Tag Archives: politics

The Nature of an Enemy

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This is the nature of the People’s Republic of China which the Left—our own and Europe’s in particular—pooh-pooh as not actually utterly antithetical to our values, our liberties, even our independence from PRC domination.

After locking up as many as a million people in camps in Xinjiang, Chinese authorities are destroying Uighur neighborhoods and purging the region’s culture. They say they’re fighting terrorism. Their aim: to engineer a society loyal to Beijing.

The rationalization for this purge comes from Shohrat Zakir, Chairman of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the Communist Party of China’s Deputy Party Committee Secretary for Xinjiang:

Ethnic unity is the lifeline of all ethnic groups in China and the foundation of economic progress in Xinjiang[.]

And that unity must be a Sinicized unity. This is the lesson the men of the People’s Republic of China government think they’ve learned from the Jinjiang and Mongol conquering of China.

That Sinicization requirement is illustrated by this:

“We can’t have a culture anymore,” said a Uighur resident of Urumqi who works at a state-owned resources company. He said he stopped visiting his local mosque after officials came to his house to confiscate his Quran. “No one goes any more. It’s too dangerous,” he said.

Anything other is evil and must be stamped out.

It’s a long article, but RTWT.

Biden Wants Abrams?

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Is Progressive-Democratic Party primary candidate wannabe for President—and the most Progressive candidate in (or almost in) the Party primaries—really thinking about asking Stacey Abrams, ex-Minority Leader of Georgia’s House of Representatives and late of the race for Georgia governor, to be his Vice President candidate in his campaign?

That brings up a question of what he really thinks of Abrams:

I mean, you got the…African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking [woman]. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Or is he simply that desperately pandering?

Time for a Clean Break

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No more bad faith pseudo-negotiations by Brussels.  No more dithering and bad-skilled pseudo-negotiations by Theresa May.

The UK asked the European Union to delay its departure from the bloc until June 30, an extension that if approved would give Prime Minister Theresa May just weeks to break an impasse in Parliament over her withdrawal deal.

It’s not just an internal impasse between the PM and Parliament. It’s also and more importantly an impasse between Great Britain and Brussels.

Cut the cord.  The other 27 nations of the EU, or at least that one of them with sense and integrity, should reject the request for more time.  It’s time that only will be wasted by both sides, each for its own reasons.

Update: The EU, lacking even that single nation of the 27, has voted to grant Great Britain’s request for more time before leaving. In fact, the EU offered a couple of options for more time.

  • Option 1: If the UK parliament votes for the withdrawal agreement next week, it can delay exiting until May 22 to ratify the text.
  • Option 2: If it does not approve the deal, the EU will offer a shorter extension until April 12.
  • If it rejects the deal and takes the shorter extension, it can then decide whether to seek a much longer delay and vote in the European elections or leave on April 12 without a deal.

The withdrawal agreement the Parliament is expected to vote on is the same one it’s rejected twice before.  The EU isn’t serious about that thing being accepted on the third try.

This is a sham offer, designed only to drag things out; Brussels is continuing to deal in bad faith. The continent has, perhaps, one or both of two motives for this disingenuousity.  It’s still looking to make an example of Great Britain as a warning to other member nations that might be thinking of leaving.  It’s looking to dismember Great Britain by taking Northern Ireland out of the nation with its demand of an open, unguarded border between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland.

If the Brits have any sense at all left (an increasing question), they’ll reject the deal and go out from the EU on schedule, on 29 March, and with no deal at all.  No amount of time is going to get them a better deal, incessant delay will only give the Remainers on both side of the Channel time to find a way to keep Great Britain trapped in the EU cage.

An Arrogant Pope

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Recall that French (should be ex-)Cardinal Philippe Barbarin was convicted of covering up the child sexual abuses inflicted by his priests.  Pursuant to that conviction, Barbarin tendered his resignation as Cardinal to Pope Francis.

Amazingly, the Pope refused the resignation.

“Monday morning, I handed over my mission to the Holy Father. He spoke of the presumption of innocence and did not accept this resignation,” Barbarin said in a statement.

Being convicted of a crime in a petty secular court apparently doesn’t satisfy the Pope’s definition of guilt.

Of course, the Pope also could have been operating off the French court’s sentence for Barbarin’s barbarity.  The court sentenced Barbarin to all of six months in jail. And then suspended even that. If the French don’t care about Barbarin’s terrible actions, there wouldn’t seem much reason for the Pope to, either.  Maybe not so arrogant.

Journalistic Dishonesty

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It turns out that a major player in the NLMSM, Reuters, had some dirt on Robert Francis O’Rourke a year before his Progressive-Democratic Party campaign for Senator in Texas in the 2018 season—and spiked the story rather than publishing it in real time, or during the campaign, because the information, in Reuters‘ view, could have hurt O’Rourke.

It seems that a teenaged Ol’ Beto was a member of the

“Cult of the Dead Cow,” a famous group of hackers credited with inventing the term “hacktivism….”
The group is responsible for a variety of shady activit[ies] like stealing credit card numbers to pay for long-distance telephone service, violating copyright laws, and hacking into computers, according to [Reuters], which stressed that O’Rourke himself never “engaged in the edgiest sorts of hacking activity.”

What’s of import today is not that misspent youth—Ol’ Beto isn’t the first misbehaving teenager who subsequently grew up—but the fact that this news outlet spiked a story because exposing the information might hurt their Chosen One.  This is the rationalization of Joe Menn, the “journalist” who hid the information with Reuters‘ approval [emphasis added]

“While he was on leave from Reuters and writing a book on the Cult of the Dead Cow, Joe Menn made an agreement regarding the embargo date of his interview with Beto O’Rourke. This is a common arrangement between journalists and sources, which we described in detail in a Reuters Backstory article on Friday,” a Reuters spokesperson told Fox News.

That just shows how pervasive and long-standing the dishonesty in what passes for today’s journalism is.  It’s OK to spike an unfriendly story, and it’s equally OK to go in real time with no hard facts on a story that destroys the lives of other teenagers—Catholic high school students, for instance.

These guys aren’t even capable of recognizing dishonesty any more.