Categories
ideological culture international affairs

Accounting for Taste

“In an open-​ended question allowing Americans to name which country they see as the greatest threat to the U.S., 50% name China, almost three times the share who name Russia (17%),” Pew Research reported last week.

Of course, some argue, as does Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs, that this “overwrought fear of China and Russia is sold to a Western public through manipulation of the facts.”

Has our government and media somehow hoodwinked us into not liking Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party? I sorta think we finally convinced them to start paying attention to the Chinazi threat — but whatever.

In perusing the polling at Pew’s website, I came across a recent survey of Asian Americans entitled, “Most Asian Americans View Their Ancestral Homelands Favorably, Except Chinese Americans.”

Strange that China would be the only unpopular outlier … unless you know modern Chinese history.

Still, these Asian Americans who responded to the poll might also have fallen victim to “Western propaganda.” What do people outside of the U.S. think?

“The nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that a median of 67% of those surveyed [in 24 countries] have an unfavorable opinion of China, while only 28% have a favorable view of the country. At least 50% of respondents in 17 countries gave China negative marks,” U.S. News & World Report detailed about the international poll, “with shares eclipsing 80% in Australia, Japan, Sweden and the United States. Majorities in only three countries — Kenya, Mexico and Nigeria — gave the country positive ratings.”

Apparently, genocidal totalitarianism isn’t very popular on this planet

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom international affairs

Truth, Compassion & Forbearance

The Chinese Communist Party’s genocidal ways did not begin with the mass Uyghur incarcerations. Twenty-​four years ago the CCP kicked off “its brutal campaign to eradicate Falun Gong in China,” writes John A. Deller in The Epoch Times.

“Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) was introduced to the public in China by Mr. Li Hongzhi in May 1992,” explains Mr. Deller. “It is a spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition based on the principles of truth, compassion, and forbearance.… By 1998, over 70 million people across China had found improved health and morality through Falun Gong.”

In the West, we may not immediately see how dangerous (to tyrants) a religio-​philosophical movement like Falun Gong could be. 

Isn’t it innocuous? When D. T. Suzuki introduced Zen Buddhism to the U.S. in the last century, most Americans … yawned. 

But the Chinazis did not yawn. They banned Falun Gong on July 20, 1999. And began arresting and imprisoning and torturing and executing its practitioners.

While Deller insists that Falun Gong was not perceived by most of its practitioners to be intrinsically anti-​communist, over the course of the antagonism it has dawned on the persecuted that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is indeed at odds with “truth, compassion, and forbearance.”

What really bothers the CCP? Ideas

Of independence … forbearance. 

Of truth … not propaganda. 

Of compassion … the idea that maybe prisoners shouldn’t be killed to facilitate lucrative organ transplants.

The 24-​year-​old genocide is a memecide, the attempted final solution to these paramount ideas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder​.ai and DALL-E2

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

“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

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 notgood 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
Accountability general freedom international affairs

The Real Thing