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Strait Democracy — Common Sense
The Sound of Sino-Silence? — Common Sense
Pandemics — and Something Far Worse — Common Sense
The Most Deadly Disease — Common Sense
Friends & Enemies — Common Sense
‘One Child Nation’ Exposes the Tragic Consequences of Chinese Population Control -— Reason TV
Totalitarianized — Common Sense
“This city is under siege!”
“This is a threat to our democracy!”
“There’s a nationwide insurrection!”
“This is madness!”
This is not a recording from January 6th and, no, it’s not happening here in these United States. Look north. Those are the words of Ottawa’s Police Chief Peter Sloly.
Sloly was addressing what The Washington Post reports are “big rigs and other vehicles — emblazoned with signs blasting [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau in obscene language and reading ‘Mandate Freedom,’” adding that an estimated “5,000 people and at least a thousand tractor-trailers and other vehicles clogged the streets of Ottawa over the weekend.”
“The situation at this point is completely out of control,” Ottawa’s mayor told a radio audience, “because the individuals with the protest are calling the shots.”
“It’s not a protest anymore,” argues Ontario Premier Doug Ford. “It’s become an occupation.”
Meanwhile, this anti-vax-mandate effort spurred by these truckers is spreading across the country, including “the blockade of an important U.S.-Canada border crossing” in Alberta.
I can certainly see how these government officials might feel they are under siege, with an occupying force impinging on their freedom to act as they wish. Not a good feeling at all.
But isn’t that the same feeling these truckers and others are experiencing? Aren’t they being occupied by a government that demands a measure of control over their bodies? Their very livelihoods? That is willing to block their ability to earn a living to gain that control?
Public officials might ask themselves how come so many people are so upset that it looks like an “insurrection.”*
And then consider their position as public servants, that they may be in the wrong. Not the protesters.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The Post story mentioned only four arrests made so far in Ottawa, none for insurrection.
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“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay,” Chamath Palihapitiya stated emphatically on the All-In Podcast. “I’m telling you a very hard, ugly truth.”
Concern that the totalitarian Chinese regime has locked more than a million Muslim Uyghurs in concentration camps is “a luxury belief,” according to Mr. Palihapitiya, the Sri Lankan-born Canadian and American billionaire venture capitalist, once a senior Facebook executive and now partial owner of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
As the Olympics Games open today in Beijing, the validity of his assertion remains to be seen.
“The 2022 Winter Olympics will be remembered as the Genocide Games,” argues Teng Biao, the former Chinese human rights activist, now teaching law at the University of Chicago. “The CCP’s purpose is to exactly turn the sports arena into a stage for political legitimacy and a tool to whitewash all those atrocities.”
In addition to the genocide “against my Uyghur brothers and sisters,” basketball star Enes Kanter Freedom points out the Chinazis are “erasing Tibetan identity and culture, attacking freedoms in Hong Kong and threatening democratic Taiwan.
“The world needs to wake up,” he warns, “and realize that the Chinese Communist Party is not our friend.”
“It’s hard to understand why anyone feels it’s even possible to celebrate international friendship and ‘Olympic values’ in Beijing this year,” the Uyghur Human Rights Project’s Omer Kanat told The Washington Post. Kanat charged “Olympic corporate sponsors” with “sportwashing genocide.”
“Do you ignore the ongoing genocide,” he asks, “or do you take a stand?”
Throughout these Beijing Olympics, I hope athletes and others — from news networks to you and me on social media — will care enough to take a stand by speaking up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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President Joe Biden called Fox reporter Peter Doocy a “stupid s.o.b.,” sans the abbreviation.
Biden had balked at answering questions about Ukraine, so Mr. Doocy asked him about inflation: “Do you think inflation is a political liability ahead of the mid-terms?”
“That’s a great asset: more inflation,” Biden mumbled into the hot mic. “What a stupid …”
Now, had I said that, I would hasten to explain that I was being sardonic. Of course inflation is a liability. Dubbing it a “great asset” was certainly sarcasm. It could be nothing other. Inflation is a horror show.
But the negative characterization of Doocy that immediately followed undermines that Irony Interpretation. Does it sound ironic? And if the insult is earnest, does it not suggest that the preceding declaration about inflation is not only earnest, but in the Contempt Mode that Democrats have been adopting to criticism in recent years?
Of course inflation is great!
For them.
After all, inflation does help a few at the expense of the many. It helps insiders at the expense of the outsiders. This is ancient wisdom.
Insiders in government gain through inflation, getting to “spend first,” while we on the outside — in society — suffer from decreased purchasing power.
After the event, Biden contacted Doocy. “It’s nothing personal, pal.”
But the objective issue is whether Biden was being sarcastic about inflation.
While we may argue over who will have the last word on monetary policy, it was Doocy who had the last laugh … at himself: “nobody has fact-checked [Biden] yet and said it’s not true.”
But then, fact-checkers ain’t what they used to be.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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“While everyone in America gets to cast a ballot on Election Day,” Washington Post columnist Perry Bacon, Jr., explains, “in reality rich people, corporations, foundations, politicians and other elite individuals and organizations have outsize power.”
Ah, the Washington perspective … but don’t worry, Bacon adds, “The media that those people consume is telling them clearly that the current Republican Party is a threat to the nation’s future.”
Notice he does not use the term “informing” or “educating.”
America’s major media is a pit of partisan vipers more interested in how they can spin the news to turn votes their way, than on what you, as a citizen of a democratic constitutional republic, need to know to make informed decisions your way.
Mr. Bacon remains convinced, however, that the press “still doesn’t go far enough.”
He decries that “GOP radicalization and democracy erosion isn’t being covered extensively or aggressively by a big, important chunk of the media — the morning and nightly news shows of the big broadcast channels (NBC, CBS, ABC) …”
Can’t be serious, can he?
The columnist, like so much of the national press corps, believes in “an emboldened media.”
In fact, he is mightily disappointed that more news coverage “doesn’t implicate the GOP.” Bacon justifies the thumb on the scale because “in most cases,” he asserts, “the GOP’s behavior is far worse than the Democrats’.”
I think we’re supposed to take his word for that … or maybe already suspect as much — if well-lectured in the right universities.
Bacon’s column is headlined, “The rise of pro-democracy media.”
Close in letters, but what he and other “journalists” are calling for is Pro-Democrat Media.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Attorney Harmeet Dhillon of the Center for American Liberty congenially tweets: “A meet and confer that yielded an efficient result!”
The Center represents Andy Ngo, author of Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. Andy has been extensively covering the riots and related violence perpetrated by Antifa activists.
He’s doing the job that many purported reporters can’t bother with, even when onsite. (“Mostly peaceful protest,” was a standard refrain in summer 2020, even if flames dominated the screen as the reporter intoned those words.)
Ngo has been a victim of Antifa rioters’ physical violence in retaliation for covering their doings in detail; more recently, a target of their attempted judicial violence.
The anti-Andy lawsuit was launched by Antifa thugs Melissa Lewis and Morgan Grace — I mean, alleged thugs. They accused him of retweeting a video of rioting that they’d posted to Twitter as a way of saying “Yay! Look at our wonderful rioting!”
The retweeting infringed their copyright, they claimed.
Uh, guilty? Not the copyright-infringement part. The retweeting part. Which everybody does all the time on Twitter. It’s how Twitter works.
So why did the Antifa thugs then decide to quit so easily?
Probably, opposing counsel Ron Coleman, Dhillon’s colleague, explained things very slowly and clearly. Then, probably, Lewis and Grace’s own lawyer took them aside and explained things.
“The more this drags on,” I hear them advise, “the more attention the video itself will get. The video with the criminal activity you’re implicitly endorsing. Think it through . . . .”
Call it Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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