The theme is freedom

The big stories of the past few days share a theme in common:

• Protests of China’s insane Covid regime have broken out around China. I followed them on Twitter over the weekend (as in the tweet below, for example).

• However, traditional news outlets with reporters in China have their uses in this context. The Reuters story is datelined Shanghai/Beijing: “China tightens security after rare protests against COVID curbs.” With a story under three bylines and the assistance of three contributors, datelined Beijing, the Wall Street Journal reports “Chinese Protests Spread Over Government’s Covid Restrictions.” The AP story is datelined Beijing and seems lost in a cloud of government edicts: “China affirms zero-COVID stance, eases rules after protests.” The New York Post editors add “Fury over China’s insane, endless COVID lockdowns exposes the idiocy of President Xi.”

• Those are some evil sumbitches running the show in China. They seek to perfect a form of totalitarian rule that can be extrapolated straight out of 1984. See Kai Strittmatter’s chilling pre-Covid book We Have Been Harmonized
Life in China’s Surveillance State
.

• Protests continue in Iran as well. Twitter has also been helpful to those seeking to follow them.

• Jason Brodsky’s Twitter is useful on the Iran protests. I found the tweet below on his feed. The regime blames protests on the United States. (What, not “the Zionist regime”?) Compare the bravery of these artists with those of our own hacks and fakers.

• Covid comes from Wuhan, China, and has proved instrumental in spreading the techniques of social control around the world, even as “the science” cited in their support has crumbled. See, for example, Joel Zinberg’s timely City Journal column “End the Vaccine Mandates.” As the subhead aptly puts it, “The time has come for the Biden administration to follow the science.” I’m not into predictions, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen.

• Elon Musk’s new Twitter remains a huge story. It remains a huge story precisely because of its resistance of censorship as a defining principle. Miranda Devine gets to the heart of the matter in the New York Post column “The left throws a tantrum as Elon Musk reverses censorship on Twitter.” [UPDATE: See also David Strom’s Hot Air post “The Musky smell of hysterical people.”]

• Freedom is the theme.

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