On Sept. 12, 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s database of viral sequences was taken offline. The deleted database, which has never been publicly recovered, contained more than 22,000 unpublished samples and sequences of bat and rodent viruses.

Notably, the database contains crucial data and may hold the key to determining whether the lab in Wuhan, China, had COVID-19 or a progenitor virus in its possession.

The importance of having access to virus sequence data was illustrated earlier this year, when sequences from early COVID-19 cases were recovered from another dataset that had been deleted in June 2020 from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) database at the behest of a Chinese researcher. That data confirmed that the pandemic didn’t start at the Huanan Seafood Market as Chinese authorities had claimed.

Despite the potential importance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) data, there have been no known requests from public health officials to reinstate or examine the Institute’s database and none of the major health officials and experts involved in the pandemic response, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, British pharmaceutical trust Director Jeremy Farrar or NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, have publicly acknowledged the database’s existence.

In February 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) sent an investigative team to Wuhan. The team’s report states that as part of their analysis they “reviewed data collected through the China National Centre for Bioinformation integrated database on all available coronaviruses sequences.”

But the team failed to request an examination of the database of viruses collected, maintained, and later deleted by the WIV.

The WHO’s failure to pursue what could have been its most promising investigative lead is notable as the Wuhan Institute of Virology is widely regarded as perhaps the most likely source of a viral lab leak.

Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a group used by Fauci’s NIH to fund the Wuhan Institute lab, claimed that the WHO’s investigative team didn’t request to see the deleted Wuhan database because Daszak told them that the data didn’t contain relevant information on the pandemic’s origins.

It seems surprising that WHO officials would accept Daszak’s assertions at face value, rather than insisting upon examining the database for themselves. It’s also worth noting that Daszak was inherently conflicted as he had been enmeshed with the WIV’s activities for years.

When asked about the deleted database in January 2021, WIV Director Shi Zhengli claimed that she deleted the database because of alleged hacking attempts—despite the fact that this information was supposed to be publicly available, according to Daszak’s funding agreement with Fauci’s NIH. 

The WHO’s failure to examine the Wuhan Institute’s database also is surprising in light of a September 2019 WHO report that specifically warned of the possibility for a global pandemic.

That report, which stated that “the world is not prepared for a fast-moving, virulent respiratory pathogen pandemic,” was published six days after the Wuhan Institute deleted its entire database of dangerous pathogens. 

There’s no suggestion that the authors of the WHO report had foreknowledge of the pandemic outbreak, since it was based on a Sept. 10, 2019, John Hopkins study. But the fact that the WHO’s September report warned of the potential for a global viral outbreak at the same time that the Wuhan Institute deleted all its dangerous pathogen data should have caught  WHO’s immediate attention.

The timing of the Institute’s decision to remove the database of virus sequences is notable in light of events that followed the database’s deletion.

According to a Harvard Medical School study, an increase in traffic at hospitals throughout Wuhan took place in October of 2019.

John Brownstein, the Harvard medical professor who led the research, told ABC that “Something was happening in October. . . clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.”

The Harvard study appears to have been validated through the observations of the U.S. consul general in Wuhan, Russell Westergard, who is on record as stating that by mid-October 2019, the U.S. consulate in Wuhan “knew that the city had been struck by what was thought to be an unusually vicious flu season.”

Westergard would later note that “the disease worsened in November.”

Westergard also stated that when Wuhan city officials began to close public schools in mid-December to control the spread of the disease, his team passed the information to the U.S.Embassy in Beijing while they continued to monitor the situation.

Around the same time that Westergard was raising his warnings, likely at some point in early November, three WIV lab workers were reportedly hospitalized with COVID-like symptoms. 

Additionally, Huang Yanling, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who has been rumored to be patient zero, also appears to have disappeared during this time frame. Her profile was subsequently scrubbed from the Wuhan Institute’s website.

The annex to the WHO’s 2021 investigative report—which describes Huang as a former lab worker—notes that according to the Wuhan Institute of Virology staff, Huang was an alumnus who graduated in 2015 and was working in a different province. But Huang’s profile on the Institute’s website remained active until after the pandemic outbreak. And Huang can also be seen in a 2018 Wuhan Institute group photo. 

In November 2019, warnings began to sound in Washington. According to an April 8, 2020, report by ABC News, U.S. intelligence officials were warning in late November that “a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region.”

ABC News also said that a November 2019 intelligence report by the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI) had stated that the contagion in Wuhan “could be a cataclysmic event.”

Notably, NCMI would later be identified by French media as the agency that had concluded that the virus most likely leaked out of a Wuhan lab in the 2021 Intelligence Community Assessment on the virus’s origins.

Unsurprisingly, there has been significant debate and conflicting information as to when the COVIDoutbreak first began. One report, which cited Chinese government officials, noted that the first case could be traced back to Nov. 17, 2019.

A detailed academic report in The Lancet claimed that the first known COVID case occurred on Dec. 1, 2019, and noted that the patient had no known ties to the Huanan Seafood Market.

These earlier dates contrast with the WHO’s first officially stated date for an individual becoming ill with COVID on Dec. 8, 2019.

As the outbreak in Wuhan appeared to be reaching a critical juncture, the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suddenly moved its lab’s location on Dec. 2, to a spot just a few hundred yards from the Huanan Seafood Market.

While this lab has received little, if any, media attention, the WHO’s lead investigator into the virus’s origins, Peter Ben Embarek, privately voiced his concerns about this facility to a Danish documentary crew. 

The Wuhan CDC kept the sudden move of its lab quiet and away from media attention. Embarek claims he only became aware of the move after he noticed that as he was being shown around the Wuhan CDC lab’s facilities, everything appeared to be new.

The WHO’s report, which contained only a single reference to the Wuhan CDC lab, noted that “Such moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory” and stated that the lab “reported no storage nor laboratory activities on CoVs or other bat viruses preceding the outbreak.”

However, the WHO’s statement regarding the Wuhan CDC’s activities is at odds with the activities of the lab’s resident coronavirus researcher, Tian Junhua.

In 2017, Tian bragged to a Chinese newspaper that he personally captured 10,000 bats in remote caves in southern China before bringing them back to his Wuhan CDC lab. 

Tian also is well-known in academic circles for his research on bat coronaviruses and has co-published at least 14 scientific articles with Edward Holmes, a WHO-affiliated scientist and natural-origins proponent with long-standing ties to China.

The deletion of the WIV’s database along with other evidence, including the observations of the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan, would seem to suggest that the outbreak in Wuhan began earlier than has been generally reported.

This raises questions as to why the WHO failed to give this information serious consideration in the preparation of its report on the origins and timing of the virus.

The WHO should have been aware of this information—and should have been on guard for misinformation. As WHO investigator Embarek later acknowledged, the WHO was well aware of China’s reluctance to cooperate in their investigation from the start.

WHO Failed to Investigate Deleted Virology Database and Evidence Indicating Earlier Start of Pandemic (theepochtimes.com)

Over half the grant cash came from Fauci.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has continued to funnel millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund scientific research in conjunction with Communist China since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, including to military-controlled organizations, The National Pulse can reveal.

Over half of the grants sent since early 2020 came from Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) database reveals that 13 grants have been sent to the country which has stonewalled investigations into the origins of COVID-19. China has also undertaken a global propaganda campaign to blame the U.S. for the virus, while America continues to send cash.

China Medical University, Fudan University, Peking University, and China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention are among the organizations, all of which are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, funded by various NIH agencies.

Of the 13 grants to China, seven are from Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Southern Medical University  – which is controlled by the regime’s People’s Liberation Army and has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology – also received two additional grants worth nearly $300,000 from Fauci.

In total over $4 million has been sent to studies counting their principal investigators as working in China for state-run scientific bodies in 2020 and 2021. Seven of the studies are still active at the time of publication.

America Has Given Millions for ‘Research’ At Chinese Communist-Run Facilities Since COVID Outbreak. (thenationalpulse.com)

There are many ways in which to divide humanity—the decent and the indecent, the happy and the unhappy, the cowardly and the courageous, those who lead and those who follow, etc.

Two major divisions that are less often noted but highly consequential are between those who want to control others and those who have little interest in controlling others, and between the related categories of those who are comfortable with being controlled by others and those who detest being controlled by others.

Those who seek to control others and those who seek to be controlled by others would seem to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But they are not. Both groups are overwhelmingly populated by individuals on the Left.

They currently dominate four of the five English-speaking countries (the United Kingdom may be the one exception). The ease with which Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders have accepted the loss of liberty in their respective countries has been the saddest and most frightening development since the rise of totalitarianism in the early 20th century.

Even sadder and more frightening has been the acceptance of authoritarianism by half of the American people. America has been the beacon of liberty in the world. America was the country to which France gave the Statue of Liberty. America has been, as President Abraham Lincoln characterized it, “the last best hope of Earth.” America’s self-image has been that of a “sweet land of liberty” and of “the land of the free and home of the brave.”

Then came a new virus (one with a survival rate in the 99 percent range for nearly all age groups except older adults who are also very sick), and suddenly, in the name of “public health,” no amount of suppression of liberty, no matter how irrational, has been resisted by the majority of Americans or almost any citizens of the other English-speaking countries.

The citizens of Australia’s biggest states are not allowed to leave their homes for more than a few hours a day, not allowed to congregate with other citizens even outdoors, not allowed even to speak with one another outdoors. For more than a year and a half, Australians have not been allowed to leave their country without the express permission of their government, which will decide whether they have a good enough reason. And, of course, church services are forbidden. Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders, most of whom are thoroughly secular, have only contempt for their compatriots who wish to attend religious services.

In many arenas of life, most Australians have fewer rights than most Soviet citizens did. Like Australians, Soviet citizens could not leave their country without permission, but they were allowed to leave their homes, to speak with people in the street, and to visit dying relatives in hospitals.

Meanwhile, a large percentage of Americans support a president of the United States who offers government and an enormous number of private-entity workers a choice between getting vaccinated—no matter how young they are, and whether they already had COVID-19—or losing their job. In other words, many Americans support firing any unvaccinated fellow citizens who work for the government, the medical professions, or privately owned companies with 100 or more employees.

Half of America supports a president who portrays the other half of America as an enemy, their fellow Americans as people for whom they should have hatred. No American president has ever given as divisive a speech as the one in which President Joe Biden announced his vaccine mandates (something he denied wanting to impose only nine months ago, in December of 2020). Lincoln, despite the Civil War, a war in which more Americans were killed than in all other American wars combined, called on Americans to have “malice toward none.” Biden, as mean-spirited a president as this country has ever had, has called for malice toward 100 million Americans, declaring, “our patience is wearing thin.”

There is a three-pronged left-wing assault on liberty: in the name of public health (COVID-19); in the name of “anti-racism”; and in the name of saving the planet (climate change). By ratcheting up fear and hysteria, the Left is using each to end individual liberty, including freedom of speech, for the first time in American history.

Will the Left succeed?

Unless Americans fight the Left as hard as the Union fought the slave states, the answer is yes.

Why Freedom Is in Serious Jeopardy (theepochtimes.com)

Twenty-seven Republican governors or attorneys general have vowed to fight the latest executive order issued by President Joe Biden mandating that over 80 million private employees receive COVID-19 vaccinations or undergo weekly testing, or their employer will be fined.

The executive order directs the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to require private businesses with more than 100 employees mandate that their workers receive both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine or undergo weekly testing. Noncompliance would result in fines of $14,000 per violation.

The governors who’ve expressed opposition include those from Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Republican attorneys general from states with Democratic governors who also vowed to fight include Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with whom Biden has sparred over mask mandates and vaccine passports, said Florida would fight back.

“When you have a president like Biden issuing unconstitutional edicts against the American people, we have a responsibility to stand up for the Constitution and to fight back, and we are doing that in the state of Florida,” he said. “This is a president who has acknowledged in the past he does not have the authority to force this on anybody, and this order would result potentially in millions of Americans losing their jobs.”

Texas, which is already embroiled in several lawsuits with the Biden administration, vowed to sue. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said after hearing Biden’s announcement that “Texas is already working to halt this power grab” and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Texas would be suing the Biden administration “very soon.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said, “OSHA cannot dictate personal health care decisions for Missourians. Missouri is not under an OSHA state plan, and Parson will not allow state employees to be used to enforce this unconstitutional action.”

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster vowed to fight Biden, saying, “The American Dream has turned into a nightmare under President Biden and the radical Democrats. They have declared war against capitalism, thumbed their noses at the Constitution, and empowered our enemies abroad. Rest assured, we will fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian.”

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said, “Governors don’t report to Joe Biden. Governors don’t report to the federal government, the states created the federal government, and Joe Biden has stepped out of his reach,” Ducey said. “These mandates are outrageous. They will never stand up in court. We must and will push back.”

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita indicated he was working with a group of AGs to file a lawsuit. “My team and I, along with other like-minded attorneys general, are reviewing all legal action on how to stand against these authoritarian actions by the Biden administration,” he said in a statement.

The Republican National Committee also announced it was suing “to protect Americans and their liberties” if the proposed rule change were to go into effect.

In response to Republican pushback, White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond, a former Democratic congressman from Louisiana, told CNN the White House expected the opposition.

He said, “… those governors that stand in the way, I think, it was very clear from the president’s tone today that he will run over them. And it is important. It’s not for political purposes. It’s to save the lives of American people. And so, we won’t let one or two individuals stand in the way. We will always err on the side of protecting the American people.”

More Than Half of US States Vow to Fight Biden’s Vaccine Mandate (theepochtimes.com)

Many of the people who received either one or two shots are beginning to wake up. They were told by the “experts” that they just needed to get the shot and things would get back to normal. Things are far from normal, and now they are being told that they will likely need to get multiple booster shots and even a pill to treat Covid-19.

Thankfully, many of them are starting to take a stand and fight back.

On September 10th it was reported that a New York hospital is going to pause baby deliveries after a “spate of resignations” by maternity unit workers who refused to inject an experimental substance into their bodies.

Over the weekend I received a direct message from a NASA engineer who informed me that “almost all the engineers here have all banded together and are forcing NASA admin to fire them (both vaccinated and unvaccinated alike). NASA is on a hiring freeze, so firing all these folks would essentially kill the Artemis mission.”

Many people believed they were “fully vaccinated” after two shots. They trusted the system. They believed things would get “back to normal.” They took the shots, often reluctantly, with these things in mind and they are quickly finding out that they’ve been lied to.

Now they are preparing to be labeled “unvaccinated” again if they refuse to get yet another shot. Look on the bright side: Moderna’s shares jumped 5% on news that they revealed a new single shot booster.

Meanwhile tens of millions of Americans face being fired, kicked out of school, removed from our Military, refused medical care, and more for having faith in the immune system God gave them to overcome a virus with a 99%+ survival rate for the overwhelming majority of the population.

This all comes after Pseudo-President Joe Biden declared war on 80 million (or likely way more) Americans who refused to participate in the biggest lab rat experiment in human history.

I’ve been writing about concepts like the need for a parallel economy, a parallel internet, and a parallel society throughout all of 2021. But what does that actually look like?

We are about to find out.

If you’ve already been vaccinated you can join those of us who have not been by refusing to get any of these booster shots. At some point enough of us need to say enough is enough. The way this is going to work is even if you’ve received two shots already they are going to group you in with us “unvaccinated” people because without the booster you will no longer be “fully vaccinated.” So you might as well unite with the rest of us and start building something new.

All of the best, most talented, and smartest people are critical thinkers. They are builders. Doers. They are quickly leaving the existing system. What will be left is low quality talent. The “yes” men people who will shut up, do what they are told, and get their 15th booster shot to keep their job. My heart goes out to these people, but you all know exactly the type I’m talking about.

The existing system will begin to collapse under a sea of “vaccinated” talent shortages, incompetence, and woke political nonsense.

Hospitals won’t (and already can’t) find much needed nursing talent. NASA missions will be aborted. Schools won’t be able to find teachers. Businesses who are already having trouble filling open positions will be forced to compete with businesses who don’t pry into your healthcare privacy.

The society of obedient regime sheep will chug along for a while, but inevitably it will succumb under the weight of market forces from a growing new parallel society.

Companies without mandates will perform better and get all of the best talent. Doctors will start private practices. Families will begin to homeschool their children. Blue states and major cities will see a mass exodus unlike anything in American history.

All we have to do is say no and start building a new society for ourselves. We need to take control of our own destiny here and do what needs to be done to protect our families and preserve our values and indeed our own humanity.

I believe that God has a plan, as He always does, for what is unfolding on a global scale today. Now more than ever we must keep the faith and do as Christians have always done: survive and thrive. Do you think it was “easy” for the Pilgrims to set out for a new land and start building from scratch? Of course not, but they did it and ended up building the greatest country in the history of the world. Do you think it was “easy” for first century Christians to spread the Gospel? Of course not, but today billions of Christians know that Christ is on the throne because of their work and sacrifice.

In a lot of ways we are the modern Pilgrims of our time, seeking religious freedom and sovereignty to escape the rule of a tyrannical elite who hate us. Their blood runs in our veins, the spirit of their plight is in our hearts, and most importantly their God is our God.

We can and must do this. Force their hand. Band together with other like minded people at your school and work to say: no, we will not comply. Then start your pilgrimage to a new parallel society where Jesus is King, family values matter, and freedom rings.

To God Be The Glory,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Only Jesus Saves

What Does A Parallel Society Look Like? – Gab News

During a Monday hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accusations flew from partisans on both sides of the political aisle. Democrats, hoping to defend President Joe Biden’s unpopular handling of the withdrawal, blamed the Trump administration for the catastrophe. Republicans, riding the wave of increased apprehension toward Biden after the fiasco, went on the offensive, blaming Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for their handling of the situation.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the committee, said in his opening statement that “disentangling ourselves from the war in Afghanistan was never going to be easy.”

He continued: “And for my friends who presume a clean solution for the withdrawal existed, I would welcome hearing what exactly a smooth withdrawal from a messy, chaotic, 20-year war looks like. In fact, I’ve yet to hear the clean withdrawal option, because I don’t believe one exists.”

Meeks accused Biden’s critics, who have come from both major parties since the fall of Afghanistan, of “inject[ing] domestic politics into foreign policy.”

Starting a trend continued throughout the meeting by his Democratic colleagues, Meeks shifted the blame to former President Donald Trump, referencing a 2020 deal that would have fulfilled one of the president’s campaign promises to get the country out of the war.

The former president has been heavily critical of Biden’s handling of the withdrawal. In discussions of the situation, Trump has been open about the deal that he and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made with the Taliban, but has remained insistent that this deal would have been reliant on the Taliban meeting several conditions and that his administration would have handled the situation much differently.

Afterward, ranking minority party member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) spoke for Republicans in his opening statement, shifting the blame to Biden’s handling of the situation.

He began, “This did not have to happen, but the president refused to listen to his own generals and the intelligence community who warned him what would happen if we withdrew.” The outcome of the situation, he said, was essentially “an unconditional surrender to the Taliban.”

He roasted Blinken and Biden for their “betrayal” of U.S. allies in the region after promising them that they would be evacuated safely. In the wake of this betrayal, McCaul said, “a dark veil of shariah covers Afghanistan,” leaving not only longtime allies to the Taliban’s retribution but also “stripp[ing] away in a matter of weeks” all efforts to bring rights to women and girls in the country.

McCaul said, “We’re here today to better understand how this administration got it so wrong.”

Blinken Defends Biden Administration Handling

In his own opening remarks, Blinken defended the efforts of the administration and downplayed critics’ accusations.

He began by saying that the United States had two main goals in going into Afghanistan in the first place: “bringing justice to Al Qaeda” for its role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and ensuring that the country could not be used as a launching point for another such terror attack. These goals, said Blinken, were “completed long ago.”

Still, Blinken indicated that the current administration felt forced into conforming with the deal made by Trump with the Taliban. Biden had two choices when he came into office and inherited this deal, Blinken said: “ending the war or escalating it.”

Blinken then pointed to the successes of the administration during the crisis.

He said that in March, just weeks after Biden took office, the State Department was telling Americans to leave the country and offering to help them do so. At the same time, he claimed, the administration worked to speed up the processing of special immigrant visas (SIVs), a usually long and arduous process under standing law; the Trump administration, he added, had done little on this front.

Repeating an often-stated refrain, Blinken said that the rapid decay of the country’s political and military situation defied all predictions. Blinken said that “even the most pessimistic prediction” did not indicate such a quick collapse.

Later, Blinken was asked whether the Trump administration left behind information on Americans in Afghanistan or on its plans for U.S. withdrawal.

Again pushing the blame to Trump, Blinken responded curtly that the administration “inherited a deadline, we did not inherit a plan.”

Democrats, Republicans Hurl Accusations

During a heated part of the debate, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) accused the president of lying about the situation since it began. Wilson cited claims by the president that there would not be a collapse of the country to the Taliban, that there would not be Vietnam-like scenes of evacuation, and that there would be significant air support for fleeing Americans and Afghans, among others; about each of these, Wilson claimed, Biden lied.

In an equally-heated retort to Wilson, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) snapped at him and other Republicans, accusing them of being “selective” in their concerns about terrorists, again pointing to the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban.

In another showdown, Blinken was asked a question about a phone call from Biden to the now-former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani obtained by Reuters. In the call, Biden is alleged to have told Ghani to lie about the severity of the situation. Blinken refused to comment, neither confirming nor denying the call’s veracity.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) defended the administration’s handling of the crisis. At the height of the evacuation, Sherman said, the Kabul airport was experiencing a constant “stampede.”

“There is simply no way the administration can have an orderly or successful stampede,” Sherman ruled.

Republicans Grill Blinken on Afghanistan, Democrats Blame Trump (theepochtimes.com)

A coronavirus study funded by Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health agency – which names Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists as authors – was carried out in collaboration with an “arm” of the Chinese Communist Party’s military, The National Pulse can reveal.

A coronavirus study funded by Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health agency – which names Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists as authors – was carried out in collaboration with an “arm” of the Chinese Communist Party’s military, The National Pulse can reveal.

The 2014 study entitled “Isolation and Characterization of a Bat SARS-like Coronavirus that Uses the ACE2 Receptor” was the result of a broader grant from Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) that sent U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance.

The controversial, multi-million-dollar grant supported the manipulation of coronavirus into “killers,” according to Fauci acolyte Peter Daszak, who runs EcoHealth.

The study’s acknowledgments section thanks China’s Southern Medical University (SMU) for providing human serum – a type of blood that, due to a lack of plasma, doesn’t clot:

We thank X. Che from Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, for providing human SARS patient sera.

Twelve researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – including “bat woman” Shi Zhengli – are listed as authors alongside several scientists from EcoHealth Alliance. The paper explicitly states they received “financial support” from Fauci’s NIAID.

The research material provided by SMU contributed to the study’s manipulation of different strains of coronaviruses through “recombination analysis.” The study also discusses “virus infectivity” research related to humans:

To determine whether WIV1 can use ACE2 as a cellular entry receptor, we conducted virus infectivity studies using HeLa cells expressing or not expressing ACE2 from humans, civets or Chinese horseshoe bats. We found that WIV1 is able to use ACE2 of different origins as an entry receptor and replicated efficiently in the ACE2-expressing cells.

The source of these samples, however, is under the control of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China: a hostile nation’s military that is increasingly in conflict with U.S. allies like India.

Formerly known as First Military Medical University, SMU falls under the jurisdiction of the Military Committee of PLA, according to its own website. Professors as well as entire institutes have received awards from various branches of the PLA including its General Logistics Department.

The school also runs a variety of labs, including an Institute for Genetic Engineering Research, which is described as an “arm of the PLA Key Biochip Lab” and “one of the top 20 labs of the Army.”

The school’s biomechanics lab operates under the control of the PLA and counts support from China’s 863 program, which has seen Chinese scientists affiliated with the effort get convicted for stealing trade secrets from American companies.

The financial and scientific collusion between the highest paid bureaucrat in the United States – Anthony Fauci – and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army would under normal circumstances lead to at least one full investigation of the matter. Fauci, thus far, has avoided any serious level of scrutiny from the U.S. Congress.

Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, is currently the Chief of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, where she oversees her husband’s work handing cash to Chinese Communist researchers.

Read The Study:

EXC: Fauci-Funded Wuhan Research Relied On Human Blood Samples Provided by China’s Military. (thenationalpulse.com)

A professor at Pennsylvania State University is facing multiple misdemeanor charges after he allegedly attacked a student who protested against the advocacy of COVID-19 vaccination mandates.

The incident occurred on Aug. 27, when faculty, students, and community members rallied at the center of Penn State campus and called on the university administrators to immediately issue a vaccine mandate. Student newspaper Daily Collegian reported that the event attracted counterprotesters who held up signs toward the back of the rally attendees.

A video posted to Twitter by Centre County Report appears to show a male, later identified as 36-year-old Walter Oliver Baker, trying to take a sign by force from one of the counterprotesters before eventually pulling him to the ground.

The counterprotester was later identified as Avi Rachlin, the leader of Penn State Resistance, a student group focusing on opposing mask and vaccine mandates on campus. Rachlin was seen escorted away by campus police with blood on his face, likely as the result of the incident.

The campus police record suggests that Baker was charged with simple assault, a second-degree misdemeanor; disorderly conduct, a third-degree misdemeanor; and harassment, a summary offense under Pennsylvania law. The most serious of those charges is the second-degree misdemeanor, with penalties of up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine upon conviction.

Penn State lists Baker as an assistant professor of English and African American Studies who “specializes in Critical Race Theory.” According to his faculty biography, Baker’s areas of research include “critical ethnic studies, nineteenth-century American literature and culture, critiques of racial capitalism and settler colonialism, and histories of African, Native, Chicanx, and working-class liberation movements.”

A Penn State official confirmed to Daily Collegian that Baker was placed on administrative leave as the investigation proceeds.

Meanwhile, in a previous interview with Daily Collegian, Rachlin said he is not against vaccines as a whole, but rather skeptical about the COVID-19 vaccines, given that they lack long-term data on their safety and efficacy.

“When we take this more locally, the majority of people on this campus are vaccinated,” the junior student told Daily Collegian. “It is a small percentage, but there are thousands of others including myself who have opted not to [get vaccinated] as well.”

Penn State is one of the few remaining Big Ten Conference schools that have yet to put in place any form of COVID-19 vaccine requirement. In an open letter to the campus community, Penn State President Eric Barron made it clear that the public university is not going to jeopardize its funding to issue a vaccine mandate.

“Regulations across the country clearly reflect state-level political realities,” Barron wrote in the Aug. 12 letter. “State funding of our University requires a two-thirds vote of the Pennsylvania legislature, meaning that our funding relies on strong bipartisan support.”

Penn State didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Penn State Assistant Professor Charged With Assaulting Anti-Vaccine Mandate Student (theepochtimes.com)

The online learning environment hastily imposed on students during the ongoing pandemic has accelerated the growth of cancel culture at U.S. universities, according to a new report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).

Relying on empirical data taken from student surveys along with insights from faculty and higher education leaders across the nation, the Sept. 8 report “Building a Culture of Free Expression in the Online Classroom” asserts that the sudden, widespread adoption of virtual education in this country worsened the free-speech crisis on college campuses, further limited diversity of viewpoints, and encouraged more self-censorship among students.

“The lifeblood of the liberal arts is debate, dialectic, inquiry, and challenge,” ACTA President Michael Poliakoff said in a statement. ACTA describes itself as “an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting academic excellence, academic freedom, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities.”

“In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that has threatened the strength and even the survival of so many institutions, online education moved to the fore. We have seen that it can bless us with access to a vibrant exchange of ideas, but it also has the potential to eliminate the opportunity for growth of character and intellect,” Poliakoff said.

The report comes after an ACTA/College Pulse national survey of more than 2,100 college students in 2019 found that 61 percent stop themselves from expressing opinions “on sensitive political topics in class because of concerns [a] professor might disagree with them” at least “occasionally.”

The fact that it’s so easy to record remote classroom activities makes sharing materials easy, including on social media, and gives students a resource for study, the report states.

This can help students and others, but at the same time creates problems, such as providing “an opportunity for partisans across the political spectrum to exploit the digital records in order to further an agenda that has nothing to do with learning.”

“Audio and video recordings speak directly to our passions and, consequently, can be more effective at rousing anger; and it is easier to misspeak or convey the wrong impression in conversation than by written communication for the simple reason that it happens so much faster,” according to the report.

Higher education hasn’t adapted well to the era of social media, “in which activists can unleash a torrent of negative attention on a university, faculty member, or student within minutes,” and schools are “increasingly forced to engage with vocal activists,” the report states.

Activists willing to tarnish a university’s reputation have an automatic advantage because academics and the schools they work in “are so sensitive to prestige and reputation.”

“Today, universities live in mortal fear of a negative Tweet gone viral. Presidents, deans, and provosts have, to this point, learned a dangerous lesson: that the easiest way to quiet the mob is to give into what it wants—usually by firing someone and denouncing his or her viewpoint—even if that means betraying core academic values,” the report states.

Faculty members can make the environment better by refraining from offering personal, partisan opinions, which often have the effect of making students feel less secure about sharing differing viewpoints, and by avoiding “discussing social and political issues in courses that are not directly related to current events,” the report states.

Remote Learning Advances Cancel Culture, Report Says (theepochtimes.com)

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a bill on Friday that would have increased penalties for those who engage in riots that result in damage or injury.

“People who commit crimes during riots and at other times should be prosecuted and our laws provide for that, but this legislation is unnecessary and is intended to intimidate and deter people from exercising their constitutional rights to peacefully protest,” Cooper, a Democrat, said in a press release.

A person would have faced felony charges and jail time if he or she caused damage to property, or assaulted a citizen or emergency personnel, during a protest or state of emergency.

Republican House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors, called it a “common-sense bill” written to protect “small businesses and individuals in the event that a protest became violent and focused solely on the perpetrators of violence rather than peaceful protesters.”

“Every suggested change to improve the bill from the other side of the aisle was incorporated,” Moore said. “Unfortunately for this governor, pandering to the far left is more important than rule of law.”

In a statement released after the bill passed in the Senate in August, Moore said he had witnessed “the violence and destruction caused by rioters right here in downtown Raleigh” in 2020.

“What this bill does is enforce harsher penalties for the perpetrators of violence and looting, while preserving every North Carolinian’s right to protest peacefully,” Moore said. “Our rights to free speech and assembly are precious and must be preserved, but never at the expense of harm to others. House Bill 805 simply ensures the safety of our citizens while upholding their rights to free speech and assembly.”

Felony charges would have been handed down if damages exceeding $1,500, serious bodily harm, or death, had resulted from the actions of the rioter.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the bill “harmful,” adding that it “would dissuade many people from engaging in peaceful and constitutionally protected acts of protests.”

The bill was retaliation, the ACLU alleged, against the “uprising for racial justice” that happened in 2020 when an outbreak of violence started in May at the time of the killing of George Floyd, a black man who had been arrested.

The May 25 arrest was filmed, and in the video, Floyd, 46, said he couldn’t breathe as Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was witnessed kneeling on Floyd’s neck as he pleaded for air.

Floyd was pronounced dead an hour after the incident.

According to a September 2020 report (pdf) from the Raleigh Police Department, May 30 through June 7 became a week of peaceful protest that devolved into acts of violence and destroyed property.

In July 2020, the Triangle Business Journal reported that statewide insurance claims were over $10 million.

Anti-Riot Bill Vetoed in North Carolina (theepochtimes.com)

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a bill (pdf) on Friday that would have prohibited teachings in the K-12 school system that the bill calls contrary to “the equality and rights of all persons”

“This legislature should be focused on supporting teachers, helping students recover lost learning, and investing in our public schools,” Cooper, a Democrat, said in a press release. “Instead, this bill pushes calculated, conspiracy-laden politics into public education.”

Proponents of the bill, mostly Republicans, call it the anti-discrimination bill, while many Democrats consider the bill an attack on critical race theory (CRT), also claiming that there is no evidence of it being taught in the North Carolina school system.

CRT is based on the Marxist philosophy that describes society as a class struggle between oppressors and the oppressed, labeling white people as the oppressors and all other races as the oppressed.

Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, a Republican and an outspoken critic of CRT, said in a press release that the bill would have been the first step in combating CRT “being forced upon our children.”

Robinson called Cooper’s reasoning for vetoing the bill “lazy,” and a part of a pattern of “ignoring the issue.”

Indoctrination Report

Robinson had created the Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students task force (F.A.C.T.S.) to gather evidence of CRT in the K-12 school system, he told The Epoch Times last month, which produced the Report on Indoctrination in North Carolina Public Education on Aug. 24 (pdf).

Through an online portal, parents, teachers, and students could anonymously submit evidence from curriculums by email.

In the report, race shaming and allusions to surgical castration in children’s literature—as well as xenophobia against political figures—were among the themes found.

In his Sept. 10 statement on the veto, Robinson said that the report “irrefutably established that there is a clear problem in our state,” and that Cooper’s veto “does a disservice to the teachers, students, and parents across our state who have voiced their concerns.”

“In a letter I presented to the governor, I asked him to share which discriminatory concepts in the bill he believed he should be ‘compelled’ to believe,” Robinson said. “However, in his veto, he chose not to share those details. Governor Cooper should stop playing political games and start serving the people who elected him.”

Officials Respond

Republican House Speaker Tim Moore said in a press release that House Bill 324 “would have ensured that students of every race would be protected from discrimination in the classroom. I am disappointed that Governor Cooper would block legislation that simply protects students or teachers from being forced to accept the false idea that one race is superior or inferior to another.”

In a press release regarding the veto, Catherine Truitt, the superintendent of The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, said, “Each day, thousands of teachers lead and guide our students, challenging them with robust conversations on difficult topics without ever influencing them using their personal or political beliefs. What we’ve learned throughout this process is that we need parents to continue to play an active role in their children’s education. When and if they have concerns, they should feel empowered to share this with their children’s teacher.”

Debating on the House floor on Sept. 1, Representative James Gailliard, a Democrat, called the bill a form of censorship.

Quoting whom he said was Benjamin Franklin, Gailliard said, “It is absolutely necessary that knowledge of every kind be disseminated.”

The quote is in fact historically attributed to another founding father, Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the Continental Congress.

The post-Revolutionary War address was a petition to combat the danger of a reimposed monarchy by creating federal universities that would educate students in history, law, commerce, and war tactics.

“To conform to the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens to our republican forms of government, it is absolutely necessary that knowledge of every kind should be disseminated through every part of the United States,” is the full quote.

However, the question of whether CRT is “knowledge,” or propaganda, continues to be debated among lawmakers and scholars.

North Carolina Gov. Cooper Vetoes Bill Prohibiting Critical Race Theory in Classrooms (theepochtimes.com)

North Korea said on Sept. 13 that it had launched new long-range cruise missiles. These missiles can likely carry nuclear weapons. The missile tests were the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)’s first since March, and highlight the continued danger that China, Russia, and their totalitarian ally, North Korea, hold for truly democratic countries in Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the United States.

North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006, and has since frequently tested additional nuclear weapons and the missiles that carry them. The technological sophistication of these weapons has increased markedly in the last six years. The DPRK started testing submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) in 2015.  In 2017, North Korea tested three intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and a sixth underground nuclear weapon. Afterward, North Korea claimed the ability to hit the continental United States with a nuclear weapon.

In October 2020 and this January, North Korea paraded newly-developed ICBMs and SLBMs. North Korea’s March tests included a new ballistic missile that carries a 2.5-ton warhead. In August, the United Nations claimed that North Korea apparently restarted one of its main nuclear reactors. Earlier this month, South Korean media reported that North Korea was developing a short-range ballistic missile with a three-ton payload.

China has provided finances, high technology, front companies, and diplomatic cover to North Korea during its nuclear weapons development. Beijing protected North Korea diplomatically at the U.N. from tougher sanctions necessary to augment existing sanctions since 2006. U.N. sanctions weakened by Beijing have as a result failed, making the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) responsible for North Korea’s continued transgressions, and any of the massive harms that could result.

In 2005, the United States effectively sanctioned a Chinese bank for the facilitation of North Korean money laundering. Xi Jinping, in 2011, approved the arguably illegal sale of 16-wheel trucks that North Korea needed to transport nuclear-capable missiles to launch pads. In 2016, North Korean Kwangmyongsong-4 rocket parts that fell into the Yellow Sea, and were retrieved by the South Korean navy, revealed that motor parts, wiring, and other essential components came from China.

Monday’s North Korean cruise missile tests included targets that were 932 miles away. They were hit, according to North Korea’s official media, after the missiles changed trajectory and circled their targets, making counter-missile defense more difficult. The missile strikes are implicit threats against South Korea and Japan’s five main islands, all of which are within range of the new missile. North Korea announced on Monday that the new cruise missile was “a strategic weapon of great significance” and a goal of North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, announced in January.

The missile test highlights the weakness of current U.N. sanctions against North Korea, which ban the country from developing or testing ballistic missiles that can reach the United States, but not the cruise missiles that can reach Japan and South Korea, including the U.S. forces on those islands.

As a result of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, all three countries are increasing their investment in missile and other military defenses. These costly military expenditures in democracies are the fault of China, Russia, and the rogue regimes they support, including North Korea. Without these offensively-oriented dictatorships, the United States and its allies would be able to devote more spending to social services.

American nuclear disarmament talks with North Korea are stalled, and successive American administrations have unfortunately been unwilling to take the necessary action, including tougher economic sanctions on China and North Korea, to remove the threat. This failure to take action against China and North Korea puts American and allied lives at risk.

Given the CCP’s influence over North Korea, the country could be used to launch a proxy war that includes nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies. This could allow Beijing to facilitate nuclear strikes without suffering retaliation, which would effectively remove American deterrence of a nuclear war.

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, is scheduled to meet the South Korean foreign minister on Sept. 15. The latest DPRK missile test will give Beijing more bargaining leverage over South Korea during these talks. South Korea increasingly needs the CCP’s assistance in decreasing the threat from North Korea. Indeed, the Sept. 13 test may have been timed by Beijing to assist it in the Sept. 15 negotiations.

China has been implicated in the provision of funding, technology, and diplomatic support for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and in turn, benefits from the North Korean program due to its close alliance with the country. The CCP regime must therefore be held fully responsible for any harm that results from North Korea’s nuclear weapons.

Hold China Responsible for North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons (theepochtimes.com)

With the launch of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) five-year “sinicization campaign” in 2018, the regime has been working to “re-create” spiritual beliefs that are compatible with its ideologies, according to a Chinese American pastor.

Bob Fu, the founder and president of the U.S.-based Christian nonprofit China Aid, told The Epoch Times in an email that his organization has “clearly detected intensified persecution every year” since the first year of the campaign.

“The Chinese government under the guidance of President Xi Jinping has escalated the persecution of people of faith with the ‘sinicization’ campaign, or to re-create religion to better align with the CCP ideals,” said Fu, who was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and a house church leader in Beijing. Fu and his wife fled to the United States as religious refugees in 1997.

Fu added that the sinicization campaign has “impacted those of all faiths in China.” “Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, Falun Gong practitioners, house church Christians, and Catholics have all been targeted by the Chinese government because of their religious beliefs,” he said.

With only a few months left until the 2022 Winter Olympics, Fu says it is “egregious” that China will be hosting the Games despite its record of “gross human rights abuses.” He said the 2022 Beijing Olympics “will be a test of the world’s conscience to see how we respond.”

Sinicization of Christianity

According to Fu, the sinicization of Christianity is “directly linked” to the escalated persecution of house Christians. He said the act of sinicization is centered on gaining “control”—the key goal that the CCP “desires the most.”

“Sinicization gives the CCP a chance to re-imagine Christianity with the government at its center. That’s why we see portraits of Jesus being replaced by Mao and Xi in state-sanctioned churches,” Fu said.

However, Fu added that despite the communist regime’s “best efforts” to persecute Christians, “Christianity continues to grow rapidly.”

A week after the CCP marked its 100-year anniversary, the state-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement held a national conference on July 8 where churches were provided with “a model sermon” based on Xi’s centenary speech of July 1.

The pastors were instructed to hail “Long live the great, glorious and correct Chinese Communist Party,” and Christians were required to “trust the CCP,” reported Bitter Winter, an online magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China. A few days later in another conference on July 13 in Shanghai, the participants discussed speeding up the “sinicization of Christianity,” according to the magazine.

The communist regime has reached this key phase of distorting the Christian faith over the long years of persecution. Just in the year 2020, over 900 crosses were removed from churches and Bibles were confiscated. Apart from demolishing the crosses, the CCP also raided and closed down many house churches, including state-run churches.

“In 2020, we saw a rise in cases involving authorities threatening or detaining Christians, outlawing house churches, as well as increases in demolishing church buildings and crosses,” Fu said. “2020 is the worst year in persecution since the end of the Cultural Revolution.”

In the same year, it was reported that a state-owned university in China distorted a biblical story from John 8 about how Jesus forgave a woman who had committed adultery. The altered version, published by the University of Electronic Science and Technology Press, states that Jesus stoned the woman, saying “I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead,” reported Bitter Winter.

According to UCA News, Catholics in China are “upset” over the incident. An anonymous priest said in the report that such distortion of the original text “is against morality and the law.” Another Catholic in China said that events distorting Christian faith and history have been “repeated every year,” but the Church has never received the “respect and apology it deserves.”

Fu doesn’t find it surprising, either. “It is sadly unsurprising to me that the CCP would go through such lengths to alter the Gospel,” he told The Epoch Times, adding that the true teachings call for “sacrificial change” and for one’s life to be centered on the Divine, “not the CCP.”

Some of the other instances of Christianity being sinicized include the following: the replacement of a painting of Mother Mary and the Christ child with a portrait of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping, religious believers being forced to attend compulsory training to memorize Xi’s quotes, and the portraying of Jesus and Mary in ancient Chinese attire, reported Bitter Winter.

“My eyes widened when I saw Mary with her hair tied in a bun like an ancient Chinese woman. It’s so bizarre,” a Three-Self churchgoer told Bitter Winter after seeing the illustrations of Jesus and Mary published in Tian Feng, a monthly Christian magazine.

Another 70-year-old Christian said: “The CCP has always talked about de-Westernization; it doesn’t allow Chinese people to believe in the God of foreigners, but I never expected that the Lord Jesus and saints through the ages would be transformed into Chinese people. The CCP has gone totally crazy.”

According to a 2019 report by Bitter Winter, a Three-Self church in Jiangxi province was “completely altered.” One house church leader said in the report that sinicization aims at “eliminating pure religious beliefs.”

“The ultimate goal is to eliminate Christianity, and also to eliminate Taoism, Buddhism, and Islam, with only communism remaining in the end,” the anonymous leader said.

Sinicization of Other Religions

The CCP’s sinicization campaign is multi-targeted; Tibetan Buddhists and Muslims aren’t spared either.

For instance, the China Islamic Association in Puyang County, Henan province, issued a notice in 2019 that the mosques’ Arabic-style domes and structures must be changed to ancient Chinese-style architecture to fit in well with the rest of the buildings located on the South Ring Road, reported Bitter Winter. The dismantling of the domes and minarets began thereafter.

“This is nationwide. Anything with these symbols must be altered. If you obstruct [the dismantling work], the mosque will be torn down,” an officer from the Religious Affairs Bureau told local Muslims, according to the report.

To force religious leaders to conform to the CCP’s ideologies of Marxism and atheism, they are required to undergo training at the Ningxia Academy of Social Sciences in Yinchuan City, an imam told the magazine in another report.

“The regime doesn’t allow us to preach in accordance with the teachings of the Quran and requires us to talk about state policies before expounding scriptures,” the imam said, adding that their preaching has to be recorded and sent to the authorities.

The sinicization campaign has equally impacted Tibetan Buddhism since the campaign’s beginning. According to Bitter Winter, the CCP has since intensified the demolition of temples and the removal of symbols related to Tibetan Buddhism.

In June 2020, the authorities in Qingdao City, Shandong province, issued an order to hide a white Tibetan Buddhist stupa on the Xiaolong Mountain because the stupa distracted the drivers and “affected the traffic on the nearby highway.”

According to the same report, other elements or words related to religion were also removed. The “wisdom eyes” that were painted on a signboard, which hangs at the entrance of a temple in Shandong province, were painted over in red color.

In the same year, authorities in Hebei province instructed Tibetan words to be removed from the Xingguo Temple, which was built in the Jin Dynasty (1115–1234), according to the report.

Arshdeep Sarao contributed to this report.

CCP Is Sinicizing Christianity, Other Faiths to ‘Align’ Them to Its Ideology: Chinese American Pastor (theepochtimes.com)

A new report from the Chicago Federal Reserve on business conditions in the central bank’s seventh district paints a picture of slowing growth and historically high price pressures, with labor cost inflation at a record high.

The Chicago Fed Survey of Business Conditions, released on Sept. 13, shows that the headline business activity index fell to a reading of -2 in August from +14 in July, suggesting August growth fell below trend.

At the same time, labor costs rose to a series high of +42 in August, up two points from July and the highest reading in the eight-year history of the series. Nonlabor cost pressures—led by materials, shipping, and energy—held steady over the month at +23, a level not seen since mid-2018.

The report is based on a survey of over 800 business contacts in the Seventh Federal Reserve District and provides input into the Fed’s recently released so-called “Beige Book,” which provides an economic snapshot of the United States from early July through August, based on reporting from the central bank’s 12 districts.

While the Chicago Fed survey is limited in scope to the seventh district, it provides insight into the state of the broader economy. According to Thomas Walstrum, senior business economist at the Chicago Fed, the survey’s headline business activity index has tracked real GDP growth from 2013 to the present “quite well.”

“The index is less volatile than real GDP growth, so while it usually is right about whether growth sped up or slowed down from quarter to quarter, it often understates the degree of the pickups and slowdowns,” Walstrum wrote in an explainer note.

Despite the slowdown in the current business activity measure, respondents’ outlooks for the economy over the next 12 months remained optimistic, with 60 percent saying they expect an increase in economic activity in the coming year, the Chicago Fed report said. Still, the 12-month forward outlook deteriorated significantly in August compared to July, dropping over the month from a reading of +44 to +14.

The pace of hiring fell, as did respondents’ expectations for the pace of hiring over the next 12 months, although both indexes remained in positive territory.

Meanwhile, the Fed’s Beige Book, which was partly informed by the Chicago Fed’s data, showed that U.S. businesses were facing supply-crunch-driven inflation in input costs, with many saying they expect to pass those higher prices to consumers.

Resource shortages were “pervasive” and input price pressures “widespread,” with many businesses reporting difficulty sourcing key inputs, even at greatly increased prices, the Beige Book report indicated.

“Firms have continued to report exceptionally widespread increases in input prices—particularly in the construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, and transportation and warehousing industries,” the report’s authors wrote, adding that contacts in all sectors expect widespread input price increases for the rest of the year.

Half of the districts described input price inflation as “strong,” while the other half characterized it as “moderate.” In many cases, higher input costs are likely to translate into higher prices for consumers.

“A sizable share of contacts in all sectors plan to increase prices over the next six months,” the Beige Book authors wrote, adding that several of the 12 districts indicated that businesses expect “significant hikes” in their selling prices in the months ahead.

Adding fuel to the inflationary dynamic were upward price pressures on wages, with most businesses characterizing wage growth as “strong” as demand for workers continued to climb.

“All districts noted extensive labor shortages that were constraining employment and, in many cases, impending business activity,” the authors of the report wrote.

Increased worker turnover, a rise in early retirements, child care needs, and enhanced unemployment benefits were all noted as factors driving the hiring crunch, according to the report, with businesses resorting to more frequent raises, bonuses, training, and flexible work arrangements to attract and keep staff.

Echoing the findings in the Chicago Fed’s business activity index, the Beige Book showed overall economic activity “downshifted slightly to a moderate pace” in the reporting period, with the softening mostly down to a pullback in dining out, travel, and tourism, mostly reflecting concern around the spread of the Delta variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Business Activity Growth Slows While Labor Cost Inflation Hits Record High: Chicago Fed (theepochtimes.com)

An international group of vaccine experts, including officials from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and World Health Organization (WHO), said that there is no evidence to suggest that the general population needs COVID-19 vaccine booster shots.

The authors warned that if booster shots are introduced too soon, they may cause more side effects in the general population, including myocarditis or Guillain-Barre syndrome. Should that occur, the researchers said, it would create even more problems with vaccine acceptance in the general population.

The paper was published Monday in The Lancet medical journal and was co-authored by Marion Gruber and Phil Krause, two top FDA officials in charge of regulating and approving vaccines. Both Gruber and Krause are slated to depart the FDA in the coming weeks, the agency confirmed about two weeks ago.

The Lancet paper’s authors said that available COVID-19 vaccines are able to offer strong protection against severe COVID-19 cases and symptoms. They noted that protection against symptomatic infection from the Delta variant has dropped.

But, they added that “current evidence does not … appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high.”

“Even if boosting were eventually shown to decrease the medium-term risk of serious disease, current vaccine supplies could save more lives if used in previously unvaccinated populations,” the authors added.

Booster shots could lead to more harmful side effects in the general population, which is a poorly understood phenomenon, they cautioned.

“There could be risks if boosters are widely introduced too soon, or too frequently, especially with vaccines that can have immune-mediated side-effects (such as myocarditis, which is more common after the second dose of some mRNA vaccines, or Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has been associated with adenovirus-vectored COVID-19 vaccines ),” the study said.

If “unnecessary boosting causes significant adverse reactions,” such as the aforementioned side-effects, the authors said, “there could be implications for vaccine acceptance that go beyond COVID-19 vaccines.”

In recent days, the WHO has urged wealthier nations not to embark on producing, distributing, or mandating booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last week urged these countries, including the United States, to halt developing booster shots until the end of 2021.

“I will not stay silent when companies and countries that control the global supply of vaccines think the world’s poor should be satisfied with leftovers,” he told a news conference on Sept. 8. “Because manufacturers have prioritized or been legally obliged to fulfill bilateral deals with rich countries willing to pay top dollar, low-income countries have been deprived of the tools to protect their people.”

Meanwhile, both Gruber, the head of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review, and Krause have not issued statements why they are departing the FDA.

According to a memo that was sent by FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research head Peter Marks in August, Gruber is leaving on Oct. 31. Krause is leaving sometime in November, the memo said. In the meantime, Marks will serve as the head of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review.

COVID-19 is the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

FDA Leaders, Other Scientists Say Most People Don’t Need Vaccine Boosters (theepochtimes.com)

Most people in the West believe that China, the Chinese people, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are all the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s time the world wakes up to the fact that the CCP is not China, nor does it represent the Chinese people.

The first politician to point out this fact was former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California in July 2020, Pompeo said: “The Chinese people are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party. The biggest lie that they tell is to think that they speak for 1.4 billion people. The CCP fears the Chinese people’s honest opinions more than any foe.”

On Sept. 1, Professor Miles Yu, former adviser to Pompeo on strategies related to China, took time off his busy schedule and granted me an exclusive interview at his Maryland retreat. He explained why the CCP and the Chinese people are not the same.

Yu, who was born in China and left the country in the mid-1980s, understood what life was like under CCP rule.

“Anyone who has life experience in China would immediately conclude that the interests of the Party and the people are not the same. For example, people want freedom but are denied on the pretext of national security.”

According to Yu, it’s ironic that while the CCP’s interests are at odds with the people’s, it shamelessly claims that the Party represents the Chinese population of about 1.4 billion. Whenever Beijing quarrels with the Western powers, it would accuse them of “hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.” In other words, the CCP tries to intimidate the West by the sheer size of the population under its control.

In Yu’s view, this is like kidnapping the Chinese people for a ransom. “While the CCP silenced the people and tied their hands, they claimed to represent the people they kept hostage—these are exact characteristics of a rogue regime.”

The Chinese regime was infuriated by Pompeo’s statement. State-run media Xinhua published a long article that accused Pompeo of “trying to drive a wedge between the CCP and the Chinese people.”

Furthermore, the Yu family clan in Anhui Province de-listed Miles from the family tree registrar at the behest of local authorities. In the Chinese tradition, this is regarded as a major insult to the Yu family and a heavy “moral” penalty for Miles.

From the fierce reaction of the CCP, Yu deduced that he and Pompeo had directly touched on the CCP’s sore point.

The CCP understands that this distinction between the Party and the people could cost its legitimacy. Before the CCP came to power 100 years ago, it applied the same tactic to undermine the then-ruling Kuomintang, which led to the latter’s eventual downfall.

“Therefore, they are hypersensitive when we point out that they in fact do not represent the Chinese people,” Yu explained.

Indeed, the “wedge” concept is bothering the CCP. On Sept. 3, 2020, Chinese leader Xi Jinping gave a speech during the 75th anniversary of the Anti-Japanese War (1937–1945) and said, “The Chinese people will never allow anyone or any forces trying to drive a wedge between the CCP and the Chinese people.”

The same theme also came up in the Sino-U.S. meeting in Alaska early this year, when Yang Jiechi, the top official for China’s foreign affairs, drew a so-called red line for the United States, warning the latter not to question its legitimacy.

In the past, whenever Beijing complained that a certain U.S. policy “hurts the feeling or the interests of 1.4 billion people,” Washington would soften its stance a bit, Yu said. Starting from Pompeo, this rhetoric no longer worked because “we knew that the CCP does not represent the Chinese people.”

At the policy level, the Trump administration made a clear distinction between the Chinese people and the CCP. While the administration welcomed Chinese nationals to study in the United States, it imposed restrictions on certain CCP members from entering the country.

“We penalize the CCP for hurting Hong Kong, for genocide in Xinjiang, for intimating Taiwan and for violating international law in the South China Sea. All these measures are truly in the interest of the Chinese people but at odds with those of the CCP, Yu said.

Yu believes that by pointing out the obvious fact that the CCP is not the same as China or the Chinese people, this would go a long way toward ending the pro-Beijing appeasement sentiment.

He explained that deep in the American culture, there had been strong sympathy for the Chinese people—thanks to the early Christian missionaries who witnessed the plight and backwardness of the ordinary people. This compassion for the suffering Chinese was best reflected in Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth.”

Unfortunately, this benevolence for the ordinary Chinese citizens was skillfully transformed by the CCP, through propaganda and united front tactics, to serve its own interests. This resulted in a strong appeasement sentiment toward the CCP.

“This appeasement policy had survived eight presidents, until Donald Trump,” Yu said. He believes that appeasement would naturally die down once people realize that the CCP and the Chinese people share diametrically opposite interests.

Yu concluded: “For over half a century, we had been fooled by the Chinese propaganda into believing that the CCP and China meant the same. For the first time, we broke this myth and this is going to have a significant impact in the days to come.”

The CCP Is Not China, Nor Does It Represent the Chinese People (theepochtimes.com)

Planning, according to the American author Alan Lakein, involves “bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” If you want to buy a new house in five years, it helps to start saving today. To have a thriving economy going forward, it helps to have well-trained, highly-skilled graduates. That’s good news for China.

Last month, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), a think tank based in Washington, published a rather telling report. When it comes to the production of STEM PhD graduates, as the authors note, China is fast outpacing the United States. For the uninitiated, STEM refers to the “integrated teaching and learning” of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In other words, it involves a deep understanding of the very subjects that make our lives possible, and the very subjects that are vital for the progression of humanity. Since the “mid-2000s,” as the report notes, “China has consistently graduated more STEM PhDs than the United States, a key indicator of a country’s future competitiveness in STEM fields.”

The gap between China and the United States, we’re told, “will likely grow wider in the next five years.” Chinese universities, once known for rampant plagiarism and questionable teaching practices, are most definitely improving. The authors findings “suggest the quality of doctoral education in China has risen in recent years, and that much of China’s current PhD growth comes from high-quality universities.” If current enrollment patterns continue on this current trajectory, the authors project that “by 2025 Chinese universities will produce more than 77,000 STEM PhD graduates per year compared to approximately 40,000 in the United States.” With more than “three-quarters of Chinese doctoral graduates” specializing in STEM fields, China’s “robust” education system threatens to undermine the “long-term economic and national security” of the United States.

Why is this report important, and why is it a must read for the Biden administration?

From cancer detecting software to virus protection software, drone strikes to drone deliveries, space travel to air travel, modern society is inextricably linked with STEM subjects. This is not good news for the United States, where a precipitous drop in educational standards can be seen in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and elite universities. A number of American educators consider math to be inherently racist. Some people argue that math needs to confront its “white, patriarchal past.” What does this even mean? Empiricism has become the bête noire of many a leftist. Science is not racist. Although science can be carried out by racists, it’s important to make the distinction. A car can be driven by a xenophobe, but we don’t call the car xenophobic. To continue this brief exercise in stating the obvious, math is not racist. Without math, nothing is possible. More importantly, no one gets paid. Regardless of a person’s skin color, we all benefit from math. In a recent piece for Quillette, the authors—three mathematicians “who came to the United States as young immigrants”—describe the ways in which “the nationwide effort to reduce racial disparities, however well-intentioned” only serve to weaken “the connection between merit and scholastic admission.” When everything, including math and science, is viewed through the prism of race, the country suffers.

The trio lament “the deplorable state” of the K-12 “math education system.” A pitiful number of American public-school children, they argue, are prepared for careers in STEM. Not surprisingly, this leaves the United States all too “dependent on a constant inflow of foreign talent, especially from mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, and India.” As “curricula increasingly shift from actual mathematics knowledge to courses about social justice and identity politics,” expect this trend to continue.

The United States is home to a number of outstanding universities. However, it’s little use having such extraordinary establishments if they’re not being used to breed extraordinary minds. If the United States is to have any chance of competing with China, serious changes are needed, and they’re needed fast.

Sadly, the only changes we’re seeing are harmful ones. If in doubt, let me point you to Oregon. Governor Kate Brown recently signed Senate Bill 744 into law. For the next five years, all Oregonian high school students who wish to graduate will be exempt from having to demonstrate proficiency in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics to graduate. The bill, according to reports, was introduced in order to help “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.” One wonders how dumbing down graduation requirements helps anyone.

Many progressive-minded educators are determined to “reimagine” the way subjects like math and science are taught in schools. But they don’t need to be “reimagined.” They need to be left alone and they need to be taught properly. The United States is currently ranked 31st in math literacy out of 79 countries. China, meanwhile, ranks 1st in mathematical proficiency. Now, with the average IQ of American children continuing to fall, and the dumbing down of education in full swing, expect the proficiency gap to widen. Without enough STEM graduates, how is the United States expected to compete with China? This is an important question that requires immediate answers.

Who Benefits From the Dumbing Down of American Education? China (theepochtimes.com)

A Norwegian pension fund that recently announced it planned to blacklist Israeli companies in the West Bank has poured hundreds of millions into Chinese companies linked to slave labor and Russian entities on the U.S. sanctions list.

Norges Bank’s Government Pension Fund Global, Norway’s largest pension fund, placed several Israeli companies in the West Bank on its “excluded companies” list earlier this month, citing “serious infringements of the rights of the individual in situations of war or conflict in connection with the construction of roads linked to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.”

At the same time, Norges held over $150 million in investments in at least seven companies that operated in or are suspected of using forced labor from the Xinjiang province of China, where Uyghur Muslims face human rights abuses, according to the fund’s most recent financial disclosures from last December. And the fund also held $1.8 billion in shares in at least six Russian energy companies and banks that are under U.S. financial restrictions or sanctions.

The fund’s investments raise questions about its decision-making process for divestments. While Norges Bank cut ties with Israeli companies, it has yet to bar controversial Russian and Chinese companies from future investments. Anti-Israel boycotts are growing more common in progressive circles. Earlier this year, Ben & Jerry’s announced it was ending its operations in the West Bank, prompting a wave of public backlash and the threat of financial penalties against the ice cream company from several U.S. states.

“The decisions made by the Executive Board of Norges Bank, announced last week, were made based on recommendations from the Council on Ethics,” said Line Aaltvedt, a spokesman for Norges Bank. “The Ministry of Finance has established the independent Council on Ethics to evaluate whether or not the fund’s investments in specified companies is consistent with its Ethical Guidelines.”

Norges Bank did not indicate whether it still holds shares in Chinese companies linked to slave labor or Russian firms under U.S. sanctions. The fund said last year that it would be reviewing its investments in companies that are linked to forced labor in Xinjiang, but the entities are not included on the fund’s list of “excluded companies,” which was updated earlier this month.

The list is overseen and approved by the fund’s executive board, which acts based on formal recommendations from the Council on Ethics. Such recommendations are kept private until the bank unloads its shares.

According to Norges Bank’s most recent investment disclosure from last December, the pension fund held $28 million in investments in Daqo New Energy Corp., whose Xinjiang subsidiary was blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Commerce this summer for “accepting or utilizing forced labor in the implementation of the People’s Republic of China’s campaign of repression against Muslim minority groups.” The fund also held a $35 million stake in JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd., a solar panel company that is supplied by Daqo—over 1 percent of JinkoSolar’s shares.

The Government Pension Fund Global listed a $30 million investment in GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd., a company that was also designated by the Commerce Department.

In addition, it held stakes in several Xinjiang-based manufacturers, including Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology, which has been accused of supporting forced Uyghur labor and has come under scrutiny for its work with Apple.

Other Government Pension Fund Global investments have been subject to U.S. sanctions. This includes a subsidiary of China’s state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which produces military aircraft and was placed on an investment blacklist by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The fund also disclosed stakes in subsidiaries of Russia’s Lukoil, Novatek, Surgutneftegas, Sberbank, and Gazprom, which have been sanctioned by the Treasury Department related to their work in the Russian energy sector and oil production.

Johan H. Andresen, chair of the fund’s Council on Ethics, told Reuters in March that he was “concerned that some of our companies in the fund may make use of this [forced] labour” in Xinjiang.

“If we were to make a recommendation [to exclude these companies from investments] it would be in the first half of this year,” Andresen told Reuters.

The Chinese foreign ministry denied that it persecutes Uyghurs and urged Norway to “respect the facts” and avoid “politicizing economic trade and cooperation,” according to Reuters.

Norwegian Pension Fund Boycotts Israel While Investing in Companies Linked to Chinese Slave Labor (freebeacon.com)

Several Chinese Communist Party-backed influence groups have sponsored events and trips to China for U.S. officials – including Joe Biden’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack – as part of a broader crusade to increase collaboration between the two countries on agriculture and farming.

The unearthing of the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA) ties to Chinese foreign influence groups follow reports of Chinese Communist Party members and firms buying up American farmland, raising national security concerns among lawmakers.

Founded by former Democrat Governor of Missouri Bob Holden, the USHCA purports to be a “bipartisan organization committed to building stronger ties between USHCA Region (20 states located in the USA between the Great Lakes to the Gulf) and the People’s Republic of China.”

“Our focus will be on Trust Building efforts connecting government officials; business leaders; educational and community interests with like minded institutions between the Heartland Region and the People’s Republic of China,” the group’s mission statement euphemizes.

In addition to partnering with various branches of the Chinese regime, the USHCA also is “proudly working with” the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

The organization is an integral component of the Chinese Communist Party’s “United Front,” an effort that seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the U.S. government.

The USHCA has also co-hosted events alongside the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), regarded as the “public face” of the United Front and an “avowed arm of the party-state.” The U.S. State Department has described the group as seeking to “directly and malignly influence” U.S. state and local leaders.

MUST READ

EXC: Fauci-Funded Researchers & U.S. Officials Star In Chinese State Propaganda Documentary.

Through USHCA’s partnerships with the National Governor’s Association and The United States Conference of Mayors, the aforementioned Chinese Communist Party-linked influence groups have courted several American representatives with sponsored speeches or travel. Joe Biden’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has participated in events with the USHCA – which “celebrated” his appointment to Biden’s cabinet – as recently as May 2020.

The group also hosts an annual “U.S.-China Agriculture Roundtable”, which counted presentations from officials including Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, Director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture Chris Chinn, and Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture Thom Petersen in 2021.

In partnership with CUSEF, the USHCA has also sponsored trips to China for delegation consisting of American heartland mayors. CUSEF has also deployed this tactic on American journalists, offering free trips to the country in exchange for “favorable coverage,” according to Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings. The trips functioned as part of a broader effort to “effectively disseminate positive messages to the media, key influencers and opinion leaders, and the general public” regarding China.

USHCA delegation participants have also called for closer collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party on agriculture and farming, including Sioux Falls, South Dakota Mayor Paul TenHaken in an op-ed recently wiped from the internet, upon return:

It is time that Sioux Falls looks at developing deeper, more consistent relationships with key Chinese communities and businesses. Both the city leaders of Guangzhou and Shenzhen—with populations of 20 million each—expressed interest in forming some government partnership between Sioux Falls and one of their city districts. These relationships are critical first steps in establishing both trust and economic partnerships between our communities. One of our largest employers—Smithfield Foods—is owned by a Chinese parent company, and my office has had several other discussions with business development opportunities that have Chinese ownership ties. The Sioux Falls economy would strengthen via stronger cultural and business relations with key Chinese partners.

Among the other representatives joining USHCA’s inaugural 2019 delegation were Mayor of Carmel, Indiana James Brainard, Mayor of Youngstown, Ohio Jamael Tito Brown, and Mayor of Maumee, Ohio Richard Carr.

MUST READ

EXC: Media’s ‘Lab Leak’ Denial Darling Is Actually Ex-Chinese Communist Advisor.

REVEALED: Biden Cabinet Secretaries, Local Mayors Collude With Chinese Communist Party on Agriculture Policy. (thenationalpulse.com)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top U.S. public health official, said that a new study regarding so-called natural immunity following COVID-19 infection is provoking discussion among government experts.

The real-world study, conducted by Israeli researchers, found that previous COVID-19 infection confers better protection against infection and hospitalization than COVID-19 vaccines.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was asked Friday about the research in the context of convincing people who have natural immunity, or recovered from COVID-19, to get vaccinated.

“I get calls all the time people say, ‘I’ve already had COVID, I’m protected.’ And now the study says maybe even more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine? How do you make the case to them?” Dr. Sanjay Gupta asked Fauci during an appearance on CNN.

“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that,” Fauci responded.

“That’s something that we’re going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response. The one thing that paper from Israel didn’t tell you is whether or not—as high as the protection is with natural infection—what’s the durability compared to the durability of a vaccine? So it is conceivable that you got infected, you’re protected, but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time,” he continued.

“So I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously because you very appropriately pointed out, it is an issue, and there could be an argument for saying what you said.”

Some experts who have studied the matter have expressed confusion as to why vaccination efforts are not focused on those who have not gotten a shot and have not recovered from COVID-19.

“We’re trying to update policy such that people who have recovered have the same privileges and access as people who are vaccinated,” Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, clinical professor of preventive medicine and medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, told The Epoch Times previously.

The Israel findings, because they’re based on real-world data, even led Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to call for natural immunity to be part of policy discussions.

“The balance of the evidence demonstrates that natural immunity confers a durable protection,” Gottlieb said during a recent television appearance.

Official guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges people have some level of immunity after COVID-19 recovery. But the agency still recommends the vast majority of Americans get a COVID-19 vaccine, asserting the protection is even better when combining natural immunity and a jab.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, last month pointed to a study conducted by CDC and Kentucky researchers that suggested vaccines actually provide better protection than previous infection.

“These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone and that vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections,” the agency said in a statement.

Fauci: No ‘Firm Answer’ on Why Americans Who Recovered From COVID-19 Should Get Vaccinated (theepochtimes.com)

President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has ruined, perhaps for decades, America’s most important bilateral relationship of this era.

If Washington is going to deter a militant China, it needs the support of democratic India. Unfortunately, India looks like the country most immediately—and perhaps most adversely—affected by the Biden-created debacle. As a result, New Delhi could decide to side not with America but with a Chinese ally, Moscow.

New Delhi was one of the staunchest supporters of the American-backed Afghan government and was working alongside Washington in the war against the Taliban and other insurgents. For instance, Indian intelligence was instrumental in breaking up an Afghan ring of Chinese spies working with the Haqqani Network. The Trump administration believed that the Chinese members of that ring, taken into custody last December, were, among other things, offering cash to kill American troops in-country.

India saw the Afghan government as a friend in blunting extremism in neighboring Pakistan, which has always defined itself as India’s enemy. Islamabad continually foments trouble in India-controlled Kashmir and has continually backed insurgents targeting India. The Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who attacked targets in Mumbai in November 2008, for instance, came from Pakistan and relied heavily on Pakistani government resources.

The fall of the Afghan government was, therefore, a blow to New Delhi. Worse, the inability of the Biden administration to orchestrate an orderly withdrawal resulted in compounding the damage to Indian interests.

“The U.S. left behind reinvigorated jihadist networks, tens of billions of dollars in weapons and communications systems, critical strategic infrastructure, and even, reportedly, intel not only on who was working with the U.S. but some who were working with India,” Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Gatestone. “Physically, the closest target for this massively armed and confident jihadist resurgence is India. As a result of decisions taken in Washington, India is dramatically less secure today than it was a few months ago.”

To obtain security, New Delhi had been looking toward the United States. Consequently, Russia’s and China’s friends in Indian policy circles were losing influence, a trend especially evident after the Chinese incursions in Ladakh beginning in May of last year. Russia’s friends were delegitimized by that event because Moscow had assured New Delhi that the movement of Chinese forces in Tibet, which occurred immediately before the invasion, was only a drill.

As a result of Ladakh and other incidents, the government of Narendra Modi had been working fast to build military ties with the United States. In the wake of the fall of Kabul, however, relationships with Washington have been put on ice. “Indian strategists who have been saying that the way forward is working more closely with the U.S. are being openly taunted by those who have a more pro-Moscow bent,” Paskal, also associated with Chatham House, reports.

“There is a reassessment going on,” she added. “One possible outcome is that Delhi works more closely with Tokyo, and possibly Canberra and Taipei.” Japan, Australia, India, and the United States form what is known as the Quad, which up until the fall of Kabul was coming together as an effective grouping. Now, all bets are off.

Another scenario is that New Delhi decides to work more closely with Russia, reviving decades-old ties. Russia, of course, is increasingly aligned with China.

In the wake of the fall of Afghanistan, Taiwan has become the critical test of American resolve, especially as President Biden has justified the withdrawal as a strategic move to counter Russia and China. “The world is changing,” he said to the American people on Aug. 31. “We’re engaged in a serious competition with China. We’re dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia.”

It is significant, therefore, that on Aug. 27 USS Kidd, an American guided-missile destroyer, and USCG Munro, a Coast Guard cutter, transited the Taiwan Strait. The transits come on the heels of Vice President Kamala Harris’s welcome comments in both Singapore and Hanoi on China’s “bullying” in the South China Sea.

The Biden administration may in fact be willing to defend Taiwan, but that is not all that counts at this crucial time. What also counts are perceptions, and the perceptions that especially count are those in Beijing. Chinese propagandists promoted two narratives as Kabul fell: The United States will not defend Taiwan and an America unable to deal with the Taliban cannot hope to stand up to China.

Those two narratives appear to in fact reflect Chinese thinking, especially because the withdrawal from Afghanistan signaled to Beijing a complete failure of the U.S. intelligence community, the Pentagon, and the White House national security apparatus. Chinese exercises in areas adjacent to Taiwan in August and an Aug. 13 simulated attack on Taiwan with a short-range missile are, in this context, ominous.

The other perceptions that count are those in New Delhi, which had been inching toward closer cooperation with Taiwan. Indian thinkers realized that they needed to challenge China in its peripheral seas as China was challenging India in its nearby waters. India’s close ties with Vietnam are an indication that India perceives its security as dependent on an open South China Sea and even East China Sea. Taiwan, which sits at the intersection of those bodies of water, is essential in keeping sea lanes there open.

America more than ever needs India’s help in ensuring peace in the ring of countries surrounding China and its surrounding waters. Now, however, India could desert America as America has just deserted India. Said Paskal, “To say there is a crisis in trust in current U.S. policymaking in New Delhi is an understatement.”

From the Gatestone Institute.

Chaotic Afghanistan Pullout Puts Important Relationship With India in Peril (theepochtimes.com)

As President Joe Biden launches via executive order a sweeping vaccine mandate for all federal government workers, and now a brand-new initiative for private sector mandates, the issue has once again risen to the forefront of the national dialogue. United Airlines, for example, recently became the first U.S. airline to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for all its employees. United Airlines’ mandate takes effect on Sept. 27, and it might augur a broader trend: A poll conducted last month by insurance and advisory firm Willis Towers Watson, for example, suggests that 52 percent of private sector employers surveyed expect to have a workplace vaccine mandate by the end of 2021. As Biden’s brand-new announcement of a Department of Labor rule for private sector vaccination requirement now makes clear, that poll was prescient.

Against this backdrop, several Republican-leaning states have advanced laws or executive orders that prohibit private sector vaccine mandates for employees, customers, or in some other respect. That tally is now at least eight states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Texas, South Carolina, and South Dakota. The legal mechanics and specifics differ from state to state. But the highest-profile and most mechanically straightforward Republican-led assault on vaccine mandates is the one in my new home state, Florida.

In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has emerged as a talismanic figure of sorts for those standing athwart COVID-induced hysteria, signed into law SB 2006. The legislation bans private businesses, local governments, and schools from issuing vaccine mandates for customers or members of the public. On Aug. 27, Florida’s Department of Health announced that it will enforce SB 2006 via $5,000 fines “per individual and separate violation.” That rule will go into effect on Sept. 16, though DeSantis had previously already taken aim at mandatory private sector vaccinations via executive order even prior to the passage of SB 2006.

Amid the pending Biden Department of Labor vaccination rule for all employers with 100 or more employees, there will now inevitably be mass litigation between the states and the federal government. But while that litigation begins to percolate, the battle lines were already clarified.

Progressives, whose various echo chambers have led them to believe COVID is a modern-day apocalypse despite a 98 to 99 percent (at least) survival rate, predictably march in lockstep against bans on vaccine mandates. It is perhaps the only time progressives defend private enterprise against public regulation, broadly speaking. But those on the right have divided over the question of what role, if any, the state should play in regulating private sector vaccine mandate promulgation and enforcement.

The private sector vaccine mandate, much like the roiling debates over Big Tech regulation, is a proxy for a broader intellectual fault line on the right. That divide is between the more adamantly classical liberal, libertarian-inspired pundits and politicians who believe the quintessence of sound governance is simply permitting individuals and private entities to do what they wish, and the more common-good-inspired figures who believe the breadth and depth of the threat from our wokeist ruling class is such that we must be less skittish about the prudential use of state power to secure the deplorables’ basic way of life.

On this matter, as in many other matters, the DeSantis-style common-good conservatives have the better of the doctrinaire “let businesses do whatever they want” libertarian absolutists. It is important to understand why.

President Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” That was probably true when the Gipper said it, but times have changed. The new, 21st century threat comes in the form of a sprawling, paninstitutional ruling class whose public and private sector branches alike worship at the secular altar of wokeism. That ruling class has no interest in abiding by any sort of neutral “live and let live” niceties; its interest is in banning conservative speech from social media, soft-banning conservative ideas from the academy by means of “microaggressions” and “safe spaces,” and so on. As I have argued, we should think of the new “most terrifying words” as, “I’m from the ruling class, and I’m here to subjugate you.”

Vaccine mandates will be a convenient fig leaf for a ruling class already gung-ho at the possibility of precluding conservatives from the full panoply of in-person public life: air travel, concerts, or even private banking services. Accordingly, the governing imperative is to use state power to protect those who may harbor not-unreasonable reservations about the COVID vaccines against woke capital and woke businesses champing at the bit to forsake those who have made a different decision about what to do with their bodies than what our elites may wish. Dispensations will always be made, but the default legal rule should be a general ban on private sector vaccine mandates. Those still very concerned about COVID, after all, can always vaccinate themselves: The vaccines presumably work well, as we are constantly told.

It is the obligation of patriots in 2021, to quote Claremont Institute senior fellow David Reaboi, to “know what time it is.” On vaccine mandates, that means following the DeSantis lead, and, as now appears to be necessary, launching strategic state-led lawsuits against an overzealous Biden administration dead-set on making COVID hysteria the law of the land.

The Vaccine Mandate Assault on the Common Good (theepochtimes.com)

Joe Biden outright rejected criticism of his federal vaccine mandate Friday, telling Republicans to “have at it” should they choose to file lawsuits against his administration.

[Some Governors] are calling your vaccine requirements an overreach and are threatening to challenge it in the courts,” yelled one reporter.

“Have at it,” said the President. “I am so disappointed that -particularly some Republican governors- have been so cavalier with the health of these kids. So cavalier with the health of these communities”

“Have at it.” — President Biden to those governors threatening lawsuits over the vaccine-or-weekly-testing mandate for large businesses.

He adds, “I am so disappointed that particularly some Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids.” pic.twitter.com/rYc0QWHkOX

— The Recount (@therecount) September 10, 2021

“My plan will extend the vaccination requirements that I previously issued in the health care field. Already, I’ve announced we’ll be requiring vaccinations that all nursing home workers who treat patients on Medicare and Medicaid, because I have that federal authority.,” said Biden Thursday night.

“Today, in total, the vaccine requirements in my plan will affect about 100 million Americans — two-thirds of all workers. And for other sectors, I issue this appeal: To those of you running large entertainment venues from sports arenas to concert venues to movie theaters, please require folks to get vaccinated or show a negative test as a condition of entry.,” he added.

“My message to unvaccinated Americans is this: What more is there to wait for? What more do you need to see? We’ve made vaccinations free, safe and convenient. The vaccine is F.D.A. approved. Over 200 million Americans have gotten at least one shot. We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us,” concluded the Commander-in-Chief

‘HAVE AT IT’: Biden Dismisses Potential Lawsuits Over Vax Mandate, Says ‘Patience’ Wearing Thin | Sean Hannity

President Joe Biden issued a series of vaccine mandates Thursday night that applies to federal employees and private employers, directly contradicting comments he made in December 2020.

“Do you think both vaccines should be mandatory?” asked one reporter in December 2020.

“No, I don’t think it should be mandatory. I wouldn’t demand it be mandatory, but I would do everything in my power, just like I don’t think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide,” said then President-Elect Biden.

Republican Governors are planning new lawsuits to stop the mandates that could impact upwards of 100 million workers.

“This is not about freedom, or personal choice,” Biden said during his 5pm address. “It’s about protecting yourself and those around you — the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love … We cannot allow these actions to stand in the way of protecting the large majority of Americans who have done their part, who want to get back to life as normal.”

“This is not a power that is delegated to the federal government,” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem told Sean Hannity Thursday night. “This is a power for states to decide. In South Dakota, we’re going to be free and we’re going to make sure that we don’t overstep our authority. So we will take action. My legal team is already working, and we will defend and protect our people from this unlawful mandate.”

“COVID-19 is a contagious disease, it is still with us and it will be for the foreseeable future,” added Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. “President Biden’s solution is hammering down on private businesses and individual freedoms in an unprecedented and dangerous way … How many workers will be displaced? How many kids kept out of classrooms? How many businesses fined?”

FLASHBACK 2020: Joe Biden Says ‘I Don’t Think’ Vaccines ‘Should Be Mandatory’ | Sean Hannity

Critical race theory (CRT) aims to indoctrinate students and turn them into “Red Guards,” akin to those during the Cultural Revolution in China, warned Xi Van Fleet, a Chinese-American living in northern Virginia’s Loudoun County, at a “Rally to Save Our Schools” event on Sept. 8.

She called CRT “communist race tactics” with the goal of “indoctrinating our kids, dividing Americans, and controlling Americans.”

She added that she would talk to Chinese-language media to tell Chinese-Americans not to stay silent.

“If you still want to enjoy the prosperity and the freedom of this country, now it’s your turn—join the fight,” she said.

She said that upon taking over China in 1949, the first thing the CCP did was to indoctrinate teachers with Marxist ideology so they could teach it to students. Red Guards were the “full display” of what indoctrinated children could do, she said.

The Red Guards were communist youth led by then-CCP leader Mao Zedong to persecute those identified as the CCP’s “class enemies” during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. They beat up their teachers in public and tore down temples and statues.

“They became Mao’s bulldogs,” said Van Fleet, adding that she saw a similar phenomenon in America during the “so-called summer of unrest,” referring to the riots during Black Lives Matter protests.

CRT adherents believe America is systemically racist, that racial oppression exists in every institution, and that an individual is either an oppressor or oppressed based on the color of their skin.

Monica Gill, a Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) teacher who teaches Advanced Placement government, said that the LCPS was indoctrinating teachers with CRT tenets to trickle down the effect onto students. Though LCPS is not explicitly telling teachers to teach CRT to students, it is “imposing this very distorted lens of race on kids,” Gill said.

“Our kids are in this cultural battle with us … And we have been asleep at the wheel, just thinking that everything in public schools is okay with the majority of teachers—they are teaching our kids the right things—and that’s not the case,” Gill added.

LCPS Public Information Officer Wayde Byard stated in an email to The Epoch Times, “As LCPS has stated, repeatedly, Critical Race Theory is not part of its student curriculum.” He didn’t comment on Gill’s assertion of the LCPS indoctrinating teachers and students.

Political Action

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin also attended the event. He accused his opponent, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, of introducing CRT in Virginia’s schools during his administration in 2015 and that McAuliffe called concerns of CRT a “right-wing conspiracy.” The Epoch Times contacted McAuliffe’s campaign for comments and didn’t receive them by press time.

On June 30, in front of the LCPS school administration building in Ashburn, Virginia, Youngkin promised to ban CRT if elected on day one of his administration. “He will end the use of divisive critical race theory in professional development and as an approach to education,” a Youngkin campaign spokesperson wrote in an email to The Epoch Times on Sept. 9.

“I will preside over the largest education budget in the history of Virginia … to reestablish expectations of excellence in the school systems across Virginia that used to be known nationally for the best place to send your kids,” said Youngkin.

McAuliffe’s campaign announced that Youngkin’s tax cut plan would result in Virginia’s schools losing funds, based on a new study by Virginia Excels, an education advocacy organization.

“Between the available surplus, remaining one-time federal funds, and expected future revenue growth, Glenn’s plan can provide significant tax relief to address the cost of living while making a significant investment in education,” a Youngkin campaign spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

Polls have shown a close race for the next Virginia governor. A new one by WPA Intelligence conducted for the Youngkin campaign shows him leading McAuliffe for the first time at 48 percent versus 46 percent. The poll, released on Sept. 8, surveyed 734 likely Virginia voters between Aug. 30 and Sept. 2. Its margin of error is 3.6 percent.

Early voting in Virginia starts next week.

Critical Race Theory Aims to Turn Students Into ‘Red Guards,’ Chinese American Warns (theepochtimes.com)

More than a dozen governors and two attorneys general late Thursday issued statements defying the Biden administration’s impending vaccine mandates for federal workers and private-sector workers.

President Joe Biden earlier in the day signed an executive order to require all federal workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. There would be no option to opt out via COVID-19 testing. The mandate also applies to government contractors and their employees.

The president later announced he would direct the Department of Labor to create a rule to have companies with over 100 employees mandate vaccinations or weekly testing, a move that impacts more than 80 million workers in the private sector.

At least 19 governors and two attorneys general immediately issued statements disagreeing with the administration’s move, with several vowing to defy it.

They include the governors of Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.

They were joined by at least two state attorneys general as of Thursday night—Sean D. Reyes from Utah and Todd Rokita from Indiana.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the chair of the National Governors Association, said in a statement, “I fully support continued efforts to increase vaccination rates across our nation, but the federal government mandates on private businesses are not the right answer.

“I have been consistent in freedom of businesses to require their employees to be vaccinated, and I have opposed the government from saying businesses cannot exercise that freedom,” he added. “The same principle should protect the private sector from government overreach that requires them to vaccinate all employees.”

Multiple Republican governors, including for Arizona, Georgia, and South Dakota, hinted or announced that they would seek legal avenues to resist the mandates.

“The COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective tools to prevent the disease, but getting the vaccine is and should be a choice,” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said in a statement. “These mandates are outrageous. They will never stand up in court. We must and will push back.”

“I will pursue every legal option available to the state of Georgia to stop this blatantly unlawful overreach by the Biden administration,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said on Twitter.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem issued a statement on Twitter, saying, “South Dakota will stand up to defend freedom. @JoeBiden see you in court.” She later shared another Twitter post saying that her legal team is prepared to stand up to the Biden administration’s mandates.

The Biden administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden earlier in the day commented on the issue of vaccine mandates in schools, saying, “if these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as President to get them out of the way.”

Biden said the matter of getting more shots into arms is “is not about freedom or personal choice. It’s about protecting yourself and those around you—the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love.”

Statements from the remaining governors and attorneys general as of late Thursday are as below:

• Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (in part): “I support the science and encourage folks taking the vaccine. However, I am absolutely against a government mandate on the vaccine, which is why I signed the vaccine passport ban into law here in Alabama. This is not the role of the government.”
• Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy: “This is ridiculous and unenforceable. If there was ever a case for the 25th Amendment…”
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (at a press conference): “I do not believe that people should lose their jobs over this issue, and we will fight that. If they try to do that through a rule like the Department of Labor, I don’t think they have the legal authority to do that, but we obviously would want to support protections for people who are just trying to earn a living.”
• Idaho Gov. Brad Little: “Today’s actions from President Biden amount to government overreach. Government should stay out of decisions involving employers and their employees as much as possible. I’ve advocated for and championed fewer government regulations and mandates on business.”
• Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds: “President Biden is taking dangerous and unprecedented steps to insert the federal government even further into our lives while dismissing the ability of Iowans and Americans to make healthcare decisions for themselves. Biden’s plan will only worsen our workforce shortage and further limit our economic recovery. As I’ve said all along, I believe and trust in Iowans to make the best health decisions for themselves and their families. It’s time for President Biden to do the same. Enough is enough.”
• Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (in part): “Vaccination protects us from serious illness, but the decision to get vaccinated is a private health care decision that should remain as such. My administration will always fight back against federal power grabs and government overreach that threatens to limit our freedoms.”
• Mississippi Gov. Mike Reeves: “The President has no authority to require that Americans inject themselves because of their employment at a private business. The vaccine itself is life-saving, but this unconstitutional move is terrifying. This is still America, and we still believe in freedom from tyrants.”
• Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte: “President Biden’s vaccination mandate is unlawful and un-American. We are committed to protecting Montanans’ freedoms and liberties against this gross federal overreach.”
• Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts: “President Biden’s announcement is a stunning violation of personal freedom and abuse of the federal government’s power. This plan isn’t about public health—this is about government control and taking away personal liberties.”
• North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum: “President Biden’s misguided plan steers our country down a dangerous path away from states’ rights and the freedom of private businesses to make their own decisions on vaccinations. We stand opposed to this blatant federal overreach.”
• Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt: “It is not the government’s role to dictate to private businesses what to do. Once again President Biden is demonstrating his complete disregard for individual freedoms and states’ rights. As long as I am governor, there will be no government vaccine mandates in Oklahoma. My administration will continue to defend Oklahoma values and fight back against the Biden administration’s federal overreach.”
• South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster: “The American Dream has turned into a nightmare under President Biden and the radical Democrats. They have declared war against capitalism, thumbed their noses at the Constitution, and empowered our enemies abroad. Rest assured, we will fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian.”
• Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee: “‘This is not about freedom’ is a phrase that should never come out of a U.S. President’s mouth. For a fight that requires working together, a lot of cynical and divisive edicts came out of the White House today pitting the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, businesses against employees, and the federal government against states.”
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: “Biden’s vaccine mandate is an assault on private businesses. I issued an Executive Order protecting Texans’ right to choose whether they get the COVID vaccine & added it to the special session agenda. Texas is already working to halt this power grab.”
• Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (in part): “I have asked the Attorney General to stand prepared to take all actions to oppose this administration’s unconstitutional overreach of executive power. It has no place in America. Not now, and not ever.”

19 Governors, 2 AGs Resist Biden’s Vaccine Mandates (theepochtimes.com)

Interview with the Antichrist is a must-see film, especially for Christians. In the movie, the Antichrist interviewee made a warning that soon he would take all lukewarm Christians to Hell, instead of being saved by God. Who is this guy? And who are the lukewarm? Could this happen in the real world, and how to prevent it? You will get an answer to these questions after watching this feature.

Director Timothy A. Chey shared he was an atheist until in his 30s. Since then, he has become very spiritual and committed to making faith-based films. Chey does not think the movies he made are merely fictional or for entertainment. “My one and only goal is to bring people true salvation in Christ in these very last days,” Chey said, “the Lord is coming sooner than we think.” And what he is most interested to illustrate is the battle of Armageddon described in the book of Revelations—the destruction of humanity by the Antichrist before God returns and how mankind would go through this great tribulation.

“I believe the Antichrist is alive right now,” Chey stated, “so it intrigued me to show a live broadcast with the Antichrist to ask him every question under the sun.” That is why, in the film, the Antichrist is peppered with stark questions including media domination, the battle between pastor John MacArthur and the California governor, the ACLU, Netflix and couch potatoes, the 9/11 terrorist attack, mass shootings, radical left movements, communist China, the evils of political correctness, pandemic lockdowns, and other mandates.

In the movie, the Antichrist mocks Pope Francis’ Interfaith Unity movement and lukewarm Christians spending more hours watching food channels than reading the Bible. Is even the Pope lukewarm? Some churchgoers may be shocked.

Lukewarm is neither hot nor cold. Lukewarm Christians are people who claim they have faith in Lord, but in the real world, are on and off. Are you lukewarm? Maybe you’re thinking, “No, I’m a devout believer of God.” That is remarkable. But wait for a minute. Is this your resolution or actual daily practice?

When the apostles worried about their clothes and bread, and when frightened by the storm, they were called “ones of little faith.” Peter denied his identity three times, even though he was the first disciple to acknowledge the Messiah.

Like water being cooked, every molecule of water in the pot is lukewarm until it boils. So lukewarm might not be name-calling, but a description of certain status or phase in the spiritual journey. And a person’s spiritual level is not static throughout one’s life; shifts in both directions are possible.

Viewer Joan Enderman agrees this movie is a wake-up call because she has found herself “slipping,” “being a Christian and sealed by the Holy Spirit does not give us immunity from sin and slipping backward.” Another viewer Christine Kenyon notes, “it now becomes harder and more of a spiritual battle because our eyes and hearts have been opened.” The movie talked about people being deceived or attached to worldly desires. For example, the lure of pornography is everywhere, from movies to TV shows, from advertisements on the street to the internet.

The Antichrist in the film is an anthropomorphized character. Through the dialogue between host Alex Carter and the Antichrist, the film conveys that the Antichrist is alive and is everywhere, as many politicians and influential figures believe more in the power of man than in God. This is exactly the spirit of the Antichrist.

Undoubtedly, communism or Marxism has been a collective representation of the Antichrist for the last hundred years. Opposing capitalism and preaching common prosperity through violence are just the political slogans of communists. But anti-God and anti-humanity are their hidden intentions.

The communist regimes have killed hundreds of millions of innocent people simply because of their spiritual beliefs. Affirmed by the China Tribunal, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime has committed forced organ harvesting for years on a significant scale, “an unprecedented evil on this planet.” The reason the communists denigrate and eliminate all traditional beliefs and values is that they want humans to worship them as god or savior.

If you were thinking the Antichrist would only appear in the Western world, that might be a mistake. Revelation 14:9 reads that the worshippers of the beast will receive “the mark on his forehead or on his hand.” Think about the communist posture of raising their hands to take the oath, and then you may understand the verses better.

Likewise, Revelation 17:1-2 says, “The great whore… With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” Who better to be called the great whore than the CCP that has lured the leaders on earth with money and coaxed the inhabitants of the earth with poor quality and low-priced goods?

Stressed in the movie, the Antichrist and his secular agents are most adept at creating and exploiting various forms of crisis to panic people into ceding their rights to the government and totalitarians. Hence, many people fear that America might become like a communist country.

If you are someone who wants to take your faith seriously, or is concerned about the future of America, or cares about the health and well-being of yourself and your family, I suggest you watch this film. It is available on EpochTV, a streaming platform for exclusive programming that includes investigative news analysis, in-depth interviews, and award-winning documentaries and films.

Lukewarm Christians, Watch This Before It’s Too Late (theepochtimes.com)

Paul Shinkman of U.S. News wrote the other day:

“China is considering deploying military personnel and economic development officials to Bagram airfield, perhaps the single-most prominent symbol of the 20-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

“The Chinese military is currently conducting a feasibility study about the effect of sending workers, soldiers and other staff related to its foreign economic investment program known as the Belt and Road Initiative in the coming years to Bagram, according to a source briefed on the study by Chinese military officials, who spoke to U.S. News on the condition of anonymity.”

As Moon Unit Zappa used to say, “Gag me with a spoon!”

Feasibility study? You don’t have to be Nostradamus to figure out how that’s going to turn out, assuming it hasn’t been done already and this is just a masquerade.

Why wouldn’t the Chinese take over Bagram? It’s sitting there.

And no real estate could be more apt for their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road), essentially a large-scale bait-and-switch operation. The Chinese—in reality the Chinese Communist Party—lends the poor country—in this case the impoverished Taliban—money to modernize their infrastructure with the caveat that, if they don’t pay off the loan in a certain amount of time, guess who owns said infrastructure?

Well, we know the answer to that. The Chinese are in essence buying the world with the help, note well, of some of the most prominent American firms (pdf) busy enriching themselves with more money than most of us can compute.

(If you’re interested in how successful the BRI has been, here’s a helpful map from the Council of Foreign Relations.)

What has occurred in recent days is that China has achieved something absolutely free for which the Soviets and the United States wasted decades of personnel (tragically dead or wounded), matériel and trillions of dollars, not to mention ended up by disgracing themselves in the eyes of the world.

Effectively, the Chinese own Afghanistan, the important parts of it anyway—airbases, ports, mineral rights, and so forth—or will shortly.

As for internal Taliban affairs, the Chinese communists aren’t about to lift a finger about the horrifying level of women’s rights or the extensive drug growing and dealing the terror group engages in, especially if they send as much of it as possible to America.

As long as the various Islamic terror organizations leave the Chinese alone, the Chinese will let them do as they wish. Yes, some—al-Qaeda, ISIS-K, one we haven’t heard of yet—may make a fuss about the treatment of the Uyghurs and make their violent presence known, but I would imagine they ultimately see the Chinese forces as much more ruthless than the Americans (now especially) and this will be at best a temporary sideshow of little global importance. Realpolitik will be at play on both Chinese and Taliban (Islamic) sides as they benefit each other, at least for now.

So how did we get here? If this is all so obvious—and it is—wasn’t our State Department and our military aware of how this would, or certainly could, turn out? (Wouldn’t they at least leave a small NATO force guarding Bagram and destroy our weaponry?)

I imagine many of our officials were—how could they not be—aware of this eventuality. And that’s highly disturbing.

Why then did the USA cede Afghanistan—a territory bounded by Iran and Pakistan, among other states, not to mention control of much of the world’s rare earths and other key resources—to the increasingly totalitarian China of Xi Jinping?

For an answer, it’s hard not to think back to those days when, shortly before declaring for the presidency and reversing himself on the topic, our current president told us “The Chinese aren’t our enemies, folks.”

Was he covering up for his own activities and connections that could have been recorded on his son Hunter Biden’s laptop, much of which is as yet unseen? Do the Chinese, in the crudest sense, have something on him? Unfortunately, considering the operations and governance of our FBI and Department of Justice, we may never know.

We can, however, make our own surmises. But whatever they may be, they’re only a part of a more depressing overall zeitgeist.

I have believed for some time—and our extraordinarily rapid and ill-conceived evacuation of Afghanistan, leaving behind not only Bagram but enough U.S. weaponry to make the Taliban’s army nearly equivalent to the Italian’s, not to mention putting our advanced military technology in the hands of the Chinese and the Russians, only underscores this—that a large percentage of our Democratic Party leadership as well as a tragically significant percentage of the Republican have long believed the Chinese regime are winning the battle between China and America for global hegemony. They are therefore, overtly or covertly, consciously or subconsciously, throwing in with the Chinese side for their own economic—and to a lesser extent survival, though the two interact—advantage.

Our globalist-leaning corporations, like the giant law firm linked above, that deal extensively with China are similar. They’re going with what they think is the winning side.

And globalism is not democracy. For the globalist, people voting has been irrelevant, even retrograde, for decades. It’s the one-party state gone world-wide.

So, to be overly colloquial, “bugging out” on Afghanistan to them is no big deal. And China taking over, well, to them it’s just part of the game.

Why Did the USA Hand Afghanistan to China? (theepochtimes.com)

A couple of weeks before the completion of the catastrophe of the American presence in Afghanistan—or, if you believe President Joe Biden, the “extraordinary success” of the American evacuation—a Russo-British comedian named Konstantin Kisin published a brilliantly funny thread on Twitter headed: “You’re struggling to understand why some people are vaccine hesitant. Let me help you.”

The “let me help you” megathread, as he called it, consisted of example after example of so-called “expert” opinions that have turned out to be completely wrong—beginning with the British vote for Brexit and the American vote for President Donald Trump in 2016, both of which elections the top experts at the time confidently assured us would go the other way.

Actually, Kisin’s spiel could be considered as a belated gloss on one of the most famous quotations to come out of the Brexit referendum, that of the Brexiteer and veteran government minister Michael Gove who said: “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts.”

I think that Trump was striking the same responsive chord with Americans when he disparaged what he called “political correctness”—still ravaging the county after four years of his administration—which was also the product of that breed of experts who call themselves “intellectuals.”

If people were fed up with experts in 2016, think how much more reason they have to be so five years later! Kisin does, and he goes ruthlessly through the whole catalog of errors from Russian collusion to “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” to “toxic masculinity” and the abolition of sex in favor of the nebulous idea of “gender.”

And of course we mustn’t leave out the conflicting and often mendacious pronunciamentos of “the Science” on the coronavirus, which have culminated in the distrust, not so much of the vaccines themselves, but of “the experts’” attempts to demonize those who remain skeptical about them.

And all this was before the collapse of the Afghan government and army under the onslaught of the Taliban gave us what may be the best reason ever for thinking that we, too, have had enough of experts in this country.

“Afghanistan: the graveyard of experts,” wrote Tim Black at Spiked Online.

“US ‘experts’ who created Afghanistan mess should be fired for malpractice,” wrote Rebekah Koffler for The New York Post—though of course they won’t be. They never are. They’re the experts.

A writer on Substack named Richard Hanania compared the galaxy of American Ph.D.’s (including the now-deposed president of Afghanistan himself, Ashraf Ghani, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia) who got us into Afghanistan with the madrassa-educated Taliban and wrote that, “It’s as if Wernher von Braun had been given all the resources in the world to run a space program and had been beaten to the moon by an African witch doctor.”

Unsurprisingly, there were a great many negative comments appended to Kisin’s bonfire of the experts, most of them to the effect that, just because some people have been wrong about some things it doesn’t mean that other people are going to be wrong about other things—especially when those things include vaccines which, as there are sound scientific reasons for believing, can be life-saving.

Nor should we neglect to consider that the lives saved are not only of those who receive the vaccines but also those of the immunosuppressed and other vulnerable people who come in contact with them.

They have a point. But so has Kisin. The latter is certainly right in thinking that the experts, particularly those who write for the partisan media, have taken too little care of their own credibility in the past, instead expecting to be trusted and believed as right, just because of who they are. When they then turn out to be wrong, they have no one but themselves to blame if people don’t believe them the next time.

Some people are always going to be wrong about almost everything, but the case is altered when the people who are wrong have set themselves up in the profession of being right. These are the people we call “experts” solely because they have the recognized credentials of experts—advanced degrees from top universities or awards for their expertise from other experts—whether or not they have any real-world experience or expertise.

Their authority is what the anthropologists call “positional”—like that of the parent who answers a child’s question of why? by replying: “Because I said so!” or “Because I’m your mother.”

The experts treat us all like those children—and then they wonder why they are resented and distrusted.

They are the people who identify themselves with their beliefs to the extent that they can never admit it—and so never learn from their mistakes—when those beliefs turn out to be wrong.

That’s how you get to Biden’s calling an obvious disaster of the first water an “extraordinary success”—with no more than an occasional raised eyebrow from the compliant media.

Much publicity in the last week or so was given to a Reuters report of a conversation between Biden and Ghani in the dying days of the latter’s government, as the Taliban were closing in. What he had to worry about, said the American president to the Afghan one, was the “perception” that he was losing the war, not the fact that he actually was losing it.

All he had to do to get American help, said Biden, was change this perception, “whether it is true or not.”

I think a lot of the criticism of this extraordinary conversation was misdirected. The problem wasn’t that Biden told Ghani to lie. Lying to the enemy has a long and honorable tradition in the history of warfare.

No, the problem was that he was foolish enough to think he could lie in that situation: that he (or Ghani) could get away with spinning the enemy as he himself was used to spinning the American media—as, of course, he would go on to do again with the claim of an “extraordinary success.”

A man whose self-assurance and self-absorption is such that he believes reality can make no claim against him that he can’t pay off with the experts’ counterfeit currency of interpretive ingenuity and rhetorical sleight-of-hand is a man who can only lead his country and himself into more disasters.

Bonfire of the Experts (theepochtimes.com)

Karl Eikenberry – a former Ambassador to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden – now collaborates with several Chinese Communist Party-funded influence groups seeking to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition” to the regime and works for a state-run university in China, The National Pulse can reveal.

The sole political appointee to fill the role in the Obama-Biden years, Eikenberry served as Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011. His appointment followed his service as a Lieutenant General in the U.S. Army focusing on Afghanistan, overseeing the training of the now-defunct government’s army and police forces.

Since his departure from the role, Eikenberry has affiliated with several Chinese Communist Party-run institutes and initiatives.

In addition to serving as a senior advisor to the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Defense, he doubles as a Visiting Professor at Schwartzman College housed at Tsinghua University. The alma mater of Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, Tsinghua University has a history of launching cyberattacks against the U.S. government.

Tsinghua also has a “clear connection between them and the state administration for technology and industry in discussions on what [they] can do to help the national security,” according to former Senior Intelligence Officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency and State Department Official Nicholas Eftimiades.

Similarly, Eikenberry is an International Security fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). The National Pulse has previously highlighted the center’s deep collaboration with several Chinese military and government-linked entities, including those flagged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for espionage and blacklisted by the U.S. government.

Eikenberry is also part of a working group based at the University of California San Diego’s (UCSD) 21st Century China Center, which is predominantly funded by the co-founder of the e-commerce giant Alibaba. The China-based firm has close financial and personnel ties to the Chinese Communist Party and its military. It has been flagged as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party by the U.S. State Department.

Beyond academia, Eikenberry has also participated in dialogues at the East-West Institute sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF). The organization was founded by the Vice-Chairman Chinese Communist Party’s “United Front,” an effort that seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.”

Another event sponsor – the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC) – has been flagged by the U.S. government as a United Front group operating under the auspices of China’s military.

“CAIFC has additional ties to the Ministries of State Security, Civil Affairs, and Foreign Affairs, and it is a platform for deploying undercover intelligence gatherers,” the federal commission’s report adds.

Despite these ties, Eikenberry participated in a 2018 military-to-military dialogue – the Sanya Initiative – alongside Chinese Communist Party counterparts sponsored by CUSEF and CAIFC.

“Retired American and Chinese senior flag officers and executives of the hosting organizations met in Beijing to discuss critical issues of mutual concern and interest impacting the U.S.-China military-to-military relationship, including North Korea, Taiwan, the South China Sea, emerging technologies, as well as other regional security challenges,” an event summary notes.

Foreign Policy magazine noted how the Chinese regime effort aims to subvert former American military leaders into advocating on behalf of Beijing and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA):

• One of those PLA projects is the Sanya Initiative, an exchange program that brings together U.S. and Chinese former high-ranking military leaders. On the Chinese side, the Sanya Initiative is led by a bureau of the PLA that engages in political warfare and influence operations, according to Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute.

• Sometimes the results of such high-level exchanges aren’t subtle. In February 2008, PLA participants in the Sanya Initiative asked their U.S. counterparts to persuade the Pentagon to delay publishing a forthcoming report about China’s military buildup, according to a segment excised from the 2011 annual report of the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

• The U.S. members complied, though their request was not successful.

Obama-Biden Afghan Ambassador Is Now A China-Funded Academic Tied To Influence Groups ‘Neutralizing’ Beijing’s Enemies. (thenationalpulse.com)

Company’s top scientist says China’s use of AI is ‘chilling’

Microsoft’s top scientist is warning Congress about the dangers of Chinese artificial intelligence even as his company deepens its collaboration with China. 

Dr. Eric Horvitz this year reported to Congress that “China’s domestic use of AI is a chilling precedent for anyone around the world who cherishes individual liberty.” The report was the result of Horvitz’s work on a panel tasked with advising Congress on artificial intelligence. The report comes as Microsoft CEO Brad Smith is meeting with top Chinese officials to discuss deepening ties in digital technology and Microsoft’s work in China.

Microsoft is one of many companies that capitulate to China in exchange for access to the country’s lucrative market. The National Basketball Association supports political activism among its players and coaches but remains silent on China’s human rights abuses and suppression of free speech. Apple allows Chinese officials to physically monitor its facilities and data centers in the country. Tech companies have also faced pressure from within their ranks to downplay Chinese human rights abuses. Apple employees have called on the company to condemn Israel for its actions in the Gaza Strip but not China for its use of slave labor.

Microsoft allows China to heavily censor LinkedIn, a Microsoft subsidiary. LinkedIn creates both a Western and a Chinese profile for Western users and shutters the Chinese versions when users post phrases banned by the Chinese government. In March, LinkedIn took a step further and banned a China critic based in the United Kingdom.

Smith continued his engagement with the Chinese government in a meeting last week with Xiao Yaqing, a top regulator at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. According to Xiao, the two discussed expanding Microsoft’s work with China.

Horvitz sounded the alarm about China as part of his work for the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. The commission’s report repeatedly warns that China’s AI use is a threat to both liberty and American national security. China’s “employment of AI as a tool of repression and surveillance—at home and, increasingly, abroad—is a powerful counterpoint to how we believe AI should be used,” the report’s authors say.

The report also highlights the dangers of China’s use of artificial intelligence to more effectively leverage facial recognition technology. The authors write that China’s use of AI to repress its Uyghur minority “foreshadows how authoritarian regimes will use AI systems to facilitate censorship, track the physical movements and digital activities of their citizens, and stifle dissent.” Microsoft has expanded data centers in China for its Azure cloud service, which includes a facial recognition software package.

China in March hacked hundreds of thousands of Microsoft servers, an attack that some scholars believe was an attempt to collect data to train AI models. Microsoft responded to the attacks by expanding its business in China. The Biden administration refused to sanction Chinese actors for the attack.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.

A report highlighting Chinese government-backed influence campaigns on social media platforms found that the effort sought to mobilize protests against “racial injustice,” CNN has finally admitted.

The network’s summary of the recently released Mandiant Threat Intelligence and Google report notes how bot accounts linked to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) disinformation network attempted to incite Asian Americans to protest against racism and those claiming COVID-19 originated in China.

“US officials believe the operation is linked to the Chinese government,” the article adds.

As the CNN article admits:

In April for example, experts saw thousands of fake accounts calling on Asian Americans to protest racial injustice in the US and “disinformation about the virus’ origins.” While experts found no evidence these posts were successful in mobilizing protesters, the report says “it does provide early warning that the actors behind the activity may be starting to explore, in however limited a fashion, more direct means of influencing the domestic affairs of the US.”

The report identifies how the bot network attempted to catalyze a protest on April 24th in New York City:

In April 2021, thousands of posts in languages including English, Japanese, and Korean, images, and videos were posted across multiple platforms by accounts we assess to be part of this broader activity set that called on Asian Americans to protest racial injustices in the U.S. The accounts specifically called on Asian Americans to protest on April 24 in New York City and “fight back” against the purported “rumors” caused by Dr. Li-Meng Yan, Guo Wengui, and Steve Bannon, and in some instances provided an address that they claimed Guo lived at.

Posts shared by the fake accounts included messages such as “the racism is the virus.”

MUST READ:

High School Teacher With Antifa Flag in Classroom Praises Chinese Communist Party.

“This direct call for physical mobilization is a significant development compared to prior activity, potentially indicative of an emerging intent to motivate real-world activity outside of China’s territories,” the report says.’

“While experts at Mandiant and Google say they have not seen these specific pro-Chinese accounts wade into election specific content to date, they did warn that the actors responsible could be gearing up for a more expansive disinformation push,” CNN adds. Platforms such as TikTok, however, have been used to sabotage Trump rallies during the 2020 election cycle.

The National Pulse first reported on the existence of a Beijing-backed, online bot army in early 2020, which, at the time, was used to criticize former President Donald Trump and his COVID-19 response.

More recently, over 20 advocacy groups comprising the “Stop AAPI Hate” coalition sent a letter demanding the Biden White House terminate the Department of Justice’s Trump-era “China Initiative” – which identifies and prosecutes Chinese Communist Party espionage operations – and publicly discredit the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory.

No evidence of a quid pro quo over the CCP’s attempts to bolster these campaigns digitally and the campaigns’ attempts to shift U.S. government policy on China has yet emerged.

Is this the Pot vs the Kettle? [US Patriot]

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, on Wednesday responded to sharp criticism by billionaire investor George Soros, who took issue with the firm’s recent investments in China.

In a rare Wall Street Journal editorial published on Monday, Soros warned that pouring money into China amounted to aiding a repressive regime engaged “time of a life and death conflict” with the democratic values upheld by the United States.

“Pouring billions of dollars into China now is a tragic mistake. It is likely to lose money for BlackRock’s clients and, more important, will damage the national security interests of the U.S. and other democracies,” Soros wrote.

“The BlackRock initiative imperils the national security interests of the U.S. and other democracies because the money invested in China will help prop up President Xi’s regime, which is repressive at home and aggressive abroad.”

BlackRock responded to the critique in a statement provided to CNBC. The asset management firm said it set up its first mutual fund in China after raising just over $1 billion from 111,000 investors.

“The United States and China have a large and complex economic relationship,” a BlackRock spokesperson said. “Total trade in goods and services between the two countries exceeded $600 billion in 2020. Through our investment activity, US-based asset managers and other financial institutions contribute to the economic interconnectedness of the world’s two largest economies.”

In addition to criticizing BlackRock’s entry into China’s mutual fund market, Soros faulted the asset manager for recommending that investors stop treating China as a developing nation and triple their exposure to investments in Chinese securities.

“The Chinese market represents a significant opportunity to help meet the long-term goals of investors in China and internationally,” BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink wrote in a letter to shareholders.

In the statement to CNBC, the BlackRock spokesperson said the company could help China address its retirement crisis by providing retirement services expertise.

Soros cast BlackRock’s China ventures as a misguided move likely motivated by a fundamental misunderstanding of China’s leader, Xi Jinping.

“The firm seems to have taken the statements of Mr. Xi’s regime at face value. It has drawn a distinction between state-owned enterprises and privately-owned companies, but that is far from reality. The regime regards all Chinese companies as instruments of the one-party state,” Soros wrote.

The billionaire investor also cautioned that while pouring money into China may stave off a looming real estate crisis, it won’t address deeper signs of decline, including falling birth rates.

BlackRock Addresses George Soros’ Criticism of Firm’s China Investments (theepochtimes.com)

Reward China- the world’s largest polluter by far- by sending trillions of dollars to China for solar panels. Democrat logic. [US Patriot]

On Sept. 8, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy issued a new report, “The Solar Futures Study,” which claims solar energy could power 40 percent of the U.S. grid by 2035 and 45 percent of the grid by 2050.

The report, produced by the DoE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), proposes this could be done without raising the cost of electricity, thanks to continued technological improvements and “demand flexibility.”

Expanding on what “demand flexibility” would mean, the report hints at the possibility of expanded real-time changes to electricity pricing, “enabled by Internet-of-things appliances and communications.”

Solar capacity would have to reach 760-1,000 gigawatts by 2035 to realize either of the report’s two decarbonization scenarios (the report also includes what it calls a “business as usual” scenario).

For context, the United States had installed roughly 80 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2020 according to the report.

By 2050, solar capacity would need to reach 1,600 gigawatts to achieve what the report calls a “fully decarbonized grid.” Its third and most ambitious scenario, a preliminary modeling of total energy system decarbonization, would require 3,000 gigawatts of solar power by 2050.

The report projects that its maximum deployment scenario could require up to 0.5 percent of the contiguous U.S. surface area—roughly 15,600 square miles, an area slightly smaller than the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the state of Connecticut combined.

It notes that “land acquisition poses challenges,” though it claims contaminated land, waterbodies, farms, and grazing areas could all be used.

A SETO press release on the report stated that “aggressive cost reductions” would be essential to realizing either of the two decarbonization scenarios.

The report itself argues that “soft costs,” including permitting, customer acquisition, and installation labor, are major contributors to the high cost of solar energy. The hard costs of solar power have rapidly declined, with International Energy Agency reportedly claiming that some solar power systems can now offer the “cheapest… electricity in history” in its World Energy Outlook 2020.

Notably, the report assumes that the costs of both decarbonization scenarios would be offset by benefits to air quality and avoided climate change damages, which it calculates at more than $1 trillion for both scenarios.

The report did not appear to calculate the pollution or other environmental damage associated with producing or using solar panels, which may contain lead, cadmium, arsenic, and other toxic heavy metals mined in countries with laxer environmental standards than the United States. The new solar infrastructure could potentially occupy land used by other organisms or ecological processes.

Although the report does note that producing and disposing solar power technologies could negatively impact “[low- and medium-income] and communities of color,” it asserts that such harms “are trivial relative to the existing energy system,” arguing they could be mitigated through the repair, reuse, and recycling of solar panels.

The NREL did not respond to questions about the potential environmental costs of large-scale solar deployment.

The report met with a range of reactions on Twitter.

“Ramping up clean, solar power means lower energy bills, good-paying jobs and less pollution,” wrote Rep. Kathy Castor (D.-Fla.), chair of the House Climate Crisis Committee.

“This is a terribly weak goal. Horrible,” wrote Margaret Klein Salamon, executive director of the Climate Emergency Fund and self-described “climate warrior.”

“I think solar should be a large part of the energy mix. If it gets to 20 percent, I’d be really happy. Set achievable goals and you won’t have to deal with large scale policy failure,” wrote Jeff Terry, a professor and energy researcher at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

“Utterly impossible. Let me guess, Hunter’s starting a solar panel company?” wrote conservative commentator Jon Gabriel.

“Here’s what happens: Energy costs will skyrocket. The poor will be semi-shielded by massively expanded low-income energy welfare programs. Middle class? Will be paying for drastic funding increases for those programs AND stupid-high energy bills. Intentional destruction,” wrote an anonymous Twitter user, “Oilfield Rando.”

Biden Administration Envisions Solar Power Decarbonizing the Grid (theepochtimes.com)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, is facing calls to answer for a shocking report, published by the Intercept, about the so-called “gain of function” research that the National Institute of Health funded at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The WIV is thought to be a possible origin point for COVID-19.

In May of 2021, Dr. Fauci, in his testimony to a Senate committee investigating whether the U.S. funded “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, claimed that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

The Intercept, however, found, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, evidence that the NIH issued a “bat coronavirus grant” to a group called the EcoHealth Alliance for “$3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans.”

As The Daily Wire reported Tuesday, Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and an expert who spoke to The Intercept, elaborated on the findings on Twitter.

“The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present,” Ebert noted. “The materials confirm the grants supported the construction — in Wuhan — of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.”

“The materials reveal that the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses also could infect mice engineered to display human receptors on cells (‘humanized mice’),” he added. “The materials further reveal for the first time that one of the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses — one not been previously disclosed publicly — was more pathogenic to humanized mice than the starting virus from which it was constructed and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated* to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity.”

That puts Dr. Fauci in the spotlight. Dr. Ebright even suggested that Fauci was being “untruthful” in his remarks to the Senate.

Several Republicans have already suggested that Dr. Fauci must face a full investigation and be totally forthcoming about his agency’s — and the NIH’s — involvement in funding research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) suggested that Dr. Fauci is “hiding” something and should face an investigation.

Your tax dollars funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

What is Fauci hiding?https://t.co/TDcwOHZpNP

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 7, 2021

Former White House physician-turned-Congressman Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) also demanded answers — and for Dr. Fauci to be terminated from his role as a top health advisor to the president.

Fauci’s NIH funded DANGEROUS gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Laboratory. The same man that wants to mask your kids and keep us LOCKED DOWN forever helped cause this pandemic. How does he still have a job? Fauci needs to be FIRED and INVESTIGATED immediately! pic.twitter.com/BkCvMD1gDt

— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) September 3, 2021

Rep. Josh Hawley (R-MO) had the harshest criticism, demanding that Dr. Fauci resign immediately.

Anthony Fauci has repeatedly and deliberately mislead Congress and the American people. Resign. And face a congressional inquiry https://t.co/o8Bxfvb8jt

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 7, 2021

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has already referred Dr. Fauci for an investigation for possible perjury related to his testimony in front of Congress.

This article has been revised for clarity. 

Dr. Fauci Faces Call To Resign, Answer For Shocking Report About U.S. Government Funded Wuhan Research | The Daily Wire

More than 900 pages of materials related to US.-funded coronavirus research in China were released following a FOIA lawsuit by The Intercept.

NEWLY RELEASED DOCUMENTS provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory. The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates relating to EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic.

The documents were released in connection with ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation by The Intercept against the National Institutes of Health. The Intercept is making the full documents available to the public.

“This is a road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right To Know, a group that has been investigating the origins of Covid-19.

One of the grants, titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” outlines an ambitious effort led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak to screen thousands of bat samples for novel coronaviruses. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals. The documents contain several critical details about the research in Wuhan, including the fact that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment — and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed. The documents raise additional questions about the theory that the pandemic may have begun in a lab accident, an idea that Daszak has aggressively dismissed.

The bat coronavirus grant provided EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans. Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments. The grant proposal acknowledges some of those dangers: “Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled.”

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said the documents show that EcoHealth Alliance has reason to take the lab-leak theory seriously. “In this proposal, they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten — and they kept records of everyone who got bitten,” Chan said. “Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?”

According to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, the documents contain critical information about the research done in Wuhan, including about the creation of novel viruses. “The viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell,” Ebright wrote to The Intercept after reviewing the documents. Ebright also said the documents make it clear that two different types of novel coronaviruses were able to infect humanized mice. “While they were working on SARS-related coronavirus, they were carrying out a parallel project at the same time on MERS-related coronavirus,” Ebright said, referring to the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

Asked about the grant materials, Robert Kessler, communications manager at EcoHealth Alliance, said, “We applied for grants to conduct research. The relevant agencies deemed that to be important research, and thus funded it. So I don’t know that there’s a whole lot to say.”

The grant was initially awarded for a five-year period — from 2014 to 2019. Funding was renewed in 2019 but suspended by the Trump administration in April 2020.

The closest relative of SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, is a virus found in bats, making the animals a focal point for efforts to understand the origins of the pandemic. Exactly how the virus jumped to humans is the subject of heated debate. Many scientists believe that it was a natural spillover, meaning that the virus passed to humans in a setting such as a wet market or rural area where humans and animals are in close contact. Biosafety experts and internet sleuths who suspect a lab origin, meanwhile, have spent more than a year poring over publicly available information and obscure scientific publications looking for answers. In the past few months, leading scientists have also called for a deeper investigation of the pandemic’s origins, as has President Joe Biden, who in May ordered the intelligence community to study the issue. On August 27, Biden announced that the intelligence inquiry was inconclusive.

Biden blamed China for failing to release critical data, but the U.S. government has also been slow to release information. The Intercept initially requested the proposals in September 2020.

“I wish that this document had been released in early 2020,” said Chan, who has called for an investigation of the lab-leak origin theory. “It would have changed things massively, just to have all of the information in one place, immediately transparent, in a credible document that was submitted by EcoHealth Alliance.”

The second grant, “Understanding Risk of Zoonotic Virus Emergence in Emerging Infectious Disease Hotspots of Southeast Asia,” was awarded in August 2020 and extends through 2025. The proposal, written in 2019, often seems prescient, focusing on scaling up and deploying resources in Asia in case of an outbreak of an “emergent infectious disease” and referring to Asia as “this hottest of the EID hotspots.”

Details Emerge About Coronavirus Research at Chinese Lab (theintercept.com)

Julian Gewirtz, Joe Biden’s China Director at the National Security Council, is a former fellow at the Chinese regime-funded Ash Center, which has also advised Chinese Communist Party officials sanctioned by the U.S. government for human rights abuses. 

Hosted within the Harvard Kennedy School, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation is funded by several Chinese Communist Party-backed entities. Among its donors are China Southern Power Grid Corp, whose management is “directly appointed by China’s central government.”

Additional donations come from New World China Enterprises Project, a Chinese company whose board is composed of virtually all Chinese Communist Party members. Chairman and Executive Director Cheng Kar-Shun served as a Standing Committee Member of the regime’s Political Consultative Conference, an arm of the party-state responsible for conducting overseas influence operations.

As a result, the center has routinely produced studies amplified by Chinese state-run media outlets and regime officials. A July 2020 report – “Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time” – contends that the Chinese Communist Party is “as strong as ever” and that “Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board.”

For two decades, the Ash Center has also hosted the “China’s Leaders in Development Program,” which describes itself as being “widely recognized by the Chinese government as one of the best overseas training programs for government officials.”

“Taught both at Tsinghua University, China, and Harvard Kennedy School, this multi weeks training program is specifically designed to help prepare senior local and central Chinese government officials to more effectively address the ongoing challenges of China’s national reforms,” the summary continues.

Beyond collaborating with a university that has attempted to hack the U.S. government, the program brings Harvard professors’ prestigious advice to senior leaders from the brutal Chinese Communist Party, handpicked by the party’s own Organization Department of the Central Committee. Several years, members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp, which has been identified as an “instrument of repression” against Uighurs by the Washington Post and accordingly sanctioned by former President Donald Trump, have joined the delegation.

Despite these ties, Gewirtz served as a fellow at the center from 2017 to 2018.

Gewirtz has also been a fellow at the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program, which has hosted the Chairman of the China United States-Exchange Foundation (CUSEF)  C.H. Tung as a speaker. CUSEF functions as part of China’s “United Front,” which the U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission identifies as seeking to “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing.”

Similarly, Gewirtz’s father, Paul, is the Director of Yale Law’s Paul Tsai China Center, which has taken millions in Chinese Communist Party cash and counts Chinese government and military-linked individuals as fellows and speakers. The center re-established itself in 2016 following a $30,000,000 donation from the son of the late Paul Tsai, Vice Chairman and co-founder of Alibaba Joseph Tsai.

Alibaba, founded by Jack Ma, has close financial and personnel ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Tsai is also a “patron” of CUSEF.

EXC: Biden’s National Security Council China Director Is Former Fellow At Chinese State-Funded Group Advising Communist Officials Sanctioned For Human Rights Abuses. (thenationalpulse.com)

Newly disclosed documents detailing U.S. funding of Chinese research into coronaviruses show that Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top public health official, lied when claiming the United States did not fund “gain of function” research, critics say.

The documents made public this week shed new light on how much money the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and one of its subagencies, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci heads, granted to the EcoHealth Alliance.

The alliance, in turn, funneled the money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a top-level lab that sits a block away from the reported location of the first detected cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

At issue is whether the U.S. money went to fund so-called gain of function research, research that includes modifying biological agents so they become more transmissible or lethal.

Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, have insisted that the grants did not back such research. Fauci insisted so during multiple congressional hearings, resulting in tense exchanges with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is also a doctor.

According to Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and professor at Rutgers University, the new documents, which include grant proposals that had never been made public, show that the grants to EcoHealth meet the federal definition of gain of function research.

“The materials confirm the grants supported the construction—in Wuhan—of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells,” Ebright wrote on Twitter.

Both Ebright and Paul say the new documents confirm that Fauci was not truthful with the public regarding the grants, with Ebright also charging that Collins lied as well.

Collins and Fauci were “untruthful” when they claimed that the NIH did not support gain of function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at the Wuhan lab, Ebright wrote.

Paul also reacted on social media.

“Surprise surprise—Fauci lied again. And I was right about his agency funding novel Coronavirus research at Wuhan. Read this thread and the papers released,” he said, pointing readers to a series of posts from Ebright.

“The U.S. did fund ‘gain of function’ research in Wuhan. Fauci lied,” added Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), another doctor, wondered how people could still trust Fauci.

“Either he’s completely misinformed or has intentionally lied to Congress & the American people multiple times,” he alleged.

Fauci and Republicans have clashed during congressional hearings on multiple occasions. In July, Paul said Fauci lied to Congress when he said two months prior that the NIH did not fund gain of function research. He asked Fauci to retract his previous comments.

Fauci, visibly shaking with anger, refused, charging that he did not lie and accusing him of not knowing what he was talking about.

Shortly after the hearing, Paul sent a criminal referral of Fauci to the Department of Justice.

The newly disclosed documents “make it abundantly clear that he needs to be held accountable,” the senator added on Tuesday.

People convicted of lying to Congress can be imprisoned for up to five years.

Fauci previously admitted he misinformed members of the public about the efficacy of masks out of concern that there wouldn’t be enough masks for healthcare workers.

Spokespersons for the NIH and Fauci’s agency did not respond to requests for comment. Fauci appeared on CNN on Tuesday morning but was not asked about the newly released documents.

Newly Disclosed Documents Show Fauci Lied: Sen. Paul (theepochtimes.com)

New documents have been released detailing U.S.-funded research on various types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where the first outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus occurred.

More than 900 pages of materials were obtained by The Intercept in connection with a Freedom of Information lawsuit by the publication against the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The documents detail the work of the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund research into bat coronaviruses at the Chinese lab.

They include two previously unpublished grant proposals funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates related to EcoHealth Alliance’s research.

One of the grants awarded by the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance is titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” and amounts to $666,422.

It outlines an ambitious plan led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak to “investigate the ecology, evolutionary biology and transmission dynamics of bat coronaviruses at the human-wildlife interface.”

“Specifically, we will conduct field studies in China to obtain high quality samples from bats, and identify, characterize and isolate known and novel coronavirus. We will analyze the patterns of coronavirus transmission among bats and other wildlife, and the risk of spillover to humans,” the proposal reads. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals.

The documents also note that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed, The Intercept reported.

The grant proposal also acknowledges the potential dangers of the study, including during fieldwork, stating that it “involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled.”

“There is also some risk of exposure to pathogens or physical injury while handling bats, civets, rodents or other animals, their blood samples of their excreta,” the document states. “Virus isolation may be a challenge,” researchers note.

The bat coronavirus grant provided the EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans, according to The Intercept.

The grant was initially awarded for a five-year period from 2014 to 2019. Funding was renewed in 2019 but suspended by the Trump administration in April 2020.

The second grant awarded by the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance is titled “Understanding Risk of Zoonotic Virus Emergence in Emergent Infectious Disease Hotpots of Southeast Asia,” and was awarded in August 2020 and extends through 2025.

The proposal states it “will bring leaders in emerging disease research from the U.S., Thailand, Singapore and the three major Malaysian administrative regions together to build an early warning system to safeguard against pandemic disease threats.”

The team would “identify novel viruses from Southeast Asian wildlife, characterize their capacity to infect and cause illness in people, and use serological assays of samples from people in rural communities with high wildlife contact to identify the background rate of exposure, and risk factors that drive this.”

In-depth surveillance at hospitals serving these communities would be used to examine if cryptic outbreaks are caused by these novel agents, which researchers hoped would help them develop a rapid response to outbreaks in such regions.

Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments, and the newly-released documents will no doubt raise further questions regarding the theory that the CCP virus pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan.

Following the release of the documents, Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University wrote on Twitter, “The materials confirm the grants supported the construction—in Wuhan—of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.

“The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.”

Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) urged China to share raw data from the earliest COVID-19 cases, saying it is “vitally important to know how the COVID-19 pandemic began” and to set an example for establishing the origins of all future animal–human spillover events.

A WHO-led team spent four weeks in and around the central city of Wuhan with Chinese researchers in January 2021 to investigate the origins of the pandemic.

In March, researchers said that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal and that “introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway.”

However, the Chinese communist regime has faced fierce criticism from the international community, who have accused them of engaging in a cover-up.

In July, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China were being hampered by the lack of raw data on the first days of spread there and urged the regime to be more transparent.

Newly-Released Documents Detail US-Funded Coronavirus Research at Wuhan Institute of Virology: Report (theepochtimes.com)

Dr. Ian Lipkin – an American virologist who once claimed there was “no evidence” COVID-19 could have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – appeared to reverse his premature stance on the origins of COVID-19 in a new interview. 

“If they’ve got hundreds of bat samples that are coming in, and some of them aren’t characterized, how would they know whether this virus was or wasn’t in this lab?” Lipkin asked in reference to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in June before answering, “they wouldn’t.”

The unearthed comments come amidst Lipkin revealing he was informed of a “new outbreak” in Wuhan on December 15th, 2019 in Spike Lee’s documentary miniseries “NYC Epicenters.” The mid-December date, which Lipkin defends when pressed by the interviewer, is at odds with the Chinese Communist Party’s public COVID-19 timeline, first informing the World Health Organization of an outbreak on December 31st, 2019.

The National Pulse has previously exposed Lipkin’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party, including the Columbia Professor receiving awards and consultancy positions from the regime.

Lipkin was heavily quoted by mainstream media outlets including CBS and USA Today in an effort to “debunk” former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Chief Dr. Robert Redfield’s explosive claim linking the virus to a Chinese lab.

“We should be moving away from finger-pointing,” Lipkin told CBS after adding there is “no evidence to suggest that it was created in a lab.”

Top Wuhan Lab Theory Denier Reverses Stance, Reveals He Knew Of Virus Weeks In Advance. – The National Pulse

A civilian exposed China’s black market involving the trafficking and selling of newborn babies under the guise of adoption after a year-long voluntary undercover investigation.

According to The Paper, a Chinese state-owned digital newspaper, a civilian played a critical role in the anti-trafficking effort. The civilian, Zhengyi Shangguan, joined a baby trafficking WeChat group disguised as a barren woman who desired a daughter. After prolonged undercover work, Shangguan gradually gained the trust of the middleman and was later considered to be a suitable buyer.

There were about 100 members in the WeChat group, consisting of people from various cities and provinces in China. Due to WeChat’s sensitive vocabulary recognition, the group often disbands and reassembles itself. New members must clearly state their needs or be removed from the chat group.

Shangguan was able to identify the encrypted terms used by the group to avoid vocabulary detection. For example, the slang “bao” represents “baby.” The English letter “S” represents “sending for adoption,” and “L” represents “acceptance of adoption.” The two English letters corresponded to selling and buying.

On June 11, Shangguan received an encrypted message on WeChat suggesting that a baby girl would be available, followed by a phone conversation. The party that reached out to Shangguan was Ms. Zhu, one of the alleged orchestrators.

Zhu said the baby girl was expected to be delivered around July 20 at a hospital, and the price would be $17,000. She then guaranteed the baby’s health with a clean genetic history and offered to be there for the entire delivery process. To further dispel buyer worries, Zhu also suggested that payment could be made on the delivery day, but only cash would be accepted.

In addition, Zhu repeatedly stated that a birth certificate was not recommended because it could easily be obtained afterward. However, if requested, the birth certificate would be an additional $6,000. She explained that getting a birth certificate at the time of delivery would require the birth mother to use the buyer’s identity to register the baby, which is not ideal because if the birth mother knows who the buyer is, she may decide to look for her child in the future. According to Zhu, it would be worrisome to know the birth mother could find her child one day.

After thorough communications, Shangguan learned the entire delivery process and transaction details: A pregnant woman is usually admitted to the hospital’s delivery room in the morning. For the next three days, the newborn will be looked after by the nurses and screened for diseases and defects. After the examinations are completed, the baby is ready to be discharged. Upon discharge, the nurses will hand the baby directly to Zhu. After collecting payment, Zhu then passes the baby to the buyer along with a “consent to adoption letter” signed by the birth mother—then the transaction is complete.

Zhu appeared to be detail-oriented in her operations and even provided the buyer tips in advance. She suggested that it’s best to pretend to be pregnant months before the transaction occurs. Otherwise, friends and neighbors might question when a child suddenly appears. “It may cast a shadow in the child’s future” if not done properly, Zhu said, according to Beijing-backed media ifeng.

To ensure smooth operations, Zhu claimed that she had connections in the local hospitals and that doctors and nurses generally turned a blind eye. “You have to spend what you have to spend to make things work,” Zhu added, and suggested that there are other staff that are part of the operation.

Zhu claimed to have graduated with a master’s degree and was formally a teacher. After remarrying, she was unable to conceive and started her 10-year-journey to have a child and accidentally entered the business of trafficking. The middleman in the WeChat group once helped her get a surrogate, and the two became partners.

Black Market Baby Trafficking Organization Exposed by Civilian in China (theepochtimes.com)

National Institutes of Health officials and researchers funded by Anthony Fauci are contributing to documentaries produced by Chinese Communist Party-run media outlets seeking to absolve the regime of blame for COVID-19.

China Global Television Network (CGTN) relies on participation from American experts – even from the taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) – to grant a facade of credibility to its propaganda operation.

The state-run broadcaster’s hour-long documentary – “The Next Pandemic” – posits that COVID-19 developed naturally, criticizing proponents of the “lab leak” theory as conspiracy theorists. To do so, the documentary relies on interviews with Chinese Communist Party-funded researchers including the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “bat lady” Shi Zhengli and American academics with extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party who prematurely insists the virus has a natural origin.

Also key to the documentary’s anti-lab leak narrative is an interview with Director of the NIH Office of Emergency Care Research Jeremy Brown. The NIH official speaks to the severity of the 1918 influenza pandemic in the middle of the film:

“One of the most chilling aspects of the influenza virus was of course the realization that nobody knew what was killing them. They had no identification of what this bug was. People called it influenza, but they didn’t know what it was, how it was transmitted. They had some ideas, but really, and modern medicine was in its infancy even 100 years ago, and the disease would come on very, very quickly. It uncharacteristically targeted young, healthy adults.”

“The exact origin of the 1918 pandemic influenza is still not known,” CGTN host Mike Walter immediately follows up after Brown’s commentary. The clip comes from a longer interview conducted at the NIH’s Maryland campus published on March 21st, 2020

Another CGTN documentary – “Transforming the Coronavirus into a ‘Political Virus’” – blames the U.S. for starting the COVID-19 pandemic and rebukes China-focused investigations into its origins,

Among the Western experts appearing in the documentary are two researchers that counting sizable funding from Fauci: Dr. Robert Garry and Dr. Frederic Bushman.

Garry has received 70 grants from NIAID, with several sums totaling over $1 million in taxpayer funds. Recently, Garry was selected as a lead investigator for an $8.9 million NIAID-funded program to combat the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses with pandemic potential globally.

Bushman has similarly received nearly 90 grants from NIAID.

Garry definitively asserts that COVID-10 is neither “a bioweapon” nor a product of a lab leak in the film:

“This is not a bioweapon. Nobody made this virus in a laboratory. This is a product of nature.” 

Bushman pushes a similar, premature conclusion:

“There’s no reason to think that it’s a deliberately engineered weapon or something like that.”

EXC: Fauci-Funded Researchers & U.S. Officials Star In Chinese State Propaganda Documentary. (thenationalpulse.com)

A former lead scientist for Corning Inc. – a technology company manufacturing glass vials for COVID-19 vaccines – was indicted for stealing company technology for use in China, including Chinese Communist Party-sanctioned business ventures. 

Corning’s Wang Ji was indicted on charges of economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, and unlawful exports. Wang, who worked for the company from 1998 to 2019, was a lead scientist on a Corning project developing optical laser fibers to attack hostile drones, which counted $16 million in funding from the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

He allegedly stole files relevant to the project to set up a business using the same technology in China and was in negotiations with several Chinese Communist Party authorities in the city of Tianjian to set up the company.

The indictment follows Corning, which supplies pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government to manufacture glass vials for COVID-19 vaccines. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) granted Corning $204 million and the company received another $57 million infusion from the federal government in March of 2021.

If convicted, Wang will face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $5 million.

Lead Scientist For COVID Vaccine Vial Maker Indicted For Stealing Technology For China. – The National Pulse

Last week, China’s state-run tabloid Global Times ran an article, based on information from an inside source, which laid out the evidence that stood as the basis for sentencing Canadian national Michael Spavor to 11 years on spying charges in a case linked to Huawei. Spavor’s trial was held in secret. The article caused quite a stir as this is the first time that information on Spavor’s case was “leaked.”

Spavor is one in a growing line of Canadians targeted by Beijing, to be used as political pawns, to get the Canadian government to change policy, or more often, interfere in its judicial system for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) benefit. Other Canadians include Robert Schellenberg, whose initial prison sentence was recently revised to the death penalty; and Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat whose sentence has not yet been announced.

What has not been much discussed is why this information was leaked now and what it actually means. To start with, the argument presented in the Global Times article is rather embarrassing. The Ministry of State Security has had their hands on Spavor since late 2018, and apparently, the best case they’ve been able to build against him is that he took photos of military installations or equipment, and shared those photos with friends in the mainland and outside of China. The military secrets that Spavor allegedly divulged are deemed second-tier state secrets. But Spavor could have just taken any random photos of an airport near the China-North Korea border where he happened to both live and work before he was taken into custody by Chinese authorities.

If the leaked information sought to build legitimacy for Spavor’s conviction and imprisonment, it failed.

So what can be deduced from this information leak?

To start with, the CCP has walked a very thin line about making it clear that its actions are closely tied to the outcome of an extradition process in Canada regarding Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou (who is wanted by the United States). Hence, having this information “leaked” through the Global Times makes perfect sense. It should also be noted that only the English language edition ran the story, not the Chinese language one.

In reality, the Global Times article is actually not about Spavor at all, but rather about Kovrig. After sentencing Schellenberg and Spavor, Kovrig is now China’s last card to play—his trial has concluded but his sentence has not yet been announced. So far, all of Beijing’s actions have failed to sway Canada to intervene in the ongoing judicial process regarding Meng, nor has it managed to cause any serious divisions among the political parties in Canada. The outcome of Meng’s extradition trial is set to be announced in October.

In December 2018, Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on a U.S. extradition warrant. She is accused of being involved in a scheme to use the global banking system to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran. The two Michael’s detentions were widely seen as a tit-for-tat response by the CCP over her arrest.

The leaked information, purportedly about Spavor, only briefly mentions Kovrig and that he allegedly worked with Spavor to carry out espionage activities. Kovrig is also accused of unlawful entry.

Kovrig could receive a far heavier sentence than Spavor, and this “information leak” is a warning shot against Canada of what is to come, unless the CCP sees meaningful support from the Canadian government to send Meng back to China. From the CCP’s perspective, it makes perfect sense. If 11 years for Spavor, a businessman connecting China with North Korea, was not enough to sway Canada, maybe life imprisonment of Kovrig will be.

The problem for the CCP is that it is very unlikely that increasing the punishment for Kovrig will, or even can, change the behavior of the Canadian government. In fact, the CCP’s thuggish behavior is only leading to ever stronger negative views among Canadians about the CCP, rallying their support behind their government and Canada’s independent judicial system, which would make it politically difficult for the Canadian government to intervene, even if it wanted.

The leaked information is nothing but a desperate attempt by the CCP to use their last pawn. China has failed in its hostage diplomacy before, when they detained and disappeared Canadian couple Kevin Garratt and Julia Garratt in order to get Canada to stop the extradition of a Chinese spy to the United States. In this case, if Meng is indeed extradited back to the United States or locked into a prolonged appeals battle, we can expect the CCP to, despite the limited results that hostage diplomacy has brought them, continue to do more of the same. After all, the CCP has no other way to move forward, and by intentionally making Meng’s trial such a high-profile case in China, the CCP has tied itself to its outcome.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Peter Dahlin is the founder of the NGO Safeguard Defenders and the co-founder of the Beijing-based Chinese NGO China Action (2007–2016). He is the author of Trial By Media, and contributor to The People’s Republic of the Disappeared. He lived in Beijing from 2007, until detained and placed in a secret jail in 2016, subsequently deported and banned. Prior to living in China, he worked for the Swedish government with gender equality issues, and now lives in Madrid, Spain.

China Tilts From Spavor Toward Kovrig in a Desperate Bid for Leverage Against Canada (theepochtimes.com)3

It is essential that we refocus our capabilities on the demonstrably highest probability source of the next global pandemic: genetically-engineered viruses that are being increasingly created in labs in China.

Aggregating Disparate Information

Over the course of late-2019 to the present, humanity has experienced the most disruptive series of events since World War II. However, unlike the World War II period, many of those affected remain bewildered and lacking access to even fundamental information regarding the origin, current status, or what success even looks like in this situation. The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the strategic environment in the Asia-Pacific, caused massive economic hardship, and generated domestic chaos across multiple systemically important nations in Asia, the Middle East, and the West. Over the course of this period, there are several previously disparate pieces of information that, when logically aggregated, generate a clear signal from what is otherwise a sea of undefined noise.

COVID-19 Relevant Patent Filings Since 1998

Dr. David Martin is the founder and chairman of M-Cam, the world’s leading international intangible asset underwriter that specializes in innovation finance, trade finance, and intangible asset finance. Since 1998, Martin and his team have developed a unique database and other related data assets focused on patent activity that is directly related to coronaviruses. The M-Cam team conducted a disciplined and comprehensive study that reviewed coronavirus-related patent filings since 1998. Martin’s findings, all of which can be independently verified through publicly available patent databases, are astonishing.

Fundamentally, Martin has clearly demonstrated that the virus that causes COVID-19 is neither genetically nor clinically novel in any sense and has not been so in over 20 years. He and his team also identify, isolate, and assess an April 19, 2002 U.S. patent filing (U.S. Patent Number 72279327) that clearly demonstrates that American researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill literally engineered the SARS virus. For some historical context, the first officially identified case of the alleged SARS outbreak in China was in Guangdong Province in November 2002.

The patent record itself shows that SARS is not a natural progression of a zoonotic (animal origin) modification of coronavirus. In other words, Martin’s research suggests that the patent record demonstrates that the first SARS virus may not have originated in nature. The April 2002 U.S. patent describes the bioengineering work as producing an infectious, replication-defective coronavirus that was specifically targeted for human lung epithelium—that is a description of SARS. Martin notes that this patent lays out the fact that these researchers knew that the ACE receptor, ACE2 binding domain, the S1 spike protein, and other elements could be synthetically modified in laboratory settings. This could be done using existing gene sequencing technologies (even back in 2002) to utilize computer code to turn this genetic sequence into a pathogen or an intermediate host of a pathogen.

This work was funded in its critical early stages in the United States under the scientific rationale that this SARS virus could be a vector to distribute a universal HIV vaccine, the lifelong (and still unrealized) pipe dream of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. However, it was also noted by these scientists that this same exact research had bioweapons applications as well.

Serious Lab Security Incidents Occur Much More Often Than We Think

Dr. Marc Lipsitch of Harvard has been at the forefront of systematically identifying and determining the risk of high-risk pathogen research in quantifiable, and therefore independently verifiable, terms. His works cover various open-source case studies of serious errors made in advanced Biosafety Level 3 (BSL3) and even Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) settings in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and China.

Lipsitch’s work has also revealed that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) receives on average two reports per week regarding serious incidents pertaining to Select Agents (high-risk biomaterials that pose clear risks to public health) from labs in the United States alone.

If this is the general rate of these events in the United States, it is not an unreasonable or unfair assumption that this rate also likely remains (at a minimum) consistent in China as well. This is due to the (at least officially) globally consistent engineering, lab management, and other related protocols and standards of BSL3 and BSL4 labs. It should also be noted that many of China’s leading scientists who engage in multiple forms of high-risk pathogen research have been trained in the United States with some even having worked inside the CDC before returning to China.

When considering Martin’s patent-based evidence that the SARS virus was likely initially created in a laboratory in 2002, the above-mentioned statistic becomes problematic. This U.S. patent filing combined with multiple linked scientific publications enabled critical knowhow to become globally accessible for the first time. Also problematic is the fact that the lead researcher on this patent, Dr. Ralph Baric, has an extensive track record of joint research and publications with like-minded Chinese counterparts, including Dr. Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, amongst multiple others.

Advances in Reverse Genetics Have Rendered Engineered Coronaviruses Indistinguishable From Natural Origin Coronaviruses

Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin, a former U.S. Army Officer and biodefense expert, has determined that recent advances in reverse genetic engineering technologies, such as those that have been developed by Dr. Shi Zhengli and a range of her Chinese and international collaborators, render synthetic lab-created coronaviruses indistinguishable from coronaviruses originally found in nature. The implications of these developments are difficult to overstate. For one, this injects a fundamental degree of uncertainty and unreliability into the countless investigations that are occurring across the world that seek to determine the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Secondly, these advanced technologies enable a strong degree of plausible deniability in the event of a lab leak when engineering synthetic coronaviruses, conducting gain-of function experiments on previously-natural coronaviruses, and/or other high-risk pathogen research. The use of these technologies in laboratory settings has traditionally been confined to a relatively finite number of research groups in China and several Western countries. However, my colleague and I have recently identified a broader diffusion process that appears to be underway within China itself. Continuous monitoring, risk assessment, and the development of concrete response options must be an absolute priority.

Many Other Naturally Occurring Zoonoses Pose Serious Risks to Human Health, But Most Are Not Human-to-Human Transmissible

Billions of dollars continue to be spent on government- and NGO-administered infectious disease surveillance and control programs in frontier environments across the world, and in the tropics in particular. These funds are often justified on the grounds that these programs represent an early warning detection system to rapidly identify and prevent global pandemics. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is particularly active in this domain and has previously worked extensively in China. However, SARS-CoV-2 appears to have flown right past them.

This is not to suggest that the infectious disease surveillance and control work done by the USAID and others is not valuable. However, it must be noted that the majority of zoonotic pathogens that infect humans with the highest statistical frequency, such as malaria, dengue, scrub typhus, melioidosis, leptospirosis, and others are not transmissible between humans. Therefore, they do not pose a high risk of causing a global, or even regional, pandemic.

A Targeted Early Warning System Must Be Developed

The fact pattern outlined in this piece leads to an inescapable fact-based conclusion. We have spent billions with countless dedicated clinicians, scientists, and others working tirelessly to protect public health. However, we do not presently have a global pandemic risk surveillance system that corresponds to the current threat environment let alone the new rapidly emerging one. It is essential that we recalibrate and refocus our capabilities on the demonstrably highest probability source of the next global pandemic: synthetic viruses that are increasingly being created in labs in China. American and other Western scientists were fundamental in the early stages of this process, but they have now been relegated to the sidelines. This structural shift needs to be broadly recognized and directly acted upon immediately.

Emerging Pandemic Risks Come From Engineered Viruses in Chinese Labs, Not the Jungle or Bat Caves (theepochtimes.com)

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for all emails National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins related to gain of function research, hydroxychloroquine and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-02302)).

This lawsuit was filed after the National Institutes of Health failed to respond to a June 8, 2021, FOIA request for:

All emails sent to and from Director Francis Collins related to “gain of function”, “hydroxychloroquine”, “HCQ”, and/or “Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

When challenged about whether the National Institutes of Health supported gain of function research, Collins released a statement on May 19, 2021, claiming:

Based on outbreaks of coronaviruses caused by animal to human transmissions such as in Asia in 2003 that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and in Saudi Arabia in 2012 that caused Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have for many years supported grants to learn more about viruses lurking in bats and other mammals that have the potential to spill over to humans and cause widespread disease. However, neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.

An August 26, 2021, report by the Washington Post claims the NIH has been funding gain of function research for years. According to the report:

In the United States, NIH Director Francis S. Collins and Anthony S. Fauci, director of the agency’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have led the federal funding and oversight of gain-of-function research.

Eight years ago, Collins and Fauci helped put in place high-level reviews and other safeguards in response to concerns raised by Relman [David A. Relman, a Stanford University physician and microbiologist] and aides to President Barack Obama, who were alarmed by what they saw as insufficient scrutiny of the research with ferrets. The NIH leaders and the Department of Health and Human Services pledged to subject the work to increased transparency and vetting. This included forming a review group of federal officials — known informally as a “Ferrets Committee” — to vet proposed projects for safety and worthiness.

However, Collins and Fauci in recent years have helped shape policy changes, directly and through their aides, that undercut the committee’s authority, according to federal documents, congressional testimony and interviews with dozens of present and former officials and science experts.

***

Since then, the experiments have continued to unfold amid secrecy, and HHS, which administers the review committee, has kept its work confidential: No agendas, meeting minutes or other records of its proceedings are public. Even the names of the federal officials assigned to serve on the committee, which has spanned the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, are kept secret

On Sunday, March 7, 2021, Collins argued to CBS News that hydroxychloroquine was a “bust:”

“Basically it was a bust … maybe it got in the way of trying other kinds of repurposed drugs. All the enthusiasm about hydroxychloroquine was basically dependent on anecdotal reports,” Collins said. “And that did leave everybody with kind of a sour taste in their mouths … we had to get over that. I think we’re over it now.”

“The NIH is in full cover-up mode about the COVID-19 controversies and politics. Where are the emails?” asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

On August 25, 2021, Judicial Watch made public 129 pages of records from HHS that included an “urgent for Dr. Fauci” email chain which cites ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded EcoHealth Alliance. The government emails also reported that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates worked closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help “raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from China on important international counsels as high level commitment from China.”

In July, Judicial Watch obtained records from NIAID officials in connection with the Wuhan Institute of Virology revealing significant collaborations and funding that began in 2014. The records revealed that NIAID gave nine China-related grants to EcoHealth Alliance to research coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants to the Wuhan lab itself.

Also in July, Judicial Watch uncovered CDC records revealing that Facebook coordinated closely with the CDC to control the COVID narrative and “misinformation” and that over $3.5 million in free advertising has been given to the CDC by social media companies.

In June, Judicial Watch announced that it filed FOIA lawsuits against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the State Department for information on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Also in June, Judicial Watch obtained records from HHS revealing that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID.

In March, Judicial Watch publicly released emails and other records of Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane from HHS showing that NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the WHO conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020. Additionally, the emails reveal an independent journalist in China pointing out the inconsistent COVID numbers in China to NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects Lane.

In October 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered emails showing a WHO entity pushing for a press release, approved by Fauci, “especially” supporting China’s COVID-19 response.

HHS Sued For New Emails Over Whuhan Institute and Hydroxychloroquine – The Independent Citizen

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have seized several counterfeit Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration badges shipped from China. 

As an agency press release notes, “officers at the Chicago International Mail Branch (IMF) recently seized several packages all arriving from China that contained counterfeit Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) badges.”

In the following week, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials busted additional shipments containing over two dozen counterfeit DEA badges.

“These counterfeit badges could have led to disastrous consequences if our officers had not found them,” said LaFonda Sutton-Burke, Director of Chicago CBP’s Field Operations. “Criminal organizations could have used these badges for their illicit activity under the guise of federal agents. Our CBP officers were able to identify these very realistic counterfeits and stop them from reaching their destinations.”

Joe Biden’s Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman purchased shares in a fund invested in Tencent, a tech firm flagged as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party and its military by the U.S. State Department, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal. 

Financial disclosures reveal Sherman purchasing up to $50,000 in shares of Matthews Asia Dividend Fund, which counts Tencent as one of its top positions, on May 7th 2021. The transaction came roughly one month after Sherman’s Senate confirmation for her critical State Department role.

A separate financial disclosure reveals Sherman purchasing additional shares in the fund, valued up to $15,000, on August 17th amidst the White House’s Afghanistan debacle.

Tencent, however, has been flagged the U.S. State Department as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party, counting many powerful party members among their executive ranks.

The firm has also been involved in the “research, production, and repair of weapons and equipment for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)” and has a “deep record of cooperation and collaboration” with China’s espionage operations, former Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation Christopher Ford revealed.

The State Department has also linked Tencent to the regime’s build-up of “technology-facilitated surveillance and social control,” as the company has “no meaningful ability to tell the Chinese Communist Party “no” if officials decide to ask for their assistance – e.g., in the form of access to foreign technologies, access to foreign networks, useful information about foreign commercial counterparties, insight into patterns of foreign commerce, or specific information about the profiles, activity, or locations of foreign users of Chinese-hosted or -facilitated social media, computer or smartphone applications, or telecommunications.”

The fund, which has over 22 percent of its investments in Chinese companies, counts Tencent as one of its top five holdings in its portfolio.

The unearthed investment follows a National Pulse report exposing Sherman’s praise for Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping as “extraordinary” and participation in trips to China subsidized by communist influence groups. Her husband, former National Journal Correspondent Bruce Stokes, has also taken trips from the same Chinese Communist Party-linked group – the China United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) – in exchange for “favorable coverage” of the regime.

EXCLUSIVE: Joe Biden’s Deputy Secretary Of State Just Invested In a Firm Flagged As A ‘Tool’ Of The Chinese Communist Party. (thenationalpulse.com)

Pfizer revealed on Wednesday that it gave its first dose to a patient participating in its phase 2/3 clinical trial examining the efficacy of an orally administered drug that is designed to combat COVID-19.

CEO Albert Bourla on Wednesday night wrote on Twitter that “success against COVID19 will likely require both vaccines [and] treatments” and said the pharmaceutical giant started a “Phase 2/3 study of our oral antiviral candidate—specifically designed to combat SARS-CoV-2—in non-hospitalized, low-risk adults.”

The drug, which has been dubbed PF-07321332, is designed for COVID-19 patients who haven’t been hospitalized but who have symptoms of the virus and are at low risk of seeing it progress to become a severe disease.

The randomized, double-blind trial will enroll about 1,140 participants, who will get either PF-07321332 or a placebo orally every 12 hours for five days, according to a press release from Pfizer (pdf).

“Protease inhibitors, like PF-07321332, are designed to block the activity of the main protease enzyme that the coronavirus needs to replicate,” the release said. “Co-administration with a low dose of ritonavir is expected to help slow the metabolism, or breakdown, of PF-07321332 in order for it to remain in the body for longer periods of time at higher concentrations, thereby working continuously to help combat the virus.”

Currently, the only three COVID-19 drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are the vaccines made by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the vaccines’ efficacy for keeping people out of the hospital has dropped. In an update, the agency said that against the Delta variant, the vaccines’ effectiveness at keeping people out of the hospital was between 75 percent and 95 percent in July—a drop from 97 percent in June.

It comes as the American Medical Association (AMA) called for “immediate end” to the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, and for doctors to stop prescribing it after podcast host and comedian Joe Rogan confirmed he took the drug in combination with other medications to treat COVID-19.

“We are alarmed by reports that outpatient prescribing for and dispensing of ivermectin have increased 24-fold since before the pandemic and increased exponentially over the past few months,” the AMA said on Thursday.

Ivermectin has been labeled as a “horse dewormer” by some mainstream media outlets, but the drug has been used for decades to treat river blindness and intestinal roundworm infection in humans. Over the course of the pandemic, some doctors have prescribed it for COVID-19, and several Indian states authorized the drug’s usage to treat the virus earlier this year.

Variations of the drug are given to pets and livestock, and federal officials have warned people against taking animal ivermectin for COVID-19, saying it could lead to hospitalization or even death. In veterinary medicine, the drug is designed to prevent and treat heartworm.

COVID-19 is the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

For every American wanting to preserve their freedom and counter the unfolding communist revolution in the world, this must-watch episode of “Counterpunch” with Trevor Loudon is the place to start. The episode, entitled “How Pro-CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Communists Are Working to Flip North Carolina,” covers key strategies that communist activists and the CCP use to infiltrate and take over states through winning elections for Democrats. Loudon breaks down how this strategy could soon flip the balance of power in the United States completely in pro-CCP Democrats favor. “We have a world to win back and we don’t have much time,” he said.

Loudon uses the state of North Carolina as the key example in this episode, explaining that North Carolina is a big target for the left and communists. This is due to the number of universities there with cutting edge research, which makes it an ideal location to place spies and steal technology. North Carolina also plays a key role in the presidential election as a path to victory. The infiltration of minority communities and activist efforts there could result in flipping the state blue (Democratic), therefore making it very difficult for any Republican to ever win the presidency again.

Loudon explains how this method was done in Virginia—flipping the state from Republican to now a solid Democrat stronghold. This effort was done by a pro Communist Party organization that worked to give votes back to convicted felons. It was those votes that flipped Virginia. The organizations were well versed in the demographics needed to win, with the maps they used even being generated from the Geography Department of Wuhan University in China. This shouldn’t be a surprise. The important thing for Americans to understand is that the goal of the American pro-Chinese communists is to flip the south, as it is the stronghold of the Republican Party and Conservative Christians. This is the area for them to flip in order to destroy the Republican Party.

Liberation Road is the pro-CCP organization that Loudon delves into in this episode. This group is made up of many self proclaimed communists with ties to the CCP. These activists have been moving people in large numbers to areas of North Carolina and working to sway voter demographics in their favor as well as infiltrate local organizations. Many of the voter registration organizations they work with are in fact front groups that target different communities, such as rural or minority areas, and coordinate their efforts towards one specific goal.

The episode mentions key activists to be aware of in North Carolina, their pro-communist ties, and what role they are playing with these various front organizations. Loudon also gives examples of how activists have turned the teachers and union members of North Carolina into a voting block and increasingly militant force as well as how they mobilize targeted communities to win elections. The main pattern Liberation Road uses is to get involved in the minority communities and activate them to vote Democratic in big numbers. This strategy is how they intend to flip the state.

Durham, North Carolina, is a critical target to achieve this goal. Liberation Road has moved large numbers of people into that area and worked to elect people into local governing positions such as school board, sheriff, city council, and others. “Two organizations: The Durham People’s Alliance and Durham for All have basically put almost every serving member of the city council in their seats. And they call in favors.” Loudon says. This level of control gives these organizations key access to money, systems, information, and experience. Loudon points out that taking control of a city is a great way to learn how to take over and govern an entire state.

The episode even takes a look into the various city council members and mayors that communist fronts have elected, and their connection with the organizations. It is important to know backgrounds and affiliations before voting so that voters can be educated on who these candidates are connected with and what their motives are. Statewide, the Carolina Federation and Durham for All have supported the Democratic ticket top to bottom. Although they support all Democrats running for various positions, the main interest lies in the governor and United States Senate seats.

Right now the Senate is evenly balanced, with 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats. That tie is broken by Vice President Kamala Harris, who Loudon points out also has a pro-CCP background. Every state, regardless of size, has two senators that serve in Washington. In the last year, Durham for All has put significant effort into flipping the two North Carolina Senate seats. If a Democrat were to win those seats, that would win the Democratic Party complete control of the United States Senate and allow them to basically accomplish whatever they want. The Democrats did almost flip one seat in a recent election, but thanks to a sexting scandal from their candidate, the Republican barely squeezed by with a victory. However, this setback was not for lack of trying.

Loudon says people need to understand that: “the communists are very strategic. They understand elections, they understand the balance of power, so they’re always trying to elect Democrats. This is the big reason they’re trying to get Washington, D.C. into a state.” If this Democratic stronghold became a state, the Democratic Party would get two more senators, making it virtually impossible for Republicans to ever control the Senate again. “A few hundred votes could decide the whole balance of power in the nation.” This power would extend to deciding the presidency as well.

The episode also covers North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who was elected by these pro-communist organizations. His actions of taking down confederate statues is in line with the Liberation Road ripping down and destroying monuments in the state, among other pro-communist agendas that he has pursued. Cooper is very active with pro-China causes, such as the Carolina China Council, which facilitates exchanges between China and Carolina businesses and academia. Liberation Road loves these partnerships. “That’s what they’re here to do. They’re here to give China an avenue to exert its influence in this country. That is their job.”

Loudon says that bringing Chinese companies into your county or your state is like bringing the mafia into your community. Yes there’s going to be a lot of money, but there’s also going to be a lot of corruption with it. “Every major Chinese business is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party or the People’s Liberation Army or both. This is not like American businesses that hopefully work independently from the government,” says Loudon, stating that Chinese business and the CCP are directly and closely connected. “You do not get big in business in China unless you cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party.” By bringing Chinese companies into North Carolina, Cooper has brought the CCP into the state.

Loudon concludes the episode expressing hope that this information gives Americans a better understanding of what is happening not only in this critical state, but in every state across the country. He stresses that the same principles happening in North Carolina are also being applied all over America and all over the world. Wherever the CCP is involved, they are working with local activists to flip the seats of power in that state or community toward their own interests. “Giving the Communist Party of China access to your country at any level is going to have, openly or covertly, a big impact on your politics, and not in the right direction.”

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The fall of Kabul to the Taliban on Aug. 15 was a shock to the world, as were images of U.S. cargo planes lumbering off the runway in “defeat” at the hands of the Taliban. Yet, there was no real Taliban defeat of America, which at its core is the idea of freedom. An idea can never be defeated.

And, America continues to be the most powerful nation in the world, both economically and militarily. The Taliban will struggle to feed themselves over the coming months, and America will probably end up helping them do so. For better or worse, that’s the kind of people we are.

Rather than experiencing defeat in Afghanistan, America is pivoting to its newest, greatest threat: China. After 20 years of defeating the Taliban, and keeping down other terrorists on their own home turf, it is time to accept that the democracy we sought for Afghans has not come to pass. It’s time to move on and demonstrate the power and opportunity of democracy elsewhere.

Yet, Beijing, which supported Pakistan and their Taliban proxies throughout the war, is trying to go further and present the fall of Kabul as evidence of not only an American defeat, but of a longer-term American decline. This couldn’t be further from the truth, at least for the moment.

Look at the last decade of stock performance to see that not only is America roundly beating China, but America is beating Europe as well. Together, America and Europe are leaving China in the dust, because the Chinese Communist Party’s communism, regulatory and tax takings, and erratic governance, are scaring off smart money.

It is true that since the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) index outperformed America’s S&P 500 by about 1 percent. And, the pandemic hit American stocks harder than Chinese stocks.

But take the longer view. Since 2011, the S&P rose 260 percent, beating the SSE’s 27 percent rise by a multiple of over nine times. And by August 2020, the S&P had entirely recovered from the pandemic slump and was back to America-sized growth.

Chinese equities are bringing down emerging market (EM) indexes, which also include India, Brazil, Turkey, and South Africa. These markets trail U.S. equities, which have the advantage of existing in a mature rule of law system that respects property. People want to put their money where it is safe and can be used, and it is safer in capitalist countries with a history of wealth accumulation, than in communist countries with a history of taking capitalists hostage.

International investors only benefit when they can freely withdraw their earnings, which is not the case in communist countries like China and Venezuela. Capital controls in those countries make investments forever, or nearly so, which make them more of a donation or foot in the door than an investment. Profits typically can’t be repatriated easily from communist countries.

According to the Financial Times, U.S. stocks have returned 356 percent over the last 10 years, beating European returns of 188 percent, and the emerging market’s (MSCI EM index) 66 percent. That makes the last 10 years a lost decade for emerging markets, and in particular, for investors in China.

“After starting 2021 on a bright note as investors bet on a global economic renaissance and commodity prices rushed higher, EM equities were thrown back into reverse by China’s regulatory clampdown on industries from financial technology to education,” according to the Times. “As a result, the MSCI EM index has slipped another 1.4 per cent this year, even as most other markets have soared.”

The Times continues, “Beijing’s crackdown [on technology and education companies, for example] has sent the Hong Kong stock market down more than 10 per cent since the beginning of July and the onshore CSI 300 index has slipped 6.4 per cent.”

The CSI 300 replicates the capitalization-weighted performance of the SSE and Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s top-300 stocks.

Conversely, vaccines in the United States and Europe are allowing for economic opening and growth, possibly closing the prior gap of China’s GDP growth outpacing that of the West. Governments are increasingly concerned about allowing investment and trade with China due to its relative lack of accounting standards, as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) lapses. China scores badly on these metrics, to which conscientious investors increasingly pay attention.

Many investors also fear more anti-capitalist crackdowns are coming from Beijing, making Chinese equities uninvestable, and leading its already-invested cheerleaders to wake up and give a few half-hearted cheers for China.

China optimists at Goldman Sachs, Standard Chartered Bank, and BlackRock, who do plenty of business with China and so may be just a tiny bit biased on the matter, keep pumping the totalitarian country.

“There are pockets of opportunities now,” Goldman’s Peter Oppenheimer told the Times. “Given how emerging markets have derated, if concerns about the Delta variant moderate a little bit and we don’t get more significant anti-market interventions in China, I think there will be a reasonable rebound.”

Goldman is one of the top-20 U.S. investors in China, at approximately $17.4 billion according to a 2021 government document, so it’s not surprising that its analysts would be pumping the value of their own investment.

Eric Robertson of Standard Chartered said in a note, “We believe this growth pessimism is overdone and that EM assets look attractive. The timing might still be premature, but we are looking for that entry point.”

Yet as recently as Aug. 24, Standard Chartered Wealth Management’s chief information officer said they preferred U.S. and European markets to emerging markets, and within emerging markets, preferred India to China.

On Aug. 17, BlackRock’s Wei Li told the Times that “China is under-represented in global investors’ portfolios but also, in our view, in global benchmarks.” Her BlackRock Investment Institute recommended doubling or tripling allocation to Chinese assets in diversified global portfolios. In the MSCI All-World index, that would mean increasing the weighting from its current 4.2 percent, to about 10 percent.

That’s a lot of money given the totality of U.S. investments in China.

The largest American institutional investors, including private equity firms and state pensions, already have $2.3 trillion invested in China, according to the government data. Tripling that would increase American capital at risk in China to almost $7 trillion.

The more money the banks have invested in China, the more pressure they will put on Washington to go easy on the totalitarian country. Going easy means China keeps pushing its territorial boundaries against our allies, we do and say nothing, and we keep slapping China’s wrist for up to $600 billion in IP theft annually.

BlackRock is America’s biggest investor in China, according to the government data cited previously, with approximately $155 billion in the country. Could that capital at risk have something to do with BlackRock’s support for other investors doubling or tripling investment in the country? It would sure make for a smooth unwinding of its position.

Already in 2021, investors have plowed $81 billion into emerging market equity funds. That’s setting up 2021 to be the biggest for EM equities since 2010.

What these investors and big banks aren’t accounting for is the macro-political risk at the end of it all. Once China is pumped up economically through American investment and technology, their military will be stronger than the U.S. military, and at that point, China will be in a position to gradually erode American influence globally.

Democracy, freedom, and capitalism, could become a thing of the past. All those billions that the big banks thought they made from China will then belong to China. Communism will have won, and there will be no more American bankers, and no more bank accounts stuffed with their Chinese earnings.

America will have sold China the rope with which they hang us, and which will be the end of democracy and freedom.

But, I’m not sure that American bankers can see past the next few financial quarters, or coordinate sufficiently through government controls on investments in China, to act strategically and avoid that sorry eventuality.

Stop Investing in China: America Is the Better Bet (theepochtimes.com)

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is calling out East Kodak CEO James Continenza for apologizing to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over an Instagram post featuring images of Xinjiang—where the regime is accused of committing genocide—after some complaints on heavily censored Chinese social media platforms.

The Republican lawmaker sent Continenza a letter on Wednesday in response to the company’s decision last month to pull 10 images by French photographer Patrick Wack taken of life in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, where at least one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are being held in a sprawling network of detention and reeducation camps.

Wack described his photographs as a visual narrative of Xinjiang’s “abrupt descent into an Orwellian dystopia” over the past five years, which sparked backlash from Chinese Instagram accounts. Kodak subsequently apologized for “any misunderstanding or offense” that the post may have caused.

“For a long time, Kodak has maintained a good relationship with the Chinese government and has been in close cooperation with various government departments,” Kodak also said in a separate statement posted to China’s social media platform WeChat. “We will continue to respect the Chinese government and the Chinese law. We will keep ourselves in check and correct ourselves, taking this as an example of the need for caution.”

Scott in a Twitter post said it is “shameful” that New York-based Kodak “covered-up abuse to appease Communist China.”

“After sharing photos shedding light on Communist China’s brutal human rights abuses against Uhygur [sic] Muslims, @Kodak cowered, deleted them & apologized,” Scott said.

In his letter, Scott questioned Kodak’s “close cooperation” with the CCP as described in the apology.

“The ongoing abuses in Communist China are despicable,” Scott wrote. “Kodak’s decision to delete these photos, essentially censoring its own content, only empowers Communist China to continue these abuses against the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.”

Scott gave the company 30 days to answer his questions, including whether all of Kodak’s supply chains are free from Uyghur forced labor, why Kodak apologized to the CCP, and whether Wack’s images will be reposted.

“As an American company headquartered in New York and incorporated in New Jersey, Kodak should be standing for American values and against our foreign adversaries,” wrote Scott. “I am deeply concerned by Kodak’s decision to not only delete Mr. Wack’s photos from Instagram, but also to issue gross apologies to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Addressing the issue in an interview with Hong Kong Free Press, photographer Wack said Kodak’s conduct is “disappointing,” particularly as a company that has been for a century “one of the main traders in the photography industry” that “prides itself on helping people record important events.”

“I think that’s what upsetting most people,” Wack said.

“Once they made the post, even if they were harassed by Chinese trolls … they should have stayed with it,” he added. “It was starting to get ugly for them and that’s why they panicked. They didn’t see that they were actually going to unleash something even worse by doing this.”

The Chinese regime’s army of Internet trolls, dubbed the “50 cent army” as they are paid by the CCP (pdf) to make posts, works to dominate online thought and discussion by echoing the party line.

Kodak didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

Sen. Rick Scott Calls Out Kodak CEO for Apologizing to CCP Over Xinjiang Instagram Post (theepochtimes.com)

How does a leader decide what to do?

The most logical response is: “Cui bono?”—”Who benefits?”—from the decision.

If some policy benefits your country most, you should, within moral bounds, pursue it.

If your enemies benefit most, you should avoid it.

I’d be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan—conservative or liberal—would give to the question, “Cui bono?”

I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly it benefits America.

“Twenty years is too long,” or its variant, “we have to end these endless wars,” the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.

It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.

The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members’ lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.

The number of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan per year from 2015 to 2020 is respectively 22, 9, 14, 14, 21, and 11. No one can seriously argue that we are leaving Afghanistan because of high American casualties.

So, while America doesn’t benefit at all from leaving Afghanistan, it does get hurt.

The damage to the reputation of America—as an ally and as a strong country—is not easily overstated.

The damage done to NATO, whose members President Joe Biden didn’t bother to consult, is greater than any damage former President Donald Trump—whom the left-wing mainstream media constantly attacked for damaging NATO—was alleged to have done.

On the other hand, “Cui bono?” has some very clear answers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every Islamic terror group in the world and every other anti-American regime and movement.

In the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro compiled a list of recent Western weakness in the face of tyrants and the commensurate strengthening of those tyrants:

“The West’s abandonment of Hong Kong in the face of Chinese aggression last year.

“The West’s continuing desire for a rapprochement with the Iranian mullahcracy.

“The West’s routine appeasement of Russia.

“All speak to the unwillingness of the West—and the West’s leader, the United States—to stand up for allies anywhere on earth.

“Afghanistan is simply the latest, and by far the most stunning, example of abandonment of an American ally …

“China’s Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, chortled, ‘From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and U.S. military won’t come to help. As a result (Taiwan) will quickly surrender.’

“Indeed, given the window presented by the Biden administration, it would be somewhat of a surprise if China didn’t attempt some sort of action against Taiwan in the next few years …

“Foreign policy abhors vacuums, and the United States has now created one. That means that erstwhile American allies will begin to play footsie with countries like Russia and China, believing that American commitments mean little. They have reason for such suspicions, obviously.”

The effects on Americans’ perceptions of the military constitute another terrible price paid by leaving Afghanistan. More and more Americans see the military as more concerned with fighting white supremacy in America and transphobia in the military than with fighting for the supremacy of freedom on earth. This is new. And it will have a devastating effect on both America and the military. One obvious consequence: Who will want to enlist in a woke military? (Perhaps that’s the goal.)

It seems that every generation has to relearn the basic laws of life, such as this one: There are many bad people and many bad countries in the world, and only a fear of good countries prevents them from conquering other countries.

There is less fear of good countries in the world today than at any time since World War II. And that is especially so because the good countries are preoccupied with their own alleged evils rather than with the world’s real evils.

Cui Bono? Who Benefits From the Afghanistan Withdrawal? (theepochtimes.com)

CalPERS has $490 million tied up in companies funding Belt and Road

California’s state pension invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese state-owned enterprises linked to the People’s Liberation Army, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) had more than $3 billion invested in Chinese companies, including 14 state-controlled enterprises blacklisted by the Trump administration, as of June 2020. Many of these companies are funding the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project Beijing is using to expand its geopolitical and military influence.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), who recently praised a Chinese-owned media company for its “journalistic integrity,” has not commented on CalPERS’s Chinese investments. It is a notable silence from the embattled governor, who has called on CalPERS, the country’s largest public pension system, to divest from tobacco companies and companies linked to the Turkish government. Newsom faces a recall election on Sept. 14.

CalPERS had more than $450 million invested in 14 Chinese companies the Trump administration put on an investment blacklist last year because of their ties to the Chinese military. President Donald Trump’s executive order, which the Biden administration has continued, prohibited Americans from investing in companies that aid the Chinese military.

It is unclear whether CalPERS has complied with the executive order by divesting in the blacklisted companies. The pension fund declined the Free Beacon‘s requests for comment. CalPERS had more than $490 million invested in seven Chinese state-owned enterprises that, while not on the U.S. blacklist, are funding the Belt and Road Initiative, according to its 2020 investment report. CalPERS invested in some of the Chinese companies as early as 2016, records show.

Two companies in the CalPERS portfolio—China Merchants Port and CITIC—control ports in Sri Lanka and Myanmar that the People’s Liberation Army has used for military exercises. CalPERS had $3.7 million invested in China Merchants Port and $110 million in CITIC as of June 2020.

CalPERS, which has more than $400 billion in assets under management, also had $5 million invested in China State Construction Co., which has built roads and bridges in Asia, Africa, and the United States as part of Belt and Road. China State Construction is one of the firms on the Trump administration investment blacklist.

CalPERS had another $6 million invested in China Communications Construction Company, a state-owned company that U.S. officials have said is building military installations in the South China Sea in violation of agreements that China has with its neighbors. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo singled out China Communications Construction last year as one of the “weapons” Beijing uses to impose an expansionist agenda.

The pension fund has hundreds of millions of dollars more invested in some of China’s largest lenders, including $185 million invested in China Construction Bank. China Construction has invested $405 billion in 176 Belt and Road projects. China Merchants Bank and Bank of China, two other state-owned enterprises in the CalPERS portfolio, are invested heavily in Belt and Road projects.

CalPERS has come under scrutiny from state and national lawmakers over its investments in Chinese companies. The fund’s critics say the investments not only aid the Chinese Communist Party but also create financial risk for the state’s pensioners because of the lack of transparency into the operations of Chinese firms.

“CalPERS would do well on its own to reconsider some of its billions of dollars of investments in China just for the fact that immediate international turmoil produces large uncertainties for California retirees,” said Lance Christensen, the chief operating officer at the California Policy Center, a conservative think tank.

Some investment managers are reportedly reconsidering investments in China because of the government’s crackdown on tech companies and other for-profit companies. Chinese companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges lost $400 billion in value in July amid a series of regulatory crackdowns orchestrated by the Chinese government, the Wall Street Journal reported.

CalPERS’s former head under Newsom, Ben Meng, is an American citizen of Chinese origin. Prior to leading CalPERs, he worked in China as the deputy chief investment officer of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange. In that role, he oversaw $3 trillion of foreign-exchange reserves.

During Meng’s time at CalPERS, Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) criticized Meng’s membership in China’s Thousand Talents Program, which the nation uses for espionage. Banks wrote to Newsom suggesting the governor fire Meng, a power Newsom does not technically have.

“Governor Newsom, if it were up to me, I would fire Mr. Meng immediately,” Banks wrote in a February 2020 letter. Banks took specific issue with Chinese companies like Hikvision, for example, that are used by China to further its detention of Uyghurs. CalPERS responded by calling Banks’s letter a “politically opportunistic attempt to force us to divest, undermining our ability to perform our fiduciary duty to provide retirement security to California’s public employees.”

Last year, Banks and Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) called on Newsom and CalPERS to divest from Chinese state-owned companies. CalPERS rejected the requests, saying that its portfolio largely mirrors investments in the MSCI and FTSE stock indices. MSCI has said it is divesting from the 14 companies on the federal blacklist, but it is not clear whether CalPERS plans to follow MSCI’s lead.

While Newsom does not directly control CalPERs, he has actively used his bully pulpit as a statewide elected official to force the agency’s investment decisions in the past. In 2019, he signed an executive order directing CalPERS and other state pension funds to invest in green energy companies in order to fight climate change.

In 2016, then-Lt. Gov. Newsom urged CalPERS not to reverse a decision to prohibit investment in tobacco companies. He said CalPERS would be “investing in death” if it allowed investments in Big Tobacco. CalPERS voted later that year to expand its prohibition on tobacco investments.

As a gubernatorial candidate in 2018, Newsom called on CalPERS to divest from Turkish companies because of the regime’s refusal to recognize the mass murder of Armenians in 1915.

“It is wrong of us as a state … to invest in Turkish businesses. It’s time for divestment at the [University of California] and CalPERS,” Newsom said at a rally outside the Turkish consulate in Los Angeles.

Newsom has not made a similar demand of CalPERS regarding China, even though both the Trump and Biden administrations have said that the government is carrying out genocide against Muslims in Western China.

“Gov. Gavin Newsom is quick to leverage his position on issues like climate change by outlawing gas-powered cars or other similar mandates, but slow to speak out on government investments in China, where their environmental and labor record is abysmal,” said Christensen, the official at the California Policy Center.

Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

California’s State Pension Invests Millions in Chinese State-Owned Companies (freebeacon.com)

Hillhouse Capital – a private equity firm funded by America’s top universities and is invested in companies including Zoom and Apple – struck a $1.5 billion deal with a Chinese Communist Party-owned investment fund.

Hillhouse Capital partnered with the “wholly state-owned” Hangzhou Capitol on a billion-dollar fund “to invest in sectors including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and new energy vehicles,” according to Chinese state-run media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN).

Hillhouse Capital, which was funded with $20 million in seed capital from the Yale University Endowment, is reported to be backed by America’s most prestigious universities. Following a Stanford University investment of $200 million in 2015, the fund was “investing money for at least six of the 10 wealthiest universities in the U.S.,” including Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) has also invested nearly $1 billion with the Beijing-based fund.

These investments are now being used, however, to contribute to the growth of the Chinese Communist Party.

A press release from Hangzhou Capital – which pledges to be “guided by Xi Jinping’s thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era” – reveals that its partnership with Hillhouse Capital is part of a broader Chinese regime-backed effort to turn the city into a “leading and exemplary benchmark for national advancement.”

“The implementation of the “National Digital Economy First City” strategy focuses on value investment to empower outstanding enterprise development, optimizes industrial layout and accelerates the cultivation of new kinetic energy, and creates new impetus for Hangzhou to become a model city ​​for high-quality development and construction of a common prosperity demonstration zone in Zhejiang Province,” the group adds. 

Hillhouse Capital’s partnership with a Chinese state-owned enterprise also calls into question its sizable investments in companies such as Zoom, Uber, Apple, TikTok parent company ByteDance.

MUST READ:  Biden White House Approves Licensing Deal For Chinese Communist Party-Linked Huawei, Reversing Trump-Era Hardline.

Article Seven of China’s National Intelligence law stipulates that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to law.”

Investment Firm Backed By Top American Universities Partners With ‘Socialist’ China-Backed Fund. – The National Pulse

No mention of US-funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology

The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) “remains divided on the most likely origin of COVID-19,” according to an unclassified report released on Aug. 27. “Two hypotheses are plausible,” the report explains, “natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.”

In May, when President Joe Biden urged the agencies to “redouble” their efforts to find the origin of the virus, the IC had “coalesced around two likely scenarios but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” he said in a statement. To reach essentially the same conclusion now, the IC must have ignored major revelations, and there’s more to the story.

For Angelo Codevilla, a former staffer with the Senate Intelligence Committee, Biden’s call to redouble efforts was “a comical attempt to avoid being discredited by the unraveling narrative that China’s role in the pandemic is another manifestation of racism.” In addition, “U.S. intelligence does not possess hard facts to prove exactly what happened in that lab, nor does U.S. intelligence have sources in China, human or technical, placed and uncompromised, capable of yielding such information.”

Codevilla, a former professor of international relations at Boston University, predicted that “the report will stop short of a full-on indictment of China, instead urging increased transparency through ‘cooperation.’ The chances of this report mentioning U.S. funding for ‘gain of function’ research are zero.”

True to form, the Aug. 27 report contends that “China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19.” Gain-of-function research is not mentioned, an unforgivable oversight.

Gain-of-function research manipulates viruses to make them more lethal and transmissible. Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to conduct gain-of-function research, once banned in the United States.

Money is fungible and the WIV is not accountable to American taxpayers. Fauci initially opposed President Trump’s ban on travel from China and maintained the theory that the virus that causes COVID-19 developed naturally in the wild. When scientists found evidence that the virus had been engineered, the NIAID boss pressured them to change their view.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), believed “the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory. You know, escaped.” For holding that view, Redfield began to receive death threats. As he told reporters in March of 2020, “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis.” Embattled Americans might expect the vaunted intelligence community to take notice of such threats, along with other developments now a matter of record.

Chinese national Dr. Xiangguo Qiu transferred a cargo of deadly pathogens from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) to the WIV. One of the pathogens was the Henipah virus, and samples from early Wuhan COVID-19 patients show the presence of genetically modified Henipah virus, according to The Epoch Times.

The genetic manipulation was the finding of Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician, scientist, and former faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In COVID-19 samples uploaded by scientists at the WIV shortly after China informed the World Health Organization about the outbreak, Quay found “genetic manipulation of the Nipah virus [a type of Henipah virus], which is more lethal than Ebola,” he told The Epoch Times.

Quay also co-authored an opinion piece, titled, “The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak,” noting that the COVID-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint never observed in a natural coronavirus. “In gain-of-function research, a microbiologist can increase the lethality of a coronavirus enormously by splicing a special sequence into its genome at a prime location.” The result of similar experiments “has always been supercharged viruses.”

Quay is also the author of the manuscript, “A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived.”

Embattled Americans might expect their intelligence community to take notice of major scientific developments like that. Americans might also wonder what the nation’s “medical CIA” might know.

The Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a division of the CDC, is tasked to prevent dangerous viruses from arriving on American soil. Despite boots on the ground in China, the EIS failed to prevent the virus from arriving stateside. What the medical CIA knows about the origin of the virus would be of great interest, but nobody from the EIS has testified to Congress under oath.

Dr. Nancy Messonnier began her career with the EIS and in early 2020, as director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), she briefed reporters on a “novel” coronavirus from China. When asked about travelers from Wuhan to the United States, Messonnier told reporters that was “not something that I’m at liberty to talk about today.” Americans might expect their intelligence agencies to identify the official or politician who slapped that gag order on the CDC official, and explain what it was intended to hide.

Messonnier suddenly resigned from the CDC in May and has yet to testify. Another missing witness is Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance. A recent report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee found “strong evidence that Daszak is the public face of a CCP [Chinese Communist Party] disinformation campaign designed to suppress discussion about a possible lab leak.”

The Aug. 27 report claims the intelligence community examined “all available intelligence reporting and other information.” That is clearly a stretch, and embattled Americans could be forgiven for regarding it as a coverup, or worse.

According to the Aug. 27 report, “the virus was not developed as a biological weapon.” In addition, “the IC assesses China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.” That ignores the experience of Qiu, who worked closely with four facilities believed to be involved in China’s biological weapons development, including the WIV, where she transferred the cargo of deadly pathogens.

Most agencies involved with the report believe “SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered.” That ignores the published work of Quay, who found “genetic manipulation” of the Nipah virus, and showed how gain-of-function research makes viruses “supercharged.”

Had the intelligence agencies investigated the latest scientific evidence, the death threats to Redfield, the resignation of Messonnier, and the mysterious Epidemic Intelligence Service, they might not remain divided on the origin of COVID-19.

As it stands, a dubious and evasive report will help China hinder investigation of the pandemic that has harmed millions of Americans and people around the world.

Latest US Intel Report Helps China Hinder Probe Into COVID-19 Origin (theepochtimes.com)

A full-page advertisement that called for the world to hold the Chinese communist regime to account for the COVID-19 pandemic was pulled at the last moment by The New York Times in March 2020. The paper said the ad didn’t meet its standards, but the ad was pulled after it had already passed the paper’s vetting process. The businessman who paid for the ad suspects the paper’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) played a role. He only revealed the details of the incident to The Epoch Times earlier this year.

The ad was scheduled to run on March 22, 2020. It was already approved, paid for, and even printed and distributed in some locations when the paper pulled the plug in the middle of the night, preventing the ad from being published in some of the paper’s main markets, including New York and Florida.

The decision was so abrupt that the sales representative responsible for the ad wasn’t informed, and the client only found out the next morning when he couldn’t find the ad in the paper.

The client, Brett Kingstone, is a real estate agent in Florida. He backed up his story with email threads documenting his correspondence with the newspaper as well as images of the contract he signed, details about the payment and subsequent refund of the $55,000 ad fee, and photos of the ad as it ran in some locales.

New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said the ad ran in “an early edition of Sunday’s paper and was removed from all later editions, which account for the vast majority of copies.”

“The ad in question did not meet our standards and should not have appeared in The New York Times,” she told The Epoch Times via email.

She didn’t respond to a question about whether the paper faced any CCP pressure regarding the ad.

“It was removed after being flagged internally by [New York] Times staff,” she said.

Kingstone, a prolific donor to charitable and conservative causes, had contacted The New York Times via email on March 18, 2020, with an advertorial placement request.

He said he placed an advertorial in the paper’s Sunday edition back in 2018 and the staff “did an excellent job in delivering what was promised both in performance and placement.”

“I am interested in doing the same again,” he said, submitting a draft of the ad.

The text urged the U.S. government to organize and initiate investigations and lawsuits regarding the origins and repercussions of the CCP virus pandemic.

“This virus was the direct result of the incompetence and irresponsibility of the Chinese Government. They showed as much disregard for their own population as they have for ours,” the ad stated.

It called for “massive liability lawsuits” against the CCP as well as investigations into two Chinese labs close to the epicenter of the pandemic, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Scrutiny of the Wuhan Institute of Virology was treated as a taboo subject by social media and the corporate press at the time. Only earlier this year have establishment actors acknowledged that the inquiries were legitimate and that the virus could have escaped from the lab.

On March 19, 2020, the ad placement representative informed Kingstone that it had been accepted.

“My Ad Acceptability team has approved the message as long as we include the footnotes, your email address, a border around the ad, and advertisement slugs,” the representative said.

The two then exchanged several emails regarding technical edits to the ad as well as proof of payment of the ad fee required before publication.

Everything seemed to go smoothly.

Then, on the morning of March 22, 2020, Kingstone was surprised to learn the ad was nowhere to be found in the Florida edition of the paper.

In his inbox, he found an email from the sales representative:

“I wanted to let you know that I was informed late last night that our production team had pulled the ad from the production run, without my knowledge. I’m investigating this now and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can with any updates,” it read.

“I just wanted to assure you that I’m working on this and I will hopefully be able to share additional context on Monday after I speak to the necessary people. I will be in touch on Monday!”

The representative has since left the paper. The Epoch Times is omitting her name for the sake of her privacy.

Kingstone didn’t hide his disappointment.

“I would like to know the reason why they did this,” he said in an email response to the representative, requesting a refund.

He asked whether the paper’s executives concluded that his particular message needed to be silenced.

“I was very pleased with how the NYT treated me on my first advocacy advertisement. They were more than fair. Now my fears about bias are being realized,” he wrote.

The cancellation was all the more a slap in the face given that The New York Times used to regularly publish propaganda advertorials paid for by a company directly controlled by the CCP.

After receiving his refund, Kingstone didn’t leave it at that.

As it happened, his website, which was listed on the ad, came under a cyberattack around the same time the copies of the paper that did include the ad landed on people’s doormats, he said.

This was too much of a coincidence for Kingstone, who has had his share of run-ins with the CCP. It was his company that years earlier won a precedent-setting lawsuit against Chinese counterfeiters. In 2005, he published a book detailing his story, called “The Real War Against America.”

Kingstone started to inquire with his contacts and eventually reached the conclusion that the CCP must have been involved in the ad’s cancellation.

One New York Times executive told him a CCP official called the paper’s leadership, demanding the ad be pulled, he said. The Epoch Times wasn’t able to independently confirm that the phone call took place. Attempts to reach the executive for comment were unsuccessful. The paper’s spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that such a phone call took place.

In any case, the situation carries “an earmark of how China would operate,” according to Pat Laflin, a former FBI agent who upon retirement led a series of lectures for the bureau to American businesses and research entities on economic espionage by adversarial nations, including China.

It’s “impossible” that the CCP let the ad slide, he told The Epoch Times.

“If there’s anything negative about China, China’s going to scream,” he said in a phone call.

It would just be the question of what form the pressure took, he said.

“Exactly what they said and how subtle it was or how not-so-subtle, that’s all speculation. I don’t know. But did the call come in? Yes.”

The New York Times has over the years repeatedly faced criticism over its relations with the CCP. The controversy reaches back to at least 2001, when the paper’s publisher at the time, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., met with then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin, whose power faction within the communist regime exerts influence even to this day, long after his retirement.

The paper actively discouraged reporting on one of the most gruesome atrocities committed by the CCP—the harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience, mainly practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual practice—as indicated by former New York Times Beijing correspondent Didi Kirsten Tatlow in her testimony to the independent China Tribunal in the United Kingdom.

Last year, the paper finally cut ties with the CCP-controlled China Daily and quietly deleted hundreds of paid propaganda pieces from its website, The Washington Free Beacon reported. China Daily disclosed to federal authorities one $50,000 payment to The New York Times in 2018. It’s not clear how much total revenue The New York Times drew from CCP advertorials.

NY Times Pulled Ad Calling CCP to Account for Pandemic (theepochtimes.com)

Chesa Boudin, AOC, and other progressive Democrats have cozied up to ‘Sing Tao’

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) earlier this month spoke at the annual gala for a pro-Beijing newspaper that has registered as a foreign agent of China due to its influence activities in the United States.

Newsom lauded Sing Tao for its “journalistic integrity” and for providing “balanced news stories” to its readers. He also said the newspaper, which publishes daily in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City, has helped Chinese Americans acclimate to California.

Sing Tao is considered a pro-Beijing news outlet. Its owners are members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a government advisory group controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. One of the owners, Charles Ho, last year defended a national security law that has been used to arrest pro-democracy journalists in Hong Kong. The Department of Justice required Sing Tao to register this month under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law aimed at tracking foreign influence in the United States. Chinese state-controlled news outlets like CGTN, China Daily, and Xinhua have also registered with the Justice Department as foreign agents.

Newsom’s praise for the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece comes as he is campaigning to remain in office. Newsom’s opponents cited California’s high tax rates, homelessness problem, and lax enforcement of immigration laws as reasons to recall the Democrat.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) has also praised Sing Tao. The “Squad” leader thanked the newspaper in June 2020 for covering a roundtable discussion she held for foreign-language media outlets. Her campaign paid $728 to Sing Tao in April 2021 for ads touting the coronavirus vaccine and $2,755 for ads in June 2020, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Rep. Grace Meng (N.Y.), another progressive Democrat, has paid $12,364 to Sing Tao through her campaign since 2012, the most of any lawmaker.

Former Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.) paid for $6,600 worth of ads in 2016. Royce, who was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee until his retirement in 2019, is currently a registered lobbyist for Chinese tech giant Tencent.

The Democratic National Committee said in May that it would place ads with Sing Tao and other newspapers to raise awareness about hate crimes against the Asian-American community. The Republican National Committee paid $2,855 to the newspaper in November 2020.

Sing Tao has had most of its success cozying up to policymakers in California.

Chesa Boudin, the progressive San Francisco district attorney, spoke at the Sing Tao gala. Boudin, who once worked as a translator for the government of Hugo Chavez, the late Venezuelan communist dictator, touted an endorsement from Sing Tao during his campaign in 2019.

Like Newsom, Boudin faces a recall in San Francisco. His critics say his criminal justice reform efforts have caused a dramatic spike in crime. Chinese-American activists have criticized Boudin amid a spike in attacks against elderly people of Asian descent in San Francisco. Many of the activists blame Boudin’s soft-on-crime policies and support his recall, according to the New York Times.

San Francisco mayor London Breed (D.) and state senator Scott Wiener (D.) also spoke at the Sing Tao gala.

Newsom, Ocasio-Cortez, and the Democratic National Committee did not respond to requests for comment.

Newsom Praised Chinese Foreign Agent for ‘Journalistic Integrity’ (freebeacon.com)

Deborah Seligsohn – an American academic frequently cited by Western media outlets to debunk the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory – has extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party, including delivering lectures at the regime’s Central Party School and accepting fellowships from state-run universities. 

When cited, mainstream media outlets routinely fail to disclose Seligsohn’s deep ties to Beijing, which call into question her ostensible status as a neutral arbiter of COVID-19’s origins. Currently an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Villanova University, Seligsohn was formerly in charge of science and health issues at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s.

Since her job in the U.S. State Department, Seligsohn has lectured and participated in fellowships at institutions led by the Chinese Communist Party. She addressed the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party – the “exclusive training ground for the elite apparatchiks groomed to govern China” – in December of 2011. She also spoke at the regime-sponsored Shanghai World Expo in 2010.

Seligsohn also served as a research fellow at the state-run Nanjing University before leveraging her credentials to contribute to a host of mainstream media outlets including NPR, Foreign Policy, Associated Press, and more.

In a Foreign Policy op-ed titled “Demands for a Lab Leak Investigation Are a Dangerous Distraction,” Seligsohn posits there “is no actual evidence for the lab leak allegation” despite the theory counting support from scientists and government officials including former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Chief Dr. Robert Redfield and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Seligsohn’s op-ed was then utilized by Chinese state-run media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN), amplifying her words in its article “Expert: Demands For Lab Leak Investigation Are Dangerous Distraction.

“Although virologists have said over and again that there is no actual evidence for the lab leak allegation of the coronavirus, some people in the U.S. just won’t let it go. The demands for a lab leak investigation are a dangerous distraction, warned Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, in an article published recently on the website Foreign Policy,” CGTN wrote in a summary of Seligsohn’s article.

Seligsohn has peddled similar sentiments in outlets including the Associated Press and NPR, both of which failed to include her Chinese Communist Party ties.

In addition to dismissing the lab leak theory, she has also defended scientific collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party, arguing that “joint US-China research on bat coronaviruses is going to be more important after this pandemic, not less” in the Financial Times.

Seligsohn has participated in exclusive interviews with Chinese state-run media outlets decrying officials who trace COVID-19 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and defending National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded collaboration with Chinese Communist Party-run labs.

U.S. Republicans claim the virus causing COVID-19 escaped from a Wuhan lab. Assistant Professor Deborah Seligsohn of @VillanovaU says such conspiracy theories are very damaging. #covid #coronavirus @DebSeligsohn pic.twitter.com/Id9rffa4e1

— CGTN America (@cgtnamerica) August 24, 2021

She joins the ranks of more and more former U.S. government employees and so-called “experts” who have quietly been aiding the Chinese Communist Party for years.

EXC: Media’s ‘Lab Leak’ Denial Darling Is Actually Ex-Chinese Communist Advisor. (thenationalpulse.com)

‘The IOC hasn’t learned anything. They trust the CCP too much.’

When an Australian Olympian ran into Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 2002 waving a 1964 Tokyo Olympic banner with the words “truthfulness, compassion, tolerance” written on it as a stand against human rights abuses in China, she already knew that the communist country had been awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Five years later, in 2007, she traveled the world in the lead-up to the Games as an ambassador for the Global Human Rights Torch Relay (GHRTR)—with the slogan, “Olympics and crimes against humanity cannot coexist in China.” She never expected that eight years later, in 2015, China would be awarded that privilege yet again; this time, to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Former Olympic swimmer Jan Becker, from Melbourne, Australia, now aged 76, swam the 100-meter freestyle relay in Tokyo at the ’64 Olympics and won the silver medal.

Her protest in Tiananmen Square—where she was arrested, interrogated, and deported along with several other Australians—was a major event at the beginning of her decades-long journey in speaking out about the persecution of faith by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). She returned home to see the media headlines: “Olympian Arrested in China.”

Just move the Olympics. With human rights, what they’ve done is just absolutely atrocious. The CCP is so anti-Divine … The International Olympic Committee hasn’t learned anything.— FORMER OLYMPIC SWIMMER JAN BECKER

“When I saw what they were doing, when they were killing people and taking their organs, I just had to stand up,” Becker told The Epoch Times. “That’s why I went to Tiananmen Square, because I wanted to get the news out to the world and to let the Chinese people know that the Western world was aware of what they were going through and that we were supporting them.

“I wanted the CCP to know there was an Olympian there, that that was connected⁠—the Olympics.”

Believing in “a connection” between the Olympics and “faith in the Divine,” yet seeing no ceasing of the CCP’s ongoing persecution of faith, including of Christians, Tibetans, Buddhists, Falun Gong, and more recently of Uyghurs, Becker is urging for a complete move of the 2022 Games away from China.

“I would prefer to see a complete move of the Games, not boycott China, just move the Olympics,” Becker said. “With human rights, what they’ve done is just absolutely atrocious, what they’ve done to Falun Gong practitioners, selling their organs around the world. They don’t believe in any faith. The CCP is so anti-Divine, against people who practice looking up to their God or their divinity.

“So many athletes actually look to the heavens. They do believe in God, they do believe in the Divine, and it must have a connection.” But as for the CCP, “they certainly wouldn’t dedicate anything to faith or religion,” Becker said.

A 22-Year Human Rights Advocacy Journey

Besides being an Olympian, Becker has taught and coached swimming for 20 years, worked as a consultant for 8 years, and was a human resource manager for 22 years before finally retiring in 2014.

But rather than slowing down, Becker, a mother-of-three and grandmother-of-eight, shifted much of her freed-up time into what she’d been doing in her spare time outside of her full-time job since 1999—raising awareness of the grave human rights violations in China, predominantly, of the persecution, torture, and organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners.

“I’ve always given 100 percent of myself to any job, my family, and do everything to the best of my ability. And that’s what I’m doing now,” she said.

Talking about what led her to defend human rights in China, Becker said it’s the CCP’s ongoing persecution of her faith: Falun Gong.

Searching for a cure for an illness at 54, Becker was introduced to the spiritual practice in February 1999. A self-cultivation practice of mind and body incorporating meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of “truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance,” Falun Gong (or Falun Dafa) was practiced by 70 million to 100 million people in China before the CCP launched a persecution campaign in July 1999 in an attempt to eradicate the practice.

“I had been suffering probably for five or six years with a terminal illness, and I tried a whole lot of different things and nothing seemed to work,” she said. “And then someone told me about Falun Gong. I could see after reading the book that this would be really good for me to do. It was a spiritual journey.”

Besides the health benefits, Becker said that after 22 years of having taken up the practice, it has made her a better person. “I learned I had to be compassionate. That was the main thing I had to learn. And I have become a better person for it. It’s quite amazing,” she said.

After only five months of Becker having taken up the practice, however, the CCP’s persecution in China was launched.

By 2002, the reports of arrests, torture, and deaths of her fellow Chinese practitioners prompted her and some other Australian practitioners to go to China to stage a peaceful protest in Tiananmen Square to request the communist regime to end the persecution.

“I went to Tiananmen Square with a group of other Australians,” she said. “I took a 1964 Olympic banner, and I had a Falun Gong emblem painted on it—on ⁠the Japanese red circle⁠—and the words ‘truthfulness, compassion, tolerance,’ and I ran into Tiananmen Square.”

Becker said she was determined to make an impact and wasn’t scared of going, despite knowing that thousands of Chinese practitioners who had already protested in the Square before her were arrested, often tortured, and some even lost their lives.

“I never had any fear about going. I knew I was going, I was doing it, and I was coming home,” said Becker, whose story of going to Tiananmen was documented in the 2020 film “Protest at Heaven’s Gate.”

“Being an Olympian gave me a platform to be able to go out. That’s why I went to Tiananmen Square, because I wanted to get the news out to the world. The main thing was to let the CCP know that there was an Olympian in that. And also, make people around the world take a bit more notice of what was happening.”

Becker was arrested on that day, March 7, 2002, along with eight other Australians, not more than 30 seconds after running into the Square with her Olympic banner. She was questioned for 5 1/2 hours before being detained overnight and deported the next day, blacklisted from ever returning.

“They wanted to know where my Falun Gong books were, where my tapes were.” Becker said. “I said ‘they’re in my head and in my heart, I don’t need to bring them here.’ And they came in waving a glove, wanting to do a body search. They asked me to get undressed. I got down to my bra and knickers, and I said, you want me to get them off too?

“I remember telling the policeman that was interviewing me that they need to get out to see the world more, that ‘it’s not like this’ outside China. The world is not like what China was like. Everywhere I went in China, I was watched. They followed us down the street with phones. That’s why the Chinese people are so scared, they’re scared to do anything.”

The harassment didn’t stop there, either, Becker said. It extended beyond China’s walls to include threats to get her to stop speaking out to media only days after she’d returned home to Australia and had already told her story to various news outlets. About two or three days after being back home, she had left her house for the day, and when she returned, she found that the front door had been knocked down, “totally kicked off its hinges.”

“They’d placed a pitchfork on my bed, as if to scare me,” she said, referring to who she describes as “CCP agents” living outside China. Becker reported the incident to the police.

By the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics approaching, to raise awareness and call for a boycott of the Games, a coalition of China human rights advocates launched their human rights torch relay and asked Becker to serve as the GHRTR Australian ambassador. The relay kicked off in Athens, Greece, on Aug. 9, 2007, and made its way through over 100 cities in more than 30 countries throughout Europe, America, Asia, and Australia.

While the CCP was touring its Olympic torch around the world, Becker was carrying its counterpart, the “human rights torch,” in its own separate international tour, including relaying it through 67 towns and suburbs in her home state, Victoria, in Australia.

“I had to stand up,” she said. “Lots of people were involved. In many towns, there were mayors, MPs, media, faith leaders, school groups, and human rights advocates; there were lots of reports and lots of things that happened with that torch relay.”

‘2022 Olympics Should Be Moved’

In referring to the March 2020 final judgment of the China Tribunal, a London-based people’s tribunal, Becker said that after thorough investigations, chair of the tribunal Sir Geoffrey Nice QC and a seven-member panel summarized that “any government, organization, or individual who interacts with China should recognize they are ‘interacting with a criminal state.’”

The tribunal stated in its judgment that “Commission of Crimes Against Humanity against the Falun Gong and Uyghurs has been proved beyond reasonable doubt,” and that the investigations led to the tribunal’s “unavoidable final conclusion that forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale.”

“Therefore, I’m calling that the 2022 Olympics should be moved,” Becker said. “And I believe that the sanctity of life and respect for human beings takes precedence over any sporting event—even the Olympics.”

Although lawmakers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and recently Australia, have called for a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Becker says she doesn’t believe it will solve the issue, because the CCP no longer cares about pleasing diplomats, so “that’s not going to make them lose anything,” nor stop their human rights abuses.

“I don’t think China will care at all if the diplomats don’t go,” she said. “You’ve just got to look at how they’re treating Australia at the moment, look how many things they’ve taken off Australia; they don’t really care about the politicians or the diplomats that much anymore. I think they’ve got to move the 2022 Games, they’ve got to push to move them.”

Becker, who currently has commemorative items on display at the “Memories of Tokyo 1964” exhibition at the Consulate-General of Japan in Melbourne, said that, even if the Games have to be delayed, which “can be done as we saw for Tokyo 2020,” a complete move away from China is achievable.

“There’s plenty of countries that could do it,” she said. “Plenty of European countries that have got the infrastructure set up. If they need to get things together, we could put it off a year, but I’m sure there will be European countries that would take it on.”

Becker said that expecting any kind of boycott by athletes is not a realistic solution either. Shifting the burden to athletes who’ve “put in 110 percent” would not be a fair or reasonable expectation; she said the burden lies with the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

“This may be their only opportunity, one opportunity to go to an Olympics,” Becker said of the athletes. “It’s very hard to ask them to walk away from that. Administrators and the IOC should have made the right choices, it shouldn’t involve the athletes having to make this decision at all.”

The IOC ‘Stands Alone’

In 2001, when the IOC awarded the 2008 Games to China, as a former Olympian still in good relations with the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC), Becker raised with them directly the seriousness of the communist regime’s “horrible” human rights record.

Later in 2007, while touring the world as Australian ambassador for the GHRTR, she implored them to ask the IOC to move the Olympics to Athens.

Becker said that, at the time, they had taken up a collection of petitions to move the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And John Coates, the now-vice president of the IOC, who was then a member of the IOC and the AOC, had forwarded those to the then-president of the IOC. “He guaranteed me that they got those petitions. So he reported how I felt. He’s supportive,” she said.

Even when China was still being considered as a contender for hosting the 2008 Olympics, Becker managed to raise her concerns with then-vice president of the IOC Kevan Gosper in-person at an Olympic function they both attended in November 2000. His response was that he believed the CCP would surely change.

“He told me the CCP would improve. I assured him at the time, they wouldn’t,” Becker said. “It’s interesting that they don’t learn, the IOC hasn’t really learned what the CCP’s about. In 2001, they were awarded those Games; It’s 20 years down the track, and they’re still doing the same thing today.”

Referring to the recent Hong Kong issue, suppression of Uyghurs, and the CCP’s recent intrusion activities in Taiwan, Becker called these all “new human rights abuses.” “These are new things after they were awarded the Olympics. The IOC hasn’t learned anything. They trust the CCP too much,” she said. “The CCP have just done exactly what they want to do afterward.”

Becker applauds the members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) who have coordinated legislative actions on the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, saying they’re “politicians who have a good heart and understand the human rights issues.” She said, however, that presidents and prime ministers are not likely to get involved.

“The IOC is a very strong organization. It stands alone, away from politics,” she said. “That’s why those politicians don’t want to get involved. They know that it stands alone. So it’s up to the people to try to talk to the International Olympic Committee, the Australian Olympic Committee, people involved at that level are the people we have to get to.

‘It’s Up to the People’

Becker said citizens around the world who are concerned about Beijing hosting the Olympics can find and sign an existing petition to the IOC, or start a new one. “I think they can all sign a petition,” she said. “Stand up where they can, show China⁠. We’ve seen that China can’t be trusted, even with the COVID situation. I think people are really waking up to how it is.”

In getting the Games moved, Becker said the world shouldn’t rely solely on “people at a high level of government.” “I think individual people can make it happen more, and as the groundswell happens, they then might come onboard,” she said.

Speaking about corporate sponsors dumping money into the Beijing Games—dubbed the “Genocide Olympics” by critics—Becker said corporations “will do anything for money.” “Corporations need to be talked to because they’ve supported the Olympics forever and ever, it’s going to be a difficult one to move them on that, but we have to try,” she said.

Various human rights abuses were reported to have happened during the 2008 Beijing Olympics: Elderly people being thrown out of their homes and made homeless to make way for the Olympic village, and dissidents being rounded up en masse by the CCP and imprisoned out of fear they might expose the CCP’s crimes to overseas visitors.

“We spoke about all these things in 2008,” she said. “I don’t know that many people listened as much as they should have, otherwise we wouldn’t be in this situation. I guess we have to go through it all over again.”

In predicting that “they’ll do it again,” Becker said those previous abuses by the CCP need to be brought back to the world’s attention because, “once again, they’ll make sure that anyone who doesn’t suit the commitment of the Party, the CCP, will be pushed out of town so no one can see them.”

Future of China, CCP, and Communism

When asked her thoughts about a communist country hosting the Olympics, and what she holds out for the future of China, Becker said: “I don’t believe in communism or socialism. I think it’s really bad for the world, you can see what’s happening⁠—people don’t have any thoughts, they can’t think for themselves, it’s just a terrible way of living.”

Becker said she’d like “to see the CCP collapse” and for freedom to be returned to the Chinese people. “It will be a better world for the Chinese people eventually. And I hope it’s sooner than later,” she said.

Seeing communism as a threat to the world, Becker said from her own experience that “we would not want to be ruled by the CCP.” But despite what may appear to be grim prospects with how far the CCP have already infiltrated the West, she maintains hope that the citizens of Western countries will fight to gain their dwindling sovereignty back.

“Even just in Australia⁠—and it’s happening in America and other countries as well⁠—the people are waking up; they’re realizing what the CCP is really all about, and how much they want to control everything,” she said. “People can now see through it.”

As for whether China will remain the host nation of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Becker believes that it “wouldn’t be good for the Olympic movement.”

“They’re putting themselves in a really difficult situation if they let China host the 2022 Olympics. They should have learned from the last one, and from the empty stalls in Tokyo. They may never go on. It may not keep going if we can’t take that away from the CCP,” she said.

“It’s wrong, it’s just wrong for them to have it.”

For Sanctity of Life, ‘Move the 2022 Games,’ Olympian Once Arrested in Beijing Says (theepochtimes.com)

America is underwriting its own demise.

Woke Capital apparently wants to hasten it.

Coming on the heels of a letter from titans of American industry to the Biden administration calling for it to jettison punitive China tariffs post-haste, and resume trade negotiations with Beijing, BlackRock’s research arm recently urged investors to increase their exposure to the PRC by two-to-three times.

The world’s leading asset manager of some $10 trillion in assets did so 18 months after China helped foist a pandemic on America and the world that has caused incalculable damage in blood, treasure, and sacrificed liberty and justice.

It did so after China crushed Hong Kong, clashed with India, antagonized Australia, and as it threatens a takeover of Taiwan.

It did so in spite of the fact that Xi Jinping is currently waging a jihad—euphemistically referred to as a “regulatory crackdown”—against China’s largest businesses, U.S.-listed ones of which saw $400 billion of market value lopped off this summer.

It did so surely knowing those funds ultimately redound to the benefit of the sworn adversary of the United States that seeks to supplant it and reign as the dominant world power.

It did so notwithstanding all the U.S. government has done for it, BlackRock having been dubbed the “fourth branch of government” for its political and pecuniary ties to the feds generally, and the quasi-public Federal Reserve in particular.

And it did so irrespective of its claimed fealty to progressive investing principles.

Former Trump administration Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, one of the principal architects of the administration’s China strategy, broadly captured the symptoms of Woke Capital’s China addiction, and exposed the hypocrisy of the likes of BlackRock, in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs.

Pottinger noted:

“The retirement savings of millions of Americans currently finance Beijing’s military modernization and support Chinese companies that are complicit in genocide and other crimes against humanity. Even as Beijing was systematically expelling foreign journalists from China and making the country’s investment climate increasingly opaque, stock index providers such as FTSE Russell and MSCI continued to add Chinese companies to their indexes, sometimes under pressure from Beijing. Because many American funds benchmark their investments to those same indexes, billions of U.S. dollars automatically flow to Chinese companies, including those that Washington has sanctioned or subjected to export controls.”

This issue is so systemic that until the Trump administration forbade it, the retirement funds of federal employees were being funneled into malevolent Chinese companies as well.

Meanwhile, many financial firms pledging allegiance to “ESG”—prioritizing investments in companies that adhere to progressive environmental, social, and governance standards—demonstrate those concerns do not stretch beyond America’s shores.

As Pottinger adds:

“Some money managers…eschew investing in Western companies that don’t meet…’ESG criteria’…but happily invest in Chinese companies that feature atrocious records in all three categories. There are U.S. university endowments, for instance, that could deliberately decide to invest in only ESG-compliant companies in the United States but simultaneously invest in a raft of Chinese firms that flout all accepted standards of corporate governance and environmental stewardship. Chinese firms contribute more to greenhouse gas emissions, ocean plastic pollution, and illegal fishing than do the companies of any other country on earth. As for social responsibility, a wide variety of Chinese companies—from leading technology firms to manufacturers that export globally—work with Beijing’s security apparatus to track, incarcerate, and extract forced labor from ethnic Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims. With respect to corporate governance, CCP cells, operating mostly in secret, wield significant and often decisive control over Chinese companies—making a mockery of Western standards of corporate transparency and independence.”

When it comes to the likes of BlackRock, and its peers, it’s “ESG for thee, but not for Xi.”

American—increasingly in-name-only—financial firms, which lubricate the global economy, epitomize the Woke elite, who reject the very system from which they have so richly benefited.

That the rest of that elite—our political class, media, academic institutions, and so on—are literally and figuratively invested in, beholden to, or at minimum afraid of running afoul of China, is at root a symptom of an existential crisis that threatens to undo America far before we ever get around to doing all that is necessary to counter Beijing.

The existential crisis concerns our understanding of who we are as a nation, our confidence in its purpose, and our resolve to do whatever is necessary to defend and protect it, and cultivate its greatness.

A pervasive America Last mentality of Wokeism, decadence, and decline prevails over the commanding heights of society. It is born of a sort of moral narcissism, as Roger Simon has termed it, under which our elites confess their sins of power and privilege, while supporting paternalistic policies falling hardest on those for whom they claim to care most. The elites virtue-signal without bearing any cost—on the contrary, they end up further ensconced in their preeminent societal position.

Unserious as this cynical charade is, it may prove fatal.

A nation that prioritizes politics over merit; rewards mediocrity over excellence; protects the connected and targets the contrarian; permits tyranny under the guise of health and safety; privileges foreigners over citizens; and inculcates an ethos of national self-loathing aimed at undoing the system on which it is based, no matter the resources and capabilities of those laboring under it, will be poised to crumble well before it gets around to confronting its global foes.

Domestic peace and prosperity will erode; morale will recede; the will to survive, let alone thrive, will be extinguished.

The zeitgeist of Wokeism, decadence, and decline will defeat us before China has a chance to say “kowtow.” That our putative leaders already kowtow in word and deed—indeed are actively aiding, abetting, and enabling our worst enemy—demonstrates the extent of the rot that has already set in.

Woke Capital Hastens America’s Demise by Backing China (theepochtimes.com)

The Biden White House granted the Chinese Communist Party-linked firm Huawei – which was crippled by Trump-era sanctions – licenses to purchase American auto chips, according to reports. 

The decision follows the Beijing-backed tech firm hiring several lobbyists, including the brother of Joe Biden’s White House Counselor Steve Ricchetti and CNN guests who have pushed the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

“U.S. officials have approved license applications worth hundreds of millions of dollars for China’s blacklisted telecom company Huawei to buy chips for its growing auto component business, two people familiar with the matter said,” Reuters reported.

The reported approval follows a Trump-era crackdown on the telecommunications firm, which has extensive links to both the Chinese Communist Party. Labeled a “national security threat” by the Trump administration and a decades-long Chinese military collaborator by the U.S. Department of Defense, Huawei routinely provides the regime backdoor access to its products, networks, and devices.

Former President Donald Trump’s State Department also emphasized that the Chinese Communist Party uses Huawei as an “instrument not only for making money but also for pursuing the Party-State’s agenda and fulfilling its strategic objectives […] deeply enmeshed in Beijing’s system of oppression at home and its increasingly assertive strategic ambitions globally.”

The Biden White House, however, has taken a considerably softer approach to the company, as Reuters notes:

Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, has been hobbled by trade restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on the sale of chips and other components used in its network gear and smartphones businesses. The Biden administration has been reinforcing the hard line on exports to Huawei, denying licenses to sell chips to Huawei for use in or with 5g devices. But in recent weeks and months, people familiar with the application process told Reuters the U.S. has granted licenses authorizing suppliers to sell chips to Huawei for such vehicle components as video screens and sensors. 

Biden White House Approves Licensing Deal For Chinese Communist Party-Linked Huawei, Reversing Trump-Era Hardline. – The National Pulse

Oregon Governor Kate Brown has participated in events sponsored by Chinese Communist Party propaganda groups flagged by the U.S. State Department for “directly and malignly influenc[ing]” American officials, The National Pulse can reveal.

The unearthed Chinese Communist Party links follow Oregon Democrats calling for the cancellation of an upcoming event featuring The National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam and Natalie Winters due to the site’s promotion of “China-centric conspiracy theories” and “toxic beliefs.”

The Oregon Democratic Party is attempting to ban China-focused news reporters while one of the party’s most high-profile members – Governor Kate Brown – recently established links with one of the regime’s chief influence groups abroad.

Brown, in fact, has a long history of collaboration with groups tied to Beijing’s United Front Work Department.

Propaganda 101.

China’s billion-dollar “United Front” effort aims to “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the federal U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission. United Front groups such as the China United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) have used tactics including free trips to China to garner “favorable coverage” from mainstream media outlets according to Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings.

Scarcely a “China-centric conspiracy theory” as the Oregon Democratic Party insist.

Brown also has deep ties to the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), dubbed the “public face” of the United Front and “avowedly an arm of the party-state.” The U.S. State Department has even described the CPAFFC as seeking to “directly and malignly influence” U.S. state and local leaders.

MUST READ:  Chinese Regime Takes Financial Stake In TikTok, Now Directly Linked to Facebook Fact-Checker ‘Lead Stories’.

Brown attended the group’s 2015 China-U.S.Governors Forum, an event the State Department has singled out for its subversive influence on U.S. politics:

“CPAFFC’s actions have undermined the Governors Forum’s original well-intentioned purpose.”

As the CPAFFC recounts, Brown emphasized that “Oregon hopes to enhance cooperation with China” at the event, which counted Chinese Communist Pary leader Xi Jinping as its top speaker. Following the forum, Brown was one of six governors to ink a deal with Beijing to collaborate on “clean technology and economic development.”

While taking a private meeting with CPAFFC Vice President Lin Yi the month following the forum, Brown reportedly described Xi’s remarks as “encouraging” while pushing to “strengthen pragmatic cooperation with China in education, science and technology, health, tourism and sports”:

Governor Brown said it was her great honor to attend the Governors’ Forum held in Seattle last month. President Xi’s remarks were encouraging and the Forum helped provide great opportunities for U.S.-China cooperation. The State of Oregon regards China as the most important international partner and has  willingness to strengthen pragmatic cooperation with China in education, science and technology, health, tourism and sports, etc. 

REVEALED: Oregon Democrat Governor Kate Brown Has Long-Standing Ties to Chinese Communist Influence Groups. (thenationalpulse.com)

Iran touts US failure in Afghanistan as it increases enrichment of weapons-grade uranium

Iran is set to hold a series of war drills with Russia and China, as the hardline regime celebrates the United States’ bungled evacuation in Afghanistan and boosts its enrichment of nuclear weapons-grade uranium to historically high levels.

Iranian and Russian leaders announced on Monday that their countries, along with China, will hold joint maritime war exercises in the Persian Gulf later this year or early in 2022, according to Iran’s state-controlled media. The countries said they will focus on “shipping security and combating piracy” as the United States reduces its military footprint in the region following its marred withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The announcement comes as the rogue countries step up their involvement in war-torn Afghanistan amid a hurried effort by the Biden administration to evacuate U.S. personnel from the country. Iran, Russia, and China have all expressed an interest in replacing the United States as a powerbroker in the nation and working with the newly installed Taliban government. Iran’s foreign ministry announced that “Iran is in contact with all parties in Afghanistan to pave the ground for dialogue and reconciliation” and that the Russian and Chinese embassies remain functioning.

Iran’s new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, celebrated what he called America’s “military failure” in Afghanistan last week, saying the Biden administration’s “military defeat and its withdrawal must become an opportunity to restore life, security, and durable peace in Afghanistan.” Iranian officials also have sought to increase ties with the Taliban, historically a regional enemy, as it expands its footprint in the region.

As the situation in Afghanistan deteriorates for the United States, Iran has increased its enrichment of uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported late last week that Iran produced uranium metals that were enriched up to 20 percent purity for the first time in its history. It also amped up its uranium enrichment program to 60 percent purity, a threshold level that allows the regime to produce the fuel needed for a nuclear weapon.

The move was met with consternation by the United States and its European allies, but they did not take any steps to sanction Iran or issue penalties for its breach of the 2015 nuclear accord. The United States said Iran must cease its enrichment, but would not go further than a public reproach. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom also acknowledged their concerns on the IAEA report in a joint statement on Thursday.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Free Beacon that “the botched Afghanistan drawdown is a propaganda coup for Tehran.”

The Islamic Republic “has long advanced the idea that America can be forced from the region through a sustained death-by-a-thousand-cuts military strategy,” Taleblu said. “Moreover, it is trying to get local actors who are pro-American to accommodate rising Iranian power by saying those who work with Washington will one day be abandoned.”

Iran’s latest enrichment levels are a signal to the U.S. administration that the country “is increasingly comfortable with escalation and has survived peak pressure,” Taleblu said. “Would you be afraid of a state which has denigrated instruments of national power like economic sanctions and military force in a bid to change your national security policy?”

As Iran increases its regional footprint and funds terrorist groups operating in and around Afghanistan, the Biden administration is pursuing negotiations aimed at securing a revamped nuclear agreement.

The State Department has made clear that it remains open to talks even as Iran refuses to come back to the bargaining table. Tehran wants full-scale sanctions relief and access to hard currency, but claims the Biden administration is not going far enough in its concessions, which are rumored to include the removal of sanctions on Iran’s financial system and other sources of revenue for the regime.

U.S. Iran envoy Robert Malley said last week the Biden administration is prepared to present Iran with a new nuclear deal should talks on reentering the 2015 accord fall apart, according to Politico.

Iran recently enlisted U.S. ally Japan in its pursuit of sanctions relief. Japanese foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi landed in Tehran over the weekend to discuss ways both countries can pressure the Biden administration into granting Iran sanctions relief.

“To revive the [nuclear deal], the United States must abandon its excessive demands,” Motegi was quoted as saying following meetings with high-ranking Iranian government officials.

Emboldened Iran To Hold War Drills With Russia and China (freebeacon.com)

In February, California resident Sherry Zhang received a call from her parents back in China, who told her a group of officers from the Ministry of State Security, the regime’s top intelligence agency, had shown up at their workplace.

The couple, in their late 70s, runs a factory in southern China’s Guangdong province.

“Are you the principal of this school?” Zhang’s parents asked her on the phone. “Is this true?”

They messaged Zhang a copy of a webpage, which included her photo and a short bio, Zhang told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. She immediately recognized the page—it’s from the official site of the San Francisco High School of the Arts, where she has been principal since 2015.

“I know my parents never go online; they’re old-fashioned,” Zhang said. She believes the officers gave her parents the copy.

According to Zhang, the officers told the elderly couple that Zhang is the head of a school that is “against China.” They then accused the parents of funneling money from their factory to the school, she said.

The officers then issued a veiled threat: if they uncover any proof of this, the factory would be shut down and Zhang’s parents would be jailed, Zhang said.

For the elderly couple, all of this came as a rude shock because Zhang had never told them anything about her profession or where she worked.

This is because Zhang is a practitioner of Falun Gong, a spiritual meditative practice persecuted by the Chinese regime since 1999. Millions of practitioners who refuse to give up their faith have been arrested, detained, or tortured in China. For practitioners based overseas but who have family inside China, the regime has threatened their relatives in a bid to pressure the relatives living outside of China into staying silent about Beijing’s human rights abuses.

Since the start of the persecution, Zhang, a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country for almost two decades, has joined protests in the United States calling for an end to the atrocities in China. She has friends whose relatives from her hometown in China were persecuted to death. “I know it’s real,” she said. “I think we should speak out.”

“Falun Gong is my personal belief,” Zhang said, adding that San Francisco High School of the Arts is a non-religious private school with faculty staff from diverse religious backgrounds.

The school focuses on teaching tradition, universal values, and a sense of civic duty, according to its website. Its arts curriculum includes ballet, Chinese dance, classical instruments and vocal music, visual arts, and musical theatre.

Zhang had not revealed details of her activities to her parents these past years. “I never wanted them to worry,” she said.

The Epoch Times is withholding details relating to Zhang’s parents and their business for safety reasons.

‘They Target Almost Anyone’

For the months following the call in February, officials would show up to “inspect” her parents’ factory every other day, according to Zhang.

“It’s never been seen that so many departments all come at once, and every time they come they have like 7 or 8 people,” Zhang said, adding that officials from tax, labor, customs, and health agencies were all involved. “The employees feel pressured. They cannot operate normally.”

One employee got ahold of Zhang’s number and called her several times. They asked her to back out from her position at the school so the factory can be “free of trouble.”

“I think [the Ministry of State Security] was trying to get their words to me,” Zhang said. “They just want to make things happen, so that I could do things according to their wish.”

Experiencing regular harassment from officials, Zhang’s parents now believe they have only two options left: get Zhang to resign from the school, or cut off all ties with their own daughter, the principal said.

“If you guys feel too much pressure, you can say we are not connected anymore,” Zhang told her parents in a phone conversation. “I don’t want to be your burden.”

This is not the first time Zhang’s parents have been pressured by local authorities.

Chinese police have harassed her parents since as early as 2001, according to Zhang. In one case, the police called her mother to meet at a restaurant. When she got there, the police told her to get Zhang to stop practicing Falun Gong. “My mom felt very disturbed,” she said.

Zhang’s parents were never against her practicing Falun Gong, but they were afraid of the officials, she said. “They don’t feel like they can do a whole lot.”

Recently, communications from Zhang’s parents have dried up. The last time they called was more than two weeks ago. They mentioned the police “keep saying they found more evidence.”

Zhang is unsure what is actually going on back home right now. “My parents try to not tell me much anymore,” she said.

Having not heard from her parents, Zhang doesn’t know what will happen next.

“[The Chinese regime] don’t just target Falun Gong practitioners. I think they’re trying to control overseas Chinese because they have their roots in China: their parents, relatives, friends,” Zhang said. “They target almost anyone they view as not in line with their [communist] doctrine.”

Speaking Out

Zhang has lived in the United States since 1992. She completed a doctorate in chemistry before doing post-doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley researching lithium-ion batteries. After a few years of industry work, she got together with a group of like-minded parents who were dissatisfied with the U.S. public school system, and in 2010 co-founded San Francisco High School of the Arts.

“We think that a school teaching traditional arts and universal values is very important,” Zhang said. “Respect, empathy, honesty, kindness, tolerance, and responsibility.”

“When you go into a lot of schools, especially high schools, you can see the children are not necessarily motivated,” Zhang said. “I was told by many parents there’s not a single high school in San Francisco that doesn’t have drug issues.”

Many parents who come to her are concerned their children lack traditional values and work ethics, she said. “They want their children to be positive contributing members of society.”

Zhang described a typical day of work as “busy but enjoyable.” She holds weekly assemblies with students on topics like the dangers of drug addiction. Zhang’s students are like her own children, she said.

Students would tell Zhang stories of their previous schools. “They [felt] like they cannot speak what’s on their mind, otherwise they cannot fit in,” she said. “Only the loud people got their voices heard.”

Exposing the Chinese regime’s egregious abuses of power is her way of practicing what she teaches to her students, Zhang said.

“Every note [the students] play, every dance movement they make; we keep on encouraging them to work hard, and they will persevere; we teach them that goodness will prevail,” she said. “I would have to stick to the same thing.”

Zhang cautioned that the Chinese regime is infiltrating every corner of the international community. “They try to control everything, control a lot of media, a lot of schools,” she said.

“We’re teaching the traditional values here … that’s not what they [the Chinese regime] want to see.”

Zhang said that the Chinese regime tries to influence Americans through the Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, Beijing-funded language centers found in colleges and K-12 institutions that have been criticized for promoting Chinese Communist Party propaganda and suppressing academic discussion and freedom on topics the regime doesn’t want to be discussed.

“They want the next generation to be an easier target and to really infiltrate what’s easy to infiltrate—the children.”

Chinese Authorities Harass Parents of California School Principal in Intimidation Attempt (theepochtimes.com)

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is partnered with a self-described “socialist” internet foundation run by the branch of the Chinese Communist Party spearheading its digital campaign to censor factual narratives and push fraudulent information about COVID-19.

The two foundations inked a memorandum of understanding in 2015, pledging cooperation in areas including “public health”:

According to the cooperation memorandum of understanding, the two parties will rely on new technologies such as the Internet to promote pragmatic cooperation in the fields of charity, public health, and international development, and work together to improve the quality of life of the poor and promote poverty reduction in developing countries.The China Internet Development Foundation (CIDF) operates under the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Civil Affairs and is managed by the Cyberspace Administration of China.Given its close relationship to the Chinese Communist Party, CIDF’s charter pledges to “adhere to the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

“Consciously maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core in ideological and political actions, and earnestly fulfill the historical mission of building a network power to promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” are among the foundation’s other objectives.

“The Foundation adheres to the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China and, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the Communist Party of China, establishes an organization of the Communist Party of China, carries out party activities, and provides necessary conditions for the activities of the party organization,” the group’s charter adds.

The CIDF also openly admits to “practicing the core values of socialism.”

CIDF’s oversight body, the Cyberspace Administration of China, also played a critical role in deploying Chinese bot armies on social media platforms to spread propaganda about the origins and severity of COVID-19.

In addition to controlling thousand-person legions online, the body was also responsible for dictating pro-government editorial lines of Chinese state-run media outlets regarding COVID-19 stories.

“All Cyberspace Administration bureaus must pay heightened attention to online opinion, and resolutely control anything that seriously damages party and government credibility and attacks the political system,” reveals a government memo obtained by ProPublica.

Gates Foundation Partnered With ‘Socialist’ Internet Group Running China’s COVID-19 Propaganda Operation. – The National Pulse

State health departments are using the Chinese Communist Party-linked social media platform TikTok to encourage children as young as 12 to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

In West Michigan, Kalamazoo County’s Health and Community Services Department is specifically using the app to “better reach people ages 12 to 29 years old.”

Lyndi Warner, public information officer for the department, reveals the platform is being used to target the young demographic: “When we look at who’s being vaccinated and where are we wanting to make those strides… the 12- to 29-year-old age group is where we really wanted to try and focus in on.”

“We are seeing these videos do really well so far. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well that they’re doing,” she added.

The Alabama Department of Health (ADH) also sponsored a contest on TikTok for individuals aged 13 to 29 to “encourage vaccination against COVID-19 before the beginning of the school year.”

“To participate, contestants are to submit a TikTok video showing themselves getting vaccinated or include a creative message explaining, “This is why I got vaccinated.” All videos must tag @alcovidvaccine, #getvaccinatedAL and #ADPH. […] A panel of judges composed of advertising professionals and ADPH personnel will select four winners who will each be awarded a $250 Visa gift card,” a contest summary continues.

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance employs former Chinese Communist Party officials, including individuals with military ties, to executive roles and grants party members preferential treatment in hiring processes. Its founder has also pledged to use ByteDance to “promote socialist core values” and devotion to the Chinese.

The app’s threat to national security and data privacy prompted the Trump administration to attempt to ban the platform from operating in the U.S. – an effort recently quashed by the Biden White House.

Former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – who played a critical role in shaping the Vatican’s controversial relationship with the Chinese Communist Party – has repeatedly headlined events sponsored by CEFC China Energy, a Chinese government-led influence group that has counted Hunter Biden as its Managing Director, The National Pulse can reveal.

The former Cardinal, who was defrocked due to sexual abuse, spoke at several events hosted by the group, with excerpts of his remarks earning publication in CEFC China Energy’s journal, “China Eye.” McCarrick has asserted commonalities exist between Communist and Catholic doctrine along with drawing positive parallels between Xi Jinping and the Pope.

McCarrick also served as an envoy for negotiations between the Chinese Communist Party and the Vatican over establishing formal ties, with many criticizing the final deal as a “slap in the face” to China’s Catholics. The establishment of formal relations between the two entities follow McCarrick’s robust involvement with CEFC China Energy.

CEFC’s Deputy Chairman and Secretary-General is Dr. Patrick Ho, dubbed “the f**king spy chief of China” in exclusive audio released by The National Pulse from Hunter Biden’s “Hard Drive from Hell.”

Ho appears multiple times in the e-mails as the pair inked million-dollar contracts, earning Hunter Biden the position of “Managing Director” at CEFC by 2018. The Chinese Communist Party operative was later indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for “schemes to bribe top officials for business advantages,” and used the committee “to conceal his criminal schemes, according to the Department of Justice.

McCarrick spoke at several CEFC events including the New York Forum on World Civilizations in 2012 and Sino-US Colloquium on Core Values and World Order in 2013.

A 2014 edition of CEFC’s “China Eye” Journal contains an excerpt from McCarrick’s speech from 2013. “It is a special pleasure to be back with the China Energy Fund,” he began his speech before praising the “brilliant” Patrick Ho. “I do not have the brilliance or the learning to match Patrick, but I’m just going to take out a couple of things that I think would be important and perhaps stimulating as we begin our discussion today,” he added.

EXC: Ex-Cardinal Negotiating Vatican-China Deals Attended Hunter Biden-Led Communist Party Influence Events, Deleted Webpages Reveal. (thenationalpulse.com)

Fellow Conservative:

We were right all along. It is becoming more and more apparent that Communist China directly caused COVID and that liberals – from the World Health Organization to the United Nations, to Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer – aren’t going to do anything about it.

Joe Biden is terrified of angering Communist China.

Millions are dead, the American economy in shambles and all of it can be tied back to Communist China. Joe Biden’s only response is capitulation and shaming anyone who dares to tell the truth.

Remember all the times Republicans – President Trump especially – were mocked for saying that China caused COVID-19? Remember all the times last year when we fought to close our borders to Chinese travelers, but Joe Biden and his friends on the left mocked us and called this common-sense move racist?

If they won’t do anything, then it is up to us. I am working overtime to expose the truth, save lives, do my part to take back the U.S. Senate for the Republican Party, and I need you to help me in this fight.

The outcome could decide the direction of our nation for generations and our ability to hold China accountable for harming the world.

I have been saying this for months, here is a clip of me on Fox News– if you aren’t angry after watching this, then you aren’t paying attention.

Multiple issues are being covered up:
• The “gain of function” research being conducted on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology;
• Big Tech’s censoring of the evidence for the lab-leak theory during last year’s election campaign;
• The three Wuhan scientists who got seriously ill in late 2019;
• The APPALING conditions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• China no longer holding its Military Games in Wuhan.
• The bid for new repairs at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that are going unquestioned…until now.

It is disgusting to see such weakness in the Oval Office. But, if we don’t take back the Senate to add some balance and strength to our government, I don’t know what will happen.

Please, your donation of $1,000, $500, $250, $100, even just $50 to do your part to take back the Senate could make a HUGE difference.

Republicans are fighting to hold China accountable for the lives it has destroyed. Every day, every hour, we cannot stop working to protect our families and the nation I love and served in the U.S. Navy to protect.

China must be held accountable. With your help, I will continue the fight to protect our great country. Please stand with me today.

For our children,

Rick Scott
U.S. Senator, Florida