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general freedom media and media people

No Culture, No Future

Corinne Masiero

Actress Corinne Masiero, on stage at the César Awards — France’s version of the Oscars — shocked the nation by what she wore. And didn’t wear. 

Invited to present an award for best costumes, Masiero started the night in an ultra-significant yellow vest emblazoned with the motto “No Culture, No Future.” But she came on stage wearing a bloodied donkey costume, then doffed it for a bloodied dress, and then removed that, too. On her naked front she had scribbled: “No Cultur, No Futur.” And on her back, but in French, “Give us back art, Jean.”

“Jean” being French Prime Minister Jean Castex.

While this is in the style of typical artsy antics, this was not just gratuitous. It was a protest. She wants theaters to open.

Unique — in the sense that it was by an artist protesting the anti-lockdown cause, in a dramatic way usually reserved for more lefty causes. But not at all unique — in being against the lockdowns. All around the world folks are protesting the shuttering of society.

But why go to such lengths on stage?

Well, I might advise against . . . still, I haven’t seen much previously on the news about those protests?

Major media apparently does not have time, space or desire to cover protests over harsh, extremist “mitigation” efforts that “lock down” commerce and normal human interaction.

LifeSiteNews, a “non-profit Internet service dedicated to issues of culture, life, and family,” had the best I found. 

“The world demands its freedom back: Anti-lockdown protests sweep the globe,” runs its March 22 headline. 

“I don’t think I’ll be invited next year,” Masiero said, walking off stage. “We’ll see.”

What we need to see is more coverage . . . in the news.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment Regulating Protest

Mostly Peaceful Protest?

police, baton, riots

Crimes committed yesterday at the capitol should be prosecuted. 

Let’s make that the rule from now on, not the exception.

I’m not suggesting long prison terms for trespassing, smashing windows, small-scale vandalism. But we have a right (and almost a duty) to insist that people respect the lives and property of others, no exceptions.  

That’s Civilization 101.

Last summer, I think the cavalier attitude displayed by many public officials (Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler comes to mind) — and media outlets — toward looting and riots, as well as intimidation and violence directed at innocent individuals sent the wrong signal to . . . bad people on all sides.

Mostly peaceful protest isn’t good enough.

As the dust settles, we will learn more and discuss further. Note that as I put this and myself to bed last night, Congress was back at work but not yet finished certifying the Electoral College results.

Speaking of doing one’s job, in yesterday’s chaos, I witnessed one policemen apply some finesse to protecting the capitol — by de-escalating the tense situation. The mob he confronted refused to heed his instruction to leave the capitol. As the officer retreated up the stairs, they were on his heels. To delay their advance and stop them from overtaking him, he would turn upon reaching each floor’s threshold and threaten them with his baton. 

But he didn’t hit them. If would have been disastrous for him to do so, because even with a baton he was badly outmanned: mob against one.

Soon, however, he was able to get to reinforcements, who together appeared to block the insurgents.

A few moments of wise restraint. Too rare these days.

Not to mention some fancy footwork. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Hairdo, Don’t

BLM, Black Lives Matter, Trader Joes, protest, riots,

The name was dropped again the other day, Karen.

Not a proper name, though — it is a put-down, idiomatic and not inoffensive.  

Over at PJMedia, Bryan Preston used the term “Karen” good-naturedly (and with an *) in reporting on the “trained Marxists” at Black Lives Matter taking over a Trader Joe’s grocery store in Seattle to protest the, ahem, “lack of access to grocery stores” . . . because “capitalism exploits the working class.” 

Somehow I got stuck on Karen. 

“Karen is a pejorative term used in the United States and other English-speaking countries for a woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is appropriate or necessary,” Wikipedia informs. “A common stereotype is that of a white woman who uses her privilege to demand her own way at the expense of others. Depictions also include demanding to ‘speak to the manager,’ anti-vaccination beliefs, being racist, or sporting a particular bob cut hairstyle.”**

Is it just me, or does “being racist” seem a lot worse than sporting an uncool haircut? When racism’s at issue, why not use the label “racist,” instead?

And isn’t there already another five-letter word for a female exhibiting the less extreme negative features?  

“Karens are most definitely white,” Helen Lewis assures in The Atlantic. “Let that ease your conscience if you were beginning to wonder whether the meme was, perhaps, a little bit sexist in identifying various universal negative behaviors and attributing them exclusively to women.”

Apparently it is not okay to mock women . . . but thank goodness we can still mock women who have white skin! 

And a specific hairdo!

Land of the Free, Home of the Trash-Talkers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Preston’s footnote read: “with all due respect to the Karens I’ve known, all of whom are nothing like the stereotype of Karens as busybodies who leap to complain and always end up running authoritarian regimes such as HOAs.” 

** The Urban Dictionary also does not fail to mention that “crown bowl haircut.”

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First Amendment rights general freedom international affairs

Too Many Tiananmens

tiananmen, protest, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan,

Chinese students suddenly occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for seven beautiful weeks in the Spring of 1989. 

Millions more from all walks of life joined them.

Protesting tyranny, they demanded democracy and freedom of speech.

Then, 31 years ago to this very day, the Chinese government sent in tanks and soldiers, opening fire on citizens outside the square, killing thousands. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) followed up the massacre with arrests and lengthy prison terms for those committing the unspeakable crime of speaking out for freedom.

Fast-forward three decades and the ChiNazis in Beijing are currently engaged in snuffing out the civil liberties and democratic aspirations of the people in Hong Kong.*

In mainland China, the CCP has always squelched any mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre, but every year Hongkongers have held a vigil. Not this year. It has been banned.

The world should have learned two obvious lessons: (1) the Chinese people want freedom and democracy, and (2) the ‘Butchers of Beijing’ will brutalize to prevent it.

Far more powerful than in 1989, CCP tyrants now wield a much more effective police state against Chinese citizens. 

Now is the time to honor the Tiananmen demonstrators, but clearing Lafayette Park of protesters so President Trump can walk to a church seems . . . disquieting.

Not a memorial. 

And suggesting he might invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to engage the military in domestic policing? Trump’s defense secretary rightly opposes. 

Comparisons to Tiananmen Square have not unreasonably been drawn. 

The difference? Americans can revolt . . . peacefully, which our government cannot put down. 

For the sake of the free world and all those — including 1.4 billion Chinese — in the unfree world, now is no time to abandon peaceful protest and political action for insurrection, riot, and military suppression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * This is brazen violation of the 1997 turnover agreement made with Britain, of course.

Additional Reading:

What It Means

What Tiananmen Inspired

Tiananmen & Term Limits

All the Tyranny in China

I Am Hong Kong

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Victimhood Conspiracy

riots, protest, BLM, antifa,

When a purported Antifa group tweeted an “alert” on Sunday, instructing “Comrades” to “move into residential areas … the white hoods … and we take what’s ours,” tagging it “#BlacklivesMaters #F**kAmerica,” Twitter closed the account. 

Few would object. 

That was criminal incitement to riot, and worse.

But when Twitter, Facebook and YouTube remove client content for arguing things about the coronavirus that does not fit with government bodies’ officially approved information, something else is going on. 

Last week, President Donald Trump warned of the dangers to election integrity of switching to mail-in ballots. So Twitter flagged his tweet, implying it as non-factual.*

I am not going to defend the wisdom or legality of Trump’s threats — on Twitter or by executive order. But one characterization of the whole affair by Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason seems a . . . bit . . . off.

“The order relies heavily on conservatives’ victimhood conspiracy du jour: that social media companies are colluding to suppress conservative voices,” Ms. Brown wrote last Thursday. “It’s an objectively untrue viewpoint, as countless booted and suspended liberal, libertarian, and apolitical accounts can tell you.”

The fact that non-conservatives have been de-platformed does not actually work against the supposition that the social media outfits are colluding against conservatives. It remains a problem if conservative thought is suppressed along with libertarian and anything else heterodox. These companies do conspire to suppress opinions they do not like, and influencers they regard as dangerous.

To center-left establishment opinion.

These social media behemoths aim to defend their approved news and opinion against what they regard as “fake news.” Thereby suppressing free debate and inquiry.

Opposing Trump’s reaction does not require pretending that these companies’ policies are not deeply problematic.

Concern about open and robust debate is not a mere “victimhood conspiracy du jour.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* How a prediction can be a factual matter is a bit odd. But let that slide, I guess.

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Freedom’s Front Lines

coronavirus, Covid, China, police, protest,

Last weekend, riot police broke up a candlelight vigil for Chow Tsz-lok, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology student, who died back in November. He had fallen a story from a parking garage as Hong Kong police were “clearing a group of anti-government protesters.”

“Police said they seized petrol bombs, bricks and other protest items from the car park where the memorial was held,” reports the South China Morning Post. “Officers then stopped rally-goers from leaving and checked their identity cards and bags, arresting more than 40 people for unlawful assembly.”

If the police can be believed. 

They can’t. 

As Tom Grundy, editor-in-chief of Hong Kong Free Press, puts it: “[P]eople just don’t trust the Government.”

While people were violently arrested, it wasn’t for violence or weapons. It was for daring to use what we call “freedom of assembly.”

Now with the spread of the COVID-19 virus, protesters have been reluctant to call for mass gatherings. Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based regional director of Amnesty International, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, “The authorities may be counting on the coronavirus epidemic to extinguish the unrest.”*

On Friday, authorities used the lull to charge three prominent pro-democracy leaders — Jimmy Lai, owner of media highly critical of China; Yeung Sum, the former Democratic Party chairman; and the Labour Party vice-chairman, Lee Cheuk-yan — for taking part in a protest march last year.

They join more than 7,000 demonstrators arrested since the protest movement began last June. 

Young people — and some not-so-young — are risking their very lives for freedom, for the right to choose their leaders . . . knowing that without such basic mechanisms, they have no defense against the Butchers of Beijing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Amnesty International has called for an “independent investigation into police violence.”

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The Fundamental Complaint

revolution, protest, police, authoritarianism,

“Something is going on,” writes The Washington Post’s Adam Taylor. “From Baghdad to Hong Kong, Santiago to Barcelona, sites around the world have seen major protests over recent weeks.”

What is that something? 

“Global protests share themes of economic anger and political hopelessness,” reads the headline to Taylor’s article.  

He’s way off. 

Hope, not hopelessness, drives people to demand change. 

“Income inequality seems to have added an economic insecurity that helped lead to anger and protests,” Taylor informs . . . in keeping with a consistent Post narrative.

The millions who have marched in Hong Kong didn’t take to the streets over income equality. Their five clear and reasonable demands are about justice and basic democratic citizen control of government. 

The protests and violence in Catalonia stem from the central Spanish government denying self-determination and trying to bully the people by imposing long prison terms on Catalonian officials who committed the crime of holding an “illegal” referendum for independence.

Even where economic concerns are far more prominent (or the main driver of demonstrations, such as in Chile) the frustration is much less about inequality than a lack of opportunity in a stagnant and corrupt system. 

“They promise changes every time we protest, but it’s not a new law or a concession that we want,” Iraqi student Ali Saleh explains. “It’s our rights. It’s a fundamental change in how we’re governed.”

The current global explosion of political unrest isn’t about income inequality or even economic insecurity alone. It is about the desire for more fundamental freedoms — economic as well as political — in an unfree world. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Blizzard Fallout

Ng, Activision, Blizzard, games

“I’ve already deleted my Blizzard account,” offered the young man while taking my Starbucks order. 

Blizzard Entertainment is a video game developer based in Irvine, California. Earlier this week, the company rescinded the Grandmasters tournament winnings of Hearthstone esports player Ng Wai Chung, whose professional name is “Blitzchung,” banning him from pro competition for one year. 

Why? In a post-match interview, the Hong Kong native, donning a gas mask, declared, “Liberate Hong Kong!”

The company claims Blitzchung violated tournament rules disallowing “any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard.” More likely, the censorship comes from Tencent Games, a large Chinese company, with a 5 percent ownership stake in Blizzard’s parent company.

“I can’t just sit there doing nothing,” Chung told reporters, “watching our freedom being destroyed bit by bit.”

Blitzchung’s courageous stand has, thankfully, received rewards, too, for he is receiving offers from other, more politically conscious gaming outfits. 

And Blizzard faces a serious customer backlash, along with employee walkouts and dissent.

On Wednesday, I bemoaned the fickle stand taken by Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who tweeted, “Fight for freedom! Stand with Hong Kong!” but then deleted the tweet under pressure from the Chinese government. Then, yesterday, an NBA spokesperson apologized that a CNN reporter was blocked from asking Rocket players a question about the controversy.

The NBA may be scared of totalitarian China’s economic bullying, but fans are speaking out. At exhibition games between NBA and Chinese Basketball Association teams, in both Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., fans wore shirts and held signs saying, “Free Hong Kong.” 

Speaking truth to power across the globe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Ng, Activision, Blizzard, games

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What It Means

Goddesss of Democracy, China, freedom, protest,

The most inspiring political event of my six decades on this planet remains the pro-freedom and democracy protests of three decades ago, when for seven weeks first students and then other Chinese citizens occupied iconic, historic Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

“In the history of communist China,” said a CNN correspondent as a million people swelled into the square, “there has never been anything like this.”

The students’ demands were strikingly similar to those articulated in America’s Declaration of Independence, and their symbol was the Goddess of Democracy and Freedom, something of a replica of our Statue of Liberty.

Now, one might ask what the protestors knew of liberty and democracy. “To them,” offered Princeton Professor Perry Link, “democracy just meant ‘get off our back.’”

What, it doesn’t mean that?

“We probably don’t know what democracy is, living in China,” acknowledged student leader Wuer Kaixi, “but we have a pretty good idea what totalitarianism, what non-democracy, is.”

That totalitarian tyranny exploded late this very evening 30 years ago, when Chinese troops fired on unarmed protesters and tanks rolled; the massacre continued into the wee hours of June 4, 1989. Death counts range from 300 to several thousand, and there’s uncertainty as to whether the carnage took place in or out of the square, killing mostly workers or students. Regardless, it is all-too-typical behavior from an illegitimate regime.*

The saddest news is that, as a survivor told the South China Morning Post, “What happened [30] years ago in China . . . is still happening now in China.”

Over a million Uighur Muslims are, reportedly, confined in concentration camps right now.

What can we do? Remember, for starters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*Firing on one’s own citizens is far too common, and delegitimizes any regime that practices it, as I have pointed out per Nicaragua, Venezuela, and U.S.-subsidized Egypt — the list goes on and on.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture insider corruption media and media people property rights Regulating Protest

Ortega’s Got to Go

Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua, rebellion, atrocity, protest, violence

Sometimes “if it bleeds, it leads” fails us. Only a few news outlets have given much attention to Nicaragua’s ongoing atrocities.

Weeks ago, mothers of some of the 76 people, mainly students, already killed protesting despot Daniel Ortega, were leading a march demanding justice . . . “when gunmen opened fire on the crowd.” The Washington Post report continued, “Witnesses have accused police and their civilian allies of initiating the violence that left as many as 18 people dead and more than 200 wounded.”

The June 2 headline summed up the last seven weeks: “At least 100 killed in Nicaragua as political violence intensifies.”

But time and tyranny march on. “Every day they’re killing more people,” an attorney with the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights told the Post. Friday, the group updated the death toll to 137.

Then on Saturday, the English-language Today Nicaragua informed that a 60-year-old man was cut down by a government sniper in Masaya, the former Sandinista stronghold, which is “now under almost total rebel control.”

What can we do?

We can educate ourselves on what’s happening — and pester more news organizations to cover Nicaragua.

We can learn from the experiences in Cuba, in Venezuela, and now in Nicaragua, that leaders seeking awesome powers to remake society to supposedly benefit the poor are ultimately batting zero in helping the poor. Instead, they’re busy at the plate for themselves.

And we can add our voices to Amnesty International’s condemnation of what it calls “the systematic ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy of President Ortega’s government.”

When governments open fire on peaceful protesters, it is past time for those governments to go.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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