Monthly Archives: March 2021

Arrogance

Posted on by
Reply

The head of the Progressive-Democratic Party, President Joe Biden, has no immediate plans to visit our southern border in person and see for himself the crisis exploding there.

…he intends to travel to the southern border “at some point,” telling reporters that he is in no rush to visit because “I know what’s going in those facilities.”

He already knows what’s going on; he doesn’t want to be confused with facts.

Or, Biden is channeling Gold Hat:

Facts? I ain’t got no facts. I don’t need no facts. I don’t have to see any stinkin’ facts!

Wow.

“Sanctions”

Posted on by
Reply

That’s what US, Canada, Britain, and European Union politicians are claiming they’ll impose on the People’s Republic of China in response to PRC genocide efforts against the Uyghurs in the PRC’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The sanctions are expected to vary in type, and will include Global Magnitsky economic sanctions on individuals alleged to be involved with the mistreatment of the Muslims in the Xinjiang region of China.

Among those sanctions are these which the US, Canada, the UK, and the EU already imposed last Monday to four (count ’em) PRC officials:

  • Zhu Hailun, former deputy Communist Party head in Xinjiang
  • Wang Junzheng, party secretary of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps
  • Wang Mingshan, member of the Xinjiang’s Communist Party standing committee
  • Chen Mingguo, director of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau (PSB)
  • Xinjiang Public Security Bureau itself

Politico noted, interestingly, that the EU explicitly omitted to sanction the top Communist Party boss in Xinjiang, Chen Quanguo.

That’ll show them. We’re wagging our fingers very firmly at the PRC, and shortly we’ll be wagging our fingers even more vigorously.

Right.

What’s truly needful here is—at the minimum—a ban on import or even purchase of goods manufactured, including constituent parts, or assembled in Xinjiang or any business anywhere in the PRC with any sort of tie back to Xinjiang, and a parallel ban on doing any sort of business with a Xinjiang-associated enterprise.

Better would be to expand that list to include an ever broadening set of imports from or exports to the PRC until that nation provides publicly available and publicly verifiable proof that the PRC has put an end to its assault on the Uyghurs.

Fat chance, though, as the politicians of the four nations have shown themselves too timid to do more

There are Boycotts

Posted on by
Reply

…and there are boycotts.

There are calls to boycott the upcoming Olympics scheduled for the People’s Republic of China or to move those Olympics to another, more honest venue, over the PRC’s various land and sea seizures and especially over the PRC’s genocide in progress in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Sadly, there’s no stomach in the IOC, anyone associated with it, or the nations with competing athletes actually to make such a move.

Now Japan is instituting a boycott against its own Olympics scheduled for later this year.

Spectators from overseas will be barred from attending the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, organizers of the event said, a move to reduce the possibility of spreading of the coronavirus at the Games and boost tepid support for the event among Japanese.

Despite the foolishness or paranoia of the Japanese rationale, there’s no stomach in the IOC, anyone associated with it, or the nations with competing athletes for pushing back on such a move.

To which I say, a pox on the IOC and the Olympic games themselves. And shame on the those associated with the IOC or the Olympics generally, and on the nations.

How Fast is Fast?

Posted on by
Reply

Starlink is touting 120Mb/sec on its downlinks from its growing constellation of satellites purpose-built and -orbited to provide Internet connections.

Other satellite Internet providers in the offing are claiming similar speeds.

Put the speeds in context, though.

My Ethernet Internet connection gets link speeds in the gigabit/sec range.

My cable Internet provider gets me downlink speeds in the low hundreds of Mb/sec (faster than Starlink’s present 120Mb/Sec).

Consider another aspect of a satellite constellation network. Surface-based Internet connections (which cable connections are, for all that some of them still use microwave connections rather than underground copper (less obsolete than microwave) or glass to send their signals over much shorter distances than can satellites—which must bring the signal up from its ground-based origin, run it along that longer orbital arc, and then back down to the surface-based destination.

The throughput in any leg of that distance may well be lightning fast—which 120MB/sec is, for all that gigabit/sec is faster. But to all of that must be added the physics-created latencies—because the signal only goes at the speed of light—with further latencies created by each relay required as the signal is pushed from satellite to satellite before being relayed to the ground.

For all that negativity, though, a satellite-based Internet connection is fast, fast enough for consumer needs (so far) and for most business needs (so far), and it’s infinitely faster for those users in locations not reached by any other Internet network.

The follow-on question is whether a satellite-based Internet network can evolve as those “so fars” evolve.

“Pope Struggles to Contain Conservative-Liberal Tensions in Catholic Church”

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the headline on a Wall Street Journal article about the purported struggles of Pope Francis to manage the church of which he’s the nominal [sic] head.

For me, though, as a personally religious man who’s neither a Catholic nor enamored of institutional religion in general, I’m confused by this struggle.

How can there be any struggle? Why are the tensions accepted as something to be taken seriously?

The Church’s tenets are inviolate; morals are universal and inviolate.

All that might vary over time or across cultures is the way in which those tenets, morals generally, are upheld, defended, and enforced.

The Pope needs to consider putting his foot down and enforcing—in no uncertain terms—the Church’s fundamental tenets.

That might cause a schism? Possibly. Likely, even. But there’s a major so what here. Sure, the schism itself would be painful and badly inconvenient. However, the Church has grown stronger after every schism. Christianity has grown stronger since the Catholicism-Protestantism schism.

At worst, after any schism from Francis’ putting his foot down, the Church would be rid of those who can’t support Catholic tenets and would have a clearer path forward. And those who can’t support those fundamental Catholic holdings would be free to create and support their own church with their own clearer path.

Sort of like the Church of England, for all the shabby reason for its origin.