Tag: Communism

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free trade & free markets international affairs

Embargo Socialism?

Cuba, communism, socialism, freedom, slavery

As the people of Cuba have revolted, this month, taking to the streets in huge marches, complete with waving of American flags, leftists in America — who love socialism and hate the Stars and Stripes — have been put in an awkward position. 

The Biden administration, in its continual prostration before progressives, initially attributed Cuban unrest to lack of COVID vaccine access. But then leftists began blaming the United States’ embargo for that and for Cuba’s sorry economic mess, blaming the U.S. as the cause of Cuban misery. 

Not Cuba’s Castro communist government! 

The problem is U.S. foreign policy, or so the memes assert. Some claim that the embargo amounts to a blockade of all international trade with Cuba.

Is this true?

“Embargo is the official term used by the U.S. government to describe the sanctions on Cuba,” Politifact explains. “While the nuances in the U.S. embargo can make it difficult for foreign companies to trade with the country, there is no evidence that they can’t,” concluding with “We rate this claim False.”

Indeed, other popular memes show that the U.S. is the only country on the planet not trading with the communist-run tyranny due south of Florida.

More interesting is the clarification of the embargo by Senator Marco Rubio. “There’s only two embargoes, here: the embargo against government-owned companies and the embargo that the Cuban regime imposes on its own people.”

It is entirely legal for Cubans and Americans to trade, says Florida’s senior U.S. senator. But the Cuban tyranny won’t let them.

All my life the U.S. has been engaged in an embargo against Cuban socialism. Against slavery. Against a government at war with its people. 

It has not yet “worked,” but I know why Cubans wave American flags.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs

The 400 Million

“More than 50 million total deaths,” writes Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle, summing up the cost of Communist Mao Zedong’s decades of re-making Chinese society from the “Great Leap Forward” to the “Cultural Revolution.” 

“. . . entirely self-inflicted,” Von Drehle adds.

“A free market of ideas would never have settled on such terrible policies,” he declares, “and a limited government could not have enforced them.”

Exactly! Is it finally morning in Washington?

The columnist articulates two principles: (1) “a free society is a great solver of problems and finder of answers because more brainpower is better than less,” and (2) “while a big government can certainly give a great boost to a good idea, it can also put enormous force behind a bad idea — and when it does, the effects can be catastrophic.”*

He highlights China’s brutally enforced One Child policy, instituted in 1979, whereby the government, according to One Child Nation documentarian Nanfu Wang, bragged it had “successfully prevented 400 million babies from being born.” Through forced abortions and infanticide! 

“This draconian, ill-considered measure,” Von Drehle charges, “has brought China to the brink of population decline at a time when the rising nation is still too poor, on a per capita basis, to support swelling ranks of elderly pensioners on the backs of a dwindling number of young workers.”

So, in 2016, “the all-powerful government permitted couples to have two children,” he explains. “Birthrates have continued to drop, moving the Central Committee to raise the cap last month to three children.” 

Regardless of the number, what could be more totalitarian than the government deciding how many children you may have?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Like covering up a virus outbreak that turns into a pandemic killing almost 4 million people worldwide — and over 600,000 Americans?

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education and schooling international affairs

Subsidizing Chinese Attacks on American Ideals

Should the federal government fund organizations working at the behest of China and the Chinese Communist Party?

Democrats on the House Education and Labor Committee have blocked an amendment sponsored by Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) that, in her words, would have banned funding of academic institutions “if they have a partnership with any entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the government of the People’s Republic of China or organized under the laws of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The entities being referred to are so-called Confucius Institutes, which, in addition to promoting innocuous educational goals, help spread the propaganda of the misnamed CCP. (The Chinese Communist Party should really now be called the Chinazi Party. Post-Mao, the Chinese have stopped trying to communize everything and now permit markets to function to a significant extent — but, as in the fascist Nazi version of totalitarianism, always subject to sweeping interference and oppression.)

The current number of active Confucius Institutes in the U.S. is uncertain, but the National Association of Scholars counts at least 55, including 48 at colleges and universities.

Meanwhile, as part of a freeze on regulations issued toward the end of the Trump administration, President Biden has withdrawn a proposed rule that would have required schools to reveal any ties to Confucius Institutes.

Is it a bad idea to find out which schools are facilitating Chinazi propaganda? 

Is it a good idea to directly or indirectly fund Chinazi propaganda? 

No and no.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs

Good Relations with Genocide?

Joe Biden, China, communism, human rights

“Beijing is trying to convince the incoming Biden administration that the U.S.-China relationship can be smooth and positive,” writes Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, “but only if Washington dumps the Trump administration’s policies, ignores China’s worst behaviors and pretends everything is fine.”

It is more than a little scary because “pretending” is one of the political establishment’s greatest skill-sets. Plus, the columnist reminds that “calls for the Biden administration to reverse course are coming not only from China but also from . . . former secretary of state Henry Kissinger” and a “range of interest groups.”  

But “yielding to China’s demands,” Rogin warns President-Elect Biden, “would be going against a majority of Americans in both parties and breaking Biden’s campaign promises to stand up to [Chinese leader] Xi.”

Consider “Beijing’s naked economic extortion of Australia,” argues Rogin. “If Biden intends to repair alliances, he should realize that allies like Australia want support for resistance to China’s bullying.”

So, what does China want?

“A Chinese official gave the Sydney Morning Herald a list of the conditions it expects in return for lifting harsh sanctions on Australia’s agricultural and mineral export industries,” Rogin explains. “. . . Australia must stop exposing Chinese Communist Party influence efforts on its soil; shut up about Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Uighurs; open its doors to Chinese tech companies; and quit calling for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Rogin notes “concern in Asia” about whether Mr. Biden will return to the Obama Administration’s weak stance on China, which “would allow serious problems to fester, raising the long-term risk of just the kind of serious conflict both countries would like to avoid.”

How “good” should our relations be with nations engaged in genocide, such as China?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

The NBA’s China Syndrome

Mark Cuban, China, NBA

“I’m against human rights violations around the world,” declared Mark Cuban, owner of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Dallas Mavericks, joining Megyn Kelly for her Apple podcast.

“Including the ones in China?” Kelly posed ever-so impolitely.

“China is not the only country with human rights violations,” Cuban prevaricated. Adding that, “Any human rights violations anywhere are wrong.”

Then Kelly dropped the bombshell: “Why would the NBA take $500 million dollars-plus from a country that is engaging in ethnic cleansing?”

“So basically,” the NBA owner fumed, “you’re saying nobody should do business with China ever?”

Perhaps not entertaining Chinazis is the right course — especially if doing so leads to kowtowing to Chinese government demands that their genocide be met with your well-compensated silence.

“They are a customer of ours . . .” he continued. “I’m okay with doing business with China. And so we have to pick our battles. I wish we could solve all the world’s problems. But we can’t.”

In addition to the PR problems brought by cuddling up to China, Kelly also asked whether prominently placing “Black Lives Matter” on the league’s courts had contributed to an “unprecedented viewership collapse” for the just-finished NBA Finals. 

“Each game has broken another all-time low,” wrote Bobby Burack for Outkick.com. “With a marquee match-up between the Lakers and the Heat and the league’s biggest draw in LeBron James, a drop of almost 60% is inexcusable.”

“Your audience is fleeing,” Kelly noted. “They object to the politicization of their game.”

Cuban demurred, but as Election Day approaches, I bet it has occurred to him more than once that Americans have already used their television remotes to cast some powerful votes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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China, media, communism, socialism

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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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China, organ transplants, capital punishment, communism,

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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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Bernie Sanders, communism, socialism,

Photo by Gage Skidmore

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