Mar 4, 2022 | Philosophy
From Tennis Now:
Reigning Roland Garros champion Djokovic will be permitted to defend his crown in May after the French government announced it will end mandatory masking indoors and COVID-19 vaccination pass requirements on March 14th.
That ruling means the unvaccinated Djokovic, who was booted from Australia and unable to defend his Melbourne crown, can play the clay-court major starting May 22nd and the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters set for April 10-17th provided governmental protocol stands.
French Prime Minister Jean Castrex announced vaccine passports will no longer be required to enter venues or arenas as of March 14th.
The COVID-negative Djokovic was deported from Australia for being an “icon” for body autonomy (“anti-vaccination sentiment”) by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison — who as I write this has tested COVID positive “but will continue his official duties while isolating.”
Mar 3, 2022 | Politics
“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“The person I nominate…will be the first Black woman nominated to the United States Supreme Court.” – U.S. President Joe Biden
The nominee, is a Democrat Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a capable candidate (any rejection of her would be due to the political bent of her judgments, and not because of her IQ).
I don’t have an opinion on Jackson, but her skin color or that she has a womb and XY chromosomes (is a woman) should have no bearing on whether one is nominated as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Such “affirmative action” hires only stigmatize those selected as not being able to earn their position based on merit.
As for the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, here is what he has to say:
Other zingers:
Mar 3, 2022 | Politics
From “62 percent of voters say Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were president: poll“:
62 percent of those polled believed Putin would not be moving against Ukraine if Trump had been president
“A majority of American voters say that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine had former President Trump still been in office, according to a new survey released on Friday.
“A new Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS)-Harris Poll survey released Friday found that 62 percent of those polled believed Putin would not be moving against Ukraine if Trump had been president. When looking strictly at the answers of Democrats and Republicans, 85 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of Democrats answered this way.
“However, 38 percent of all Americans polled believed that Putin would have invaded Ukraine even if Trump had been president.”
The majority believe Putin Saw Weakness in Biden
“A majority of Americans polled — 59 percent — also said they believed that the Russian president moved on Ukraine because Putin saw weakness in President Biden, while 41 percent said that it was not a factor in Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
U.S. “Selective” Sanctions Does Not Kick Russia Out of SWIFT
“The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Russian financial institutions, Russian elites and their family members, the Nord Stream 2 AG — the parent company of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline — and, the White House confirmed Friday, Putin himself, among other entities.
“However, the U.S. has resisted calls to kick Russia out of the SWIFT international banking system, despite appeals from Ukrainian officials and some U.S. lawmakers.
Mar 3, 2022 | World
Historian Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, speaking on Bari Weiss podcast on “Russia’s War on Ukraine: A Roundtable“:
In Russian literature, there is a great novel: Dostoevsky’s The Idiot.
Biden is the idiot.
The reason this happened is because the Biden administration slowed down deliveries of armaments to Ukraine, lifted the sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was supposed to bypass Ukraine, signaled to Russia that the U.S. would not support Ukraine militarily, and therefore made it clear to Putin that he had an opportunity to take military action with only sanctions to fear.
The administration’s strategy was to threaten the worst sanctions—as if sanctions were going to deter Putin. Then they tried something even crazier, which was to say, “You’re going to invade, and we know the date”—as if that was somehow going to stop him from invading. And the worst thing they tried was to get the Chinese to dissuade him from invading, when the Chinese had given him the green light on the condition that he didn’t go until after the Beijing Olympics.
This has been a debacle that has allowed a massive war to break out, one that could have been prevented had there not been such clear signs of weakness.
(Joe Biden apologist, Francis Fukuyama, disagrees.)
Ferguson later adds:
The problem is that we created the possibility of Ukraine’s joining NATO and joining the European Union. But our actual attitude was like that New Yorker cartoon of the guy on the phone who says, “No, I can’t do Thursday. How about never?” We never seriously meant for them to join NATO or the EU. We didn’t supply nearly enough armaments for them to deter Russia from attacking. And as a consequence, we have a massive geopolitical crisis that could have been avoided. Telling people that you saw it coming is not an act of strategic genius. It’s an act of strategic feebleness.
The consequences of this are far-reaching indeed. First of all, in the administration’s anxiety to avoid even higher inflation, they’re desperately trying to resuscitate the Iran nuclear deal and get Iranian oil back onto the world market in the process, making all kinds of concessions that I think will come back to haunt them. Meanwhile, in China, Xi Jinping is watching this fiasco and saying to himself, “Well, if the most I have to fear is the threat of sanctions, then if I decide to take control of Taiwan, I’m in good shape.” And when Putin took out his little nuclear saber and rattled it, we were immediately deterred. The Europeans were so terrified that they immediately canceled the plan to make fighter jets available to the Ukrainians, which they had offered in the early days after the invasion.
Listen to the podcast.
***
As an aside:
Mar 1, 2022 | World
Michael Shellenberger on how green ideology empowered Putin and when it comes to understanding the relationship between energy independence and political-economic security Putin is “smart” and Europe and much of the West has been “dumb”:
How has Vladimir Putin—a man ruling a country with an economy smaller than that of Texas, with an average life expectancy 10 years lower than that of France—managed to launch an unprovoked full-scale assault on Ukraine?
[…]
Missing from that explanation, though, is a story about material reality and basic economics—two things that Putin seems to understand far better than his counterparts in the free world and especially in Europe.
[…]
The reason Europe didn’t have a muscular deterrent threat to prevent Russian aggression—and in fact prevented the U.S. from getting allies to do more—is that it needs Putin’s oil and gas.
[…]
For all his fawning over Putin, Donald Trump, back in 2018, defied diplomatic protocol to call out Germany publicly for its dependence on Moscow. “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia,” Trump said. This prompted Germany’s then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, who had been widely praised in polite circles for being the last serious leader in the West, to say that her country “can make our own policies and make our own decisions.”
The result has been the worst global energy crisis since 1973, driving prices for electricity and gasoline higher around the world. It is a crisis, fundamentally, of inadequate supply. But the scarcity is entirely manufactured.
Read the rest…
Related:
On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare
Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
Feb 27, 2022 | World
From “Lawmakers fear Russian invasion could increase Chinese threat to Taiwan” (Washington Examiner):
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm that Russia’s attack on Ukraine could increase the threat of China invading Taiwan, with some calling for the United States to ramp up its efforts to deter an incursion. These concerns spiked after China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that “Taiwan is not Ukraine,” arguing it has “always been an inalienable part of China” and refusing to call Russia’s actions an invasion.
[…]
House Foreign Affairs ranking member Micheal McCaul said he believes it is “only a matter of time” before China invades Taiwan, noting that at least nine Chinese military jets have already been seen crossing into the self-governed island’s airspace. “I think we all saw this unholy alliance coming together at the Beijing Olympics, where Putin and [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] were hand-in-hand condemning NATO’s ‘aggression’ and calling for the West to stay out of the South China Sea and Taiwan,” the Texas Republican said in an interview.
“So these two events are interconnected and intertwined, and I think Putin has always wanted to do this, it was all about the right time. And I think Xi has always wanted to take Taiwan — it’s about basically going back to the glory of their empires.”
[…]
McCaul said that after speaking with military officials, he believes the U.S. needs to help provide Taiwan with the resources necessary for the island to prepare for an attack.
“Deterrence is always a key. I didn’t really see any deterrence with respect to Ukraine. In fact, waving the Nord Stream 2 sanctions [last May] was, in my judgment, a really bad mistake and emboldened Putin,” he said in an interview.
Recommended:
Feb 19, 2022 | Politics
Writes Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post on why “Enes Freedom was cut for exposing how U.S. corporations became foreign agents of Communist China“:
When the United States supported China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in the 1990s, through its admission in 2001, the hope was that U.S. businesses would influence China to be less repressive. Instead, U.S. businesses became lobbyists for the totalitarian regime here at home. It’s not the Chinese government that is trying to silence Freedom; it’s the NBA — worried about its bottom line and its corporate sponsors — who pressured Freedom to stop criticizing China, and then clearly drove him from the court when he refused. The Chinese Communist Party sat back and watched while its paid vassals did its dirty work.
Their malign influence extends beyond the basketball court. U.S. corporations now effectively act as foreign agents of the Chinese regime, lobbying Congress on its behalf. Freedom pointed out that U.S. corporations such as Apple, Coca-Cola and Nike lobbied against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which bans imported goods made with slave labor. “Instead of Communist Party, they are the ones that are doing their propaganda,” he said.
Then there is the hypocrisy. Companies such as Coca-Cola spoke out against Georgia’s voting law but now sponsor the Olympics in a country engaged in genocide. They “preach social justice at home but ignore it when it could affect their revenue” from China, Freedom says.
[…]
When he became a U.S. citizen in November, he changed his last name from Kanter to Freedom. Now, for exercising his newfound freedoms, he might lose his basketball career. “I’m 29,” he told me. “I’m healthy. I can play another six years. So, hope that’s not the case.” But he adds, “If that is the reason that I am not going to be able to play basketball again, then you know what? Oh well. I can look back at least and say I did the right thing.”
Many other athletes share Enes Kanter Freedom’s convictions, but not his courage — which is why Beijing made an example of him. The Chinese regime might have the power to silence its critics at home. But for the NBA to help a totalitarian dictatorship reach into this country and punish one of its leading critics is a disgrace.
Feb 17, 2022 | Politics
An inspiring speech by lawyer and former teacher Tricia Lindsay on the nature and purpose of the U.S. constitution. A powerful condemnation of the welfare state and government-controlled education and COVID fascism in America.
Feb 15, 2022 | Business
Why Levi’s brand President and the woman lined up to be the next CEO of Levi’s, turned down a $1 million severance in exchange for her freedom to speak about the irrational “woke” culture that permeates the Levi’s corporation.
Writes Jennifer Sey writes in Yesterday I Was Levi’s Brand President. I Quit So I Could Be Free:
…Early on in the pandemic, I publicly questioned whether schools had to be shut down. This didn’t seem at all controversial to me. I felt—and still do—that the draconian policies would cause the most harm to those least at risk, and the burden would fall heaviest on disadvantaged kids in public schools, who need the safety and routine of school the most.
I wrote op-eds, appeared on local news shows, attended meetings with the mayor’s office, organized rallies and pleaded on social media to get the schools open. I was condemned for speaking out. This time, I was called a racist—a strange accusation given that I have two black sons—a eugenicist, and a QAnon conspiracy theorist.
… the Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the company asked that I do an “apology tour.” I was told that the main complaint against me was that “I was not a friend of the Black community at Levi’s.” I was told to say that “I am an imperfect ally.” (I refused.)
The fact that I had been asked, back in 2017, to be the executive sponsor of the Black Employee Resource Group by two black employees did not matter. The fact that I’ve fought for kids for years didn’t matter. That I was just citing facts didn’t matter. The head of HR told me personally that even though I was right about the schools, that it was classist and racist that public schools stayed shut while private schools were open, and that I was probably right about everything else, I still shouldn’t say so. I kept thinking: Why shouldn’t I?
In the fall of 2021, during a dinner with the CEO, I was told that I was on track to become the next CEO of Levi’s—the stock price had doubled under my leadership, and revenue had returned to pre-pandemic levels. The only thing standing in my way, he said, was me. All I had to do was stop talking about the school thing.
Read the rest.
Feb 14, 2022 | Quoteable
Our February 13th, 2002, newsletter Voice of Capitalism inaccurately credited Ayn Rand with the following quote:
“I believe that totalitarianism in the form of some kind of national socialism is on its way. That the Democrats are pushing for it and the Republicans are impotent – they’re not strong enough – they don’t fight it the right way.”
The actual source of the quote is the heir of her estate, Leonard Peikoff, author of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Feb 14, 2022 | Politics
Leonard Peikoff, the heir to the estate of Ayn Rand and foremost living expert on her philosophy, explains why he supports the Canadian Truckers’ Freedom Convoy and similar protest movements–many inspired by them–throughout the world.
You can follow Amy Peikoff on Parler.
Feb 12, 2022 | World
Bill Maher says that Justin Trudeau’s rhetoric against those who oppose his viewpoints makes him sound like Hitler (though we think Trudeau looks more like Fidel Castro).
For those who wish to learn how Germany turned into Nazi Germany (and how to avoid it) see Leonard Peikoff’s The Cause of Hitler’s Germany, and The Ominous Parallels.
Feb 9, 2022 | World
“The NBA, Hollywood and many big companies make ads saying “speak up on injustice.” Yet they’re happy to ignore atrocities committed by China, because they want the money.” – John Stossel
Feb 9, 2022 | World
Comments Gren Reynolds in the NY Post:
So we’re finally seeing a genuine, bottom-up, working-class revolution. In Canada, and increasingly in the United States, truckers and others are refusing to follow government orders, telling the powerful that, in a popular lefty formulation, if there’s no justice, there’s no peace.
Naturally, the left hates it.
For more than a century, lefties have talked about such a revolt. But if you really paid attention, the actual role of the working class in their working-class revolution was not to call the shots — it was to do what it was told by the “intellectual vanguard” of the left.
A working-class revolution led by the working class is the left’s worst nightmare because the working class doesn’t want what the left wants. The working class wants jobs, a stable economy, safe streets, low inflation, schools that teach things and a conservative, non-adventurous foreign policy that won’t get a lot of working-class people killed. It’s not excited about gender fluidity, critical race theory, “modern monetary theory,” foreign adventures and defunding police. [“Truckers are starting a working-class revolution — and the left hates it“]
