Category: international affairs

Tyranny Without Limits

This weekend, at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a unanimous vote of elite communist party officials gave President Xi Jinping his third five-year term.

But the story that made the headlines focused on the physical removal from the main chamber of Hu Jintao, the previous Chinese leader (2003–2013), on the final day. No one is sure what it means, but we cannot unsee the pattern.

“In 10 years of ruling China, Xi Jinping has expunged political rivals, replacing them with allies,” notes The New York Times. “He has wiped out civil society, giving citizens no recourse for help but his government. He has muzzled dissent, saturating public conversation with propaganda about his greatness.”

The Times forgot to mention the genocide against Uyghurs or the full extent of CCP censorship or repression or the stepped-up harassment and threats to invade democratic Taiwan, but the article does convey that Xi is a thug of totalitarian proportions.

“What is happening is potentially very dangerous,” Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a political scientist at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, argued back when the limit was repealed, “because the reason why Mao Zedong made one mistake after another was because China at the time was a one-man show.”

Those “mistakes” cost millions of Chinese their lives. One-man totalitarian rule is bad news for everybody everywhere. Xi’s personal power makes China more repressive at home as well as more dangerous and aggressive abroad.

“For Xi Jinping, whatever he says is the law,” Lam added. “There are no longer any checks and balances.”

Lam meant internally, but, for better or worse, we are likely to see what checks and balances and defenses there are outside of communist-run China.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags China, Hu Jintao, Xi Jinping

Fifth Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights international affairs

The Chinazis Next Door

China, spies, police, Canada, USA, America

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

This 1966 comedy about the accidental grounding of a Soviet submarine off the coast of New England was nominated for four Academy Awards and captured the Golden Globe Award for best motion picture.

But a remake exclaiming “The Chinese Are Coming!” would be old hat: They’re already here.

“The People’s Republic of China has opened at least three police stations on Canadian soil as part of an alleged attempt by the country’s security state to keep an eye on the Chinese-Canadian diaspora,” The National Post informed last month.

“Canada-based dissidents of the Beijing government have long warned Canadian authorities that they face organized harassment from Chinese authorities,” The Post added.

A new report by Safeguard Defenders, a Spain-based foundation working for human rights in Asia, reveals there are now 54 of these Chinese “service stations” in 30 countries . . . including one in New York City.

The organization warns of “China’s growing global transnational repression,” explaining that in the last year 230,000 expats were “persuaded to return” to China but “these returns are often obtained by visiting extreme sanctions on the families of those targeted, such as asset seizures and prohibition from seeking government health care or education.”

In another recent report noted by The Globe and Mail, “the United Nations human-rights office said it found ‘patterns of intimidations, threats and reprisals’ against Uyghurs and other Chinese nationals living overseas who had spoken out against Beijing.”

Just last week, “El Correo published direct corroboration from Chinese authorities” of “illegal policing operations” with an anonymous Chinese official telling the Spanish paper, “The bilateral treaties are very cumbersome, and Europe is reluctant to extradite to China. I don’t see what is wrong with pressuring criminals to face justice. . . .”

The message to Chinese dissidents is clear: “You’re not safe anywhere.”

Are we?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags China, human rights, police

general freedom insider corruption international affairs

Musk Gone Mad?

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has often been lauded in this commentary — regarding SpaceX and the growth of private space travel, and recently for providing crucial internet access through his company’s Starlink satellites first to Ukraine and now for Iranian protesters.

I like that.

But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doesn’t like it at all. As Musk acknowledged last week in an interview with the Financial Times (FT), explaining that Chinese rulers wanted “assurances” he would not provide Starlink internet to the 1.4 billion people they actively repress.

With a Tesla plant in Shanghai, Musk is much more vulnerable to the dictates of Xi Jinping and the CCP than he is to Vladimir Putin or Iran’s Ayatollah.

“Tesla, though headquartered in the U.S.,” Forbes notes, “made about half of its cars last year in mainland China, the world’s largest auto market.”

Which amounts to an awful lot of leverage.

In that same FT interview, Musk floated a “solution” to the tensions between China, which threatens a military attack that might kill millions, and its target Taiwan, which overwhelmingly favors a war of resistance to CCP takeover and threatened re-education.

“My recommendation,” the usually innovative businessman told FT, “would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan [under China’s authority] that is reasonably palatable,” adding, “it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”

While the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. thanked Elon Musk for his idea, a senior Taiwanese official reminded, “The world has seen clearly what happened to Hong Kong.”

Does this brilliant businessman really think that the promise of a more “lenient” totalitarianism is any kind of solution?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags authoritarianism, China, freedom, Taiwan

defense & war general freedom international affairs

Armageddon, Anyone?

Ah, the things one hears at high-dollar Democratic Party fundraisers!

Like declaring Russia’s threat to unleash nuclear weapons against Ukraine as the most serious “prospect of Armageddon in 60 years.”

Last week, Sleepy Joe “startled many Americans” with those remarks at a closed-door meeting of big donors.

Backpedaling on Friday, “U.S. officials stressed . . . that the United States has no reason to change its nuclear posture.” No reason? We’re backing one side in a war in which nukes are on the table!

Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, didn’t defend Biden’s “Armageddon” terminology but offered that it was “useful for the president and the administration to be having a conversation with the public about the risk.”

Of course, the president gave this frank evaluation to his party’s top check-writers, not the public. And that’s the second biggest problem with U.S. foreign policy: it’s totally divorced from the people.

The biggest? Headin’ towards Armageddon. If Mr. Biden is serious about slouching towards the End Times, he should do more than make it the subject of political locker-room talk.

Like what? How about:

Seek to reduce tensions, wherever possible, and help Mr. Putin find an off ramp from his war in Ukraine;
Double- and triple-down on technologically defending the American people from the threat posed by nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction; and
Speak to the people about these threats and the U.S. response.

While security concerns may dictate that information not be shared publicly, if it’s good enough to share on the rubber-chicken circuit, it good enough for ‘We the People.’

We pay the highest prices; we deserve to hear the sales pitch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags foreign policy, nuclear war

First Amendment rights general freedom international affairs paternalism too much government

Deadly Dress Code

Iranian women are again out in the streets protesting the brutality of the regime.

We can only hope that their efforts will bear fruit — or, if we’re Elon Musk, we can also provide protesters with Internet service via Starlink satellite, now that the Iranian government has blocked the Internet in much of the country.

The immediate spark was the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

On September 13, Mahsa was arrested by Iran’s morality police for incorrectly wearing the hijab, the traditional head covering mandatory for Iranian women since 1979. Some of her hair showed.

According to witnesses, the police beat Mahsa in the police van; the police deny it.

Within hours of being detained, Mahsa was hospitalized and in a coma. She soon died. The police not very plausibly claimed that she had a heart attack. All a terrible coincidence. The family says that Mahsa had no health problems before being detained.

The immoral morality police were obeying the country’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, who on August 15 decreed that the nation’s dress code be more strictly enforced.

The protests — in which women have been burning their hijabs, cutting their hair, and shouting “Death to the oppressor!” — are ongoing and nationwide, and have spread to other countries.

At least thirty protesters have been killed.

In the words of the New Yorker’s Robin Wright, Mahsa’s death “lit the fuse of long-smoldering dissent in Iran,” and its people have taken to the streets before.

Godspeed this time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Hijab, Iran, morality police, revolt, revolution, woman

general freedom international affairs

A Thousand Times Yes

“Yes,” President Joe Biden stated unequivocally in answer to an October 2021 CNN townhall question on whether he would “vow to protect Taiwan.” Biden repeated that “yes” three more times in his full reply.

Months earlier, this president spoke of democratic Taiwan as one of our key allies that we have a “sacred commitment” to defend.

“Yes,” Mr. Biden emphatically informed a reporter back in May of this year who inquired, “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”

Last Sunday on 60 Minutes, correspondent Scott Pelley asked President Biden point-blank: “Would US forces defend the island?”

Again, the president replied, “Yes.”

“So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces — U.S. men and women — would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” Pelley followed up.

“Yes,” answered Biden.

Handlers-R-Us at The White House have walked back each and every one of these statements by the commander-in-chief to maintain the charade of “strategic ambiguity” — the U.S. strategy of not saying quite how we will respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. A thoroughly silly policy.

And — come’on man! — the cat is out of the bag! Mr. Biden’s statements, as Aaron Blake wrote in The Washington Post, amount to “firmly committing to send troops to defend Taiwan if China invades.”

I hope the United States and other countries will stand — militarily — with Taiwan, and thereby prevent the Beijing bullies from snuffing out the freedom of 24 million free Taiwanese.

Strength and unity and clarity of purpose are our best weapons against war.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags China, defense, freedom, Taiwan

international affairs local leaders media and media people national politics & policies

Pawns in Their Shame

“Let me say loud and clear to Greg Abbott and his enablers in Texas with these continued political stunts,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told a September 1 news conference, “Gov. Abbott has confirmed . . . he is a man without any morals, humanity or shame.”

Abbott’s alleged shame is busing a small percentage of the migrants streaming into Texas on to Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C. The bussed are volunteers: the migrants can choose to go or not.

Not too shockingly, however, the mayors in all three cities are crying foul quite “loud and clear.” Which only makes the Texas governor’s point. Abbott wants to dramatize the cost, seeking federal help so Texas doesn’t bear the brunt of the massive influx of folks illegally crossing the border — a record 1.7 million last year, estimated to hit 2.1 million more this year.

What particularly peeved Mayor Lightfoot was the lack of any “level of coordination and cooperation” from Texas authorities. At issue? “Those huddled masses yearning to breathe free in the United States,” Washington Post columnist Ruben Navarrette, Jr. explains, “usually arrive with empty pockets.” They have needs.

Last Wednesday, 147 more migrants arrived in Chicago, where Lightfoot has declared they will be welcomed. But . . . well . . . within hours she sent 64 of those individuals to a hotel in (Republican-voting) Burr Ridge, some 20 miles from downtown Chicago.

Bussed, no less.

Burr Ridge Mayor Gary Grasso blasted the fact “that nobody from the city, from the state called and told me.”

“This isn’t about them, the migrants are fine,” he insisted, but went on to complain that “they’re being used as political pawns by the governor and mayor.”

Add U.S. congressmen and especially the president to that list of shameful bussers, for Abbott’s tactic mimics the federal government’s transporting of migrants from border areas to other parts of the country.

Sure migrants are pawns in their game. We citizens should sympathize, for we are pawns in their shame.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Chicago, immigrant, immigration, Lori Lightfoot

international affairs national politics & policies

Survival Disallowed?

climate change, transition, science, starvation, poverty

By their assault on farming in the Netherlands, those who would sacrifice humanity on the altar of Mother Nature have given a big clue of how far they will go . . . to make our lives harder.

Pretty darn far.

Will Dutch farmers be forced out of business? Will others face skyrocketing food prices, hunger, even starvation?

Yet the elites say: So what? “It’s a transition.”

Livestock produce ammonia. Ammonia must be stopped. Whaddyagonnado?

We’re under assault in the U.S., too. Even if the attacks don’t always top the headlines and energy producers have yet to blockade roads en masse.

Specifically, the Legal Insurrection blog calls our attention to three new governmental obstacles to energy production:

The federal government is pausing oil and gas leases on 2.2 million acres of Colorado land to permit more study of environmental impact.
A federal judge is re-imposing a ban on the sale of coal on federal lands to permit more study of environmental impact.
The federal government is stopping a pipeline to transport gas from Idaho to Wyoming to permit more study of environmental impact.

If this goes on, sooner or later people without AC or heat will be rioting against utilities and gas stations . . . as Biden and the rest pretend that high prices and low supplies are caused by evil entrepreneurial greed.

Every election day we will have another chance, sort of, to stop the insanity. Meanwhile, we can at least stop pretending that this is not happening.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs media and media people

Words Not to Use

“Today, I confess, I am proud — proud of my profession.”

Sky News host Andrew Bolt was referencing the tough questions posed to Xiao Qian, China’s ambassador to Australia, following the ambassador’s speech last week to journalists at the nation’s Press Club.

After Xiao talked about “a possible opportunity to reset the relationship between our two countries,” what with a new Australian administration — and complained that media coverage of China was “mostly not positive”— the questions began.

The ambassador was asked first about the arrest, imprisonment and secret court proceedings against journalist Cheng Lei, an Australian citizen. Next, he was questioned on whether China might consider ending trade embargoes imposed after Australian officials requested an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Ambassador Xiao evaded answers on both matters.

Then came the issue of China’s threat to invade Taiwan. “I’d rather not use the word ‘invasion,’” offered Xiao, “when we talk about China and Taiwan.”

Asked if 24 million Taiwanese shouldn’t get to choose their own path, the ambassador replied, “The future of Taiwan will be decided by 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

“In fact, that’s not even true,” explained Bolt. “It is going to be determined by the Chinese dictatorship,” he added, noting the complete lack of any democracy under Chinese Communist Party rule.

Citing a recent statement by the Chinese ambassador to France that China would “re-educate” the Taiwanese after a military takeover, Ben Packham with The Australian requested a comment.

“There may be a process for the people of Taiwan to have a correct understanding of China,” Xiao acknowledged.

“Along the lines of the camps you have in Xinjiang?” Packham inquired. “That’s a re-education process isn’t it?”

“I’d rather not use the word ‘re-education,’” offered Xiao.

Words scare the genocidal totalitarians running China.

Speak up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags China, media, Taiwan

First Amendment rights international affairs Internet controversy

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.

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Tags censorship, China