Category: Enemies Foreign
Amid Damning Wire Transfer Revelations, Let’s Review What the Bidens Said About Chinese Money
By now you’re likely aware that Hunter Biden listed his father’s Delaware home as the ‘beneficiary address’ in the process of receiving two wire transfers, totally more than $250,000, from Beijing in 2019. Fox News Digital published the scoop on Wednesday, writing that “the first wire sent to Hunter Biden, dated July 26, 2019, was for $10,000 from an individual named Ms. Wang Xin. There is a Ms. Wang Xin listed on the website for BHR Partners. It is unclear if the wire came from that Wang Xin. The second wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated August 2, 2019, was for $250,000 from Li Xiang Sheng—also known as Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR Partners—and Ms. Tan Ling. The committee is trying to identify Ling’s role.” We’ll return to the role of Mr. Li below. There’s also this significant detail: “The beneficiary for the wires is listed as Robert Hunter Biden, with the address “1209 Barley Mill Rd.” In Wilmington, Delaware. That address is the main residence for Joe Biden.”
Would this be even more ‘no evidence‘ of Joe Biden being intertwined with his son’s various overseas business dealings? The White House, having abandoned previous talking points Biden had dishonestly advanced about his knowledge and involvement in this family enrichment scheme, recently shifted to claiming that the elder and younger Bidens were not “in business” together. I’ve argued that quite a lot of evidence suggests otherwise. Much has been made about Joe Biden’s false, categorical denials on this front (eg “I have never discussed with my son, or brother, or anyone else, anything having to do with their business, period”) which have blown up in his face. But there was also this lie, told to the American people from a 2020 presidential debate stage (Biden also used the 2020 debates to broadcast his false ‘Russian disinformation’ spin about his son’s authentic and damning laptop):
“My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, uh, what are you talking about? China…Nobody else has made money from China.”
Biden told this lie shortly after his son was wired $260k from China, with Joe's Delaware home listed as the beneficiary address. pic.twitter.com/pWNaugmItq
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) September 27, 2023
Biden flatly denied that Hunter had made money from China, saying that the ‘only’ person who had done so was Donald Trump. In fact, bank records show that Hunter and Jim (Joe’s brother) Biden had made money from China. Millions of dollars worth, some of which was allegedly ‘held for the Big Guy,’ according to Biden family emails. Hunter had even drummed up business in China after flying to that country with his father aboard Air Force Two, when Joe Biden was Vice President. The Washington Post fact-checker eventually slapped a Four Pinocchios rating on Biden’s debate assertion, albeit nearly three years after he made it.
BLUF
Yes, they’re coming for our guns. No, they can’t have them without a fight.
Academic says quiet part out loud on gun control
Anyone who engages in discussions on gun control has undoubtedly been told that no one is coming for our guns; that all anyone wants to do is to keep firearms from falling into the wrong hands. All those regulations they’re proposing? Those are just for criminals.
Now, we all know this is BS. Things like assault weapon bans, for example, result in taking people’s guns sooner or later. Just because that’s not what they’re saying no doesn’t mean that’s not where we’re eventually going to head.
Enter a discussion about President Joe Biden’s new Office of Gun Violence Prevention over at China Daily.
Yes, it’s China talking about US gun policy–a subject I think I’ve been pretty clear about my feelings on–but in there, we find someone who may have just said the part gun control fans are supposed to keep quiet.
Jeffrey Fagan, an expert on policing, crime and gun control and Professor of Law at Columbia Law School in New York, said: “Every little bit helps, including research, to slow the epidemic of gun violence. However, unless there are strong measures to reduce the supply of firearms, and also the legality of firearms, this will have little effect on the unacceptably high rates of both lethal and nonlethal firearm violence.”
(Emphasis added)
Now, let’s take a look at that bolded section for a moment. We’re going to take that in order–don’t worry, we’ll get to the “legality” thing in a moment.
Reduce the supply of firearms
There are an estimated 400 million firearms in private hands in the United States. The Second Amendment also protects our right to keep and bear arms.
Yet Fagan here has argued that we need to reduce the supply of firearms. Not the supply of black market guns or guns in criminal hands, but guns in general. That despite ample evidence that it’s those guns in particular that represent a problem with regard to violent crime.
As such, that means reducing guns for law-abiding citizens to some degree or another.
The easy thought is to assume Fagan simply means restricting the purchase of firearms in general in some manner, such as gun rationing or some similar policy.
The problem there is that with 400 million firearms already in circulation and the fact that firearms are generally durable, meaning they don’t necessarily wear out or anything if properly maintained, that number isn’t going to decrease on its own. Every gun purchase adds to the availability of firearms.
That means that, at some point, you’re going to have to remove firearms from circulation as a whole. The only way that can happen is via gun confiscation.
You can’t just make guns vanish otherwise. You can’t reduce the availability of guns without that.
Reducing the legality of firearms
Fagan makes reference to the legality of firearms, suggesting he wants to make them less legal to own in some manner. This likely includes things like assault weapon bans and other restrictions, particularly those lacking some kind of grandfather clause that would allow those who already have such weapons to keep them.
Again, that whole gun confiscation thing.
But we need to remember that the legality of firearms is preserved via the Second Amendment. You can’t just wish that away no matter how much you want to. So long as the Second Amendment stands, you’re not going to be able to really do much of anything about the legality of guns no matter how much you favor gun control.
This is one problem gun control is always going to have.
What’s more, following the Bruen decision, it’s clear that one will be hard-pressed to find gun control regulations existing at the time of the Second Amendment that would be an analog for any restriction you could pass today that would restrict the legality of guns in general.
Now, one can imagine gun control advocates dismissing Fagan’s comments as just the words of a single academic, that they’re not reflected in the gun control community as a whole. I disagree, especially since we saw Gabby Giffords, founder of one of the biggest anti-gun groups out there, argue for “no more guns.”
I’m sorry, but I can’t buy that this is just a fringe opinion.
Yes, they’re coming for our guns.
No, they can’t have them without a fight.
You think you might hate Commies enough, but you don’t. https://t.co/itSmfgToL1
— Toshiro Grendel (@ToshiroGrendel) September 25, 2023
BLUF
A “massive campaign . . . to de-develop the United States.”
“De-develop the United States.” Ponder that. Mr. Holdren lamented that the idea of de-development was subject to “considerable misunderstanding and resistance.” I for one am happy about the resistance. Indeed, I wish it were stiffer. But as for misunderstanding what “de-development” means, I have to take issue. We know exactly what it means. It is the same thing that Luddites and anti-capitalists have always meant: the impoverishment and immiseration of the mass of mankind just so long as the perquisites for the self-appointed nomenklatura persist un-disturbed.
“The climate crisis,” said Al Gore at the U.N. a couple of days ago, “is a fossil fuel crisis.”
“What climate crisis?” you might be asking, and you would be right to do so. Yes, it is impossible to turn anywhere in our enlightened, environmentally conscious world without being beset by lectures about one’s “carbon footprint” and horror tales about “global warming,” “rising seas” and imminent ecological catastrophe.
But deep down you know that it is all hooey. Mark Twain was right when he observed that it is not so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. Rather, the mischief is caused by things that we “do know that ain’t so.”
For example, we all “know” that carbon dioxide is “bad for the environment.” (In fact, it is a prerequisite for life). We “know” that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is reaching historically unprecedented and dangerous levels. (In fact, we have, these past centuries, been living through a CO2 famine). We “know” that “global warming”— or, since there has been no warming in more than two decades, that “climate change”— has caused a sudden rise in the seas. (In fact, the seas have been rising for the last 20,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age). We “know” that, when it comes to the subject of climate change, the “science is settled,” that “97 percent of scientists” agree that global warming is anthropogenic, which is Greek for “caused by greedy corporate interests and the combustion of fossil fuels.”
It’s really quite extraordinary how much we do know that ain’t so.
It’s No Accident The Southern Border Is Collapsing, It’s Intentional.
A clip of comedian Louis C.K. on the Joe Rogan show has been circulating on X (formerly Twitter) this week in which he goes on and on about how opening up the southern border would be a good thing because Americans shouldn’t have such a high standard of living compared to the rest of the world, how poor people in other countries just want what Americans have, and how it’s not fair that we have so much. “It shouldn’t be so great here,” he says. So open the border and let them pour in.
It’s possible he’s joking, that it’s just a comedy bit he’s practicing. That’s what my friend Inez Stepman thinks. Get liberals to nod along in agreement and then expose the consequences of such an insane idea. You can judge for yourself:
Louis CK: if we allow open borders, America is going to have a lot of problems… and that’s good. We should have problems. It’s not fair that life in America should be good while it being bad in third world countries
pic.twitter.com/yRCv1JgsQs— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) September 19, 2023
I don’t think it comes off as a joke but as an almost perfect distillation of globalist liberalism. Louis C.K. cannot fathom why Americans should have a say about who comes into their country and who does not. He clearly has no real allegiance to his country or countrymen, and is actually embarrassed by their prosperity — and presumably his own as well.
There is nothing special about America, according to this view, and no reason the rest of the world should not enjoy her ill-gotten riches. Opening the border is the least we could do for the cause of justice.
Whether it’s a joke or not, the substance of what Louis C.K. articulates is the logical endpoint of leftist ideology. It’s what the mainstream left actually believes — and the Biden administration has been actively working to accomplish at the southern border.
When villains pretend to be noble. https://t.co/YU91BZ3cSy
— James@CCRKBA 🇺🇸 (@JamesAtCCRKBA) September 19, 2023
Your God-Given Rights vs. Their Power-Driven Rules
Without question, our God-given rights and American freedoms are being attacked by a three-headed leftist leviathan: the maniacal Marxist, the conniving communist, and the septic socialist. They are on a never-ending mission to seize the balance of power away from the US Constitution and regulate the individual rights and derivative freedoms of US citizens to maintain the power of a centralized state government. I call it…Institutional Capture.
When I use the term “Institutional Capture,” I’m referring to how high-ranking officials in positions of authority put their personal agenda above their professional responsibilities while abusing their power. Case in point, think about how Dr. Fauci and other leftist elitists instituted draconian COVID rules, which led to the mass incarceration of our God-given rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Or how a deranged Democrat governor from the great state of New Mexico just recently “halted” the right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms. She believes, “No constitutional right, in my view, including my oath, is intended to be absolute.” Maybe someone should remind her of her oath to office, since history has shown us how “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.” I’m asking my fellow Americans: “Will you choose your God-given Rights over Their Power-driven Rules?”
As I write this article, I think about how these power-driven rules are designed to usurp the cornerstones of our country, God, and the family. I’m thinking about the unborn boy or girl who is about to be assassinated in their mother’s womb because she has conspired with a “medically certified” hitman; I’m thinking about the parents of young boys and girls who were groomed and guided into mutilating and castrating themselves by demonic elitists; I’m thinking about the woman in N.Y. who lives in fear because she was savagely beaten with her cane by a repeat offender who will probably be back on the streets before her wounds can heal; I’m thinking about that small business owner who’s store is constantly robbed by repeat offenders who don’t respect the rule of law; I’m thinking of the mothers and fathers who lost their sons and daughters to fentanyl; I’m thinking about the families of those Americans being held as political prisoners of the U.S., without due process, because their right to protest was deemed an insurrection; I’m thinking about the former president who is trying to survive, what can only be described as a “lawfare lynching” by a rogue special prosecutor and leftist DA’s, from Democrat-led cities.
The U.S. Constitution makes it clear that the government does NOT grant us our rights. Instead, it must PROTECT our rights. It’s pretty clear that leftists want the American people to relinquish their rights, or to put it another way, as one lefticle (leftist nut) said so viciously, “Bow down or get beat down.” I’ll reiterate, “Will you choose your God-given Rights over Their Power-driven Rules?”
Fear not, my fellow Conservative Americans. As I continue to see the clear and present decline of our country, I am reassured by our righteous resiliency that we will once again rise up in a revolution of truth. We must use our “Swords of Liberty” and “Shields of Patriotism” to thrash and thwart the three-headed leftist leviathan: the maniacal Marxist, the conniving communist, and the septic socialist.
I am driven by the timeless words from our Founding Fathers, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
I am inspired by the resounding words of “The Great Communicator,” Ronald Reagan, during his A Time For Choosing Speech: “Well, I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.”
I am encouraged by the words of the undeniable Booker T. Washington, “Our republic is the outgrowth of the desire for liberty that is natural in every human breast…and the most complete guarantee of the safety of life and property.”
I am energized by the words and actions of Donald J. Trump to “Make America Great Again.”
And lastly, Joshua 1:5 emboldens me with the spirit of hope, for as it is written, “No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and of good courage.”
Whether it’s the blessings of liberty, the virtues of individualism, or the joys of capitalism, again, I ask, “Will you choose your God-given Rights over Their Power-driven Rules?”
China’s attempt to seize another island in the South China Sea failed (for now).
There has been a strategic battle taking place in the South China Sea this year between China and the Philippines. As you probably know, China has laid claim to most of the South China Sea and over the past decade has been using a strategy called the cabbage strategy to gradually claim individual islands.
The cabbage strategy involves surrounding islands with Chinese boats like the leaves of a cabbage. China starts with fishing vessels, dozens of which anchor around an island or shoal making it difficult for any other vessels to approach. Once that’s done, Chinese Coast Guard vessels move in to surround the fishing boats and formally prevent other boats from coming close. Having established control, the fishing boats go away and sends in construction equipment to militarize the island.
One of the islands China has its eyes on is called Ayungin Shoal or, to foreigners, Second Thomas Shoal. Ayungin Shoal is only a few miles east of Mischief Reef, an area that China has already claimed and heavily militarized. Both islands are well within the Philippines exclusive economic zone which stretches 200 miles to sea from the coast. Here’s a map showing Ayungin Shoal on the right and Mischief Reef on the left.
And here’s what Mischief Reef looked like in 2017 after China claimed it:
China would like to do the same to Ayungin Shoal but there’s a problem. Philippines has a permanent military presence there. It’s literally 8 soldiers occupying a rusted out hulk of a ship which the US donated after the Vietnam war. The Philippines beached it on the Ayungin Shoal in 1999, creating a makeshift military outpost. That’s a photo of the ship above. Here’s a closer view. As you can see, it’s a rust bucket.
In 1999 the Philippine Navy deliberately grounded an old US Navy ship on Second Thomas Shoal/Ayugin Reef in the Spratly Islands and kept it manned year-round as a South China Sea sentinel. It's been annoying China ever since and now China is upping … https://t.co/TypQ6YKuFd pic.twitter.com/coZa9XB2UG
— Chris Cavas (@CavasShips) August 9, 2023
But because the Philippines keeps that rust bucket constantly manned, China hasn’t been able to deploy the Cabbage strategy around the shoal. This year China has upped the ante in its efforts to seize the territory. Back in February, Chinese Coast Guard ships used
a powerful laser to temporarily blind resupply ships as they approached the shoal. The Chinese ship also maneuvered within 150 yards of the supply ship. Since then a kind of blockade has been in place. Earlier this month, Chinese Coast Guard vessels turned water cannons on resupply ships.
BREAKING:
The Chinese Coast Guard has used water cannons to attack a small vessel used by the Philippine Navy to resupply its Ayungin (Second Thomas) Shoal outpost.
The attack took place only 190 km from the Palawan island of the Philippines.pic.twitter.com/D2kQREWNPK
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 6, 2023
There was some outrage after the water cannon incident but China pressed its luck claiming a former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, had recognized their claim to the island. That brought a joint response from Japan, Australia and the US which announced last week that they would be holding naval exercises in the area.
The United States, Japan and Australia are planning a joint navy drill in the South China Sea off the western Philippines this week to underscore their commitment to the rule of law in the region after a recent show of Chinese aggression in the disputed waters, Filipino security officials said Sunday…
The U.S. plans to deploy an aircraft carrier, the USS America, while Japan would send one of its biggest warships, the helicopter carrier JS Izumo. The Royal Australian Navy would send its HMAS Canberra, which also carries helicopters, one of the two officials said, adding that the joint drill was planned a few months ago.
The Philippines would not be part of this week’s drills due to military logistical limitations but is open to becoming a participant in the future, the official said.
China apparently didn’t get the message. This Wednesday, China’s Coast Guard tried blockading the resupply boats again but this time Philippines sent along two larger Coast Guard vessels and the resupply boats got through the blockade after a standoff.
Two Philippine coast guard vessels escorting the supply boats, however, were blocked by at least four Chinese coast guard ships for about five hours in the tense standoff off Second Thomas Shoal…
The Philippine coast guard invited a small group of journalists, including two from The Associated Press, to join its ships that secured the supply boats as part of a new strategy aimed at exposing China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety.
One Chinese coast guard ship came as close as 46 meters (50 yards) as it crossed the bow of BRP Cabra to block the Philippine coast guard ship, which maneuvered fast to avoid a collision, said a coast guard officer onboard the Cabra who could not be named because of official policy.
The Cabra and another coast guard ship, the BRP Sindangan, were forced to stop, surrounded by four Chinese coast guard ships and four suspected militia vessels, as the two boats delivered supplies to the Filipino forces at Second Thomas Shoal, more than 7 kilometers (4 miles) away.
Here’s a bit of what that looked like.
This isn’t the end of this battle. China will continue this blockade and perhaps up the ante some more.
So a guy pushing the Trump Russian collusion story was actually colluding with the Russians. You literally can’t make this up.
Former F.B.I. Spy Hunter Pleads Guilty to Aiding Russian Oligarch
The plea by the former agent, Charles F. McGonigal, represented a remarkable turn for a man who once occupied one of the most sensitive and trusted positions in the American intelligence community, placing him among the highest-ranking F.B.I. officials ever to be convicted of a crime.
Appearing before Judge Jennifer H. Rearden of Federal District Court on Tuesday, an emotional Mr. McGonigal stood up and said that he had broken the law after his retirement in 2018 from the bureau, where he had been an expert in Russian counterintelligence, by aiding an effort by Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian billionaire under U.S. sanctions, to investigate a rival.
“I have understood what my actions have resulted in, and I’m deeply remorseful,” Mr. McGonigal said, his voice breaking. “My actions were never intended to hurt the United States, the F.B.I. and my family and friends.”
The conspiracy charge he pleaded guilty to was newly filed by prosecutors on Tuesday, replacing the original indictment handed up by a grand jury in January that had included more serious charges of violating U.S. sanctions and laundering money. Under the plea deal, the maximum prison term Mr. McGonigal could serve is five years, instead of the sentence of up to 20 years he might otherwise have faced.
In court, Mr. McGonigal, 55, told the judge that he had known he could not legally perform services for Mr. Deripaska, who was placed on a U.S. sanctions list in 2018. He said he had understood that his work in the second half of 2021 to collect “open source” negative information on Vladimir Potanin, an oligarch who was a business competitor of Mr. Deripaska, was likely to be used in an effort to get Mr. Potanin placed on the sanctions list as well.
He admitted knowingly arranging for payments to be routed from a Russian bank through a company in Cyprus, and then to a corporation in New Jersey, to conceal that the source of the money was Mr. Deripaska.
Judge Rearden scheduled Mr. McGonigal’s sentencing for Dec. 4.
In the initial charging document, prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said that Mr. McGonigal and an associate had received payments totaling more than $200,000 for their work investigating Mr. Potanin under a contract with an aide to Mr. Deripaska. They also hired subcontractors for the investigation, the indictment said.
But on Tuesday, Mr. McGonigal told the judge that in the end he had netted only $17,500, and he agreed to forfeit that amount.
The plea brings the prosecution of Mr. McGonigal in New York to a relatively speedy conclusion after fewer than seven months. He had been arrested by F.B.I. agents in January at John F. Kennedy Airport upon his return from an overseas business trip.
Mr. McGonigal still faces a second indictment brought by federal prosecutors in Washington on charges that accuse him of concealing his acceptance of $225,000 from a businessman and of hiding dealings in Eastern Europe while working for the bureau. Mr. McGonigal has pleaded not guilty to those charges but is in talks to resolve them; his lawyer, Seth D. DuCharme, told the judge overseeing the Washington case that he expected to provide an update on the talks after Labor Day.
Although Mr. McGonigal was privy to highly classified information, a three-year investigation found no evidence that he had passed secrets to foreign adversaries, according to people with knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing matter. The F.B.I. concluded that Mr. McGonigal’s misconduct was limited to corruption, the people said.
Mr. Deripaska, who has been called “Putin’s oligarch” because of his close relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, is among the best known of the businessmen who became rich as Russian state resources were doled out to friends of the Kremlin after the fall of the Soviet Union. Mr. Deripaska and others were also accused last year by federal prosecutors in New York of violating U.S. sanctions through real-estate deals and other actions, including trying to arrange for the oligarch’s girlfriend to give birth to their two children in the United States. Mr. Deripaska, a Russian citizen, is unlikely to be extradited to face the charges in the near future.
The prosecutors in Mr. McGonigal’s New York case have said that before the U.S. government expanded sanctions in 2018, following Russia’s interference in the 2016 American presidential election, Mr. McGonigal had reviewed a preliminary sanctions list with Mr. Deripaska’s name on it. Around the same time, they suggested, Mr. McGonigal was seeking a connection with Mr. Deripaska by arranging a New York Police Department internship for the daughter of one of the oligarch’s aides. (A senior police official has said it was actually a “V.I.P.-type tour.”)
After Mr. McGonigal retired, he and his co-defendant in the New York case, a court interpreter and former Russian diplomat named Sergey Shestakov, referred the same Deripaska aide to a law firm for help getting sanctions removed, according to the original charges in New York.
While negotiating the law firm agreement, Mr. McGonigal met with Mr. Deripaska in Vienna and London, referring to him in electronic communications as “the Vienna client,” prosecutors have said. Mr. Deripaska paid the law firm $175,000 a month; the firm passed $25,000 on to Mr. McGonigal as a consultant and investigator, the prosecutors said.
Mr. Shestakov has pleaded not guilty to violating U.S. sanctions, money laundering, conspiracy and making false statements to the F.B.I. His lawyer, Rita M. Glavin, did not respond to a request for comment.
The deal to investigate Mr. Potanin was made with an aide to Mr. Deripaska in the spring of 2021, prosecutors said.
In November of that year, Mr. McGonigal and Mr. Shestakov were trying to obtain “dark web” files, purportedly about $500 million in hidden assets held by Mr. Potanin, in exchange for a payment of up to $3 million, Rebecca Talia Dell, an assistant U.S. attorney, said in court Tuesday. Before that transaction could be completed, F.B.I. agents seized Mr. McGonigal and Mr. Shestakov’s electronic devices, bringing their work for Mr. Deripaska to an end, prosecutors have said.
Lilly and Scowcroft Were Wrong in 1989. Let’s Not Be Wrong in 2023
A Lifeline to China is a Mistake.
Brent Scowcroft was a great American, as was Lawrence Eagleburger. Both served our country well throughout their lives. Except once.
June 4th, 1989, the Communist Party of China unleashed a slaughter and then round-up of activists and students who had bravely demanded a more democratic China. Less than 6 weeks later, while bodies of students were still in Beijing morgues, Scowcroft and Eagleburger, encouraged by James Lilly, and of course with the full backing of then President George H. Bush, undertook a secret mission to Beijing to let the butchers know, “we’ve got your back”.
Alternative historical timelines are somewhat useless, however, judgments about the actions of government officials are open to scrutiny, and I am more than willing to argue that the olive branch along with the tarp, to cover the bodies of the Tiananmen students, delivered by Mr. Eagleburger and Mr. Scowcroft, was a mistake. China was on the ropes, the Soviet Union was going down fast, and what could have been the end of the Communist Party, or at least a serious shake-up, was an opportunity missed for reasons that really don’t add up, other than then President Bush, and policy hands like Ambassador James Lilly, thought stability in China was preferred over change. A move where the only recorded beneficiary was the Carlyle Group.
We are now at that crossroads again, and once again, we have the engagement crowd telling us that it’s much better for us for to let the Party of Xi escape, with our assistance, rather than face the music of the last nine years of economic mismanagement.
Whether it’s slithering Hank Greenberg, Kissinger, or even our newest US China policy maker, Australian Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd, the bail out China brigade is out in full force.
I disagree.
Unless the engagement fellows have figured out a way to increase the Chinese birth rate, solve the problems of communism, and found some path for the Communist Party to allow an investment that is not a gift, then we are wasting our time.
Xi put them in this mess, and it’s his mess to sort. The idea that we need some type of Marshall Plan to help the Communist Party save itself, so they don’t turn into bad guys and invade the rest of Asia is sadly lacking an understanding of exactly what totalitarians have done throughout history.
I’m not advocating to isolate, or to even cut off trade with China, but if they want to trade, then they can trade like adults, and not always based on the premise that the United States and the European Union are their supplicants.
It’s been the common thread from the China hands for the last 30 years that China is a place that only changes on its own, and we, the West, can only watch and encourage them to go in the better direction. Sounds right to me. Xi made the mud, let him, on his own, clean it up.
Energy Sec Granholm secretly consulted top CCP energy official before SPR releases
EXCLUSIVE: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm engaged in multiple conversations with the Chinese government’s top energy official days before the Biden administration announced it would tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to combat high gas prices in 2021.
Granholm’s previously-undisclosed talks with China National Energy Administration Chairman Zhang Jianhua — revealed in internal Energy Department calendars obtained by Americans for Public Trust (APT) and shared with Fox News Digital — reveal that the Biden administration likely discussed its plans to release oil from the SPR with China before its public announcement.
According to the calendars, Granholm spoke in one-on-one conversations with Jianhua, who is a longstanding senior member of the Chinese Communist Party, on Nov. 19, 2021, and two days later on Nov. 21, 2021. Then, on Nov. 23, 2021, the White House announced a release of 50 million barrels of oil from the SPR, the largest release of its kind in U.S. history at the time.
“Secretary Granholm’s multiple closed-door meetings with a CCP-connected energy official raise serious questions about the level of Chinese influence on the Biden administration’s energy agenda,” APT Executive Director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital.
“Instead of focusing on creating real energy independence for America, Granholm has been too busy parroting Chinese energy propaganda and insisting ‘we can all learn from what China is doing,’” Sutherland continued. “The public deserves to know the extent to which Chinese officials are attempting to infiltrate U.S. energy policy and security.”
In a statement, the DOE said the meeting was broadly part of the agency’s effort to combat climate change, but didn’t share what was discussed at the meeting.
Fresno Lab: China’s Operation to Exterminate Americans
Prestige BioTech, a Nevada company fronting for parties in China, was caught operating an “unlicensed laboratory” in Reedley, California in March. State and Fresno County officers raided the facility, and the FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have since been participating in the investigation.
The illegal operation housed white lab mice—773 live and more than 175 dead—that were genetically engineered to carry disease. Authorities also found medical waste and chemical, viral, and biological agents. There were on site at least 20 potentially infectious pathogens including those causing coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, and herpes.
The lab is “mysterious,” as the California Globe news site proclaimed. We know enough, however, to be alarmed.
The lab was supposed to be producing COVID-19 and pregnancy tests, but the facility contained items inconsistent with that explanation. The seizures at the lab strongly suggest China’s regime is preparing to spread diseases in America, undoubtedly in the months before a war.
“This kamikaze lab—unsecured, poorly contained, makeshift, containing a couple dozen pathogens near a population center—cannot be a one-off,” Brandon Weichert, author of Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, told Gatestone. “It is, I believe, a part of a large Chinese military operation to spread disease throughout the American population.”
Meet the Company Trying to Control Your Mind
There’s a group of people who control what you are allowed to see — the news you read, the videos you watch, the posts you engage with.
You haven’t heard of them. You don’t know their names, but they determine, through methods both direct and indirect, whether you are allowed to be exposed to particular messages. Their decisions can bankrupt companies, silence voices and fundamentally shift cultural norms. Who are these people and how do they do this?
Well, at the top level you have a network of global elites who have created a universal framework full of guidelines and ratings designed to enforce “approved” narratives and punish disapproved ones. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, except it isn’t a secret and we’re not guessing.
First, you have the World Economic Forum, the WEF, and their platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. Second, you have the World Federation of Advertisers, the WFA, who represent mega-corporations that control 90% of global advertising dollars. WFA members are a who’s who of global business and include some of our recent wokeified favorites like Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev, Hershey, Procter & Gamble, Lego and Disney.
There is barely a billionaire Fortune 500 CEO, heavyweight philanthropist, government or woke nonprofit that isn’t associated with the WEF or the WFA.
In 2019, the WFA established the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, or GARM. Within months, the WEF adopted GARM as part of its platform for shaping the future of media, entertainment and culture. GARM is a cross-industry alliance that brings these mega-corporations — the advertisers — together with Big Tech companies like Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram; Google-owned YouTube; the CCP’s TikTok; and even Snapchat and Pinterest.
This unholy alliance created something they call the Brand Safety Floor & Suitability Framework. Think of Brand Safety as a dog whistle for censorship. They say it themselves: The Brand Safety Floor means, “Content not appropriate for any advertising support.” In other words, if you publish content that violates these guidelines, you will be blacklisted from 90% of the advertising revenue in the marketplace.
So, what have these global elites decided to put in their censorship framework? They started with things we can all universally agree on, like preventing the distribution of child pornography or the advocacy of graphic terrorist activity. But they don’t draw the line at what is objectively criminal, abusive or dangerous. They continue expanding the guidelines to include far more subjective parameters.
Our society’s ‘top brains’ have gone mad — and dysfunctional politics is the result
“Suppose we got it all wrong and the real crazies are the TV people in nice suits and $300 haircuts?”
That’s an observation by Richard Fernandez on Twitter, and he has a good point.
There’s a lot of craziness in the air these days.
But for the most part it seems to be flowing from the top down, not bubbling up from the bottom.
It wasn’t farmers and factory workers who came up with the idiotic COVID responses — nor was it they who originated the more or less criminal idea of conducting “gain of function” research on making dangerous viruses more dangerous.
It wasn’t shopkeepers and bus drivers who thought the way to deal with burgeoning urban crime was to get rid of police and release criminals without bail.
It hasn’t been landscapers and auto mechanics championing the notion that a child in the single-digit age range can make a lifetime choice about his or her genitalia or maintaining that even criticizing that idea is itself a species of “violence.”
Ordinary Americans haven’t been claiming the way to promote free speech is to censor people or the way to end racism is to classify everyone by race and consequently treat them differently.
It’s not the working class that wants to “save the planet” by blocking traffic, starting forest fires or banning pickup trucks or gas stoves (though private jets remain surprisingly free from criticism).
All these crazy ideas and more are the product of our allegedly educated and intelligent overclass, the experts, policymakers and media types who in theory represent the thinking part, the brains, of our society. But there’s something wrong with these people — the “brains” of our society are basically crazy. Crazy is when you believe and do things that obviously don’t make sense or fit with the facts.
It’s important to have an intellectual class.
Exactly how important is open to question — in his recent book “How Innovation Works,” Matt Ridley argues that most 19th- and 20th-century innovations actually came from tradespeople and industry, not academics doing abstract research — but important enough.
The COVID lockdown scolds killed people — but they still have no shame
There are dangers to an intelligentsia, though.
Communism and Nazism started as intellectual movements; so did such fads as eugenics and lobotomies.
The Tuskegee Experiment wasn’t the product of racist Klansmen but of the curiosity of credentialed public-health experts.
In a 1999 essay, Neal Stephenson wrote that “during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.”
It’s gotten worse.
Ideas can be dangerous; playing with them can be like gain-of-function research with viruses — if they escape into the general environment, disaster can ensue.
Guardrails like custom, religion and moral traditions made such disasters less likely, but we have spent basically my entire lifetime weakening those guardrails.
At the same time, our ruling class has become less diverse and more prone to groupthink.
A century ago, the people running our government, our economy, our academy and our media were varied.
Now they’re all members of the same class, educated usually at the same elite institutions, incestuously intermarried and driven by class solidarity.
As J.D. Tuccille recently wrote regarding the press’ supine attitude toward government censorship, today’s journalists “love Big Brother”: “Prominent reporters and powerful officials know each other, share attitudes, and trust each other.”
Agriculturalists know that in a monoculture, diseases spread rapidly because the entire crop is identical.
In a social and intellectual monoculture, groupthink ensures that bad ideas spread the same way.
This is especially so because our ruling class has substituted reputation for achievement.
One can be a successful CEO if the company does badly, so long as it pursues the right political goals.
Journalists, bureaucrats and political operatives routinely fail upward because they play to their peers.
The result is that any crazy idea can flourish if it’s stylish. And it’s gotten more dangerous, probably because social media allow so much self-herding behavior by elites.
Dissent is instantly ostracized before it even has a chance to be considered.
A decade ago, the crazy ideas I listed earlier would have been seen as beyond the pale of civilized political discussion. Now they’re all endorsed by leading American institutions.
That’s the hallmark of dysfunctional politics, and dysfunctional politics is what we have.
Mexico’s Gun Manufacturer Argument Probed by First Circuit
The First Circuit appeared open to Mexico’s argument Monday that gunmakers knowingly manufacture and sell weapons that can be easily modified south of the border by criminal cartels for automatic fire, but were skeptical manufacturers could be held liable.
Mexico alleges that firearm giants, including Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. and Glock Inc., unlawfully design their weapons to attract cartels, exacerbating gun violence in the country. Its novel lawsuit argues that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which protects gunmakers from an array of lawsuits, shouldn’t apply for claims rooted in foreign law.
If the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit sides with Mexico, it could open the door to more litigation from other countries against American gunmakers.
However, judges were skeptical that gunmakers should be held liable for weapons that were later modified abroad. Rather than focusing on Mexico’s broader argument about the legal shield, the judges bored in on the question of whether an exception for knowing violations of state or federal laws is applicable here.
That exception would give Mexico an avenue to pursue its claims even if the court finds federal immunity law applies.
“If you violate federal gun laws you do not get protected” by the liability shield, said Jonathan Lowy, president of Global Action on Gun Violence, who represents Mexico.
Judge William Kayatta asked Lowy, “what then is the cause of action that would involve the manufacturer knowingly violating” the law. Lowy responded that the cause of action is the manufacturers allegedly aiding and abetting unlicensed weapons, as well as allegedly designing semi-automatic weapons that can be easily modified to shoot automatically.
“If it was not originally designed as a machine gun, it’s not a machine gun,” said Noel Francisco, a partner at Jones Day representing the manufacturers. Francisco served as US Solicitor General in the Trump administration.
Embracing Mexico’s view of convertible semi-automatic weapons would make the federal government “derelict in its duty” to regulate machine guns in the US, Francisco said.
The manufacturers argue that Mexico hasn’t adequately alleged any violation of federal or state law, and that the “chain of causation” from the manufactures to the injury Mexico seeks relief for is too long to show proximate cause, since the guns are ultimately distributed by retailers that are not named defendants in the lawsuit.
Kayatta suggested that Mexico’s complaint did allege violations of US law.
Judge Gustavo Gelpí also asked both sides whether the lawsuit implicated the Second Amendment.
“You’re talking about a lawsuit that has potentially crippling effects on the ability of an individual firearms owner to obtain firearms,” Francisco answered, arguing that a win for Mexico could allow other countries to govern US firearm policy.
“I don’t think any court has held that there is some Second Amendment right to negligently or illegally hold and make guns,” Lowy said.
You Will Own Nothing: Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back
When Carol Roth first heard that one of the World Economic Forum’s predictions for 2030 was “You will own nothing, and be happy,” she thought it was an outlandish fantasy. Then, she researched it. What she found was that a number of businesses, governments, and global elites share a vision of a future that sounds utopian: Everyone will have everything they need, and no one will own anything.
From declines in home and vehicle ownership to global inflation and government spending, many of the trends of modern life reveal that a new world that is emerging—one in which Western citizens, by choice or by circumstance, increasingly do not own possessions or accumulate wealth. It’s the perfect economic environment for the rich and powerful to solidify their positions and prevent anyone else from getting ahead.
In You Will Own Nothing¸ Roth reveals how the agendas of Wall Street, world governments, international organizations, socialist activists, and multinational corporations like Blackrock all work together to reduce the power of the dollar and prevent millions of Americans from taking control of their wealth. She shows why owning fewer assets makes you poorer and less free. This book is essential guide to protecting your hard-earned wealth for the coming generations.