Category: International

See If You Can Spot the Biggest Difference Between Biden’s and Trump’s China Deals.

As Matt writes nearby, on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a complete economic and trade reset with China that is aimed at bridging a lopsided $1.2 trillion trade deficit with the U.S.

Details of the new agreement are promised on Monday, but let’s take a look at the abundant differences we can see between Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s approaches with China.

While people love to tout Trump’s “art of the deal” transactional dealmaking with super powers, it was actually Joe Biden who leveraged his job as vice president and then as president to personally enrich his son’s “business” and, by extension, his own personal bottom line.

Biden encouraged his son’s ferociously greedy dealings with the Chinese energy firms and even fronted a deal for China to get raw earth minerals to help with the communist state’s electric car battery production and to help its notorious “Belt and Road Initiative.”

At one point, Hunter Biden and family were paid in diamonds in an apparent obvious attempt to avoid paying taxes.

As we now know, Hunter’s businesses always had to kick back “10% to ‘The Big Guy.'”

His investment firm was involved in a deal where a Chinese state-backed company gained control of a cobalt mine. This deal involved a $3.8 billion transaction and transferred 80% ownership of the Tenke Fungurum mine from an American company to China Molybdenum.

When Joe Biden was vice president he took his granddaughter and his family bagman, Hunter Biden, on Air Force Two to China.

While Joe Biden was discussing world relations with Ji Xingping, Hunter was off sealing deals for the Biden family. The senior Biden always claimed he had no personal knowledge of his son’s business dealings, but on that trip then-Vice President Biden met with Xi Jingping for hours and thereafter introduced him to his son.

Just ten days later, Hunter’s company was given the proper licenses enabling him to do business in China.

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Police Raid Shatters British Gun Control Myth. Again

“We need sensible gun control laws like the UK has.”

How many times have you heard something like this? Often, the country is different, but a lot of times it’s not. Far too many Americans forget we fought an entire war because of British attempts at gun control and think we should import it here.

In fairness to them–well, sort of–they actually think it would work.

The problem is, it doesn’t. Like, at all.

Police have arrested seven people after uncovering a stash of guns, knives and machetes during a raid at a petrol station.

Armed officers swooped on a row of businesses around the Gulf Petrol Station in Birmingham today amid a major operation.

Firearms officers, drones officers, dog handlers, and officers from the Organised Crime and Gangs team descended on the complex at around 2.30am, where they seized several dangerous weapons.

Two stun guns, shotgun cartridges and a large number of knives and machetes were all recovered and are now being examined by officers….

Photos taken from the scene show forensics officers handling a number of guns including what appears to be a shotgun and a revolver.

A black Vauxhall was also pictured at the site of the raid, with a large dent and several scratches along the front passenger door.

Yeah, not a lot of guns, but let’s also remember that they regulate stun guns and bladed weapons, which also don’t seem to be much of a problem for some people to get.

I don’t know the specifics of this raid, nor do I care.

For me, this is just another example of how criminals will get guns, even on an island with only one roadway leading into the country. If the UK can’t keep guns out of the country, how would we?

We have a porous southern border, which isn’t as porous as it was, but is still bad enough. Once it becomes profitable enough, some criminal enterprise would start importing guns into the United States, rather than out of here.

There’s very little in the way of legal gun sales in the UK, which clearly doesn’t stop bad people from getting guns, and people want this here? They claim, “I support the Second Amendment, but…” and then want to completely gut it by doing exactly what the British were trying to do at Lexington and Concord, all without a hint of irony at the fact that it doesn’t work in the UK.

It’s absolutely bonkers, and yet, here we are.

No, the UK’s gun control doesn’t work. It never worked. As I’ve noted before, our non-gun homicide rate is higher than their total homicide rate, which means looking at them as a guide on guns makes absolutely no sense due to significant differences in our culture.

So excuse me if I don’t bend over and accept that the empire we kicked out of our borders in the 18th century and that has since shrunk to a minuscule portion of where it was, a nation that now arrests people for mean words on the internet, is a country we can learn anything from other than how not to become a totalitarian hellhole in the making.

Part of that is not giving up our guns, because I promise you, if Europeans as a whole were armed like Americans, memes wouldn’t be the thing the powers that be over there fear.

Just something to keep in mine; Both nations have the bomb….

India launches strikes on terrorist camps in Pakistan
The military action comes amid tense relations between the nuclear-armed states following an April 22 attack that killed 26 people

India said it attacked “terrorist infrastructure” in neighboring Pakistan on Wednesday in two of its occupied territories, killing at least one child and wounding two other people, Pakistani security officials said.

The Indian armed forces launched “Operation Sindoor,” which targeted terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed, the Press Information Bureau of India said in a statement.

“Our actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature,” India’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. “No Pakistan military facilities have been targeted.”

“India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution,” the statement said.

The missiles launched Wednesday struck locations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and in the country’s eastern Punjab province. A mosque in the city of Bahawalpur was struck, killing a child, and a woman and man were injured, one Pakistani security official said.

The attack occurred in a remote valley only accessible on foot or by horse, and survivors claimed after the attack that the gunmen had accused some of the victims of supporting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

President Donald Trump said he hoped the tension between the two nations subsides.

“It’s a shame. We just heard about it just as we were walking in the doors of the Oval (Office),” he said. “I just heard about it. I guess people knew something was going to happen based on a little bit of the past. They’ve been fighting for a long time. You know, they’ve been fighting for many, many decades and centuries, actually, if you really think about it.”

“I just hope it ends very quickly,” he said.

The military action comes amid tense relations between the nuclear-armed states following an April 22 attack that killed 26 people in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, a long-disputed territory that has been the source of tension between the two nations and is one of the most militarized regions in the world.

Kashmir has been a disputed region since both India and Pakistan gained their autonomy from Britain in 1947.

India has blamed Pakistan for backing the militant attack, which Islamabad has denied.

Pakistani army spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif, told ARY News that the missiles were launched Wednesday from within Indian territory and that no Indian aircraft had entered Pakistani airspace.

“This was a cowardly attack targeting innocent civilians under the cover of darkness,” Sharif told the broadcaster.

I think that Operation Nitro Zeus never really ended.

Quip O’ The Day: ‘Cardboard factory’, suuuure

What the Hell Is Going on in Iran This Time?

Iran is on fire — literally, again — and nobody knows why. A massive power plant and a “cardboard factory” caught fire bigly in Iran over the weekend. But there is impressive new video of Iran’s port explosion from last week.

Iran International reported that a “series of incidents unfolded in Alborz Province, west of Tehran, on Saturday evening, including two fires, reports of an explosion, and a magnitude 4.0 earthquake, according to official statements and eyewitness accounts.”

Israeli action? Typical authoritarian regime attention to maintenance issues? God just doesn’t like the mullahs’ regime? Who knows.

For reasons yet unknown, the Montazer Ghaem power plant in Karaj, just west of Tehran, caught fire on Saturday. Here’s that video:


Those cooling towers make Montazer Ghaem look like it might be a nuclear power plant, but it burns natural gas and other fossil fuels.

Tehran posted undated video of the plant not on fire and claimed that there was nothing to see here, move along.

In the same province, also on Saturday, a “cardboard manufacturing factory” was seen burning brightly.

The Germans never really abandoned the authoritarian state.

Spain experienced a nationwide power outage one week after reaching 100% “green” energy.

Across all of Portugal and Spain, people were left without power or cell service of any kind. The nations literally went dark.

Tens of millions of people had to resort to old handheld radios to figure out what was even happening. It could have been an alien invasion for all they knew!

From El Pais:

The outage suddenly set Spain back to the 19th century. Traffic lights out of service, traffic jams forming across the country, pedestrians wandering around cities without public transportation, desperate families trying to communicate with their loved ones, passengers left stranded without trains or flights, canceled medical appointments, rescues underway in subway stations and elevators, lines forming outside small shops due to supermarket closures…

I wonder what could have caused this?

For no reason at all, here’s a video of Spaniards celebrating the destruction of a nuclear power plant three years ago.

A huge blast on Saturday in Iran’s southern port of Shahid Rajaee has killed at least four people. According to The Guardian, the explosion wounded more than 500, with an official suggesting the fire was caused by the explosion of chemical containers.

“If the smoke is a funny color, always run to take cover.”

Q: What steps should you take when this happens?
A: Large and rapid

BLUF
In rebuttal, Francisco effectively summarized the core of the case: The PLCAA is “not just about protecting the manufacturers, the distributors and the retailers, but it’s about protecting the right of every American to exercise their right under the Second Amendment to possess and bear firearms. That right is meaningless if there are no manufacturers, retailers and distributors that provide them in the first place.”

What Supreme Court Justices Had to Say About Mexico’s Attempt to Demolish Our Second Amendment

Mexico has extinguished its constitutional arms right and now seeks to extinguish America’s,” stated the NRA’s amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case Smith & Wesson v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos. The oral argument took place on March 4, and the Court’s decision is expected by the end of June. Based on the Justices’ questions during oral argument, there is reason for cautious optimism that the Court will enforce the federal statute that prohibits abusive lawsuits designed to destroy American firearms businesses.

The roots of the current Mexico case go back to 1998, when the gun-ban group Handgun Control, Inc., orchestrated meritless lawsuits by big-city mayors to attempt to bankrupt American firearms companies through the sheer cost of litigation. Handgun Control, Inc., later changed its name twice, and now calls itself Brady United.

In response, two-thirds of the states enacted legislation to forbid such abusive suits. Then in 2005, a bipartisan Congress passed and President George W. Bush (R) signed a federal statute called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) to stop the frivolous suits. Given the new law, most judges promptly dismissed the abusive suits.

Yet two decades later, the Mexican government is in American courts attempting to accomplish what the previous lawsuits did not, namely bankrupting the American firearms industry—and thereby making the exercise of Second Amendment rights impossible.

The allegations in the Mexico case are updated versions of the same bogus allegations from the earlier suits: American firearms businesses that obey all of the many laws about firearms commerce should be held financially liable for criminal gun misuse. Mexico wants $10 billion from American firearms businesses, plus court-ordered, drastic restrictions on the firearms industry.

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Germany Is Revoking Gun Rights from AfD Supporters—and It’s a Warning Shot for the West

In Germany, owning guns is a privilege that can be taken away—not for breaking the law, but for holding the wrong political opinion.

Members and supporters of the right-leaning Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party are now facing mass gun license revocations. The reason? The German government has labeled the AfD a “right-wing extremist” group—a political designation that suddenly makes its members “unreliable” under the country’s gun laws. And just like that, firearms must be surrendered or destroyed.

If that sounds outrageous, it should. But it’s not surprising.

Here in the U.S., we’ve already seen our own political establishment flirt with these kinds of tactics. Remember when New York’s then-Governor Andrew Cuomo said pro-gun conservatives “have no place” in his state? Or when San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors labeled the NRA a “domestic terrorist organization”? Label first. Punish later.

That’s the playbook being used in Germany right now. And it’s worth paying attention to.

Government Labels a Popular Opposition Party “Extremist”—Then Comes the Crackdown

In 2021, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), designated the entire AfD as a “suspected threat to democracy.” That move allowed the government to surveil, wiretap, and investigate the party and its members.

It didn’t stop there.

Courts have now upheld revoking gun licenses from AfD members, based solely on their political affiliation. In one case, a couple in North Rhine-Westphalia lost legal ownership of over 200 firearms. They weren’t criminals. They weren’t accused of wrongdoing. They were just AfD members.

Another court in Thuringia blocked a blanket gun ban for all AfD members—but left the door wide open for revocations on a case-by-case basis.

In Saxony-Anhalt, officials are reviewing the gun licenses of 109 AfD members. As of last fall, 72 had already been targeted for revocation, with the rest under active review. The justification? Supporting a party the state now claims is “working against the constitutional order.”

And the courts are backing it up. According to a March 2024 ruling, former or current AfD supporters “lack the reliability” required to legally own firearms.

Why the AfD’s Platform Sounds Familiar to American Ears

You don’t have to support the AfD to see the dangerous precedent here. In fact, many of their stated positions would be right at home in American politics:

  • Support for limited government and individual liberty
  • Stronger penalties for violent crime
  • Calls for unbiased law enforcement and judicial independence
  • Opposition to political censorship
  • A demand for simple, fair taxes for middle- and low-income citizens

On gun rights, their platform is clear: “A liberal and constitutional state has to trust its citizens… The AfD opposes any form of restrictions of civil rights by tightening firearms legislation.”

Sound extreme to you? Or does that sound like something a lot of Americans already believe?

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Looks like ‘Stop Drop & Roll’ didn’t cut it for the jihadi.
Orange car in the lower right center

The Globalist Authoritarians Are Playing With Fire

What happened with Marine Le Pen, the most popular politician in France who was just banned from standing for election on the flimsiest of pretenses, is no exception. It’s becoming the rule around the West and in other places, too, where being outside the mainstream of authorized establishment left-leaning globalist politics has become criminalized.

In some places, like the UK and Spain, it takes the form of persecuting people for saying things that those in power don’t want to hear. In other places, like Germany, upstart populist parties that earned a significant number of votes are informally, and sometimes formally, marginalized and threatened with being banned. But it’s the criminal persecution of leaders that is becoming the go-to.

It happened to Bolsonaro in Brazil, Netanyahu in Israel, Georgescu in Romania, and Le Pen in France. In each of these cases, the establishment authoritarians essentially attempted to frame a politician they couldn’t beat at the ballot box. Of course, their American analogs tried to do the same thing to Donald Trump here, and when that didn’t work, their allies tried to murder him. Thankfully, they failed at both – with the people who instigated these atrocities too dumb to know that they are the ones who should be the most thankful they failed.

These are not the acts of strong and confident leaders who believe in the strength and popularity of their ideology. These are the cowardly acts of authoritarians who differ from Putin not in their nature but only in their extent. They haven’t thrown anybody out of a fifth-story window yet that we know of, though we don’t know if they actively put the murderer who tried to kill Trump in Butler up to it – the one who tried to ambush him in Florida was an active member of their collective – but they would’ve cheered if either attempt had succeeded.

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Visigoths no longer outside the gates, but recruited by the Legions.
What can possibly go wrong? It’s just diversity, equity, and inclusion right?

U.S. resumes military aid as Ukraine backs plan for 30-day ceasefire

Ukraine “expressed readiness to accept” a U.S. proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire with Russia, the two countries said in a joint statement after a key meeting between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Saudi Arabia.

Why it matters: A ceasefire, if implemented, would be a major diplomatic breakthrough in the three-year war between Russia and Ukraine. But the Kremlin has yet to weigh in on the U.S. proposal.

  • “The ball is now in their court. We hope the Russians will reciprocate,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a press conference after the meeting.

The latest: A source close to the Ukrainian government told Axios U.S. military assistance resumed on Tuesday. Intelligence sharing with the U.S. was fully restored.

Driving the news: During the meeting — which lasted more than five hours — the U.S. agreed to lift its suspension on intelligence sharing with Ukraine and resume weapons shipments to the country, which were paused eight days ago.

  • After weeks of pressuring the Ukrainians, the U.S. side signaled the pressure is now on Russia. “If the Russians say no, we will know what the impediment is here,” Rubio said.
  • President Trump told reporters at the White House that he hopes Russia will agree to the ceasefire, and said he would invite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky back to the White House.
  • National security adviser Mike Waltz said Ukraine not only accepted the U.S. proposal but also presented its principles for a comprehensive peace deal including the security guarantees that it requires.

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Mollie Hemingway

 

Yesterday, [February 28]Susan Rice said of the Trump-Zelensky meeting, “There is no question this was a set up.” She revealed full knowledge of the mineral agreement, complained that it didn’t include “concrete” security agrees (meaning, apparently, commitment of US troops on the ground if conditions merit), and then mischaracterized Trump’s behavior, counting on most Americans to not have watched what transpired over the entire hour in the Oval Office.

You can look at this and dismiss it as typical Democrat talking points, but you could also view it as almost a confession, one that includes details about the current “Get Trump” effort. Yes, Trump won the popular vote against unbelievable odds, but if you think Team Obama is being any less involved in quiet insurrections than they were during the first Trump administration (Russia collusion, Ukraine impeachment, etc.), you’re clueless.

I’ll remind you that Susan Rice was in the small Jan. 5, 2017 meeting in the WH with other key Russia collusion hoax perpetrators. Zelensky repeatedly declined opportunities to sign the deal in Kyiv and Munich, and requested the meeting at the White House. It later came out that Rice and Tony Blinken, Victoria Nuland, and Alexander Vindman may have been personally advising Zelensky to do this meeting in the way he did — that they recommended him to be hostile and to try to goad Trump into blowing up. Even though he didn’t, and even though Zelensky’s actions horrified many normal Americans, the Obama team went on the airwaves to falsely characterize what happened.

I think their goal was to have a wonderful performance by Zelensky, an angry Trump appearing to scuttle the deal, and the support of the neocon portion of the GOP to start applying pressure on Trump to have US Troop commitments as part of the “security guarantee.” It was a set-up, in Susan Rice’s interesting choice of words. Instead, Zelensky had one of the worst stage performances of his acting career, and Trump was statesmanlike (against all odds) throughout.

Zelensky followed Team Obama’s advice to be hostile to a tee, but it didn’t land how they thought it would. Surprisingly, one of the most important aspects of it not working out might have been Lindsay Graham’s reaction. Had he and other neocons thought Zelensky was being reasonable, Trump would be having to fight (even moreso) the neocon portion of the GOP in addition to Team Obama’s dirty tricks.

Even the “conservative” neocon pundits on TV last night were admitting Zelensky had royally messed up. As you can see from the hostility of the bureaucracy to any Republican oversight, no matter how reasonable or minor it may be, the entrenched bureaucracy and permanent DC apparatus is quite active. That goes quadruple for the deep state in the Intelligence Community. I’d expect more and more shenanigans and to be prepared so that you don’t fall for the next information operation.

The post-WWII architecture in Europe and the US needs this war to continue or be settled on “US troops on the ground” type guarantees, even though that’s not what Americans want. Things will heat up here, and it’s a very dangerous time.

Also, the immediate and near-identical reaction of leaders of various European countries in support of Zelensky’s temper tantrum yesterday also suggests a high-level of coordination and indicates a set-up. All very interesting.