Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end.
Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Part Two: “Metaphysics of Virtue.”
Image incorporating aquatint silhouette by J.T. Puttrich, 1793. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark
“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay,” Chamath Palihapitiya stated emphatically on the All-In Podcast. “I’m telling you a very hard, ugly truth.”
Concern that the totalitarian Chinese regime has locked more than a million Muslim Uyghurs in concentration camps is “a luxury belief,” according to Mr. Palihapitiya, the Sri Lankan-born Canadian and American billionaire venture capitalist, once a senior Facebook executive and now partial owner of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
As the Olympics Games open today in Beijing, the validity of his assertion remains to be seen.
“The 2022 Winter Olympics will be remembered as the Genocide Games,” argues Teng Biao, the former Chinese human rights activist, now teaching law at the University of Chicago. “The CCP’s purpose is to exactly turn the sports arena into a stage for political legitimacy and a tool to whitewash all those atrocities.”
In addition to the genocide “against my Uyghur brothers and sisters,” basketball star Enes Kanter Freedom points out the Chinazis are “erasing Tibetan identity and culture, attacking freedoms in Hong Kong and threatening democratic Taiwan.
“The world needs to wake up,” he warns, “and realize that the Chinese Communist Party is not our friend.”
“It’s hard to understand why anyone feels it’s even possible to celebrate international friendship and ‘Olympic values’ in Beijing this year,” the Uyghur Human Rights Project’s Omer Kanat told The Washington Post. Kanat charged “Olympic corporate sponsors” with “sportwashing genocide.”
“Do you ignore the ongoing genocide,” he asks, “or do you take a stand?”
Throughout these Beijing Olympics, I hope athletes and others — from news networks to you and me on social media — will care enough to take a stand by speaking up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Olympic corporate sponsors are sportwashing genocide. The Beijing Games are a referendum on the Chinese government’s atrocities. Do you ignore the ongoing genocide, or do you take a stand?
Omer Kanat, Executive Director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, as quoted on Senator Rick Scott’s website, “Communist China Cannot Whitewash Genocide with Olympic Games” (January 24, 2022).
On February 4, 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected as the first President of the United States, under the new Constitution, by the U.S. Electoral College.
On the same date five years later, the French legislature abolished slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic.
Celebrate the Olympic Games. And all they entail?
See our latest video on Rumble and within our new category on YouTube (satire):
More on the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity:
An “independent” redistricting commission established in New York State by constitutional amendment has failed. That means state lawmakers get to draw political districts after all.
And boy, are they drawing them.
The maps just proposed by the dominantly Democratic legislature may reduce the number of GOP congressional districts from eight to three. But as Adele Malpass explains, these maps “are filled with districts that are shaped like snakes [and] cross multiple bodies of water.”
Although the failed New York State Independent Redistricting Commission sports that imposing moniker, it is really just a bipartisan commission. Not so independent. The commission was set up in such a way allowing either group of partisan members to obstruct things until there is no alternative but to let state lawmakers draw the districts.
That’s what happened here.
Both Republican and Democratic commission members argue that a legislature-mandated compromise to reconcile clashing sets of maps — a GOP-preferred set and a Democrat-preferred set — was thwarted by the other partisan team. The Republican claim is more plausible; they had nothing to gain by letting districts be squiggled by Democrats in the legislature.
Last November, the commission survived a Democrat-favored ballot measure to kill it, but that victory wasn’t enough to prevent the commission from collapsing.
Perhaps this grotesque gerrymandering will be stymied by courts. It would be great if Empire State voters had the power to enact a more robust district-drawing commission. But sadly, New Yorkers have no statewide right of citizen initiative.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Nobody cares about it. Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay? . . . I’m telling you a very hard, ugly truth, okay? . . . And I think a lot of people believe that, and I’m sorry if that’s a hard truth to hear, but every time I say that I care about the Uyghurs, I’m really just lying if I don’t really care. And so, I’d rather not lie to you and tell you the truth — it’s not a priority for me.
Chamath Palihapitiya, a Sri Lankan-born Canadian and American billionaire venture capitalist, quoted in “Investor’s Uyghur Comments Are Even Worse Than You’ve Heard,” by Jim Geraghty, National Review (January 18, 2022).
On February 3, 1783, Spain recognized United States independence.
Walter Bagehot (pronounced “badge-it”; pictured), famed editor of The Economist and author of Lombard Street, was born on this date in 1826.
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson’s aim, in moderating a panel discussion last week, was to provide, in his words, a “long-overdue second opinion” on the coronavirus pandemic. The senior senator from Wisconsin gathered a wide variety of experts who offered up a lot of information.
Included in the nearly five hours of material is some startling information — data derived from military personnel and their families.
You may remember that the current president has made the “vaccines” mandatory for the military. Well, Ohio attorney Thomas Renz “presented DOD medical billing data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED) that paints a shockingly disturbing picture of the health of our service members in 2021,” writes Daniel Horowitz for Blaze.
What was found?
Now, these do not represent individual cases, but specific diagnoses, which can be multiple for each patient. Still: alarming.
And in case you might wonder about blaming COVID itself for some of these, consider the miscarriage rate: it was normal in 2020, before the vaccines, and it spiked in 2021, with the vaccines.
These rate increases were based on data going back five years prior to 2021.
While these issues need to be fully addressed, the sad truth is that approved, official government personnel and the pro-vax “expert” authorities declined to participate in the Wisconsin Republican’s hearing.
More evidence that the pandemic has become a partisan issue, with Democrats pushing the official narrative.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The spectacle of the Olympics cannot cover up genocide. It’s hard to understand why anyone feels it’s even possible to celebrate international friendship and ‘Olympic values’ in Beijing this year.
Omer Kanat, in “Beijing Olympics Begin Amid Atrocity Crimes” (January 27, 2022), a joint statement of the Uyghur Human Rights Project.