90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, April 5, 2021

MLB’s Chinese media partner targeted NBA exec for supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters

Major League Baseball renewed a licensing contract earlier this week with a Chinese media company that has targeted an NBA executive over his support human rights and democracy activists in Hong Kong.

The deal, which MLB signed with Tencent on Wednesday, has taken on new significance after the league’s decision Friday to pull its All Star game out of Atlanta over a Georgia state voting law opposed by Democrats.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said the move was being made because the league “fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”

Defenders of the Georgia law, which was signed last week, have denied allegations that it will restrict voting access. The New York Times reported Saturday that the law is “unlikely” to affect turnout or hurt Democrats. It may “plausibly even increase turnout,” according to the newspaper.

But MLB has ignored the anti-democratic bent of its media partner, Tencent.

In October 2019, Tencent temporarily stopped airing all NBA games after Daryl Morley, the then-general manager of the Houston Rockets, expressed support for Hong Kong protesters who opposed a law backed by Beijing that they feared would lead to a crackdown on dissidents.

Tencent resumed airing most NBA league games, but has continued boycotting Rockets’ games, and those of Morley’s new team, the Philadelphia 76ers.

The Guardian reported on Dec. 30, 2020, that Tencent refuses to air the two teams’ games.

Tencent’s crackdown on Morley and its apparent opposition to Hong Kong’s activists has not deterred Major League Baseball.

MLB and Tencent announced Wednesday that they were expanding a partnership that allows the Chinese conglomerate to air baseball games in several new Asian markets, according to The Global Times.

Tencent has broadcast MLB games since 2018, when the two sides signed an exclusive licensing deal.

The new deal extends MLB’s contract with Tencent through 2023 and will allow access to the league’s All Star game and playoffs.

Viewers in the Asian markets will no longer see the All Star game in Atlanta, where it was initially to be held.

MLB’s decision followed after President Joe Biden said in an interview that he supported the idea of the league pulling the annual game out of Georgia because of...

Why Climate Panic Is Unfounded Hysteria

The weather and climate are dynamic and ever-changing. Thus, this hysteria is a giant ploy to deprive people of freedom and liberty instead of providing them with affordable and flexible energy.

China is currently building more coal-fired power plants than the entire U.S. fleet. On Joe Biden’s first day in office, he canceled the Keystone Pipeline to assuage environmentalists who helped get him controversially elected. This means nothing for carbon outputs or emissions since the amount of coal being spewed by China plus what’s under construction is equal to or greater than twenty Keystone Pipeline projects. Add Asia, India, Poland, Germany, Japan, and coal-user behemoth—India—into the coal-for-electricity-mix, and canceling western pipelines, decarbonizing, or promising an all-electric transportation future means nothing to lower emissions.

Faux solutions such as hydrogen gas, which is attempting to defy physics, thermodynamics, and economics “would make hydrogen gas produced using heavily subsidized wind and solar the most expensive energy in human history,” says Professor Ian Plimer, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies.

What the entire climate change, global warming, renewables over fossil fuels and electrify society movement is really about is one thing—money—clean energy is now worth trillions of taxpayer dollars. Government-sponsored science and economic growth at its worst picking clean energy over fossil fuels and internal combustion engine vehicles. These are disastrous energy policies.

The existential threat narrative of global warming only solved by destroying global economies by switching to intermittent, expensive renewables over reliable fossil fuels is foolish according to Dr. Steve Koonin, a physicist who served as Undersecretary for Energy during President Barack Obama’s first term.

It’s particularly painful because climate doomsday scenarios are all historically wrong. Climate panic is simply unfounded hysteria. The weather and climate are dynamic and ever-changing. Seemingly, it’s a giant ploy to deprive people of their freedom and liberty rather than provide them with abundant, affordable, reliable, scalable, and flexible energy and electricity resources and...

A new arrest in a five-month-old hate crime against an Asian couple in Washington State makes the fifth time in a week an African-American male has been implicated in possible hate crimes.

Police say a 15-year old African-American teenager is charged with second-degree assault in Tacoma. They have not released his name.

A teen attacks and punches an Asian couple in Tacoma, apparently unprovoked

In Charlotte, North Carolina, police have charged an African-American man, Xavier Rashee Woody-Silas, for allegedly violently trashing a convenience store with his friend yelling racial insults at the Asian-American owners.

One of the store owners said of the attack, captured on surveillance video, "he just walks in the store with a metal pole. No one sees it at first until he starts hitting things with it. …His friend came towards the end, stuck his head through the door and said ‘That’s what you get. That’s what you get you Chinese motherf******.’”

Police say Xavier Rashee Woody-Silas trashed a

convenience store owned by Asian-Americans

Xavier Rashee Woody-Silas is under arrest after North Carolina anti-Asian rampage

On Saturday, New York police released the photo of an African-American man who allegedly committed a crime against an Asian woman and her children on the subway.

Authorities say the suspect used anti-Asian slurs and spit at the Asian family, then "knocked the victim's cellular phone out of her hand and proceeded to kick it out of the back door of the subway car, onto the tracks as the train was still moving."

Police allege this unidentified man committed a
hate crime against an Asian family in New York City

Earlier in the week, also in New York, police filed hate crime charges against another African-American male in a brutal attack against an Asian woman. Police say 38-year old Brandon Elliot had previously stabbed his mother to death.

Brandon Elliot was arrested in a New York hate crime

And on Friday, an African-American man, Noah Green, allegedly ran over two police officers at the U.S. Capitol, killing one of them, who was white.

Green, reported to be linked to the radical Nation of Islam Muslim group, was shot on the scene when he allegedly jumped out of his car and lunged at police with a knife. He later died. Police have not speculated as to whether he may have targeted his victims because they were police or because of race.

Noah Green was shot after allegedly attacking U.S. Capitol Police

In the Tacoma arrest of the unidentified teen, videos apparently recorded by at least two attackers shows one of them lunging at and punching the couple while the woman screams out. In another clip, the person recording the video is cussing and lunging at the Asian man, and using racial slurs.

The Asian man, 56, reportedly suffered a broken rib. He told KIRO-TV that he "filed a complaint about the Nov. 19 attack the same day, but heard nothing from police. More than four months later, a family member identified the couple in the viral video of the incident when it was...