Tag: China

Categories
general freedom international affairs media and media people

It’s Complicated

China, Taiwan, war

“You are living proof of this nation’s democracy,” former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently told his hosts in Taipei, Taiwan, accepting an award honoring his work to strengthen relations between our two countries. He was referring to a small group of protesters outside his hotel. 

“And,” Pompeo added, “you remind me of home.”

The Republican was making a simple but pertinent point. In a world of growing authoritarianism, genocide and war, Taiwan and America share very essential political values: Freedom, democracy, respect for human rights.

The visit irked China, of course, which claims Taiwan as a province and doesn’t like Americans stopping by, especially meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen . . . whom the Butchers of Beijing refuse to refer to as “president.” 

Totalitarians often seem especially displeased with the words people utter. Upon his arrival, Pompeo spoke of the beautiful island nation as — get this! — a “great nation,” further traumatizing the Chinese. 

In bigger news, however, Pompeo urged the United States to recognize Taiwan as a free and independent nation. It is, indeed. And I applaud the Trump Administration for opening up all manner of nation-to-nation dialogue and cooperation, and the Biden Administration for continuing that policy.

But it’s complicated.

The Chinese have long threatened to launch a bloody invasion in order to “reunite” Taiwan’s territory with the repressive People’s Republic of China (PRC) against the will of the Taiwanese. The PRC claims that any official announcement of “independence” by Taiwan or similar recognition by the U.S. is provocation for war.

Rather than fretting about the “independence” label, let’s concern ourselves with the strategic and tactical military means for Taiwan to resist the embrace the Chinazis have already clamped upon Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom international affairs national politics & policies

How to Avoid World War III

Taiwan, China

Last week, when I heard about a power outage across Taiwan, my first thought was the possibility of a Chinese cyberattack which might precede a military attack.

It was not that. Thank goodness.

But what if it had been? Many have speculated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine might distract the U.S. and thereby encourage Xi Jinping and his People’s Liberation Army to launch an assault against Taiwan. 

How should the U.S. react to a Chinese invasion? Even with our silly policy of “strategic ambiguity,” most in Asia expect the U.S. to defend the island nation. The Washington Post and others argue the U.S. has committed to fight with Taiwan.* 

That’s not the case with Ukraine.

Like Ukraine, Taiwan will defend itself, but is over-matched. Geographically important as part of the first island chain, Taiwan is, as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo points out, “right in the middle of our defensive parameters, from Japan to Korea to the Philippines in the South China Sea.”

And the island is economically nearly essential. “Ninety percent of the most advanced [computer] chips are made in Taiwan,” reports The New York Times. 

The United States should not be the world’s policeman, which dilutes our strength, needed not only for our own defense and the defense of navigable trade routes but also the defense of hundreds of millions of currently free people with whom we are allied — especially in Asia. 

Most urgently in Taiwan.

As a country, it’s time to start doing some homework, and push-ups. Economically. Militarily. Being weak doesn’t help anyone. Being strong is our best chance to avoid World War III.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The USA has pledged military assistance to 67 countries in all, including the Republic of China (Taiwan), but not Ukraine. It’s a list the American people have every right to re-configure. But until then, one Pentagon planners should get busy with.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom international affairs

A Naïve Victory

gold medal, Olympics, China

The warning was loud and clear. It came from China’s government and was echoed by Nancy Pelosi: during the Beijing Olympics, don’t dare protest the brutal policies of China’s government lest it come down upon you like a ton of bricks.

An Olympic athlete has found a way to both heed and spurn this counsel.

In what the New York Times calls a “rare rebuke,” Swedish speedskater Nils van der Poel has given one of his gold medals to the daughter of a Chinese-born Swedish publisher being imprisoned by the Chinese government.

Last November, Nils saw a production by Civil Rights Defenders that told of how Gui Minhai, a publisher of works criticizing the Chinazi regime, is now incarcerated in China. He had been abducted by Chinese operatives while vacationing in Thailand.

The skater felt obliged to do something in protest “since I had the opportunity that very few people have.”

Gui’s daughter, Angela, shrugs off any suggestion that the skater’s gesture, lacking immediate power to free her father, must be naïve.

“A little bit of naïveté is important to try to effect change,” she says. “I think it’s very important that Nils giving me his medal to honor my father is understood as honoring political prisoners like him, many of whom are increasingly Hong Kongers and Uyghurs.”

What about it, fellow Olympic winners? If you follow Nils’s example, you’ll no longer have your medal. But you’ll still have your victory. 

And a little more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom ideological culture international affairs media and media people

Changing the Chinazi Channel

China, Uyghurs, Olympics

“Is there a more beautiful phrase,” Jim Geraghty asks his readers at National Review, “than ‘cataclysmic loss of audience’?”

Geraghty shares Dan Wetzel’s term for the good news that viewership of NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics in Beijing hit “a record low for the Opening Ceremony.” 

“Through the first four nights of competition,” reports the Associated Press, “NBC is on track for the lowest-rated Winter Games in history.”

What’s going on? Americans are voting with their eyeballs! And TV remotes.

An Axios-Momentive poll shows why: “Seven in 10 survey respondents disapprove of allowing China to host these Olympics.”

“The host country, China,” explains Yahoo columnist Dan Wetzel, “is a serious problem.”

Wetzel called China’s use of a Uyghur athlete to light the Olympic torch “a propaganda prop to cover up a campaign of slavery, torture, forced abortions and internment in reeducation camps.” 

“Some Americans want U.S. corporations to take a stand as well,” informs FightThirtyEight, the polling website. “When asked whether they think ‘companies should withdraw their advertisements for the February 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in response to human rights violations by the Chinese government,’ 54 percent of U.S. adults said probably or definitely yes. . . .”

One sponsor, Coca-Cola, “has dialed back its marketing efforts outside of China.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that “soda aisles in grocery stores are bereft of Olympics-themed displays” and “the main page of Coke’s U.S. consumer website made no mention of the Games.”

“Congratulations to the athletes,” offers a Boston.com reader, “but the pomp and circumstance can’t hide what’s really happening there.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom international affairs media and media people meme

Olympic Sponsors

China, Olympics, genocide games

More on the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity:

All the Tyranny in China — Common Sense
Thriving Totalitarianism — Common Sense
Disney’s Memory Hole — Common Sense
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

Categories
general freedom international affairs media and media people

“Nobody” Cares

“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.”

And not a good sport, either.

“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.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom ideological culture international affairs social media

LinkedIn, Red-Handed

Breitbart, LinkedIn, censorship, China, freedom

How dare they? 

In their eagerness to chastise tyrannical governments and Western lackey tech firms, some persons appear to go so far as to cite — get this — investigative reports.

That’s what one LinkedIn user recently did, anyway. 

So no wonder Microsoft’s LinkedIn felt obliged to censor him for it.

The trouble-making investigative report? Peter Schweizer’s Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win. The LinkedIn user in question tried to share a Breitbart piece about the book: “Red-Handed Exposes Communist China’s Silicon Valley Sympathizers.”

In his own remarks, the censored LinkedIn user chimed in with a condemnation of China’s genocidal policies and American Big Tech’s abetting of the Chinese Communist Party.

LinkedIn says the user’s post violated its policies against “bullying.”

This is “not the first time LinkedIn has been caught censoring criticism of Communist China on its platform,” observes Breitbart.com. LinkedIn is now suppressing posts “that expose Big Tech’s own links to the authoritarian regime in China.

“Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, is exposed in Schweizer’s book for working with the Chinese military on artificial intelligence research.”

I have the answer to this problem.

Before you say something on mainstream social media, ask yourself: “Is the thought I’m about to express something that the Chinazi government would approve? What about LinkedIn and other spineless Chinazi-government-appeasing social-media companies like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook? Would they approve?”

If not, take your heretical thinking to Rumble, Odysee, Teamspeak, Telegram, Gab, MeWe, and/or Clouthub, and express your thoughts there instead. 

I dare you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability general freedom international affairs

The Real Thing

Uyghurs, China, Coke, Olympics
Categories
general freedom international affairs

China Trip Itinerary

Enes Kanter Freedom, China, Olympics

It’s nice to be invited.

Either former NBA basketball player Yao Ming or a Chinese Communist Party handler standing just behind him had the idea of inviting Enes Kanter Freedom to visit China, where Yao Ming would be his tour guide.

Mr. Freedom, a current NBA player, is a sharp critic of the Chinazi regime and advocates boycotting the Beijing Olympics. Yao Ming says the proposed trip would help Freedom to “have a more comprehensive understanding of us.”

Enes Freedom has accepted the invitation, conditionally.

  • He asks, in a video reply, whether he and Yao Ming could “visit the Uyghur slave labor camps? Or visit the innocent women being tortured, raped, and abused?”
  • What about the Tibet Autonomous Region? “Can we see what the regime is doing to these beautiful people?” Such a trip could show the world how the CCP is “erasing Tibetan identity, religion, and culture.”
  • Hong Kong too. “On this trip, can we please visit Hong Kong together? Hong Kong used to be one of the freest cities in the world, yet now the destruction of the free press, crackdowns on rights, and more arrests are happening each and every day.”

Enes Freedom is ready to learn more about China and Chinese government policies in the company of Yao Ming. But will the Chinazi government permit the trip to proceed as outlined?

We know the answer. 

On the other hand, Enes invited Yao to visit Taiwan to witness how “democracy is thriving.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom international affairs

Very Free?

Peng Shuai, China, freedom

“Why would I be monitored?” Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai queried a reporter last Sunday. “I’ve always been very free.”

Yet governments the world over do certainly spy on citizens, and nowhere more virulently than in China, or with less accountability. 

As for being “free,” or “very free,” that’s the real issue, the very reason those who love tennis along with all who love freedom — and life itself — have been so worried about Peng. 

She’s not free. Not even close. Nor are 1.4 billion others living under Chinazi rule. 

It’s a big problem.

To recap the story from last month: On November 2, Peng posted a statement on her official Weibo page, her country’s state-monitored-and-censored equivalent of Facebook* (which is banned there). According to The Washington Post, she “claimed that former vice minister Zhang Gaoli had pressured her into having sex with him.”

That’s a scandal — and possibly a crime.

Followed by another crime: Her post was removed. She was silenced. And then Grand Slam doubles tennis champion Peng Shuai was summarily erased from the Chinese Internet. 

Gone. Disappeared. Nary a trace.

As weeks passed with neither sight nor sound of Peng, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) started to raise the alarm, threatening to withdraw from their quite lucrative activities in China if her safety could not be guaranteed.

That’s when Chinese media clumsily hyped an email wherein Peng supposedly said she was peachy-keen. Then the International Olympic Committee, on the CCP’s payroll, held a staged video call with her without bothering to even inquire about her allegations. Followed by a second silly call.

Now the update: last weekend, Peng appeared in a supposedly impromptu interview, telling a pro-Beijing newspaper in Singapore, “I have never said or written that anyone has sexually assaulted me.” 

But more than her original allegation, which remains unproven and uninvestigated, it is the totalitarian treatment of this one professional tennis player post-allegation that has caught the world’s attention. Perhaps Peng’s plight is easier to get one’s head around than two million Uighurs in concentration camps or China’s organ harvesting exploits.

None of it will apparently lead to an Olympic boycott by the U.S.

Still, the WTA, to its enormous honor, has stuck to its guns, forfeiting millions in revenue by canceling all events in China and making clear that “these appearances [by Peng] do not alleviate or address the WTA’s significant concerns about her well-being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion.”

Because Peng Shuai is not very free. Or safe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Of course, Facebook is a U.S. Government-encouraged corporate censor. That’s terrible, as regularly noted on these pages, but not nearly as suffocating and brutal as the CCP’s system.

PDF for printing

Peng

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts