Category: ideological culture

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs media and media people

Changing the Chinazi Channel

China, Uyghurs, Olympics

“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.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs media and media people

Exclusion-​Enforced Inclusion

covid, Canada, Justin Trudeau, authoritarianism, freedom

When the prime minister of Canada told the world that “Building Back Better means” not only helping the “most vulnerable” but also “maintaining our momentum on reaching the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” it might behoove us to look it up.

It’s not a secret.

It’s part of what Davos globalist Klaus Schwab calls “The Great Reset.” And the links between Schwab and Justin Trudeau are not tenuous: “what we’re really proud of now is the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau,” gushed Schwab weeks ago.

Well, Trudeau really had a chance to prove his Klausian globalist mettle last week.

Trudeau had indeed leveraged the coronavirus pandemic to institute tight statist controls on the Canadian population, right out of Schwab’s playbook.* But his vax mandate for truckers led not merely to supply-​chain problems in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the massive convoy protests in Ottawa.

So how did Schwab’s proud privileged prodigy perform?

First, he went into hiding. And then, while the protesters were explicitly directed against the vaccine mandates — notwithstanding the fact that 90 percent “of Canada’s cross-​border truckers … has had two shots” — Justin Trudeau couldn’t help himself, condemning “the antisemitism, Islamophobia,** anti-​Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we’ve seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days,” he proclaimed in a tweet. “Together, let’s keep working to make Canada more inclusive.”

Well, mandating vaccines is forced inclusion, the ominous part of the Schwab/​Trudeau agenda, enforced by exclusion. 

No wonder the growing opposition, sporting anti-​Klausian signs such as “Mandate Freedom.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The ’book in question being Schwab’s explicit program in Covid-​19: The Great Reset.

** Some participants are undoubtedly many of those phobic things, but evidence at the rally? Scant. As Tucker Carlson pointed out in his coverage, the protesters even shoveled snow and picked up trash after themselves.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs social media

LinkedIn, Red-​Handed

Breitbart, LinkedIn, censorship, China, freedom

How dare they? 

In their eagerness to chastise tyrannical governments and Western lackey tech firms, some persons appear to go so far as to cite — get this — investigative reports.

That’s what one LinkedIn user recently did, anyway. 

So no wonder Microsoft’s LinkedIn felt obliged to censor him for it.

The trouble-​making investigative report? Peter Schweizer’s Red-​Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win. The LinkedIn user in question tried to share a Breitbart piece about the book: “Red-​Handed Exposes Communist China’s Silicon Valley Sympathizers.”

In his own remarks, the censored LinkedIn user chimed in with a condemnation of China’s genocidal policies and American Big Tech’s abetting of the Chinese Communist Party.

LinkedIn says the user’s post violated its policies against “bullying.”

This is “not the first time LinkedIn has been caught censoring criticism of Communist China on its platform,” observes Breitbart​.com. LinkedIn is now suppressing posts “that expose Big Tech’s own links to the authoritarian regime in China.

“Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, is exposed in Schweizer’s book for working with the Chinese military on artificial intelligence research.”

I have the answer to this problem.

Before you say something on mainstream social media, ask yourself: “Is the thought I’m about to express something that the Chinazi government would approve? What about LinkedIn and other spineless Chinazi-​government-​appeasing social-​media companies like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook? Would they approve?”

If not, take your heretical thinking to Rumble, Odysee, Teamspeak, Telegram, Gab, MeWe, and/​or Clouthub, and express your thoughts there instead. 

I dare you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture

The Anti-​Free Speech Boycott

Neil Young, Spotify, censorship, free speech, freedom

Now that The Atlantic — a once- or twice- or thrice-​upon-​a-​time great magazine — toes a statist line relentlessly, it is most valuable for its hints at the exact opposite of the truth. 

While Spencer Kornhaber’s article, “Spotify Isn’t Really About the Music Anymore,” may be mostly correct regarding the facts presented in Neil Young’s and Joni Mitchell’s boycotts of Spotify — pulling their music off the Internet platform — the whole angle is off. 

Spotify, we learn, rarely turns a profit in its long tail music biz. By making an exclusive podcasting contract with The Joe Rogan Experience, the company seeks to entice users to pay up to listen to talk-​show audio, and thereby become more profitable. 

But is the service not really “about the music anymore”? 

Adding an allied genre does not negate the provision of entertainment to the core audience.

The article’s tagline gets it exactly backwards: “In choosing Joe Rogan over Neil Young, the company has made its new priorities clear to listeners.” Well, no. It was Neil Young (and then Joni Mitchell) who went the narrow, exclusionary route. Spotify had made a long-​term contract with Rogan in a bid to attract listeners of podcasts and other spoken-​word content. Young and Mitchell didn’t have the same kind of relationship with Spotify, so their attempt to cancel Rogan was doomed.

Unless they get other artists to do the same. Which could sink the company.

Then we would see the culture war ramp up another notch, with the artistic community segregating itself against those of differing (non-leftist*/non-statist/pro-freedom) opinions.

It’s something rich old rock-​n-​roller cranks can do. 

But a dangerous strategy for younger artists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Even leftists with differing opinions shall be shunned; back in 2020, Joe Rogan endorsed socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for president. 

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crime and punishment folly ideological culture

Stop & Go on Crime

crime, Democrats, law enforcement

In last week’s news conference, President Biden seemed to wave a green light to Vladimir Putin: Russian military forces may make a “minor incursion” into neighboring Ukraine. Was Biden applying to diplomacy, I wondered, the permissive posture so many other Democratic officials have taken, domestically? Crime’s fine, if small enough. 

If so, Biden’s not leading — Democrats around the country are changing direction. 

“We are in a crisis,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced last month, declaring a state of emergency. “Too many people are dying in this city. Too many people are sprawled all over our streets. And now we have a plan to address it.”

Her approach? Simple: End the “reign of criminals” by taking “the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement … and less tolerant of all the bullsh*t that has destroyed our city.”

The New York Times called it “a sharp break with the liberal conventions that have guided her city for decades.” 

“About time,” was California Governor Gavin Newsom’s response.

When Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner responded to questions about rising crime by arguing, “We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence,” former Mayor Michael Nutter expressed incredulity.

“How many more Black and brown people, and others,” Nutter wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “would have to be gunned down in our streets daily to meet your definition of a ‘crisis’?”

Still, upon taking office weeks ago, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg “ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences for hordes of criminals and to downgrade felony charges in cases including armed robberies …” the New York Post reported.

“The identical platform,” noted a police supervisor, “has not worked out in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore.”

Or anywhere else. Ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Specifically Alarming

Heartland Institute/Rasmussen Reports, covid, Democrat

To see Washington politicians and political hacks behaving badly, demanding the power to roll over the rights of those with whom they disagree, is not nearly as frightening — because it’s now so mundane — as to witness that insiders’ itch also infecting the grassroots of the body politic like a viral contagion.

Specifically alarming? A new Heartland Institute/​Rasmussen Reports survey of voters finds a plurality of self-​identified Democrats (48 percent) support slapping fines and imposing prison sentences on Americans “who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-​19 vaccines.”

No joke, as President Biden would say … but I’m telling the truth. 

Here’s the precise question asked: “Would you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose a proposal for federal or state governments to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-​19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications?”

Thankfully, the overall numbers less portend a totalitarian future, where speech would be thoroughly policed and suppressed (like China today). Pro-​censorship Americans total only 27 percent of the population, with fully two-​thirds of us opposed to shredding the First Amendment.

Still, per this poll, it isn’t free speech alone that Blue Team members are increasingly willing to jettison in fear of COVID:

  • “Forty-​five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-​19 vaccine,” explained Rasmussen Reports. 
  • And 47 percent of Democrats support “governments using digital devices to track unvaccinated people.”
  • Nearly a third of “Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-​19 vaccine.”

Constitutional rights belong to everyone … “in sickness and in health.” 

Right? Democrats?  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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