Tag: protests

Two-thousand Somethings

Alex Ko is “exactly the kind of person China is worried about,” informs the BBC.

Described as “soft-spoken” and “bespectacled,” the 23-year-old Ko lives in Taiwan, hundreds of ocean miles away from Hong Kong, where for months the streets have been consumed in protests demanding simple but difficult things: freedom, democracy, government accountability.

What can one person do — especially living far away and in a different country?

You might think: not much.

But Mr. Ko managed to do something. Two-thousand-plus somethings. With help.

Ko launched “a donation drive for gas masks, air filters and helmets at his church,” and has been able to send Hong Kong protesters “more than 2,000 sets of such gear . . . to protect them against tear gas regularly fired by the police.”

It’s sad such gear is needed but . . . “[a] new Amnesty International field investigation has documented an alarming pattern of the Hong Kong Police Force deploying reckless and indiscriminate tactics, including while arresting people at protests, as well as exclusive evidence of torture and other ill-treatment in detention.”

“As a Christian,” Ko told the BBC, “when we see people hurt and attacked, I feel we have to help them.” And then he added, “As a Taiwanese, I’m worried we may be next.”

Today I’m flying to Hong Kong in route to Taiwan to address the 2019 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy. Because freedom and democracy must be protected and expanded the world over . . . so no one is “next.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs Popular

Protests and Propaganda

Hong Kong, police, riots, protests, violence,

Poised to gobble up Hong Kong whole, completing the process Britain began when it ceded the colony back to China in 1997, the government of China remains concerned about world opinion, for it engages in massive propaganda.

“When a projectile struck a Hong Kong woman in the eye this week as protesters clashed with the police, China responded quickly,” explains an article in the New York Times. “Its state television network reported that the woman had been injured not by one of the police’s bean bag rounds, but by a protester.”

But that’s not the only kind of propaganda. If you have spent any time on Instagram, for example, you have probably seen the posts of Chinese people decrying the scandal and shame of how Hong Kongers resist government efforts at hegemony.

There is a name for this latter form of propagandist, “the fifty cent party” because the Communist Party is said to pay social media users for each pro-government post . . . though almost certainly not 50¢.*

The basic idea, according to General Secretary Xi Jinping, is to “to strengthen media coverage … use innovative outreach methods … tell a good Chinese story, and promote China’s views internationally.”

And managing its own population, as when, according to the Times, state media “posted what it said was a photo of the woman counting out cash on a Hong Kong sidewalk — insinuating, as Chinese reports have claimed before, that the protesters are merely paid provocateurs.”

These young street protestors are almost certainly not mercenaries, though they have sometimes faced what appear to be hired thugs.

The protests are a kind of insurrection. Strong resistance, at least, to being totalitarianized.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom Popular Regulating Protest too much government

I Am Hong Kong

Hong Kong, protests, extradition, freedom, democracy,

“I love my students so much,” a protesting teacher in Hong Kong told a BBC reporter, wiping tears from her eyes. “I worry about they cannot have the freedom we have before. They cannot speak what they want to speak like us. So, I don’t want . . . this.”

Her English grammar notwithstanding, she speaks a language we should all understand: Liberty.

“If there must be trouble,” Tom Paine wrote in The American Crisis, “let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” As usual, it is the young, whose idealism and courage has not been worn down and compromised — and who have their own future children to fight for — who lead the effort, facing tear gas and truncheons. That is precisely what they’ve encountered in Hong Kong . . . along with pepper spray and rubber bullets . . . for now.

It can get worse.

Nonetheless, millions of Hong Kong residents have taken to the streets against Hong Kong’s legislature considering a bill to allow Mainland China the power to extradite criminal suspects. People well understand that, if the bill passes, their civil rights will be extinguished in China’s crooked, totalitarian justice system.

What to do? Hope and pray for Hong Kong.

But let’s draw some lessons. Freedom requires not merely bravery, but also unity. An attack on the rights of anyone is an attack on us all. And attacks on precious democratic checks on political power are attacks on everyone’s freedom.

Instead of the United Nations, we need an organization of united citizens across the globe. People everywhere want to be free and democratic. We should work together . . . bypassing our governments.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

Who Rules the French?

yellow vests, jackets, France, protests, taxes, nationalism

The petition that Priscillia Ludosky posted on Change.org many weeks ago was labeled “For a Drop in Fuel Prices at the Pump!” Now more than a million people have signed it.

“Taxation as a whole represents about two-thirds of the price of fuel,” the French activist informed.

Sparked by the tax hike, working people have joined massive weekend protests in Paris and throughout France — five weeks running— against the Macron government.

The Gilets Jaunes or “Yellow Vest” movement has already forced the removal of the fuel levies. While French President Emmanuel Macron’s approval rating has plummeted down into the low 20s, polls show support for the protesters by two out of three French citizens.

“[E]lected officials take advantage of power to become aristocrats of public money,” Ms. Ludosky told protesters via bullhorn last weekend.

This movement is about a lot more than the price of fuel.

“The citizens’ initiative referendum,” noted France 24, an English language news channel, “now one of the main demands of Yellow Vest protesters in France. The RIC [Référendum Initiative Citoyenne] would in theory allow the people to propose a law, get rid of one, change the constitution or demand the resignation of an elected official.”

For the last ten years, France has had a national initiative and referendum process, but citizens are dependent on the support of legislators, none of whom have taken the initiative — pun intended.

“The idea is that once 700K people ask for it,” the report continued, “there would have to be a national referendum on the issue.”

An essential democratic check on power that the French — and all people — must have.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture tax policy

Class War in France

France, French, tax, protests, yellow, jackets

The French have a talent for riot, public protest, and street-based insurrection.* The current mayhem in Paris has been escalating every weekend since starting in mid-November.

Why weekends? This is a working-person revolt.

“Rioters ran amok across central Paris on Saturday, torching cars and buildings, looting shops, smashing windows and clashing with police in the worst unrest in more than a decade, posing a dire challenge to Emmanuel Macron’s presidency,” Yahoo News informs us. “The authorities were caught off guard by the escalation in violence after two weeks of nationwide protests against fuel taxes and living costs…”

Yes, this is a tax revolt.

You see, the taxes are part of a carbon emissions reduction program — the kind of taxes that Democrats are eager to put into place in America. Leftists and environmentalists worldwide should pay special attention.

The gambit, of course, is this: cityfolk tend not to mind such taxes less because they do not take the hit immediately. People outside cities, on the other hand, drive everywhere, often for their jobs. In Paris, well, not so much. The city has even enacted an ordinance to outlaw all but electric automobiles by 2030.

It’s called the “yellow vests [jackets] movement” to symbolize the government’s anti-driver mindset: “all motorists had been required by law — since 2008 — to have high-visibility vests in their vehicles when driving.”

Sure, push around ordinary motorists.

The protest movement has been largely made up of these people, since many businesses and professionals get exemptions from the taxes.

It’s a class war thing. You might think Macron and other elitists in government would understand their own country.

But no.

So, why?

It’s a big government thing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Maybe that is why the street violence of “refugees” and children of Middle-Eastern and North African migrants have been taken with as much tolerance as it has been: the rioters have seemed so very French.

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Tags France, French, Macron, protests, tax

free trade & free markets ideological culture

Fifty Out 1.4 Million

Black Friday’s mass anti-WalMart protests focused on how poorly WalMart treats its employees. Or so run the allegations. A typical sign said “Living Wage NOW.”

But it was a funny sort of labor-relations protest. There were marchers. And there was media coverage. Lots.

What there wasn’t a lot of, though? Walk-out WalMart employees. A few hundred showed up, nationwide, says OUR WalMart, the protesting organization; WalMart itself puts the walkout number at about 50.

That’s out of 1.4 million workers overall.

The whole spectacle seems so strange. It’s not the workers protesting wage and conditions, really, but those who don’t work there. The protestors demand higher wages for WalMart employees. But from what I can tell, actual employees feel rather lucky to have their jobs.

Could we be witnessing a new form of unionizing? Outside agitators working to get in? That is, could the protestors be trying to force up wages so that they could replace current WalMart workers?

For many of the most vocal WalMart critics, that seems unlikely. They hate WalMart. One gets the idea, from following their typical spiels, that what they are really up to is hurting the company.

And, if the folks at Reason magazine are right, raising prices. What many object to is the fact that WalMart has succeeded precisely because it has decreased prices to consumers.

In olden days, the common presumption was that cheaper prices were what we wanted from business: more goods for less, thus providing betterment to vastly increasing numbers of people.

On the professional left, such eternal verities no longer seem to apply.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.