"Gotta say I did not have 'Land War With Canada' on my 2022 bingo card."

David Burge, the ever-sardonic Iowahawk, responding to a babblingly-stupid Matt Iglesias tweet.

In related news, our governor, in the midst of a deservedly-difficult re-election fight, has offered heavy equipment and security assistance to remove the Canadian truck protesters.

Oh, really?

She has always been a good neoliberal, making sure the corporate bottom line is never threatened too much. And she does love issuing edicts. But there might be a few problems with committing Michigan personnel to a classic Foreign Freedom Adventure Expedition! on her own. 

 

 

NBC's ratings for the Winter Olympics have plummeted.

To paraphrase the late, great Yogi Berra: If no one watches the Beijing Games, who's gonna stop 'em?

Down nearly 44 percent from the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Good job--but it's not over yet. 

Keep doing anything wholesomely-non-collaborationist with your time. 

Why I am not watching a second of the Ber--, er...Beijing Winter Games.

If, for some reason, the genocide of the Uyghurs is not enough reason to say no, there's this grotesque spectacle of the Chinese Reich ending the broadcast of Dutch journalists.

The only way American-based transnationals like Comcast (owner of NBC) will learn is if you kick them in the pocketbook. 

I mean, say what you will about the Berlin Games in '36, but at least Kristallnacht hadn't happened by then. The Nazis even temporarily took down the "Jews Not Welcome" signs. 

 

May the Women's Tennis Association ever prosper.

On November 2, 2021, Peng Shaui, a female pro tennis player from China, announced that she had been raped by a former vice premier and high ranking Communist Party member back in 2018.

Shortly thereafter, the post was deleted, then she herself vanished. A statement purportedly from her was published by the state media two days ago, stating that she hadn't been raped, was fine, really, just taking some time off, thanks, don't worry.

The usual unconvincing platter of lies. 

Yesterday, the Women's Tennis Association responded to Peng's imprisonment.

I am so used to seeing cringing, bowing and scraping before the People's Republic of China that the slightest pushback against the monsters of Beijing deserves a celebratory signal-boost.

But note that the WTA's actions are not "the slightest pushback." 

This is putting money where one's mouth is, something American corporations and institutions never do when it comes to flow of sweet, sweet blood-stained yuan.

None of us should be under any illusions that China will change its behavior due to being publicly shamed in the west. If they cared about that, they wouldn’t have issued a transparently fraudulent “everything’s fine” statement in Peng's name. But having the WTA and its stars call attention to Peng’s disappearance will help further delegitimize the regime in the eyes of westerners who don’t normally pay attention to foreign policy. And it might shame other western institutions that are inclined to keep quiet when China commits crimes in plain sight to acknowledge what’s happening before their eyes. There’s news today that the UN is now demanding proof of Peng’s well-being from Beijing. Would that have happened if the WTA had shrugged off her disappearance as a matter of internal Chinese politics?

Women’s tennis isn’t a mega-bucks business in China the way, say, the NBA is but they’ll be leaving real money on the table if they pull out. Steve Simon, the WTA’s chairman, swung a deal in 2018 that would have seen China hold the WTA Finals every year for the next decade. Nine tournaments were played there in 2019 alone, with room to grow. And Simon is known for his business savvy, per the WSJ. If there’s anyone you might expect to carefully weigh the financial health of his industry against the safety of a single Chinese player, it’s him.

But you’d be doing him a disservice, if so. The second half of the CNN interview embedded at the end of this post is almost shocking in the moral clarity Simon displays by threatening to quit China. “There’s too many times in our world today … that we let business, politics, money dictate what’s right and what’s wrong,” he says at one point. “We have to start as a world making decisions that are based upon right and wrong, period.” And then the real stunner: “This is bigger than the business.”

Bravo to the Association and the athletes for standing up and saying no. Willing to leave money on the table in the process.

As compared to Marriott, which went the usual collaborator route. The American hotel chain behemoth actually used the phrase "political neutrality" in canceling a Uighur conference at one of their hotels.

Congratulations--that earns the profits-not-people chain the Elie Weisel retort:

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

Appeasers gonna appease.

First, the good: Boston Celtics center Enes Canter takes a stand on Tibet. 

It should also be noted that the Turkish native cannot return to his homeland because of his fierce and well-supported criticisms of the tyrant there.

So, yes--he's the real deal.

Xitler's Reich responded as expected, yanking Celtics games from broadcast.

Which brings me to the bad: the best case scenario is a tepid defense of Canter. But more likely, you'll see anger from those who always take yuan--no matter how much blood you have to wring out of the bills.

Speaking of such: the bowing and scraping sell-out collared practitioners of neo-Ostpolitik (a failure, no matter what the red-friendly apologists try to say) are floating trial balloons about abandoning Taiwan.

Because of course they are. 

Makes me wonder how many yuan are cycling through Vatican City at the moment.

No doubt some sold themselves too cheaply, not understanding the market.

And let me end on a final grim note:

If you don't have a "Guns of August" square on your 2020s Apocalyptic Bingo Card, get one that has it. It's just about a certainty to happen.

 

Commissar Dorsey's newest purge is underway.

For those of you who care about Twitter, an interesting report from one of the newly-unpersoned.

The straining out of small fish has begun.

As a consumer of Mystery Grove's (another of the purged) catalog, permit me to recommend their small-but-worthwhile collection here--while it can still be found.

 

What do Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, Microsoft, Apple, BMW and Samsung have in common?

 Use of Uighur slave labor in their factories.

But they put up the correct hashtags in February and June, so that makes it all better.

Uighurs’ placement in factories outside Xinjiang has been conducted under a central government policy known as “Xinjiang Aid.” Factory bosses receive cash compensations for each Uighur worker they employ. Some companies have even advertised their ability to supply Uighur workers through online bookings. One such ad, claiming to be able to supply 1,000 Uighur workers aged 16 to 18 years, read: “The advantages of Xinjiang workers are: semi-military style management, can withstand hardship, no loss of personnel … Minimum order 100 workers!” 

Although state media are claiming Uighurs are being compensated for their work, the ASPI researchers found they live in segregated dormitories, are unable to go home, and they undergo Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours, similarly to Uighurs in the internment camps.

In one case, a batch of “graduates” from a so-called vocational training center in south Xinjiang were transferred directly to a factory in the eastern Anhui province, according to a government report. The factory, Haoyuanpeng Clothing Manufacturing Co. Ltd, lists Fila, Adidas, Puma and Nike among its clients. Xinjiang workers have also been placed in factories that are part of Apple’s supply chains, including a plant in Guangzhou visited by Apple CEO Tim Cook in December 2017.

Corporate America: China's Ghetto Police.

I loathe all of these people and their overcompensated gutless pitchmen--most especially the Chamber of Commerce, which is happy to pretend How Much It Cares.

Burn, baby, burn:

[T]he legislation, called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, has become the target of multinational companies including Apple whose supply chains touch the far western Xinjiang region, as well as of business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Lobbyists have fought to water down some of its provisions, arguing that while they strongly condemn forced labor and current atrocities in Xinjiang, the act’s ambitious requirements could wreak havoc on supply chains that are deeply embedded in China.

Xinjiang produces vast amounts of raw materials like cotton, coal, sugar, tomatoes and polysilicon, and supplies workers for China’s apparel and footwear factories. Human rights groups and news reports have linked many multinational companies to suppliers there, including tying Coca-Cola to sugar sourced from Xinjiang, and documenting Uighur workers in a factory in Qingdao that makes Nike shoes…

[F]or many companies, fully investigating and eliminating any potential ties to forced labor there has been difficult, given the opacity of Chinese supply chains and the limited access of auditors to a region where the Chinese government tightly restricts people’s movements.

They "strongly condemn" atrocities--but actually doing something? Nah. 

Keep this in mind when you read their diversity statements, deep concern for black lives and gaudy advertisements for Pride Month. 

They don't mean a word of it, and would kick it to the curb if it hurt the bottom line.