Category: international affairs

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initiative, referendum, and recall international affairs term limits

He Tries Harder

Putin, Russia,

He’s the Avis Rent A Car of authoritarianism. 

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin is not the most evil tyrant on the planet. That title clearly belongs to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Instead, Putin is No. 2. 

So, of course, he tries harder.

Two years ago, Xi Jinping got the Chinese Communist Party to jettison his term limits without breaking a sweat. Not the slightest pretense of democracy necessary. 

Two weeks ago, Putin finally caught up with Xi by winning an unnecessary and highly fraudulent national referendum designed to legitimize the constitutional jiggering that would allow him to stay in office until he would be 83 years old. 

Beating Joseph Stalin for post-tsar star tsar.

So, how did Putin rig the referendum? 

“Voters are being asked to approve a package of 206 constitutional amendments with a single yes-or-no answer,” explained National Public Radio. Many U.S. states have single-subject requirements for ballot measures to prevent precisely this sort of log-rolling.

Sergey Shpilkin, a well-known Russian physicist, produced statistical evidence that “as many as 22 million votes — roughly 1 in 4 — may have been cast fraudulently,” ABC News reported.

“The European Union regrets that, in the run up to this vote, campaigning both for and against was not allowed,” read a statement from the 27-nation block. With little debate and scant information, the referendum was just pretense.

So, why did Putin go through all the trouble to pretend?

Low approval ratings, a New York Times piece argued, his “lowest level since he first took power 20 years ago.” Putin needed all the help that fake democracy can provide.

Without any of those uncomfortable checks-on-power that real democracy demands.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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WHO Don’t You Love?

WHO, World Health Organization, Coronavirus, Covid,

“It leaves Americans sick,” tweeted Sen. Robert Menendez, the Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, “and America alone.”

Feeling lonely? 

The Trump administration has officially informed both the United Nations and Congress that the U.S. will withdraw from the World Health Organization effective July 6, 2021. 

“China has total control over the World Health Organization,” the president asserted, and covered up critical information about COVID-19, thereby enabling a very deadly worldwide pandemic.

And did so with the WHO’s help, he argues.

“Elements of Trump’s critique have resonated well beyond the White House,” notes the virulently anti-Trump Washington Post. “Foreign governments and current WHO advisers have questioned why the WHO amplified false Chinese claims in the early days of the outbreak and repeatedly praised Beijing as the virus spread.”

Back in April, President Trump demanded the WHO agree to “substantive improvements” within 30 days. “We will be terminating our relationship,” Trump announced a month later, “and directing those funds” to other global health efforts. This week, it was made official.

Funds? The U.S. is the largest donor nation, providing 15 percent of the WHO budget — more than $400 million in 2019. The BBC reports, “The withdrawal will call into question the WHO’s financial viability.”

Of course, many Democrats, global health experts, and editorial pages attacked the move as “dangerous,” “likely to cost lives” and lead to a loss of U.S. “influence.”*

Influence? 

Those running the United Nations or its agencies cannot now ignore U.S. complaints. 

The threat of funding cuts? 

No longer are they mere bluster only for show.

Mr. Trump may feel lonesome . . . what other U.S. president would buck** the establishment to stop our tax dollars from flowing to an unaccountable U.N. agency? 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “On my first day as President,” Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden pledged on Twitter, “I will rejoin the WHO and restore our leadership on the world stage.”

** Some have disputed the president’s constitutional authority to unilaterally withdraw from the WHO. “[T]he U.S. joined the WHO via a joint resolution rather than through the mechanism set out in the Constitution’s Treaty Clause, it is what is sometimes termed an ex post congressional-executive agreement,” explains University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Jean Galbraith. “Presidents have withdrawn the U.S. from such agreements on a few prior occasions.”

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Bolsonaro’s Little Flu

CNN, Covid, Coronavirus, Bolsonaro,

“I know that nobody can recover from dying, but the economy not working leads to other causes of death and suicide,” said Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro regarding his reopening of his country’s economy. “We have suffered very harsh criticism in this regard, but today it shows that we are right. The fact that I am infected shows that I am a human being like any other.”

Some of that strikes this reader as not well put, but there are two important points: shutting down commerce does lead to horrendous consequences, especially for the poor, and . . . President Bolsonaro — who is often characterized as a Brazilian Trump-like figure — has been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and has COVID-19, if in mild form.

He has taken hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, the much-disputed treatment. 

The news report from CNN mentions his diagnosis and immediately follows it up with “after months of downplaying the virus.”

Now, downplaying threats is one way of handling them, for psychological reasons: sometimes the worst thing to fear is, as FDR said, “fear itself.” In the beginning, Bolsonaro called the virus a “little flu.”

“More than 65,000 people have now died of the virus in Brazil, according to figures released by the country’s health ministry on Monday,” CNN explains. “So far, 1,623,284 cases have been confirmed.”

That’s a 4 percent lethality rate — but that rests upon an under-tested population, and CNN admits that “some local experts say the real number of people infected could be 12 to 16 times higher.”

Like so many major news reports, CNN does not describe the curve of coronavirus deaths, just says they’re up.

Apparently, good reporting has a high lethality rate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs

Last Bit of Freedom

Hong Kong, China, freedom,

Yesterday, on the 23rd anniversary of Britain’s 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed a draconian national security measure on the previously semi-autonomous territory.

“The law effectively ends the long-cherished freedom of speech that Hong Kong residents have had,” reported The Washington Post, “putting them under the same threat of life imprisonment if they criticize Beijing’s government, as other Chinese nationals face.”  

Supersizing police powers to “intercept communications and covertly surveil people” are also part of the CCP clampdown.

“In the past,” a pro-Beijing council member explained, “Hong Kong has been too free.”

In keeping with that sentiment, protests planned for yesterday were banned. 

“They still came out,” however, noted a reporter with UK’s Sky News, “even though the cost of protest had been raised significantly on the first full day of the new law.” 

“We are on street,” tweeted Joshua Wong, the young pro-democracy activist, “against national security law. We shall never surrender. Now is not the time to give up.”

“China is Hong Kong, Hong Kong is China, as of today, the first of July. It’s a sad day, but that’s what it is,” offered a woman protester. “I’ll still take to the streets. I’ll still say what I think. Because it is my right as a human being.”

More than 300 protesters were arrested yesterday. 

Wong called on the “international community” to “continue to speak up for Hong Kong” and help protect its “last bit of freedom.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall international affairs

A Deafening Disquiet

Stop Fighting Start Voting, Citizens in Charge Foundation,

“We are living in a world of disquiet,” offers U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres at the beginning of a one-minute video now running on social digital platforms in the U.S. and worldwide.

The advertisement shows political strife in Hong Kong and Sri Lanka. It is the opening salvo in a campaign called “Stop Fighting Start Voting,” launched by Citizens in Charge Foundation today with support from direct democracy experts and organizations across the globe — researchers, advocates, NGOs, and academics. 

As scenes from the Hong Kong protests unfold, a woman tells a newscaster that China’s new “national security law” will “take away our freedoms . . . our rule of law.” The spot then pivots to Sri Lanka, lamenting “possible war crimes” and noting that a U.N. panel found “40,000 Tamil civilians were killed” at the end of the country’s civil war a little more than a decade ago.

“We hope to have the right to vote,” a Tamil says as the video ends.

The Stop Fighting Start Voting campaign seeks to increase awareness of unresolved conflicts, such as the struggle for basic democracy in Hong Kong or concerning a referendum for the establishment of a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka. We do not advocate for or against the underlying issues in these often bitter disputes, but advance the use of direct democracy, voters weighing in through ballot referendums conducted under accepted international norms and procedures, to achieve a peaceful resolution.

Self-determination takes a lot of determination. So does the establishment of basic democracy with human rights. That’s why non-governmental organizations and concerned citizens must step up. 

Don’t leave the future of freedom and democracy in this world to governments alone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Twelve Monkeys in Charge?

Covid, coronavirus, Dr. Fauci, epidemic, pandemic, vaccine,

Dr. Anthony Fauci, current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, served as a leader on the “Global Vaccine Plan” through partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates, late of Microsoft, Inc., is on record desiring to make a future coronavirus vaccine mandatory for travel . . . and to institute tracking of everyone’s interactions.

After the Obama Administration pressured National Institutes of Health to put a moratorium on “gain of function” research of coronavirus in America, according to Newsweek, Dr. Fauci devoted over $7 million to that very research . . . in Wuhan, China.

The idea? To see if the coronavirus in bats could migrate into humans, using ferrets and other animals to cajole the virus to “gain function,” i.e. transmissibility.

The goal being to prepare vaccines in advance of naturally occurring jumps over the barrier between humans and other animals.

But many scientists regard this kind of research to be morally questionable. 

And 12 Monkeys dangerous. 

In the midst of all this has been one Dr. Charles Lieber, a 61-year-old nanoscience researcher, who recently “has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of making false statements and will be arraigned in federal court in Boston at a later date.  Lieber was arrested on Jan. 28, 2020, and charged by criminal complaint.” He allegedly lied about his relationship with China’s Thousand Talents Plan and his role as a “Strategic Scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology in China.

Where SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus of the current pandemic — apparently came from.

Nanoscience is the engineering of really, really small stuff. Like strands of RNA and DNA and . . . viruses.

Does this induce confidence about that vaccine allegedly in the offing?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Keeping Score

Hao Haidong, China, CCP,

Retired Chinese soccer superstar Hao Haidong “stunned his country,” The Washington Post reported last week, “after he called for the downfall of the ruling Communist Party and the formation of a new government.”

Certainly, Hao — “the Chinese national team’s all-time top goal scorer and an idol in the 1990s and early 2000s” — startled the country’s rulers, not to mention their multitudes of censors. Hard to say, however, how much information reached the average citizen before silence was enforced.

“The Communist Party’s totalitarian rule in China has caused horrific atrocities against humanity,” the expatriate declared in a YouTube video released on the 31st anniversary of China’s brutal Tiananmen Square massacre. 

The Butchers of Beijing are a tad sensitive about that. 

Working with “fugitive billionaire Guo Wengui, one of the Chinese government’s most reviled opponents,”* Hao and his wife, Ye Zhaoying, once an Olympic medalist and badminton champion, offered that their dangerous stand against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was “the biggest and most correct decision in our lives.”

“It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented,” noted CNN, “for a successful Chinese sports star to unleash such a blistering public denunciation of the Communist Party and openly call for its downfall.” Adding, of course, that, “Dissidents who publicly criticize the party or demand democratic reforms often face lengthy prison sentences.”

Though China blocks YouTube, news of Hao saying the CCP should be “kicked out of humanity” was spreading on Chinese social media. Hao’s account has since been deleted.  

“Hao Haidong has made a speech that subverts the government and harms national sovereignty and uses the coronavirus epidemic to smear the Chinese government and spread falsehoods about Hong Kong,” said a statement by a popular sports website. “We strongly condemn this behavior.”

Soon, the statement replaced Hao’s name with only the Roman letter “H.” Hours later, the entire statement and all mention of the incident had been erased. Poof! 

“Within 24 hours,” The Post disclosed, “Hao’s name had become the most heavily censored term on Weibo.”

It didn’t stop there. “Following his father Hao Haidong’s public criticism of the Chinese Communist Party,” informed Taiwan News, “Chinese soccer player Hao Runze has reportedly been released by his Serbian team due to heavy pressure from Beijing.”

The firing came “after an impressive debut performance,” in which the young Hao scored a goal. So “all Chinese news agencies have now removed any mention of the young rookie.”

This is the dystopian world with which 1.4 billion Chinese are stuck.

For now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Billionaire Guo Wengui has hired former Trump advisor Steve Bannon to assist in the effort.

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First Amendment rights general freedom international affairs

Too Many Tiananmens

tiananmen, protest, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan,

Chinese students suddenly occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for seven beautiful weeks in the Spring of 1989. 

Millions more from all walks of life joined them.

Protesting tyranny, they demanded democracy and freedom of speech.

Then, 31 years ago to this very day, the Chinese government sent in tanks and soldiers, opening fire on citizens outside the square, killing thousands. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) followed up the massacre with arrests and lengthy prison terms for those committing the unspeakable crime of speaking out for freedom.

Fast-forward three decades and the ChiNazis in Beijing are currently engaged in snuffing out the civil liberties and democratic aspirations of the people in Hong Kong.*

In mainland China, the CCP has always squelched any mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre, but every year Hongkongers have held a vigil. Not this year. It has been banned.

The world should have learned two obvious lessons: (1) the Chinese people want freedom and democracy, and (2) the ‘Butchers of Beijing’ will brutalize to prevent it.

Far more powerful than in 1989, CCP tyrants now wield a much more effective police state against Chinese citizens. 

Now is the time to honor the Tiananmen demonstrators, but clearing Lafayette Park of protesters so President Trump can walk to a church seems . . . disquieting.

Not a memorial. 

And suggesting he might invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to engage the military in domestic policing? Trump’s defense secretary rightly opposes. 

Comparisons to Tiananmen Square have not unreasonably been drawn. 

The difference? Americans can revolt . . . peacefully, which our government cannot put down. 

For the sake of the free world and all those — including 1.4 billion Chinese — in the unfree world, now is no time to abandon peaceful protest and political action for insurrection, riot, and military suppression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * This is brazen violation of the 1997 turnover agreement made with Britain, of course.

Additional Reading:

What It Means

What Tiananmen Inspired

Tiananmen & Term Limits

All the Tyranny in China

I Am Hong Kong

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Trumping China?

Taiwan, United States, freedom, China,

“You may not like Donald Trump,” argues Dr34mLucid in his latest video on YouTube and Facebook, “but he is the most vocal and has taken the most action in containing China. That is a fact.” 

Dr34mLucid is Christopher Raymond Hall, who claims to be “made in Britain, schooled in the U.S., assembled in Taiwan, hardened by China, currently broadcasting from London.” His video, “Trump or China, unite or fall,” created with Dr. Lai from the Sci-tadel channel, is full of worries . . . about “attitudes to China in the West.” 

The two YouTubers are troubled that “the West has done its best to ignore” the library of crimes against humanity committed by the Chinese Communist Party. Recognizing that “China has very real ambitions to become THE world superpower,” they ask, “What kind of world would that look like?”

“China invading Taiwan is a very real risk,” insists Dr34mLucid. “The weaker the West becomes the higher the chance of Xi Jinping making a move on Taiwan. . . . with the riots in the US . . . now is an excellent time for Xi to invade.”

“If you think Hong Kong looks bad,” he offers, “wait until they get to Taiwan.” 

“We shouldn’t be waiting until they get to Taiwan,” replies Dr. Lai. 

Dr34mLucid and Dr. Lai applaud President Trump for standing up to China and for Taiwan. But they fret about his unpopularity. 

“I doubt many people would support Trump if he decided to defend Taiwan,” notes Dr34mLucid. “I doubt they would miss the chance to call him interfering or an imperialist.”

Opposition to totalitarian China and support for free and democratic Taiwan should unite the free world. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Note: In the video, Dr. Lai recounts that President Trump called Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen after his 2016 victory. It was actually Pres. Tsai who phoned to congratulate Mr. Trump.

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Disgraced, Enraged, Belligerent

China, virus, Covid, coronavirus, authoritarianism,

“Over the course of April and throughout May,” writes Timothy McLaughlin in The Atlantic, “Beijing was undertaking aggressive actions across Asia.” These include:

  • The ramming — and sinking — of a Vietnamese vessel in the South China Sea.
  • Intrusive surveying by a Chinese research vessel (plus coast-guard and other ships) near a Malaysian oil rig, drawing warships from the United States and Australia. 
  • Creating two administrative units on islands in the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam. 
  • Ugly if predictable rage directed towards Taiwan, “whose handling of the pandemic has won plaudits and begun a push for more international recognition.”*

Bursting out of Wuhan, did the coronavirus pandemic, responsible so far for taking more than 350,000 lives worldwide, not make the Chinese rulers look bad enough?**

Now the Butchers of Beijing move against Hong Kong, today considering a so-called “national security law” to further take away Hongkongers’ civil liberties. The CCP gang is so insecure they cannot stand to hear Hong Kong crowds boo the Chinese national anthem at soccer matches. So the new law will punish the Bronx cheer with three years in prison.

Months ago, former New York Mayor and short-lived Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg argued that America would “have to deal with China” . . . “to solve the climate crisis. . . . because our economies are inextricably linked.”

Yesterday, showing more backbone, the U.S. Congress passed legislation asking the Trump Administration to sanction Chinese officials over the camps imprisoning Uighurs. Meanwhile, responding to China’s Hong Kong clampdown, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the territory “not autonomous” from China, which could lead to a big change in trade status.

It is getting harder to ignore this menace in Asia.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* For some reason, Mr. McLaughlin left the recent border clashes between China and India, which have left 100 soldiers injured, off his list. 

** They looked especially bad after it came out that the Chinese government had arrested doctors in Wuhan to cover it up.

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