On the China protests and zero COVID
There’s an awful lot being said about the Chinese protests, but I’m going to boil it down to this interview with a Chinese dissident artist. I’m pretty much in agreement with him, from what I see – except I’m inclined to blame the West more than he does, for being reluctant to speak out in support of the demonstrators:
He says that China’s lockdown policy has been “mad” (as in seemingly crazy), and I agree that it seems that way. But it’s also possible it’s an attempt to see how much control it can exercise – although to what purpose I don’t know, because it’s causing so much upheaval within China and is so out of line with the policy of other countries, even those who have locked down fairly stringently. Why is China so completely dedicated to an unrealistic zero COVID policy? Why so very extreme? I’ve seen speculation, but I think that the most logical explanation is that they wanted to be able to boast of being the only country to successfully keep COVID away, and therefore are superior to the rest of the world.
Today commenter “Cornflour” offered a link to this Asia Times article:
Events have prodded China to speed up the schedule for a shift of Covid focus to treatment rather than prevention, according to sources close to the State Council leadership.
The sources have reaffirmed to Asia Times that decisions reached just prior to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China to relax Covid controls have not changed. Indeed, preparations for the change have been underway since early October, they say – but now, with omicron cases surging and protests threatening to get out of hand, the matter has become more urgent.
According to the sources, further relaxation is now scheduled to start in the course of January…
Health officials and their direct superiors who have been promoting heightened control measures to prevent death of the elderly have been overruled. Local government officials who are deemed to have promoted measures deemed excessive – not in line with the 20 new guidelines for easing Covid Zero that were issued November 11 – will be reprimanded, according to the sources.
The report says the new plan is to emphasize treatment and to import vaccines, and deal with COVID much as the rest of the world does. I guess time will tell whether this is an accurate representation of the plans of the Chinese government.
COVID was such a golden opportunity for the authoritarian left
Governments around the world used the fear engendered by the COVID pandemic to increase their control on both the behavior of their populations and the ability of those populations to exchange information. The excuse was that this was a life-or-death emergency, and to that end they both exaggerated the threat and lied about many things connected with it. In addition to flat-out lying, there were elements of the science that were not “settled,” and yet the authorities pretended they were and blocked speculation by the hoi-polloi (that’s the rest of us) about things that didn’t fit the official narrative.
And yet much of that speculation, so strongly suppressed, has turned out to be true. And not on minor issues, either. One big one is the probable lab leak origin of the virus.
That’s not to say that all such speculation is true. Hardly. Much of the falsehood by the speculation crowd comes from the use of statistics to supposedly prove some point that those statistics simply don’t prove. But that certainly doesn’t justify squelching all dissent and disagreement and questioning of the official line, which is what happened with Twitter:
On Tuesday, Musk released publicly a report that explains how many accounts were banned due to supposed COVID-19 “misinformation.” He then dropped a bomb of a policy change, making it official that Twitter will no longer ban anyone for expressing varying opinions on the coronavirus…
Conservative accounts were targeted in large numbers, with over 11,000 of them being banned, while liberal accounts were allowed to spread all manner of misinformation on various topics with not even an eye being batted. Then there were the over 11 million “challenges” put on posts, which entailed a disclaimer asserting something was false because the “experts” said so when it often wasn’t.
I have to say that Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is one of the more interesting stories these days, although it has a lot of competition. The man has cojones, that’s for sure, because he knows they’re coming after him. For example, back on November 10, Biden said this:
“Mr. President, do you think Elon Musk is a threat to U.S. national security?” a reporter asked the president during a press conference on Wednesday. “And should the U.S. — and with the tools you have — investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis?”
“I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at,” Biden responded. “Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that it wor- — worth being looked at. And — and — but that’s all I’ll say.”
The reporter attempted to probe Biden on how the federal government might “look at” Musk, to which Biden respond that there were “a lot of ways,” before moving on to another reporter’s question.
I bet there are.
It’s almost humorous – almost, but not quite – that Biden is suggesting that Musk’s “cooperation or technical relationships with other countries” needs looking into, considering Biden’s own history and that of his immediate family.
The Arizona election mess continues
Mohave County Board of Supervisors Chairman Ron Gould said Monday he chose to canvass the 2022 Arizona general election because otherwise, he’d be arrested.
“What we found out today from the county attorney is, essentially, if I have a question with how our election is run and I don’t get my question answered, I have no choice but to canvass the election, which is the technical word for certifying it,” Ron Gould told KTAR News 92.3 FM’s The Gaydos and Chad Show on Monday.
“Or I’ll be charged with a felony.”
I’m curious what the charges would be – obviously not minor, because he says it would be at the felony level. Is “election denial” now a crime? Or perhaps it’s somehow connected to the fact that there were no irregularities reported in Mohave County and his failure to certify was based on Maricopa’s problems? Gould has said “that they chose to make the political statement because when elections are run poorly in the state’s most populous county it disenfranchises the smaller, rural counties.”
The article also said that, had Mohave County not come on board, that county’s vote would have been excluded in the final certification. Mohave County is a majority-GOP county, so it certainly wouldn’t have helped the Republicans, but the Democrats won anyway so I guess it wouldn’t have mattered much if at all.
In addition, there’s this, which I found towards the end of the article. It involves Cochise County, which is the last Arizona holdout county refusing to certify:
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs filed a lawsuit Monday night against the Cochise County Board of Supervisors for not certifying the election by the state’s required Nov. 28 deadline.
That’s the final sentence in the article. It fails to mention what many know, which is that Katie Hobbs cannot possibly be considered a disinterested and neutral party. She was the Democrat nominee for governor, and the winner over Kari Lake in 2022 in a very close race. As the present Secretary of State in charge of supervising her own election, she refused to recuse herself despite calls to do so and the fact that her conflict of interest is blatant and glaringly obvious.
What’s going on in Arizona highlights several important points. The first is that in states with early voting, the GOP strategy of voting on Election Day and not before is not a good idea.
The second is that – and I’ve already said this many times – the only remedy available is prevention because once an election is done it’s virtually impossible to prove fraud or error that mattered, unless it’s a counting error that involves paper ballots (which is not the usual situation at all). It doesn’t matter how suspicious the events are and how they undermine trust in elections. Trust is not the point; suppression of dissent is the point, and those with power will exercise it to its full extent.
And the third is that integrity is almost nonexistent. In years past, it seems to me that someone in the position of Katie Hobbs would have recused herself to prevent the appearance of impropriety and bias. It was understood how important that is. No more. Power is everything, and they intend to never lose it.
Open thread 11/29/22
Amazon reminder: BUMPED UP for CyberMonday [scroll down for today’s new posts]
Please use this blog as the portal for your Amazon holiday gift purchases if you prefer – as they used to say of the yellow pages long ago, before the internet took over – to let your fingers do the walking. Click on the Amazon widget in the right sidebar on desktops/laptops or down at the bottom of the page for phones (or go here if for some reason the widget isn’t showing), and everything you buy during that visit will send a bit of money my way, and it won’t cost you one extra cent.
Today is CyberMonday at Amazon, and there are lots of things on sale. I’m thinking of getting a new computer – something I think about quite regularly but so far have done zero about except read product descriptions. Maybe I’ll really do it this time. This one kind of catches my fancy.
Roundup!
(1) We’e talked about Trump as a tragic Shakespearean hero, and also as Captain Queeg. Victor Davis Hanson explores the latter possibility in this article.
(2) A tale of college propaganda convincing a student to turn hard left, and of her mother’s successful attempts to deprogram her. This probably happens a lot, minus the second part. I’m often surprised that so many people are susceptible to being indoctrinated like that – one attendance at an SDS rally in college made it clear to me that this was not the way to go, for example – but many certainly are, and there’s no dearth of college professors and administrators dedicated to the task these days.
(3) About that Trump dinner with Kanye West and others.
(4) RIP Irene Cara. She had a couple of really big songs and a lot of positive energy when she performed. Here’s a very 1980s video of one of those songs.
(5) In Arizona, Maricopa county has certified its results despite all the sketchy things that happened. This is no surprise; they’re the ones responsible for allowing the sketchy things to happen in the first place. Lake is suing. Meanwhile, some smaller Republican counties are still delaying their certification of results, due today.
Anti-government demonstrations in China
You’ve almost certainly read about the protests in China. On the one hand, it’s encouraging that people so tightly controlled want to be more free and are willing to go public with it in significant numbers. On the other hand, the fact that they are so tightly controlled – and modern technology makes it more and more possible for any high-tech centralized government to do something of the sort – makes it hard to think that the protesters will somehow be successful.
When regimes topple, it’s often because of one of these things: (1) those at the top become unwilling to use violence and coercion to maintain control; or (2) those at the next-down level – police or military, for example – stop doing their bidding.
Are there any signs of either thing happening in China? I don’t really see it. For example:
Rallies against China’s unusually strict anti-virus measures spread to several cities over the weekend, and authorities eased some regulations, apparently to try to quell that public anger. But the government showed no sign of backing down on its larger coronavirus strategy, and analysts expect authorities to quickly silence the dissent.
With police out in force Monday, there was no word of protests in Beijing or Shanghai. But about 50 students sang at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and some lit candles in a show of support for those in mainland cities who demonstrated against restrictions that have confined millions to their homes. Hiding their faces to avoid official retaliation, the students chanted, “No PCR tests but freedom!” and “Oppose dictatorship, don’t be slaves!”
Many governments have learned how to calibrate their responses so that things are kept at a simmer, cracking down where needed and relenting a little bit when needed just to allow a bit of pressure to release. And then they go on as before.
Do I sound cynical? I suppose so. But until a significant portion of the police and/or military decide not to enforce the government’s will, or many more people go on a general strike, I just don’t see things changing.
Open thread 11/28/22
Amazon reminder for the holidays [BUMPED UP: scroll down for today’s new posts]
Act of shameless self-promotion coming up: please use this blog as the portal for your Amazon holiday gift purchases if you prefer – as they used to say of the yellow pages long ago, before the internet took over – to let your fingers do the walking. Click on the Amazon widget in the right sidebar on desktops/laptops or down at the bottom of the page for phones (or go here if for some reason the widget isn’t showing), and everything you buy during that visit will send a bit of money my way, and it won’t cost you one extra cent.
Thanks!!
A long time coming
Newborn twins, born in Oregon three weeks ago, were produced from what are believed to be the longest-frozen embryos ever.
The embryos, which produced twins Lydia and Timothy Ridgeway on Halloween, were frozen 30 years ago on April 22, 1992.
The embryos were donated but had been unused all those years. The couple who decided to have them implanted have four biological children but “‘specifically requested the embryos that have been waiting for the longest. They actually felt called to specifically say we want the embryos that everyone else has taken a pass on,’ Dr. John David Gordon, medical director at NEDC, told WATE.”
The attempt to revive a sexual assault case against Trump
Commenter “TR” has a question:
Does anyone think that the rape lawsuit against, by Ms. E. Jean Carroll, will succeed?…
…[S]he’s starting a lawsuit against Donald Trump, accusing him of- convincing her to go into a store, a store that just had him in it, and she also accuses him of raping her in that store.
I’m really puzzled as to why this case can go to court since:
1] she seems to be a VERY pro-feminist writer, who has a serious dislike of most men, 2] she doesn’t sound like someone who would be around men she doesn’t know at all, like Trump, because of the violence done to her in the past, and 3] She doesn’t sound like someone who would say to herself: I think it is OK to go into a store or building…,with nobody and no clerks in it…, and go into a dressing room with a man I don’t know…, AND this man is called by many reporters: a rich, powerful, greedy, bullying, white man. Would she really go into a building with someone, or into a room with someone, in these situations? Would she really trust a person + go with him, with all of these red flags on this event?Do you think that the courts will find him guilty…?
This is only one of many many attempts to destroy Trump through lawfare, and if it fails it will not be the last. Without knowing more details of the case it’s impossible to answer, but even with details it would be impossible to answer. The outcome rests on judge and/or jury (if it’s a jury case), as well as on elements of the law in the state of New York with which I’m almost certainly unfamiliar.
However, I can’t even imagine finding a jury in New York (or perhaps even elsewhere) that is objective.
I have written briefly here about Ms. Carroll’s claims back in June of 2019, around the time they were first aired. The incident is alleged to have occurred in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996, so that’s one problem right there: lack of specificity can cast doubt on credibility. Of course, there is also the age of the charges and the fact that they were brought up almost 25 years later, and when the accused was president of the US.
Carroll is a long-time advice columnist for Elle magazine who first made the accusations in a memoir featured in New York magazine. That only solidifies the suspicion that this was done for political reasons and for personal publicity to help sell her book. I don’t know enough about the law in New York to know whether that sort of evidence would be allowed, however. She is also suing Trump for defamation because after the accusations were made public he said she was a liar and also not his type. This type of defamation charge for saying that accusers are liars has become a not-uncommon tactic of women making such accusations against public figures these days.
There are people, and probably even judges, who believe Trump is evil incarnate or at least politically dangerous and who would convict him of raping aliens on the moon if it would serve the cause of stopping him from ever holding a position of power again, and/or of bankrupting him and his family. So even though these charges would probably not even be brought if they weren’t against a public figure like Trump, it is certainly possible he would be found guilty. They are not criminal charges, however – which in a way is an advantage to his accuser because the standard of proof is much lower than in a criminal case.
How is Carroll able to bring charges for such an act that is alleged to have occurred so long ago? Simple. The law in New York was amended recently and she filed as soon as the new law became operative:
The New York Adult Survivors Act gives women a one-year window starting Thursday to file a complaint against an alleged attacker and other responsible parties for incidents of sexual assault perpetrated at any point in their adult lives, starting at 18, within the state of New York.
One notable lawsuit already filed under the new law is against former President Donald Trump.
If you’ve followed my writing on the subject of sexual assault allegations, you’ll see that I believe the standard of proof should be high in order to protect from the very real problem of false allegations. It is just too easy to make them, and in the case of public figures much too rewarding. In the past, some sort of shame might have attached to victims’ coming forward that might have discouraged such false allegations at least somewhat, but that’s long gone. Was this law designed to allow this particular lawsuit against Trump? Let’s just say that Carroll had already made the accusations and had been barred by the statute of limitations from bringing suit prior to the law’s passage, and so it’s certainly possible that getting Trump was one of the goals of the law, although probably unstated.
NOTE: See this. It will give you a glimpse into the mind and motives of Carroll, a rather chilling sight.