It’s been a tough couple of years for Americans, what with COVID-19, rising crime, record inflation, and a marble-mouthed grifter with dementia wandering about the White House. There certainly hasn’t been much to be happy about.
Even things that used to give us joy, like watching the Olympics and rooting hard for the U.S. of A., no longer do.
Olympics sponsor Coca-Cola has remained silent on the topic of human rights abuses by the Chinese government even as it boosts left-wing political causes in the United States while pursuing business in China.
Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta and a member of the Olympic Partner program, has refused to specifically condemn the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority group and others, but it has supported the Black Lives Matter movement while attacking Republican-led Georgia’s election laws and anti-abortion proposals. The company has teamed up with the International Olympic Committee and a massive Chinese company to promote the Beijing Winter Games.
Studio slavishness to the CCP was for nothing
Filmmakers often end up as propagandists. Hollywood’s biggest directors went to the front lines, cinematically speaking, during the Second World War. Luminaries like Frank Capra, John Ford and John Huston made Why We Fight films to rally a war-weary nation. The series was so effective that Franklin Roosevelt thought they were “dangerous”. Movies were another way of making war.
NBC’s Tuesday night telecast of the Beijing Winter Olympics drew catastrophic ratings with a -59 percent plunge compared to the 2018 PyeongChang Games, reports Sports Media Watch.
(AP) — NBC’s Mike Tirico began Friday’s Winter Olympics opening ceremony by saying, “just over six months ago in Tokyo, we said we were about to embark on an Olympics unlike any other. Now we’re about to top that.”
In the case of ratings, though, topping that has meant producing record lows.
Companies tell us they support justice.
“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything,” says former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in a Nike ad.
“Speak for the people who may not be able to be heard,” says the NBA.
“Corporate PR hogwash,” says journalist Melissa Chen
The CCP is building ‘civilisation centers’ to create a ‘collective soul’
New structures have been seen sprouting up in towns and cities across China. But these aren’t the usual overproduced apartment blocks. They are “New Era Civilization Practice Centers,” hubs from which a vast army of volunteers will host movie nights and vocational education classes, sort trash, visit the elderly, and generally inculcate more “civilized behavior” in Chinese citizens. Their stated mission: to “solve problems for the masses, so that every family can feel the warmth of the Party and the government.”
As detailed in a new report by the website ChinaFile, thousands of these centres have appeared and started providing social services since they first began being trialled in 2018.
The American-born Chinese figure skater who gave up her US citizenship and changed her name to compete for the Communist country at the Winter Olympic in Beijing fell twice during the women’s short program team event – to the scorn of many her adopted country.
Beverly Zu, 19, who changed her name to Zhu Yi, finished with the lowest score of the event at Beijing’s Capital Indoor Stadium after she failed to land a jump and fell on the opening combination, and botched another jump later in her short program.
“Thursday’s primetime coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics averaged 7.25 million viewers on NBC, marking the smallest primetime Olympic audience ever on the network,” reports Sports Media Watch. “The previous low was 8.5 million for the final night of competition at last year’s Tokyo Summer Olympics.”
By not doing more to stop China’s genocide of the Uyghurs, Canada is ignoring its obligations as laid out in a United Nations convention, a newly filed Federal Court application alleges.
The Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project filed the application in Montreal this week; spokesperson Mehmet Tohti says it aims to have a judge declare that a genocide is happening in China and also issue “any order or remedy” in response.
“They have an obligation to act,” Tohti said of the government, “by staying silent, they are silently contributing to the Chinese government’s attempt to normalize the genocide.”
Doesn’t stand a chance. The China class is well embedded in the Liberal party.
You may not be aware, but the Opening Ceremonies to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics took place Friday morning.
As with every Opening Ceremony, the final act is the lighting of the Olympic cauldron, usually lit by an athlete with the Olympic torch. On Friday, China made a controversial decision with who would be lighting the cauldron, reportedly selecting a Chinese athlete with a Uyghur last name to do the honors. According to The New York Times, the athlete was Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross-country skier with Uyghur roots.
China’s Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin of Russia have signed a joint statement calling on the west to “abandon the ideologised approaches of the cold war”, as the two leaders showcased their warming relationship amid a tense standoff with the west before the Beijing Winter Olympics.
In the joint statement released by the Kremlin, Putin and Xi called on Nato to rule out expansion in eastern Europe, denounced the formation of security blocs in the Asia Pacific region, and criticised the Aukus trilateral security pact between the US, UK and Australia.
The two leaders met for the 38th time since 2013. The two countries also pledged to step up cooperation to thwart “colour revolutions” and external interference, and vowed to further deepen “back-to-back” strategic coordination.
A reporter for a Dutch news outlet was dragged away on video by a Chinese security officer outside the arena during a live broadcast of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on Friday.
Onze correspondent @sjoerddendaas werd om 12.00u live in het NOS Journaal door beveiligers voor de camera weggetrokken. Helaas is dit steeds vaker de dagelijkse realiteit voor journalisten in China. Hij is in orde en kon zijn verhaal gelukkig een paar minuten later afmaken pic.twitter.com/GLTZRlZV96
— NOS (@NOS) February 4, 2022
China’s militant regime wants the United States to aid its space program, and some, including those in the U.S. space community, are eager to provide assistance. Such cooperation, however, would be extremely disadvantageous for the United States, as it has always been.
On January 28, Beijing issued “China’s Space Program: A 2021 Perspective,” its fifth white paper on the subject. Listed priorities include moon landings, asteroid defense, and space debris removal.
Achill is blowing through Chinese civil society as activists, journalists and academics report receiving police warnings and censorship of their social media platforms in recent weeks as Beijing prepares to host the Winter Olympics beginning on Friday.
In mid-January, the Beijing-based human rights activist Hu Jia said in a tweet that China’s state security apparatus was summoning activists around the country to question them and warn them to stay silent.
