Tag: Communism

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general freedom international affairs

All Dogs Go to Heaven Early

dog, North Korea

In July, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un declared possessing pet dogs to be a “decadent trend” from the West.

Along with eating well and living without fear of one’s government.

Oh, not that last bit.

But, apparently — and there are many news stories, if not much exactitude or certainty — he did order all dogs confiscated. 

Why?

Well, reports vary. A search of DuckDuckGo will yield much speculation and a few sparse facts. 

A South Korean newspaper relayed a leak saying that Un called dog ownership “a ‘tainted’ trend by bourgeois ideology.”

How could dogs have been with us for tens of thousands of years, and may have been key to our species’ success, yet somehow now be “decadent” and “tainted” and “bourgeois”?

And, for that matter, a “trend.”

How many tens of thousands of years does it take to make a trend? On Twitter, it takes just a few minutes!

There is a lot of talk of a COVID-19 famine (on top of the Kim Family Famine that has been trending for decades) and meat shortages. I’ve read reports that the dogs are to go to restaurants. And then there is the business about higher-ups in the Hidden Kingdom’s un-hidden but Un-ridden hierarchy who have been taking advantage of a cultural loophole to display their status with expensive pet dogs from the West. 

Un prefers his displays of status, apparently, to be public executions and harsh and abrupt edicts . . . such as putting all dogs into execution chambers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

A Modest Anti-Capitalism?

Sawant, Seattle, socialism,

Socialists are so “modest”!

But how modest?

Ask Rep. Ilhan Omar, who recently proclaimed to be “fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in health care, in employment, in the air we breathe.” 

Gasp?

Well, maybe that isn’t so clear. So listen to Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant.

“I have a message for Jeff Bezos and his class,” Sawant warned. “If you attempt again to overturn the Amazon Tax, working people will go all out in the thousands to beat you. And we will not stop there.”

Does that sound like a threat? Or is it really just a harmless expression of politics-as-usual?

“You see, we are fighting for far more than this tax,” the self-proclaimed socialist elaborated. “We are preparing the ground for a different kind of society, and if you, Jeff Bezos, want to drive that process forward by lashing out against us in our modest demands, then so be it. Because we are coming for you and your rotten system. We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism. This police state. We cannot and will not stop until we overthrow it, and replace it with a world based, instead, on solidarity, genuine democracy, and equality: a socialist world. Thank you.”

And thank you, Ms. Sawant, for making yourself ultra-understandable.

You want to destroy private property and free markets and robust political debate and replace them with . . . well, let’s just say that if you complain about a police state now, wait’ll you get a load of what follows from your “modest” demands.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people

Follow the (Media) Money

China, media, communism, socialism

“[A]t a time of rising tensions with China” is “the objectivity of news” . . . dead? 

Wounded?

So wonders Arthur Bloom, lamenting for The American Conservative, in “China’s Long Tentacles Extend Deep Into American Media.”

“We’ve got this tremendous disconnect between what the American people actually think about China and what the media has been telling us,” Bloom explained to Fox New’s Tucker Carlson. “Something like 70% of Americans blame China for [the spread of the coronavirus], and yet that’s not what we’ve been getting. So, why?”

Bloom suggests part of the reason is that media corporations are “in business with them.”

“Comcast which owns NBC Universal” is “building a big theme park in Beijing” offered Bloom . . . “a multibillion dollar investment.”    

Last December, the Free Beacon informed,“China routinely broke federal law by not disclosing how much it spent to publish regime propaganda in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers,” adding that “China Daily gave media outlets millions to publish ads disguised as news stories.”

During his short-lived presidential run, Michael Bloomberg soft-peddled China’s totalitarian threat to its own people, Hong Kong, neighboring democratic Taiwan and the rest of us. With Bloomberg News having done business in China for years, the former mayor told Americans that President Xi Jinping was “not a dictator.”

“Six years ago, Bloomberg News killed an investigation into the wealth of Communist Party elites in China, fearful of repercussions by the Chinese government,” National Public Radio revealed last week. “The company successfully silenced the reporters involved. And it sought to keep the spouse of one of the reporters quiet, too.”

Using legal non-disclosure agreements. 

Regarding China, is non-disclosure the operating principle of our media?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Pandemics — and Something Far Worse

China, organ transplants, capital punishment, communism,

Last week, I ventured into Washington for an important event, hoping not to get sick from the coronavirus swirling around the globe. 

Nearly 200,000 people in 142 countries have been infected with COVID-19 and 7,866 have already died.

“Both SARS and COVID-19 . . . appear to have emerged from animals in China’s notorious wildlife markets,” explains a Vox video. “Experts had long predicted that these markets, known to be potential sources of disease, would enable another outbreak.”

In fact, I did become ill in our nation’s capital — sick to my stomach. 

Not from the virus, but from a new report by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation “address[ing] the failure of institutions and governments to come to terms with 14-year-old allegations of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China.”

With the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) waging genocides against Falun Gong practitioners and now Uighurs, they are abundantly rich in such lucrative national resources.

Susie Hughes, initiator of the China Tribunal, announced its unanimous conclusion that “forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale.”

And continues to this day. 

“The source of the organs for transplant are a living population,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) emphasized, “kept alive like some form of livestock until their organs are needed.”

Recently, in “All the Tyranny in China,” I tried to detail the myriad ‘crimes against humanity’ committed by the Chinese Communist Party. Sadly, I just couldn’t get to them all.

I forgot to mention that the CCP will also gladly sell you the fresh organ of some currently incarcerated prisoner of conscience. At a bargain price.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture political challengers too much government

The C-Word Emerges

Bernie Sanders, communism, socialism,

“We’re not going to throw out capitalism,” declared Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York City mayor now seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. 

“Other countries tried that. It was called communism and it just didn’t work.”

Bloomberg was responding to a question by MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson at Wednesday night’s Las Vegas debate regarding his thoughts on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ proposal to “require all large companies to turn over up to 20 percent of their ownership to employees over time.”

“Let’s talk about democratic socialism, Mr. Bloomberg,” countered Sanders. “Not communism — that’s a cheap shot!”

But is it? 

The Vermont Senator has a long history of offering effusive praise for repressive socialist and communist regimes, including the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua. After lauding the late Fidel Castro for providing healthcare and education and “totally transform[ing] the society” — while ignoring Castro’s complete disregard for human rights — Bernie judiciously added, “Not to say that Fidel Castro or Cuba are perfect, they are certainly not.”

Sanders has also called for “public ownership of the major means of production.” Unlike Karl Marx, I guess Bernie doesn’t sweat the small stuff.

“What a wonderful country we have. The best-known socialist in the country,” offered Bloomberg, referring to Sanders, “happens to be a millionaire with three houses! 

“What did I miss?”

Asserting a need for a second residence, the Vermont senator replied, “Well, you missed that I work in Washington.” 

“That’s the first problem,” Bloomberg interjected.

The first of many.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom

The Most Deadly Disease

Anyone knowledgeable about medicine — or history, for that matter — is taking very, very seriously the coronavirus outbreak in China, and its subsequent spread across the globe, including to the U.S.

More than 70,000 Chinese have been diagnosed and over 1,700 have died, along with one death in each of France, Japan, Hong Kong and the Philippines. 

Over the weekend, Taiwan — the independent island nation a hundred miles off the coast of a hostile, threatening People’s Republic of China (PRC) — announced its first fatality. The deceased Taiwanese taxi driver, whose health was already compromised by diabetes and hepatitis B, likely caught the virus from customers traveling from China. 

Last week, China finally allowed the World Health Organization to allow Taiwanese experts to participate in discussions about containing the virus. Unlike China, Taiwan boasts one of the best medical systems in the world.

Also over the weekend, news broke that Chinese President Xi Jinping had mentioned the coronavirus in a speech given many weeks before officials first alerted the public. 

That’s how the totalitarian PRC rolls. At all levels. One victim of the virus is Dr. Li Wenliang, who warned back in December that the disease was spreading. First, he was reprimanded and then “apprehended by Wuhan police for spreading ‘rumours,’” reported Aljazeera. 

“As more information leaks out from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak,” a recent Taipei Times editorial argues, “it is clear that Beijing was unable to prevent the virus from spreading out of control precisely because it lacks the accountability, freedom of speech and free flow of information that form the bedrock of democracies.”

Yet another way that freedom affirms life and totalitarian tyranny kills. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Not Your Mother’s How-To Manual

communism, socialism, freedom, capitalism, motherhood, family,

“Want to Dismantle Capitalism?” asks The Nation headline for a recent interview with feminist Sophie Lewis, immediately answering: “Abolish the Family.”

In a world of YouTube videos on how to do almost everything, apparently the progressive publication noticed something missing: There is no reliable guide for going full commie.

Rosemarie Ho prefaces her discussion with Ms. Lewis, author of “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family,” by observing that “the most infamous demand of The Communist Manifesto is the ‘abolition of the family.’”

“The family, Marx and Engels noted, was where patriarchy and capitalism worked in tandem to produce willing, alienated workers,” writes Ho, “where women became little more than ‘instruments of production’ for the men who lorded over them.”

Ah, “little more” — how depressingly reductionist.

Ho applauds that Lewis “takes up this forgotten struggle” and “gives us an account of the material conditions — the biological and societal violence — that gestators, or people who are carrying fetuses, have to bear.”

“Mothers nurture,” acknowledges Lewis, “but they also kill and abuse their wards. That’s why it’s so valuable to denaturalize the mother-child bond. To do anything otherwise is to devalue that work. That’s the horizon that I think opens up the space for a revolutionary politics.”

Through 2,000 words of jargon, we learn that “motherhood is a very powerful ideological edifice,” as Lewis attacks “the idea that babies belong to anyone — the idea that the product of gestational labor gets transferred as property to a set of people.” After all, she informs that we should “think about babies as made by many people.”

Gestators of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our sanity!

Oh . . . and the family. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

communism, socialism, freedom, capitalism, motherhood, family,

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meme

Guess Which is Real.

communism, New York Times, Nazism,

NOTE: 100 million human beings were killed by communist ideologues in the 20th century.

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ideological culture media and media people Popular

Gray Lady Commies

New York Times, communism, socialism, journalism, pandering, newspaper,

The New York Times has long leaned left. But is it really a stable Pisa-tower lean, at this point? It sure seems that, in recent years, the Gray Lady has gone extreme, abandoning its “respectable” center-left perch. 

The change, economist Alex Tabarrok writes for FEE, appears to have happened “around 2010-2014,” when we can see “an inflection point” where phrases and buzzwords like “social justice” and “diversity and inclusion” increased in number in Times editorials and news stories.

Forget, for a moment, the why — is it demand side, with the paper trying to court Millennial readers; or supply side, a result of new hires out of journalism programs and other indoctrination factories; or a mixture of both? — and concern ourselves with how far will the Gray Lady go?

Communism, apparently.

Or, at least, “Automated Luxury Communism,” as identified in what may be the stupidest article to appear in any newspaper in years.

“The plummeting cost of information and advances in technology are providing the ground for a collective future of freedom and luxury for all,” the author asserts, upon the evidence of innovations he has identified as arising . . . in our capitalist mixed economy, chiefly in the market sector: lab-grown burgers and “molecular whiskey.”

It all smacks of a loafer’s Marxism, with robots and AI as the proles. I could explain this better had the author bothered to do any real work on his vision, but, unfortunately (?), he offers nothing but a “wouldn’t it be neat if” blog post. 

That the Times’ placed on its front page.

I guess since Democratic pols are now calling themselves socialists, their lead thought organ must seize the advance guard position by going full commie.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly ideological culture moral hazard

Mass Murderers Are Cool?

Walmart, hammer and sickle, USSR, mass murder, socialism, communism, cool

If you have a lick of sense, you wouldn’t emblazon images of Ché Guevara on your chest or your wall — and yet Ché t-shirts and posters have been a pop culture hit for decades now.

He is cool, we are told, because he was ¡Viva la Revolución! and all that.

But it could get worse. You could be emblazoning a hammer and sickle.

Walmart’s website is there to help. Under “men’s sleeveless,” for example, we see an artistic rendering of the old Communist symbol, frankly identified as a “Soviet Hammer and Sickle,” white on black for $14.97.* Walmart files it under “Pop culture.”

Aren’t men’s sleeveless shirts called “wife beaters”? Should we now call them Kulak Killers?

It’s hip to murder millions!

No wonder Lithuania and several other Baltic countries — who suffered greatly under Soviet rule — object. Indeed, many of these countries go too far in actually banning the symbols. Now, they have contacted Walmart requesting a cessation in hawking the offensive merchandise. “You wouldn’t buy Nazi-themed clothing, would you?” Lithuania’s foreign minister Linas Linkevicius tweeted. Or sell such items.

But a few people might. Certainly, a lot of people do buy stuff that others regard as “Nazi.” Sometimes to be “cool”; other times to make a controversial political point.

At the Uhuru Store, Gavin McInnes’s “ProudBoys Official” sells a “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong” t-shirt for twice the price of Walmart’s Hammer and Sickle shirt — and that surely has annoyed leftists who have seen it.

I’m waiting for the death of cool.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The shirts also come in Navy, Royal and Gray. I guess to get a red commie shirt you have to go for the sleeves.

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