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international affairs media and media people

The Sound of Sino-Silence?

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Jon Ralston, editor of the Nevada Independent, acknowledged that “it’s unclear whether the Atlanta shootings were a hate crime or not,” but asserted that former President Trump’s use of “phrases like ‘the China Virus,’ clearly has exacerbated these problems.”

At the close of the program, host Chuck Todd warned “elected officials” that, “when [you] talk about China, the country, as a rival and an adversary to this country, be careful of your words. That matters too. And I know there’s a lot of fear that as the rivalry heats up with China, that these, these hateful incidents will also increase here.”

That’s really his takeaway? Be careful what you say about China?

Sure, let’s always remember that the genocidal regime running China — the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that recognizes zero individual rights and permits no democratic checks on its power — is not the disenfranchised Chinese people.

Of course, most sane people understand the difference between ordinary folks and their government. 

Frankly, Mr. Todd and NBC are as guilty as anyone in speaking of China while meaning the ruling CCP — just as we often say the U.S. when we really mean the U.S. Government. 

But please, do not stop reporting when “China” does something bad, even genocidal. Lives everywhere depend on it.

And about that term, “rivals.” The problem with China is not that it rivals us — economically, or even militarily, per se. The problem is China’s tyranny, too easily exported

Yes, watch your words, but don’t fear speaking out. The lives you save may be Asian. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Note: As faithful readers know, I prefer the term “CCP Virus,” directing blame for the worldwide pandemic to the Chinese government, which by lying and hiding information from the world unnecessarily unleashed death upon millions across the globe. 

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media and media people

HCQ Blackout

“The race to find vaccines for COVID-19 has dominated the headlines,” runs the opening of a CBS News story, “but there’s been less news about how to keep people with COVID out of the hospital.”

Accurate, so far as it goes, but something is missing.

The story that follows is about an anti-depressant developed decades ago, and “a small but ingenious clinical trial and a series of coincidences [that] have led scientists to look closely at fluvoxamine as a possible tool to keep newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients from becoming severely ill.”

The drug, the story tells, may do what has been claimed for a number of treatments (vitamins, minerals, and the infamous hydroxychloroquine, or HCQ): that is, prevent patients from developing COVID’s severe, deadly respiratory distress.

Yet, in a time of crisis, discussion of such treatments were regarded as “fake news” by social media; doctors and researchers who discussed them online had their videos removed and their posts suppressed. Neil Cavuto and others raised alarms. But now the American Journal of Medicine recommends HCQ, along with “Azithromycin, and Zinc for the treatment of Covid 19 outpatients.” 

So when CBS tells us that there has “been great caution about recommending repurposed drugs for COVID after the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was promoted as a potential ‘game-changer’ by former President Trump — before it was tested in a large clinical trial on COVID patients,” let’s not forget what they are still hiding: that major media along with several governors and many “influencers” suppressed information about drugs that saved some lives and could have saved more.

All while seeking to eradicate the disease they feared most, Trump.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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First Amendment rights media and media people

Misinformed … or Worse?

“For the third time in less than five months,” journalist Glenn Greenwald writes at Substack, “the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them, with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms. On March 25, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will interrogate Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebooks’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai at a hearing . . .”

A joint statement by Democrat committee and subcommittee chairs declares: “This hearing will continue the Committee’s work of holding online platforms accountable for the growing rise of misinformation and disinformation.”

Wait — the constitutional authority of Congress does not stretch to holding social media “accountable” for political speech. The First Amendment clearly states that “Congress shall make no [such] law . . .”

And what Congress is forbidden to do, it cannot threaten and intimidate private companies into doing, instead.

“For the same reasons that the Constitution prohibits the government from dictating what information we can see and read . . . ,” Greenwald points out, “it also prohibits the government from using its immense authority to coerce private actors into censoring on its behalf.”

Consider longtime Hillary Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri’s response to President Trump’s banning by Twitter and Facebook: “It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump’s destructive behavior was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them.”

Many on the left — and even some libertarians — continue to argue that Congress plays no role in the censorship being carried out by these private Tech Giants. 

They are mistaken — whether because misinformed or disinformed, we can leave to another day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 


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individual achievement media and media people

The Dittos Now in Order

In reporting Rush Limbaugh’s passing, yesterday, from lung cancer at age 70, the Associated Press dubbed Limbaugh a “bombastic talk radio host and voice of American conservatism.” 

The latter, yes; but if you think Rush was “bombastic,” you missed the joke. Sure, he spoke of “talent on loan from God” and of “flawlessly” running the “Excellence in Broadcasting Network . . . with zero mistakes.” But bombastic means “high-sounding but with little meaning; inflated.” 

Washington, D.C., in other words.

Decidedly not Rush.

Rush was both communicator and political force. When Republicans took the House in 1994 on a promise to vote on term limits, Limbaugh strongly supported the strict term limits passed by the states, challenging congressional Republicans for playing games on the issue. 

Later, in 2007, Rush also gave this program a boost by reading my column, “The Two Americas,” on the air, calling it “a great way of restating the ideological arguments that exist in the country today.”

Rush stood for “the America of ever-increasing wealth, innovation, creativity. . . . The abundant work product of freedom.” And not “the politician’s America: The regulated America, the subsidized America, the earmarked America.”

Unlike so many seemingly angry shock jocks in talk radio, Mr. Limbaugh was actually nice to callers — even those who disagreed with him — and thoughtful, intelligent, and polite.

While on the hot seat speaking live for three hours each weekday to the nation’s largest radio audience (upwards of 15 million people a show) Mr. Limbaugh was one of the most transparent personalities of the age. “Dittoheads” could feel like they really knew precisely who and what they were ditto-ing.

Now, they ditto their respect. As do I.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Should Oppressors Host the Olympics?

China is scheduled to host the Winter Olympics in 2022. Should it be allowed to? If allowed, should anybody go?

Cato scholar Ilya Somin argues, at Reason, for at least boycotting the event.

Why? To respond to the Chinese government’s “many egregious atrocities, including its detention of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in concentration camps, brutal repression in Hong Kong, and much else.”

China is one of the worst violators of human rights in the world. So why let the Olympics serve as a “propaganda showcase” for the regime?

The ideal of an Olympic Games unencumbered by politics is untenable. You can’t keep the games free of politics when tyrant-hosts routinely exploit the event for political purposes while appeasers turn a blind eye.

A globally publicized boycott would make the work of the appeasers much harder.

Somin goes further, however. He argues that the International Olympic Committee should permanently prohibit oppressive governments from hosting the Olympics.

If this policy were enacted, there would be heated debates about whether Country Y or Country Z belong to the same ban-worthy category as China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbabwe.

Maybe we could use Cato’s Human Freedom Index as a guide to oppression.

How brutal is too brutal? Let’s talk, because without open argument, any decision or policy will be arbitrary and useless.

And I welcome those debates about borderline cases, just as long as the most blatantly brutal regimes can never again host the Olympics and exploit them to advance their vicious agendas.

Until then: Boycott the 2022 games in China.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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media and media people national politics & policies

Big Bucks Buy Votes

Want to know how Washington works? 

Or doesn’t work? 

Drafting legislation to provide COVID (and COVID lockdown) relief, President Joe Biden and Congress contemplate just how big to make the next round of government checks sent to “the inhabitants of America.”

And which folks to send the freshly printed moolah.

“Something very weird is happening,” explains Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman. “On one side you have Republicans and conservative Democrats saying people at higher incomes don’t deserve this government help. On the other side you have liberals advocating that higher-income people should share in this largesse.” 

Including socialists Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“So if I were Biden,” Waldman advises, “this is the argument I’d make to [conservative Democratic Senator] Manchin:

1. People like it when you give them money. A lot.

2. The more people we give money to, the more people will be pleased with us.

3. That will improve our chances of keeping control of Congress in 2022 and the presidency in 2024.

4. If we keep control we’ll be able to do more of the things you want to do. If we lose control, we won’t be able to do anything. . . .”

Translation? Stay in power by buying votes

Seems the advice you’d get from a sleazy political consultant, not a newspaper columnist.  

Biden and senior Democrats have also unveiled a plan to pay parents up to a certain income over $50,000 per child from birth to 17 years of age.* One obvious benefit? “Its execution could also prove crucial to deciding Democrats’ ability to maintain control of Congress,” informs The Post, “given its likely direct impact on the lives of tens of millions of voters.”

This is our direct-deposit Republic.

But not Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* The Democrats’ plan came just “days after Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) surprised policymakers with a proposal to send even more in direct cash per child to American families.”

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First Amendment rights media and media people

Stelter in a Time of Storm

Reliable Sources, CNN’s media watchdog program, is hard to watch. It should be retitled Pot Calls Kettle to match host Brian Stelter’s teapot head, so often skirling from a full steam. To avoid all that, I read the transcript of his Sunday episode to take in his much-quoted tear defending Big Tech’s deplatforming of alternative media and attacking the three news channels he hates so much — OAN, Newsmax, and, especially and always, Fox.

You see, they’re liars!

He’s not, of course; CNN’s not, he says — without ever managing to acknowledge his job at CNN, deliverer of the Official Spin. 

And ignorer of the laundry list of whoppers espoused by his own network.

Which Glenn Greenwald made clear in his response: “CNN lies and spreads conspiracy theories constantly. They’re a pro-Democratic Party outlet that barely airs any dissent from the DNC line. If @brianstelter’s standards for banishing Fox were applied equally, it’d affect all cable news outlets, not just one.”

Asserting that “disinformation” about the pandemic is “harmful” — while CNN’s slavish towing of the government’s incoherent, shifting line on COVID has not been??? — Stelter offers a “harm reduction” model. Deplatforming people he disagrees with? Why, that’s not an abridgment of “freedom of speech.”

All he itches for is to cripple his competitors’ “freedom of reach.”

But take a breath: extending the reach of one’s speech is why we have “the press.” This freedom of the press (“reach”) is also protected from government, to be valued even when we disagree with our opponents.

The idea that a few CNN hosts get to determine The Official Truth for everybody else, and that this should be institutionalized in some broad, society-wide way, would toll the death knell of America.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

Gun Group Deplatformed

Mailchimp is an “all-in-one integrated marketing platform” that helps businesses send newsletters and other email to customers, prospects, and supporters. In January it blocked the Virginia Citizens Defense League from sending email to members about an annual rally in defense of gun rights and told the organization to get lost.

Some help.

According to the president of the Defense League, Philip Van Cleave, “There was no justification. They provided nothing. Basically, they just said we need to get our stuff and be prepared to move on.”

Well, Mailchimp’s boilerplate letter did also state that its “automated abuse-prevention system, Omnivore, detected serious risks associated with [your] account. . . . This risk is too great for us to continue to support the account.”

What risk? Oh, why bother to specify. The point is, the automated system detected it. I’m guessing that certain scary words were flagged, like “gun,” “Second Amendment,” “Constitution,” “rights.”

It seems that any kind of assembling on behalf of certain constitutionally protected rights or to petition for redress of grievances is to be regarded as a rationale for summarily ejecting politically right-leaning customers — at least by firms going along with this accelerating strategy to abet repression.

Mailchimp has violated the terms of service upheld by those who respect freedom of speech and do not respect arbitrary assaults on costumers. If you’re using it, look for an alternative.

The Defense League’s “Lobby Day” rally was peaceful again this year — as the group’s website informs, “just a lot of patriots sending a strong message to the General Assembly to keep their hands off our gun rights.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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The Uninvestigated

We have long relied upon journalists in major media to cover actual news. And investigate leads to juicy stories of major import to clear up confusion.

But the mainstream media has become mainly propagandistic: “journalists” today rarely “report,” they propound and pontificate. And help spread disinformation for major political factions.

Is it really that bad?

Well, one way to test how bad is to track juicy news leads that get left unexplored.

In June I commented on Harvard’s Dr. Charles Lieber, arrested and charged with not reporting his activities with the Chinese at the Wuhan labs — which have been associated with SARS-CoV-2. In October, Lieber sued Harvard for not backing him up in his legal troubles with the U.S. Government.

There could be a huge story here. Or maybe a mere bureaucratic snafu.

But it is not “in” the news; I cannot find any decent reporting on it.

From the beginning, the idea that the virus could have been grown in a lab “to help discover new vaccines” (or even as a cultivated bioweapon) has been a real possibility.

A year after its public acknowledgment, there is still disagreement.

While we expect reporters to dig deep, instead we see a plethora of premature declarations — as at egregious “fact-checking” sites — that the matter is settled. “Leading researchers have debunked this notion,” as Snopes confidently stated in February. But since then, the origins of the pandemic have remained murky. And allegations of bioweaponry keep re-appearing.

The World Health Organization is on the ground in Wuhan now, investigating.

Belatedly.

Long past time for American reporters to get on the beat.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Reality About Fake News

“Fake news entered the world with the emergence of descriptive language,” writes philosopher Ray Scott Percival on Medium, “perhaps hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

And it is here to stay, because we lack a “fool-proof algorithm” for “disposing of fake news” without cranking out a different variety of fake news.

“But this should not demoralise us,” Percival admonishes. “It is no different from the situation of science. Removing error has to be a piecemeal, tentative enterprise.”

Percival, following a line of argument from philosopher Karl Popper, denies there is such a thing as “manifest truth.” It’s a delusion, says Percival. (The title of his multi-part essay is “Fake News and the Manifest Truth Delusion.”) But you don’t necessarily need to accept wholly his Popperian take on epistemology (or should that be “epistemics”?) to agree with his important conclusion, that a “ministry of fake news is a fantasy, a tool of oppression, suppression and stagnation, and would unavoidably impair our best means of error-correction.”

He recognizes that error isn’t the half of it. People lie. And some lies look pretty convincing, so we spread them. But the bizarre part of the current “fake news” mania is this: too many earnest citizens turn to government to stop “fake news,” though the biggest and most influential liar has always been the government.

What to do? Well, our “biggest gain in the control of error would be through the separation of science and the corrupting influences of politics (e.g. state funding, licensing etc.) and the chilling effect of political correctness on open discussion.”

Percival wants to “keep the enlightenment alive and kicking.” I like to think that’s just common sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.


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