardian’s, conscience is.