Aristotle was once asked what those who tell lies gain by it. Said he, “That when they speak truth they are not believed.”
Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.).
On May 28, 1952, the women of Greece gained the right to vote.
No honest person could deny the evidence.
Nevertheless, there are denials.
In February 2021, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, uttering a standard denial, told the United Nations that “basic facts show that there has never been so-called genocide, forced labor or religious oppression in Xinjiang.”
But now a hack of China’s police computers has unearthed a trove of documents showing what is happening in the camps according to the regime itself.
The files include mug shots of prisoners and records of protocols to be followed as police subdue detainees, handcuff and blindfold them while moving them between buildings, and shoot to kill anyone who tries to escape.
The xinjianpolicefiles.org site also hosts an explanation of the files by Adrian Denz, an expert on Chinese documents.
The “thousands of documents, speeches, policy directives, spreadsheets, images” come “directly from police computers in two ethnic minority counties in Xinjiang,” Denz says. “They for the first time give us a firsthand account of police operations inside reeducation camps.”
Unsurprisingly, they confirm the involvement of government officials.
Basic facts, abundantly documented.
Can Chinese officials still deny them?
Yes, but the job of controverting the incontrovertible is harder now. It will also be harder for appeasers in the West to pretend that none of this horror matters.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.
Lin Yutang, as quoted in Hard-to-Solve Cryptograms (2001) by Derrick Niederman, p. 96.
On May 27, 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi began his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification.
In 1927 on this date in May, the Ford Motor Company ceased manufacture of the Ford Model T (pictured above), the last of this model coming off the line the day previous. Over 16 million Model T Fords had been sold; it was a world-transformative product. On the 27th, the company began to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.
Exactly 70 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Paula Jones could pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he was in office.
In 2015 on the 27th of May, the commercial space company SpaceX was approved as a contractor to the U.S. military for satellite launches; SpaceX has since led the world in its use of
Katz is supposedly being fired for a relationship he had with a student 15 years ago and for which he was penalized in 2017. Actually, it’s for exposing the racist assumptions of so-called antiracism in a 2020 article.
It seems Princeton has been itching for an excuse to can him. Last year, the university found its excuse when the student involved in the older controversy, provoked by the new one, revived the old complaint.
Katz’s lawyer, Samantha Harris, says “the message to would-be dissenters is clear: the price of speaking out is having your personal life turned inside out looking for information to destroy you.”
Only a few colleagues have publicly supported Professor Katz.
Or even still talk to him.
More have joined the bandwagon against him. When it’s been most urgent to profess the truth, these professors have preferred a “safer” path.
In 2020, Katz wrote: “The pressure to apologize . . . to appease one’s tormentors can be tremendous, but do not give in to the pressure. If you feel you did no wrong, do not apologize.”
If Professor Katz wants to put this nightmare behind him, I’d understand. If he wants to sue Princeton for a billion dollars or so, well, I’d understand that too.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.
On May 26, 451, the Sassanid Empire defeated the Armenians at the battle of
On May 26, 1328, scholastic philosopher and Franciscan friar William of Ockham and other Franciscan leaders secretly exited Avignon, fearing a death sentence from Pope John XXII. On the same day in 1538, the city of Geneva expelled John Calvin and his followers, who headed to exile in Strasbourg.
Now a major target of the commies and Democrats, Musk has good reason to seek expert legal assistance. Indeed, he prophesied his peril in an infamous tweet, and he prophesied correctly — leading to the de rigueur sex scandal . . . and another funny tweet.
But it’s not all seedy, partisan sturm und drang:
Musk’s record isn’t perfect. But chances are that the help he’s seeking will be used in a good cause.
Just FYI — in case you’d like to boil down your resume to pursue this opportunity.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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It is not true that the masses are vehemently asking for socialism and that there is no means to resist them. The masses favour socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals. The intellectuals, not the populace, are moulding public opinion. It is a lame excuse of the intellectuals that they must yield to the masses. They themselves have generated the socialist ideas and indoctrinated the masses with them. No proletarian or son of a proletarian has contributed to the elaboration of the interventionist and socialist programmes. Their authors were all of bourgeois background. The esoteric writings of dialectical materialism, of Hegel, the father both of Marxism and of German aggressive nationalism, the books of Georges Sorel, of Gentile and of Spengler were not read by the average man; they did not move the masses directly. It was the intellectuals who popularized them.
The intellectual leaders of the peoples have produced and propagated the fallacies which are on the point of destroying liberty and Western civilization. The intellectuals alone are responsible for the mass slaughters which are the characteristic mark of our century. They alone can reverse the trend and pave the way for a resurrection of freedom.