Category: international affairs

China Leads the Way

A novelist lost access to the novel she was working on. Though almost finished, she had placed her draft in “the cloud” … and her Internet service decided to lock her out.

Suddenly, her million words were no longer hers.

That should be a lesson to us all about cloud storage (keep local, off-line back-ups of precious data!), but it’s especially a lesson about China.

While other governments and companies have already begun to emulate China’s censorship of social media and social credit scores, China’s remains at the cutting edge. Chinese writers are losing access to their work because a cloud-based software, WPS, is censoring at the behest of the Chinazi government.

The first to report the development was the novelist with the pen name of Mitu, mentioned above. Writers are being locked out of their manuscripts because the technology has spied illegal content.

Technology Review observes that the ensuing controversy has “highlighted the tension between Chinese users’ increasing awareness of privacy and tech companies’ obligation to censor on behalf of the government.”

An odd way of putting it. But yes, there’s often tension between persons who want to be free to act and others eager to repress.

Could it happen here?

We’re past the point of regarding any form of Big Tech-enabled censorship on behalf of the American state as unthinkably beyond the pale. When they’re routinely gagging scientists for discussing research inconsistent with government-approved doctrines about COVID-19, that’s a strong clue about how far they’re willing to go.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags censorship, China

defense & war general freedom international affairs

Fight or Flight?

Be strong or be gone. America must choose one of these two options in East Asia.

China insists.

Let’s note at the outset that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not “directly” threaten to shoot down House Speaker Pelosi’s plane on her possible upcoming visit to democratic and free Taiwan. That friendly suggestion was instead offered by a columnist for the “state-run” Global Times.

On Twitter.

Which, incidentally, is banned in China.

That being said, the totalitarians are indeed “bad folks.” In addition to continually threatening the invasion of Taiwan, they’re known to rough up defenseless old folks. For instance, browbeating 79-year-old President Joe Biden last week in a multi-hour phone call, in which, according to a Chinese foreign ministry read-out, Xi Jinping warned our president about standing with Taiwan: “Those who play with fire will perish by it.”

While no one in his right mind wants war with the Dragon, to avoid war with fear and cowardice may ultimately require ceding the world’s greatest democratic success story, Taiwan (the Republic of China), to the genocidal (and misnamed) People’s Republic of China.

Our cowardly leaders might opt to shut up and look the other way — especially if there is payola attached — but not the rest of us.

Should the United States tangle with a nuclear power over Taiwan?

Isn’t that like asking whether we should go to war over my mother or yours? Or your spouse … or your son or daughter?

Is one person — or a small nation of 24 million souls — worth such a risk?

When the Dragon demands a sacrifice, recognize it for what it is.

If one person, recognize it once.

If a nation, recognize it 24 million times.

Resist the Dragon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: As I point out in last weekend’s podcast, Taiwan can successfully repel a Chinese invasion, especially with U.S. and Japanese assistance. And here, Ian Easton, author of The Chinese Invasion Threat, speaks to the issue.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags China, freedom, Taiwan, war

defense & war general freedom international affairs

Does China Want War?

“WARNING,” it began, “THIS VIDEO MAY BE UPSETTING TO SOME VIEWERS.”

Just the all-caps was upsetting, I thought to myself.

Still, I was all ears and eyes for Johnny Harris’s “Here’s What Happens If China Invades Taiwan,” which garnered seven million views since February.

Harris was “a little bit conflicted making this video,” because he “feels very against the machismo fascination with conflict,” telling viewers that “we’re talking about people’s lives” and “entire societies being ripped about by a power struggle.”

Declaring that “China doesn’t want war,” Harris hazards that Mainland China “will probably try much less violent ways to try to force Taiwan to the negotiating table before resorting to all-out invasion.”

Masters of benevolence, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will … accept surrender!

Mr. Harris points out that the CCP has passed a law saying they “must” invade Taiwan if peaceful reunification is not possible. Explaining the dearth of support in Taiwan for joining their totalitarian neighbors, he notes “the interpretation of this law [is] more and more on the side of China should do this forcibly.”

Why, it’s “a legal imperative.”

And protecting “this far away island,” asserts Harris, “is something the American public broadly would not be into.” (Though, ahem, recent polling says otherwise.)

“I really hope that we are past needing to resort to this version of conflict to settle our disputes at this time in our history,” he concludes. “But I’m not totally convinced that we are yet.”

The CCP part of “we” is clearly not there.

“We can talk about it,” explains Harris. “We can find creative ways to solve this.”

My take? Don’t expect too much creativity from the CCP.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags China, freedom, Taiwan

defense & war general freedom international affairs

Biden Time with Bully

What’s more provocative: visiting friends or threatening a military invasion?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rumored to be visiting Taiwan in August, to see our friends who have made the most miraculous political advances of the last half century, from a repressive authoritarian society through four decades of martial law to arguably the most democratic and free nation in all of Asia.

Not to mention blossoming into an economic powerhouse that produces “roughly 90% of the world’s most advanced chips.”

“[T]he chip industry is dominated by manufacturers in the small island of Taiwan,” informs Fortune. “Policy makers in the U.S. have started to see that as a problem.”*

What’s problematic? Well, Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), ruling over both the world’s most populous country and the world’s fastest growing armed forces, constantly threatens a military assault to conquer the “renegade Chinese province.”

They want us not to be friends with the Taiwanese. No talking. No holding hands.

Last week, Beijing warned the U.S. against allowing Pelosi’s visit. Chinese spokesman Ma Xiaoguang “said today that some people in the US government and Congress are constantly provoking and playing the ‘Taiwan card’ … and the mainland will ‘resolutely strike back,’” Taiwan’s government news service reported.

Asked about the possible trip, President Joe Biden offered: “Well, I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now. But I don’t know what the status of it is.”

By any fair reading of all the gobbly-gook produced by our State Department over the decades, the U.S. is treaty-bound to defend Taiwan.

Moreover, from U.S. statements and actions, all the world expects America to step up for democratic Taiwan against a violent takeover by totalitarian China.

Even China thinks so.

And what does Pelosi think? “It is important for us to show support for Taiwan,” Pelosi told reporters.

She’s right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Also last week, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo called a disruption of the supply of computer chips from Taiwan a “scary scenario” that would lead to a “deep and immediate recession.” Invasions can be quite disruptive. Where would the chips fall, then?

NOTE: More on Taiwan at ThisisCommonSense.org.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags China, Nancy Pelosi, Taiwan

international affairs privacy

Delivering to Evil

Will Americans who demand the outing of anonymous donors to political causes listen to Jianli Yang?

One reason that people donate to organizations anonymously — just as they want their votes and other personal information to remain confidential — is to avoid being harassed by political opponents.

But being bullied in a restaurant is hardly the worst that can befall donors stripped of anonymity.

Jianli Yang is a Chinese dissident. In 2008, after spending years in a Chinese prison for his activism, he founded Citizen Power Initiatives for China, a US-based organization working to advance rights and democracy in China.

Yang notes that Chinese supporters of his organization, even if residing outside of China, “can face extreme consequences when they are identified by the Chinese government.” Without the right to protect donor privacy, affirmed in a July 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the associational rights of donors, donors can end up being punished by the Chinese government.

The risk isn’t just theoretical. In April 2021, one Mr. Lee, a businessman, was forced to appear on Chinese television to “confess” to supporting Citizen Power Initiatives for China. The government also sentenced Lee to eleven years in prison.

We must fight both the CCP and their wannabe branch in DC. Things are nowhere near as bad in this country as in China. But we don’t know what threats we will face the day after tomorrow even from our own government.

We need every First Amendment protection we can get.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags censorship, China, dissent, freedom, privacy

folly general freedom ideological culture international affairs

Seppuku for Dutch Farmers?

Post author By Editor
Post date July 11, 2022
2 Comments on Seppuku for Dutch Farmers?

farmer protest, Dutch, Netherlands, global warming, climate change

Two years ago, the Netherlands government was spending millions of euros to subsidize farmers and others hurt by pandemic policies.

Now it seeks to destroy many Dutch farmers by compelling them to drastically slash livestock herds to reduce nitrogen oxide and ammonia, thereby supposedly benefiting the environment. The government has also thwarted construction projects on save-the-planet grounds.

Farmers are protesting throughout the country. At one site, police opened fire. No one was hurt.

The prime minister objects to “intimidating” officials by, say, clogging highways with tractors — which protesting farmers have done.

Understandable, but shoe the other foot: Is using governmental coercion to destroy farmers a form of peaceful suasion?

Such irrational policies conform to ideologies that sure seem bent on the progressive destruction of civilization for the alleged sake of fine-tuning the weather. Yet nothing the Dutch could do — not even mass seppuku — would appreciably affect our far-more-massive-than-the-Netherlands global climate. But the government may succeed in making life harder for everyone in the habit of eating.

Just some overseas craziness that could never happen here?

It already is. Federal assaults on the oil industry have fueled skyrocketing fuel prices. Our current president says the burden is an acceptable part of “an incredible transition” to a world that will be “stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.”

Will the U.S. government next decide that too many cows are emitting gases such as methane and mandate culling of herds here?

Who knows? It depends on the politics of the moment, how eager officials are to appease enemies of mankind, and other factors having nothing to do with respecting the requirements of human survival.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts