Military Veterans and Patriots

Tag: CCP

  • Random News and Notes

    Random News and Notes

    It’s another one of those days where there’s a bunch going on, but nothing that calls me to write a dedicated piece about. So here are some things you should know.

    Starting out in the Philippines. The CCP is big mad that the US sent the Independence class LCS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS 10) to the Second Thomas shoal in the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The Giffords was conducting a FONOP (freedom of navigation operation) in the Philippine EEZ. The Chinese claim the entirety of the South China Sea as their own despite multiple international maritime court rulings against them.

    The area has been a hotspot for decades, with the CCP and the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) building artificial islands to try and claim sovereignty over the area.

    There was some weirdness about the explosion in Alexandria VA last night. The guy responsible, James Yoo, is turning out to be an extremely odd duck. I recommend you click thru and read this entire thread.

    Our next item comes from South America, where Venezuela decided they want 2/3 of the territory of Guyana. I wrote about it some here, but there’s an update. The plebiscite happened and, to the surprise of no one, the Venezuelan people voted to annex Essequibo. I don’t know what to expect now, but I’ll keep a weather eye out for any movements by Venezuela.

    I’m assuming y’all have heard of the Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea already. If not, well, the Houthi rebels in Yemen launched a bunch of anti-ship missiles the other day and hit three civilian ships and sank one. The International maritime shipping insurers have taken note. The ‘war premium’ on shipping insurance went from less than .03% of the value of the ship and cargo to .5-1%. That increase adds tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a journey in that area.

    Nobody is asking me, but I think it’s long past time for the complete destruction of any and all Iran backed terrorist groups.

    Florida State got screwed. That is all.

    This next one probably deserves a separate article, but TBH I’m feeling lazy today. Senator Dick Durban D(umbass)-Il, wants to allow illegal aliens to enlist in the military. Yes, you read that right. Here it is in his own words:

    Do I need to tell you how bad an idea this is? Doesn’t anyone read history books anymore? I mean, allowing foreigners into the army was one of the proximate causes of the fall of the Roman empire. The Brits allowed non-citizens into their army, but they were not allowed to get any closer to Britain than the Isle of Guernsey.

    The land of my fathers seems to be straying from the light a little more each day. There was the knife attack on some kids outside a Gaelic school by an Algerian immigrant and subsequent riots. Then there was the absolutely tone-deaf response of the Taoiseach on the release of an Irish boy who had been taken hostage by Hamas.

    Now, the Dáil (parliament) is poised to pass some of the most restrictive speech laws since the breakup of the Soviet Union. This new law would prohibit the simple possession of items considered offensive.

    Specifically, the bill targets any “offense of preparing or possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred against persons on account of their protected characteristics.” The bill defines “hatred” as “hatred against a person or a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics”—which include national origin, “transgender” status, and “gender[s] other than those of male and female.”

    I’m just waiting for the oxygen bottle mortars and the rattle of me little Armalite to start up again.

    Got any news you want to share? Drop it in the comments below.

  • Nine Line’s Tyler Merritt Calls Foul Over CCP Slave Labor Fabric in the Apparel Business

    Nine Line’s Tyler Merritt Calls Foul Over CCP Slave Labor Fabric in the Apparel Business

    (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

    SALENA ZITO | HotAir

    SAVANNAH, Georgia — Tyler Merritt has questions.

    Ten years ago, the 39-year-old West Point graduate launched his apparel company, Nine Line, out of his garage. Named after the military code word for getting wounded soldiers off the battlefield, the company now runs the booming business out of a 60,000-square-foot facility here in Georgia.

    They produce a complete range of punchy patriotic apparel while employing more than 200 people, mostly veterans and their spouses, in suburban Savannah.

    On this day, Merritt is standing outside of the Nine Line storefront, which is adjacent to a Black Rifle Coffee shop, along the cobblestoned River Street in historic downtown Savannah. He has his rescue dog, Red, on his leash and doing the right thing on his mind.

    Merritt says he has never shied away from service, patriotism and doing the right thing: “These things are at the heart of why we do our business and how I do business with others.”

    But he wonders: From where does the cotton for his shirts come? His company uses the fabric on his clothing line, whose shirts bear slogans such as “Land of the Free Because of the Brave” and “Faith, Family, Friends, Flag and Firearms.”

    For him, it had to be ethically sourced — in short, not from any supplier who was part of the slave labor trade in the Xinjiang region of China. This is nonnegotiable for Merritt and his brand. To ensure he maintains these standards, he goes above and beyond what most retailers do, and he conducts isotopic testing — basically a DNA test on fabric to detect the unique fingerprint of the country of origin.

    That’s when things went south. Merritt discovered one of his suppliers had been using cotton from Xinjiang, so he made a phone call.

    “I said, ‘Hey, I’m a customer of yours. Can we talk about this?’” Merritt, who was a helicopter platoon leader for the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment known as the Night Stalkers, said.

    Soon after that first phone call, Merritt said he started to get legal notices from “very, very powerful law firms,” which he said initially gave him pause, then ultimately motivated him to continue to press for information.

    “I’ve never been one to back down. So it was, I believe, a very poor strategic move on the count of Next Level Apparel, which is the entity that was tested through the boxes that we received into our facility from our distributor S&S Activewear. The carton label stated the importer of record was YS Garments, and after a simple Google search, I discovered YS Garments is doing business as Next Level Apparel. When I received test results back from these samples tested, it stated the Next Level DBA YS Garments products were consistent with Xinjiang cotton,” he said.

    Merritt said he even spoke to the CEO of Next Level privately about the issue. “Eventually, I ended up speaking to lawyers over the next several months,” he said. “In the end, I asked one very specific question that would never be answered directly: ‘If you have suspected product that is either coming to this country illegally or at the very least unethically, do you plan on quarantining it and testing it? And if it comes back as consistent with Xinjiang cotton, will you inform your customers and return it to whoever you purchased it from?’”

    The Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwest China is where a lot of the cotton used worldwide originates. The Chinese Communist Party has populated this region with forced labor and “reeducation” camps meant to nullify this historic minority.

    “If you are a company buying cotton for your fabrics in this region, it gives you an unfair, illegal advantage because you are paying less than your competitors,” explained Merritt.

    Next Level Apparel posted a statement on its retail page regarding concerns about reports of forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region that read in part:

    “Next Level Apparel takes very seriously any reports about forced labor and we have been engaging with multi-stakeholder working groups to assess collective solutions that will help preserve the integrity of our global supply chains. We will continue to collaborate with industry associations … to understand, evaluate and address this critical global issue.”

    Merritt remains skeptical: “After months of discussions, I’ve been able to return all of my products that I purchased from them. They have assured me it was quarantined and will not be put back into circulation, but there are lingering questions that need to be answered.”

    “Their ‘Zero Tolerance Policy’ states they would terminate any relationships with vendors who utilize unethical sourcing such as slave cotton from Xinjiang. I want to know if they have done that yet. It is incumbent on them to identify who is in their supply chain that is causing this to occur,” he said.

    A call to Next Level Apparel was not returned by deadline.

    For the average consumer — or even church groups, youth sports organizations or local event planners — fraud in the textile industry is easy to mask. “If you’re selling at a convention center, if you’re selling to a church group, if you’re selling to a school group and people are looking for those bottom dollar prices, they may be unknowingly participating in the slave trade if they’re purchasing from some of these companies that are utilizing forced slavery, that are utilizing cotton that derived from Xinjiang cotton,” Merritt said.

    Merritt’s decision to take this on has come with great personal cost. Since this journey began for him late last year, he’s been slammed with lawyer fees, and his company has faced numerous cyberattacks.

    “I won’t say it hasn’t been hard, but I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror every morning, and that means doing the right thing. That’s how I’ve approached my military career, my personal life, and my business. Everything comes with risk, but clearly, it is a risk I am willing to take. So bring it on.”

    Original Here

  • CCP Adviser Outlined…..

    CCP Adviser Outlined…..

    I have had the following in my file for approximately a week. First, I was going to condense it…failed. Next, I was going to do a bullet point…failed. Third was an attempt to highlight the “high points”…failed. Basically, I find the entirety of the article needs to be presented as published.

    CCP Adviser Outlined Detailed Plan to Defeat US,

    Including Manipulating Elections

    Article by Nicole Hao in The Epoch Times

    A leading Chinese professor—who is also an adviser to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—laid out a comprehensive plan for the communist regime to overthrow the United Statesas the world’s superpower.

    The professor’s multi-pronged strategy involves a range of malign actions to subvert the United States while strengthening the Chinese regime. They include: interfering in U.S. elections, controlling the American market, cultivating global enemies to challenge the United States, stealing American technology, expanding Chinese territory, and influencing international organizations.

    The plan was explained in detail by Jin Canrong, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Beijing’s Renmin University of China, in a July 2016 speech on “Sino-U.S. Strategic Philosophy” given over two full days at Southern Club Hotel Business Class in south China’s Guangzhou City.

    “We want to be the world leader,” Jin said, explaining Chinese Leader Xi Jinping’s desire for a “national rejuvenation” of the country.

    Dubbed “teacher of the state” by Chinese netizens, Jin is a prominent scholar known for his fiery anti-U.S. rhetoric. He is an advisor to two powerful bodies of the CCP, the Organization Department, and the United Front Work Department, though it is unclear how close he is to Xi.

    Weakening the United States

    The strategy to topple the United States was composed of two broad components: weakening America through both internal and foreign sources; and strengthening the Chinese regime’s economic, military, and diplomatic power.

    Using a metaphor of a company to illustrate the U.S.-China dynamic, Jin likened the United States to a company president, and China to a vice president who wants the top job.

    “The United States is a middle-aged man, who is good looking, has strong capabilities, and support from most employees,” Jin said.

    “[To replace it], we first need to create the conditions to make it easier for the United States to make mistakes. Second, we should make it as busy as possible [dealing with problems], to the extent that it will feel depressed and want to give up. Third, we should become intertwined with the United States, so that it can’t attack us.”

    Jin said the CCP was thinking of many ways to weaken the United States, which he described as a “very difficult” task. The professor offered four practical tactics.

    1. Manipulating Elections

    Jin suggested that the CCP should interfere in U.S. elections to bring pro-Beijing candidates to power. He singled out races for seats in the House of Representatives as an easy target.

    “The Chinese government wants to arrange Chinese investments in every single congressional district to control thousands of voters in each district,” Jin said.

    He noted with a population (at the time) of about 312 million and 435 congressional districts, roughly 750,000 residents live in each district.

    “The voting rate in the United States is about 30 percent, which means around 200,000 residents in each congressional district vote for the representative in that district,” Jin said. “Normally the difference of votes between two candidates is 10,000 or less. If China has thousands of votes on hand, China will be the boss of the candidates.”

    Jin said China’s ambition is to control at least the House.

     “The best scenario is China can buy the United States, and change the U.S. House of Representatives into the second Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress,” he said, referring to the committee that oversees the CCP’s rubber-stamp legislature.

    2. Controlling the US Market

    Ramping up Chinese investments in the United States is another way to exert influence in the country’s political system, Jin said, noting that this tactic has the added benefit of enriching Chinese business people and the CCP.

    “The investment opportunities in the United States are relatively good,” he said. “The U.S. market is open—more open than the Japanese and European ones,” he continued, adding that its benefits include its size, transparency, and stability.

    He said the Chinese regime wants Chinese business people to control the U.S. market, and also for them to develop their businesses in the country.

    To reach this goal, the Chinese regime had tried to negotiate with Washington for the U.S.-China Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). The agreement was actively negotiated for the decade prior to 2017, but fell off the agenda during President Donald Trump’s administration.

    Some U.S. companies wishing to enter the Chinese market, and the U.S.-China Business Council have advocated for the signing of a BIT.

    3. Fostering Enemies of the US

    Jin said the CCP’s “strategic task” was to make sure the United States has not less than four enemies.

    Four enemies are needed to stretch the United States’ resources while bogging the government down in domestic debates over which threat to prioritize, Jin said.

    For instance, before WWII the United States had two adversaries, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. “The Americans debated over and over about who is the real threat,” he said.

    “If the United States has four enemies, it will totally lose its direction.”

    Analyzing the situation as of 2016, Jin concluded that the United States only has three adversaries: “Terrorism is definitely an enemy of the United States. Russia looks like another one … Definitely, the United States treats us as a competitor … It’s not enough.”

    The professor said that in the past few years, the CCP had tried to develop Brazil into an adversary of the United States, but was unsuccessful because Brazil “didn’t want to be improved.”

    He said the CCP had pumped a lot of investment into Brazil in the bid to get its support on global issues, including taking stances against the United States. Xi had visited Brazil in 2014 and agreed to invest in infrastructure in the country’s western region, as well as a railway to link ports in Brazil and Peru.

    Jin said the Chinese regime has given up on this approach and is trying to find a candidate to develop into a U.S. adversary.

    4. Causing International Problems for the US

    Jin said the Chinese regime was at a strategic advantage due to the United States’ role as global enforcer: whenever there is a crisis in the world, the United States would have to intervene to maintain global stability, which in turn drains U.S. resources and diverts its attention away from China.

    As examples, he cited the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which he described as “completely not strategically valuable” endeavors that cost the United States “$6 trillion and 10,000 soldiers’ lives.”

    The result was that the United States “wasted ten years [without being aware of China’s development], and let China grow big,” Jin said.

    Another possible tactic is to sell the CCP’s holding of U.S. Treasury bonds to precipitate a debt crisis, he said. According to the U.S. Treasury, China currently holds nearly $1.1 trillion in U.S. treasury securities.

    Finally, engaging in drawn-out negotiations with the United States is also an effective strategy to bog down the United States, while giving the regime the time to focus on developing itself, according to Jin. During such negotiations, the United States wouldn’t take punitive actions against the CCP such as sanctions, and instead focus its energy on preparing and carrying out the talks. Meanwhile, the Chinese regime, which has no intention of negotiating in good faith, would use the breathing space given to it over the course of the negotiations to solidify its power both inside and outside of China.

    Former deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger in February warned of the CCP’s “negotiation traps.” Pottinger said years of successive formal dialogues between the two sides, such as the “Strategic Economic Dialogue” allowed the regime to “draw out the clock” and continue its economic assaults on the United States with impunity.

    Strengthening the Chinese Regime

     Jin said the Chinese regime has greatly relied on the U.S. trade and investments to spur its economic development over the past four decades. He highlighted four approaches to expand the CCP’s economic and political power at home and abroad.

    1. Stealing US Technology

    The professor admitted that the CCP has depended on stolen American technology to fuel its growth.

    “China’s industry has a large output, but lacks certain technology,” Jin said. “In the past 30 years, we bought technology, 46 percent of which were from Germany. But the United States has the best technology, but it doesn’t sell to us.”

    He added, “Americans think that Chinese hackers steal a lot of their things. This may very well be true.” Jin said key technology for China’s J-20 fighter jet and DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile was stolen from the United States.

    The regime is also eager to get its hands on American space technology.

    In June 2016, China’s Long March 7 rocket sent an orbital debris clean-up satellite Aolong-1 to space. Beijing claimed that Aolong-1 only brought space debris back to earth, but Jin suggested the satellite had another mission.

    “The U.S. said that [Aolong-1] was collecting American satellites [from the space], and bringing them back to China,” Jin said. “We can disassemble [the American] satellites and reassemble them into Chinese ones.”

    2. Expanding the Regime’s Territory

    Jin believed that the Chinese regime would occupy the whole of the South China Sea and Taiwan in the near future.

    The CCP lays claim to almost all of the South China Sea despite a 2016 ruling by an international court finding that its territorial claims were unlawful. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan also have competing claims in the waterways. Home to rich fishing grounds and potentially valuable natural resources, the South China Sea is also one of the world’s major shipping routes.

    Beijing has sought to bolster its claims in the strategic waterways by building artificial islands in the area and building military outposts on them.

    “In one and half years [in 2013 and 2014 under Xi’s administration], China has created more than 3,200 acres of territory. The other four claimant states have created only 100 acres in 45 years,” Jin said.

    Jin predicted that the CCP would continue to create more features in the South China Sea.

    He also boasted about the regime’s success in wresting control of the Scarborough Shoalfrom the Philippines in 2012 with the help of Chinese fishing boats and coast guard vessels.

    “Even if the Philippines wants the United States to take over the reefs [in the South China Sea], the United States can’t guard them,” Jin said. “If the United States stations an aircraft carrier there, China can simply send 2,000 fishing boats and surround the carrier. Then the carrier doesn’t dare to fire at the fishing boats.”

    In relation to Taiwan, the CCP has more ways to bring the democratic island under its control, Jin said. The regime views the self-ruled island as part of its territory and has vowed to bring Taiwan under its fold with force if necessary. For instance, the regime could bribe Taiwanese politicians, ban trade and tourism from China, convince the few remaining countries that recognize Taiwan diplomatically to switch to China, blocking Taiwan’s participation in international organizations and meetings, and assassinating some Taiwanese to instill fear among the population.

    3. Building Global Influence By Leading Projects

    Xi’s global strategy to bolster the regime’s global power has two pillars, according to Jin. One is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the other is the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP).

    BRI, previously known as One Belt One Road, is a massive global investment strategy launched by the CCP in 2013 aimed at bolstering its economic and political influence across Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America. The project involves investments in infrastructure and natural resource projects in countries. It has been criticized by the United States and other countries as an example of “debt trap” diplomacy, that saddles developing countries with unsustainable debt burdens while allowing the regime to export its technology and governance abroad.

    “The ultimate purpose of BRI is to team up with the industrial power Germany. Then there’s no position of the United States in the world’s industrial playing field,” Jin said.

    Similarly, Jin said the FTAAP, a proposed free trade agreement between 21 Asian-Pacific countries, would also open a conduit of influence for the CCP in the region.

    The professor also believed that Chinese-backed development banks, the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, would work to Beijing’s advantage, as countries that received loans from the banks would then be beholden to the regime, Jin said.

    “We are building up our friend’s circle in the world. We will be more powerful than the United States with more friends,” he said. “Then we can tell the United States that we are the only representative of the world.”

    4. Influencing International Organizations

    Jin also explained the CCP’s plan to exert greater influence over global bodies such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, Interpol, the International Monetary Fund, the International Olympic Committee, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

    The Chinese regime’s goal is for “all these international organizations to be controlled by China. We can appoint someone who speaks Chinese [who represents China] to be its leaders,” Jin said.

    During his speech, Jin emphasized that Xi was unlike his predecessors in his ambitions. Previous CCP leaders, such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao worked hard to develop the regime’s power but didn’t dare to use it, he said.

    “No matter how much power you have, it’s nothing if you don’t dare to use it,” Jin said. “Chairman Xi dares to use it. [Xi’s authorities] have the power, dare to use that power, and all of its attacks make the other party bleed.”

    Xi’s ambitions, however, cannot be revealed to the outside world, the professor said.

    When Xi took power in 2012, he urged the country to realize the “Chinese dream.” This meant becoming a “moderately well-off” country by 2021, and then a “strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and modern socialist country” by 2049.

    Jin explained that Xi’s target is actually to replace the United States as the world’s only superpower by 2049.

    “[Chinese] Ministry of Foreign Affairs keeps on saying [at press briefings] that China loves peace. But no reporters at the press briefings believe this,” Jin said.

  • China ‘Copied Its Way’ to Economic Success, Chinese Professor Boasts

    China ‘Copied Its Way’ to Economic Success, Chinese Professor Boasts

    China ‘Copied Its Way’ to Economic Success, Chinese Professor Boasts

    A Chinese professor recently bragged in front of a mainland Chinese audience that China had successfully “copied its way to the world’s front row,” which has emboldened the regime to take a more aggressive line towards the United States.

    For the past 40 years, the Chinese regime only did one thing: plagiarize, Zang Qichao, a prominent marketing expert and visiting professor of Beijing’s Tsinghua University, told a group of Chinese entrepreneurs recently.

    “We plagiarized wildly, copied wildly,” Zang said.

    “What intellectual property rights? What patented technology? We’ll get it first and deal with it later.”

    Through this approach, China has skyrocketed to become one of the world’s leading economies, and now finds that there’s nothing left to replicate, Zang said.

    Inflated by its achievements replicating foreign technology, the Chinese regime is now emboldened to be tougher against the United States, Zang said, as demonstrated by the public tongue-lashing dished out by Chinese diplomats to U.S. officials in Alaska earlier this month.

    Zang is a Chinese professor, author, and businessman, who also chairs two companies, a communications company and investment firm. The companies’ clients include China’s state-owned banks and telecom firms. His brief remarks were first published on his Chinese social media channel on March 21 and have since been circulated widely.

    Epoch Times Photo
    Workers producing LED chips at a factory in Huaian city, in China’s eastern Jiangsu Province, on June 16, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

    Four Decades of Cheating

    Since the Chinese regime’s economic reforms of the late 1970s, it has depended heavily on foreigners bringing in their investments, technology, and know-how to spur the country’s economic development, Zang said.

    Specifically, Zang said the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forced foreign businesses to enter into partnerships with domestic firms, so the locals could learn from the foreigners and eventually replace them by running the businesses themselves.

    Known as forced technology transfer, the CCP has forced foreign companies to enter into joint ventures with local firms and handover their intellectual property (IP) as a condition of entry to the Chinese market.

    After four decades, “we’ve learned everything, and can do everything ourselves,” he said.

    “When we look back, the factories are ours, the equipment is ours, the technology is ours, the patents are ours,” Zang said. “The foreigners have all gone.”

    The CCP’s rampant theft of foreign IP has sparked rising push back in recent years, particularly during the Trump administration. U.S. officials have described Beijing’s strategy to overtake the United States as the lone superpower as centered on the actions: “rob, replicate, replace.”

    After finding the CCP was engaged in state-sanctioned theft of American IP, the Trump administration in 2018 launched the U.S.-China trade war in an attempt to get the regime to drop a range of unfair trade and economic practices, such as forced technology transfer, subsidies for domestic industries, and currency manipulation. A phase-one trade deal was reached in January 2020, but many trade barriers were not addressed.

    Federal authorities have also ramped up prosecutions of alleged technology theft by Chinese students and company insiders, as well as Chinese cyberhackers.

    In his speech, Zang said the United States had finally found out about Beijing’s plans.

    “They don’t let us copy anymore,” he said.

    Epoch Times Photo
    An elderly woman pushes a cart along a street near the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on March 5, 2021. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

    Arrogance

    According to Zang, the Chinese regime was in a position to be tough with the United States during the recent talks in Alaska because of its strengthened economic standing achieved through four decades of state-sanctioned theft.

    “That’s why our Foreign Minister Yang [Jiechi] and Wang [Yi] could be so tough when they talked to the United States. [They thought] you have no right to talk to us in this way,” Zang said, while laughing.

    The CCP’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and its Foreign Minister Wang Yi sparked headlines in March when they publicly lambasted the United States over a series of alleged offenses during the first face-to-face talks with Biden administration officials, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

    Going forward, Zang said the CCP is focused on encouraging citizens to develop native technology through the slogan “innovation is the top driver for production.” The slogan has been repeated by Chinese Leader Xi Jinping since 2015, as he aims to shift the country to focus on domestic innovation.

    Comment: Nothing contained within this article comes as a surprise, it is simply an affirmation of the profound failure of Western leadership. “However, there was a time when we hung horse thieves.”

    See Also: “Corporate Communism”

  • The Plot to Steal America

    The Plot to Steal America

    2020 has been a year like no other… everything we know, everything we trust, and everything we come to rely on has changed.

    Comment: The expression Hold the Line has never been more important.

    See Also: Arrogance on full display

  • DNI John Ratcliffe: China Using ‘Gene Editing’

    DNI John Ratcliffe: China Using ‘Gene Editing’

    DNI John Ratcliffe: China Using ‘Gene Editing’ to Boost Military

    Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Sunday warned China was using “gene editing” in an effort to boost its military.

    Ratcliffe told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that if the Asian superpower becomes the dominant force in the world, which it is attempting to do with its genetic testing, then “individual liberties, freedoms” and “free enterprise are all stake.”

    “It’s altering DNA, and it’s one of the things our intelligence shows that China is doing. … The People’s Republic of China has 2 million strong in its military, and it’s trying to make them stronger through, you know, gene editing,” Ratcliffe advised. “That’s just one of the ways that, you know, China is trying to essentially dominate the planet and set the rules in the world order. And why it’s so important and people need to understand is this is an authoritarian regime. It doesn’t care about people’s individual rights. We’ve seen what they’ve done to the Uighurs; we’ve seen what they’ve done in Hong Kong. It’s about putting the state first, and that is the exact opposite of what has always made America great. Individual liberties, freedoms, free enterprise those things are all at stake if China dominates.”
    https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/12/06/dni-john-ratcliffe-china-using-gene-editing-to-boost-military/

    See Also: QUIZ: ‘The Bard’

    Comment: An original holds much greater value and superior quality than copies, modified version and knock-offs.

  • False History Taught in Schools…

    False History Taught in Schools…

    Alex Newman: False History Taught in Schools Incites Children to Hate America

    The history taught in public schools is “a complete and total reversal of reality” and the root cause of the civil unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis that has spread across the nation, said Alex Newman, an author, and award-winning international journalist.

    President Donald Trump said during the Independence Day celebration at Mount Rushmore on July 3, “Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that were villains.”

    “The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats, in every case, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions,” Trump said.

    “He hit the nail right smack on the head. That’s what I’ve been arguing for years,” said Newman, co-author of the book “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”

    “Now, when i say [what’s been taught is] a complete and total reversal of reality, that’s what i mean,” he told The Epoch Times‘ “Crossroads” program. “It’s not hyperbole, that’s not exaggeration.”

    He said what defines American people as Americans are principles enshrined in the country’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, and that everyone is endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights,” Newman said.

    Interview with Alex Newman starts at 14:47.

    However, the history taught in schools has been replaced by a historical narrative that reverses those principles, claiming that the country’s founding principles were “slavery, oppression, racism, white supremacy,” and similar things, Newman said.

    An example of U.S. history reversal is a New York Times series, called the 1619 Project, created by New York Times reporter Nikole Sheri Hannah-Jones, whose opening line of an essay that won her a Pulitzer was, “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.”

    According to the 1619 Project, America was founded in 1619 when a group of 20 Africans, who were considered to be the first enslaved Africans in British America, arrived in the colony of Virginia.

    The project is “essentially fake history, as historians from across the political spectrum—and even The New York Times’ own fact-checker—publicly confirmed,” Newman wrote for the Epoch Times.

    Despite this criticism, the series, which posits that America was not founded on the basis of liberty in 1776, but on the basis of slavery in 1619, has become school curriculum that is taught across America, Newman said.

    According to Hannah-Jones, the notion is that racism and evil are embedded in the very DNA of America, Newman said. Since DNA cannot be changed or removed, “and so what she’s really saying—as the mullahs say in Iran—’Death to America.’ You’ve got to kill America to get rid of this horrible DNA,” Newman said.

    “This could not be more wrong,” because America’s founding fathers wanted to abolish slavery as it was incompatible with the country’s founding principles based on Christian values, Newman said, adding that Thomas Jefferson fought a war against slave catchers in North Africa, and James Madison, the father of the Constitution, “loathed slavery” and expressed this view on many occasions.

    Almost every civilization or culture has practiced some form of slavery at a certain point in its history, Newman said.

    Rewriting American History

    Mount Rushmore

    The consequence of teaching wrong and reversed American history to children is that “our children hate America” and “they’re burning down our cities,” Newman said.

    One of the most popular history books in the United States is Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” which is a key text in schools and has sold more than 3 million copies, Newman said.

    Dr. Mary Grabar, a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, exposed Zinn’s distortions of American history in her book, “Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History that Turned a Generation against America.”

    Zinn portrayed Christopher Columbus as a “genocidal monster” in his book, according to Newman, who added that Grabar already knew that Zinn’s book was biased when starting her project. However, Grabar wrote in her book that “even I was surprised by how blatantly and deliberately Zinn lied.”

    Reading Columbus’s own diaries shows very clearly how Columbus was mischaracterized by Zinn. Columbus wanted to bring the Bible and Christianity to people, Newman said, and was inspired by his religious belief to embark on his journey.

    “The truth, I believe is much more powerful than lies” and this is our big advantage, he said.

    “Anybody can go look at the primary source documents, and investigate these things for themselves, and see what really happened.”

    Chinese Communist Party Applauds 1619 Project

    Red Guards, high school and university students, waving copies of Chairman Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book,” parade in June 1966 in Beijing’s streets at the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Since the May 1966 launch of the Cultural Revolution at Beijing University, the Red Guards were instrumental in Mao’s recapture of power after the failure of the Great Leap Forward. The movement was directed against “party leaders in authority taking the capitalist road.” The Red Guards went on rampage in Chinese towns, terrorizing people, particularly older ones. (Photo by JEAN VINCENT / AFP) (Photo by JEAN VINCENT/AFP via Getty Images)

    “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been openly celebrating the 1619 Project,” Newman said, because through propaganda, brainwashing, lies, indoctrination, misinformation and disinformation, and psychological warfare, Americans can be convinced to hate their own country and dismantle it from the inside. Then America’s economic or military power will no longer pose a threat to the CCP.

    Americans will just “burn their own country up and that’s what we’re seeing right now,” he said. “It’s incredibly dangerous.”

    The CCP, which understood this principle, launched the Cultural Revolution, one of the key elements of which was wiping out China’s true history, Newman said.

    “China was this incredible civilization with thousands of years of the amazing, incredible history that contributed so much to humanity,” Newman explained, so the communists “were burning books, and they were pulling down statues and setting libraries on fire and murdering people who knew real history so that they could start from a blank slate.”

    Everything prior to the communist revolution was branded “evil, backward, uncivilized, barbarous, and so on,” he said. “Everything post-Communist Revolution was wonderful and glorious, and all the rest of it.”

    “That is exactly the same thing they’re trying to do in America and it’s the same thing they’ve done around the world.”
    https://www.theepochtimes.com/alex-newman-false-history-taught-in-schools-incites-kids-to-hate-america_3553516.html?utm_source=pushengage BY ELLA KIETLINSKA October 27, 2020 Updated: October 27, 2020

    Comment: Children are not the only ones that have been taught a false history. When you listen to adults quoting a famous line from a movie that is supposed to be based on actual events in history, the propaganda is succeeding.

    See Also: Nau-do-we-e-gun-ing

  • TikTok and WeChat Banned in the US; …..

    TikTok and WeChat Banned in the US; …..

    TikTok and WeChat Banned in the US; What’s Really Behind China’s Airport Construction Binge

    President Donald Trump’s administration will block Americans from downloading China-based applications WeChat and TikTok, citing national security concerns. This ban will go in effect on Sunday. U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement “Today’s actions prove once again that President Trump will do everything in his power to guarantee our national security and protect Americans from the threats of the Chinese Communist Party.”

    Meanwhile, China is making a new push for logistic systems to stabilize its supply chains, and planned projects include the construction of hundreds of new airports. Yet behind this move is something deeper, and it may give us another hint at the true state of the Chinese economy. We’ll be explaining this in-depth.

    And the new Quad alliance formed between the United States, Japan, India, and Australia is working to stand up against the Chinese Communist Party. According to Bruce Klingner, Senior Research Fellow on Northeast Asia at The Heritage Foundation, Japan in particular may need a bit more of a push to reach its full capabilities — and when it comes to standing up against the Chinese government, this may be necessary. He argues that the issue Japan faces isn’t its defense capabilities, but instead its hesitancy to employ them. To get a better sense of this, we’ve invited Bruce Klingner to speak with us.
    https://www.theepochtimes.com/tiktok-and-wechat-banned-in-the-us-whats-really-behind-chinas-airport-construction-binge_3505939.html

    See Also: Welcome to Saturday Conversation

    Comment: Personally, I am pleased to see the construction of airports getting the attention they deserve. I raised this warning flag about four or five years ago. These are not simply little runways or landing strips, they are full scale airports. This first caught my attention in Zimbabwe and while I disliked Mugabe intensely; the CCP literally plundered the diamond wealth of the nation. The CCP has stayed primarily in the Pacific Rim region, but their intent is apparent. And I find it offensive that their, the CCP, wealth has been built on the backs of plundering other nations, courtesy of the World Trade Agreement signed in 2001.