Category: general freedom

Virtual Private Communist

“China censors Olympic gold medalist’s defense of China’s internet censorship . . .” informed Mashable.com’s ironic headline.

The medalist in question? Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old phenom who just became the youngest ever Olympic freestyle skiing champion. Born in San Francisco to an American father and a Chinese mother, Gu is an American citizen, but chose to ski on the Chinese national team at the Beijing Olympics, which means she is also a Chinese citizen. (Which is completely against Chinese law. But ssshhh.*)

Miss Gu’s now-you-see-it/now-you-don’t Instagram post of February 7th garnered a reply from a Chinese netizen, who inquired, “Why can you use Instagram and millions of Chinese people from mainland cannot, why you got such special treatment as a Chinese citizen?” The commenter added, “That’s not fair,” noting that “millions of Chinese . . . don’t have internet freedom.”

Gu quickly replied, “Anyone can download a vpn its literally free on the App Store.”

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are indeed easily available outside of China, but “it is illegal to use them to get around China’s Great Firewall,” Mashable explained.

“And, as the Weibo post featuring Gu’s Instagram comment started to gain traction on the social network, it was subsequently censored.”

“Let them have VPNs,” mocked a column in the Taiwan News, dubbing it Gu’s “‘Marie Antoinette’ moment.”

The reality of VPNs in China? Not so easy, and the laws against VPN usage are increasingly enforced.

Gu’s ignorance about the reality of living under Chinese rule may be caused by the wealth showering over her. “Eileen Gu’s China choice pays off for now,” says Yahoo News, noting she has made over $30 million since the beginning of 2021 and is poised to make far more.

This makes her a Communist Party asset, and thus a danger to herself and the rest us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “China does not allow for dual citizenship,” Mashable informs, “and there is no record that Gu has given up her American citizenship.” It appears we can add “looking the other way” and “duplicitousness” to the Chinazis’ long rap sheet of crimes against humanity.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags censorship, Eileen Gu, olympics

First Amendment rights general freedom local leaders nannyism

The Next-Worst Thing

New York City, big apple, mayor, censorship

New Yorkers can breathe easier now — they’re finally rid of the repellent Mayor Bill de Blasio.

But — uh oh — the new mayor, Eric Adams, may be another worm to keep that bitter taste dominant in the Big Apple.

Mayor Adams dislikes guns and violence, so he wants social media to censor rap videos that display and glorify guns. It’s unclear whether he also wants social media to censor links to westerns and Matrix movies and lots of other movies and media in which guns to fight bad guys or bad algorithms are approvingly deployed.

“You have a civic and corporate responsibility,” Adams intones, enjoining social media firms to expand their list of banned things.

“We [we?] pulled Trump off Twitter because of what he was spewing. Yet we are allowing music displaying of guns, violence. We allow this to stay on the sites.”

“Stagecoach” and a rap video proposing that one “[expletive deleted] that [expletive deleted]” may have little in common in the categories of values and sensibilities. But if violence is “glorified” in both, well, that’s bad. Right?

Adams is a government official. A “public servant.” And a functionary in such a position cannot make solemn, well-publicized declarations about what companies should censor without thereby seeking to enlist them — deputize them, you might say — as agents of government censorship.

He is not sending police to the offices of Twitter and Facebook and ordering them to ban rap-video tweets or else. But he’s doing the next-worst thing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags censorship, guns, New York City, violence

First Amendment rights general freedom social media

#GoPoundSand

Give Send Go, crowd funding, Canada, truckers, GoFundMe

The exact words of GiveSendGo, on Twitter:

“Know this! Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo. All funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”

Just the attitude one would hope for.

This wonderful statement is in response to assertions by the government of Ontario that they’re preventing the Freedom Convoy from getting the funds via GiveSendGo that truckers need to eat, gas up after police steal their gas, etc. All the standard expenses involved in being a national (and now international) trucker convey fighting tyranny.

Compare the inspiring policies of the folks at GiveSendGo with the dreary interventionism of the pinch-mouthed overlords at GoFundMe.

In addition to shutting down the Freedom Convoy campaign, GoFundMe briefly but seriously planned to steal some of the donations that had already been made.

GoFundMe has also shut down other fundraising campaigns to oppose mask and vaccine mandates, campaigns to help Kyle Rittenhouse and to help conservative students harassed at Arizona State University, a campaign to investigate voter fraud, etc.

We have to think long and hard. If we need to raise money for a purpose the tyrannical left would disapprove, are we better off going with new-kid-on-the-block GiveSendGo or better-established GoFundMe?

I hope that you ponder this question for the same full millisecond that I did.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags Canada, covid, crowd funding, mandates, protest

education and schooling general freedom

Freedom Fighting Washougal-Style

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 11, 2022
No Comments on Freedom Fighting Washougal-Style

Three young men at Washougal High School in Washington state are leading a common-sense rebellion against mask mandates.

The evidence has been in for a while. Young people aren’t at much risk from COVID-19. And masks with less than N95-level filtering don’t much help in reducing the risk of being infected by COVID-19.

The form of the protest is simple. Walkouts and refusal to mask up. The leaders are Washougal High School seniors Cade Costales, Caleb Bennett, and Harrison Tanner.

They stress that the target of their protest is the state government, which imposed the mandate.

“It’s not the school district, as it is the state that is mandating masks,” Tanner says. “We are trying to get notice up to the state level to get the mask mandate revoked so it’s optional in schools. So we have freedom and liberty.”

Costales urges students to be respectful: “We want this to be a peaceful, respectful movement. We are just trying to gain back our rights as citizens. The teachers in the end are just doing their jobs. It doesn’t come from them. It comes from the state. . . .

“We’re doing this peacefully and respectfully. If a staff member asks you to put a mask on, you say ‘No, thank you’ and keep walking. And if they kick you out, then go home. If people need rides home, then I’m sure some of the seniors can start giving people rides home.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says that the time is not yet right to take away indoor mask requirements. Just like Canada’s Justin Trudeau, it’s time he stopped talking and started listening.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

general freedom ideological culture international affairs media and media people

Changing the Chinazi Channel

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 10, 2022
No Comments on Changing the Chinazi Channel

“Is there a more beautiful phrase,” Jim Geraghty asks his readers at National Review, “than ‘cataclysmic loss of audience’?”

Geraghty shares Dan Wetzel’s term for the good news that viewership of NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics in Beijing hit “a record low for the Opening Ceremony.”

“Through the first four nights of competition,” reports the Associated Press, “NBC is on track for the lowest-rated Winter Games in history.”

What’s going on? Americans are voting with their eyeballs! And TV remotes.

An Axios-Momentive poll shows why: “Seven in 10 survey respondents disapprove of allowing China to host these Olympics.”

“The host country, China,” explains Yahoo columnist Dan Wetzel, “is a serious problem.”

Wetzel called China’s use of a Uyghur athlete to light the Olympic torch “a propaganda prop to cover up a campaign of slavery, torture, forced abortions and internment in reeducation camps.”

“Some Americans want U.S. corporations to take a stand as well,” informs FightThirtyEight, the polling website. “When asked whether they think ‘companies should withdraw their advertisements for the February 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in response to human rights violations by the Chinese government,’ 54 percent of U.S. adults said probably or definitely yes. . . .”

One sponsor, Coca-Cola, “has dialed back its marketing efforts outside of China.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that “soda aisles in grocery stores are bereft of Olympics-themed displays” and “the main page of Coke’s U.S. consumer website made no mention of the Games.”

“Congratulations to the athletes,” offers a Boston.com reader, “but the pomp and circumstance can’t hide what’s really happening there.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts