Emails reveal how Hunter got Obama to officially recognize partnership

The Biden administration last month warned of a Chinese Communist Party front group that seeks to “co-opt” state leaders as part of Beijing’s sprawling foreign influence operation. Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop show the first son and his business partners helped the organization gain a foothold in the United States while his father was vice president.

In 2015, Biden’s partners lobbied the State Department to publicly approve a partnership between the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and State Legislative Leaders Foundation, a nonprofit group that hosts forums for state legislators and corporate leaders. Hunter’s team portrayed the initiative as a boon for U.S.-Chinese relations.

But emails show they hoped the U.S. government’s recognition of the partnership would help the foundation establish an office in Beijing. It is not clear why the partnership—or the Obama administration’s blessing of it—would have helped Hunter Biden’s business prospects. What is clear is that he and his colleagues believed it would: Biden associate James Bulger wrote in a July 17, 2015, email that the Beijing office would be “a great business driver” for a joint venture they sought with Harvest Fund Management, a Chinese investment firm led by Henry Zhao, a businessman and reported member of the Chinese Communist Party.

The lobbying campaign proved wildly successful on all fronts. After a September 2015 meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, President Barack Obama endorsed the partnership between State Legislative Leaders Foundation and the Chinese group. Months later, Hunter Biden’s company finalized its multimillion-dollar deal with Harvest Management.

Biden’s emails, which have not been previously reported, show how the younger Biden helped a Chinese Communist Party influence outfit that his father’s administration now views as a national security threat. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said last month that the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries seeks “to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda.”

On April 28, 2015, Bulger told Hunter Biden that State Legislative Leaders Foundation president Stephen Lakis wanted to meet to discuss a path forward to setting up a SLLF office in China and creating a partnership between his organization and the Chinese organization.

“Whatever you need on this just let me know and I’ll make it work,” Biden replied.

Between April and July 2015, Biden’s longtime friend and business partner Eric Schwerin arranged meetings between the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and State Department officials to help advance the partnership with the Chinese group. Schwerin, who had dozens of White House meetings with members of then-vice president Joe Biden’s office, was “instrumental” in arranging the State Department sessions, according to an email from Bulger.

The Biden group’s primary goal was to have Obama reference the collaboration between the State Legislative Leaders Foundation and the Chinese group in his upcoming meeting with Xi Jinping. On May 11, 2015, a foundation adviser wrote Evan Ryan, who then served as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs, that a reference by Obama would help them gain “top level approval” from Chinese officials to set up a foundation office in Beijing.

Ryan, who now serves as White House cabinet secretary and is married to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appears to have played a major role in midwifing the partnership. Schwerin noted in an email to Biden that Ryan had “helped with” the effort to officially acknowledge the foundation’s work with the Chinese group. Other emails show Biden and Schwerin in frequent correspondence with Ryan on other matters.

The U.S. intelligence community has increasingly warned that Beijing uses American businessmen and nonprofit groups—often through “deceptive and coercive” means—to promote China’s political agenda in the West. Republicans have said Hunter Biden would have been a prime target for such an influence operation, given his extensive dealings in China and his access to policymakers in Washington. Biden, who is under federal investigation over his taxes and foreign business dealings, earned millions of dollars from a deal with CEFC China Energy, whose chairman was suspected of having ties to Chinese military intelligence. Biden also provided legal services to a CEFC executive whom he referred to as “the fucking spy chief of China” and who was convicted for trying to bribe African officials for oil rights.

The Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and State Legislative Leaders Foundation have hosted five “Cooperation Forums” in Honolulu, Las Vegas, Wuhan, and Shijiazhuang since 2015, providing the Chinese influence group access to dozens of state legislative leaders and American business executives. While the U.S. government has not publicly scrutinized the forums, the State Department in 2020 pulled out of a forum between the Chinese group and the National Governors Association due to the former’s efforts to “spread Beijing’s malign influence in the United States.”

Biden’s associates began lobbying the U.S. government as a ploy to land a lucrative investment from Harvest Fund Management, one of China’s largest asset managers. Biden allegedly touted his family’s political connections in seeking a $5 million investment from Harvest founder Henry Zhao, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Zhao is believed to be a Chinese Communist Party official, according to the New York Post.

The Biden team had worked with the State Legislative Leaders Foundation before. The foundation helped Biden and his associates at the private equity firm BHR Partners in 2015, when Hunter’s team helped the Aviation Industry Corporation of China purchase Michigan auto parts maker Henniges Automotive, the Free Beacon reported earlier this year.

The Biden emails provide a detailed roadmap of how the State Legislative Leaders Foundation, the Biden team, and Zhao sought to use an official blessing from the U.S. government to advance their business interests. In a September 2014 email, Lakis, the foundation president, told Zhao he was a “shareholder” in Bulger’s company. He urged Zhao to consider an investment in the Biden joint venture, saying he had “every confidence that such a partnership will be beneficial to all parties.”

Back in China, Zhao was “working with the Chinese Governments [sic] counterparts in Beijing” to have the foundation’s efforts mentioned during the Obama-Xi summit in September 2015, Bulger told Biden in a July 17, 2015, email. Having the initiative mentioned in an official document for the summit “would be a huge boost to [Zhao’s] effort in China.” That in turn “would be a great business driver for Burnham/Harvest,” referring to their joint venture, said Bulger. Bulger, a relative of mobster Whitey Bulger, also wrote that Zhao wanted Biden’s “help with this matter.”

The emails do not detail what steps Biden took to help the initiative, but he cheered the partnership between the foundation and the Chinese group in a November 2015 email to Zhao. Biden wrote he was “very happy to hear that the State Legislative Leaders Foundation matter was worked out and was highlighted during President Xi’s State Visit in September.”

Burnham and Harvest finalized the joint venture in March 2016, according to emails Biden sent to Zhao.

“This is an exciting milestone and I look forward to helping building [sic] a cross border institution that helps investors in our respective countries across the globe,” Biden wrote Zhao on March 18, 2016.

While Biden had high hopes for the partnership with Zhao—he said his company had “no greater partner” than the Chinese businessman—the joint venture went south in May 2016 after another Biden partner, Devon Archer, was indicted on fraud charges.

It is unclear whether Biden was aware of his son’s activities, though Hunter has kept his father in the loop on several of his other business ventures. Joe Biden met in 2017 with Michael Lin, a longtime Hunter business partner who advised the State Legislative Leaders Foundation on its first foray into China, the Free Beacon reported in May 2021.

None of Biden’s associates—Schwerin, Lakis, or Bulger—have registered with Congress as lobbyists, despite their outreach to the State Department. None returned requests for comment. Biden’s attorney and the White House also did not respond to requests for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Dozens of cases of Langya virus have been reported in China, according to new research from scientists who were previously linked to controversial bat coronavirus studies at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The Langya henipavirus — referred to as LayV — belongs to a family of viruses that are “known to infect humans and cause fatal disease,” revealed a group of Chinese-led scientists in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Of the 35 confirmed LayV cases found in China’s Shandong and Henan provinces, however, none have proven deadly. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, cough, loss of appetite, and muscle aches.

The majority of the scientists behind the paper identifying the virus are affiliated with Chinese Communist Party-run scientific institutions, which are notorious for their ties to the regime’s military efforts and biological warfare programs. Researchers from labs including the Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology and State Key Laboratory of Pathogens and Biosecurity are among the paper’s authors.

Lin-Fa Wang, a researcher at the Duke–National University of Singapore Medical School, is also an author of the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine piece, whose work on the LayV virus follows his involvement with bat coronavirus research conducted by the Wuhan Institute of Virology using funds from Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency.

Led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak and the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “Bat Woman” Shi Zhengli, researchers used the samples to conduct risky “gain-of-function” research, as now-deleted webpages reveal the lab manipulating bat coronaviruses to “replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.”

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Wang, who is an Honorary Professor at the lab, appears as a co-author on many of these now highly controversial studies including “Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor” in 2013 and “Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus” in 2017.”

Though Wang told the Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times that the reported LayV cases had “not been fatal or very serious” so far and that there was “no need for panic,” officials from Taiwan’s health authority are currently monitoring the virus’ spread.

In the paper, scientists sequenced the LayV virus genome and alleged that “the shrew may be a natural reservoir of LayV.”

In the early days of COVID-19, Chinese Communist Party scientists and their American counterparts pushed a similar narrative.

A California teacher who bragged about using his position to radicalize students into far-left “revolutionaries” has been given three years of pay by his school district to resign, according to a report.

Gabriel Gipe, a teacher of Advanced Placement government at Inderkum High School, agreed in January to leave his post with a $190,000 payout from the Natomas Unified School District, according to The Sacramento Bee, citing district records.

Gipe, whose annual base salary is about $60,000, received a final paycheck of about $100,000 after taxes were withheld, according to the newspaper.

The teacher drew outrage from the school district community last year after he was featured in a video by undercover news organization Project Veritas.

In the video footage, Gipe says he gave students extra credit for them to attend left-wing events, including counter-protests to the “right-wing rallies.” He also allegedly kept track of his students’ political inclinations to make sure they drifted further left as time went on.

“So, they take an ideology quiz and I put [the results] on the [classroom] wall. Every year, they get further and further left,” he tells the undercover journalist, who was posing as a left-wing sympathizer.

“I’m like, ‘These ideologies are considered extreme, right? Extreme times breed extreme ideologies.’ Right? There is a reason why Generation Z, these kids, are becoming further and further left.”

Gipe says he displayed on his classroom wall an Antifa flag, which he claimed was “meant to make fascists feel uncomfortable.” The video footage also shows a poster of Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong on a wall in the teacher’s classroom.

When asked about his views on the Chinese Communist Party, Gipe says in the video footage that Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which took place after a disastrous economic campaign that triggered mass starvation and famine, provides lessons for how socialism can take root inside the United States.

“You need propaganda of the deed—your economics—and cultural propaganda as well. You need to retrain the way people think,” he says. “We have to hit both fronts. We have to convince people that this [socialism] is what we actually need.”

Later, when a Project Veritas reporter confronted Gipe on the street, the teacher was wearing a T-shirt with a hammer and sickle on the front. Gipe didn’t respond to the reporter’s questions regarding his persuading of students to adopt far-left ideologies.

Following parents’ outrage, the school district placed Gipe on unpaid leave pending an investigation, acknowledging that Gipe’s “educational approach” was “disturbing and [undermined] the public’s trust.”

An administrative judge later ordered that Gipe be put on paid leave as the district’s investigation continued.

The report of the investigation revealed more details about Gipe’s problematic conduct, including replacing typical AP government curriculum with lectures about communism and pinning photos of students who expressed conservative ideas on a wall next to a swastika.

“You used your position of authority with a captive audience of impressionable teenagers to promote your own political ideology, including advocating or teaching communism with the intent to indoctrinate or inculcate in the mind of any pupil a preference for communism,” the district report reads, according to The Sacramento Bee.

In response to a request for additional information, the Natomas Unified School District officials said in a statement that they have put the matter behind them.

“We have put this behind us and have moved forward,” the statement reads. “What’s most important right now is welcoming our students back to the start of a new school year.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Chinese regime commits and enables trafficking in persons, primarily by subjecting religious and ethnic minorities to forced labor, according to the U.S. Department of State’s latest Trafficking in Persons Report.

Forced labor in China is so prevalent—that it amounts to a “government policy or pattern”—conducted by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials at all levels, the report stated.

Chinese citizens have further reportedly suffered forced labor at Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) projects abroad due to the regime’s neglect to supervise recruitment and labor conditions, the report added.

During the reported period—from April 2021 to March 2022—China showed indicators of state-sanctioned forced labor, did not meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons, and did not make serious efforts to fight it, causing the country to rank among the lowest tier of nations, the State Department said in the report. 

Forced Labor in Detention Centers

State-sponsored forced labor occurs mainly under the CCP’s “mass detention and political indoctrination” campaign targeted against Uyghurs and other Muslim or Turkic minorities in China’s Xinjiang region, according to the State Department.

Victims include Tibetans, Christians, and members of other suppressed ethnic and religious minorities, such as Falun Gong adherents.

The CCP “subjugate[s] and exploit[s] minority populations in forced labor in internment camps under the pretext of combating violent extremism and other social ills,” the report stated. 

“Authorities continued to amplify the magnitude of trafficking crimes in the country and abroad, including by perpetrating genocide,” it added. 

An independent people’s tribunal, known as the Uyghur Tribunal, ruled in December 2021 that the Chinese regime had committed genocide against ethnic Muslims in Xinjiang—through an array of repressive acts that included mass internment, family separation, sterilizations, and forced labor.

The United Nations estimates that more than 1 million Uyghurs have been detained in internment camps in Xinjiang. 

Such internment camps are “designed to erase ethnic and religious identities under the pretext of ‘deradicalization,’” according to the State Department.

Detainees may be subject to forced labor within internment camps or at near or external factories. The goods produced range from garments to consumer electronics, face masks, automotive components, and holiday decorations, among many others.

Domestic companies are incentivized to open factories near internment camps through tax cuts and subsidies, as well as to take in transferred detainees from other provinces, as stated in the report.

Local authorities are also incentivized to conduct forced labor, as they are awarded funds “for each inmate forced to work in these sites at a fraction of minimum wage or without any compensation,” the report read. 

Local officials are also encouraged to meet detention quotas to keep the system functioning. They achieve this by issuing arbitrary arrests and accusing individuals of false criminal offenses or administrative violations—such as violating birth regulations. This data was extracted from the regime’s official documents, according to the State Department.

Non-interned Forced Labor

Besides being subject to forced labor under detention, victims are coerced into forced labor through threats of interment. They are also transferred to manufacturing sites in other provinces under “poverty alleviation” programs.

China “has reportedly placed 2.6 million members of minority communities in agricultural and manufacturing jobs within Xinjiang and across the country through state-sponsored ‘surplus labor’ and ‘labor transfer’ initiatives featuring overt forced labor indicators,” the report stated. 

“The government has transported at least 80,000 of these individuals to other provinces for forced labor under the guise of poverty alleviation and industrial aid programs,” it added. 

Trafficking in Persons Linked to China’s BRI

The Chinese regime has reportedly omitted to oversee BRI projects’ recruitment channels, labor conditions, and contracts, which resulted in Chinese citizens being deceived into moving abroad, where they were subjected to forced labor and other abuses, according to the report.

The BRI—a tool for the CCP’s global expansion—finances enormous loans to developing nations for building infrastructure. Chinese state-owned banks provide the countries with loans that experts say open the nations to the risk of being saddled with unsustainable debt levels. 

The loans are then used to pay Chinese companies to build infrastructure, including the development of roads, ports, power plants, mines, telecommunications, or banking institutions. The ostentatious projects have been described as part of so-called debt-trap diplomacy since the often-unpayable loans will force the nations to repay China with goods or land.

Chinese citizens employed in BRI projects abroad have suffered forced labor at worksites funded totally or partially by Beijing, Chinese companies, or Chinese nationals, said the State Department.

Chinese and “host country nationals employed in some BRI construction projects, mining operations, and factories in African, European, Middle Eastern, Asian, Pacific, Latin American, and Caribbean countries experience deceptive recruitment into debt bondage, arbitrary wage garnishing or withholding, contract irregularities, confiscation of travel and identity documentation, forced overtime, and resignation penalties,” the report read.

Such was the case of Li Wei and Mao Chen, two Chinese citizens recruited for a rural BRI project in Indonesia, which included flights, housing, food, and wages. However, once at the smelting plant, their passports were seized, and they were subject to forced labor, working 16 hours a day without a salary, according to the report. They were accommodated in small quarters, surveilled by armed guards.

A subcontractor later took over their contracts, but their labor conditions did not change. While Li escaped the facility, Mao was still subjected to forced labor. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

he Wuhan Institute of Virology, whose research into coronaviruses is believed by many to be the source of COVID-19, is engaging in similarly risky studies tracking bats and their ability to infect humans in caves across China.

The unearthed paper follows the controversial lab using funds from Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency in collaboration with EcoHealth Alliance to gather bat samples. Beginning in 2014, led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak and the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “Bat Woman” Shi Zhengli, researchers used the samples to conduct risky “gain-of-function” research, as now-deleted webpages reveal the lab manipulating bat coronaviruses to “replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.”

The new study, published in May of 2020, appears to be engaging in similar research methods.

Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, including “Bat Lady” Shi Zhengli, tracked and sampled the Cave Nectar Bat since it is “known to carry both filoviruses and coronaviruses,” according to the paper.

“In this study, we tracked 16 bats in Mengla County, Yunnan Province, China, using miniaturized GPS devices to investigate their movements and potential contact with humans. Furthermore, to determine the prevalence of coronavirus and filovirus infections, we screened for the nucleic acids of the Měnglà virus (MLAV) and two coronaviruses (GCCDC1-CoV and HKU9-CoV) in anal swab samples taken from bats and for antibodies against these viruses in human serum samples,” explains an overview of the researcher’s work.

The study also shows that researchers worked with “recombinant proteins,”  a term that commonly appears in “gain-of-function” research.

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The research was published in the journal Zoological Research and was funded by several Chinese Communist Party-run scientific organizations including the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). The National Pulse has previously exposed the NSFC’s deep ties to China’s military.

The group’s 2020 funding guidelines identify “innovative research in defense and military and civilian integration” as receiving “preferential” funding. The foundation also inked a 2016 “strategic cooperative agreement” with the Science and Technology Committee of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission – the regime’s paramount military policy-making body.

Annual reports from NSFC reveal several researchers from PLA-run institutions received millions in funding.

The paper also follows lies from EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak about the lab’s work with live bats, which were proved false through recovered footage from the lab. Deleted webpages and patents filed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology also show that researchers worked closely with bats despite the lab acknowledging that “the risk of being bitten by a bat still exists” even when protective gear is worn.

WASHINGTON—Lawmakers and experts highlighted the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) history of violence and bloodshed, while recognizing a new milestone reached by a global movement calling for people to relinquish their ties to the world’s largest communist regime.

The number of Chinese who have severed their ties to Chinese communist organizations reached over 400 million on Aug. 3, according to the Global Center for Quitting the CCP, an organization dedicated to processing and tracking online declarations denouncing CCP memberships. The global movement is known as “tuidang,” which means “quit the Party” in English.

“The Chinese Communist Party has the blood of tens of millions of Chinese on its hands, so it is no wonder that over 400 million Chinese civilians have left the CCP over the past two decades,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) in an emailed statement.

“Mao’s Great Famine, Tiananmen Square, the persecution of the Falun Gong, and the genocide of Uyghur Muslims are all proof that the CCP only cares about its grip on power,” continued Burchett, who sits on the Asia subcommittee of the House Committee of Foreign Affairs.

“Chinese people would be better served by an open and truly representative government, so I hope the tuidang movement picks up steam.”

A ‘Self-Healing’ Movement

In the past decades, more and more Chinese have been questioning the CCP’s representation of the people, according to Ryan, one of the authors of “Nine Commentaries of Communist Party,” a 2004 book first published by the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that inspired the global movement. Ryan is an alias used to protect his identity and family in China.

Ryan described the tuidang as a “self-healing” and “self-redemption” movement. According to him, Nine Commentaries helped the Chinese people unwind decades of CCP propaganda that instilled the idea that the Party equates to China, and the Chinese civilization. People were finally able to separate the CCP from the people, and the nation.

Before the book systematically illustrated the Party’s history of deceit and use of mass struggle to solidify its power over society, the CCP had controlled the Chinese people and dictated their mentality without the people’s knowledge, said Ryan. While he himself grew up in this environment, Ryan credited his belief in Falun Gong for helping him to transcend the communist regime’s indoctrination.

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice involving meditative exercises and a set of moral teachings underpinned by the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

Putting these principles into practice helped Ryan to extricate himself from the CCP’s hold on people’s psyche. This is because the Party has been able to manipulate and control the populace by appealing to the ignoble parts of human nature: greed, fear, and jealousy, he said. Such a tactic is most clearly shown in the CCP’s continual efforts in its 100-year history to pitch one group of society against another for no other reason than to consolidate its own grip on power, and eliminate threats to its control.

Falun Gong, itself, became singled as a target of the CCP’s wrath in 1999, after the Party deemed the spiritual disciplines’ huge popularity—with up to 100 million people practicing—a threat to its hold on power. The CCP has sought to wipe out the spiritual discipline with an all-society-wide campaign of arrest, torture, and vilification for the past 23 years and counting.

“Whether Chinese people have read the ‘Nine Commentaries’ or not, they have begun to discuss social issues with the verbiage and logic presented in the book,” Ryan said about the book’s impact. “Their mentality change is as important as the action of quitting the Party.”

Chinese people have quit the Party or its affiliate organizations by submitting online statements to the Global Center for Quitting the CCP. Most use an alias to do so.

“Chinese as a group are rediscovering their identity, one that is separate from the CCP,” Ryan added.

‘An Exemplar’

Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a Washington-based advocacy group, highlighted the tuidang movement as a model for peaceful resistance against communist oppression.

“Congratulations to the Tuidang movement for reaching a new milestone. Tuidang is an exemplar of a peaceful, civil society movement where activists reach the conscience of their fellow citizens and persuade them to renounce communist ideology and control,” he said in an emailed statement.

“The efforts of the movement to end communist domination are admirable, and the free world must stand with the people of China in such brave acts of resistance against the tyranny of the Chinese Communist Party,” Bremberg continued.

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) on the House Energy and Commerce Committee welcomed the latest progress of the tuidang movement in an emailed statement: “This week’s milestone is a clear signal to the CCP that their oppressive ways will not stand forever, and personal freedom will eventually carry the day, even in their own country. This is progress for those who stand against communism and the harm its policies have across the globe.”

Ryan said he has also seen the knock-on effects of the movement in the United States. It’s now the norm for U.S. officials to clarify that they don’t target the Chinese people or China the nation when they criticize the CCP.

Communist Insider Decouples from the CCP

Cai Xia, a former professor at the CCP’s elite Central Party School in Beijing, was a Party insider.

Now based in Washington, Cai, in a January interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD, described her journey of how she walked away from the CCP.

The first time Cai thought of quitting the Party was in 2016. She had retired from teaching then and was living in Beijing. The impetus for her change in thinking was statements made by Ren Zhiqiang, an outspoken real estate tycoon in China, who questioned whether the government was the same as the Party and criticized the CCP for “taking the taxpayers’ money but not working for them.” That was his response to the CCP general secretary Xi Jinping’s statement that “the media’s last name is ‘dang’”—a term referring to the CCP.

Known as “Ren the canon” for being vocal in criticizing the Party, the real estate mogul is a “red princeling”, a term for descendants of former CCP senior officials. Thus many thought Ren would get into trouble but wouldn’t have to pay a hefty price. However, Ren was sentenced to 18 years in September 2020 for alleged graft after criticizing the CCP for its mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, which led to the global pandemic.

Cai told NTD that the Party school reprimanded her in 2016 for publishing an article supporting Ren. “I didn’t have a voice because the Party discipline bound me, and I was considered a CCP member first and foremost,” said Cai. “I would rather have abandoned my CCP member identity to keep my right to speak up.”

Cai had written a formal application to quit the CCP then. But her friends persuaded her not to submit it because of the expected financial retaliation, including losing her pension. When Ren was sentenced to 18 years in 2020, Cai again wanted to quit the Party. At that time, she was in the United States. Once again, her friends in the United States persuaded her not to leave the Party so that she could keep her pension income.

But the decision was ultimately made for her. The Party expelled her on Aug. 17, 2020.

Cai said she felt “completely relieved” upon receiving the news.

“I completely decoupled with the Party. From then on, I would have no relationship, economic or interest involvement, with the Party anymore,” she said.

Cai’s transition from a CCP insider to a member of ordinary Chinese citizens brought her sense of happiness mixed with relief. She acknowledged that she had to deal with some financial difficulties due to the loss of her pension, but it was something that she could overcome.

“Once you have joined the Party, you don’t have the freedom to quit it. They strictly forbid members from quitting the Party,” Cai told NTD, adding that this was equivalent to making people accomplices to the CCP’s criminal activities.

She urged people to have the courage to break this bind. Such an act doesn’t only amount to the liberation of a person’s mind and spirit, Cai said.

It will also “offer a person an added layer of protection when China goes through a transition in the future,” she said.

“The Party is evil; it doesn’t mean the 90 million members are all like that.”

Renouncing Their Pledge

Many Chinese who quit the communist organizations state their reason as wanting to rid themselves of the CCP’s control and avoid being considered an affiliate if or when the CCP is held accountable in or outside China.

These people also include those who were once members of the CCP’s junior organizations: the Young Pioneers for elementary- and middle-school-aged children, and the Communist Youth League for those who are middle- and high-school-aged.

Although memberships in these organizations are not mandatory on paper, they are in practice. Students who haven’t joined these two groups by a certain age face increasing pressure and even discrimination in being eligible to receive education benefits.

With each progressive level from the Young Pioneers up until fully-fledged Party member, the initiates’ pledge evolves from “contributing to” to “fighting for,” and eventually, “ready to sacrifice everything for” the CCP.

Even though the membership in the Young Pioneers supposedly ends at 14 and the Youth League at 28, members don’t go through a formal process to rescind their pledge to the CCP. Therefore anyone who has ever been a member of these youth organizations is encouraged to submit a statement withdrawing their affiliation at the Global Center for Quitting the CCP platform.

This explains why the 400 million figure who have quit the CCP organizations vastly outstrips the official number of CCP members, which is 90 million.

The movement was also welcomed by Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology: “We spent decades fighting the Cold War to stop the spread of communism because we knew back then that it is evil and capable of great atrocities.

“The Chinese Communist Party is not only a great threat to democracy and freedom but also our national security. We must stop its growing influence around the world and here at home.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Australia’s shadow defence minister has called on the West to “see China with clear eyes” as he warned Australia’s “greatest vulnerability” is its failure to recognise the communist regime’s “fundamentally different vision for the world.” 

Andrew Hastie on Sunday said that Australia is in an “immensely difficult” position where it can neither forsake its closest allies, the United States, nor turn away from its largest trading partner, China. 

Hastie added that Australia has “failed to recognise how mobile our authoritarian neighbour has become” and ignored the role that ideology plays into China’s actions across the Indo-Pacific region. For example, Australia keeps using its own categories to understand China’s actions, such as its motivations for building ports and roads, rather than those used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he said.

“The West has made this mistake before. Commentators once believed Stalin’s decisions were the rational actions of a realist power,” Hastie said.

“Right now, our greatest vulnerability lies not in our infrastructure, but in our thinking. That intellectual failure makes us institutionally weak.”

Read More

Appeasement of the CCP?

The shadow defence minister warned that the West and the Chinese communist regime has “a fundamentally different vision for the world” and urged Australia to be “intellectually honest and take the Chinese leadership at its word.”

“Xi’s view of the future is one where capitalism will be eclipsed and ‘the consolidation of and development of the socialist system will require its own long period of history … it will require the tireless struggle of generations, up to 10 generations.’”

“If we don’t understand the challenge ahead for our civil society, in our parliaments, in our universities, in our private enterprises, in our charities—our little platoons—then choices will be made for us. Our sovereignty, our freedom, will be diminished.”

Meanwhile, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Aug. 5 called out China for its “destabilizing” live-fire drills near Taiwan, noting that Australia will monitor the situation closely.

On Aug. 4, China launched live-fire military drills in the seas surrounding Taiwan, which was seen as a campaign of military coercion against the island in apparent retaliation for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) visit.

The CCP declared six exclusion zones encircling the island for its war games. Warplanes and vessels crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait that separates Taiwan from mainland China.

Calling the military drills “highly provocative,” Taiwan’s defense ministry said that Chinese military jets and warships had been seen in waters near Taiwan on Aug. 4, with some crossing the median line. Also known as the Davis Line, the median serves as an unofficial air and maritime buffer between China and Taiwan.

Victoria Kelly Clark contributed to this article. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Twitter has permanently banned author James Lindsay for calling a transgender attorney a “child sexualization specialist” on the social media platform.

Lindsay said he made the comment after Alejandro Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic who previously worked as staff attorney for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, accused him of being racist and sexist.

Caraballo celebrated and took credit for Lindsay’s suspension, saying, “Tell James, I want him to know it was me” in a post on Twitter.

Over the last two weeks, Lindsay said, trans activists have banded together, targeted him, and claimed responsibility for a “mass reporting” campaign—which is against Twitter rules.

“They not only launched a massive reporting [campaign], but they bragged that they did it,” he told The Epoch Times on Aug. 5, the day he was banned. “Twitter has a terms of service agreement that you can’t mass report or induce mass reporting. It’s considered targeted harassment, and it’s against the terms of service to do it, but nobody ever enforces it—ever.”

He was previously twice locked out of his @conceptualjames Twitter account, once on July 21 for responding “ok groomer” to Ari Drennen, an LGBTQ program director at Media Matters, and again on July 26 for using the word “groomer” in old Twitter posts that trans activists publicized.

Drennen, who took credit for getting Lindsay locked out of his account on July 21, wrote an article published online July 22 suggesting Twitter suspend users “slandering LGBTQ people as ‘groomers’” and calling Lindsay a “right-wing CRT alarmist.”

To get back into his Twitter account in that case, Lindsay said he was “forced to confess” the “ok groomer” comment violated Twitter rules because “it’s the only way to get your account back unless you want to get locked into appeal limbo.”

Lindsay has since appealed the permanent ban. When prompted to “describe the problem” to Twitter, he wrote: “The problem is that you arbitrarily changed the rules and suspended my account after repeatedly forcing me to lie to admissions of guilt for ‘violations’ that aren’t real. You should un-suspend my account and correct your biased and arbitrary policy enforcement.”

Ironically, Lindsay said that he felt like he was “let out of prison” after the ban.

“I don’t know why I want to go back. It’s so strange how immediate it is that I just feel relief that I’m not on there anymore,” Lindsay said. “The only reason I want it back as a matter of practicality, because it drives something like 80-something percent of my traffic to my website.”

He accused Twitter of using tactics similar to those of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to coerce people into confessing to fake crimes.

“That is a tactic of Maoism—a communist tactic to force people to confess to crimes to be able to get leniency. That’s literally how Mao ran his prisons in CCP-controlled China in the ’50s,” he said.

The term “groomer” has several meanings, and although it can refer to pedophilia, it can also mean a recruiter who “grooms” someone into a cult, club, or organization, or a person who “grooms” another for a job or position, he said.

Lindsay contends he used the term “groomer” to describe someone involved in what he views the “cult indoctrination” of others into the trans activism or and gender ideology movement and was not accusing anyone of pedophilia.

“I would not accuse anybody of that without substantive evidence. It’s a horrific accusation,” he said.

He has admitted publicly that he openly criticizes those involved “defending and engaging in cult grooming into a gender ideology rooted in queer Marxist theory.”

“It’s weird because the cult indoctrination is sex, gender, and sexuality, and so they’re indoctrinating people with concepts of sexuality which sexualizes children, but that’s not the same thing specifically as pedophilia, which is also the sexualization of children. There is this weird double meaning, or two meanings to the word,” he said.

Lindsay has produced a series of podcasts called “Groomer Schools” for his website, New Discourses, which has been very popular, he said.

“So, I’ve been calling these people ‘groomers’ for months. I started doing it back in October,” he said. “[It wasn’t] ambiguous in terms of what it means until 10 minutes ago.”

Twitter did not respond to an inquiry about Lindsay’s allegations that activists had launched a mass reporting campaign against him, but told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement on Aug. 5 that his account was “permanently suspended” for “hateful conduct” according to Twitter policies.

While Lindsay opposes “cancel culture” on social media, especially for expressing an opinion on an issue, he said people who abuse their positions or power to impose an ideology on school children “should be fired.”

As the author of several books, including “Race Marxism” and “Social (In)Justice,” that delve deep into today’s culture wars, Lindsay is no stranger to controversy, but he has never been banned from Twitter for his opinions on critical race theory, for example.

“It’s not the broader constellation of things I’m calling out; it is specifically that they want to protect the transsexual ideological grooming of children, and it is huge and it is coordinated,” he said. “There is a vested interest in protecting this specific thing, and I don’t know why that is.”

Tiffany Justice, co-founder of national parental rights organization Moms for Liberty, was recently locked out of the group’s Twitter account for a week over a post condemning controversial proposed legislation that would make California a transgender sanctuary state, and for also challenging gender ideology.

She wrote on Twitter July 25, “Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?”

After Justice deleted the post, the Moms for Liberty Twitter account was unlocked.

Media Matters has also accused Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok, Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Michell, and others of slandering people with the term groomer.

Last week, Twitter also locked the Gays Against Groomers account. The group had posted: “Damaged people damage people. The internet is a dangerous place for kids, especially when you have radical alphabet activists openly grooming them. Protect your children from these people at all costs.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used COVID-19 for biological warfare, according to a new report by nine experts with the Center for Security Policy (CSP).

Generals, medical experts, and foreign policy experts including former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra and former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin contributed to the report, which is available in book form on Amazon.

The report, titled “The CCP is at War with America,” stated that there is no evidence COVID-19 was a natural virus, arguing that there is significant evidence it came from a CCP lab. It also stated that the CCP deliberately allowed the virus to spread worldwide by allowing international flights while locking down movement within China.

The CSP describes the report as an “exercise in competitive analysis that strongly challenges the Director of National Intelligence’s September 2021 conclusion.”

The Plague War

U.S. intelligence experts in 2021 concluded that they might never know for certain where COVID-19 came from. But the CSP put the blame squarely on the Chinese communist regime.

“The preponderance of evidence indicates that SARS-CoV-2 was lab-manufactured,” the report stated. “In any event, Beijing acted with murderous intent in spreading the disease beyond China’s borders.”

As proof of these claims, the report pointed to genetic features of COVID-19 not found in natural viruses. It noted that China’s military has a biological warfare program.

Finally, it highlighted that the Chinese regime restricted internal travel to stop the spread of COVID-19 but kept its international borders open. At the same time, it bought up global supplies of personal protective gear.

Even if the original release of the virus was an accident, its worldwide spread was intentional, the report stated. The likely motive was to ensure that the rest of the world would be set back economically by the virus to the same degree China would be.

“Xi’s regime clearly saw the imperative need to ensure that it would not suffer economic privation alone, to the advantage of its enemies, especially the United States,” the report read. “Actively spreading the virus was, thus, a means of waging economic warfare, and the Chinese Communists applied themselves to doing so with a vengeance.”

According to the report, the CCP worked to spread its COVID-19 quarantine policies around the world so it could weather the pandemic at an advantage. The damage COVID-19 measures did to America’s economy put the CCP ahead.

“A principal beneficiary of such economic trauma would be the Chinese Communist Party,” the report read.

Weapons of Choice

The report also stated that the Chinese regime has a history of biological warfare. In the early 1990s, Chinese general Chi Haotian told China’s biological weapons program that it should depopulate America so China could take it over, according to the report. But China kept these plans secret.

“Right now, it is not the time to openly break with [America],” the general said. “Our reform and opening to the outside world still rely on their capital and technology.”

Biological weapons could be China’s road to world domination, the report stated. Chinese military journals have openly published articles about genetically-targeted biological warfare. China has collected genetic profiles of foreigners while keeping a close guard on the genetic profiles of Chinese people, it added.

“If Chinese scientists succeed in designing pathogens targeting only foreigners, the next germ, virus, or microbe from China could end non-Chinese societies,” the report stated.

“Xi will be the first supremo to possess a weapon making worldwide Chinese rule possible,” it read.

The report suggested that COVID-19 fatalities outside China should be considered “murder victims.”

The paper offered several conclusions. These include that the CCP and any who colluded with it must be held accountable for the pandemic’s results; the government shouldn’t impose vaccine mandates on the vulnerable; the United States should develop deterrents against Chinese bioweapons; and future medical health measures shouldn’t follow Chinese totalitarian lockdown advice.

“We must never again allow our constitutional freedoms to be denied on the pretext of a public health emergency, especially at the insistence of foreign powers, let alone our mortal enemy,” the report stated.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

China’s ruling communist regime announced Friday that it would cancel or suspend dialogue on several issues with the United States ranging from military communications to climate change initiatives.

A statement from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) foreign ministry said that the regime would cancel all direct communications between military theater leaders, working meetings between defense departments, and maritime security dialogues with the United States.

Additionally, the CCP would suspend all cooperation with the United States related to illegal immigrant repatriation, criminal justice assistance, climate talks, transnational crime, and anti-drug programs.

The announcement is part of a suite of retaliatory measures by China against the United States and its partners following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier in the week.

Moreover, the canceling of communications between military commanders in the Indo-Pacific is likely to be seen as a major escalation by the international community, as such contact is often a key tool in helping militaries avoid miscommunication or harmful accidents.

The CCP statement follows a barrage of explosive rhetoric and hostile actions from Beijing this week.

On Thursday, the CCP launched 11 ballistic missiles into the waters around Taiwan, some of which passed over the island and into the exclusive economic zone of Japan. The regime has also seemingly launched a sustained series of cyberattacks on Taiwanese infrastructure, and has implemented import bans on more than 2,000 items from Taiwan. The Chinese military’s encirclement of Taiwan has also formed a sort of blockade, forcing international air and sea traffic to back up as it attempts to wrap around the most dangerous areas.

International forums including the G7 and ASEAN have called on the CCP to end its provocations and pursue a peaceful solution to ongoing tensions.

The White House, meanwhile, summoned the Chinese ambassador for a reprimand over the unprecedented escalations.

The U.S. leadership said that it would not give in to China’s erratic and dangerous behavior and that, in spite of CCP threats to regional stability, it would pursue deescalatory measures including postponing one of its own missile tests.

“As China engages in destabilizing military exercises around Taiwan, the United States is demonstrating instead the behavior of a responsible nuclear power by reducing the risks of miscalculation and misperception,” said White House National Security Council communications coordinator John Kirby during an Aug. 4 press conference.

“This is how we’re going to defend America’s national security interests and our values.”

The CCP maintains a so-called One China principle, which states that Taiwan is a breakaway province that must be reunited with the mainland. The regime has not ruled out the use of force to achieve this goal. Taiwan has been self-governing since 1949 and has never been controlled by the CCP, however. And Taiwan maintains a democratic government and thriving market economy.

U.S. relations with Taiwan and China are governed by a series of treaties and diplomatic cables stretching back to the 1970s. Notably, the United States adheres to a One China policy, which provides an acknowledgment, but not endorsement, of the CCP’s One China principle. The policy also mandates extensive unofficial ties with Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 further mandates that the United States will provide the arms to Taiwan necessary for its self-defense.

At the heart of the ongoing tensions between the CCP and the United States is their long-standing agreement that neither side will attempt to unilaterally change this status quo through force or coercion.

CCP authorities maintain that Pelosi’s visit was intended to unilaterally change that status quo. U.S. officials say the same of China’s increased military and economic aggression in the region, and have accused the CCP of manufacturing a crisis to justify military expansion around Taiwan.

“Beijing’s provocative actions are a significant escalation in its long-standing attempt to change the status quo,” Kirby said.

“We’re not going to accept a new status quo. And it’s not just the United States, but the world as well.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

SURPRISE! ANOTHER BIDEN HIRE IS A CCP SHILL!

A Co-Chair of Joe Biden’s forthcoming White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health has appeared in documentaries produced by Chinese Communist Party-run outlets; lauding the regime’s agriculture and food policy as an approach that should be “learned by the whole world.”

Ertharin Cousin, one of five individuals selected by Biden to lead the conference, has also repeatedly praised the Chinese Communist Party’s agricultural policies, with her quotes frequently appearing on regime-run media.

Set to take place in September, the White House’s conference is slated to address nutrition and health in addition to food security and agriculture. It comes as inflation and food shortages plague the economy, dovetailing with efforts by left-wing activists and billionaires to eliminate meat from Western diets to supposedly combat climate change.

Cousin, who was a former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, appeared on an episode of China Global Television Network’s (CGTN) show Full Frame titled “The Hunger Paradox.”

Cousin is the sole interviewee in the 20-minute program aired by CGTN, which is entirely owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party. It has been described by the Freedom House think tank as “a long-standing weapon in Beijing’s arsenal of repression” whose “mission is to attack designated enemies of the Communist Party.”

The episode peddles Chinese Communist Party talking points surrounding the success of its agriculture methods despite the regime’s notoriety for famine and food rationing during the Cultural Revolution.

“In China, agricultural reforms ensured most rural farmers had land to grow on, allowing them to be food self-sufficient. China’s poverty reduction efforts have contributed to 70 percent of the world-wide poverty reduction since the 1980’s,” asserts the host, who makes no mention of China’s history of famine.

MUST READ: REVEALED: Pelosi-Linked Lobbyists Are Pushing China’s Social Credit System For American Citizens.

“One of the things I’ve heard you say, which I think is fascinating and true, is that policies do make a difference and you point to China. So many people lifted out of poverty, so many people hungry that now have meals, so policies do make a difference don’t they,” he continues.

“Yes they do,” responds Cousin, adding “You would often hear me use China as an example of a country that the world said would never feed itself. That it would always depend upon assistance from the global community because 50 years ago, China was WFP’s largest recipient, and that all evolved to the point where President Xi now says that he will eradicate poverty by the end of 2020.”

“I’m looking forward to that,” Cousin exclaims.

Cousin proceeds to explicitly praise the actions of the Chinese Communist Party, praising the regime for its “commitment”:

“It did take commitment from government to developing the programs, investing in the activities that were necessary to ensure the agricultural system was one that could provide access to food, but also ensuring that people who could not afford food had access to food. And that made a difference in the evolution of China, and there are many other factors involved there but the reality of it is is it began with a commitment by leadership to ensure that they were self-sustained in food access.”

Cousin, who served in the Obama administration as the Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, has made similar comments throughout her public service tenure.

MUST READ: EXC: Anthony Fauci Is STILL Funding China’s Military-Run Labs With U.S. Taxpayer Cash.

“China has made enormous progress in dealing with hunger and its experience can be learned by the whole world,” Cousin said during a visit to China in 2013, which was hyped in an article by state-run media outlet China Daily.

In 2016, speaking with another state-run media outlet Xinhua, she claimed that “China has created significant lessons for the world and established a true benchmark for what the world can achieve.”

As recently as July 2021, while delivering a keynote address at a conference, Cousin again praised the Chinese Communist Party for “despite the fact that some 60 years ago, the world said China would never be able to feed itself, not only does it feed itself today, but it is also a donor country, supporting food access across the globe for developing countries.”

In addition to Cousin’s praise for China potentially complicating her leadership role for the upcoming White Conference, she has also served on the Advisory board of pharmaceutical giant Bayer since 2019.

Five ballistic missiles launched by China landed in the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone on Aug. 4, prompting an international outcry against the communist regime.

The missiles were launched as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) retaliatory military exercises against Taiwan, which have cut off several international air and sea paths to the island in a sort of blockade.

“To have five Chinese missiles fall within Japan’s EEZ like this is a first,” Japanese defense minister Nobuo Kishi said.

“We have protested strongly through diplomatic channels.”

Shortly before the launches, CCP authorities canceled a previously planned meeting between China and Japan’s foreign ministers, citing displeasure with Japan’s signing of a joint statement by the G-7 that called on China to resolve its tensions with Taiwan peacefully.

“We call on the PRC not to unilaterally change the status quo by force in the region, and to resolve cross-Strait differences by peaceful means,” the document said.

Taiwan Warns CCP Could ‘Invade’ Local Waters

The military exercises are the largest ever conducted by the CCP across the Taiwan Strait. They include joint naval, air, and missile forces, operating in six areas surrounding Taiwan.

Notably, some of the exercise areas, which the CCP has declared “prohibited” to international travel, occur within 10 miles of Taiwan’s coastline. A nation’s sovereign waters end 12 miles from the coastline, according to international law.

Such maneuvers would constitute an invasion of Taiwan’s territorial waters if Chinese forces were to travel the full breadth of the exercise areas, Taiwan lawmaker Wang Ting-yu told Axios.

“If they send in their fighters or their warships to enter our territorial sea, that means China invaded our territory and we will have our standard operation procedure to respond to that,” Wang said.

“We don’t want to provoke any conflict here, but whoever dares to invade our country, our home, we have our obligation to defend our home.”

CCP authorities claim that Taiwan is a rogue province of China that must be united with the mainland at any cost. As such, China’s state-owned propaganda organs have issued articles claiming that Taiwan’s territorial waters are actually China’s territorial waters.

Despite China’s claims, Taiwan has been self-governed since 1949, has never been controlled by the CCP, and boasts a democratic government and thriving market economy.

The White House said that China was positioning itself to take further aggressive actions against Taiwan following the announcement of the exercises, which have effectively blockaded many important international trade routes to the island.

“China has positioned itself to take further steps, and we expect that they will continue to react over a longer-term horizon,” said White House National Security Council communications coordinator John Kirby during an Aug. 2 press briefing. “The United States will not seek and does not want a crisis. [But] we are prepared to manage what Beijing chooses to do.”

“What we’ve seen thus far is consistent with the playbook that we expected them to run.”

US, China at Loggerheads Over Status Quo

The CCP’s escalations in the region follow a highly publicized visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which the CCP leadership loudly protested. Both China and the United States have used the ensuing tensions to accuse one another of unilaterally attempting to change the status quo regarding Taiwan.

The United States maintains a “One China” policy, which acknowledges but doesn’t endorse the CCP’s principle that there is one inalienable China of which Taiwan is a part. It’s also bound by treaty to supply Taiwan with the arms necessary for Taiwan to defend its de facto independence. Further, the documents that form the basis of China and the United States’ agreement on the Taiwan issue demand that neither side seek to unilaterally change the current status quo through force or coercion.

To that end, the CCP has said it would “start a war no matter the cost” in order to prevent Taiwan’s independence from being recognized on the international stage.

Likewise, however, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that the language of the United States’ agreements with China indicated that the nation would be willing to go to war to defend Taiwan from a CCP invasion.

“Going back 50 years, our views on this issue [have] been clear in that regard, that this would be a matter of ‘grave concern,’ which is often diplomatic language that we would be willing to go to war over this,” Esper said during a speech last month.

“It’s China that is undermining the “One China” policy as all sides have understood it now for 50 years, and it’s China changing the status quo through force. Those are just the facts of the matter.”

Despite the CCP’s claims that Pelosi’s visit constituted a “secessionist” push away from the status quo, the White House was quick to note that congressional delegations visit Taiwan with some frequency, including multiple times this year which received relatively little or no attention from the CCP.

Taiwan’s political and military leadership have also defended the visit, and have vowed to defend Taiwan’s territory and democratic way of life from CCP aggression.

“We are not eager for a fight, nor will we shy away from one,” Taiwan’s defense ministry stated in a video released on social media. “We have the capacity and the will to uphold our valued liberty and democracy, and maintain our region’s stability.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Thomas Friedman criticized Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan trip

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman last month hosted a delegation from a think tank helmed by a Chinese government adviser deeply enmeshed in Beijing’s propaganda operations.

Friedman met in July with Wang Huiyao, the president of the Center for China and Globalization, to discuss “megatrends and the transformation of globalization in the post-pandemic era.” Friedman also hosted the group at Planet Word, a Washington, D.C.-based language museum run by his wife, Ann.

Wang advises the Chinese government, is an official at two united front organizations, and helped develop China’s controversial “Thousand Talents” program, which the FBI says Beijing uses to steal trade secrets from American companies and create national security risks for the U.S. government. The think tank has been linked to China’s united front system, which the Communist Party uses to influence “universities, think tanks, scholars, journalists,” and government officials, according to a Trump administration report.

Friedman, reportedly one of Joe Biden’s favorite newspaper columnists, wrote in a Times column on Tuesday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D., Calif.) trip to Taiwan is “utterly reckless.” The columnist has repeatedly urged government officials to take a softer stance toward Beijing. Chinese state media last year touted Friedman’s remarks in an interview with Wang that America could not succeed without a “healthy relationship with China.” He conducted a glowing interview in 2019 with the head of the Chinese tech giant Huawei, in which he asked what “America loses” by blocking the company from building 5G infrastructure because of its links to Chinese intelligence.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist has also made inaccurate claims about China’s efforts to deter Russia’s actions in Ukraine. While criticizing Pelosi’s trip in an interview last week, Friedman said that “China is helping us” in Ukraine and cautioned against “poking the bear right now.” But U.S. officials have publicly criticized Beijing for supporting Russia, as the Times reported last month. The State Department said in May that Chinese Communist Party media outlets “routinely amplify Kremlin propaganda, conspiracy theories, and disinformation.”

Like Friedman, Wang also criticized Pelosi for her Taiwan visit, calling it a “very, very bad move” in an interview with Bloomberg News over the weekend. And he portrayed China as a potential peacemaker in Ukraine in a Times op-ed in March. The Gray Lady came under fire for the piece for failing to disclose that Wang is a Chinese government adviser.

The Center for China and Globalization has downplayed its links to the Chinese government, saying that it is “independent from direct government control.” But the organization acknowledges that Wang advises several Chinese government agencies and serves on two organizations—Western Returned Scholars Association and the China Overseas Friendship Association—that are both part of the CCP’s united front.

The Biden administration in an intelligence memo last month sounded the alarm about the united front. The director of national intelligence called the united front “a coalition of entities working towards CCP goals” that plays a leading role in China’s “foreign influence efforts.”

The center touted the stateside trips as an overseas think tank “engagement mission … filled with productive meetings.” Wang met with leaders of several groups known for sympathetic views toward China, including the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, the Asia Society, and the U.S.-China Business Council. After meeting with Friedman, Wang visited with the head of CGTN America, a TV station controlled by the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

CURIOUS TIMING, WOULDN’T YOU SAY?

Major U.S. news outlets including CNN, CNBC, and the Associated Press recently met with Chinese Communist Party propagandists flagged by the U.S. government for seeking to “malignly influence” U.S. politics, The National Pulse can reveal.

Bureau chiefs for the Associated Press, CNN, and CNBC took a meeting with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), which is part of China’s billion-dollar “United Front” effort.

The United Front 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 – U.S. government initiative from 2018.

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.

The CPAFFC has been dubbed the “public face” of the United Front Work Department and “avowedly an arm of the party-state” in addition to being flagged by the U.S. State Department for its campaigns to “directly and malignly influence” American officials and business leaders.

Journalists met with the President, Lin Songtian, at the group’s Beijing headquarters on July 26th, 2022.

As a press release from the group’s Chinese-language website reveals, the meeting “enhanced mutual understanding and friendship”:

“On July 26, President Lin Songtian met with Mori Tsijian, Director of the Greater China News Department of the Associated Press (AP), Jiang Xin, the Beijing Bureau Chief of CNN, and American Consumers at the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. Representative of mainstream American media in Beijing, including CNBC. The two sides had a candid and friendly exchange of views on China’s domestic and foreign policies, China-US relations, non-governmental exchanges between the two countries and issues of common concern, which enhanced mutual understanding and friendship.”

The CPAFFC President appeared to instruct the media representatives to portray China as an ally as opposed to a “major competitor” to avoid “misjudgment and misleading public opinion”:

“In today’s era of political multi-polarization, economic globalization, and democratization of international relations, the United States still views China from the outdated perspective of “you lose, we win, and either friend or enemy is an enemy”. Positioning China as a major competitor will inevitably lead to strategic misunderstandings, misjudgment and misleading public opinion.”

The unearthed webpage follows The National Pulse linking other individuals and organizations, who are often publicly soft on China, affiliating with the CPAFFC. Similarly, mainstream media outlets have repeatedly published stories lauding the Chinese Communist Party and uncritically echoing the regime’s propaganda and talking points.

Quincy Institute scholar Jessica Lee has lambasted the administration’s rhetoric toward China, arguing it fuels anti-Asian hate crimes

The State Department is tapping a China apologist who has blamed the Biden administration’s rhetoric toward the Communist country for a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and called for “a cooperative relationship” with North Korea, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Jessica Lee, a scholar at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an isolationist think-tank bankrolled by George Soros and Charles Koch, is joining the administration as senior adviser for legislative affairs at the State Department, two sources familiar with the matter told the Washington Free Beacon on Monday. Lee sent an email to her Quincy Institute colleagues Sunday advising them of the move.

Lee has been one of the most strident critics of what she called the Biden administration’s “anti-China” foreign policy, advocating for closer ties with the CCP and arguing that “over-the-top” warnings about China’s malign activities—including widespread hack attacks and domestic spying incidents—increase the likelihood of war with the country.

“The continual naming and blaming of China as a bad actor on seemingly every front, as the source of all of America’s problems, cultivates real fear and insecurity among Americans,” Lee said in a May 2021 video. “And it directly fuels violence against Americans of Asian descent. From physical attacks to outright murder, evidence of violent racism fueled by our anti-China policy is alarming.”

Lee’s move from the Quincy Institute to the State Department is a sign the American foreign policy community’s most dovish voices are making inroads with the Biden administration. She is one of several Quincy Institute members to join the administration, including Rachel Esplin Odell, a State Department employee who has claimed “the military threat posed by China to U.S. interests is limited in nature.”

The move comes at a precarious time for the organization, which has seen two top staff members resign over its calls for a speedy resolution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its opposition to the Biden administration’s support for the Ukrainian resistance. In addition to China and Russia, the think tank is also home to several scholars who are calling for a more accomodationist posture toward Iran.

Lee has been one of the most prominent pro-China voices working at the Quincy Institute. In a May 2021 video posted online, Lee claimed that “a hostile relationship with China will make Americans less safe.” She also bemoaned the potential to lose “cultural and student exchanges” with China, but did not mention that the CCP uses these programs to infiltrate U.S. institutions and spy on them.

The “most troubling” result of America’s “anti-China” foreign policy, according to Lee, is the rise in racist violence. “There is a clear link between the militaristic foreign policy that we’re seeing today and the rise of anti-Asian discrimination and hate crimes,” the Quincy Institute wrote in an introduction to Lee’s video.

Lee’s rumored hire comes at a pivotal point in the U.S.-China relationship and against the backdrop of the White House’s softening stance toward China. While Joe Biden has said in the past that the United States would defend Taiwan if it is invaded by China—comments that administration officials walked back—Biden recently warned Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi against visiting the contested island during her trip to Asia this week.

Lee also has advocated for the United States to end the Korean War and develop a “cooperative relationship” with the country’s dictator, Kim Jong-un.

“Over the long-term, Washington should also be open to the possibility of not just normalization of relations but to a cooperative relationship with Pyongyang as part of closing the chapter of the Korean War and stemming the growing arms race between the two Koreas,” Lee wrote in a July 2022 analysis for the Quincy Institute.

Lee said that North Korea’s nuclear missile testing “makes sense” and that “over-emphasizing the nuclear threat fosters deterrence-centric solutions.”

Lee, who will liaise with Congress as part of her role at the State Department, publicly griped in 2021 that Capitol Hill staffers are unable to comprehend North Korea policy issues.

“I saw firsthand the inherent challenges of getting 545 Hill offices to play a constructive role in [North Korea] related matters,” she tweeted. There is a “lack of expertise, high staff turnover, and lack of sustained attention to Asia, just to name a few.”

The State Department would not comment on personnel matters.

Update 3:57 p.m.: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that Sasha Baker, a senior official at the Pentagon, was a former Quincy Institute official.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

AS PELOSI STAYS MUM ON TAIWAN, HER NETWORK IS LOBBYING FOR CCP SOCIAL CREDIT COMPANIES.

Ant Group – a payment platform used to implement “vaccine passports” and a “social credit” system in China – has retained a number of American lobbying firms, including some with ties to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, and failed presidential candidate Senator Mitt Romney.

Ant Group is an offshoot of the Chinese company Alibaba, previously flagged by the U.S. State Department as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party and crucial to the regime’s build-up of “technology-facilitated surveillance and social control.” Ant Group also owns AliPay, a digital payment platform used by Beijing to institute vaccine passports, which have been used to render citizens unable to leave their houses and forced into quarantine.Ant Group is a key component of China’s broader “social credit” system, sharing the data it collects on users’ spending habits and online activity with Chinese Communist Party regulators.

Social credit systems have raised concern in the West, with many fearing the weaponization of government and business surveillance to restrict individuals’ access to the economy and services based on specific behaviors – or even ideologies.

Despite these fears, several American lobbyists are working on behalf of Ant Group, appearing to help broaden the company’s operations and reach inside of the U.S.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, Ant Group hired four external lobbying and public affairs firms to help with objectives including “outreach regarding corporate profile and operations of Ant Group and its subsidiary Alipay US.”

The OB-C Group has been representing Ant Group since January 1st, 2022 on “matters regarding regulatory issues for ANT Group and its subsidiaries.”

MUST READ: REVEALED: CNN, CNBC, AP Met With Chinese Communist Party Propagandists in July.

Among the firm’s consultants working for Ant Group is Larry O’Brien, who has been described by the Washington Post as a “major Democratic operative.”

“Mr. O’Brien has been a long-standing participant in the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s (DCCC) maximum level individual donor program, the Speaker’s Cabinet, and in the “Pelosi Team 100” program.  Over a period of two decades, Mr. O’Brien has had an extensive degree of involvement and interaction with the House Democratic leadership, with myriad Democratic members across a wide array of House committees and with the leadership of the DCCC,” explains his professional bio.

He has also worked “at the most elevated participation level with the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC),” charging its “premier individual donor group, the Legacy Circle, since the inception of the program in 2006.”

“He was designated a “Lifetime Member” of the Legacy Circle in 2014. In addition, he is the recipient of what the DSCC describes as one of the highest honors it can bestow, an award of lifetime membership in its “Majority Trust” program. In the award letter to Mr. O’Brien, Senator Schumer, then Chair of the DSCC, stated, “I can’t think of a more qualified Democrat to receive this honor,” his bio continues.

Another Ant Group lobbyist on behalf of the OB-C Group, Thomas J. Keating, served in the House of Representatives in the Office of Sergeant at Arms for over 13 years, with his most recent role as Director of Police Services.

Several other establishment D.C. figures – including advisors to the campaigns of George H.W. Bush and Mitt Romney – are also working on behalf of Ant Group according to the OB-C Group’s lobbying registration. For three months of work, the firm received a retainer of $60,000.

MUST READ: EXC: Anthony Fauci Is STILL Funding China’s Military-Run Labs With U.S. Taxpayer Cash.

Lobbying firm Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld is also currently representing Ant Group, beginning its work for the Chinese company on January 27th, 2022.

In addition to Democratic congressional staffers and advisors to George W. Bush, Ed Pagano, who served as Senate Liaison and Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs in the Obama administration, is also working on behalf of AliPay.

Another government affairs firm – Rich Feuer Anderson – began lobbying for AliPay on January 1st, 2022, conducting “outreach regarding corporate profile and operations of Ant Group and its subsidiary Alipay US.”

Among the consultants working on behalf of Rich Feuer Anderson are alumni of the U.S. Treasury Department, Senate finance committees, and Democratic officials.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made much of her trip to Asia this week, though upon landing in Singapore, appeared to intentionally leave out references to China or Taiwan.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on July 31 that he expects there to be an agreement to conceal an indictment of Hunter Biden.

Johnson predicted in a Fox News interview that law enforcement “may indict Hunter Biden, but they’ll probably seal—they’ll do a deal—they’ll seal all the information.”

“The American public will never get the full truth,” he said.

Both Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have been involved in a yearslong investigation into the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son in places such as China, Ukraine, and elsewhere. The pair released a report in September 2020 that detailed extensive financial connections between Chinese Communist Party-linked entities and individuals and Hunter Biden.

“We’ve known that the Bidens are a corrupt family for years,” Johnson told Fox News’ Dan Bongino, noting that the “corrupt mainstream media has been covering it all up” and “even the FBI.”

Johnson also predicted that legacy news media outlets will now turn on Biden amid increasingly low poll numbers.

In March, both Republican senators presented bank records on the Senate floor showing CEFC China Energy, a now-defunct firm, made payments to Hunter Biden. That included a $100,000 wire payment to one of the younger Biden’s companies, Owasco, from CEFC.

Other payments include a wire transfer of $5 million to Hudson West, a company Hunter Biden invested in and managed, from Northern International Capital, a business that partnered with CEFC. A contract also made public by the senators shows that $500,000 went to Hunter Biden as a “one-time retainer fee.”

Two others show a $1 million payment made to Hudson West by CEFC and a transfer of $1 million from Hudson West to Owasco, with the money appearing to go to Hunter Biden for the purposes of representing Patrick Ho, a Chinese businessman who has helped CEFC gain advantages through bribery.

FBI Interference

In a recent letter, Johnson further claimed that the FBI attempted to undermine their congressional investigation in mid-2020.

Amid recent “whistleblower revelations,” they “would strongly suggest that the FBI’s August 6, 2020 briefing was indeed a targeted effort to intentionally undermine a Congressional investigation,” he wrote in a letter (pdf) to top Department of Justice officials and members of other intelligence agencies.

“If these whistleblower allegations are accurate, how can your agency, Director Wray, be capable of investigating the president’s son?” Johnson wrote in his letter. “Unfortunately, the FBI can no longer be trusted to investigate Hunter Biden with integrity and the equal application of law.”

He was referring to whistleblower complaints issued by unnamed FBI officials, as detailed by Grassley in a July 25 letter (pdf).

“The allegations provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,” wrote Grassley, who has long been involved in crafting legislation to support federal government whistleblowers.

“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are—and have been—institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law.”

Department of Justice officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

‘Religious liberty is fragile, and religious intolerance and persecution have been recurring features of human history’

The Supreme Court justice who drafted the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade decried a “growing hostility” toward religion in the West in his first public appearance after the ruling.

“The problem that looms is not just indifference to religion, it’s not just ignorance about religion,” Alito said, starting his keynote address at the 2022 Notre Dame Religious Liberty Summit in Rome on July 21. His 37-minute speech was released on July 28.

“There’s also growing hostility to religion or at least the traditional religious beliefs that are contrary to the new moral code that is ascendant in some sectors,” the justice said.

The keynote address marks the top judge’s first appearance after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the United States, with a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It came as a defiant comeback as lawmakers in the United States and across the world voiced opposition to the ruling, with some even calling the June ruling an “assault” on democracy.

‘The Proud Civilization’

Alito, a Roman Catholic, reflected on the parallels between the United States and Rome, as once a “proud” spiritual civilization, nonetheless proved “no human achievement is ever permanent.”

“I find myself thinking about the proud civilization that was centered here two millennia ago,” he said. “As I think back, I also think ahead, and I wonder what historians may say centuries from now about the contribution of the United States to world civilization.”

“One thing I hope they will say is that our country, after a lot of fits and starts, and ups and downs, eventually showed the world that it is possible to have a stable and successful society in which people of diverse faiths live and work together harmoniously and productively while still retaining their own beliefs,” Alito added, noting that the fact that Americans can exercise religious liberty has been “truly a historic accomplishment” for the country.

In this United States, the Justice said, where religious liberty goes hand-in-hand with many other rights, a “growing hostility” towards religion is threatening the protection of this sacred right across the country.

“And the problem that looms is not just indifference to religion, it’s not just ignorance about religion. There’s also growing hostility to religion, or at least the traditional religious beliefs that are contrary to the new moral code that is ascendant in some sectors,” the justice added.

Yet, according to Alito, this hostility to religion and religious freedom threatens a range of other fundamental rights.

“The exercise of religion very often involves speech, a spoken or written prayer, the recitation of Scripture, a homily, a religious book or article these are all forms of speech they are also forms of religious exercise. If this sort of speech can be suppressed or punished, what is to stop the state from crushing other forms of expression?

“We consider the relationship between freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. A religious service in a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple is a form of assembly. If a government can ban those assemblies, will it hesitate to outlaw others?

“On the other hand, if religious liberty is allowed, it will be harder for the state to restrict other speech and other assemblies,” Alito said.

While most legal academics nowadays believes that “religion doesn’t merit special protection,” Alito added, “the Constitution of the United States provides a clear answer” to the question of whether religious liberty warrants protection.

“Constitution protects the free exercise of religion … And for judges like me, who think to the belief that it matters what the Constitution says and what it does not say, that is enough,” the justice said. “It’s the law, and don’t ask me why.”

‘What Really Wounded Me’

In what he described as an “unusual” sense of “diplomatic impulse” in him, Alito responded to foreign lawmakers and celebrities who “felt perfectly fine commenting on American law.

“One of these was former Prime Minister Boris Johnson—but he paid the price—post hoc ergo propter hoc right?” Alito said, applying the “after this, therefore resulting from it” fallacy to the fact that the UK PM resigned after voicing opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling.

But the justice did not stop there.

“What really wounded me—what really wounded me—was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision—whose name may not be spoken—with the Russian attack on Ukraine,” Alito said, referring to Prince Harry, who claimed the overturn of Roe v. Wade was a part of “a global assault on democracy and freedom” in a speech in July.

Religious Liberty

The justice went further to reflect on religious persecution across the world—such as in Nigeria, Egypt, and India—and, most prominently China, but all were not successful.

“During my lifetime, the People’s Republic of China did its best to eradicate religion completely. And yet it failed. Just as the Roman emperors who spent centuries trying to destroy Christianity failed,” the justice said.

As an example of this, Alito added, was that “the Cultural Revolution did its best to destroy religion, but it was not successful. It could not extinguish the religious impulse.”

The cultural revolution was a tumultuous period between 1967 to 1977, during which the Chinese Communist Party sought to eradicate traditional beliefs and values.

Alito’s speech came after the highest court made multiple rulings on cases pertaining to religious liberty in the United States, including a June ruling that ruled in favor of a football coach who petitioned for his right to pray and another ruling in the same month that struck down Maine’s ban on religious school funding.

China’s Long-Arm Persecution

Currently, plaintiffs in another high-profile religious freedom case before the Supreme Court is seeking in what they describe as China’s long-arm religious persecution in the United States.

Twenty-three attorneys general (AGs) across the nation, in a joint amicus brief, described the point of law in the case as “an issue of national importance,” supporting the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs’ complaint (pdf) describes around 40 incidents of threats or physical assault against them for participating in parades representing Falun Gong, handing out flyers about Falun Gong, or managing a booth with Falun Gong-related literature in the United States.

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice consisting of meditative exercises and moral teachings centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It became widely popular in China in the 1990s. In 1999, the communist regime, perceiving that popularity to be a threat, began nationwide persecution targeting the practice and its adherents.

Millions of practitioners have since been held in detention centers, jails, and labor camps across China, where they are subject to physical torture, forced labor, and forced organ harvesting.

With respect to one incident in July 2011, two plaintiffs describe in graphic detail an attack by Li Huahong, head of the Chinese Anti-Cult World Alliance, a CCP-affiliated organization that targets religious dissidents overseas with violence and harassment.

According to two witnesses, a mob of 20 to 30 people then surrounded two Falun Gong practitioners. One of them was held for about 30 minutes until the police arrived, while a mob yelled “kill her” and “beat her to death.”

“In this case, a religious group known as the Falun Gong, which originated in China, experienced persecution and harassment on American soil,” according to a statement from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office on June 29.

“The group started in China under a Communist regime hostile to religious pluralism,” the AGs wrote. “Many Falun Gong practitioners have thus fled to America. Yet even after coming here, Petitioners allegedly continue to face persecution and abuse from Communist sympathizers.”

The AGs, in their amicus brief, said the 2021 ruling of a lower court dismissing the case is “wrong on an issue of national importance that stands at the center of our constitutional tradition”—namely, religious liberty.

In doing so, the court “unduly narrowed a statute meant to bar the worst acts of violence in many of America’s sacred places,” the AGs said.

“America’s commitment to religious freedom is ‘essential.’ … It constitutes ‘one of our most treasured and jealously guarded constitutional rights,’” the AGs wrote, quoting previous court opinions.

“Our hearts are restless until we rest in God,” Alito said in his speech.

“And, therefore, the champions of religious liberty who go out as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves can expect to find hearts that are open to their message,” the justice said.

Eva Fu contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

With an expected GOP takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, Republicans in the chamber are poised to launch a slew of investigations aimed at dialing up the pressure on the Biden administration over a range of issues—from border security to Hunter Biden to the origins of the pandemic.

Domestic concerns faced by everyday Americans—most notably a historic inflation rate—will be key priorities, according to Chair of the House Republican Conference Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).

House Republicans will take the administration to task on alleged “policy failures that have created an inflation crisis, energy crisis, border crisis, and crime crisis impacting every American family,” Stefanik told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Big Tech’s censorship of conservative voices will also be scrutinized, she added.

On the foreign policy front, the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the United States and abroad, and U.S. strategy toward Iran are set to come under focus.

Republicans are already laying the groundwork to take on “an aggressive oversight role” next year by issuing preservation notices and document requests so a potential GOP majority “will be ready to hold the Biden administration accountable from day one,” a House GOP leadership aide told The Epoch Times in an email.

Oversight Committee

Many of the inquiries are expected to be spearheaded by the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the chamber’s main investigative panel that has broad authority to scrutinize various facets of the administration.

The committee’s ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.), who is poised to take the chair should the Republicans flip the House, foreshadowed an ambitious agenda by a GOP-led panel.

“[W]e will return the House Oversight and Reform Committee to its core mission of rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government and holding the Executive Branch accountable,” Comer told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Another committee member Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) had a clear message for the Biden administration via email to The Epoch Times: “Their days of corruption, fraud, and abuse will no longer be met with blind eyes.”

Hunter Biden

Chief among a GOP-led House Oversight Committee’s priorities is an investigation into Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.

For more than two years, the president’s son has been at the center of growing controversy over his overseas business activities, including in Ukraine, Russia, and China, conducted while Biden was vice president in the Obama administration.

Hunter is currently the subject of a federal investigation being run out of Delaware and, according to a recent CNN report citing unnamed sources, it is “nearing a critical juncture.”

Hunter has previously denied wrongdoing, and the elder Biden has maintained that he has never discussed Hunter’s business activities with his son.

The president’s son’s extensive financial dealings with foreign individuals and businesses, raise concerns about conflicts of interests, illegal lobbying, and whether his ties influenced U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration, critics say.

Republicans have honed in on Hunter’s work for Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, while his father was the Obama administration’s point-man on Ukraine, and Hunter’s dealings with several Chinese companies and businessmen with links to the Chinese Communist Party.

“We will continue to conduct oversight of Hunter Biden and the Biden Family’s pattern of peddling access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves,” Comer said.

“They have racked up over 150 suspicious activity reports for their foreign business deals, which is a national security threat,” the lawmaker said, referring to a CBS report saying that U.S. banks had flagged more than 150 financial transactions involving Hunter or the president’s brother, James, for further review by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Some of the transactions involved large wire transfers, the report said.

“We need to know if resident Biden benefited financially from these deals and if he is beholden to the interests of foreign adversaries,” Comer said.

COVID-19 Origins

The ranking member highlighted that the committee would continue to investigate the origins of COVID-19, focusing on the possibility that the pandemic was the result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

“Growing evidence shows COVID-19 likely originated from the Wuhan Lab and the Communist Party of China covered it up,” Comer said.

An array of circumstantial evidence has prompted some officials and scientists to point to the WIV as the most likely source of the pandemic. These include the WIV’s gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, reports that staff members became sick with symptoms consistent with both seasonal flu and COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, before the Chinese regime acknowledged the outbreak, and that a WIV public database of 22,000 samples and viral sequences was taken offline in September 2019 before the onset of the pandemic.

The Chinese regime’s persistent refusal to allow outside access to the lab and its data has made it nearly impossible to fully investigate the lab leak theory.

Domestically, the potential role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in aiding WIV’s activities has been viewed with particular alarm by Republicans, who are looking to intensify the inquiry. The NIH has previously funded WIV via New York-based health nonprofit EcoHealth, including one grant that amounted to what experts have described as gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

“We will seek to hold U.S. government officials accountable for any wrongdoing, and ensure Americans’ tax dollars aren’t being used on risky research at unsecure labs,” Comer said.

Other Key Priorities

The ongoing struggle by the administration to control the flow of illegal immigration at the U.S.–Mexico border is set to become another focal point for Republicans serving on the House Oversight Committee, and other panels.

“We will also continue our oversight of Biden’s border crisis that has led to historic illegal immigration, a surge of deadly drugs pouring across the border, and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars,” Comer said.

With a GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee, Biden’s energy policies amid a deepening global squeeze on oil and gas are expected to come under close scrutiny.

“We will build on our robust oversight over how the administration is censoring conservative speech, shutting down American energy and increasing gas prices, abusing its public health emergency powers, [and] colluding with political allies like teacher’s unions,” a spokesperson for Energy and Commerce Republicans told The Epoch Times in an email.

Meanwhile, a Republican-led House Financial Services Committee would focus on probing regulatory agencies’ alleged efforts to impose a “far-left agenda” on the U.S. financial system, as well as the Biden administration’s implementation of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan, said Laura Peavey, communications director for the House Financial Services GOP, in an email to The Epoch Times.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

**** THIS HAS TO STOP !!!! ****

Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health agency has sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to China-based laboratories with deep ties to the regime’s military, including facilities that have worked with the Wuhan Institue of Virology on bat coronavirus research, The National Pulse can reveal.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant database shows two studies that have received funds from Fauci’s agency in 2022 so far: “Antigen discovery for transmission-blocking vaccines in Plasmodium vivax” and “Impacts of Urbanization on Vector Biology and Transmission of Dengue in China.”

The first study, which focuses on research into “transmission-blocking vaccines” for malaria-endemic nations, has received $135,000 from Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in 2022.

“This project seeks to use a comprehensive antigen discovery pathway, including antigen identification through genome-wide immunological screening, validation in rodent malaria model, and further evaluation in P. vivax, to identify new transmission-blocking vaccine candidates for vivax malaria,” explains a project summary.

The grant was distributed to China Medical University, which is entirely controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and formerly known as the Peasants Red Army Military Medical School. It is the only medical institution to have participated in the “Long March” in 1934 with the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party.

Similarly, the second study, which focuses on the spread of Dengue fever in China, counts $132,912 going to China’s Southern Medical University (SMU).

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.

MUST READ: As Washington Wakes Up to TikTok Threats, The Democrats Launch Their Official Account.

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 school has previously collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology – believed by many to be the source of COVID-19 – on bat coronavirus research also funded by Anthony Fauci. SMU provided human blood samples to the Wuhan lab for its controversial work with EcoHealth Alliance, appearing to represent “gain-of-function” research.

So this will be how they rig the next election: Mail-in ballots due to pandemic. [US Patriot]

Two retired U.S. generals, MG Paul Vallely, U.S. Army, and Thomas McInerney, USAF, raised concerns over the World Health Organization’s recent declaration of monkeypox as a global health emergency, alleging potential ulterior motives.

“Each of us should not be alarmed by this alert as the credibility of WHO is in great question based on their actions and notices on COVID-19,” Vallely told The Epoch Times.

“The rare designation means the WHO now views the outbreak as a significant enough threat to global health that a coordinated international response is needed to prevent the virus from spreading further and potentially escalating into a pandemic,” Vallely said.

“Beware of this politically driven global organization that is funded by the global elite.”

Monkeypox

Monkeypox is a disease primarily transmitted through the sexual activity of gay and bisexual men.

“I have decided that the global monkeypox outbreak represents a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a July 23 statement.

Ghebreyesus said that his decision was due to an increase of monkeypox cases in the world, now having been reported in over 75 countries and territories, with over 16,000 infections and five deaths.

A report published on July 23 lays out the reasons that the committee members had for and against declaring monkeypox a global emergency.

“Although the declaration does not impose requirements on national governments, it serves as an urgent call for action. The WHO can only issue guidance and recommendations to its member states, not mandates. Member states are required to report events that pose a threat to global health,” Vallely said.

“WHO Director Tedros is not a medical doctor, he is a Marxist from Ethiopia, totally supported by the Chinese Communist Party. He lied about C-19 from the beginning to cover for China,” Vallely added.

McInerney says that they predicted that the declaration of another pandemic would happen around this time of the year.

“They are right on our predicted schedule,” McInerney said.

“We shall not conform to their guidelines, we must resist lockdowns,” he further stated, “now is the time for America and the world and we the people to say no!”

“Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!” the general exclaimed.

The Epoch Times reached out to the WHO for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci claimed Monday that he never recommended “locking anything down” when pressed about what he would do differently regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

“First of all, I didn’t recommend locking anything down,” Fauci replied during an interview published by The Hill’s “Rising” program on Monday, suggesting it had been a recommendation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“Go back and look at my statements,” he added, “that we need to do everything we can to keep the schools open and safe.”

Although it’s unclear exactly what Fauci meant by lockdowns, in October 2020, Fauci had publicly recommended that former President Donald Trump “shut the whole country down,” although it’s not clear what he meant as presidents don’t have the authority to hand down sweeping lockdowns.

“When it became clear that we had community spread in the country … I recommended to the president that we shut the country down,” he said in an event with students at the College of the Holy Cross in October 2020.

If the United States didn’t “shut down completely the way China did,” then the spread of COVID-19 wouldn’t be stopped, Fauci continued to say at the time. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since early 2020 has pursued a “zero COVID” strategy that some analysts say is tantamount to economic suicide.

Closing Schools and Bars

In August 2020, Fauci said that public schools should remain closed across the country to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Fauci also publicly suggested multiple times in 2020 that bars and restaurants should remain closed, then arguing that there was a binary choice between opening schools or bars.

“You have a choice—either close the bars or close the schools. Because, if you have people congregating in bars, it’s likely you’re going to stay red,” the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said in November 2020.

Also during the interview with The Hill, Fauci said there should have been “much more stringent restrictions” imposed on asymptomatic people in 2020.

“We know now, two and a half years later, that anywhere from 50 to 60 percent of the transmission occur from someone without symptoms, either someone who never will get symptoms or someone who is in the pre-symptomatic stage,” he said.

It’s not clear how Fauci came to this conclusion about asymptomatic spread. Physician Aaron Kheriaty wrote for the Brownstone Institute that “no respiratory virus in history” has been known to spread asymptomatically.

“Had we known that then, the insidious nature of spread in the community would have been much more of an alarm and there would have been much, much more stringent restrictions in the sense of very, very heavy, encouraging people to wear masks, physical distancing or what have you,” added Fauci, who again called for mask-wearing in schools, workplaces, and “anything that brings people together in a closed environment” in some areas.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Resident Joe Biden held a phone call with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping on July 28. The call was the fifth of its kind between Biden and Xi and lasted more than two hours.

The call comes amid a myriad of tensions that have caused Sino–U.S. relations to fall to their lowest point in decades. Despite a decreasing willingness by the CCP to negotiate on most issues, the White House stated that it was important to keep the lines of communication open between the two powers.

“The President wants to make sure that the lines of communication with President Xi remain open, because they need to,” said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby. “There’s issues where we can cooperate with China on, and then there’s issues where, obviously, there’s friction and tension.

“This is one of the most consequential bilateral relationships in the world today, with ramifications well beyond both individual countries. The president clearly understands that, and we’re going to continue to work on that relationship.”

Chinese state-owned media outlets stated that the exchange was “candid and in-depth” and that the two leaders promised to stay in communication.

Xi reportedly told Biden that it was the duty of “the two major powers” to manage global security and urged Biden to not view the CCP through the lens of “strategic competition.”

Biden is currently contending with the need to adequately address China’s status as a rising power while simultaneously mitigating the regime’s increasingly hostile behavior.

To that end, Xi’s conversation with Biden focused heavily on Taiwan.

“Playing with fire will set you on fire,” Xi told Biden. “I hope the U.S. can see this clearly.”

The CCP maintains that Taiwan is a breakaway province of China. Xi has vowed to unite the island with the mainland and hasn’t ruled out the use of force to do so. For its part, Taiwan has been self-governed since 1949, has never been under CCP control, and boasts a thriving democracy and market economy.

The United States doesn’t have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is bound by a treaty to provide it with the arms necessary for its self-defense. The government also maintains a doctrine of “strategic ambiguity” in which it will neither confirm nor deny whether it would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.

The issue came to the fore over the past week as rumors emerged that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was planning a personal visit to Taiwan.

The CCP subsequently threatened “forceful measures” against the United States and Taiwan should the trip take place.

Following the remarks from the CCP, Biden publicly said such a trip was “not a good idea” and suggested that the military was against it.

Biden’s statements raised eyebrows from legislators and experts alike, who believed that they overstepped the bounds of both the president and the military in attempting to control the personal travel of a sitting member of Congress.

Pelosi said the administration may have believed that China would shoot down her plane if she visited Taiwan.

The back and forth was just one incident in a growing line of bellicose and, at times, hostile rhetoric emanating from the highest echelons of the CCP.

In May, China’s defense minister said the CCP would “not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost” to prevent Taiwan’s de facto independence from being recognized internationally.

The White House hadn’t released a readout of the call by press time.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Biden administration has sold nearly 6 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to an entity tied to the Chinese Communist Party, records show.

From September 2021 to July, the Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded three crude oil contracts with a combined value of roughly $464 million to Unipec America, the U.S. trading arm of Chinese state-owned oil company Sinopec, according to a review by The Epoch Times of the DOE documents. A Chinese firm with ties to Hunter Biden had invested in the national oil giant.

The sale would tap 5.9 million barrels in total from the strategic reserve (SPR) to export to the Chinese firm. The latest contract, revealed on July 10, was for 950,000 barrels sold for around $113.5 million.

The two most recent sales to Unipec came out of an emergency drawdown of the U.S. oil stockpile, initiated under resident Joe Biden on March 31 in what he said would offset the loss of Russian oil in global markets and tame rising fuel costs at home.

The Unipec contracts have been subject to heavy criticism in recent weeks, especially because of the firm’s connections to the president’s son. With Americans nationwide still reeling from elevated gas prices, the selling of oil reserves to foreign adversaries such as China is at odds with U.S. energy and security needs, Republican lawmakers and analysts have said.

“Biden is draining our strategic reserves at an unprecedented rate. This is an abuse of the SPR, far beyond its intended purpose. Sending U.S. petroleum reserves to foreign adversaries is wrong, and it undermines our national security,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) told The Epoch Times.

What the United States should do, he says, is to “unleash American energy production and ensure that our strategic reserves are stocked and able to meet the demands of a national emergency.”

Unipec’s Bids

The oil auction is price-competitive, meaning contracts are awarded to the highest bidder. Unipec, a consistent participant in previous U.S. crude oil sales, secured 1.9 million barrels over the past three months through two contracts it won on April 21 and July 10.

The DOE also sold 4 million barrels to Unipec last fall during a congressionally mandated sale.

Sales to Unipec appear to fall in the lower price range among the successful buyers, a review of DOE contracts by The Epoch Times shows. For the 2021 contract, Unipec paid about $63 for each barrel, about $7 lower than the trading price at the time, and more than $2 short of the highest price from other buyers in the sale.

The April and July purchases cost Unipec $103.30 and $119.50 per barrel, respectively. The highest prices offered, by comparison, were $111.25 and $125.10.

Unprecedented Drawdown

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil, with four storage sites in Texas and Louisiana designed to alleviate significant oil supply shortages in times of major geopolitical events or natural disasters.

The amount of oil in the SPR has seen a steep decline over the past year, more notably since Biden, blaming Russia’s Ukraine war for the “price hike at the pump,” in March ordered a withdrawal at a rate of 1 million barrels per day for six months to curb gas prices. The planned sale of about 180 million barrels marked the biggest drawdown in the reserve’s more-than-four-decade history and is set to cut the U.S. backup oil supply by about a third.

The inventory stood at 474.5 million barrels as of July 22, marking a 34 percent drop from its peak of 726.6 million, and some 90 million lower than the level in late March.

The DOE on May 5 announced a “long-term buyback plan” to repurchase 60 million barrels in fall through “a competitive, fixed-price bid process.” The delivery date, the DOE said, will take place “in future years when prices are anticipated to be significantly lower,” likely after fiscal year 2023. More buybacks would follow after this first tranche of purchases, it added.

But releasing oil reserves at this magnitude carries risks, according to Abhi Rajendran and Robert Johnston, two research scholars on global energy policy at Columbia University. For one, there’s no guarantee that oil prices will fall when the government moves to refill the stock. Further, the diminution of oil supply may cause the market to price in a greater premium for wars and other supply shocks, resulting in higher prices for longer, they said in a Q&A on April 1.

Scrutiny

On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers have been watching the oil sales with growing alarm. A total of 206 House Republicans voted on July 20 in support of a legislative amendment aimed at preventing the Biden administration from exporting petroleum to entities with Chinese Communist Party ties.

“It does not make sense that we are using our already depleted energy supplies to help China build up their own strategic reserves,” Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) said in a speech rallying support for the proposal.

China is the world’s largest importer of oil. As the West turns away from Russian oil due to the Ukraine war, China has been quietly snapping up Russian resources at steep discounts. From March through June, it spent more than $25 billion on Russian oil, gas, and coal, nearly doubling the amount from the year-earlier period, the latest customs data show. The sales volume propelled Russia to become China’s top oil supplier for two straight months from May, displacing Saudi Arabia.

The GOP-led measure was overruled after 219 Democrats in the House unanimously voted against it.

The same day, 20 Republican members on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform wrote (pdf) to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm requesting an immediate briefing and all documents related to the administration’s decision to sell U.S. oil reserves. They noted that Sinopec, the parent organization of Unipec, has been linked to the president’s son Hunter Biden, through the state-backed Chinese private equity firm BHR Partners, which became a stakeholder of Sinopec in 2014.

Hunter served as a founding board member of BHR from 2013 through April 2020. His firm Skaneateles also held a 10 percent stake in BHR, which his lawyer said has been divested as of November 2021. On BHR’s 2021 annual report released in June, however, Skaneateles was still listed as a shareholder.

Hunter’s lawyer hasn’t responded to The Epoch Times’ questions regarding Skaneateles.

“As if Biden couldn’t have bundled this energy crisis anymore, this latest development of sending our strategic petroleum reserves to a Chinese oil firm connected to Hunter Biden reaches a new low,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who signed on the letter, told The Epoch Times.

“For one, this administration should have never tapped into these reserves. Second, these reserves should have never left U.S. shores, and third, the U.S. shouldn’t be doing deals with firms connected to the president’s son,” he said, adding that the Biden family’s “continued compromising actions require strict oversight from Congress.”

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking GOP member of the House Oversight Committee who spearheaded the letter, noted that previous inquiries by Republicans to the DOE about the oil sale had gone unanswered.

“Under no circumstances should the Department of Energy be making decisions which financially benefit Hunter Biden or any of the Biden family’s business partners,” he told The Epoch Times.

“If Administration officials continue to ignore meaningful oversight,” Republicans will “use the gavel to get answers in January,” Comer said, in reference to the expected swing to a Republican majority in the House in the November midterm elections, which would hand GOP lawmakers subpoena power as chairpersons of the chamber’s various committees.

“The American people need answers to determine if this is another attempt by the Biden family to peddle access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves.”

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who also backed the Oversight Committee request, said the sale demonstrates the current administration’s “rank incompetence.”

“The Biden White House obviously didn’t see a problem with loading millions of barrels from our strategic reserves onto tankers bound for foreign countries, which likely explains why they don’t see a problem selling our emergency crude oil to a Chinese gas company with ties to Hunter Biden’s investment firm,” he told The Epoch Times.

White House Pushes Back

Ian Sams, a special assistant to Biden and spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, responded to the Republican claims on July 22, calling them “ridiculous and false.”

The DOE is “required by law to sell it ‘in a competitive auction to the highest bidder,’ regardless of whether that bidder is a foreign company,” he told Fox News, noting that the Trump administration, in 2017, also sold a half-million barrels of crude oil from the reserve to China’s state-run PetroChina International through the same “competitive bidding process.”

Sams also stressed that Biden “had no personal involvement in this process whatsoever.”

But Sams’s statement may not have presented the full picture, according to Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power the Future, a nonprofit group advocating for energy workers.

“The White House has pushed back as saying we have sold in the past to the communist Chinese. And that is true. We sold when our SPR was nearly full and oil was not at record highest and the world was at relative peace,” he told The Epoch Times. “Times change, and thanks to this president, they have not just changed but become worse, and our policies must change with them.”

DOE officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times about its buyback plan and Republican lawmakers’ concerns.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Chinese intelligence has a systematic and well-funded campaign that successfully recruits U.S. Federal Reserve System economists and others to provide sensitive financial information and data in exchange for money and other benefits, according to Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

“This investigation makes clear that China’s malign efforts at influence and information theft are not limited to science and technology fields. American economic and monetary policy is also being targeted by the Chinese government,” Portman, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC), said in a statement in conjunction with the release of a new report by congressional investigators.

The investigative report Portman made public on July 26 was prepared by the Republican staff of the Senate panel. The document updates a report on Chinese subversion in the United States released in 2019, when Portman was the committee’s chairman.

“As our investigation reveals, the Chinese government is using every tool at its disposal to infiltrate and steal valuable information,” Portman said. “We cannot let the American taxpayer continue to unwittingly fund China’s military and economic rise, which is why our report makes strong recommendations to enhance and protect our Federal Reserve.

“This report shows that we cannot make any American taxpayer-funded investment in science, technology, or economic policy without including safeguarding and security protections like my proposed ‘Safeguarding American Innovation Act.‘”

While Portman’s proposal has 17 co-sponsors, including a dozen Republicans and five Democrats, the Democratic-controlled HSGAC hasn’t held a hearing or otherwise moved to consider the proposal. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) succeeded Portman as committee chairman in 2021.

“This investigation of the U.S. Federal Reserve shows how China has used a variety of tactics to recruit U.S.-based economists to provide China with knowledge and intellectual capital in exchange for monetary gain and other benefits,” the report says.

The report says Fed investigators have identified at least 13 individuals within the financial system who represent “stark examples of the ways in which the Chinese government has attempted to gain access to sensitive internal information and influence the Federal Reserve.”

The investigators, according to the report, dubbed the 13 individuals as the “P-Network,” and noted they work in eight of the central bank’s 12 regional banks.

“One Federal Reserve Bank employee with sensitive access to Federal Reserve Board data provided modeling code to a Chinese university with ties to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). Another Federal Reserve Bank employee attempted to transfer large volumes of data from the Federal Reserve to an external on at least two occasions,” the report says.

Another Fed employee was forcibly detained while in China on four occasions, and he and his family members were threatened with imprisonment if he didn’t cooperate, the report says.

Yet another Federal Reserve employee, when confronted by investigators with concerns about his activities with Chinese individuals and programs, changed his email addresses and began using an encrypted communication channel, according to the report.

Investigators even found a Fed employee who regularly communicates with officials within China’s Xinhua News Agency, which is notorious for being a tool of the Beijing regime’s international spying efforts.

In addition, the report found that a number of Federal Reserve employees have maintained close ties for years to Chinese academic organizations known to be affiliated with China’s Thousand Talents Program, which is central to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) subversion campaign aimed at the United States and other Western nations.

Investigators also found that another employee working for a Fed bank “had been searching for articles relating to individuals who had been arrested for economic espionage and lying about providing intelligence agents with confidential information in exchange for financial compensation,” the report says. The individual used “xijinping” as a password.

The report says the situation is complicated by the Federal Reserve’s lack of sufficient counter-intelligence resources to deal effectively with the Chinese attack.

“Despite the long-running and brazen acts by Chinese officials and certain Federal Reserve employees, the investigation found the Federal Reserve unable to counter this threat effectively,” the report says. “Compounding this was a lack of internal counter-intelligence competency at the Federal Reserve or sufficient ongoing cooperation with federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

After the HSGAC investigation was initiated, Fed officials implemented a new requirement barring employees from accepting any compensation from any country of concern, including China, according to the report.

But there are still serious gaps in the Federal Reserve’s defenses, with a result that China still has “an open avenue to disrupt the integrity of the American financial system and jeopardizing American national security,” the report says.

Despite having an internal program to protect the security of data used in the Federal Reserve’s most significant financial decision making, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) that sets economic policies, the report says only one of the 13 individuals identified as having links to or being influenced by the Chinese subversion effort has had data access withdrawn.

The remaining 12 Federal Reserve employees, including those suspected of sharing sensitive data, are still able to access FOMC information.

“I am concerned by the threat to the Fed and hope our investigation, which is based on the Fed’s own documents and corresponds with assessments and recommendations made by the FBI, wakes the Fed up to the broad threat from China to our monetary policy. The risk is clear, I urge the FBI and the Fed to do more to counter this threat from one of our foremost foreign adversaries,” Portman told a group of journalists given an advance briefing on the report on July 25.

Portman is retiring from the Senate at the end of his current term in January 2023.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Republican senators balk at $250 billion CHIPS Act over China concerns

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) removed an anti-China security measure from a bill that invests billions of dollars in the U.S. technology sector, a move Republicans say would allow China to benefit from the spending bill and could kneecap the legislation.

At issue are provisions written by Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) that bar U.S. companies from manufacturing products in China, such as semiconductors, that were developed using federally funded research. Myriad government and private investigations conclude that the Chinese government routinely steals trade secrets from U.S. companies, government agencies, and universities.

Schumer earlier this month removed Portman’s provisions from the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act, throwing a wrench into the vote for Republicans who were under the impression it would be included and planned to vote for the bill, according to multiple interviews and internal documents viewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The reason Schumer removed Portman’s anti-China provision is unclear. Some say he caved to lobbying efforts from various interest groups and the White House. The Senate last year passed a version of Portman’s measure with bipartisan support, but the House never put it up for a vote.

The removal puts a bipartisan bill that appeared to be headed toward approval in jeopardy. Opponents of the CHIPS Act now include several Republican senators who initially supported the funding for the domestic production of semiconductors. Even if it passes, the lack of meaningful guardrails against the Chinese raise grave questions about whether a bill initially meant to counter China may backfire.

Schumer did not respond to a request for comment.

The CHIPS Act puts a staggering $250 billion for domestic science investment and education, making it the largest domestic industrial investment scheme in U.S. history. But Republicans say the act, prompted by concerns that the United States is losing its technological edge to China on such critical goods as semiconductors, could end up benefiting adversaries.

Senior staffers from six Republican offices in the Senate and House spoke to the Free Beacon on the condition of anonymity to criticize Schumer’s decision. In interviews, several expressed bewilderment at the modification while others said they were misled by Senate leadership.

“Legislators are talking about pouring hundreds of billions into industry subsidies and federal R&D, ostensibly to strengthen American competitiveness and to compete with China,” one Senate staffer told the Free Beacon. “Spending that level of taxpayer dollars without meaningful safeguards to ensure they don’t end up in Beijing’s hands—either through Chinese Communist Party espionage, corporate malfeasance, or inept bureaucrats—would be a colossal mistake.”

Exactly why Portman’s measure was removed is a matter of ongoing debate on Capitol Hill. One office blamed Rep. Frank Lucas (R., Okla.), the ranking member on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Two Republican offices pointed the finger at Senate Republican staff tasked with whipping support for the CHIPS Act for failing to communicate that the provision was removed ahead of a procedural vote earlier this month. Another office said the decision to remove the guardrail provision was entirely Schumer’s and couldn’t be stopped by Republicans.

Guardrail provisions such as the ones in Portman’s bill are unpopular with universities with large research departments, as well as some corporations. Universities object for ideological reasons, namely the belief that their research should be enjoyed by everyone around the world. Universities in the last several weeks have been lobbying Republican members including Lucas particularly hard, Republican sources told the Free Beacon.

“Lucas has been turned by the lefty universities,” the individual said. “Disappointing that he’s going soft on China for them.”

One House Republican source called the idea that a single member in the minority party could tank the provision preposterous, and that the negotiations took place entirely in the Senate. A staffer for Lucas on the House Committee on Science and Technology concurred with that characterization.

“The House was shut out of any negotiations after the Senate ended four-corner discussions and then picked up this legislation on their own,” said Heather Vaughan, communications director for the House Committee on Science and Technology. “If the Senate can’t read their own legislative language ahead of a vote or negotiate effectively with each other, that’s simply not within our control.”

No matter the explanation, the lack of guardrails means several Senate offices that were potential “Yes” votes on the CHIPS Act are working behind the scenes to tank it. Other senators, such as Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), are pushing for new guardrail provisions.

Rubio on July 22 filed legislation that would, among other things, establish a counterintelligence screening process to “certify that anyone receiving funds under the bill has sufficient protections against government threats.” Such guardrails are missing from the CHIPS Act, he said.

“America needs to make things again, especially critical chips and other tech, but we need to do it in a way that benefits our country and our workers,” Rubio said. “Unless we add meaningful safeguards in this package, we should call this for what it is: the China Investment Bill.”

The Senate is expected to hold a final vote this week on the CHIPS Act. Original supporters of domestic semiconductor funding, including Rubio, are expected to vote against it.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

China’s military has become more aggressive and dangerous over the past five years, the top U.S. general asserted on July 24.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters during a trip to Indonesia that the United States and its allies have conducted more and more intercepts of Chinese aircraft and ships in the Pacific. The number of unsafe encounters has also increased significantly, he said.

“The message is the Chinese military, in the air and at sea, have become significantly more and noticeably more aggressive in this particular region,” said Milley, who recently asked his staff to compile details about interactions between China and the United States and others in the region.

The Chinese military has become “noticeably more aggressive in this particular region,” he also told the Financial Times. Milley spoke with The Associated Press and the Financial Times aboard his aircraft as he was flying to visit the Indo–Pacific over the weekend.

Milley, who has faced congressional blowback for holding two phone calls with a top Chinese general during the waning months of the Trump administration, didn’t provide specific figures about incidents involving Chinese jets or ships.

But, in one example, a Chinese J-6 fighter jet in May flew close to an Australian P-8 Poseidon spy plane and released chaff—pieces of metal debris to confuse enemy radar—that was sucked into the Australian plane’s engines, Australian officials said.

“The intercept resulted in a dangerous maneuver which posed a safety threat to the P-8 aircraft and its crew,” Australia’s military said last month about the encounter.

Threats to the Region

U.S. military officials have recently raised alarms about the possibility that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could invade Taiwan amid speculation the CCP could take inspiration from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The CCP has stepped up its military provocations against Taiwan in 2022 as it looks to intimidate it into assimilating with the communist mainland.

Milley also made note of an agreement between the CCP and the Solomon Islands that will allow Beijing to potentially construct a naval base in the South Pacific region.

“This is an area in which China is trying to do outreach for their own purposes. And again, this is concerning because China is not doing it just for benign reasons,” Milley told reporters. “They’re trying to expand their influence throughout the region. And that has potential consequences that are not necessarily favorable to our allies and partners in the region.”

He said that the “vast majority” of countries in the Pacific want the U.S. military to be more involved amid the CCP threat.

“We want to work with them to develop interoperability and modernize our militaries collectively, in order to make sure that, geostrategically, we’re able to meet whatever challenge that China poses,” he said, according to the FT.

Earlier this month, two Republican congressmen again asked Milley’s office to provide more details about two phone calls he had with a top Chinese general, including one on Jan. 8, 2021. They said that the general may have usurped civilian control of the military and said that he “has yet to respond” to their questions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Free Beacon report sparks probe

Congressional Republicans launched a formal investigation into the Biden administration on Friday following its decision to sell a Chinese state-controlled company nearly one million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, according to a copy of the probe obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon.

The probe comes on the heels of a Free Beacon report detailing how the Biden administration sold China oil from the U.S. reserves amid a crippling energy crisis that has sent consumer prices skyrocketing. Rep. Pat Fallon (R., Texas), a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, is spearheading the investigation along with six of his GOP colleagues, including Reps. Ronny Jackson (Texas) and Ralph Norman (S.C.).

Fallon and his colleagues are demanding the White House turn over a trove of documents detailing the behind-the-scenes decision-making about these sales, as well as others potentially made to “foreign adversaries.”

The Biden administration came under intense criticism earlier this month after it was disclosed that it sold Chinese state-controlled energy firm Unipec 950,000 oil barrels from the U.S. reserves, which historically are tapped in response to emergencies. The White House claimed the sale would “address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump” and “help lower energy costs.” But critics say the administration is exploiting the reserves to appease foreign countries while it cuts production domestically to appease the Democratic Party’s far left flank.

“Your policies are harming American energy independence and benefiting our adversaries,” the lawmakers write. “Draining the [U.S. reserves] to historic lows for the sake of political expediency … threatens the national security of our nation, and contemplates no long-term strategy to ensure the energy independence of the United States.”

Information included in the Republican probe shows that the White House sold China 2.5 million barrels in October and another 1.5 million in November. Millions more were sold to other foreign countries during this time period. Amid these sales, the U.S. reserves dipped below 500 million barrels—the lowest level since 1986. China, on the other hand, has around 926 million barrels stored as it continues to import illicit Russian and Iranian oil to offset the rising price of crude. Current projections show the U.S. reserves “will be drained to approximately 130 million barrels by 2031,” according to figures included in the probe.

“The American people can’t afford to put gas in their tanks and our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at its lowest level in decades, yet Joe Biden is wasting our money and resources by sending oil that’s intended for emergencies to the Chinese Communist Party,” Jackson told the Free Beacon. “Helping our adversaries and setting America up for failure in the event of a major disaster or national security threat is no way for an American president to govern. Taxpayers deserve better.”

The lawmakers say the “depletion of emergency supplies is troubling to the American public and puts the United States at a disadvantage should there be a real disaster or a national security threat.”

As China drains the American reserves, it also is “benefitting from loopholes in current sanctions against Russia and from your lack of sanctions enforcement,” the lawmakers write. “It is troubling that the United States is exporting [reserved] crude to China as China continues to align itself with our adversaries.”

While China has said that it would stop importing Russian oil amid the ongoing war in Ukraine, it has not made good on these promises. It also is importing illegal Iranian crude oil at record amounts, behavior that has been enabled by the Biden administration’s decision to loosen sanctions on Tehran as part of an effort to cajole it into signing a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear accord.

“Biden has taken these inappropriate steps as China continues to build their own reserve capabilities with cheap Russian and Iranian oil,” Fallon told the Free Beacon. “Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve was created to address national or weather emergencies, not for political expediency and personal profit.”

The Republican lawmakers instructed the White House to provide them with internal documents related to the sell-off of America’s strategic oil reserves. This includes “all documents and communications, from January 20, 2021, to present” that relates to U.S. crude “being shipped to foreign adversaries—specifically, the People’s Republic of China.” The White House must also furnish in-depth information about China’s own oil reserves, as well as any draft plans to potentially replenish America’s stockpile.

“Our strategic reserves are for national security, not to satisfy global oil markets, and certainly not to cover for resident Biden’s failed energy policies,” Norman told the Free Beacon. “This administration owes our nation immediate answers to these questions.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to militarize outer space are threatening the United States’ ability to defend itself and project power, according to the U.S. Space Force’s chief of space operations.

“China has gone from zero to 60 very quickly,” said Gen. John Raymond. “They are clearly our pacing challenge.”

“Today, more so than in the past, we have to worry about protecting and defending [our] satellites.”

Raymond delivered the remarks at the Aspen Security Forum on July 20, where he said that the United States would need to lead the world in developing international norms of behavior for space.

A Cluttered Space

Raymond said that developing more codified rules for space and further developing U.S. space systems are important given the essential role of space-based technologies in deterring conventional conflicts and preventing the escalation of hostilities.

“Space provides a great opportunity to have one more … means to change the deterrence calculus … and to deter conflict from beginning or extending into space, which we feel would deter a conflict from spilling over onto land,” Raymond said.

He noted that virtually all of the world’s most vital systems—from GPS to missile defense to international banking verification—are space-based. And space, Raymond said, is becoming more congested, more competitive, and more contested.

Indeed, the number of tracked objects in orbit has increased from 22,000 to 50,000 in just the last two years, he said.

China on the Horizon

Beyond mere space debris, however, Raymond said that China’s communist regime poses a serious threat to the United States’ interests in space, and that the regime is building out a suite of different weapons to attack U.S. space infrastructure.

“There’s a full spectrum of threats that we’re worried about,” Raymond said.

“Everything from reversible jamming of communication satellites and GPS satellites … to kinetic destruction.”

Raymond added that the CCP is reaching “near parity” with the United States regarding its space capabilities and is working to develop technologies that could seize the military, civil, or commercial advantage in space.

“That provides them [an] advantage, and that provides risk to our forces,” Raymond said.

“They have seen the advantages that space has provided us as we’ve integrated space and cyber and multi-domain operations, and, to be honest, they don’t like what they see.”

Raymond’s comments to that end were reminiscent of those made by Space Force Gen. David Thompson back in November, who said that China and Russia are conducting reversible attacks on U.S. satellites “every single day.”

2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fchina-threatens-every-instrument-of-national-power-space-force-

To that end, Raymond said that establishing “rules of the road” for the international community is vital to securing space, even if it was a foregone conclusion that the CCP wouldn’t obey those rules. By at least having a solidified framework, Raymond said, China’s hostile actions in space could be measured and recorded.

“I firmly believe that we need to develop norms of behavior, rules of the road. The U.S. and its partners are working on that.”

“And today, one of the challenges is there are no rules or very few rules. It’s the wild, wild west.”

Raymond added that China threatens “every instrument of national power.” Still, he assured the audience that the Space Force would do everything in its power to prevent the CCP from escalating its aggression in space into a bona fide war.

“We come to work every day wanting to deter great power war,” Raymond said. “That’s what we do.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for sustainable development informs government policies to restrict farming and transform the food systems in different parts of the world, said Alex Newman, an award-winning international journalist who has covered this issue for over a decade.

The 2030 Agenda is a plan of action devised by the United Nations (U.N.) to achieve 17 sustainable development goals (SDG). The goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were adopted by all UN member states in 2015.

Then-Secretary General of the U.N. Ban Ki-moon called the 2030 Agenda “the global declaration of interdependence,” (pdf) Newman said in a recent interview on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.

“In my opinion, [it] was a direct swipe at our Declaration of Independence … So instead of being independent nations, we will all be now interdependent.”

The 2030 Agenda “covers every element of human life, every element of the economy,” including global wealth redistribution not only within the nations but also among the nations, Newman commented. The Agenda “specifically says that we need to change the way that we consume and produce goods,” he added.

Goal number two on the 2030 Agenda deals specifically with food, Newman said.

In September 2021, the U.N. held the Food Systems Summit, which emphasized the need “to leverage the power of food systems” for the purpose of achieving all 17 sustainable development goals by 2030, according to a U.N. statement.

“Everyone, everywhere, must take action and work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food,” the statement said.

Taking Over Farmland

The sustainable development agenda emerged in the 1970s when the United Nations tried to define it at a conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976. Newman said.

The conference, which was the first U.N. Conference on Human Settlements known as Habitat I, adopted the Vancouver Declaration (pdf), a report that provided recommendations for U.N. member states.

Newman quoted an excerpt from this report: “Land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.”

Newman said that, in his view, the U.N. ultimately wants to get rid of private land ownership. “We see this all over the world. This is not just happening in the Netherlands.”

He thinks that a war is taking place against farmers and ranchers, especially those who are independent or those who are not part of the system. “They want to remove small farmers, even medium farmers, from their land, and they want to bring it all under the control of these—I think there’s no other term to describe it—fascistic public-private partnerships.”

Newman noted some examples to illustrate his opinion: The Chinese regime forces peasants to move to megacities, farmers are killed in South Africa, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States proposed a new rule that could bankrupt small and medium farmers.

In March 2022, the SEC proposed a regulation that “would mandate publicly traded companies to report on their carbon emissions and other climate-related information,” as well as report similar information from any companies with which they do business, according to an SEC statement.

As a consequence, all companies in the business supply chain of a publicly traded entity would have to report their carbon emission and climate-related data.

U.S. Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) led 30 lawmakers to urge SEC to repeal its proposal, calling it a “regulatory overreach.”

”Imposing regulatory overreach on farmers and ranchers falls outside of the SEC’s congressionally provided authority,” the senators said in a statement. “This substantial reporting requirement would significantly burden small, family-owned farms.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation said in a statement that the proposed rule could create “substantial costs” for farmers because they do not have teams of compliance officers or attorneys like large corporations. Moreover, it may push out of business small and medium-sized farmers and force food-processing companies to look for agricultural raw products outside of the United States, the statement asserted.

Centralizing Food Supply

 “If you control the food supply, you control everything,” Newman said.

“One of the things that the communists loved to do is create scarcity and create dependents. As long as you have independent people who are able to take care of themselves, there really is no need for the government to run your life and to control everything that you do,” Newman said.

“Americans are good examples,” Newman continued. “As long as the food production is widely diffused, and it’s in the hands of independent producers, it becomes very difficult to get people to bend to your will.”

The whole idea of using food as a weapon has been a hallmark of communist regimes for 100 years, Newman explained. “It’s also been a hallmark of the very same people who are openly promoting the U.N. Agenda 2030, the sustainable development goals, and even the World Economic Forum.”

Those who contrived “the controlled demolition of our food supply … want to completely restructure it,” in order to gain total centralized control of that because it gives them absolute power over everybody under their jurisdiction, Newman said.

For example, the Chinese regime and the mega-corporations formed a public-private partnership to centralize control of the food supply, Newman said.

It’s similar to what occurred in Nazi Germany, where on paper private companies own the business and ostensibly manage their businesses, but, ultimately, the private companies will be taking their orders from the government, Newman explained.

In the United States, the ESG metrics are used to “hijack control of the business sector, of the individual companies, and put them at the service of the goals of what I call the predator class—the people behind the World Economic Forum, behind the United Nations,” Newman said. (ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance criteria that are used to evaluate companies on how compliant they are with sustainability.)

The food supply centralization is just one component of their agenda, but it is a very critical one, which along with energy and other things, allows them to control humanity, he added.

World Economic Forum Involvement

In January 2021, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the government of the Netherlands launched a new initiative called Food Innovation Hub, according to a WEF statement. The Hub, joined by several public and private sector partners, is a key platform that will use technology and innovations for food systems transformation, the statement said.

The Food Innovation Hub secured “multiyear funding “ from the Netherlands’ government and established its Global Coordinating Secretariat that would coordinate the efforts of the regional food hubs as well as align with global food processes and initiatives such as the UN Food Systems Summit, the statement read.

The global food Secretariat would be located in Wageningen, Netherlands, at the heart of the Dutch agrifood ecosystem, and would direct the development of global, regional Food Innovation Hubs, according to the “Invest in Holland” website.

“The work of these regional hubs is already underway, with more than 20 organizations leading the initiative across Africa, ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], Colombia, and India, and the European hub,” the website said.

Ramon Laguarta, CEO of PepsiCo, said in the WEF statement: “Food is one of the main levers we can pull to improve environmental and societal health. With the right investment, innovation, and robust collaboration, agriculture could become the world’s first sector to become carbon negative. … Unlocking this potential will take ambitious multi-stakeholder, pre-competitive collaborations to transform the food system—exactly what these Hubs are designed to cultivate.”

Among the solutions advocated by the WEF to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is replacing livestock-derived foods with alternative forms of protein, such as insects, and lab-cultured proteins, according to a 2019 white paper (pdf) commissioned by the WEF.

In response to this recommendation, several indoor agriculture start-ups have emerged, including Ÿnsect, “the first fully automated vertical insect farm in the world, able to produce 100,000 tons of insect products a year,” a WEF report said.

In March, France-based Ÿnsect acquired Jord Producers, a U.S. mealworm manufacturer, to expand its operations in the United States by entering the American chicken feed market, said a company statement.

How People Can Stop Food Takeover

If people want to prevent food supply from being used as a tool to control them, they need to find alternative sources of food locally, Newman said. “You need to have a relationship with the local farmers in your community, get to the local farmers market, deal with the local farmers, come up with some agreement,” such as getting delivery of fresh, seasonal produce from the local farms for 100 bucks a week, he said.

“We need to really start providing an alternative economic structure, because if we let them get control of the entire food supply, I guarantee you, it will be used as a weapon to take your freedom, to get you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t want to do, to undermine the sovereignty of your nation, whether you’re in the United States or another country, and ultimately to dispossess people of their private land and of their freedom.”

“If you have agricultural land, do not sell out to these people. They’re trying to bribe the farmers to leave their land.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

WHY ISN’T ANYONE STOPPING THIS?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is helping fund the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Science and Technology, assisting the brutal regime in its efforts to lure foreign scientists in to boost China’s scientific advancement, The National Pulse can reveal.

A recent, $100,000 grant from the Microsoft mogul’s foundation was sent to the Foreign Talent Research Center of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology in June, according to the organization’s website.

The purpose of the cash is listed as organizing a forum on “pandemic preparedness and response,” which would focus on “leveraging resources to improve global health and support disadvantaged populations who are disproportionately impacted by pandemic.” The forum is affiliated with the Zhongguancun Forum, a Beijing-based technology conference sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party that counts high-level officials – including President Xi Jinping – as speakers.

The Gates Foundation’s decision to fund the Foreign Talent Research Center of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology comes amidst controversy over the likelihood of international collaboration between U.S. and Chinese researchers in Wuhan leading to the genesis of COVID-19. Since the outbreak of the virus, the Chinese Communist Party has stonewalled investigations into the origins of the virus and planted Western researchers with compromising ties to China in senior investigative roles.

Beyond COVID-19, the Chinese Communist Party has also come under fire for weaponizing its science and technology programs to lure Western scientists away from their home countries in order to facilitate Chinese advancement and military build-up. This program – commonly known as the Thousand Talents Plan – has led to several Department of Justice (DOJ) indictments of American researchers who routinely fail to disclose their financial ties to the Chinese Communist Party despite receiving U.S. taxpayer funds.

MUST READ: Bill Gates-Funded Lab, Less Than 2 Miles From Wuhan Institute, Reports Cholera Case.

The Ministry of Science and Technology’s Foreign Talent Research Center appears to engage in similar conduct, as it is responsible for “bring[ing] in foreign talent,” according to an outline of its missions.

The ministry “formulates and facilitates the implementation of plans for bringing in high-end foreign experts, develops mechanisms for pooling top-notch scientists and research teams from abroad, and provides services for foreign experts,” it continues.

The unearthed grant comes amidst the Gates Foundation pouring millions of dollars into China, including to universities with ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Almost 60 percent of Americans believe that the Chinese-owned short video app TikTok should be removed from app stores after revelations that American user data has been repeatedly accessed in China, according to a new poll.

In a survey conducted by the Convention of States Action and Trafalgar Group, 58.6 percent of respondents said they supported “efforts to remove TikTok from app stores now that the company has revealed American’s user data can be accessed by TikTok employees in China.”

Meanwhile, 17.8 percent of respondents were opposed to such action, and 23.6 percent said they were not sure. The poll was conducted from July 7 to July 10, surveying more than 1,000 likely 2022 election voters with a margin of error of 2.9 percent.

The results came less than a month after leaked recordings of internal company meetings obtained by Buzzfeed News allegedly showed that from least September 2021 to January, engineers in China had access to the app’s U.S. data.

TikTok employees at times had to turn to their colleagues in China to determine how U.S. data was flowing, which the U.S. staff weren’t authorized to independently access, according to the report.

The July survey showed that Independents (56.9 percent) and Republicans (76.8 percent) were more likely to support measures to remove TikTok, while 39.2 percent of Democrats agreed with this proposal.

The recent revelations have renewed scrutiny on the app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, that officials and experts say may be used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for espionage and to conduct information operations. They cite national security laws in the country that compel companies to cooperate with Chinese intelligence agencies when asked.

TikTok has repeatedly denied such allegations, saying that it stores U.S. user data on servers outside of China and that it would never allow Beijing to access such information.

“TikTok is just another invasive tool for communist China to infiltrate Americans’ personal and proprietary information,” Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) previously told The Epoch Times.

“This app presents a very real threat to our national security, and the United States should take strong action to stop the CCP’s espionage campaign.”

The Trump administration had sought to ban the social media app, citing data security risks. But resident Joe Biden later reversed the measure, and instead ordered the Commerce Department to evaluate the platform to determine whether it poses a national security risk.

In addition to U.S. user data being accessed by Beijing to conduct espionage operations, TikTok may also be used to shape Americans’ perceptions to be favorable to the Chinese regime, according to Mark Meckler, former interim CEO of social media platform Parler and president of the Convention of States Action, the advocacy group that commissioned the survey.

Meckler described TikTok as one part of the communist regime’s long-running “digital warfare against the United States.” He pointed to the Chinese military’s concept of “total war” that seeks to leverage an array of methods and arenas outside of traditional warfighting domains, such as media and culture, to overcome the enemy.

“This is just one more slice in that pie giving the Chinese Communist Party an opportunity to do damage to the United States by affecting the culture of young people,” Meckler said.

The Epoch Times has reached out to TikTok for comment.

Eva Fu contributed to this report. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A new study published this month revealed that COVID-19 mask mandates in schools have little to no effect.

“Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students,” researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California–Davis said in a preprint study published on Research Square.

Researchers evaluated two school districts in Fargo, North Dakota, in which one had a mask mandate and the other did not during the 2021–2022 academic year.

“We observed no significant difference between student case rates while the districts had differing masking policies nor while they had the same mask policies,” they noted, adding that the “impact of school-based mask mandates on COVID-19 transmission in children is not fully established” amid mandates nationwide.

A number of other studies have found no link between mask mandates and a drop in COVID-19 cases.

In one study published in May, researchers found that COVID-19 mask and vaccine rules implemented by Cornell University had limited impact against the transmission of Omicron in late 2021 and 2022.

“Cornell’s experience shows that traditional public health interventions were not a match for Omicron. While vaccination protected against severe illness, it was not sufficient to prevent rapid spread, even when combined with other public health measures including widespread surveillance testing,” the paper said.

And researchers in Spain found that mask mandates for children in Spain weren’t linked to a lower rate of COVID-19 cases or transmission.

In an evaluation of schoolchildren, kids aged 6 and older in Catalonia were required to wear masks once school reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers said.

Researchers compared the incidence of COVID-19 in older children to younger children to try to determine whether the mandates had been effective in the aim of reducing transmission of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, in schools.

Their study identified a much lower case rate in preschool, where there were no mandates when compared to older groups who were required to wear masks. Five-year-olds, for instance, had an incidence of 3.1 percent, while 6-year-olds had an incidence of 3.5 percent.

Researchers in Toronto, Canada, and California replicated a 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of counties in Arizona, published in The Lancet in May, that expanded the number of data points and extended the time period. They discovered that cases quickly declined in the weeks after the CDC cut off its study and decreased more quickly in the counties that didn’t have mask mandates.

“School districts that choose to mandate masks are likely to be systematically different from those that do not in multiple, often unobserved, ways. We failed to establish a relationship between school masking and pediatric cases using the same methods but a larger, more nationally diverse population over a longer interval,” the researchers said.

“It was known long before COVID-19 that face masks don’t do anything,” Former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon, a toxicologist and allergy research specialist, told The Epoch Times in May.  “Many don’t know that blue medical masks aren’t filters. Your inspired and expired air moves in and out between the mask [and] your face. They are splashguards, that’s all.”

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday ended its COVID-19 program for cruise ships that reported cases of the virus, while saying that ships can handle their own testing and mitigation.

“CDC has worked closely with the cruise industry, state, territorial, and local health authorities, and federal and seaport partners to provide a safer and healthier environment for cruise passengers and crew,” the federal agency’s website said in an update on Monday. “Cruise ships have access to guidance and tools to manage their own COVID-19 mitigation programs.”

“While cruising poses some risk of COVID-19 transmission,” the agency said, the “CDC will continue to publish guidance to help cruise ships continue to provide a safer and healthier environment for crew, passengers, and communities going forward.” The agency did not post a date for the latest guidance, but an Epoch Times review of archived pages shows that the update was posted Monday.

Throughout the pandemic, the cruise industry worldwide has been gutted by lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and other government-imposed rules. Cruise industry groups have called on the CDC to end its program for months.

Health officials have often scrutinized cruise ships and warned that the vessels allow for widespread transmission of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. In early 2020, extensive media coverage was dedicated to an outbreak on the Diamond Princess ship in Japan, prompting health agencies worldwide to place curbs on cruises.

‘Important Step Forward’

In a statement Monday, Cruise Lines International Association spokeswoman Anne Madison told USA Today that it’s pleased the rules were dropped “in favor of a set of guidelines for public health operations on cruise ships

“We look forward to reviewing the details, which we understand will be posted on the CDC website in the coming days,” she told the news outlet. “This is an important step forward in the CDC aligning the guidelines for cruise with those it has established for other travel, hospitality, and entertainment sectors.”

The CDC used a so-called “Conditional Sailing Order” throughout the pandemic after having first issued a no-sail order in 2020. The CDC dropped the conditional order as well as its color-coded COVID-19 warning system earlier this year, which was also hailed by cruise industry groups.

As for mandatory vaccination rules on ships, several fully vaccinated cruises have faced respective COVID-19 outbreaks so far in 2022.

A “100 percent vaccinated” Princess Cruises vessel, for example, reported a COVID-19 outbreak before it docked in San Francisco, officials said in late March.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fought against COVID-19 restrictions for cruise ships, including vaccine mandates. Last year, the Republican governor vowed that he would take legal measures to end the enforcement of CDC rules at ports in Florida, which are used by major cruise operators.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Moderate Democrats will play a key role in the coming midterm election and very likely handle the U.S. House to the Republicans, analysts said.

The main reason for the rebelling moderates is President Joe Biden’s policies.

“This [moderate voting] base is becoming increasingly disenchanted with what seems to be the ongoing failures of the Biden administration on major party platforms such as rising inflation, gas prices, and a pretty weak economy,” Jamie Wright, a political pundit at The Wright Law Firm, told The Epoch Times.

Josh Wilson, a political consultant and ex-aide to former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, shared the view that the state of the economy under Biden is a significant factor in the shift.

Besides this, Wilson also pointed out that the historical pattern of midterm elections for the party of the president will also contribute.

“Simply based on U.S. electoral history, where the president’s political party tends to suffer major losses during the first midterm of the presidential term, it is highly likely that Republicans will see major gains in the House of Representatives,” he said.

Progressive Movement Pushing Moderates Away

For over a decade, progressive activists have been pushing the political spectrum in the United States to the left in various ways, from woke textbooks in the education system to protests on the streets.

As a result, some moderate Democrats found themself isolated and being pushed out.

Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO who was a liberal, shared a meme on April 28 explaining how the progressive movement has made him closer to the conservative side. The meme shows the political left moving away from the centers since 2008 while the center and right remaining stationary. As a result, he falls into the area close to the conservative without even changing his political stance.

The meme was liked by over 1.5 million users after Musk shared it on his Twitter account.

Biden, who mainly posed as a moderate during his campaign, followed the progressive movement closely after he came to the White House and adopted policies from the woke agenda.

That deepened the discontent among moderates.

A major factor was the extreme lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus, outbreak.

“You just have one public official who’s never been elected … no scientific citation for any of these mandates, simply telling Americans: ‘do what you’re told,’” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent Democrat, criticized the policies during an interview with The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD at the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington on Jan. 23.

The mandates were “all designed to instill fear and confusion in Americans, and it’s just a catastrophic exercise in bad government and manipulation,” he added.

Biden’s Energy Policies and Soaring Gas Price

Another area that moderate Democrats feel upset about is the economic performance during Biden’s presidency, especially the rising inflation and gas prices.

According to CNBC’s All-America Survey, Biden’s economic approval rating dropped 5 points from April’s survey to 30 percent. His approval of the overall handling of the presidency dropped to 36 percent. Of the 800 people across the nation polled by CNBC, 51 percent believe Biden’s efforts to fight inflation are making no difference, and 30 percent think the measures are actually hurting.

The Biden administration has strictly adhered to its climate crisis agenda, rejecting boosting domestic energy production and insisting people should buy electric vehicles as an alternative option amid high gas prices.

However, electric vehicles are unaffordable for many families.

A Consumer Reports survey shows that 52 percent of people say they would not buy an electric vehicle because the costs of buying and maintaining them are too high.

How Moderate Democrats May Act in Midterms

Though the moderates are not as popular in the mainstream media or on some politicians’ priority agendas, they still make up the majority of Democrats, Wright said.

“There is a real power struggle between the moderates and the extreme left within the party. However, moderates still make up the majority,” she said.

She believes it’s important for the Democrat candidates to appeal to the moderate voting base to ensure they don’t leave the party over failed policies.

Wilson believes the moderates will act in two ways—either they won’t show up or vote Republican—and will cost the Democrat Party heavily.

“Democrat members of the Congress seem to be trending more to the left but Democrat voters are not. To be more specific, Democrats in D.C. seem to be putting social issues ahead of economic issues. [However,] most voters want the government to focus on things that impact them daily,” he said.

“It’s more likely that moderate Democrat voters will not vote in the midterm if [they are] extremely fed up, rather than cast a ballot for a Republican,” he said. “If the Republican candidate in those swing districts is also a moderate, they may be able to bring Democrat voters across the line.”

“By not showing up and voting for the Democrat, Democrat voters will absolutely be protesting the current situation and indirectly helping Republicans take control,” he added.

The situation is also likely to put moderate Democrat candidates in harm’s way because “they will be painted as extreme liberals during the campaigns” under the current political climate, Wilson stated.

Masooma Haq and Jack Phillips contributed to the report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci revealed that after about five decades in the federal government, he’s planning on leaving his position by the end of resident Joe Biden’s current term.

“We’re in a pattern now. If somebody says, ‘You’ll leave when we don’t have COVID anymore,’ then I will be 105. I think we’re going to be living with this,” Fauci, 81, told Politico in an interview published on July 18 that he plans to retire by the end of Biden’s current term, which ends in January 2025.

Fauci has been the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he became a household name as the face of the federal government’s response, often generating criticism from Republicans and conservatives about his generally dire predictions about the pandemic.

Of his relationship with former President Donald Trump, Fauci said that “we developed an interesting relationship … two guys from New York, different in their opinions and their ideology, but still, two guys who grew up in the same environments of this city. I think that we are related to each other in that regard.”

And if Republicans win back either the House or Senate in 2022, Fauci noted that he will likely be investigated by GOP lawmakers. But he claimed that regarding those investigations, “I don’t make that a consideration in my career decision.”

In the Politico interview, Fauci continued to defend his public recommendations, including school closures, mask-wearing, vaccination regimes, and lockdowns.

“My telling somebody that it’s important to follow fundamental good public health practices … what are you going to investigate about that?” he asked.

Possible Investigations

However, Fauci has faced public questions from Republicans in Congress about his agency having given funding to third-party groups to carry out research in China. COVID-19, caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, emerged in Wuhan, China, and a significant number of U.S. intelligence officials last year released a report suggesting the virus may be linked to the top-level Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Last month, amid questions from Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), Fauci conceded that he isn’t able to halt federal funding from being doled out to researchers in China.

“The NIH [National Institutes of Health] is still funding research in China, at least $8 million since 2020,” Marshall said. “In the Intelligence Community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, the Chinese Communist Party is presented as one of the top threats to the United States, along with Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. To my knowledge, only China is receiving U.S. research dollars.”

Later, he asked Fauci, “When will you as director of NIAID stop funding research in China?”

Federal health agencies, Fauci said in response, “had very productive peer-reviewed highly regarded research projects with our Chinese colleagues that have led to some major advances in biomedical research.”

“We obviously need to be careful and make sure that when we do fund them we have the proper peer review and we go through all the established guidelines,” he said.

NIAID officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A trio of U.S. senators is requesting a security review of a farmland purchase by a Chinese agribusiness with a founder who has links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), raising concerns about the property’s proximity to a U.S. military installation.

Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) are asking the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)—an interagency group that screens foreign investments for security risks—to review the Fufeng Group’s purchase of 370 acres of farmland near the Grand Forks Air Force Base for potential “national security implications.”

“This property is approximately 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, which has led to concern that Fufeng operations could provide cover for PRC [the People’s Republic of China] surveillance or interference with the missions located at that installation, given Fufeng Group’s reported ties to the Chinese Communist Party,” the senators wrote in a July 14 letter addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen.

“PRC investments in the United States demand scrutiny. We therefore urge you, through CFIUS, to determine whether this project has national security implications and inform us when such a review is completed.”

Fufeng is a manufacturer of bio-fermented, corn-derived products, which are used in end products ranging from animal feed to pharmaceuticals. A Hong Kong-listed company, the group has multiple subsidiaries around the world, but most of its production facilities can be found in northeast China.

Fufeng’s chairman, Li Xuechun, was a provincial-level representative in China’s rubber-stamp legislature system—the People’s Congress—in 2008 and 2013 in northeastern Shandong Province and has been a CCP member since 1985, according to Chinese media reports.

Li was awarded the “model worker” award and an “outstanding” award for entrepreneurs by Shandong provincial authorities in 2003. According to geopolitical analyst Ross Kennedy, the awards revealed Li to have embodied “the synthesis of economic and political goals of the Shandong region and the CCP.”

Considering Fufeng’s connections to an adversarial regime and the sensitive nature of the U.S. military installation, Cramer says the corn mill’s location is too close for comfort.

“There’s one very specific concern that has a lot of people focused on it, and that is that it’s in fairly close proximity to the Grand Forks Air Force Base. The Grand Forks Air Force Base is a very important ISR mission,” he told NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, referring to the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance activities at the base.

Cramer also noted that the Chinese regime is “very strategic” about the acquisitions of overseas assets, demonstrating a “willingness to use economic enticement to gain access to very important assets, whether it’s a port in Sri Lanka or an airport in Uganda.”

“China has been a predatory investor for a long time,” he said.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) agrees with his Republican colleagues.

“The Senate Intelligence Committee has been loudly sounding the alarm about the counterintelligence threat posed by the PRC,” Warner told CNBC. “We should be seriously concerned about Chinese investment in locations close to sensitive sites, such as military bases around the U.S.”

According to a May report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an influential congressional advisory body, the Air Force facility “houses some of the United States’ top intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.”

The commission found the mill’s location “particularly convenient for monitoring air traffic flows in and out of the base, among other security-related concerns.”

A representative of Fufeng USA, the subsidiary of Fufeng Group that has been leading the development and discussions with the City of Grand Forks, North Dakota, dismissed such security concerns.

“I know we’re not going to be asked to be collecting any intelligence on Grand Forks Air Force Base,” Eric Chutorash, chief operating officer of Fufeng USA, told local media outlets in March. “I can’t stress it any more than that. Me personally, I wouldn’t provide it. I don’t believe the team being built there would provide it.”

Brandon Bochenski, mayor of Grand Forks, has touted the economic benefits of the project while maintaining that the city has been working with authorities for direction.

“We have been in contact with our Governor, ND [North Dakota] state agencies, U.S. Senators, and U.S. House Representative regarding the project,” Bochenski previously told The Epoch Times in an email.

“We see economic benefits of a new wet-corn milling facility in the region. We are doing as much due diligence as possible and look to the appropriate federal agencies for national security insights and direction.”

The Pentagon declined to comment, and the Treasury didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Epoch Times.

J.M. Phelps contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

JUST AS WASHINGTON BEGINS TO TAKE THE TIKTOK THREAT SERIOUSLY, THE DEMOCRATS JOIN THE PLATFORM.

The Democratic National Committee has officially joined TikTok, a controversial social media platform with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party, despite advising their own campaigns against joining the Chinese-owned app during the 2020 election cycle.

“We continue to advise campaign staff to refrain from using TikTok on personal devices. If you are using TikTok for campaign work, we recommend using a separate phone and account,” the DNC security team instructed its candidates two years ago.

Despite the warning, the Democratic Party has completed an about-face on the platform, at the same time Washington, D.C. begins to take seriously the threat of spying through the app.

The DNC’s stark reversal comes amidst evidence revealing that the TikTok parent company employs former Chinese Communist Party officials, including individuals with military ties, to executive roles and even grants party members preferential treatment in hiring processes.

The app’s founder also pledged to use ByteDance to “promote socialist core values” and devotion to the Chinese Communist Party in 2018.

TikTok’s threat to national security and data privacy – previously acknowledged by the DNC – 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.

The committee maintains it is employing security precautions such as dedicating individual devices that are isolated from “other DNC assets/processes/businesses as a mitigation to the privacy risk.” The DNC attributed its decision to an effort to reach more voters, particularly younger generations.

The move comes amidst a massive lobbying campaign mounted by TikTok and its parent company ByteDance. Many of the lobbyists and firms hired by the company have ties to Democratic politics and leaders such as Nancy Pelosi.

MUST READ: Would-Be British PM Rishi Sunak’s Family Runs A China-Linked, World Economic Forum Partner Company Pushing Digital ID and Social Credit Scores.

Internally, TikTok has also hired several Democratic Party alumni, including Obama administration National Security Council members to run its Trust and Safety operations.

TikTok also funds several fact-checking organizations used by other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, which frequently exercise their censorship capabilities against conservative users and stories critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) still does not have an account on the platform.

“We do not have any plans to give the Chinese Communist Party our data, nor do we plan to use their spyware,” said RNC spokesperson Nathan Brand.

SUNAK’S WIFE IS A FOREIGN CITIZEN WITH A SHAREHOLDING IN THE WEF-LINKED COMPANY.

Former British finance minister Rishi Sunak – a frontrunner to become Britain’s next Prime Minister – has family ties to a technology partner of the World Economic Forum that has advocated for a Chinese Communist Party-style economy complete with trackable, digital identities and currency.

Sunak, who topped the second round of voting by Conservative Members of Parliament (MP) in the Tory leadership race on July 15th following Boris Johnson’s resignation, is widely considered the “neoliberal” or “globalist” candidate.

The father of Sunak’s wife Akshata Murthy is the founder of Infosys, an Indian information technology company that provides services to a host of Fortune 500 companies and banks. One of the company’s leading services is Finacle, a digital banking platform. Murthy remains a foreign citizen with “non dom” i.e. non UK tax-paying status despite her husband’s work as Britain’s most senior finance chief, and expectation of becoming Prime Minister.

Infosys is listed as an official partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which has been accused of seeking to develop the technological infrastructure to implement a global “social credit score” system.

Social credit scores have been used by authoritarian regimes to deny rights and restrict the movements of individuals who fail to comply with diktats. For the World Economic Forum, social credit priorities would likely focus on left-wing social issues like climate change, diversity, and equity.

Klaus Schwab’s Candidate.

Far from being a silent partner, InfoSys has earned praise from the WEF, being dubbed a “global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting.”

“With three decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, it steers clients through their digital journey by enabling them with an artificial intelligence-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change…”

– WEF on the Sunak-linked InfoSys

Several Infosys executives have also contributed articles to the WEF website, including the company’s Global Head, President, and Chief Compliance Officer.

MUST READ: CONFLICTED MUCH? – World Economic Forum ‘Anti-Corruption’ Champion Is Pfizer Director AND Reuters CEO.

Infosys President Mohit Joshi has penned articles for the site in favor of digital banking, which provides the technological framework for the “social credit score” system the WEF has come under scrutiny for attempting to effectuate across the world.

Joshi echoes these sentiments in an article for the WEF from August 2020: “Why it’s time to take central banks’ digital currencies seriously.”

“What is clear is that the crisis of COVID-19 presents many challenges – but also a unique opportunity to rethink how money is managed and used in our society,” he asks.

“There also credible concerns that paper money can transmit the virus,” he claimed before asking:

“Who then can blame the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) when it announced in February that it would be destroying cash collected in high-risk environments, such as public transport, markets or in hospitals?”

“Digital currencies could remove the cumbersome operational and security apparatus which surround conventional forms of money transmission,” continues his article, before claiming “there are political and social benefits as well.”

China’s Candidate.

“The potential for China here is immense. If the e-RMB is adopted broadly as a system to streamline trade and reduce risk, China could become the world’s trade banker, as well as its factory. Yet the bigger goal for China is actually more local, and relates to financial inclusion. Digitising the RMB will grant access to financial services to hundreds of millions of citizens, including some of the most disadvantaged. This benefit is something that can be applied to any country across the world,” continues the article, which also revealed that Infosys is contributing to digitization efforts.

MUST READ: Boris Johnson Resigns: He Couldn’t ‘Carrie On’ Any Longer. So What Next?

Another op-ed by Joshi – “Digital identity can help advance inclusive financial services” – advocates for granting every person a “unique digital identity” to conduct financial transactions. He points to the Chinese Communist Party as a successful example of this policy:

“The Chinese government in Zhejiang Province has developed an “enterprise digital code” for just this purpose, responding to small and mediums banks (SMBs) with easy-to-access financial resources. MYBank, a subsidiary of Ant Financial, the Chinese Big Tech firm, collaborates with the Chinese government through this scheme to provide cheap loans and other financial products to SMBs.”

He also calls for the creation of a “digital stability board” to regulate all payments.

“This “digital stability board” would give members the platform to share best practices and monitor risks in digital commerce and health care, for instance. With this board in place, data trusts could be built to manage individuals’ and SMBs’ data,” he explains.

Infosys is also a member of the WEF’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI), which includes cross-industry representatives from the world’s largest corporations. The National Pulse recently exposed how the initiative, which purports to fight for transparency in business practices, is the former CEO of Reuters who now serves as a board member at COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer.

Its leaders are also involved with different WEF sub-groups, such as the Global Head of Sustainability and Design Consulting Services Corey Glickman, who is a member of the WEF Pioneer Cities working group.

Sunak himself has a history of being soft on China, telling the Telegraph that he wanted a “complete sea change” in relations with the Chinese Communist Party in favor of increased trade ties and economic collaboration. China, in turn, has endorsed Sunak’s candidacy.

THIS WILL END WELL.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 authorizes taxpayer funds for the U.S. Department of Defense to research and develop plant-based proteins for members of the military.

The congressional legislation, H.R. 7900, establishes a “Pilot Program on Research and Development of Plant-based Protein for the Navy.”

The bill stipulates that by March 1st, 2023, the Secretary of the Navy “shall establish and carry out a pilot program to offer plant-based protein options at forward operating bases for consumption by members of the Navy.” Plant-based protein options are defined as “edible vegan or vegetarian meat alternative products made using plant and other non-livestock-based proteins,” according to the bill.

At least two naval facilities will be made to participate in the pilot program and “prioritize facilities where livestock-based protein options may be costly to obtain or store.”

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, which dictates appropriations for military activities and programs run by the Department of Defense, explains that the pilot program will run for three years. Following its completion, the Secretary of the Navy will submit a report to Congress including the following findings:

(1) The consumption rate of plant-based protein options by members of the Navy under the pilot program.

(2) Effective criteria to increase plant-based protein options at naval facilities not identified under subsection (b).

(3) An analysis of the costs of obtaining and storing plant-based protein options compared to the costs of obtaining and storing livestock-based protein options at selected naval facilities.

On June 22nd,  the Committee on Armed Services held a markup session to consider the bill, with the House of Representatives later voting 57 to 1 in favor of recommending it.

MUST READ: Bill Gates-Funded Lab, Less Than 2 Miles From Wuhan Institute, Reports Cholera Case.

The pilot program comes amidst intense scrutiny over billionaires such as Bill Gates purchasing massive amounts of U.S. farmland to develop plant-based alternatives to animal meats. The Microsoft founder recently called on rich nations to switch entirely to synthetic beef.

The Chinese Communist Party has also collaborated on similar ventures, launching expansive influence operations targeting American agriculture officials with free trips to China.

THE NEWS RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ENDORSEMENT OF BIRX BY NH-1 CANDIDATE MATT MOWERS.

Dr. Deborah Birx – who often appeared in front of COVID-19 task force briefings on behalf of the Trump administration – has admitted to doctoring data associated with the government’s response, as well as quietly altering the Centers for Disease Control advice without authorization, according to her own book.

Birx – who was brought into the White House task force following recommendations from Republican Party figures such as Matt Mowers (now running for Congress in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District) – writes in her underperforming book ‘Silent Invasion‘:

“I devised a work-around for the governor’s reports I was then writing. Instead of including those recommendations in the common bulleted list, I’d include them in the pandemic summary and state-specific recommendations in the governor’s reports, where they wouldn’t be so obvious. These weekly reports couldn’t go out on Monday without administration approval. Week by week Marc’s office began providing line-by-line edits. After the heavily edited documents were returned to me, I’d reinsert what they had objected to, but place it in those different locations. I’d also reorder and restructure the bullet points so the most salient—the points the administration objected to most—no longer fell at the start of the bullet points. I shared these strategies with the three members of the data team also writing these reports. Our Saturday and Sunday report-writing routine soon became: write, submit, revise, hide, resubmit. Fortunately, this strategic sleight-of-hand worked. That they never seemed to catch this subterfuge left me to conclude that, either they read the finished reports too quickly or they neglected to do the word search that would have revealed the language to which they objected.”

Birx’s appointment was welcomed by her former Chief of Staff in the State Department, Mowers, who tweeted:

I served as Chief of Staff to Ambassador Birx and I have the utmost confidence that she will ensure America is prepared to confront the Coronavirus outbreak. Her passion and commitment to ensuring our nation’s health and safety are second to none.

— Matt Mowers (@mowers) February 27, 2020

Indeed, press reports indicate that Birx’s ability to operate in such a manner was specifically due to Mowers’s influence:

Though Birx was not personally close to the President, she was able to develop a close relationship with this White House in part because Trump campaign official Matt Mowers served as her chief of staff for nearly two years, according to a source familiar with her situation.

Within weeks, however, Birx was thwarting the will of President Trump and his team, in order to prioritize the demands of pharmaceutical lobbyists and Chinese Communist Party sympathisers like Anthony Fauci. She further revealed:

MUST READ: Bill Gates-Funded Lab, Less Than 2 Miles From Wuhan Institute, Reports Cholera Case.

This wasn’t the only bit of subterfuge I had to engage in. Immediately after the Atlas-influenced revised CDC testing guidance went up in late August, I contacted Bob Redfield. He confirmed my suspicions: he had disagreed with the guidance, but had felt pressured by HHS and the White House to post it. Also, many on his staff in Atlanta were still comfortable prioritizing symptomatic individuals. Even at this late point, eight months into the pandemic, many at both the White House and the CDC still refused to see that silent spread played a prominent role in viral spread and that it started with social gatherings, especially among the younger adults. We had to find a way around them. Recognizing the damage to public health the Scott Atlas–driven testing guidance could do and was doing with testing rates dropping across the country, Bob and I agreed to quietly rewrite the guidance and post it to the CDC website. We would not seek approval. Because we were both quite busy, it might take a week or two, but we were committed to subverting the dangerous message that limiting testing was the right thing to do.

As this was going on, Republican figures like Mowers were running cover for the scarfed bureaucrat:

Thankful for Ambassador Birx’s leadership in this response. We are in good hands. #nhpolitics https://t.co/p8ZZKus4Ir

— Matt Mowers (@mowers) March 13, 2020

Worse still, Birx claimed to offer little contrition over her outright insubordination, when challenged on the matter by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows:

MUST READ: STUDY: 99% Of COVID-19 Data Websites Secretly Track Users.

“On September 18, I was still on the road—in Arizona again, for a meeting with those conducting proactive testing at the University of Arizona—when Mark Meadows’s name and number flashed across my White House–issued smartphone.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? You rewrote and posted the CDC testing stuff.”

“Yes, I did, but—” “There’s no ‘buts’ here. You went over my head.”

I explained why I had done it. We’d already seen the drop in testing numbers resulting from Scott Atlas’s dangerous guidelines. Those few pages we’d rewritten would change how states could test, and we’d prevent even more community spread going into the dangerous winter ahead. Mark Meadows took this in and then, biting off each of his words, said, “You went over everyone else on the task force’s heads. You went around the whole approval process. You do not make unilateral decisions. It’s that simple. Period. End of sentence. Understood? Don’t ever do this again.”

“Understood. I did what I needed to do.”

“Don’t do that again without talking with me first.”

The news will raise questions about the work of Birx and those around her in the White House, and whether or not she acted illegally during her employment. The developments could also cost Mowers – whose lead in the New Hampshire 1 Congressional race has narrowed in recent months.

His main opponent – former Trump admin official Karoline Leavitt – has experienced a bumper fundraising quarter as well as garnering endorsements from key Trump-world figures such as Steve Cortes:

Karoline is a rising star of America First. https://t.co/TrYgCErLkz

— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) July 14, 2022

The protection afforded by surviving COVID-19 was strong against the latest virus subvariants, including the one currently dominant in the United States, scientists in Qatar found.

People who were infected with Omicron, a variant of SARS-CoV-2, had 76.1 percent protection against symptomatic reinfection from BA.4 and BA.5 and 80 percent shielding from any reinfection, regardless of symptoms, according to the preprint study.

SARS-CoV-2, also known as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, causes COVID-19.

Omicron became the dominant virus strain in many countries in late 2021. Since then, a number of subvariants have taken hold. BA.5 is the strain currently dominant in the United States.

While protection from an Omicron infection provided robust shielding against reinfection, those who contracted a pre-Omicron strain had little protection, according to the Qatari scientists, who were led by Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar.

Pre-Omicron infection provided just 15.1 percent effectiveness against symptomatic BA.4 and BA.5 reinfection and just 28 percent infection against any reinfection.

The scientists analyzed data from national COVID-19 databases.

Infections before Omicron were those that occurred before Dec. 19, 2021, when the variant wave started in Qatar.

Protection ‘Strong’

“Protection of a previous infection against BA.4/BA.5 reinfection was modest when the previous infection involved a pre-Omicron variant, but strong when the previous infection involved the Omicron BA.1 or BA.2 subvariant,” the scientists wrote.

Natural immunity has long been found to be superior to the protection from COVID-19 vaccines, and the new study is no exception. Vaccines provide little protection against Omicron infection and perform worse against infection and severe illness from the BA.4 and BA. 5 subvariants, studies have shown.

Natural immunity also waned against BA.4 and BA.5, highlighting how the subvariants are better at evading protection, the Qatari researchers found.

The group has been studying natural immunity for years and recently discovered that the protection from prior infection against severe disease showed no signs of waning, regardless of what strain infected the person.

Among the listed limitations for the new study was the young population of Qatar, where just 9 percent of residents are 50 years of age or older. That means the findings “may not be generalizable to other countries where elderly citizens constitute a larger proportion of the total population,” researchers wrote.

Some experts, including Abu-Raddad and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, continue recommending vaccination for people with natural immunity, pointing to studies that indicate one or more doses increase protection, but others say vaccination isn’t needed for people who survive COVID-19, since some research suggests the elevated protection is minimal and that the naturally immune are at higher risk of vaccine side effects.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Remembering the courageous people who refused to be silenced

Over the past two decades, countless people of faith have lost their lives in communist China. And tens of thousands of them are still being persecuted there, every single day. These people face endless abuse and torture for displaying moral courage in the face of oppression.

Here, we remember 10 of these moral bravehearts, from all walks of life, who were killed for their faith.

Though the 5,000-year-old Chinese civilization was founded on faith and tradition, these very virtues are what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to uproot. Since the year 1992, over 100 million law-abiding spiritual believers—with their resolute faith in the universal values of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance—have been quietly turning back the destructive tide of atheism, merely due to their undeniable existence in this totalitarian society.

Fearful of the soaring popularity of Falun Gong, former head of the CCP Jiang Zemin decided to initiate an unprecedented campaign of persecution on July 20, 1999, to eradicate the peaceful practice.

Rooted in traditional Chinese culture, Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a self-cultivation practice consisting of meditative exercises and moral teachings. It was introduced in China 30 years ago, in 1992, and became hugely popular by the end of the decade, owing to its moral appeal and health benefits. According to official estimates at the time, 70 million to 100 million people were practicing Falun Gong in China. Today, Falun Gong is thriving outside China and is practiced in over 80 countries. Its adherents endeavor to be honest and virtuous, and uphold the age-old traditional thoughts of “good begets good” and “heaven accepts only kindness.”

However, the communist regime perceived Falun Gong’s presence too intimidating for the Party’s totalitarian rule—especially because the practice is bringing about a tangible rise in spirituality and restoring traditional culture, which is exactly what the Party has been persistently destroying since coming into power.

During this past 23 years of relentless persecution, countless Falun Gong adherents in China have been subjected to arrest, imprisonment, forced labor, torture, and even forced organ harvesting. Countless have been expelled from school, or fired from jobs. These people of faith usually make the majority of the CCP’s forced labor “workforce”—working for as long as 20 hours per day, often without pay, making export items like chopsticks, toys, Christmas lights, etc. Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that reports on the spiritual practice and its persecution, confirmed that over 4,600 Falun Gong practitioners have died from the persecution, but that the actual death toll is likely much higher.

Many global news media, the United Nations, the U.S. Department of State, and Amnesty International, have reported on the severity of the persecution.

1. Body Cremated 11 Years After Death

Qin Yueming, from Yichun City, Heilongjiang province, was sentenced to 10 years in 2002 for refusing to give up his faith. On Feb. 25, 2011, the Jiamusi prison authorities force-fed him, and the feeding tube ended up being inserted into his lung. He was moved into an isolated room where he died the next day. When his family saw his body, they found blood in his mouth and nose, and his facial expression showed as if he was in extreme pain. His wife and daughter were persecuted for their years-long efforts to seek justice for his death. Eventually, the prison authorities were able to pressure his octogenarian father to sign a consent form to cremate his body, which had been kept in the prison for more than a decade after his death.

2. A Retired Colonel Persecuted

Gong Piqi, a 66-year-old retired colonel and former deputy chief of staff at Shandong Province Reserve Artillery Brigade, from Qingdao City, Shandong province, was reported to have died in Jinan Prison in April 2021; he had been sentenced to 7 1/2 years for refusing to stop practicing Falun Gong. The prison authorities informed the family that he had died of a stroke. However, when the family members saw his body, there was blood in his ears, and his head was injured and swollen.

3. Elderly Lady Dies 2 Hours After Arrest

Cui Jinshi, 88, from Harbin City, Heilongjiang province, was arrested for studying Falun Gong’s teachings with other adherents on April 13 this year. She died just two hours after her arrest. When her son first saw her dead body, he found that her throat was cut open. The police didn’t allow the rest of the family members to see her body but took the initiative to call up a local funeral home. As the police have withheld her death certificate, the family is finding it hard to get an independent autopsy done. At the time of writing, her body is still kept at the funeral home.

4. A Hospital President and His Oncologist Wife

Li Yanchun, a 68-year-old retired hospital president from Qinhuangdao City, Hebei province, was imprisoned in August 2021 for 7 1/2 years, despite his “dangerously high” blood pressure. His wife, an award-winning oncologist, was incarcerated for her faith in 2019. The couple were sentenced for distributing informational materials exposing the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong.

5. A Retired Engineer

Wang Liuzhen, a retired metallurgical engineer in the Chang’an No. 2 Factory in Chongqing, in her 80s, died on Jan. 1 after a decade of persecution. She faced around-the-clock surveillance after authorities built a sentry box right outside her house; the security personnel often abused and beat her. At one point, she was also forcefully injected with drugs, which damaged her liver and left her blind. The constant harassment and beatings had reduced her to skin and bones before passing away.

6. Man Dies After 12 Years of Torture

Ge Zhijun, 42, from Zhuozhou City, Hebei province, died after enduring gruesome torture for a total of 12 years, leaving behind a grieving 9-year-old daughter, wife, and paralyzed father. He was subjected to extreme abuse which lead to his mental collapse. Handcuffed and shackled, he was once locked in a tiny 3-foot-long, 1-foot-wide cell for 15 days. Prison inmates who wanted to have their sentences reduced “assisted” the guards in torturing him; they would often throw him on the ground and then stand on his legs, press his chest so hard that he was unable to breathe, and burn his body with cigarettes.

Facing prolonged torture, his memory declined, and he developed a host of health issues, including hypertension and heart and liver problems. He was last released from prison in 2019. When he returned home, he mostly stayed silent and locked himself in a room, before passing away on Nov. 29, 2020.

7. A Manager Under Forest Bureau

Ma Shufang, 69, a former household affairs department manager under Tongbei County Forest Bureau Police Department, died of brain hemorrhage days after an appeals court upheld her three-year sentence in early June this year. She was arrested in August 2020, but later released on bail due to high blood pressure; she was indicted in August 2021 and sentenced to three years in a virtual trial in December 2021. After her appeal was rejected, she suffered a brain hemorrhage on June 4 and passed away six days later.

8. A Professor Falls Into Coma, Dies

Xing Wenzhen, 79, a professor at Northwestern Polytechnic University in Xi’an City, Shaanxi province, faced persecution for over 20 years before dying in October 2021. She was forced to retire early and was held in a brainwashing center for 102 days. Since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, surveillance cameras had been installed outside of her home to monitor her. In September 2021, the police harassment began again and the elderly lady couldn’t bear it anymore with her weakened body; she fell into a coma, and died in October that year.

9. A Retired Middle-School Teacher

Li Jingxia, 85, a retired middle-school teacher from Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang province, died three months after being detained in July 2020 after police monitored her phone calls. Prior to her last arrest, she had faced years of brutal persecution: The police burned her ears with a lighter, beat her with a belt until it cracked, pulled her hair, threatened to rape her, and covered her head with a plastic bag before hitting her with a thick club. In 2020, the police once again started harassing her. Faced with constant mental pressure, her health deteriorated, and she died in October that year.

10: Reportedly Declared Dead While Still Alive

Liu Qingfei, 74, from Shenyang City, Liaoning province, was arrested on Aug. 28, 2021, after police broke into his home, claiming they were there to give him a COVID-19 vaccine. He was detained for eight months and persecuted, before being pronounced dead on April 24 this year. When the family saw his body, they felt he didn’t look like a dead person; the police told them that he had died after developing a “sudden, acute condition.” The family suspect that Liu might have been pronounced dead while he was still alive. Liu’s body is currently in a funeral home, the family is seeking justice.

Source: The Epoch Times

SHOCKING, WE KNOW…

The vast majority of governmental and COVID-19 tracking websites employ third-party trackers on users without consent, according to a new study.

The revelation comes from a recent paper – “Measuring Web Cookies in Governmental Websites” – published by a cohort of European researchers funded by groups including the European Research Council (ERC), the European Union, and the Spanish government.

“A potential risk from e-governance is that since it represents a unique point of interaction for mandatory and indispensable services for all citizens, it can, unintentionally or not, become a single point of monitoring and tracking for the entire population of a country. A readily available way to achieve that is with the use of Web cookies,” cautions the paper.

The study analyzed three types of websites: official governmental websites of “G20” countries around the world; websites of international organizations such as the United Nations and popular websites used for COVID-19 tracking and information. It measured these sites’ use of “cookies” – personal data related to your browsing history that websites can retrieve at a later time.

“Web cookies have been exploited to collect information about users’ online activities and interests,” notes the paper.

“Our results show that, unfortunately, tracking is a serious concern, as in some countries up to 90% of these websites create cookies of third-party trackers without any consent from users,” explains a summary of the findings.

“Non-session cookies, that are created by trackers and can last for days or months, are widely present even in countries with strict user privacy laws. We also show that the above is a problem for official websites of international organizations and popular websites that inform the public about the COVID-19 pandemic,” it continues.

MUST READ: Vaccine Mandates Were Predicated on “Hope” Rather Than Science, Admits Deborah Birx.

Researchers found that up to 90 percent of governmental websites for “G20” countries, which include 19 countries and the European Union comprising the world’s largest economies, added tracking cookies without user consent.

“More than 50% of cookies created on G20 government websites belong to third-parties and at least 10% (up to 90%) originate from known trackers. Most of these cookies have a life span of more than a day and many an expiration time of a year or more,” continued the study, which based its analysis on 5,500 governmental websites and over 118,000 URLs administrated by governments.

Around 95 percent of the international organizations analyzed in the paper created cookies without user consent, and roughly 60 percent used at least one third-party cookie. Third-party cookies are “known to be tracking users for data collection purposes,” explain researchers.

Similarly, 99 percent of COVID-19 information sites added at least one cookie without user consent.

“For example, the very popular website with global maps about the COVID-19 cases, maintained by Johns Hopkins University, add cookies from 7 trackers,” explains the paper.

“All the other Top 10 website are official national information websites in European countries that have three trackers or more. The American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is also in the Top 10, with cookies associated with three trackers,” it continues.

The findings come amidst concerns that governments in the West are seeking to emulate the Chinese Communist Party’s “social credit score” system, granting the regime the ability to dictate individuals’ spending habits and movements potentially based on their ideologies.

TikTok is no longer advertising for employees in Moscow, following a Washington Free Beacon report that the company was seeking hires in Russia a few months after announcing it had suspended operations in the country.

TikTok’s corporate website listed over a dozen job listings for staffers in Moscow—noting a preference for candidates who spoke Mandarin Chinese—but the posts disappeared shortly after the Free Beacon’s report in late June. The postings appeared to conflict with TikTok’s announcement last March that it would scale back its operations in Russia after President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The removal of the job postings comes as the social media company has faced criticism for promoting pro-Putin propaganda and reportedly allowing its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to access private U.S. consumer data.

The company had advertised for numerous openings in Russia, including revenue planning managers, industry analysts, and monetization strategists. While TikTok often stresses its independence from its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, several of the Russian job ads request Mandarin Chinese speakers, with one stating that “fluency in Mandarin would be [a] distinct advantage” for candidates.

It’s unclear if the posts were removed because the positions were filled. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.

Many news outlets depicted Twitter’s suspension of business in Russia as part of a global corporate boycott campaign. But the company’s actions ended up aiding the Putin regime’s efforts to control information on the platform, according to a Washington Post report in June, by allowing state-run outlets to post propaganda while censoring outside information.

Last week, the leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate concerns that TikTok “may be collecting biometric data such as faceprints and voiceprints” from its U.S. user base, and that this information could be accessed by the Chinese government.

In a letter to the FTC, the senators cited leaked audio recordings from TikTok meetings that revealed engineers at ByteDance were able to obtain U.S. user data, despite assurances from the social media company that these private records were inaccessible to China. The recordings were first reported by BuzzFeed last month.

“In light of this new report, we ask that your agency immediately initiate … [an] investigation on the basis of apparent deception by TikTok, and coordinate this work with any national security or counter-intelligence investigation that may be initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice,” wrote Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Mark Warner (D., Va.) and vice chairman Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) in the letter last week.

“TikTok’s Trust and Safety department was aware of these improper access practices and governance irregularities, which—according to internal recordings of TikTok deliberations—offered PRC-based employees unfettered access to user information, including birthdates, phone numbers, and device identification information.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

HERE WE GO AGAIN. (AGAIN.)

The Chinese Communist Party-run Wuhan University has reported a case of an individual contracting the virulent disease of cholera, media reports suggest.

Located in the same province as the Wuhan Institute of Virology – believed by many scientists and government intelligence officials to be the source of COVID-19 – Wuhan University is less than two miles from the controversial lab. The university has also received nearly three quarters of a million dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In November 2018, the vaccine advocate’s foundation sent $499,944 to the university to “establish international research networks and data sharing platforms as well as develop policy recommendations for improving the medical insurance system in China.” In January 2021, even after the Chinese Communist Party purposely hid data relevant to the origins of COVID-19, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sent the university an additional $127,650 to fund research into broadening access to drugs for Tuberculosis.

The district’s health department claims to have collected samples, undertaken contact tracing, and closed certain venues for disinfection after a Wuhan University student was found to have the disease.

Chinese Communist Party health officials claim no further cases have been reported.

Cholera is a virulent disease that can be spread through contaminated food or water, typically resulting in acute diarrhea. The incident at Wuhan University is rare, as only one other case has been identified in China this year and five were detected throughout the entirety of last year.

The incident follows intense scrutiny of the Wuhan Institute of Virology for its role in the origins of COVID-19, as the lab manipulated bat coronavirus strains to become more lethal to humans. Resembling the hallmarks of gain-of-function research, which has previously been banned in the U.S. due to its risky nature, Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers have also hidden troves of data relevant to COVID-19.

MUST READ: Vaccine Mandates Were Predicated on “Hope” Rather Than Science, Admits Deborah Birx.

These same researchers, such as “Bat Lady” Shi Zhengli, have received millions in funding from Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Robert Malone is warning of immune imprinting after Dr. Anthony Fauci signaled his backing for second COVID-19 vaccine boosters for all Americans aged 5 and older.

“I couldn’t design a vaccine if I wanted to, to be more likely to drive immune imprinting,” Malone, who helped invent the messenger RNA technology the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are built on, told The Epoch Times.

Immune imprinting refers to a phenomenon whereby initial exposure to a virus strain may prevent the body from producing enough neutralizing antibodies against a new viral strain.

The COVID-19 vaccines currently in circulation are based on the Wuhan strain of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Also known as SARS-CoV-2, the virus causes COVID-19.

A number of strains have emerged and become dominant since the Wuhan strain was prevalent, including the currently dominant Omicron variant.

Researchers with Imperial College London and the United Kingdom Health Security Agency found that people who received three doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and were infected with the Wuhan strain had a lower level of protection against later strains when compared to people who had not been infected. Other groups, including researchers with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have found the vaccines much less effective against Omicron subvariants than the Wuhan strain.

A number of studies have found negative effectiveness among vaccinated groups. That means those who get vaccinated are more likely to get infected.

In some areas, the vaccinated account for a majority of those infected or in hospitals or dying with COVID-19. In Louisiana, for example, 70 percent of the deaths recorded between June 23 and June 29 were among the vaccinated.

Second Booster Push

The vaccines were originally promoted as two-shot primary regimens (Pfizer and Moderna) or a one-shot immunization (Johnson & Johnson). They were said to have efficacy as high as 100 percent against symptomatic infection.

Due to waning effectiveness against the emerging variants, U.S. officials authorized booster doses. In March, because the effects of the boosters against infection didn’t last long, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cleared and recommended second boosters for all adults over the age of 50.

Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and resident Joe Biden’s top medical adviser, is now saying Americans 5 to 50 should be allowed to get a second booster dose.

Fauci told the Washington Post that the United States “need[s] to allow people who are under 50 to get their second booster shot, since it may have been months since many of them got their first booster.”

“If I got my third shot [in 2021], it is very likely the immunity is waning,” he added.

Fauci has no authority over authorizing or recommending boosters, but has signaled major changes in U.S. vaccine policy in the past.

White House, FDA Respond

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, told reporters on July 12 that “we have conversations all the time about what are possible things we could be doing to better protect the American people” but that the decision on second boosters will be made by the FDA and the CDC.

Fauci uttered a similar statement during the briefing.

“The FDA is evaluating the current situation, including the emerging epidemiology indicating increased hospitalization, and will be open to all potential options to address this, if necessary,” an FDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

Vaccine makers and the FDA are working together to develop variant-specific shots for the fall, which they say will offer better protection. But the updated shots aren’t yet on the market.

Many U.S. adults have received a primary series of a vaccine, including 91 percent of those 65 and older and 77 percent of those 18 and older. But booster doses have been a harder sell. Only 70 percent of elderly persons who got a primary series have received a first booster, along with just 51 percent of those 18 and older, according to CDC data. A second booster has only been administered to 28 percent of the population 50 and older.

Few of the COVID-19 vaccine mandates included a booster, and most of the mandates have been rescinded due to factors like plunging COVID-19 metrics and the waning effectiveness of the vaccines.

The new BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants—which have been edging out other strains in the United States and are thought to be more transmissible, but do not seem to cause more severe illness—are “more likely to lead to vaccine breakthrough infections,” researchers with Columbia University found.

‘Vaccine-driven Disease’

The COVID-19 metrics in the United States have been creeping up in recent weeks, with the weekly average of cases jumping by 75 percent since late March and hospitalizations with COVID-19 doubling since April.

Officials blame the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, which have been edging out other strains in the United States and are thought to be more transmissible, but do not seem to cause more severe illness.

People should get a booster as soon as they’re eligible, which is typically about five months after their last shot, Jha and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said. “Don’t delay,” Jha said.

But Malone is among the scientists who are challenging the idea that the old vaccines are the solution.

“You got a major problem with the new Omicron, that’s the BA.5. The people that are getting infected chronically and hospitalized and dying are predominantly the vaccinated. It’s happening all over the world,” Malone said. “Now they’ve got a problem because they have driven this because of immune imprinting. This is increasingly becoming a vaccine-driven disease.”

Fauci, a major vaccine proponent, “has basically created a situation through the insistence on the hyper vaccination where he’s actually driving the disease in the United States,” he added.

Government officials disagree. Walensky said CDC data show that people who either have not received a vaccine or have not been boosted have less protection than those who have been boosted, including against infection, even as studies show the boost against infection quickly drops after the first and second booster.

Fauci said that people who were previously infected, or have natural immunity from surviving COVID-19, “don’t have a lot of protection” against the new subvariants.

Neither mentioned how natural immunity, according to a new study, remains stronger than the protection from vaccines even with boosters, particularly against severe disease.

Meiling Lee contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield is stepping down from her position, according to the Biden administration’s chief of staff.

In a statement released on July 6, the White House said that Bedingfield has “played a huge role” in the administration. The announcement came after a number of legacy news outlets, citing unnamed White House officials, said Bedingfield would depart soon.

“Her strategic acumen, intense devotion to the President’s agenda, and fierce work on his behalf are unmated,” said White House chief of staff Ron Klain. “She will continue to remain a critical player in the Biden agenda forward from the outside.”

Neither Klain nor the unnamed officials provided a reason why Bedingfield is leaving. Meanwhile, she hasn’t made a public comment on the matter.

“In the White House, Bedingfield continued as the President’s top communications aide and was similarly integral to every major public relations effort while leading the White House Communications Department, ensuring that each part of the team was working to deliver the President’s message and advocate for his agenda,” the statement said.

Characterized as a longtime aide to Biden, Bedingfield helped work for his campaign in 2020 before she was hired to work in the White House. According to recent White House disclosures, she was slated to make $180,000 in 2022, one of the highest-paid administration officials.

Several weeks ago, Jen Psaki, resident Joe Biden’s first press secretary, left the White House and was replaced by Karine Jean-Pierre. Psaki is reportedly slated to join cable channel MSNBC, according to an announcement earlier this year.

Cedric Richmond, a former congressman from Louisiana, had led Biden’s Office of Public Engagement, but he recently left the White House to work with the Democratic National Committee. He was replaced by former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.

Anita Dunn, who previously drew criticism for praising Chinese Communist Party tyrant Mao Zedong, recently returned to the White House as a senior adviser on policy issues.

In a statement last week, Dunn told news outlets that Bedingfield “ensured that our message in 2020 and in the White House was consistent with his voice and principles,” and asserted she would “always be a core member of this family, even as she takes a little time to put her own family first.”

Her departure also comes after White House rapid response director Mike Gwin left in June. Gwin is now at the Treasury Department’s public affairs division.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The protection against severe illness from so-called natural immunity remains superior to the protection bestowed by COVID-19 vaccines, according to a new study.

People who survived COVID-19 infection and were not vaccinated had sky-high protection against severe or fatal COVID-19, researchers in Qatar found.

“Effectiveness of primary infection against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 reinfection was 97.3 percent … irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection, and with no evidence for waning. Similar results were found in sub-group analyses for those ≥50 years of age,” Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad, with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, and colleagues said after studying long-term natural immunity in unvaccinated people.

That percentage is higher than the protection from COVID-19 vaccines, according to other studies and real-world data.

Swedish researchers, for instance, found in May that two doses of a vaccine were just 54 percent effective against the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

South African scientists, meanwhile, found the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines peaked at 88 percent, and quickly dropped to 70 percent or lower.

The Qatar group found natural immunity for over 14 months after a person’s first infection “remains very strong, with no evidence for waning, irrespective of variant.”

The study was published ahead of peer review on the website medRxiv.

Few researchers have studied natural immunity long-term among unvaccinated persons, in part because many of the people have eventually received a COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccines, meanwhile, have waned against both infection and severe illness over time, triggering recommendations for booster doses, with some Americans even getting five doses within 10 months.

Natural Immunity Performs Poorly Against Reinfection

The vaccines were once said to provide close to 100 percent protection against symptomatic infection. They now provide under 50 percent protection against infection after a short period of time, even after booster doses, following the emergence of Omicron.

That strain and its subvariants are dominant in countries around the world, including the United States and Qatar.

Natural immunity was thought to provide strong protection against reinfection. But the Qatari researchers found it also provides poor protection against reinfection from Omicron.

Pre-Omicron infection against pre-Omicron reinfection was as high as 90.5 percent, and remained around 70 percent by the 16th month, according to the study. But pre-Omicron infection against Omicron reinfection was just 38 percent effective, although it was higher among people infected with the original Wuhan strain or with the Delta variant, and lower among those who got sick from the Alpha or Beta strains.

Modeling signaled a drop to zero percent protection by 18 months, but the shielding still appears to last longer than that of vaccines, researchers said.

“Vaccine immunity against Omicron subvariants lasts for <6 months but pre-Omicron natural immunity, assuming Gompertz decay, may last for just over a year,” they wrote.

Limitations of the study included differences in testing frequency among the cohorts studied, and depletion of groups who had a COVID-19 infection due to deaths.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Chinese regime’s sexual abuse of Uyghurs has been widely reported in recent years as more victims of this Muslim minority have stepped forward to expose the ongoing persecution in the Xinjiang region. The mass rape and torture of female Falun Gong practitioners have been extensively reported by Minghui.org in the last two decades.

Tibetan nuns also have been subjected to sexual torture at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but their stories are still lesser known. In 2018, the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) published a firsthand account of a monk witnessing nuns being sexually abused by the communist officials in the re-education center in Sog County, Nagchu prefecture, Tibet region.

Tenzin Sangmo, a researcher with the TCHRD, told The Epoch Times in an email that their 25 years of research have provided them with “anecdotal evidence of sexual abuse” suffered by Tibetan women and nuns.

“This eyewitness account by the monk was obtained with great difficulty,” she said. “It is understood that the monk was detained in one of the many extra-legal political re-education centers with other monks and nuns.”

Sangmo added that gathering such information from inside Tibet has become “increasingly difficult” after 2008, and even more so from 2016 to 2017 because of the “massive ramping up of censorship and surveillance.”

“Contacting those inside Tibet is an exercise ridden with unbounded risk,” she added.

Sangmo said that the mass surveillance and censorship (pdf) methods like the “Grid Management” and “Double-Linked Household” systems threaten Chinese people to report on and betray one another. To add to the difficulty, the CCP’s tool of “collective punishment” has forced Tibetans who were earlier willing to speak up to instead “practice self-censorship” to avoid endangering those around them.

The anonymous Tibetan monk, who was held in the political re-education center for four months, was studying in Qinghai Province. The communist officials forcibly took him back to his hometown in Sog County, and if he had refused, his family could have been arrested, according to a TCHRD report. He was then taken to a re-education center, where almost all detainees were monks or nuns.

Though an officer informed him that the center “is a school, not a prison,” the monk said in his personal account that he soon realized that place was nothing but a prison meant to brainwash and coerce Tibetan Buddhists.

The center’s “teaching” style reminded him of the Cultural Revolution where people were forced to constantly criticize themselves. The detainees were also tortured and beaten with electric batons until some of them fainted. Every one of them, regardless of age, had to participate in military drills. During one of the drills, the monk witnessed the harassment and abuse of nuns.

“Many nuns would lose consciousness during the [military] drills,” the monk wrote, according to the TCHRD report. “Sometimes officers would take unconscious nuns inside where I saw them fondle the nuns’ breasts and grope all over their body. … I have heard about some officers lying in the nuns’ bedroom pressing unconscious nuns underneath.”

Sexual abuse is not the only method used to “transform” the Tibetans nuns. The TCHRD’s 2016 Special Report on “Prisoners of Conscience in Tibet” detailed other torture methods like inflicting shocks with electric batons; deprivation of food, water, and sleep; pouring boiling water over prisoners; setting dogs onto prisoners; and branding with red-hot shovels, etc.

These methods are but a few of the over-100 routine torture methods employed by the Chinese communist regime to persecute prisoners of all faiths.

Sangmo said thousands of monks and nuns have been evicted from renowned Tibetan academies like Larung Gar and Yarchen Gar in Kardze, Tibet region, and then rounded up for political re-education to “steer them away from spiritual pursuit as their path is deemed incompatible with the characteristics of a model Chinese citizen.”

Like other monks and nuns who were forced out of their monasteries, the anonymous monk detained at the Sog County re-education center couldn’t return to his monastery or continue with his monastic education after his release.

“He was forced to disrobe after his release from the political re-education center,” Sangmo said. “Most of the monks and nuns evicted from these two prominent Tibetan Buddhist academies are subjected to similar restrictions.”

According to an International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) report, a Tibetan former nun, Tenzin, was raped by the Chinese armed police officers after she was arrested while trying to escape from Tibet in 2005. Tenzin, who was studying in India in a school run by the Tibetan government in exile, had gone back to Tibet to visit her ailing father. She eventually returned to India in early 2009 after enduring year-long detention and torture.

Tenzin recounted how the local authorities repeatedly visited her, asking her what she had been doing in India. “The Chinese authorities are increasingly suspicious of Tibetans who attend Tibetan government in exile-run schools and religious institutes, as they consider them to have been influenced by ideas of separatism,” she said, according to the ICT report.

Unable to “stay in peace,” Tenzin decided to leave home together with a group of Tibetans, including two children. However, five soldiers stopped her at a checkpoint and later took them to a military building where a Tibetan soldier asked if she is a nun, having seen her shaved head. When Tenzin said yes, the Tibetan soldier cursed at her and the rest of them hit her with batons and belts.

For the next few days, Tenzin’s arms and feet were cuffed to a wooden bed and she was locked in a room. One night, two prison guards came in and forced her to swallow some medicine, before raping her.

“I sensed something bad was going to happen, I screamed as loud as I could in the hope that someone would come to stop them. But all was in vain,” she said. “Later I fell unconscious. I don’t know if that was because of the medicine they gave me or out of fear. I could not feel anything, especially the lower part of my body.”

Back in 1988, the BBC broadcasted a documentary of 12 Tibetans in which a nun turned emotional as she recounted how she was sexually abused at a police station, according to a UCA News report. “They stepped on my face, tasered my chest, and kicked me,” the nun said. “Then they took off our clothes and three or four people raped us with a baton.”

Another nun confirmed that they were “constantly raped by seven or eight people” and “left naked” after the ordeal.

Sangmo told The Epoch Times that nuns are subjected to the “same level of torture” as others, and physical torture is “accompanied by psychological torture.” She confirmed that there is no sign of relaxation in restrictions or persecution faced by the Tibetan people, rather the repression has only worsened.

“It has worsened since 2008 and more so after the coming of Xi Jinping to power,” she said. “His consolidation of power and implementation of his vision of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era has meant more repression of Tibetans.”

She added that the situation in Tibet cannot be assessed based on statistics alone because “there is no research environment.”

“Information trickles out of Tibet, and statistics need a sufficient pool of information to support it. Therefore, any change in statistics is not indicative of a change in the situation. Using statistics in cases like this could deny the complexity surrounding the issue,” Sangmo said.

Arshdeep Sarao contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has warned that China is using its space program to attempt to take over the moon, a claim the Chinese regime denies.

Nelson told German outlet Bild on July 2, “We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: It’s ours now and you stay out.”

The purpose of China’s space program, Nelson said, “is a military space program,” and its accomplishments are built on technology theft.

The Chinese regime has denied Nelson’s allegations.

“This is not the first time that the NASA administrator has lashed out at China in disregard of facts,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.

“China always advocates the peaceful use of outer space, opposes the weaponization of and arms race in outer space,” he added.

However, experts told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times that the theft of space technology is common by the Chinese Communist Party, and that the space program itself is part of the Strategic Support Force of the military.

Technology Plagiarism

Nelson warned about the space race with China in a Congress hearing on May 17. In particular, he warned about China’s aggression in outer space and the cyber security risks posed by technology theft. He said, “They are pretty good at stealing.”

Yue Changzhi is an electronics engineer retired from the No. 2 Institute of the Ministry of Aerospace Industry of China.

She told The Epoch Times that she has no doubt that Beijing advanced its aerospace technology by relying on stealing.

She said that the thefts started in the 1960s when she was hired at the ministry. Her task was in the development of missiles and anti-missile systems in the electronic department.

“It was the early time when the Ministry of Aerospace Industry was just established. Plagiarism has been its approach, that is, to make a copy of things invented by others with a slight change in appearance,” Yue said.

Military Ambition

Nelson issued a statement on May 19, 2021 after China released the first photos from the Zhurong Mars rover.

“Congratulations to the China National Space Administration on receiving the first images from the Zhurong Mars rover!” Nelson said.

However, in this year’s Congress hearing Nelson warned that it is “incumbent upon us to take cyber security very very seriously … with regard to the government but the private sector as well.”

When asked what military purposes China could pursue in space, Nelson bluntly answered: “Well, what do you think is happening on the Chinese space station? They learn there how to destroy other people’s satellites,” reported Bild.

Commentator Wang He pointed out that the Chinese aerospace program was built in affiliation with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

He explained that satellite launch centers such as Jiuquan and Taiyuan are both under the control of the military. Both centers are located at the testing and training base of the PLA’s Strategic Support Force.

He further emphasized that in recent years, the regime manipulated its claim “to utilize outer space for peaceful purposes, promote mankind’s civilization and social progress,” as a cover for seeking international collaboration for the purpose of stealing technologies.

He said, “The so-called Chinese private companies involved in the international collaboration are still under the control of the Communist Party.”

In other words, they are “the front companies,” He stated.

Lin Cenxin and Chang Chun contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Former New York Times journalist Alex Berenson has been allowed to return to Twitter, which banned him in 2021 for allegedly spreading COVID-19 misinformation.

Berenson and Twitter released similar statements on July 6.

“The parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution. I have been reinstated. Twitter has acknowledged that my tweets should have not led to my suspension at that time,” Berenson said in a blog post on July 6, which he linked to in his first post on the platform since he was permanently suspended,” Berenson said in a blog post.

“The parties have come to a mutually acceptable resolution. Twitter has reinstated Mr. Berenson’s account. Upon further review, Twitter acknowledges Mr. Berenson’s Tweets should not have led to his account’s suspension at that time,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

Vaccines

Minutes after Berenson posted for the first time following his reinstatement, he re-posted the words that triggered the ban.

“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it—at best—as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity,” he wrote.

Berenson was referring to the COVID-19 vaccines, which have proven increasingly unable to prevent infection from the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Also known as the SARS-CoV-2, the virus causes COVID-19.

Though the vaccines have been authorized and approved for prevention of the virus, they’re actually recommended primarily for helping prevent severe disease among those who contract the illness.

Twitter had initially claimed that Berenson’s post was “misleading,” even though the company acknowledged that “studies indicate a reduction in vaccine effectiveness against the Omicron variant” of the virus.

Studies show that the Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson shots—the only three available in the United States—provide little protection against Omicron, and that the protection quickly wanes.

Some studies indicate that the vaccinated are more likely to contract the virus after certain periods of time elapse following vaccination.

U.S. health authorities still recommend vaccination for virtually all Americans.

Lawsuit

Berenson sued Twitter after being banned, claiming the company breached its contract with him as a user.

A federal judge tossed all of the claims except for the breach of contract one. Berenson and Twitter recently announced they’d agreed on a settlement in principle.

The details of the settlement have not yet been entered into the court docket, with the parties saying they’re still negotiating.

According to court filings, Berenson was told by a senior Twitter executive that posts that sparked controversy would not lead to him being banned from the platform. But Twitter began taking action against him after Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top adviser to resident Joe Biden, said some of Berenson’s remarks were “horrifying,” first locking him out of his account and eventually enacting the ban.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee, said in a recent ruling that Berenson “plausibly avers that Twitter’s conduct here modified its contract with plaintiff and then breached that contract by failing to abide by its own five-strike policy and its specific commitments set forth through its vice president.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump said it would be a “terrible mistake” if the Biden administration decided to combat inflation by lifting tariffs on Chinese goods. Moreover, Trump said such a decision would make the United States look “weak.”

“Believe it or not, it is looking more and more like the United States is getting ready to remove the tariffs on China. This would be a terrible mistake,” Trump said in a statement released on his Truth Social account on July 5.

“Doing this would be the greatest gift that China could ever receive,” he continued. “Taking these tariffs off would be a clear signal that the United States is weak, ineffective, and doing business as usual.”

Trump began hitting China with tariffs after a U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) investigation in 2018 found that the communist regime was engaging in illegal practices, including excessive government subsidies and intellectual property theft.

Beijing retaliated by slapping tariffs on U.S. goods, bringing the two nations into a trade war.

The two countries signed a trade deal in January 2020, requiring China to buy an additional $200 billion in U.S. goods and services during 2020 and 2021, compared to 2017 levels.

However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hasn’t fulfilled its promises under the deal. According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), China bought only 57 percent of the U.S. exports it had promised to buy. In other words, the Chinese regime “bought none of the additional $200 billion of exports Trump’s deal had promised,” PIIE’s senior fellow Chad Bown stated.

Inflation

It has been more than a month since the Biden administration revealed that it was considering removing the Trump-era China tariffs. In June, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told a House hearing that “some reductions may be warranted and could help to bring down the prices of things that people buy that are burdensome.”

U.S. inflation jumped to 8.6 percent in May, the highest level in 40 years.

However, the suggestion that cutting tariffs would ease inflation is disputed by two PIIE researchers. According to their report released last month, removing tariffs on Chinese imports “could lower consumer price index (PCI) inflation by 0.26 percent point—only marginally reducing inflation.”

Citing PIIE data, the industry group Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) took to Twitter to urge resident Joe Biden to “keep the tariffs in place.”

“So… revoking tariffs won’t do anything about inflation,” AAM wrote. “But… doing so will hand the CCP a big win and undermine America’s manufacturers and factory workers.”

Read More

Ending China Tariffs Will Worsen America’s Economy

Will Chinese Tariffs Be Sacrificed on the Altar of High Inflation?

Trump praised what his tariffs on China have accomplished.

“These tariffs have brought many billions of dollars to our country, and made affected businesses, such as steel, viable again in the United States,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.

“Our farmers alone got $28 billion as a gift from me, that came directly out of the tariffs because of the way they were abused by China.”

Lawmakers

Trump concluded his statement by criticizing U.S. lawmakers who wanted to remove the tariffs on China.

“Certain senators are fighting hard to get this done, even saying such ridiculous things as it ’causes inflation,’” Trump wrote, without naming a lawmaker. “Those senators should be questioned as to their real motives!”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), in his op-ed published by Daily Press on July 3, denounced the Trump-era tariffs as “direct taxes on American families and importers.” He added that removing “these tax hikes would reduce costs for consumers and allow manufacturers that rely on imported components to be more competitive in the global marketplace.”

The CCP also believes that removing the China tariffs would help ease U.S. inflation. On July 5, Zhao Lijian, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, said during a daily briefing that removing the tariffs “will strip 1% off inflation” in the United States, citing unnamed U.S. think tanks.

“Given the high inflation in the U.S., the sooner these tariffs on China are removed, the sooner it will benefit American consumers and businesses,” Zhao said.

However, two GOP senators recently said that the Biden administration is going about the wrong way to fight inflation.

“Biden’s plan to roll back the Trump administration’s tariffs on Communist China would be a step in the wrong direction, and it’s not a real solution to Biden’s inflation problem,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) wrote on Twitter on July 5.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), in an interview with Fox News on July 5, said the Biden administration’s plan to roll back the China tariffs “is just another example of Joe Biden blaming inflation on anyone but himself.”

“We have had these tariffs in place for three or even four years, and we didn’t have inflation when it started,” he said. “The problem here is Joe Biden’s policies and especially his energy policy because the price of gasoline and electricity drives the cost of everything else.

“Joe Biden needs to look in the mirror at the White House if he wants to find the problem and perhaps the solution for inflation.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

New evidence has emerged pointing to the Chinese regime’s ongoing organ harvesting crimes, Ethan Gutmann, China studies research fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told the International Religious Freedom Summit 2022 in Washington on June 28-30.

Gutmann reported his latest finding: a compound containing a hospital surrounded with a labor camp of 33,000 people in Xinjiang—the region in north western China—that has been subjected to imports ban by the United States over forced labor since late last month.

“Less than a kilometer away, you have another labor camp of 16,000 people and a crematorium,” Gutmann told EpochTV’s “China Insider” program.

“A twenty- minute drive away, you have an airport with a green lane, that is a human organ fast lane, for export only, out of Xinjiang,” he added.

According to the expert, the organs were transferred to a hospital near Shanghai.

“After this camp was built, the kidney transplants at the hospital went up 100 percent, while the liver transplants went up 200 percent,” Gutmann said.

According to estimates by researchers, the Chinese regime has detained more than one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in internment camps in the far western region of Xinjiang, where they are subjected to torture, rape, forced labor, and political indoctrination by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The U.S. government and other Western democracies have labeled Beijing’s actions a genocide.

In Gutmann’s estimation, 25,000 to 50,000 Uyghurs are being killed for their organs every year—the number somewhat resembles that of estimates for Falun Gong adherents.

As the author of the book “The Slaughter,” Gutmann recalled the account of a witness describing how the crematorium stunk of human bones burning when driving by everyday.

From Falun Gong Adherents to Uyghurs

According to Gutmann, organ transplantation has become an industry after growing exponentially due to the exploitation of Falun Gong adherents in China.

Related Coverage

China Forcibly Collects Blood From Falun Gong Practitioners, Raising Concerns About Organ Harvesting

When organ sources from detained Falun Gong practitioners appeared to run out during 2013-2014, the authorities launched a knocking on the door campaign in nine provinces. The police went into Falun Gong practitioners’ homes and left with blood and DNA tests.

Gutmann says the move was aimed at tissue cross matching.

“This is setting up the possibility of using these people as organ sources,” he said.

“That’s how it expanded to every province in China. That’s how they went from 10,000 transplants per year, to something like 60 to 100,000 transplants per year,” Gutmann said of his estimates.

Later, with this camp popping up in 2016, the Chinese regime launched similar types of testing on every Uyghur above the age of 12.

“But it was concentrated in a single physical area, which made it much easier for the West to ignore it,” Gutmann noted.

And with some 1 to 2 million Uyghurs in labor camps, the authority also has in hand an enormous stable of readily available tissue types.

Misled by Regime

Despite the rampant ongoing atrocity, the medical community appears to still be misled by the Chinese regime’s rhetoric.

According to Gutmann, a lot of doctors in the West have wanted to help China in this area, claiming that the regime is trying to reform and that, “They may have done some terrible things, i.e. organ harvesting, in the past but that’s the past. And let’s look to the future.”

Yet, mounting evidence has, in Gutmann’s opinion, shown this to be the contrary.

“Anyone who is looking to reform China’s medical system, or wants to do anything cooperative, has to grapple with the evidence that I have just given,” he said.

“They have to start by explaining, ‘What is the transplant hospital doing in a slave labor camp during COVID?’” he said.

“For intelligent, reasonable, ethical doctors from the west to sign on to any of this is madness. It is a grave danger to the medical world,” Gutmann said.

Since 2006, a plethora of research, investigation, and testimony about the Chinese regime’s organ transplant abuses have emerged.

The 2019 London-based China Tribunal concluded that the Chinese regime has, for years, been killing prisoners of conscience for their organs for transplant on a substantial scale—a practice that’s still ongoing. It concluded that such actions amounted to crimes against humanity and that the main victims have been incarcerated Falun Gong practitioners.

Although the CCP in 2014 announced that it was ending its practice of using the organs of its prisoners, the evidence since then shows that China has been ramping up the practice of Forced Organ Harvesting from the Uyghurs, Gutmann said.

Combating Efforts at Various Levels

Gutmann suggested grassroots efforts to raise awareness of the atrocity within the medical community.

People should bring it up to their doctors, their dentists … and question them if they have heard about the issue. They can also ask, “Why is the medical community so relaxed about this?”

Former ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback has also urged all groups in civil society to push for answers. He also said that, given the poor human rights record of the Chinese regime in relation to the persecution of Falun Gong and the genocide of the Uyghurs, the United States should make human rights under the Chinese regime a mainstream foreign policy issue.

“It needs to be up there with defense, it needs to be up there with the economy,” Brownback said.

“If you don’t, as a government, stand up and protect religious freedom for everybody, everywhere, you’re going to have the clash of civilizations and a lot of violence around the world,” he added.

UPDATE: This article has been updated with a photo of a green lane in Xinjiang.

Source: The Epoch Times

Amazon founder and multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos criticized the Biden administration’s messaging around gas prices and rising inflation.

On Saturday, resident Joe Biden suggested on Twitter that gas stations across the United States charge customers less for gasoline to offset historically high gas prices.

“Ouch,” Bezos wrote in response. “Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this. It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.”

Earlier, Biden’s Twitter account wrote that he has a “message” to gas stations: “This is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.”

From the Twitter post, it’s not clear how gas stations might accomplish Biden’s Twitter demand, which was praised by a Chinese Communist Party media account. Others, however, criticized the president’s post.

“You know as well as everyone that the Federal Reserve actually sets the prices—through rampant inflation,” wrote the Libertarian Party’s account. “When 40 percent of the dollars in the world was printed in one year, inflation sets in and prices skyrocket. Just yesterday you were blaming [Russia]. We see through your scam.”

Added California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger, “At a time of war, Biden could have leveled with the American people and united the country through an ‘all-of-the-above’ clean energy strategy that included oil & gas. Instead, he has repeatedly lied about the causes of the energy crisis and divided the country.”

Data released by auto club AAA on Sunday shows that the national average price for a gallon of regular gas currently stands at $4.81, down about 10 cents from a week ago. In mid-June, the average price hit $5 per gallon for the first time.

Biden and fellow Democrats have shifted from blaming Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, for the spike in gas prices to blaming oil companies and gas stations in recent days. The president sent a letter to the top oil companies in the United States, demanding that they bring down prices while accusing them of price-gouging.

ExxonMobil, one of the firms, fired back by suggesting that federal policies have contributed to rising prices.

“In the short term, the U.S. government could enact measures often used in emergencies following hurricanes or other supply disruptions—such as waivers of Jones Act provisions and some fuel specifications to increase supplies,” the oil giant wrote in a news release.

The federal government, it added, “can promote investment through clear and consistent policy that supports U.S. resource development, such as regular and predictable lease sales, as well as streamlined regulatory approval and support for infrastructure such as pipelines.”

Republicans and some analysts have said the higher prices are caused by Biden having issued a series of executive orders last year suspending new drilling leases on federal lands, fossil fuel subsidies, and killing off the Keystone pipeline.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

AS NEW CALLS TO BAN CHINA-OWNED TIKTOK FROM AMERICAN APP STORES EMERGE FROM THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION, THE OLD REASONS TO BAN THE APP STILL HOLD TRUE.

As new calls to ban the China-owned TikTok from American app stores emerge from the Federal Communications Commission, older reasons to ban the app also continue to hold true. The National Pulse has compiled our historical reporting on the subject, below.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr recently called on Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their respective app stores, citing national security and data privacy concerns. Carr described TikTok’s parent company ByteDance as “beholden” to the Chinese government in his letter, noting that, as a result, the app is “required by law to comply with [Chinese government] surveillance demands.”

Carr’s request renews a Trump-era initiative to ban the app from American phones due to similar concerns given the app’s well-documented links to the Chinese Communist Party. Since the initial effort was launched, even more evidence and financial ties have been unearthed, demonstrating TikTok’s intimate relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.

Beyond national security fears concerning TikTok, the app has repeatedly been used to sow discord in the U.S. and parrot Chinese Communist Party propaganda. TikTok has also expanded its influence over American “fact-checkers,” which are often used by social media platforms to silence conservative voices and stories critical of the Chinese Communist Party, by funding one of Facebook’s leading “fact-checking” partners, Lead Stories.

The stories below, published by The National Pulse, outline the well-documented case for banning TikTok once and for all.

1. REVEALED: TikTok Founder’s 2018 Pledge To Promote ‘Socialist Core Values’ And Devotion To Chinese Communist Party

2. TikTok Taps Director Of Chinese Military-Linked Firm For CEO.

3. TikTok Global Ops Chief Is Former Chinese Communist Party Diplomat.

4. TikTok Parent Company Used Chinese Communist Party Official For Hiring Promotional Material.

5. TikTok Insiders Reveal Chinese Parent Company Can ‘Access U.S. User Data.’

6. China’s TikTok App Will Collect “Biometric” Data Including “Faceprints and Voiceprints” of Western Users.

7. Wuhan Alum Pushing ‘Natural Origins’ Theory Now Works At Lab Receiving Millions From Chinese Communist Companies Including TikTok.

8. WATCH: Big Tech’s Top ‘Fact-Checker’ Refuses to Drop Chinese Communist Party ‘Mouthpiece’ As Client.

9. WATCH: Facebook Fact Checker Says He is ‘Very Comfortable’ With Chinese Communist Relationship.

10. Chinese Regime Takes Financial Stake In TikTok, Now Directly Linked to Facebook Fact-Checker ‘Lead Stories’.

11. CCP’S TikTok Hosting Ads Advising Illegal Aliens – Including Convicted Criminals – On How To Avoid Deportations.

12. ‘Explode It’: ISIS Using China’s TikTok To Plot Terror Attacks In The West.

13. TikTok Quietly Reverses Ban On Pro-Abortion Group Using App To Protest Outside SCOTUS Justice Homes.

One of the key reasons TikTok has been able to escape a ban – which has been executed in countries including India – is due to the fact that the app has hired an extensive team of American lobbyists with deep ties to the Democratic Party.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) recently joined the platform and has even seen far-left activists use the platform to target voters.

1. Clinton Donor Turns TikTok Lawyer – The Latest Democrat to Get A High-Profile Job From a CCP-Linked Firm.

2. Obama National Security Director Now Leads China-Linked TikTok ‘Trust And Safety’ Team

3. Democrat PR Firm Paid ‘Influencers’ To Covertly Push Anti-Trump Content to TikTok

4. EXC: Harvard China Conference Collaborates With TikTok Parent Company & Chinese Military Proxies

Tim Cook spoke to ‘genocide-denying propaganda rag,’ says congressman

Apple chief executive Tim Cook met this month with Chinese Communist Party members and propagandists who enable Beijing’s mass surveillance, internet censorship, and other human rights abuses.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Cook praised China’s “innovative and inspiring” app developers in an interview with China Daily, a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece that has spread disinformation about China’s genocide against Uyghurs. Cook also held talks with an app developer who last year was appointed a secretary of the CCP and another whose photography app prohibits content that “subverts state power” or “undermines the national solidarity” of China.

The interactions highlight the kind of compromises Cook has made in order to do business in China. The tech titan has touted Apple’s commitment to civil rights and privacy in the United States while complying with Beijing’s draconian national security laws and ignoring its human rights record.

“This further underscores the hypocrisy of corporate America, which preaches social justice at home and turns a blind eye when it comes to its profits,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R., Fla.) told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s absolutely shameful an American CEO would sit down with a communist, genocide-denying propaganda rag like China Daily.”

China Daily pays millions of dollars a year to publish its propaganda in American news outlets.

Cook’s interview with China Daily and meeting with Chinese app developers were part of his push to maintain access to China’s deep reservoir of tech workers. He said Apple’s app store has 5 million China-based apps, up from 4.4 million last year. He lauded Chinese developers as “at the cutting edge” and said he was “inspired” by their innovation. Cook’s remarks were a propaganda coup for China Daily, which reported that Cook’s remarks showed how “China will be of greater appeal to global tech giants in the future.”

To remain in Beijing’s good graces, Apple blocks apps from its store that might offend Chinese leaders and shares its Chinese customers’ user data with government authorities. One China watcher said Cook has had “to kiss the ring” of Chinese government leaders because he “is desperate to hold onto any remaining scraps of the China market.”

Cook met at the developers conference with app makers Liu Wei and Lin Jiashu as part of a roundtable discussion with Chinese developers, according to reports in Chinese media.

Liu, the founder of video game maker miHoYo, in September was appointed his company’s secretary for the Chinese Communist Party, according to Chinese news reports. Liu said after his appointment that his company would use its games “as a promoter of Chinese culture” and would contribute to China’s “new future.” MiHoYo has censored characters and chat functions in its popular Genshin Impact video game to appease Chinese authorities. Cook congratulated miHoYo in 2020 after the game was named the Apple App Store’s video game of the year.

Lin developed NOMO CAM, a popular photography app that requires users to “comply with the applicable laws and regulations of the People’s Republic of China” or face criminal prosecution. The list of offenses in NOMO’s terms of service include “damag[ing] the honor and interests of the nation.” NOMO’s privacy policy for its Apple app allows the company to share user data with the Chinese government on issues “directly related to national security and national defense security.” The Chinese government has been accused of using its national security laws to crack down on pro-democracy demonstrators and shut down news organizations critical of the Communist Party.

Cook has heaped praise before on the Chinese tech industry, which is required to comply with Beijing’s national security laws. Cook said at a 2017 conference Beijing uses to promote its internet regulation and censorship initiatives Apple and China were working toward “openness and shared benefits.” Cook has avoided criticism of the Chinese government’s human rights record, even as Apple pushes social justice causes in the United States. Apple last year canceled production in Georgia of a movie about slavery in protest of a GOP-backed voting law. Apple’s critics noted the company has been accused of relying on Chinese slave labor to build its popular iPhones.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/apple-ceo-sucks-up-to-china-in-interview-with-state-owned-media/

The risk was 13 times higher with Pfizer vaccination

A French peer-reviewed study concluded that for both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, the risk of myocarditis skyrockets a week after vaccination.

The risk of myocarditis after mRNA vaccination was 8 times and 30 times greater than unvaccinated control groups for BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna), respectively.

The largest association for myocarditis following the Moderna jab was 44 times higher risk for persons aged 18 to 24 years.

As for the Pfizer shot, in relation to the same age group, the risk was 13 times higher.

Infection with the Chinese Communist Party virus yielded, by comparison, a 9 times greater risk of the same condition.

Myocarditis refers to the inflammation of the heart muscle—a life-threatening condition. There are many established causes for this heart condition. The leading cause—according to modern science’s most recent discoveries—is viruses; but during the pandemic, COVID mRNA vaccines have earned a place as a top suspect for myocarditis.

The new study’s goal was to provide an assessment of association with vaccines across sex and age groups.

“Both SARS-CoV2 infection and COVID mRNA vaccines have been associated with myocarditis. Knowing the spike protein’s affinity to ACE2 receptors in the heart and spike protein’s injury to cardiomyocytes (cells of the heart), the association of myocarditis with SARS-CoV2 virus or spike protein-based mRNA vaccination was not entirely unexpected,” Dr. Sanjay Verma, a cardiologist, told The Epoch Times via email.

Verma also thinks the CDC’s analysis “erroneously suggests” that risk of myocarditis after SARS-CoV2 infection is greater than after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.

“For the cases of myocarditis after SARS-CoV2, CDC uses officially confirmed PCR+ ‘cases,’ even though their own seroprevalence data demonstrates that far more people have been infected than officially conformed PCR+ ‘cases.’ For example, seroprevalence data as of Feb 21, 2022, reveals 75 percent (about 54 million) of all children have been infected compared to 12 million officially confirmed PCR+ ‘cases’ (i.e., the actual number of kids infected is 4.5 times greater than PCR+ ‘cases’). Therefore, calculating the risk of myocarditis after SARS-CoV2 infection, the rate noted by CDC would therefore need to be reduced by 4.5 times. Thus far, CDC has not adjusted its COVID-19 morbidity and mortality data accordingly,” said the cardiologist, who practices in Coachella Valley, California.

The study analyzed 1,612 cases of myocarditis and 1,613 cases of pericarditis in France from May 12, 2021, to Oct. 31, 2021, involving 32 million people aged 12 to 50 years who received 46 million doses of mRNA vaccines.

It is limited by using solely hospital discharge diagnoses. Therefore, it does not include those who may have died before being hospitalized or those whose symptoms were not severe enough to be hospitalized.

“There have been reports (pdf) of autopsy-proven myocarditis after vaccination and anecdotal evidence of patients being dismissed by ER and never being hospitalized. Adjusting for these excluded subsets may yield even higher risk than reported in this study. Follow-up of the patients in this study was limited to one month after discharge. However, a previous cardiac MRI study found about 75 percent of patients with vaccine-associated myocarditis can have persistent MRI abnormalities 3–8 months after initial diagnosis,” Verma said.

The authors of the study didn’t analyze the effect of booster vaccination since it is not yet recommended for young adults in France.

In the United States, however, booster injections are mandated by colleges and universities, employers, and even some state public health departments irrespective of age or prior infection.

“In a preprint follow-up to their peer-reviewed study of myocarditis after vaccination, analysis found continued incremental risk of myocarditis after booster vaccination. In fact, while many countries have refrained from recommending COVID vaccination in very young children because the risks do not justify the benefits, the U.S. stands alone in recommending it in the youngest of kids,” Verma said.

A research paper published on May 18 studied the pandemic control measures—which included vaccine and mask mandates, as well as isolation and contact tracing—of Cornell University, which was almost completely vaccinated, and found these policies were “not a match” for the Omicron variant and its rapid spread.

Sudden Adult Death Syndrome

Recently, a new term has been highlighted in media outlets: “sudden adult death syndrome,” or SADS.

Underlying factors for SADS include undiagnosed myocarditis, inflammatory conditions, and other conditions that cause irregularities in the electrical system of the heart, thereby triggering cardiac arrest.

Data compiled by the International Olympic Committee shows 1,101 sudden deaths in athletes under age 35 between 1966 and 2004, giving an average annual rate of 29, across all sports. Meanwhile, between March 2021 and March 2022 alone—a single year—at least 769 athletes have suffered cardiac arrest, collapsed, or have died on the field, worldwide.

Among EU FIFA (soccer/football) athletes, sudden death increased by 420 percent in 2021. Historically, about five soccer players have died while playing the game each year. Between January and mid-November 2021, 21 FIFA players died from sudden death.

Joseph Mercola contributed to this report. 

The Epoch Times reached out to the CDC for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/moderna-vaccine-increases-myocarditis-risk-by-44-times-in-young-adults-peer-reviewed-study_4561018.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-29-2&utm_medium=email&est=3G2YJ2sJz3N6IJpY04Lzv5%2Bh4wXP00uOucR%2BRP7TGtvI9CvGmbKXRtP9rq1iEQEUcA%3D%3D

Communist China is getting more totalitarian – even with foreign investment fund management firms operating on its soil. The Chinese regime is now requiring all foreign firms – including American ones – to set up an internal unit for surveillance and supervision by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Other Chinese national laws require all companies in the country, including foreign firms, to establish internal CCP organizations. However, those laws have been largely symbolic.

Until now.

Ignites Asia — an extension of Financial Times — first reported that in May, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) implemented new changes to its industry rules governing publicly offered securities investment funds.

This week it reported that one of the provisions in the new CSRC rules requires that these companies establish a CCP organ within their companies.

According to a translation by Ignites Asia, the provision states:

Fund management companies shall, in accordance with the provisions of the Articles of Association of the Communist Party of China, establish party organizations, carry out party activities, and provide necessary conditions for the activities of party organizations.

State-owned fund management companies shall, in accordance with relevant regulations, integrate party leadership into all aspects of corporate governance, and include party building work requirements into the company’s articles of association, so as to implement the legal status of party organizations in the corporate governance structure.

Logan Wright – leader of China Markets Research for the Rhodium Group – told Ignites Asia that “It’s another small signal that China’s system is increasingly diverging from global business practices and norms, rather than converging with them over time.”

Wright added that the requirement for foreign businesses to accept a CCP unit within their structure will “add to the perceived political risks associated with deepening foreign investment in China.”

Coincidentally, the new rules specifically governing fund companies come as major U.S. and international investment firms are working to bring branches of their business to China.

As American Military News reported:

A Shanghai-based lawyer who works with foreign business managers told Ignites Asia that this rule is the first explicit “party organization” requirement for the public fund industry. The lawyer, who declined to be named due to the political sensitivity of the matter, told Ignites Asia the new rule applies to foreign-Chinese joint ventures and the Chinese subsidiaries of wholly foreign-owned companies working in China. U.S. multinational firms like BlackRock, Fidelity, and Neuberger Berman are among these entities expanding into the Chinese market.

Maybe it’s time these huge American investment businesses stop ‘trading with the enemy’ and focus their powerful financial efforts elsewhere.

https://www.americanliberty.news/security/its-time-for-american-businesses-to-leave-communist-china/pcrespo/2022/06/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ae01&seyid=7958

Val Demings hopes ‘Gamers for Demings’ posts on Chinese app TikTok will take down Marco Rubio

Florida Democratic Senate hopeful Val Demings is promoting a popular “children’s game with a sex problem” to court voters in her race against Republican incumbent Marco Rubio.

Demings in March used Chinese app TikTok to share the first installment of her “Gamers for Demings” series, which used the children’s game Roblox to depict a virtual version of the Democrat running through Florida. The post came just weeks after the BBC highlighted the game’s “sex problem.” Roblox—which two-thirds of U.S. children between the ages of 9 and 12 reportedly have played as of 2020—came under fire for hosting user-generated sex games known as “condos,” where gamers’ avatars can have virtual sex. In one instance, the BBC reported, a “naked man, wearing just a dog collar” and a leash, was “led across the floor by a woman in a bondage outfit” as a man “wearing a Nazi uniform” looked on.

Demings’s decision to use Roblox and TikTok to promote her campaign shows how Democrats are widening their political strategy to use unorthodox means of communication. Demings is far from the only Democrat on TikTok, a Chinese-owned app that has sparked bipartisan security concerns. Fellow Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan (Ohio) has posted videos of himself lip-syncing on the platform, and Sens. Jon Ossoff (D., Ga.) and Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) are also active users. In February, resident Joe Biden moved to address TikTok’s security risks—but he’s also used influencers on the app to sway public opinion, even inviting some to film in the White House.

After Demings’s first Roblox-themed TikTok post, a popular Roblox news account on Twitter praised the Democrat, asking if a “Robloxian” could “be Florida’s next senator.” Demings’s communications director responded to say the campaign was “proud to launch Gamers for Demings,” and the Democrat went on to share two more Roblox posts in the following months. One, which Demings posted in April, shows her blasting off into space on a virtual rocket. Another, shared on June 11, depicts a virtual Demings dancing with LGBTQ flags under a “Happy Pride Month” banner. That post includes the hashtags “PrideMonth,” “roblox,” “LGBTQ,” “foryourpride,” “fyp,” and “valdemings.”

It’s unclear how Demings expects to use a game most popular with preteens to attract voters. Her campaign did not return a request for comment.

In addition to concerns over Roblox’s sex problem, the game has faced criticism for exploiting child labor. Roblox allows its users to create, share, and play their own games within the Roblox platform. As a result, the Guardian reported in January, Roblox has made millions off of the work of children with no formal contracts in place.  

Demings is widely favored to face Rubio in November but will first have to emerge from an August primary race. Neither candidate has a strong financial advantage—both Demings and Rubio have raised roughly $30 million and hold roughly $13 million on hand as of March 31. Rubio is polling at 49 percent, 9 points better than Demings’s 40 percent, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/val-demings-promotes-childrens-game-with-a-sex-problem-to-court-voters/

World Health Organization (WHO) Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reportedly admitted to a senior European politician that the virus that causes COVID-19 most likely came out of a Wuhan lab. The Daily Mail reports that Tedros made the admission citing a catastrophic lab accident.

The disclosure comes on the heels of a WHO investigative report that was published earlier this month, concluding that the pandemic may have started at a Wuhan lab and that Chinese authorities have been blocking access to crucial data.

At the same time, Jeffrey Sachs, leader of the Lancet Commission on COVID-19, now says that he is convinced that the pandemic started in a lab and that SARS-CoV-2 was created with the aid of U.S. biotechnology.

Sachs made his stunning admission last week at a conference in Spain where he had been invited by former Spanish prime minister José Luís Zapatero.

The admissions from two of the world’s most prominent COVID-19 authorities, who also happen to be establishment stalwarts with a record of appeasing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is a significant development in the search for the origin of the pandemic.

Early in 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to unfold, Xiao Botao, a whistleblower from China, published an article claiming that the virus had come out of a Wuhan lab. The whistleblower’s paper was quickly removed from the internet and an all-hands-on-deck effort to scrub and censor the idea of a lab leak quickly ensued.

Two institutions played a key role in that scrubbing effort. The World Health Organization and esteemed British medical journal The Lancet.

WHO chief Tedros and his organization famously pushed CCP propaganda, including lavishly praising Xi Jinping and claiming that the virus did not transmit between humans. Tedros also spearheaded efforts to “combat the spread of rumors and misinformation.” In addition, two separate WHO investigations aggressively dismissed the lab leak theory.

For its part, the Lancet published a statement that maligned anyone who deigned to so much as contemplate that the virus might have come out of a lab.

That Lancet statement—which was published before most Americans even knew that there was a pandemic spreading around the globe—was signed by a number of notable leaders in the field of virology and set the tone for the corporate media’s coverage.

It also served as a warning to other scientists and science publications around the globe that lab-leak discussions were off-limits.

Most virological research in the Western world is funded through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci—who was himself instrumental in shutting down any discussion of the lab leak theory—and Jeremy Farrar, the British pharmaceutical trust director who sits on billions of dollars’ worth of grant money and has long-standing ties to China’s CDC head, Gao Fu. Farrar co-authored the Lancet statement.

The Lancet’s editor, Richard Horton, is a recipient of the CCP’s Friendship Prize. Before the pandemic, he published a glowing tribute to Xi and the Chinese regime. Horton later went on Chinese state TV where he praised Chinese authorities, impugned Western governments, and asserted that claims that the pandemic might have started in a Wuhan lab were part of a “pandemic of disinformation.”

Horton also set up a commission to investigate “the nature, origin, and prevention of zoonotic diseases.” The focus on zoonosis—or a natural origin—meant that The Lancet had predetermined what the commission was supposed to conclude.

Sachs was appointed as head of the commission while Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance who helped Fauci funnel U.S. taxpayer money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was made a member of the group. It was Daszak’s enormous conflicts of interest, as well as the emergence of new evidence pointing to a lab leak, that led to the eventual disbanding of the Lancet Commission in September 2021.

However, the group did not publicly dismiss the natural origin narrative until last week, when Sachs attended a conference in Madrid where he made his surprising admission:

“I chaired a Commission for the Lancet for two years on COVID. I’m pretty convinced it came out of U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature.”

Sachs’s statement is not only hugely significant because of his role as chairman of the Lancet Commission but also—and perhaps even more so—because of his admission that U.S. biotechnology was used to create SARS-CoV-2.

We have known for some time about the cooperation between the so-called godfather of gain-of-function experiments, Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, and the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi Zhengli. In fact, it was the disclosure of that collaboration in a Jan. 31, 2020, article in Science magazine that led Fauci’s team to scramble to cover up the NIAID’s involvement with, and funding of, Shi’s lab.

Baric and Shi’s collaboration traces back to 2015 when they created a modified coronavirus that was not only uniquely able to latch on to human cells but also able to efficiently replicate in human lungs. While the virus they created was not SARS-CoV-2, the virus did have the attributes that we would later find in SARS-CoV-2.

Their collaboration proved that Shi had gained the technical know-how to do the kinds of experiments that might have resulted in COVID-19. Baric also sent transgenic mice with human lung receptors to Shi’s Wuhan lab. Humanized mice mimic human lung tissue and act as experimental stand-ins for humans. They are used to test whether newly created viruses can replicate and spread quickly among humans.

It is not a big leap to go from infected lab mice to infected lab workers. This is even more evident when one considers that the Wuhan lab conducted its coronavirus research under biosafety level two conditions, which even Baric acknowledged as dangerous, stating that there is much less oversight and that lab-acquired infections occur much more frequently at biosafety level two than at higher levels.

After the pandemic started, Chinese authorities directed their labs to shift coronavirus work to biosafety level three labs.

But even that might not offer sufficient protection against a biosafety accident. Late last year, a lab worker in Taiwan contracted COVID-19 from handling infected lab animals in a biosafety level three lab.

To underscore how significant Sachs’s sudden shift is, he has also co-authored a paper in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calling for an independent investigation of information held by U.S.-based institutions that would reveal the origin of the pandemic.

While it is correct that Chinese authorities have been concealing crucial data from the Wuhan lab, as well as data on early patients, many of the answers to the pandemic’s origins are held in the United States by organizations such as Fauci’s NIH and NIAID, by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, by Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, and by Baric’s lab, which provided the Wuhan lab with biotechnology.

Sachs’s observations further highlight the significance of the highly unusual furin cleavage site, the part of SARS-CoV-2 that makes it so virulent. It has been known since the start of the pandemic that SARS-CoV-2 is the only coronavirus of its kind that has a furin cleavage site. But Sachs now goes further, pointing out that the critical amino acid sequence of SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site insertion happens to be identical to one that is present in the human body, strongly suggesting that it was deliberately inserted into a SARS-like virus.

Lastly, Sachs is also raising the issue of the 2018 partnership agreement between the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Daszak’s EcoHealth, and Baric that had the specific goal of inserting such furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruses.

It has always strained credulity that a bat virus traversed all of China without leaving a trace only to suddenly erupt on the doorsteps of a lab that was known to have been creating COVID-like viruses. Sachs and Tedros appear to have come to the same conclusion.

The fact that the two institutions at the center of efforts to aggressively push the natural origin narrative have now changed course will give considerable momentum to finally get to the bottom of what really happened at the Wuhan lab. It also—very belatedly—vindicates Xiao Botao who, at great personal risk, tried to tell the world where the virus came from.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/who-and-lancet-commission-chiefs-come-out-in-support-of-lab-leak-theory_4548666.html?utm_source=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2022-06-22&utm_medium=email&est=FlV5U6VfLyNPRg4jYmXZ8J0KwqGMyAEm%2F9ZY5CDyOXe95NQRVhPrnv5LJU%2F7wd097A%3D%3D

According to a new report that just came from the government watchdog agency responsible for overseeing the NIH, it turns out that nearly three-quarters of the scientists and researchers who accept NIH grant money—meaning, people who receive NIH tax-payer funding to conduct research—fail to properly report their ties to foreign countries and companies.

Specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector-General’s office found that approximately 69 percent of the people who receive NIH research grants don’t properly report all of their ties to foreign entities—specifically, the Chinese Communist Party.

Furthermore, this same lack of transparency also applies here at home. According to another report from Open the Books, it turns out that in a 10-year time span, government scientists—like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, and so on—received somewhere between $350 million to $400 million in royalty payments.

But the disclosure documents are so redacted that we don’t know which company is paying how much money to which scientist and for which patent.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/watchdog-finds-69-of-nih-scientists-dont-report-foreign-china-ties-350m-secret-royalty-payments-facts-matter_4548458.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-22-3&utm_medium=email&est=m6mGR6R3GriR6TLWF9e1ZTS5UaigkY5NZDc%2Fe2TF3lDjklfhVYBJnEzadnC9%2B3Nhrw%3D%3D

Tom Donilon has promoted investments in China, opposed tariffs on regime

The Biden administration’s pick to advise the State Department on “strategic competition” with Beijing chairs an investment think tank that urged Americans to triple their investments in China.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday selected BlackRock Investment Institute chairman and Obama administration national security adviser Tom Donilon to co-chair the Foreign Affairs Policy Board amid the State Department’s pivot to China.

Donilon’s work at BlackRock could pose a conflict of interest for the board, which provides “advice, feedback, and perspectives” to senior State Department officials on foreign policy matters. Under his leadership, the Investment Institute has urged investors to dramatically increase their stakes in Chinese companies. What’s more, BlackRock views “strategic competition” with China as bad for the company’s bottom line.

“Strategic competition between the U.S. and China and resulting tensions have also contributed to uncertainty in the geopolitical and regulatory landscapes,” reads BlackRock’s most recent annual report. The firm listed U.S.-Chinese competition as a factor that could hurt its revenue and profit. BlackRock opened a mutual fund in China in September, making it the first American firm approved to sell financial products there.

BlackRock’s Chinese entanglements have raised concerns that the company is undermining the United States. The company has come under fire for investing in sanctioned Chinese companies, including surveillance giant Hikvision. Even progressive megadonor George Soros called BlackRock’s investments in China a “tragic mistake” that would damage U.S. national security interests.

Donilon has sided with China in the debate over tariffs imposed during the Trump administration. He chided government officials in 2019 about the tariffs and inaccurately warned that they would cause a global recession.

“Future generations of Americans will judge today’s leaders harshly for squandering this moment,” Donilon wrote in an article touted by China Daily, a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party.

Tariffs “are hurting U.S. businesses, consumers, and farmers,” Donilon wrote. “They are alienating U.S. allies. And, analysts warn, they are increasing the risk of a global recession.”

The Foreign Affairs Policy Board plays a crucial role at the State Department. The department says the board is “necessary to supplement the advice and support the Secretary gets from the Department” on a broad range of international issues. Its meetings are closed to the public due to “discussions on sensitive, and often classified, topics and materials.”

Tariffs are likely to be an area of focus for the board, as will the administration’s position on China’s human rights record and increased military activity in the Pacific and South China Sea. Blinken has accused Beijing of waging genocide against Muslims in western China. Other officials, including climate envoy John Kerry, have refused to confront Chinese leaders on the topic for fear of hurting cooperative efforts on climate change.

Donilon, whom Blinken has called his “dear friend,” is the latest in a string of Biden allies to land an influential advisory post. The State Department picked Dominic Ng, the chairman of East West Bank, to represent the United States on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s Business Advisory Council. Ng, a major Biden donor, has criticized U.S. foreign policy toward China and served on organizations linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

Biden selected his longtime friend, Chris Dodd, to serve as special adviser for the Summit of the Americas. Dodd signed an ethics agreement because his lobbying firm represents some of the countries represented at the summit. Biden appointed another major donor, Joe Kiani, to serve on the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Neither the State Department nor BlackRock returned requests for comment.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-state-department-taps-beijing-bull-to-run-china-shop/

Columnist Naomi Wolf, author of “The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human,” asserts that after two years of pandemic policies, people in free societies are behaving more like those in authoritarian societies.

Wolf maintains that America is now less free, and becoming almost unrecognizable.

“A handful of bad actors” including the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Big Tech, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) used the pandemic to “exploit the crisis in such a way as to reengineer our free democratic open societies, especially in the West, especially in the United States, into a post-free society, a post-humane society,” said Wolf during a recent interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”

Related Coverage

‘We Don’t Have America Anymore’—Dr. Naomi Wolf on CCP-Style Technocratic Authoritarianism in the US

The Biden administration in April extended the 2-year-old coronavirus public health emergency for another 90 days.

Wolf said, based on history, the ongoing lockdowns and extension of the public health emergency indicate society is in the last phase of a tyrannical takeover, because with emergency powers, laws protecting liberty can be suspended.

According to Wolf, there are 10 steps every tyrannical government has followed. We are now at step 10, said Wolf. Some of the other steps include demonizing whistleblowers and critics, calling dissent “treason,” “espionage,” or “subversion,” and controlling the media narrative.

During the last two years of lockdowns and mandates, Big Tech and the elites have profited while the average Americans have seen the American Dream slowly “closing” on them, she said.

“And so often, when a democracy is dying, or a regime is turning the screws on freedoms to create an established new form of tyranny, it happens intentionally in a very incremental way,” said Wolf. “And you really see this from 1930 to 1933 in Germany.”

She said humanity is witnessing the formation of a two-tier society of the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated, in which people who would never discriminate against others based on categories of race and sex are now discriminating against the unvaccinated.

“Suddenly, they’re happily embracing a discrimination society in which some people are cast as clean and valuable members of society and other people are ostracized and marginalized and ‘othered’ and described as sort of dirty and causing infection to others,” said Wolf.

She argues that big tech companies had an active role in creating these perceptions and in “shaping legislation and certainly in presenting the drama of COVID and lockdowns to us, and then the vaccine rollout, in such a way as to change human behavior and to change human society,” said Wolf.

Wolf cited the emails between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussing Facebook’s role in getting the right public health “messages out” during the lockdowns.

People had no choice but to rely on tech platforms while they were locked down, and Big Tech used that to manipulate the public, said Wolf.

“What I do trace in the book is how there was a vast profit that tech companies made by suppressing human assembly, by helping to message that it was unsafe or unlawful to gather in person,” she said. “And when you understand that big tech companies are competing with human beings gathering in human spaces, you understand why there was a vested interest in suppressing human assembly.”

Wolf thinks big tech companies will not stop at just harvesting data on the computer, but that they want to dominate peoples’ bodily autonomy with vaccine passports.

“What these companies want more than anything is to leave the parameters of your computer and to colonize other currently non-colonized spaces, notably the human body,” said Wolf.

This would give these companies and governments the ability to switch off peoples’ access to commerce, travel, and other goods and services if they did not comply with a particular mandate, Wolf added.

Some forms of digital tracking and surveilling are already here in the United States, she said.

“You’re now expected to swipe these QR codes just to see the menu, or just to get in. And the QR code uploads your data to a central database,” she said, adding that she’s seen the software “that maps the relationships of everyone sitting at that table, and then builds databases and networks of relationships.”

Wolf said that on a scale of one to 10 on the Chinese social credit system, the United States is currently at a three.

“There’s a change that’s happened in American cities in the last two years,” she said.

Because most people around the world, particularly in U.S. cities, use digital apps to travel, do banking, and shop, a digital social credit system similar to China’s is imminent, she said.

Our data is being harvested and used by the “global technocratic elite” to control human behavior, said Wolf.

“We’ve assumed that the worst it can be is data are harvested from us with everything that we choose to do using our free will as human beings,” said Wolf.

“But what I’ve seen is that digital technology has its own logic, and it isn’t restricted by what human beings want to do. So once digital platforms and their oligarchical masters can figure out how to change people’s behavior to suit technology, there’s nothing, moral or ethical, that will keep them from changing people’s behavior to suit their technology, and to suit their business plans,” she added.

The pandemic has revealed how this type of digital control is playing out, because humans, before the prevalence of digital technology, did not choose to “socially distance” to fight pandemics, said Wolf.

“The dream of our digital overlords is for technology to tell humans what to do, and that’s exactly where we’re at,” said Wolf.

While some people might label her a conspiracy theorist, her opinions are based on a long career as a journalist, political consultant, and now tech CEO, Wolf said. Furthermore, she has witnessed firsthand the powerful elites making historical decisions under the radar, she said.

Wolf was well acquainted with this group of powerful people until recently when she was ejected from their circles for writing oppositional pieces on lockdowns.

“But it’s really true that the global technocratic elite have more in common with each other than they do with their fellow Germans or Americans or Russians or Chinese, and they now are able to align above the level of nation-states,” she said.

For example, one of the WEF’s goals is to make nation-level decision-making less and less important, and the World Health Organization’s goal is to make public health decisions on a global scale, bypassing countries’ own authorities via the pandemic treaty, said Wolf.

“These technocratic elites really do believe that they can order the world better than you and I and that they have the right to,” she said. “That’s really scary.”

Little by little, humanity’s tolerance for cruelty and authoritarianism has grown.

“The war wasn’t just on us as a political entity, the war was on American culture, and is on American culture,” she said. “And they’ve succeeded largely, unless we wake up, because we were a kind, decent, inclusive culture that respected other people’s boundaries and freedoms. … And now a CCP-style cruelty is something that we tolerate.”

What people believe is largely determined by the news they consume, said Wolf, and many people only watch news outlets that give a skewed picture of pandemic treatments and policies, largely funded by wealthy people like Bill Gates.

“I do trace in ‘The Bodies of Others’ how millions of dollars flowed and are flowing from entities like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the BBC and the Guardian and NPR and other formerly very credible, objective news outlets.”

Because most people get slanted news coverage, the country is more divided and many people on the left refuse to consider any other narrative or look at primary source documents, because they believe only government sources are giving them “scientific” information, said Wolf.

This skewed messaging has been able to convince people that the mandates and lockdowns are more American and important than liberty or critical thinking.

Wolf said the most brilliant aspect of the pandemic messaging was that it was framed altruistically.

“You know, ‘You’ve got to exclude those people for the good of the community,’ or ‘You’ve got to mask yourself and your child to save your child,’” said Wolf. “This really brilliantly upended American culture because it cast freedom as selfish.”

Now that those in power have effectively conditioned people to be fearful and submissive, they can keep reinstituting emergency powers, she argued.

“That’s what emergency law means,” she said. “They can do whatever they want, basically. It’s a weaponization of boards of health, it’s a weaponization of the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the [Department of Health and Human Services].”

Wolf said although the situation is dire, people can do something to push back against this tyranny by being informed about what is really going on in the country, assembling in groups, and getting involved politically on the local level.

As it stands now, “I will say that each side is being fed narratives and stereotypes about the other that would persuade each side that the other is absolutely insane and dangerous, dangerously insane,” said Wolf.

“I get that conservatives think, ‘liberals don’t know what a woman is.’ That is not actually literally true, and liberals think ‘conservatives all want to torch our democratic processes, storm the Capitol, and are misogynist, racist thugs who are trigger happy,” said Wolf.

The last two years have conditioned people to fear each other and so the conversations that would have normally occurred when people gathered are not happening and keeping the country divided, said Wolf. She said she will gladly talk to people on the right.

“People I love think I’m doing something wrong in even talking to conservatives and libertarians. That’s very dangerous. The left, especially, has decided that you’re morally complicit if you have a conversation across the aisle,” Wolf said. “That is censorship, that is cancel culture, that’s un-American, that is an importation from Communism.”

She urges people to remember what makes America unique and a beacon to other nations: to remember we are the great experiment where neighbors talked to each other, listened, and didn’t “rat” each other out if they did not agree with each other, Wolf said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/we-dont-have-america-anymore-author-naomi-wolf_4545628.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-21-3&utm_medium=email&est=Ti3V30R3w%2F2JuDx47eYvzpeLpt8HYqj3OhnaBBsqKEGiN5KT8OMKfPTbD%2FFjf51nfw%3D%3D

ANOTHER FOOLS ERRAND BROUGHT TO YOU BY BIDEN’S CURIOUS OBSESSION WITH UKRAINE.

Resident Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan revealed that the U.S. federal government is using taxpayer cash to maintain seized Russian yachts, according to a report from Insider. The accidental admission – caught on a “hot mic” – came during an event at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) on June 16th.

Sullivan – who many suspect is compromised by the Chinese Communist Party – was speaking with Richard Fontaine, chief executive officer of the CNAS, about the White House’s effort to seize Russian assets including yachts amidst the ongoing war in Ukraine when he made the remarks.

In a livestream video of the event uploaded to YouTube, which has since been deleted, the pair’s personal conversation before the publicized discussion portion of the CNAS was included.

I previously wrote how the popular seizure of yachts was ignoring legal and practical problems, including the cost of maintenance. Those costs are now mounting. https://t.co/PDuuE9QIaK Some of these yachts may have to be returned with tax-funded repairs. https://t.co/GgNipe6aKs

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 18, 2022

Speaking moments before the beginning of an event at the Center for a New American Security on Thursday, Sullivan mentioned the ongoing Operation KleptoCapture, a Justice Department-led effort targeting Russian “elites, proxies, and oligarchs” with sanctions and civil and criminal asset seizures.

Sullivan appeared to reference the recent seizure of the Amadea, a 348-foot yacht owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov. The U.S. government moved to seize the yacht in early May and it sailed for the U.S. in early June, after Fiji’s supreme court authorized its seizure.

MUST READ: Biden’s White House Radicalized the Would-Be Kavanaugh Killer as Pelosi Held Up Supreme Court Security Funds.

“I just wasn’t aware how many super yachts there were in the world,” Fontaine tells Sullivan on the recording. “I mean the size of these things, the value of these things is unbelievable.”

Sullivan responds, noting that “we have to pay for upkeep” in reference to the U.S. federal government:

“I know. It’s so ridiculous, but you know what the craziest thing is? When we seize one, we have to pay for upkeep.”

“The federal government pays for upkeep because under the kind of forfeiture rubric, so like some people are basically being paid to maintain Russian superyachts on behalf of the United States government,” he continues.

A spokesperson for the think tank called the takedown an “honest mistake” and it was later reposted without Sullivan’s private comments.

It is believed that the U.S. Marshals Service, which takes control of seized property, is running the maintenance operations with a network of private contractors.

Sullivan – now at the very heart of Joe Biden’s national security apparatus – has previously served at a number of Chinese Communist-linked entities including Yale’s Paul Tsai China Center and Harvard’s Belfer Center. Sullivan infamously once said he wanted to “encourage China’s rise,” and asserted that Al-Qaeda was “on our side.”

AFTER YEARS OF HIDING IT, THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION IS APPARENTLY ADMITTING THE TRUTH BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.

The director of the World Health Organization privately believes the COVID-19 pandemic resulted from a leak from a Chinese laboratory, according to a new report which undermines the publicly stated position of the global health chief.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) – had previously stressed how unlikely the long-derided “lab leak” theory was, despite evidence to the contrary. Now, according to a report from the Daily Mail, Dr. Tedros “confided to a senior European politician that the most likely explanation was a catastrophic accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

The quiet admission in support of the “lab leak” theory is especially at odds with the public position of his WHO, whose affiliated scientists have often branded the hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory” and sought to silence the voices of those who claims otherwise.

The admission also follows the WHO launching a COVID-19 origins investigation that ultimately discredited the “lab leak” theory in favor of a “natural origins” theory. At the time, The National Pulse exclusively revealed that several researchers included on the team retained compromising links to the Chinese Communist Party, most notably EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak. Advisors to the Chinese Communist Party also served on the team.

Daszak and his partners conducted research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology using funds from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci. Using this million-dollar grant, the lab has worked on isolating bat coronavirus strains capable of “direct human infection” and is under the control of the Chinese Communist Party.

MUST READ: MSN Quietly Deleted a Story Revealing That Severe COVID-19 is Rarely Found in the Unvaccinated.

The lab also appears to have engaged in gain-of-function research, which manipulates pathogens to become more lethal and transmissible to humans. The lab has done similar research on other viruses including influenza and monkeypox.

The WHO sponsored a second COVID-19 origins investigation following its botched first attempt, leading Dr. Tedros to publicly admit that “we do not yet have the answers as to where it came from or how it entered the human population” this month.

Tedros himself has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, helping the regime expand its financial and political control over his home country of Ethiopia while serving in government.

Former U.S. President Donald J. Trump attempted to shift away from relying on Tedros, the World Health Organization, and even Anthony Fauci. He was widely ridiculed and maligned at the time, despite the mounting evidence that most of the above actors are now either totally discredited, or have rowed back from their original COVID-19 claims.

Strong, virtuous fathers are the foundations of close-knit families and a better world. While households the world over are preparing to celebrate Father’s Day, honoring their share of the protective fatherly love in their lives, let’s not forget the brave dads who are being persecuted in communist China, either for their faith or for defending human rights.

Here are some of these soul-stirring life stories—which will forever be listed in the darkest chapters of human history—revealing how communist ideologies are anti-divine, and a threat to humanity and world peace.

‘My Father Believes This Is God’s Message, and I Believe My Father’

It has been almost 1,770 days since the prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng went missing on Aug. 13, 2017. Gao has been nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

A devoted Christian and known as the “Conscience of China,” Gao was on good terms with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) until he stood up to defend members of persecuted faith groups: Christian family churches and Falun Gong practitioners. He had been repeatedly arrested and tortured over the years and was formally arrested in 2006 after he wrote open letters to the top Chinese leadership condemning the suppression of faith.

When in prison, Gao was subjected to brutal torture, such as being shocked with electric batons, having his teeth knocked loose, and even having toothpicks stabbed into his genitals. Gao was under house arrest for years before suddenly disappearing on Aug. 13, 2017; the family hasn’t heard anything about him since.

Gao’s wife, Geng He, and his two children, who had faced constant harassment from the police, escaped to the United States in 2009 with the help of underground faith groups. Residing in a free country this past decade, Gao’s family has never stopped speaking out and worrying about his whereabouts.

His daughter, Grace Geng, believes that her dad’s book, the Chinese title of which translates to “Year 2017: Stand Up China,” has an unwavering message for the world—that the CCP will soon collapse. “My father believes this is God’s message, and I believe my father,” Grace said during the launch ceremony of the book in Hong Kong on June 16, 2016.

‘My Family is Just One Example Out of Thousands’

A 22-year-old student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, has been advocating for his parents’ release. His father—a “rare talent” and renowned professional in the petroleum industry—was accused of sending informational text messages about the persecuted spiritual practice of Falun Gong via Bluetooth at a subway in Beijing.

Jack Zhiyuan Liu’s parents, both former engineers at the China National Petroleum Corporation, had faced imprisonment and persecution for their faith years ago. And on Nov. 19, 2021, they were arrested once again, according to Minghui.org—a U.S.-based website dedicated to reporting on the persecution of Falun Gong in China. His mother, Cao Wenbei, was released a month later, but his father, Liu Zhoubo, is still detained at Beijing No. 3 Detention Center.

“The CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong is destroying lives and families,” Jack told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times. “What had happened to my family is just one example out of thousands.”

Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) is an ancient self-cultivation discipline based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. The atheistic communist regime has been violently persecuting the spiritual practice since July 1999. The CCP-led campaign of persecution that ensued 23 years ago has left numerous adherents detained, arrested, and subjected to extreme torture, including having their organs forcibly harvested for profit.

In the past, Jack’s parents, grandmother, and uncle had been imprisoned for 1 1/2 years for practicing Falun Gong. His father had also been sentenced to 9 years in prison before being released in 2010—a period that Jack described as “hell” for his father, as the elderly man was subjected to torture, starvation, and death threats in prison.

‘I Have Been Trying to Do Anything That Could Possibly Help My Father’

On Feb. 2, 2013, Jewher Ilham was supposed to accompany her father, Ilham Tohti, a Uyghur economics professor in China, to Indiana University for a month as a visiting scholar. However, when the Chinese authorities restricted her dad from leaving the country, she ended up taking a flight alone from Beijing to the United States.

That fateful day at the airport would become the last time she’d see her dad, to this day. Jewher’s father was arrested and later sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of inciting separatism—a charge that she said was unfounded. “He had never mentioned a word about separating the country,” Jewher told China Uncensored.

Jewher has been increasingly worrying about her dad since 2017—the year when the world came to know about the Xinjiang re-education and internment camps; her family in China had lost contact with her father that same year.

To seek her father’s release, the young daughter has been advocating for him.

“I have been trying to do anything that could possibly help my father and my community. I don’t know if it’s helping, I don’t know if anything would help. I just don’t want to regret,” she said.

Jewher had also met the then-President Donald Trump at the White House in July 2019, together with other survivors of religious persecution, and spoke at the UN General Assembly. In December 2019, she accepted the 2019 Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament on her father’s behalf for the defense of human rights.

‘I Dream One Day We Can Be Together Again’

A young Chinese refugee, Eric Jia, had a happy family, which became nonexistent the day his dad was arrested; he was only 3 years old at that time.

Eric’s father, Ye Jia, was also arrested for practicing Falun Gong. Like his father, Eric’s close relatives, including his grandmother and aunties, had also been arrested several times for the same reason and had been subjected to different forms of torture while imprisoned.

For instance, in April 2013, when Eric’s father was in jail for an eight-year sentence, guards tortured him by pouring pungent liquid into his nose while hanging him upside down; the guards refused to allow him to seek treatment when he vomited blood for months later.

“He was locked in a small room for six years, with two to three prison guards watching him every day,” he told The Epoch Times in a previous interview.

Eric’s father was last arrested in September 2017 and released three months later in December after Australian Greens Senator for Victoria Janet Rice sent a letter to the mayor of Xi’an, China, in November 2017, urging him to release Ye Jia “immediately and unconditionally.” Eric’s story mirrors that of many other overseas Chinese Falun Gong practitioners whose families are still being persecuted by the CCP in mainland China. Eric fled to Australia with his mother in 2012 and has been raising awareness of the persecution.

“There is nothing wrong to have faith in Falun Dafa. The CCP used all kinds of means to make us give up our beliefs,” Eric said to a crowd that had gathered at Martin Place in Sydney in 2018 to commemorate the lives lost at the hands of the CCP.

“I dream one day that they can be free and we can be together again.”

No Hope for Reunion

While many families are waiting anxiously for the day they can reunite with their fathers, for countless others, this reunion day would never arrive.

For instance, 20-year-old Xu Xinyang lost her dad in the brutal persecution.

“In my memory, most of my childhood was spent in fear and horror,” said Xu Xinyang at a forum on Dec. 4, 2018, on Capitol Hill to highlight the deteriorating human rights situation in China.

Xinyang’s parents, both Falun Gong practitioners, were arrested by the Chinese regime for printing materials to expose the persecution of their faith. Her father was sentenced to eight years in prison when her mother was pregnant with her. Xinyang’s father died 13 days after he was released.

Due to the brutality of the persecution, Xinyang never saw her dad until she was 8 years old, she told the audience at the forum.

“He wanted to hold me, but I was scared and hid behind my mom. I refused to let him hold me because I never had a chance to know him,” she said. “This became my lifelong regret.”

Even after her father was persecuted to death, Xinyang and her mother were not spared. The police even arrested her school principal and some of her teachers, all of whom were Falun Gong practitioners. Xinyang was wanted by the police. Fortunately, she managed to flee to Thailand with her mother when she was 12 and arrived in the United States in 2017.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/this-fathers-day-dont-forget-the-dads-unlawfully-jailed-in-chinas-dark-prisons_3389947.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-19-3&utm_medium=email&est=oXKjxYSEE0%2F69Uw9leqbNoZ8g9GyWWWZCo%2F52pvw5TmVRzbfWu0YunrwWcSXbNuBZw%3D%3D

Elon Musk recently questioned whether the short video app TikTok is leading to the collapse of civilization, following a new report that alleged the China-owned platform had obtained private U.S. user data.

“Is TikTok destroying civilization?” the billionaire said on June 17 via Twitter. “Some people think so,” his post reads, offering no further explanation.

The remarks came after leaked audio from more than 80 internal meetings showed employees of TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance have “repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about U.S. TikTok users” in China, according to Buzzfeed. It said the recordings include 14 statements from nine employees who indicated engineers had access to U.S. user data “at the very least” for five months between September 2021 and January 2022.

Although the company has also previously claimed that it does not share user information with Beijing, and has a “world-renowned U.S.-based security team” to ​​decide who can access this data, evidence shows employees had to turn to colleagues in China to decide how user data would flow.

“U.S. staff did not have permission or knowledge of how to access the data on their own,” the Buzzfeed report reads, citing tape recordings. It was hours before TikTok announced it had completed migrating its American user data to U.S.-based servers at Oracle, a move that could address U.S. regulatory concerns over data integrity on the popular short video app.

Counting the United States as its largest market, TikTok has more than 1 billion active users globally. Washington has been scrutinizing app developers over the personal data they handle, especially when it involves U.S. military or intelligence personnel.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Or perhaps social media in general

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2022

Musk later posted that perhaps it is “social media in general” that poses the risk to civilization.

He called censorship on Twitter a “civilization risk” in April. While negotiating a $44 billion buyout of Twitter, Musk has said his offer is about “the future of civilization,” not for profit.

The billionaire, who used to stay out of politics, has also declared his concerns over Twitter’s apparent left-wing political bias.

When asked on Twitter last month about his intentions in wading into political controversy, the founder and chief engineer of SpaceX mentioned “civilization” again, in the context of what he called “woke” progressive policies.

“Unless it is stopped, the woke mind virus will destroy civilization and humanity will never” reach Mars, Musk responded.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/elon-musk-calls-out-tiktok-over-civilization-risk_4543023.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-19-2&utm_medium=email&est=9uCv%2BzWu0YHLEsOqMa21piQraOvV83lh%2BM%2F0Xm5akDmMMyVDDBSJqo1lBDuPp2OCuQ%3D%3D

‘China is the drug he just can’t quit’: GOP Senator slams NIAD head’s remarks

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was unable to commit to stop federal funding from going to Chinese scientific research, despite the U.S. intelligence community assessing the regime as America’s top adversary.

Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), made the remarks while appearing virtually at the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee hearing on June 16, during an exchange with Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas).

“The NIH is still funding research in China, at least $8 million since 2020. In the Intelligence Community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment, the Chinese Communist Party is presented as one of the top threats to the United States, along with Russia, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. To my knowledge, only China is receiving U.S. research dollars,” said the senator during the hearing. “When will you as director of NIAID stop funding research in China?”

Since 2020, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a total of $8.3 million in grants to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and its division National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, along with five top public universities in mainland China and Hong Kong, according to the NIH website.

Although this amount doesn’t capture dollars later funneled to a Chinese institution through a U.S.-based organization, such as New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, which had partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to perform coronavirus-related experiments that some experts said fit the definition of gain-of-function research, that is, experiments that increase the pathogenicity or transmissibility of a virus.

Fauci, in response to Marshall’s question, said that the U.S. federal agencies “had very productive peer-reviewed highly regarded research projects with our Chinese colleagues that have led to some major advances in biomedical research.”

“So I don’t think I’d be able to tell you that we are going to stop funding Chinese,” Fauci said.

“We obviously need to be careful and make sure that when we do fund them we have the proper peer review and we go through all the established guidelines,” he continued, adding that “grants that go to foreign countries, including China, have State Department clearance.”

“Dr. Fauci’s remarks prove that China is the drug he just can’t quit,” Marshall later told The Epoch Times about the NIAID head’s response.

“Dr. Fauci told the truth for once after years of repeated dishonesty that has eroded Americans’ trust in our public health institutions. In the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, our government should know it’s dangerous and wrong to continue funding research projects supported by the Chinese Communist Party.”

The senator, at the hearing, followed up by asking Fauci if he agrees that the American public lacks records and studies from EcoHealth Alliance’s research.

Fauci’s answer was evasive.

“We have access to an extraordinary amount of information that has gone there,” he said, arguing that the publicly available information in the scientific journals is sufficient.

“Obviously none of us know everything that’s going on in China but if the question at hand is the rather small … peer-reviewed high-priority grant that was given from Eco[Health] to China in a sub-award we have a lot of good information that’s in the publishing.”

The NIH gave a total of $3.1 million grant to EcoHealth over the five years from 2014 to 2019. A fifth of that, $599,000, went to the Wuhan lab, in part for identifying and altering bat coronaviruses deemed likely to infect humans, documents obtained by The Intercept show.

Fauci earlier this week tested positive for COVID-19 and joined the Thursday Senate hearing remotely. His response to Marshall omitted reference EcoHealth’s lack of disclosure over some of its research activities, which would have prompted an NIH review over biosafety measures.

In one experiment at the Wuhan facility, funded by NIH via EcoHealth, mice infected with a modified version of the original bat coronavirus “became sicker than those infected” with the original version, an “unexpected result” that was not “something that the researchers set out to do,” Lawrence Tabak, the principal deputy director at the NIH, told lawmakers last October.

He said EcoHealth had violated grant terms by failing to promptly notify the NIH about the finding.

Fauci, at the Thursday hearing, also told Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) that he believes the outbreak of the virus “is very, very likely a jump in species from an animal host,” and less likely to be the result of a lab leak.

“I believe it’s essential to have cooperation and collaboration with the Chinese,” he said when Braun asked him whether he thinks Beijing will cooperate with him to “get to the thorough bottom of” COVID-19 origins.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fauci-refuses-to-stop-funding-chinese-research-with-us-tax-dollars_4541209.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-18&utm_medium=email&est=TeiJMXVcP10NZweU8mCwu8Sz0Y1B%2FospyPfhUIWJdUOmQEwt1uTNLUEWv%2FJeKS%2FgZw%3D%3D

CCP boosts ties with Russia amid Taiwan invasion fears

Congressional Republicans are spearheading an effort to fast-track U.S. weapons shipments to Taiwan amid growing concerns Communist China is planning to start “a war of aggression,” Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) told the Washington Free Beacon.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has emboldened the CCP, which took steps earlier this week to strengthen bilateral ties with Moscow to help it combat Western economic sanctions. With the two malign regimes displaying a united front, Republican lawmakers want to send a clear message that America will come to Taiwan’s aid if Beijing launches an invasion.

The Biden administration also is closely monitoring the situation, with a State Department official telling the Free Beacon on Thursday that U.S. officials remain “concerned about China’s alignment with Russia.”

Banks, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said the Biden administration was caught off guard by Russia’s incursion, proving that “you can’t deter an invasion after it happens.” China is learning lessons from its Russian ally, fueling concerns that Beijing will make good on its threats to invade Taiwan sooner rather than later. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raised the prospect of a Chinese attack on Taiwan during a speech over the weekend, saying, “We will defend our interests without flinching.”

“China breached Taiwan’s airspace a record number of times in 2021,” Banks told the Free Beacon. “House Republicans can’t let Joe Biden repeat the same mistakes he made in Ukraine. You can’t deter an invasion after it happens and Congress and the Biden administration should be entirely unified around the need to send Taiwan defensive weaponry to dissuade Xi from starting a war of aggression.”

Banks, who has repeatedly pressed the Biden administration in multiple forums to “unequivocally and publicly” commit to defending Taiwan in the event of an invasion, said the Taiwan Weapons Exports Act would serve as a central legislative vehicle to deter Beijing.

It would boost Taiwan’s trade standing to make it a central U.S. ally in the same way that NATO members like Japan and South Korea are, according to a full copy of the bill provided to the Free Beacon. It also would expedite licensing approval for weapons shipments to Taiwan and remove other administrative barriers that could slow the process. The measure also cuts in half the amount of time these types of weapons deals are reviewed by Congress, making it easier for military equipment to actually arrive in Taiwan.

A Senate companion version of the bill is being spearheaded by Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.).

The Republican Study Committee, which is helmed by Banks, also is using its 2023 budget proposal to increase U.S. commitments to Taiwan. Under the RSC’s proposal, the U.S. would accelerate lethal aid to Taiwan, including stinger missiles, naval strike missiles, and quick strike air-dropped sea mine—all of which could be used if China launches an attack.

Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping spoke by phone on Wednesday to reaffirm relations in the face of Western sanctions. Xi reportedly “noted the legitimacy” of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, claiming that Moscow is protecting its “fundamental national interests in the face of challenges to its security created by external forces.”

Russia and China inked a cooperation agreement in February and both countries have said the deal contains “no limits” on their partnership.

The State Department says it sees through China’s claims of neutrality on the Russian war.

The U.S. and European partners have already “warned China against providing Russia military assistance” and continue to closely monitor Beijing’s actions, according to the State Department.

“More than three months into Russia’s brutal invasion, China is still standing by Russia,” the official said. “It is still echoing Russian propaganda around the world. It is still shielding Russia in international organizations, shirking its responsibilities as a P5 member. And it is still denying Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine by suggesting instead that they were staged.”

Both countries are believed to be boosting their economic infrastructure to “bypass SWIFT,” the international banking system, as well as “U.S. and European sanctions,” according to the official. These efforts have been accompanied by military drills, most recently a joint bomber patrol in East Asia.

“Nations that side with Vladimir Putin will inevitably find themselves on the wrong side of history,” the State Department official said. “This is not a moment for equivocation or hiding or waiting to see what happens next. It is already clear what is happening.”

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-plotting-war-of-aggression-in-taiwan-gop-lawmaker-warns/

IS THE U.S. GOVERNMENT FULL OF CHINESE AGENTS? IT SEEMS SO.

Jack Markell – resident Joe Biden’s pick to serve as ambassador to the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development – has a long history of partnering with Chinese Communist Party foreign influence groups and has called on Americans to “welcome” and “understand” the communist regime.

Markell, a former Governor of Delaware, was also tapped by the White House to lead its Afghan refugee resettlement program “Operation Allies Welcome” in September before his ambassadorship was confirmed by the Senate.

In 2011, Markell penned an op-ed – “How We Can Use China’s Growth To Fuel American Jobs” – where he called for increased ties with the communist country.

“The Chinese growth that has long stirred fear among many Americans is increasingly opening up new opportunities for US workers and exporters,” Markell argued in the piece before calling on Americans to “welcome” and “understand” the brutal, communist regime:

It’s obvious that our political systems are different, but the differences in our legal systems, business culture, and consumer expectations have a far greater impact on companies. If we want to attract Chinese investors and local jobs, we need to welcome them, understand them, and be prepared to help them understand our expectations.

“From my work in the private sector, I know that competitiveness is fortified by cooperation. These efforts will make our country and each of our states stronger,” he added.

Markell also details his work with the National Governors Association (NGA), including inking deals with Chinese Communist Party officials.

“At the NGA Winter Meeting this February, I was pleased to sign an agreement with the top official from China’s Hunan Province, Secretary Zhou Qiang, to cooperate on job creation,” he outlined before praising the group’s effort to “promote cooperation” with China:

I applaud the initiatives by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the National Governors Association to promote cooperation between “subnational” (state and local) governments in China and the United States.

In a separate NGA forum taking place in July 2011, Markell signed another memorandum of understanding with the secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China Zhao Hongzhu. Markell would later go on to serve as the Chairman of the NGA from 2012 to 2013.

MUST READ: Biden’s White House Radicalized the Would-Be Kavanaugh Killer as Pelosi Held Up Supreme Court Security Funds.

The NGA has a long history of collaboration with the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) – a premier state-run foreign influence group that functions as part of the country’s United Front Work Department (UFWD). The U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission has flagged the UFWD as Beijing’s weapon “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.”

The Trump administration designated the group a foreign mission, noting it has “sought to directly and malignly influence” American officials to promote China’s global agenda and relies on NGA forums to do so.

While in office, Markell also partnered with the Chinese company Wanxiang to fund delegations of Delaware students to study in China.

Wanxiang, however, is run by high-ranking Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks and has a long track record of adding relatives and associates of establishment American politicians to its rolodex to secure legislative and regulatory favors.

As Peter Schweizer points out in Secret Empires, the company leverages these connections to circumvent federal regulations aimed at curtailing predatory acquisition and investment at the hands of Beijing-linked firms:

“It has also collected powerful political friends on both sides of the aisle, by putting them and their family members on the payroll. Along the way, it has skated past federal regulations and avoided sanctions for doing business in North Korea that have plagued other companies. It offers a powerful illustration of how politically connected firms make members of the American political class wealthy while getting special treatment in the United States.”

Since departing the Delaware Governor’s office, Markell has stayed in the Chinese Communist Party’s orbit, including attending events sponsored by another Beijing-backed influence group: China General Chamber of Commerce-U.S.A.

MUST READ: Biden’s White House Radicalized the Would-Be Kavanaugh Killer as Pelosi Held Up Supreme Court Security Funds.

He attended their 10th-anniversary gala in 2015 alongside several Chinese Communist Party officials.

The World Health Organization announced that officials are working to rename the monkeypox virus after a group of scientists called the moniker “discriminatory and stigmatizing.”

“WHO is also working with partners and experts from around the world on changing the name of monkeypox virus, its clades, and the disease it causes,” organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a Tuesday media briefing. He said WHO will announce the new name “as soon as possible.”

This is not the first time that health officials have declared a disease name discriminatory. Soon after WHO in early 2020 named the novel coronavirus “COVID-19,” journalists wrote that calling the disease, which originated in China, “the Wuhan virus” or “the China virus” is racist. The Chinese Communist government at the same time launched a propaganda campaign to deny that the disease originated in China, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

During the pandemic, WHO covered up China’s hesitation to report on the COVID-19’s dangers, then falsely claimed that human-to-human transmission was unconfirmed. WHO officials, including Tedros, publicly praised China’s transparency as the regime withheld information.

The announcement comes after a group of almost 30 scientists said that changing the virus’s name is an “urgent need,” arguing that “continued reference to and nomenclature of this virus being African is not only inaccurate but is also discriminatory and stigmatizing.”

Monkeypox got its name when scientists observed the pox-like disease in an African monkey colony. The first human case was reported in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The groups of organisms that cause monkeypox, also known as clades, are named for the regions of Africa—West African and Central African/Congo Basin—in which scientists first found them.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/world-health-organization-will-rename-monkeypox-citing-racism/

The Biden administration’s climate czar, John Kerry, proclaimed that despite record-high gas prices, the United States doesn’t need to drill for more oil or natural gas.

Speaking during a forum, Kerry said that Republicans and some analysts have suggested that “we need more drilling” and “we need to go back to coal.” He then argued: “No, we don’t. We absolutely don’t.”

The former secretary of state also suggested that he will push back on alleged false narratives that the United States needs to drill more and use more traditional energy sources. Kerry delivered his remarks at the University of Southern California’s Center for Public Diplomacy on June 10.

“We have to prevent a false narrative from entering into this,” he said.

Kerry’s comments come as data from auto club AAA shows that the average price for a gallon of gasoline remained steady at $5.01 nationwide. California is still leading the way with an average price of $6.43 per gallon. No other state has reached $6 gas so far.

Because of the elevated prices, Republicans and oil industry executives have suggested that the Biden administration’s policies are at least partially to blame. President Joe Biden issued a series of executive orders last year, including suspending the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, suspending new drilling on federal land, and ending federal subsidies for fossil fuels, among other orders.

Democrats and Biden, meanwhile, have said the high gas prices are caused by the war in Ukraine, often blaming the spike on Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, gas prices and year-over-year inflation had been rising long before the invasion in February.

Some analysts, including GasBuddy, have said that a surge in the demand for oil and other petroleum products as countries emerge from COVID-19 lockdowns is also contributing to the high prices. A report in June of last year found that U.S. refining capability shrunk about 4.5 percent in 2020 as COVID-19 caused oil and gas facilities to shut down.

Although Kerry said the United States and other Western countries shouldn’t opt for more coal-based energy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been heavily promoting relying more on coal-fired plants in recent months. CCP officials in April said China, which has a significant amount of coal reserves, plans on boosting coal production by 300 million tons in 2022, according to reports. That’s equal to 7 percent of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, or a 5.7 percent increase over 2020’s figures, according to The Associated Press.

And late last month, India’s government said that it would reopen old coal mines to increase output by 100 million tons as cities have suffered frequent rolling blackouts amid a heat wave. In a memo released on May 7, the Indian environmental ministry gave coal mines permission to boost production by as much as 50 percent without permits.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/john-kerry-we-absolutely-dont-need-to-drill-for-oil-as-gas-prices-soar_4535220.html?utm_source=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2022-06-15&utm_medium=email&est=t2kmr%2BCN4FU1WTZweFQ067FnnYcw6Tk5fBZiiZbaZpdt9YSH7PkDRC6i0fQi6HjVLg%3D%3D

THIS IS ONLY EVER GOING TO GET WORSE.

Researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology isolated new strains of a virus that is “closely related” to Monkeypox in a recently published study.

The unearthed paper follows The National Pulse unearthing another study published by the controversial Chinese lab that detailed the assembly of new monkeypox virus strains in February 2022. The work came just months before the latest international outbreak of monkeypox cases which appear to have now reached the United States.

Eleven researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology authored the newly uncovered paper “Identification, Isolation, and Characterization of an Ectromelia Virus New Strain from an Experimental Mouse,” originally published on July 21st, 2020. It was later included in the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s scientific journal Virologica Sinica in 2021.

The study describes the “isolation” of a new strain of Ectromelia Virus (ECTV) – “ECTV-WH” – from an experimental mouse brain. The strain was flagged as potentially having “higher replication efficiency in vivo and higher transmitting efficiency to cause respiratory infection in mice.”

The Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers also warn that ECTV is highly similar to Monkeypox:

“ECTV is closely related to Variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox, and Monkeypox virus, the causative agent of a severe zoonosis. It is an attractive virus model for study of poxvirus pathogenesis, viral immune and inflammatory responses, and could be used for antiviral and vaccine tests.”

At the time of the study’s publication, the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s ECTV strain was “preserved in the National Virus Resource Center.” Additionally, researchers noted it “could be provided as an important virus resource for study on poxvirus.”

MUST READ: NIH Erased Webpage Details Monkeypox Vaccine ‘Bioterror’ Research Praised By Anthony Fauci.

The study was supported by several Chinese Communist Party-run scientific groups including the Chinese Academy of Sciences and military-linked entities including the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The unearthed study follows the Wuhan Institute of Virology conducting similar research into strains of bat coronaviruses that could infect humans while admitting its facilities lacked proper laboratory safety protocols.

Read:

They have 30 days to respond to letters before being placed on a financial blacklist

Six banks have been warned by the West Virginia State Treasury that they may be in violation of a new law preventing the state from doing business with financial institutions boycotting energy companies.

The office told The Epoch Times it had sent out letters on June 10, but didn’t share the banks’ names on the record.

Enacted in March, S. 262 directs the state to notify financial institutions that they’re slated for placement on the restricted financial institution list 45 days before the document is published.

Those institutions must respond within 30 days of receiving those notification letters to avoid winding up on the list.

In June 2021, Texas passed a similar law barring state agencies from investing in funds boycotting energy companies.

“We felt like we had a clear conflict of interest,” West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore said at a June 8 press conference.

He cited firms that he said want to benefit from the state’s finances while simultaneously “trying to diminish our dollars and destroy our industries.”

The letters come after months of escalating conflict between many energy-producing states and much of the financial sector.

In May 2021, Moore and treasurers from 14 other states sent a letter to U.S. climate envoy John Kerry to express their concerns about private comments that he made to banks in March of that year. He reportedly asked major financial institutions to step up their climate commitments.

“We intend to put banks and financial institutions on notice of our position, as we urge them not to give in to pressure from the Biden administration to refuse to lend to or invest in coal, oil, and natural gas companies,” Moore and his colleagues wrote at the time.

Environmental nonprofits mounted their own pressure campaign encouraging Kerry to further Wall Street’s divestment from the fossil fuel industry.

A March 2021 letter from 145 environmental organizations demanded that Kerry “[end] the flow of private finance” to the fossil fuel industry, specifically requesting that he push asset managers “to divest from pure-play coal, oil, and gas.”

In January of this year, West Virginia divested from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.

“BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has been outspoken in pressuring corporate leaders to commit to investment goals that will undermine reliable energy sources like coal, natural gas and oil under the guise of helping the planet, but at the same time he’s pouring billions in new capital into China, turning a blind eye to abhorrent human rights violations, genocide and that country’s role in creating the COVID-19 global pandemic,” Moore said in a Jan. 17 statement explaining the decision.

Moore told The Epoch Times he hasn’t yet heard from BlackRock.

In his view, the war in Ukraine underscores the vital importance of maintaining domestic energy resources.

“There is power in this type of energy, and I just don’t mean electrification. I mean, power for the countries. And that’s why energy independence is so important,” he told The Epoch Times in a June 8 interview.

Moore said it would be “very easy” to get West Virginia to change its increasingly aggressive stance toward financial institutions that have turned against fossil fuels or embraced extreme environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment practices.

“All you all need to do is have banks act like banks, asset managers act like asset managers, and maximize returns for your shareholders and your company. It’s pretty simple. I mean, that’s kind of how capitalism works,” he said.

The Epoch Times has requested additional information on the six banks from the West Virginia Treasury.

The Epoch Times has also reached out to BlackRock.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/west-virginia-notifies-six-banks-they-may-be-breaking-states-fossil-fuel-anti-boycott-law_4525672.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-10-4&utm_medium=email&est=VYcTwCN53hwC%2FjELeRqaN3fSqUKsQCPgwnn4Zx5OfOv6Yn2fQZgHgILNHlJ4rObhnQ%3D%3D

Once again, it appears that the science of COVID-19 and its origins is the science that is conducted among small groups of insiders behind closed doors.

Newly released government emails from early February 2020 reveal that additional secret teleconferences took place among a group of Fauci-funded scientists in the early days of the pandemic.

Up to now, we knew of the Feb. 1 secret teleconference that had been convened by Fauci. We also knew that scientists at the Feb. 1 teleconference privately concluded that the virus most likely came out of the Wuhan lab. And we knew that by Feb. 4, those scientists had written a paper that dismissed the lab leak theory.

What we did not know is that the same scientists continued having secret teleconferences to discuss the virus’s origins even after they wrote their paper. At least two of those conferences were attended by Fauci himself.

The new emails were obtained by the transparency group US Right to Know, but—as is now the norm for Freedom of Information Act requests from the federal government—the emails are almost completely redacted.

Piecing together the newly released emails with other emails that were released earlier, we can now put together an updated timeline of events after the initial Feb. 1 secret teleconference.

Welcome to Truth over News with Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/newly-released-emails-reveal-crucial-details-of-faucis-efforts-to-cover-up-the-origins-of-the-pandemic-truth-over-news_4518133.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-10-4&utm_medium=email&est=1SP4dBssvMmPZE3UC5DsqcOfGwU33ArWlkD%2FHnqU59l3h4CXjF2sdQ1q%2BH29Mq8jeA%3D%3D

A love story from communist China

After braving two years of relentless torture in a forced-labor camp in communist China, a woman was safely rescued to Australia by her fiancé nearly 20 years ago.

The couple, now in their 50s, recounted to The Epoch Times their soul-stirring journey through the darkest days of life, exposing the injustices happening behind the closed red-terror walls of the Chinese jails and labor camps. Theirs is a story of true love, firm faith, and unwavering courage.

Almost two decades ago, Ying Li, now 51, was arrested in China for her faith in the Falun Gong spiritual practice. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a brutal persecution campaign against the peaceful meditation system in July 1999, fearing the practice’s universal teaching of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance as a threat to its ideologies rooted in atheism and Marxism.

Ying, who currently resides in Sydney with her husband and their three children, was persecuted and abused for refusing to give up her faith.

“It is his love that has supported me through the darkest days of my life,” Ying said.

If people around the world can understand the evil nature of the CCP, then you can see through the gradual ‘transition to communism’ that is happening worldwide. If more people can resist communism, then we’ll have a peaceful world.

— Grant Lee, who helped rescue Ying Li to Australia

Tortured for Faith

After Ying was abducted by police in January 2001, she was sent to a brainwashing center. To protest against the unlawful arrest, Ying went on a hunger strike for a month. The guards resorted to coercive methods to torture and force-feed her, causing her health to deteriorate. She was incarcerated for four months before being bailed out by her workplace.

Recalling the abuses she was subjected to, Ying said that a staff member of the brainwashing center once told her without any fear: “Putting you in jail or under house arrest is exactly what we want to do. We are government institutions, so what do you think you can do about it?”

Ten months later, on Oct. 16, 2001, Ying was on a business trip to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, when she was suddenly arrested for the second time and sent to the Shanghai Qingsong Female Forced Labor Camp. At the time, she was working for a management consulting company.

“I was confined for 2 years. The reason recorded was ‘other,’ because my arrest was not based on any actual law,” she said. “They hung me with my hands cuffed behind my back for three days to an iron door. They also locked me in a solitary confinement cell for more than six months.

“They were afraid that my determination would interfere with their so-called ‘re-education’ of other Falun Gong practitioners.”

The communist-ruled society is not a normal society. It’s against humanity. They brainwash people to follow what the CCP thinks and do what it asks you to do. They don’t allow people to have their faith so that they can control your mind.

— Ying Li, originally from China, now residing in Australia

Recounting the torture methods employed by the communist officials to “reform” prisoners of faith, Ying said the CCP has devised “various ways to persecute.” The abusive methods include forcing practitioners to sit on very tiny stools for hours at a time, leading to the festering of buttocks, as well as standing for a long extended time, leading to swollen feet and legs, making them unable to walk.

“Some were beaten with electric batons so badly that it was hard to find any good piece of skin on their bodies,” Ying said. “In some areas, there were more physical tortures. In other places, there were more mental tortures.”

Ying said she and other practitioners often got blisters on their palms after long hours of forced slave labor, which lasted from 7 a.m. to almost midnight every day. After Ying fled to Australia, she revealed that the Shanghai Women’s Forced Labor Camp was involved in making dolls that were directly shipped to a renowned brand in Italy.

She was also forced to “make products for the ‘Three-Gun’ brand of underwear,” and underwear labeled with “examined by #16” were produced by detainees in the labor camp where she was held, according to a 2004 Australia-China Free Trade Agreement Joint Feasibility Study report by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) Australia Branch.

A Daring Rescue

All the while when Ying was facing persecution in China, her then-fiancé in Australia, Grant Lee, was busy making the Australian government aware of her situation. Grant’s tireless efforts proved impactful to a certain extent in minimizing the torture Ying experienced in the sinister labor camp.

Grant then managed to send Ying an engagement ring as a Christmas gift while she was still incarcerated. The ring not only comforted Ying during her life’s most trying days but also reassured her that true love and faith never fail; she knew Grant would never give up on rescuing her. Ying was released from the labor camp on Oct. 15, 2003.

However, the long journey of rescuing Ying out of China was no easy feat for Grant.

“At the beginning, no one wanted to help because she was a Chinese citizen,” said Grant, 58, who met Ying in 2001 via a common friend. “So, I rode a bike from Sydney to Canberra to raise awareness.”

After five local Australian media outlets reported their story, the officers from the Australian foreign department met with him when he arrived in Canberra and agreed to inquire with the Chinese government about Ying.

Grant said that to sponsor Ying to Australia, he needed to submit photos of them together. However, the couple never got any chance to take photos due to the persecution. So, Grant braved the journey to China to click some pictures with Ying.

However, the Chinese consulate in Australia refused to grant him a Chinese visa, knowing that he was a Falun Gong practitioner as well. To bypass the restrictions, Grant changed his name and appearance and went to Hong Kong to apply for a Chinese visa. Thereafter, he traveled through a few cities in China before arriving in Shanghai by bus to avoid letting others know that he came from abroad.

Grant said some members of the Parliament in Australia had contacted the Australian Consulate in Shanghai to facilitate the procedures; as a result, Ying was issued a visa within a week.

Hope for a ‘Peaceful World’

With her beloved soulmate right by her side, Ying finally landed in Australia on Nov. 29, 2003. Her elder sister and younger brother, who were also persecuted repeatedly for practicing Falun Gong, were subsequently rescued from China, and have since been granted refugee status in Australia.

Cherishing the freedom to practice her faith without the fear of getting arrested, Ying said she feels “lucky” compared to the millions of Falun Gong practitioners who are still being persecuted in her beloved homeland.

“The communist-ruled society is not a normal society,” Ying said. “It’s against humanity. They brainwash people to follow what the CCP thinks and do what it asks you to do. They don’t allow people to have their faith so that they can control your mind.”

Having experienced the “evilness of the communist party” firsthand, Grant hopes that people who are living in China will not be scared by the Party’s authoritarian rule but rather stand strong to resist it.

“If people around the world can understand the evil nature of the CCP, then you can see through the gradual ‘transition to communism’ that is happening worldwide,” he said. “If more people can resist communism, then we’ll have a peaceful world.”

Arshdeep Sarao contributed to this report.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter

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Chinese Communist Party-controlled Xinhua News Agency trumpeted a quote from congresswoman and self-proclaimed socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) in an effort to characterize “the rate of school shootings in the United States as a mark of global shame.”

“We can’t even keep our kids safe from their school being turned into a war zone,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a push for increased gun control at a Wednesday House hearing.

Xinhua’s article showcases the Ocasio-Cortez quote in bold underneath the congresswoman’s official portrait.

Ocasio-Cortez has a long relationship with Chinese state-controlled media, the Washington Free Beacon reported last year. She thanked the newspaper Sing Tao, whose owners are members of a Chinese Communist Party advisory group, for covering a June 2020 roundtable discussion. She also paid the paper that month and in April 2021 to run ads.

Ocasio-Cortez is not the only left-wing American whom China has used in its propaganda. The Chinese state-controlled Global Times in May prominently featured an interview with liberal activist Ryan Deitsch in which he called the United States a “white supremacist country.”

China’s efforts to shame the United States may be an attempt to distract from the Communist regime’s contemptible human rights record. China is carrying out a genocide against its ethnic Uyghur minority. 

https://freebeacon.com/media/chinese-state-media-use-aoc-quote-to-bash-america/

Environmental, social and governance ratings batter states, choke off capital from fossil fuel industry

State treasurers spoke out against the imposition of environmental, social and governance (ESG) scoring on public money in a June 8 press conference, with one official comparing it to the social justice-driven push for universal homeownership that helped trigger the Great Recession.

“I would be very concerned about investing in green energy right now,” said Utah State Treasurer Marlo Oaks, in response to a question from The Epoch Times.

He did not rule out the possibility of an ESG bubble similar to the housing one that burst during the late 2000s—an event that drove the nation’s worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

That bubble was inflated in part by two government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Beginning in earnest with the Clinton administration’s 1995 National Homeownership Strategy, which committed to “expanding creative financing” for home buyers, the firms continually reduced the requirements for loans.

By 2006, fully 43 percent of first-time home buyers put down no deposit, according to a study from the National Association of Realtors.

In contrast to the “invisible hand”—Adam Smith’s metaphor for the operation of the free market—Oaks sees ESG as an “invisible fist.”

Oaks was one signatory to an April 21 letter from Utah’s governor, senators, congressional representatives and other public officials in response to S&P Global’s issuance of ESG ratings for US states and territories.

“Considering recent global events, the current economic situation in the United States, and the unreliability and inherently political nature of ESG factors in investment decisions, we view this newfound focus on ESG as politicizing the ratings process.

“It is deeply counterproductive, misleading, potentially damaging to the entities being rated, and possibly illegal,” Oaks and his colleagues argued in that letter.

Idaho officials sent a similar letter to S&P Global on May 18. They echoed the Utah letter’s concerns with the firm’s scoring of American energy companies relative to some of their foreign counterparts.

China’s state-owned Sinopec, for example, earned a 41 from S&P Global. ExxonMobil Corporation, by contrast, received a 36, while Chevron Corporation received a 39.

Sinopec’s sub-scores on both “social” and “governance and economic” factors were well above the industry mean.

The results raise questions about the rankings’ reliability in light of the use of forced labor in China as well as the Chinese Communist Party’s heavy influence over corporate governance in the country.

For example, in an analysis of executive-level shake-ups in China’s oil industry during 2011, experts from the Brookings Institution and Ian Bremmer’s Eurasia Group opined that the movement of leaders from one company to another is “a blatant reminder of the CCP’s control over China’s flagship firms.”

Another speaker at the June 8 press conference, West Virginia’s Treasurer Riley Moore, made headlines in January when the state divested from Blackrock over its ESG practices.

“In West Virginia, we’re an energy state. We produce coal, gas, and oil—and this ESG movement in its current form is really an existential threat to our jobs, our economy, and our tax revenue,” Moore told reporters.

A law passed by the West Virginia Senate on March 12 will exclude financial institutions from competitive bidding with the state if they are boycotting fossil fuel companies.

Financial institutions slated for inclusion on West Virginia’s contracting blacklist will be sent letters allowing them to appeal the decision. Thirty days later, the full list will be published.

Moore told reporters that those initial letters will likely be sent out at the end of this week.

He also suggested ESG scoring could soon be incorporated into individuals’ credit scores—for example, through favorable mortgage rates for people who put solar panels on their homes.

In a follow-up interview with The Epoch Times on June 8, Riley cited a presentation from J. Michael Evans, president of China’s Alibaba Group, to the World Economic Forum.

Evans said his company is developing an “individualized carbon footprint tracker,” which he claimed would let consumers measure their travel, food consumption, and more.

“You’re going to come to a very logical conclusion if we continue down this path,” Moore told The Epoch Times.

He agreed that the economy could be facing an ESG bubble. Moore argued coal prices could be an indicator—the international benchmark for a tonne of coal has shot up from less than $50 in September 2020 to roughly $400 today.

“The coal producers are booked out through 2023. They can’t produce any more than they are right now,” he added.

Kentucky State Treasurer Allison Ball also addressed reporters at the June 8 press conference, arguing that the application of ESG could violate her state’s laws.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron agrees.

In a May 26 opinion prompted by an inquiry from Ball, officials from Cameron’s office concurred that ESG asset management practices run afoul of Kentucky law.

“This isn’t really about profitability. It’s not about retirement security. It’s not about your investments. It’s about political activism. And they’re doing it in a way that they could not do through the democratic process,” Ball told reporters.

“ESG today is misallocating capital, in that it’s not providing capital where it is desperately needed, in the traditional energy space—and it’s leading to higher gas prices,” Oaks said.

Left-wing activists and financiers have celebrated the movement of investments from the hydrocarbon sector, arguing that pressure in that direction is both ethically and financially sound.

“Getting lenders to choke off money to fossil fuel companies is the next needed move for the industry to address the material risks that the coal, oil and gas industry faces,” said Green Century Capital Management’s Leslie Samuelrich, as quoted in a February 2021 CNBC article.

“Fossil fuel mining, exploration, and extraction all are capital intensive activities that demand constant access to capital. If capital costs rise or the supply of capital is reduced, projects can become uneconomical and fossil fuel companies can see their valuations fall,” wrote David Carlin in a February 2021 article for Forbes, “The Case for Fossil Fuel Divestment.”

He argued that coal, oil, and natural gas companies may face “a grim financial future” if their reserves remain untapped as a result of political or financial pressure, suggesting that divestment advocates are “making a savvy financial decision.”

While ESG has trended in a leftward direction, at least one fund appears to offer a more conservative alternative.

The exchange-traded fund (ETF) Inspire Investing, which claims to offer “Biblically responsible investing” in the vein of ESG, has bucked ESG trends by investing in the firearms companies Sturm Ruger & Company and Vista Outdoor, as reported by Bloomberg Law and confirmed by Inspire’s Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Yet, speakers at the June 8 press conference told The Epoch Times they reject the notion of pushing ESG to the right through state power over public pensions.

“We just want the politics to come back to a neutral base,” said Derek Kreifels of the State Financial Officers Foundation, adding that the use of public pension funds to advance a political agenda was “the big offense with ESG.”

“If you want to invest in some second amendment ETF, please feel free to do it. We don’t want to be forced to invest in that,” Moore said.

Robert Netzly, president and CEO of Inspire, told The Epoch Times, “We believe that the solution to gun violence is not removing firearms from law-abiding citizens, but strong law enforcement removing criminals from our streets.

“We believe state pensions should not be forced to invest along any particular ESG guidelines, but should have the freedom to do so if they decide that is in the best interest of their constituents.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to S&P Global and Alibaba Group.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fearing-looming-bubble-state-treasurers-square-up-against-esgs-invisible-fist_4521280.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-09-2&utm_medium=email&est=%2B%2BJvIYHGqHsTpZWZa5C%2FyShPzMJFTLsEX%2BibEgQ67TMqcXigo6KzUIJnGnMad%2BR8eg%3D%3D

SPECIAL REPORT – The totalitarian Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not only engaged in global and national influence campaigns, but its corrupting tentacles also reach even down to American state and local politics. (RELATED: China’s Draconian Policies Show What Many Democrats Want for US)

Over the past 15 years, U.S. officials at local, state and federal levels have received pressure through visits, emails and phone calls from Chinese officials intent on pushing their policies in China’s favor.

As I have written about here, here and here, the CCP tends to focus its corrupting influences on currently powerful, as well as up-and-coming Democrat politicians, most vulnerable to their pitch.

Politicos such as Congressman Eric Swalwell and his Communist Chinese staffer (‘concubine’?).

However, a recent report in The Epoch Times (ET) shows how the CCP’s tentacles extend down to the state level and also target Republicans.

Usually, these efforts take the form of promoting apparently benign resolutions of friendship between U.S. states and China, or statements in support of Chinese policies.

The ET report also shows how to fight back.

In one specific case, writes The Times in “late February 2020, as the pandemic was heating up in the United States, when a request from China caught Wisconsin state Sen. Roger Roth’s attention.”

Roth is a Republican, and the request came via email from Wu Ting, wife of the Chinese consul general in Chicago. Wu wanted Roth to help pass a resolution “in support of China’s fight against the novel coronavirus.”

As ET reports:

Once Roth realized the email was legitimate, he became “downright angry.”

“I dictated a one-word response to them, and I said: Dear Consul General, Nuts. Signed respectfully, Roger Roth,” he said. “Not only do we respond to them with the word ‘nuts,’ we even drafted our own resolution on the Communist Party of China, exposing who they really are.”

That one-word reply, a nod to Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe’s famous response to a German surrender ultimatum during World War II, was the last communication Roth had with the Chinese consulate in Chicago. Wu later wrote an email expressing shock at his response, which he never replied to. But that interaction pushed him onto the offensive in Wisconsin.

States which have not been so staunch in their response to Chinese influence efforts include, most egregiously, the New York Senate resolution that was approved in June 2019, which appears to be the nation’s first official gesture to commemorate Oct. 1, marking the CCP’s official violent takeover of China.

The resolution’s lead sponsor, state Sen. James Sanders, didn’t respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times about whether the consulate had any role in the resolution’s eventual adoption.

As ET notes though, these aren’t the only states where Beijing has tried to exert influence:

Around the same period as the emails to Roth, the state of Utah was approving a resolution expressing solidarity with the Chinese people. In language similar to what Wu had put forward, the resolution noted “a friendly relationship and strong economic, cultural, and people-to-people ties” that Utah and China share, and “the unique, 14-year legislative relationship between Utah and Liaoning.”

That Feb. 25, 2020, resolution also urged against virus restrictions that “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade and raise fear and stigma.” At the time, the Trump administration had imposed a flight ban to and from China in response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, a move that initially sparked condemnation from the Chinese regime and the World Health Organization…

States like Utah that passed such resolutions didn’t know “what was really happening and how they were being used as pawns,” Roth said.

Georgia and New York also have passed a “China Day” resolution.

The Georgia version, passed in 2020, intended to “commend the special friendship between Georgia and the People’s Republic of China” and to “recognize the Consul General Cai Wei of the Consulate General of China in Houston.”

However, Trump’s State Department ordered the closure of that consulate five months later, for being a “hub of spying and intellectual property theft.” (RELATED: Ex-Obama-Biden Aide Pushing CCP China Propaganda via Amazon – Owners of Washington Post)

So, what else can be done about this massive Chinese effort to corrupt our state politicians and institutions?

Roth, the Wisconsin senator, has some excellent ideas.

Since his encounter with the Chinese, reports The Times, he has proposed a series of measures aimed at curtailing Chinese influence in his state.

These include barring Chinese military members from working in the University of Wisconsin system and curbing Chinese recruitment or propaganda programs within the university system.

His proposals should be copied by lawmakers nationwide. (RELATED: Analyst Warns That China Could Exploit Key US Military Weakness)

As Roth stated in The Epoch Times: “As lawmakers all over the country, everything we do plays into a larger narrative,” he said. And we have an opportunity, though it be limited … we have an opportunity to make a stand for freedom, and to make a stand for the freedom-loving peoples of China right now, or who are held hostage by this brutal regime.” ALD

READ NEXT: Toomey Underscores Need for Trade Deal With Taiwan >>

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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https://www.americanliberty.news/commentary/how-communist-chinas-tentacles-reach-into-us-state-politics-and-how-to-fight-back/pcrespo/2022/06/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ae01&seyid=5663

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) is facing backlash this week after she bragged to a Senate panel that gasoline prices don’t affect her because she drives an electric vehicle.

“I just have to say, on the issue of gas prices, after waiting for a long time to have enough chips in this country to get my electric vehicle, I drove it from Michigan to [Washington, D.C.] this last weekend and went by every single gas station and it didn’t matter how high it was,” Stabenow said at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on June 7.

As of June 8, the national average price of regular gasoline inched closer to $5 per gallon and now stands at $4.95, according to data from AAA. In Michigan, gasoline averages $5.21 per gallon, which is about 51 cents higher than the previous week and more than $2 higher than a year ago.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), in response, said that the average cost for a new electric vehicle is $60,000. The Kelley Blue Book puts the new electric vehicle price at about $56,000 on average.

“Democrats don’t understand the problems of everyday Americans,” Kelly said on Twitter in response to the video. Conservative commentators also accused Stabenow of being out of touch with working-class people on social media.

Stabenow drives a Chevrolet Bolt EUV, which has a starting price of about $28,000 for its 2023 model, Michigan news website MLive reported.

The Democratic senator will “never apologize” for driving the electric vehicle, which is manufactured in Michigan, a spokesperson for Stabenow told that website. Conservatives should apologize to auto workers “for disrespecting the products they work hard to make,” the spokesperson, Robyn Bryan, added in a statement.

“Instead of helping the oil companies line their pockets with Michigan drivers’ hard-earned money, these critics should join the senator’s fight to end price gouging at the pump,” Bryan said.

In recent months, the senator has often promoted electric vehicle usage and led congressional efforts to offer consumer tax credits for electric vehicles.

“I’m looking forward to the opportunity for us to move to vehicles that aren’t going to be dependent on the whims of the oil companies and the international markets,” Stabenow said on June 7.

A recent report in May suggested that the cost of electric vehicle batteries may increase as much as 15 percent amid supply chain disruptions. China is the world’s largest battery manufacturer in the world, and reports have shown that more than half of the world’s lithium, cobalt, and graphite processing and refining capacity is located in the Communist Party-controlled country.

Several White House officials have similarly drawn criticism for promoting electric vehicles amid record-high gas prices. In March, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg urged Americans to transition to such vehicles alongside Vice President Kamala Harris in a news conference.

Stabenow’s office didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/michigan-senator-criticized-for-touting-electric-car-dismissing-surging-gas-prices_4521007.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-06-08-4&utm_medium=email&est=89ucpItqyd1KrBYFaHcJ515yY8cyl0KjMpypl%2BNjWg2mmpyidij0qY9OjjlGdQeGXA%3D%3D

A mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to advertise in USA Today, which claims it “represents the voice of an entire nation.”

China Daily has since October 2021 spent $287,500 advertising in USA Today, according to filings with the Department of Justice. The iconic American newspaper is the latest news outlet to partner with the Beijing-controlled newspaper, which in recent years has paid outlets like Time, the Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Policy magazine millions of dollars to publish articles as part of Beijing’s aggressive propaganda campaign in the West.

The USA Today–China Daily partnership comes amid heightened scrutiny over the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to shape Americans’ views of Chinese culture and its domestic and foreign policy. Newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post ended advertising deals with China Daily because of foreign influence. Human-rights groups have criticized American news companies for publishing China Daily articles that tout the Chinese Communist Party’s policies in Tibet, Hong Kong, and other disputed regions.

The U.S. government has also cracked down on China Daily and other Chinese state-controlled news agencies. The Justice Department in 2020 required China Daily to disclose details of its payments to American companies, showing more than $19 million spent on advertising and printing costs since November 2016.

The influx of advertising revenue is a much-needed boost for USA Today, which last year saw the steepest readership decline of any major newspaper—a 62 percent dropoff in circulation from 2020 to 2021. Time and the Los Angeles Times, two other companies working with China Daily, have also seen declines in subscriptions and advertising revenue. China Daily between November 2021 and April 2022 spent $1,618,143 on advertising. The newspaper paid $649,603 to Time, $315,540 to Financial Times, $306,000 to the Los Angeles Times, and $117,000 to Foreign Policy, according to its filings with the Justice Department.

USA Today did not respond to questions about where it has published China Daily content, but American news companies have typically republished China Daily articles online or in physical copies of their publications. Time, for example, publishes China Daily articles at a “paid content” section of its website, as well as in a printed insert in its magazine called “ChinaWatch.” Time has not always disclosed that the Chinese government paid for the printed inserts, which are designed to look like other news articles in the magazine.

USA Today also did not respond to questions about potential conflicts of interest in its China Daily arrangement. But the newspaper insists its advertisers do not influence its news coverage.

“We will not blur the line between advertising and editorial content. We will provide appropriate disclosures, exercise transparency, and avoid actual or implicit commercial endorsements by our journalists,” reads USA Today‘s code of ethical conduct.

“When sponsorships of news are appropriate, we will not allow them to determine, change, or restrict content.”

https://freebeacon.com/media/voice-of-a-nation-usa-today-takes-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-from-ccp-mouthpiece/

YET ANOTHER OBAMA/BIDEN OFFICIAL IS STUMPING FOR THE MOST OPPRESSIVE REGIME IN THE WORLD.

A top economic advisor to former President Barack Obama headlined an event sponsored by a Chinese Communist Party-backed influence group shortly before urging the Biden White House to drop Trump-era tariffs against China.

Jason Furman participated in the 2022 Harvard Kennedy School’s China Conference, which was sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

CUSEF is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, which 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 U.S. State Department also compares the United Front to the Chinese regime’s “magic weapon” to advance its agenda in the U.S.

In practice, CUSEF has deployed this tactic on American journalists and former Congressmen, offering free trips to the country in exchange for “favorable coverage,” according to Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings.

Furman, who served eight years as a top economic adviser to former President Obama in the role of Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from August 2013 to January 2017, spoke during the event’s panel “US-China Economic Relations in Unstable Times – Challenges and Opportunities Ahead.”

“In the midst of current geopolitical uncertainties, US-China economic cooperation is facing great challenges. Panelists discussed how to maintain a fair and sustainable trade relationship between the US and China, how to ensure stability in financial markets, and how to create more opportunities for cooperation in the future,” explained a panel summary.

MUST READ: Biden’s Chief Climate Officer Is A Klaus Schwab Fellow.

While speaking at the event, Furman appeared to support the Chinese Communist Party’s controversial “Belt and Road” initiative, a key component of the regime’s efforts to expand its control globally through predatory infrastructure loans:

“I’m not afraid of [the] Belt and Road at all. I think it can play a constructive role in some countries. I think in some cases the terms of the loans and the like aren’t as desirable to the countries but those are all issues for China to work out with other countries.

Furman also opposed the “de-linkage” of the two country’s economies.

Hosted on March 26th, 2o22, the event came shortly before Furman, who now works as the Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and the Department of Economics at Harvard University, appeared on MSNBC urging President Joe Biden to drop Trump-era tariffs against the Chinese Communist Party.

“I’d love to see them lift most of the tariffs that President Trump imposed. That would bring down inflation directly, would increase competition and the economy and indirectly, and bring down prices even more,” claimed Furman in a May 10th, 2022 interview.

“This would be the biggest step he could take, that he’s not taken so far,” he reiterated while outlining how the White House could combat rising inflation.

Furman is the latest of countless current and former American government officials whose ties to the Chinese Communist Party appear to be influencing the policies they promote.

Jay Chen thrice voted to raise tuition at local college, now blames student loan debt ‘crisis’ on skyrocketing costs

A Democrat running for Congress in California says student loan debt is “one of the biggest crises faced by our country” as tuition costs “skyrocket.” He would know—as president of a local college’s board, he voted to hike tuition three times.

Jay Chen became president of Mt. San Antonio College’s board of trustees in 2015, his LinkedIn states. Over the next four years, the Democrat voted three times to raise nonresident tuition, according to board meeting minutes. In total, per-unit tuition at the college for nonresidents has increased 45 percent during Chen’s tenure on the board. Total attendance cost for in-state students has also increased 32 percent since 2015.

Chen has not discussed his votes to raise tuition at the college on the campaign trail, where he is running to unseat Republican congresswoman Michelle Steel (Calif.). The Democrat has, however, lamented the rising cost of college tuition. Chen’s campaign site in September touted his trustee position at Mt. San Antonio College and called student loan debt “one of the biggest crises faced by our country as the cost of going to college continues to skyrocket.”

But Chen went on to scrub that language from his site, suggesting he may have been concerned that his college’s repeated tuition hikes could be exposed. Chen’s updated education issues page contains rhetoric that is watered down considerably—the page does not mention Mt. San Antonio College, student debt, or rising tuition costs at all. Instead, Chen’s site merely states that the Democrat “supports efforts to make college more affordable and accessible to everyone.”

Chen told the Washington Free Beacon that he was “able to keep costs low for Californians attending Mt. San Antonio College” during his time on the board and noted that most students pay in-state tuition. He did not return questions regarding why he changed the education section of his campaign site. The Democrat’s reasons for voting to raise tuition at Mt. San Antonio College are unknown—taped recordings of the school’s board meetings are only maintained for 30 days. Chen’s candidate financial disclosure shows he received a $3,750 “trustee stipend” from the college in 2020 and 2021.

Prior to his role at Mt. San Antonio College—a two-year school based in suburban Los Angeles—Chen served on the Hacienda La Puente school board. As a board member in 2010, Chen spearheaded an effort to bring the “Confucius Classroom” program into the district’s K-12 classrooms. That program is funded and run by China’s Ministry of Education, a Chinese Communist Party arm that provides American K-12 schools with teachers and curriculum materials. It’s also linked to the CCP’s Confucius Institute program, which the State Department labeled a Chinese propaganda entity in 2020.

Chen’s embrace of the Confucius Classroom program sparked controversy in his race against Steel. When the Republican highlighted Chen’s support for “CCP-sponsored schools,” Chen accused Steel—one of the first Korean-American women to serve in Congress—of engaging in “anti-Asian racism” and contributing to the “rise in violent, anti-Asian hate crimes.” Just months later, Chen mocked Steel’s accent during a campaign event.

“She just had another town hall the other day. And it’s tough. Like, we’ve transcribed it,” Chen said. “You kind of need an interpreter to figure out exactly what she’s saying. The more she speaks, the better for us.” Chen’s comments prompted more than 20 Asian American advocacy groups to protest outside of the Democrat’s office.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/this-california-dem-hates-increased-tuition-costs-except-at-the-college-that-pays-him/

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.), who was pictured riding shirtless on a camel during a lobbyist-funded junket in the Middle East, wants to use campaign money to pay for babysitters for his three children while he is on foreign government-sponsored business trips.

In a letter sent on May 26 to the Federal Election Commission, Swalwell’s campaign lawyer said Swalwell receives “many invitations” to travel overseas because of his status as a “well-known member of Congress” and position in Democratic Party leadership. The lawyer urged the expansion of an FEC rule that allows candidates to use campaign funds to pay for nannies during campaign events and fundraisers.

If approved, Swalwell will enjoy a job perk unavailable to most working Americans, who pay for their babysitters out of pocket or rely on family members to pick up the slack. Swalwell’s wife, a hotel executive, has traveled with Swalwell during his two recent foreign trips, including the one during which he rode bare-chested on a camel in the desert of Qatar. The U.S.-Qatar Business Council paid $19,400 for the Swalwells’ flights, lodging, and food. The Swalwells in February 2020 went on an all-expenses-paid work trip to Germany, staying in a hotel that cost $611 per night.

Foreigners have long been attracted to Swalwell. A female Chinese spy named Fang Fang cultivated a years-long relationship with the lawmaker before he was elected to Congress. She fled the United States in 2015 after the FBI warned Swalwell about her activities.

Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, already uses more campaign money on nannies than any other member of Congress. His campaign spent $15,983 on child care through the first quarter of this year and $72,488 since 2019, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of campaign finance records. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D., Ga.) campaign has spent the second highest on child care of any member of Congress—$61,279 since 2020.

Swalwell has come under scrutiny for his profligate campaign spending, with one government watchdog group saying the Democrat uses his campaign coffers as a “private piggy bank.” Swalwell spent more than $20,000 on luxury car services and hotel stays last year and more than $7,000 at swanky restaurants in Washington, D.C., according to Fox News. He also paid a family member more than $17,000 for babysitting. Swalwell spent lavishly on alcohol, hotels, limo services, and restaurants from his campaign, according to reports.

Swalwell has a history of financial difficulties despite his $174,000 salary. Swalwell reported owing between $50,000 and $100,000 in student loans, $25,000 and $65,000 in credit card debt, and $600,000 and $1.25 million in mortgages as of 2020. His student loans and credit card debt have remained at those levels for a decade.

Candidates for Congress have since 2018 been allowed to use campaign funds to pay for child care during campaign events or fundraisers. The rule was implemented after pressure from groups that seek more women in office. Vote Mama Foundation, a nonprofit group that spearheaded the rule change, has said that steep child-care costs are a barrier for new candidates for public office, especially women.

Swalwell told the organization that child-care costs forced him to “reevaluate” whether he should remain in his congressional job.

“On top of the official duties, there is an obligation to campaign for House candidates and be away a lot. It was taking a toll financially,” said Swalwell, who noted in the interview his wife had recently received a promotion.

Swalwell’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/nanny-state-eric-swalwell-wants-to-use-campaign-cash-to-pay-babysitters-during-his-overseas-work-trips/

Chinese state media touted a visit by the United Nations human rights chief to the Xinjiang region, in which she echoed the Communist regime’s propaganda and dismissed allegations of genocide against the country’s Uyghur Muslim minority.

U.N. high commissioner for human rights Michelle Bachelet closed out her six-day visit to China last week with a speech that praised Communist Party officials, failed to acknowledge evidence of state-orchestrated repression and torture against Uyghurs, and mimicked CCP framing of China’s detainment of Uyghurs as counterterrorist measures.

The Global Times, a state-run tabloid, celebrated Bachelet’s speech for dismissing “the rampant disinformation on the Xinjiang region” and being a “slap to the U.S. and some Western countries, their media, and anti-China forces.”

The Global Times‘s coverage of Bachelet’s speech mentioned her comments on supposed human rights violations in the United States, with the outlet suggesting America is deflecting from its own ethical failures by accusing China of genocide. The Global Times said this month’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children “exposed the severe racism and human rights violations” of the United States.

Bachelet is the former president of Chile, representing the Socialist Party.

Human-rights advocates denounced Bachelet’s visit and called on her to resign for legitimizing China’s policies toward Uyghurs.

The trip is “bringing the entire UN into disrepute,” said Azeem Ibrahim, head of the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy.

“Bachelet neglects the duties of her office, her mandate to the world to stand up for human rights, and the UN’s founding principles,” said the Campaign for Uyghurs.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/china-propaganda-outlet-uses-un-human-rights-chief-as-tool-to-whitewash-beijings-genocide/

NO WONDER THERE’S NO END TO AMERICA’S SUPPLY CHAIN ISSUES.

A leading advisor to Joe Biden on supply chains is an alum of several World Economic Forum climate change initiatives, who additionally served as a former fellow at a think tank chaired by Hunter Biden.

Betty Cremmins, whose LinkedIn profile reveals she’s held the position of Director for Sustainable Supply Chains at the White House, since February 2022, has overseen the U.S. government’s ongoing supply chain issues, exacerbated by policies that mandated vaccines for many American workers and truckers.

Prior to taking over the White House’s supply chain initiative, Cremmins was a National Security Fellow and Climate Affiliate Group Co-Lead at the Truman National Security Project. The Washington, D.C.-based, left-leaning foreign policy network has featured Biden’s son Hunter Biden on its board since 2011.

Archived versions of the organization’s website reveal that Biden ascended to the role of vice-chairman of the board, serving there until at least March 2019 and, therefore, overlapping with Cremmins’s fellowship.

In addition to her ties to the Hunter Biden-linked group, Cremmins is also an alum of the World Economic Forum (WEF), chaired by Klaus Schwab. The WEF, which seeks to abolish private property ownership, has exploited issues like COVID-19 and climate change for its controversial “Great Reset” agenda.

Cremmins was previously the Lead of “1t.org,” a WEF initiative in support of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, from June 2020 to July 2021. The initiative seeks to “conserve, restore and grow one trillion trees by 2030,” demonstrating how environmental issues are often intertwined with WEF’s broader agenda. She was later promoted to the Lead on Engagement for “1t.org” and the WEF Natural Climate Solutions Alliance, which seeks to combat climate change through “voluntary or compliance action” with businesses, governments, and investors.

MUST READ: Biden’s Chief Climate Officer Is A Klaus Schwab Fellow.

Cremmins has also authored several articles for the WEF website focused on combatting climate change via the private sector.

“Beyond the disruptive and tragic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world finds itself facing a crisis like no other in every corner of the planet; the accelerated destruction of nature and the impacts of climate change. Although these issues have often been regarded in silos, we cannot ignore that they are inextricably linked,” explained Cremmins in a post from July 29th, 2021.

Cremmins also worked for Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a “not-for-profit charity that runs the global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts.” The CDP runs a Supply Chain program, where Cremmins previously served as its Senior Account Manager, that prioritizes sustainability and combatting climate change among the world’s leading multinational corporations.

“To transform the global economic system to prevent dangerous climate change,” explains the objective of the program in a slideshow presentation delivered by Cremmins.

Cremmins’s unearthed role in the White House follows The National Pulse revealing another WEF-linked activist advocating for Chinese Communist Party-style “re-education camps.”

Uyghur women are victims of sexual violence under the Chinese regime’s campaign of repression in Xinjiang, regardless of whether they are detained in an internment camp or not, according to Nury Turkel, vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

“They think all the sexual violence that they’re subjecting Uyghur women to, this mysterious drug that they’re giving, forced sterilization, collective punishment through gang rape, are the methods [through which] they are liberating the Uyghur women … just let that sink in,” Turkel recently told Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

According to estimates by researchers, the Chinese regime has detained more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in internment camps in the far western region of Xinjiang, where they are subjected to torture, rape, forced labor, and political indoctrination. The U.S. government and other Western democracies have labeled Beijing’s actions a genocide.

Turkel, an Uyghur-American and author of the new book “No Escape: The True Story of China’s Genocide of the Uyghurs,” said he interviewed Uyghur survivors who confirmed that guards were always on the lookout for “younger, more vulnerable” female Uyghurs.

There was a “habitual practice” of those women being led out of the cell late at night, he added.

In cases where the rape resulted in a pregnancy, those babies would then be owned by the state and the mothers would disappear, the commissioner said.

“It reminds of the old KGB tactics to make babies and then let them train from the very early age, to be loyal to the Soviet regime,” Turkel said.

“It’s [also] a reminder of how Hitler treated the Jewish woman during the Holocaust,” he added.

Other testimonials Turkel received revealed that Uyghur women were subject to sexual violence even in their own homes when there was no male protection. Chinese cadres claiming to be relatives would invite themselves to stay with these families and some would demand sexual favors, he said.

“This is a wholesale attack … you will live in this fear, surveillance, even at your home. They come to stay with you and intimidate you, even using your children to spy on you,” Turkel said.

The religious freedom commissioner urged the international community to take action to stop the Chinese Communist Party’s crimes.

“If we don’t stop this atrocity, this crime committed against the Uyghurs, it may become a new norm, and they will be used against others, even though some of it has already been in practice.”

He used the Chinese regime’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, which has been ongoing for more than two decades, to illustrate this point.

“Falun Gong practitioners were subjected to organ harvesting … and people didn’t pay attention. Now it’s happening to the Uyghurs.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/uyghur-women-subjected-to-sexual-violence-in-ccps-xinjiang-repression-us-religious-freedom-commissioner_4498979.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-29-4&utm_medium=email&est=lvzYyRACH51S2k1bCTQtp5hRxXoRNADTT8GP68noKeHuDqP3FiN1lg3DPkrx1NHq4A%3D%3D

Former vice president Al Gore runs a $36 billion investment fund dedicated to environmental and social sustainability. The “mission-led firm” that claims to “seek transformational change needed in climate and social action” has investments in companies that profit from Chinese slave labor and help the Chinese Communist Party censor the internet.

Generation Investment Management, which Gore formed in 2004, has stakes in Tencent, Anta, and Alibaba, according to its investment reports. Tencent, a tech conglomerate, routinely censors the internet at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party and has surveilled foreign users of its WeChat messaging app. Anta, a sports apparel company, has faced accusations of using cotton sourced from labor camps in Xinjiang. Alibaba, which operates China’s equivalent to Google, has links to the People’s Liberation Army.

Generation’s investments are part of a growing trend of firms touting social justice causes while profiting off companies that aid the authoritarian regime in Beijing. Coca-Cola, Delta, and Major League Baseball came under fire last year for criticizing voting laws in Georgia while raking in billions of dollars from China. The baseball league pulled its All-Star Game from Atlanta over the voting laws, but days later signed a licensing agreement with Tencent. The league entered the deal even though Tencent had blocked NBA games from airing in China because a league executive defended pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

Gore has followed a similar playbook. He accused Republicans last year of passing “truly un-American” voting laws while he profited from investments in China, which is led by unelected Communist Party bureaucrats.

Generation defends its Chinese investments on the grounds that the companies have pledged to curtail carbon emissions. The firm also cites the companies’ “significantly higher upside” than other investments in its portfolio.

Generation has worked closely with Tencent and Alibaba for years to develop its carbon emissions standards. The companies “have leapfrogged Western peers” by announcing plans to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, Generation said in a letter to shareholders last month. Generation voted to reelect Yang Siu Shun to the Tencent board of directors last year. Yang is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory committee for the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party.

Generation likes Anta because of its “successful brand platform, excellent management team, and long runway for growth.” But Gore’s firm is well aware of longstanding concerns about the apparel giant’s link to slave labor.

“Sustainable investing can at times raise challenging issues, and we have recently been grappling with one at Anta Sports,” Generation said in its investor letter, acknowledging allegations that the apparel maker uses cotton made from slave labor in China’s Xinjiang province. Generation said it has discussed the issue with Anta management, and says the company is “well-intentioned” in its purported efforts to remove slave labor from its supply chain.

“In these situations, there can be a temptation to divest and move on,” the letter reads. “We believe this is the wrong thing to do with a management team that is engaged and well-intentioned, and where we feel our ownership can help to deliver change.”

Its claim notwithstanding, Anta has rebuffed calls from human rights groups to leave Xinjiang, where the Chinese government carries out genocide against Muslim Uyghurs. And in a particularly bold move, Anta said last year it uses cotton from Xinjiang and will continue to do so.

Gore’s compromise on Chinese firms for the sake of environmental sustainability bears similarity to another failed Democratic presidential candidate. John Kerry, the Biden administration’s climate czar, has refused to criticize China over human rights abuses out of concerns it would derail climate talks with Beijing. And like Gore, he has investments in controversial Chinese firms, including one linked to labor abuses against Uyghurs.

Both Gore and Kerry are in Davos, Switzerland, this week for the World Economic Forum. The annual conclave has long drawn criticism for attendees who fly on private jets halfway across the globe to lament the effect of climate change.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/inconvenient-truth-al-gores-woke-firm-invests-in-chinese-slave-labor/

The California Legislature is poised to pass Assembly Bill 2098, described as a “medical misinformation bill.” If passed, the new law would prohibit doctors from freely providing medical advice and treating their patients if those practices run counter to the official state sanctioned position.

In April 2020, the State of California Department of Consumer Affairs, the California State Board of Pharmacy, and the Medical Board of California issued a statement (pdf) regarding the “improper prescribing of medications related to treatment of Novel Coronavirus,” such as hydroxychloroquine, warning that “inappropriately prescribing or dispensing medications constitutes unprofessional conduct in California.”

On June 29, 2021, the Federation of State Medical Boards issued a warning, stating that “Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”

In August 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci said there was no evidence that ivermectin works, and that it’s more likely to cause harm. In December 2021, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning headlined, “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.” In an updated April 29, 2022, report, the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel said it “recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, except in clinical trials.”

Should AB 2098 become law, doctors who prescribe medications not approved by the state or who claim unsanctioned drugs are effective would see their licenses revoked and face strict penalties and disciplinary actions by the Medical Board of California.

In short, AB 2098 would designate the dissemination of information not approved by the state related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which causes “COVID-19,” as misinformation or disinformation, which constitutes unprofessional conduct.

One physician, Dr. Syed Haider, has already been reported to four state medical boards by pharmacists he says “don’t like filling ivermectin prescriptions.” He has also been forced to retain a lawyer to protect his medical license.

Since December 2020—after realizing that the United States had offshored almost all prescription drug manufacturing to unfriendly nations like China—Haider has focused on the prevention and treatment of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus through his online initiative mygotodoc.com, by providing easy online access to off-label prescriptions such as ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, budesonide, and protocols for COVID, long COVID, and vaccine injuries.

“There was such a huge demand for it, it just took over my life,” Haider, who used to be “a hospital doctor,” told The Epoch Times. “Then, the pandemic hit.”

In early February 2020, Haider contracted the CCP virus at a hospital that he was working in. His work as a temporary traveling physician across many different medical practices and hospitals was coming to an end and he thought that, with the pandemic outbreak, there would be plenty of work. However, although he had applied for a position at a hospital in New York, Haider had begun to hear about online prescribing, and he started to work through an unnamed online telemedicine provider in the United States.

“Once I heard about ivermectin and off-label prescribing, people would show up on the online website looking for help with COVID and I would try to tell them about off-label medications,” Haider recalled. “And they would just give me a blank stare. Aside from hydroxychloroquine, they had never heard about drugs like ivermectin. They thought I was crazy. I think the thought was, ‘If this stuff works, why haven’t I heard about it on CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC?”

According to Haider, what really changed things for him was when he saw the Dec. 8, 2020, testimony of Dr. Pierre Kory (pdf) before Sen. Ron Johnson and the Homeland Security Committee Meeting regarding early treatment of COVID-19, “not only as an individual physician,” but also on behalf of his non-profit organization, the Front-Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.

“Although we, like many, are extremely encouraged by the apparent successes in developing effective vaccines,” Kory said, “we also are dismayed at the near complete absence of guidance and research on effective early, at-home, or preventative treatment options apart from vaccines—a reality we find unconscionable.”

It was “with great pride as well as significant optimism” that Kory reported that his group, “led by Professor Paul E. Marik,” had “developed a highly effective protocol for preventing and early treatment of COVID-19,” and that “emerging publications” had provided “conclusive data on the profound efficacy of the anti-parasite, anti-viral drug, anti-inflammatory agent called ivermectin in all stages of the disease.”

“It was real clear in his face and in his demeanor that he was really upset and very sincere and it went viral on the internet,” Haider recalled. “Then, people started hearing from family and friends that they had used ivermectin and it made a difference for them, and people went online to find doctors who would prescribe it. At that point, things got very busy and I had to basically start my own website and prescribing it online to patients. Over the next year and a half, things really ramped up. More and more people had begun hearing about ivermectin, so more and more people were looking for it.”

According to the website, “mygotodoc makes it easy to safeguard you and your family, serving three important needs the wider medical community tends to ignore: (1) emergency antibiotics to have on hand in case disaster strikes and prescription drugs are unavailable, (2) 1-month backup supplies of your regular medication, and (3) safe off-label COVID protocols designed for prevention and treatment.”

“Myself and other doctors from all over the world have had incredible results with off-label protocols including ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, budesonide, and a number of other protocols,” Haider explained. “What you hear over and over again is about the successful treatment of 5,000, 7,000, or 10,000 patients and maybe one death. They are shocking numbers compared to what you’re hearing with conventional treatments the CDC or FDA are recommending and what hospitals and other doctors are doing that are not using off-label protocols.”

Personally, Haider has treated over 50,000 COVID-related patients, many of them elderly. He said that among his patients, there have been zero deaths and only five hospitalizations. Despite his success, under California’s proposed Bill AB 2098, doctor’s using similar methods would have the state interfere and persecute them for providing independent care.

“Like a lot of other doctors around the world, I’ve just been trying to raise awareness of this,” Haider explained. “But, like a lot of doctors in America, I’ve gotten letters from the American Medical Association, the Federal State Medical Board warning me that my license is at risk if I speak out about vaccines or if I spread misinformation or if I prescribe ivermectin. I’ve had pushback from pharmacists, insurance companies, from medical boards in multiple states, that have sent me complaints and asked me to explain why I am conducting experimental trials on patients and why I am prescribing ivermectin.”

Prior to all of this, Haider had worked for over 10 years as a trained hospital physician in internal medicine and had “never had a single complaint from anyone on anything.”

“So, it was a very strange experience over the past couple of years to see what has happened to medical providers, including pharmacists,” Haider explained. “Pharmacists were pushing back at us because they were getting letters from their pharmacist boards warning them not to dispense it. ”

According to Haider, dissenting voices have been muzzled and censored from the very onset of the pandemic and they are now being threatened with the loss of their medical licenses. Because of this, Haider has had to retain an attorney.

“It’s very stressful to have to reply to a medical board,” he explained, adding that it’s a “very opaque process.”

“You don’t know who is going to see it or review it. You don’t know whether or not they’re friendly to what you are doing or if they disagree with what you are doing, and it’s not like a court of law where you can bring in witnesses in your defense. They just make a decision and sometimes they don’t even explain to you the reason behind it.”

Worse than that, Haider said his experience felt like they were trying to get doctors like himself to “get tripped up and to say the wrong things” and to incriminate themselves.

“One of the medical boards accused me of conducting medical experimental trials,” he said. “It’s not like they don’t know I’m prescribing off-label. We do off-label prescribing all the time in medicine. About 40 percent of prescribing is off-label and it doesn’t fall under the classification of ‘experiment.’ It’s not an unauthorized experimental medical trial. But they use that wording to try to get me to defend myself against that attack. If I had foolishly replied to them and tried to defend myself against their terminology, I would have incriminated myself because I can’t run an experiment without having a review board, authorization, and specific consent forms for experimental drug trials.”

Haider reflected on how during the current shift to vilify ivermectin that “everyone seems to forget that, during the past six months, they had the same problems with prescribing hydroxychloroquine.”

“I can send a hydroxychloroquine prescription to any pharmacist and they’ll fill it without question,” he said. “But now, they won’t fill ivermectin. It almost seems political rather than medical. It’s not scientific. There’s something else going on and it’s very strange. We can now prescribe things through pharmacies they used to vilify. But because our entire medical establishment has now decided that ivermectin must be killed, pharmacists now have a problem with ivermectin.”

According to Haider, the purpose of what he described as the “medical misinformation bill” in front of the California Legislature is to prevent doctors from saying things that the state deems to be disinformation. “That,” he said, “begs the question of who decides what is the truth?”

“In any scientific field or endeavor, there is no absolute truth,” he explained, asserting that “Dr. Fauci is not science, like he claims to be.”

“He does not have the last word on what scientific truth is. We’re always getting closer to the truth, but we have never arrived at a final truth in medicine. So, there always has to be room for debate. Doctors have to be able to take multiple different sides of an argument. So physicians have to be able to hash things out among themselves and to prescribe off-label. You can’t single out one disease and say, ‘This is off limits for the way we’ve conducted medicine for the past 100 years.’ Patients should be able to consult with their physician, discuss treatments and risks, and make decisions without the interference of the government.

“In nearly every hospital and clinic in the United States right now, it’s considered to be some form of misinformation or disinformation to say anything other than the vaccines are safe and effective,” Haider noted. “To say there are any risks associated with the vaccines is claimed to be misinformation or disinformation, and the working definition of misinformation or disinformation seems to be anything that would prevent someone from submitting to or doubting the FDA and CDC guidelines and recommendations.”

This bill would affect any doctor licensed in California, including Haider.

If AB 2098 becomes law, any doctor who prescribes ivermectin—even at the request of their patient—can lose their license to practice medicine in California.

“Once you lose your license in one state and you have licenses to practice in other states, you have to report that you lost your license in California to every other state you are licensed in, and then every medical board will start asking questions like, ‘Why did you lose your license in California.’ Once the snowball starts rolling, depending on what the medical board thinks about the reasoning behind the loss of your license in California, you can lose all of your licenses.”

In the wake of the pandemic, Haider noted how the country has been further compromised by unprecedented delays in supply lines. We no longer have domestic manufacturing of almost any medications, including and especially antibiotics. In fact, China has captured over 97 percent of the U.S. market for antibiotics. In the setting of runaway inflation, food shortages, and soaring gas prices, it’s easy to imagine an America where pharmacy shelves are bare, or with limited stock and huge price increases.

If AB 2098 becomes law, the precedent that would be set is California gets to become the proving grounds for new legislation, not just in medicine, but in everything, Haider said.

“Once you make this inroad in violation of physician autonomy on how to treat COVID for their patients, that could just be the beginning,” Haider warned. “What about after that? Do you go after a doctor’s ability to prescribe off-label for anything? Do we have to be restricted to what has been FDA approved for any indication? What happens when we don’t have an on-label drug for the treatment of an indication? What then? How do we treat our patients then?”

The Epoch Times has reached out to California Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Cupertino), sponsor of the Assembly version of the bill, as well as the Medical Board of California.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/california-poised-to-adopt-medical-misinformation-bill-targeting-alternative-covid-19-protocols_4490626.html?utm_source=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-05-26-2&utm_medium=email&est=iXaqmXOE9lhUZPcmgaZ8%2FmSnnOZkL%2FJBvK7%2BsSj9lzu8WfSwQ6arncJM1p0g%2FFlTDQ%3D%3D

After months of buildup, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will outline the Biden administration’s China strategy on Thursday. His venue: an event hosted by a group friendly to the Chinese Communist Party.

Blinken will give his much-anticipated speech at an event hosted by the Asia Society, a U.S.-based nonprofit that aims “to build bridges of understanding between Americans and Asians.” The speech comes as the administration weighs whether to relax Trump-era tariffs imposed on China and prepares for diplomatic talks in Asia.

The event could undermine the Biden administration’s attempt to talk tough on China. Several Chinese state-owned companies—including the China Investment Corporation and State Grid Corporation of China—are part of the Asia Society’s global corporate network, which helps members engage with “corporate leaders, policymakers, and influencers.” One of the Asia Society’s trustees is Ning Gaoning, a Chinese Communist Party official whose company, Sinochem, has been blacklisted by the United States government over its ties to the Chinese military.

The Asia Society also has ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machine. It helped establish dozens of Confucius Institute classrooms across the country. U.S. government officials have warned that the Chinese government uses Confucius Institutes to disseminate pro-Beijing propaganda at American colleges and high schools. Another Asia Society board member is an official with the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a think tank that directs the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas influence activities.

“​​It’s unclear why Blinken chose Asia Society as a host,” said Anders Corr, an intelligence analyst and publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. Corr said Asia Society’s “soft-on-China reputation” and financial ties to state-controlled companies means it “should be avoided by U.S. government officials at any cost.”

Blinken is not expected to announce any major policy shifts toward China at the event, which he postponed earlier this month after contracting COVID-19. His speech comes amid intense debate in the Biden administration and business community over Trump-era tariffs against Chinese companies. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and officials on the National Security Council want to maintain tariffs while Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and others want to ease some in order to lower prices amid high inflation, the New York Times reported. Blinken is not expected to explicitly address how the administration should handle tariffs, according to the Times.

The Asia Society and many of its corporate sponsors support a rollback of tariffs. Anna Ashton, an official with the Asia Society Policy Institute, recently said the Chinese government had exercised “a great deal of patience” in hoping that American policymakers “would come to their senses” about the economic relationship between Washington and Beijing.

The State Department and Asia Society did not respond to requests for comment.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/soft-on-china-blinken-to-unveil-biden-admins-china-policy-at-china-friendly-org/

Gov. Kristi Noem: Power over personal health choices ‘is not President Biden’s to give away’

Republican governors Ron DeSantis (Fla.), Glenn Youngkin (Va.), and Kristi Noem (S.D.) denounced the Biden administration’s proposed amendments to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations.

“We in Florida, there is no way we will ever support this WHO thing,” DeSantis said Monday. “No way.”

The amendments would change WHO’s surveillance methods, allowing the organization to “develop early warning criteria for assessing and progressively updating the national, regional, or global risk posed by an event of unknown causes or sources.” WHO would provide member nations with assessments that indicate “the level of risk of potential spread and risks of potential serious public health impacts, based on assessed infectiousness and severity of the illness.”

The amendments would also change how WHO determines public health emergencies. While the previous regulations task the organization’s director-general and each member nation with determining a crisis, the amendments delegate that power solely to the director-general. The amendments also allow the director-general to issue an intermediate public health alert if he deems that a crisis requires international awareness, even if it doesn’t meet international public health emergency standards.

DeSantis is not the only governor wary of the amendments.

“South Dakota will continue to trust our people to exercise personal responsibility over their health,” Noem said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon. “That power is not President Biden’s to give away—the 10th Amendment reserves it for the states and for the people.”

A spokeswoman for Youngkin called the Biden administration’s plans “incredibly concerning” and said “giving WHO sovereignty over U.S. health decisions” is “not something Governor Youngkin condones or supports.”

WHO has a history of working against U.S. interests. Under the leadership of Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organization repeatedly allowed the Communist regime in China to hold sway over official health decisions. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO followed Beijing’s lead and falsely claimed for weeks that human-to-human transmission was unconfirmed. A top WHO official in July 2020 promoted an anti-Taiwan conspiracy theory about the virus. Under former president Donald Trump, the United States withdrew from the organization, but President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s decision.

Delegates from almost 200 countries have gathered this month in Geneva, Switzerland, for the 75th World Health Assembly, where they are discussing the changes.

Member nations are allowed to reject WHO’s emergency assistance, but they must alert WHO of their rationale within 48 hours of the rejection.

The Biden administration’s proposals would establish “compliance committees” in each member country to gather information and promote compliance with regulations.

Members hope to establish a new pandemic agreement in addition to the International Health Regulations, which legally bind countries to detect and report potential health threats. If approved, these amendments are not expected to take effect until 2024.

In his Monday remarks to the World Health Assembly, a meeting of WHO’s legislative body, Health and Human Services director of global affairs Loyce Pace said the United States is pleased “with the consensus reached this week on concrete action and further work to strengthen existing tools available to the WHO and to all Member States.”

“This includes strengthening the International Health Regulations from 2005 to clarify roles and responsibilities, increase transparency and accountability, share best practices, and communicate in real-time with our global partners,” Pace said.

Member nations have until August to decide on initial drafts of the amendments.

Update 10:53 p.m.: This piece has been updated to include comment from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R., Va.).

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/governors-say-no-way-to-biden-plans-to-empower-pro-china-health-organization/

The World Health Organization (WHO) is responding to a string of monkeypox outbreaks, and will be convening an emergency meeting on the virus and its global spread.

In terms of government power, the timing of this outbreak couldn’t be better for the WHO—which may soon be granted powers to manage laws on global health outbreaks, and which is oddly well-positioned for a monkeypox outbreak following a recent “germ-games” call, and recent incidents tied to figures who include Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates.

The New York Post declared, “The World Health Organization is reportedly convening an emergency meeting into the alarming spread of monkeypox around the world—including a possible case in the Big Apple.” The Telegraph reports that the United Nations health authority will be bringing together “a group of leading experts” in the meeting, which is believed to be focused on how the virus is suddenly spreading so widely. It also allegedly will look into the virus’s prevalence among homosexual men and on the “vaccination situation.”

The numbers of infections are by no means high. By May 23, the University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School recorded 245 either confirmed or suspected cases in the entire world. Sajid Javid, the UK health secretary, wrote on Twitter: “Most cases are mild …”

The timing of all of this is important. It gives the WHO a chance to show its worth, since it’s in the process of trying to get new and expansive powers—under the banner of governing global health emergencies.

The United Nations is considering various amendments to the WHO at its 75th World Health Assembly in Geneva, that could give its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the unilateral authority to declare a public health emergency with far-reaching powers over the laws of sovereign nations.

Not only would this give Tedros the ability to declare a public health emergency in any nation he wants—using whatever evidence he wants—but it would also allow him to dictate policies that the target country should adopt to respond to the U.N.’s declared emergency. If a country refuses, a proposed amendment could give the WHO the ability to sanction that country.

If you’re wondering whether giving such powers to a U.N. agency that couldn’t demonstrate its independence from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could fly in the face of U.S. law, it seems that President Joe Biden has the answer. Not only is the Biden administration allowing this shift in power to the WHO, but it’s also helping advance it.

The United States proposed amendments to the WHO in January, which will be considered at the U.N. meeting in Geneva, The Epoch Times reports. These included an amendment that would allow the WHO to make public declarations on a health crisis without needing to consult with the target country, and without needing to get verification from local officials. The Biden administration’s proposals would also give $2.47 billion in funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for things including “enhancements to domestic sentinel surveillance programs,” “investments in global genomic surveillance approaches,” and other systems.

As The Epoch Times reports, “Respiratory surveillance platforms include video cameras and recorders that alert authorities when members of the public are seen coughing or otherwise acting in a manner that could indicate the presence of an infectious disease or help spread one already present in a population. Such equipment is widely used in China.”

Whether or not monkeypox poses a large threat to public health, it presents a serious threat to public freedom. The virus could act as a Trojan horse, carrying inside it all the justifications to grant the WHO a dictator’s dream of global power, and give the CDC a system of surveillance beyond anything Orwell could have conceived.

Under normal circumstances, monkeypox wouldn’t be a large viral risk. The CDC states that it can be transmitted human-to-human mainly by respiratory droplets that typically don’t travel more than a few feet, and so it notes that “prolonged face-to-face contact is required.”

Even Biden is walking back his statements that people should be concerned about monkeypox, and is clarifying that it’s not as serious of a threat as COVID-19.

Regardless of its inability to spread widely under normal circumstances, a global discussion on monkeypox vaccines started in 2021 after Gates warned of a smallpox bioterrorist attack as a potential next pandemic. He called on world leaders to hold “germ games” and give the WHO new powers—similar to the ones they may soon receive—under a new WHO “Pandemic Task Force.”

Gates also called for pandemic surveillance systems, which seem eerily similar to what the Biden administration submitted in its proposed amendments for the WHO’s new powers.

“It’ll take probably about $1 billion a year for a pandemic Task Force at the WHO level, which is doing the surveillance and actually doing what I call ‘germ games’ where you practice.” Gates said in 2021, Sky News reported. “You say, OK, what if a bioterrorist brought smallpox to 10 airports? You know, how would the world respond to that?”

Even though the mention of smallpox by Gates was minor, it purportedly was used to justify new discussions on a smallpox vaccine that could also treat monkeypox. Just several days later, on Nov. 8, 2021, Precision Vaccinations reported, “Gates Germ-Game Warning Motivates Smallpox Vaccine Discussions.”

The “discussions” in question were about a Jynneos Smallpox and Monkeypox Vaccine—approved in 2019. Precision Vaccinations noted that it’s “the only FDA-approved non-replicating smallpox vaccine and the only FDA-approved monkeypox vaccine for non-military use.”

Movement within the CDC began a few days earlier, on Nov. 3, 2021. It says that “the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices reviewed the two presentations focused on the smallpox vaccine Jynneos.”

And then, just several days later, an even stranger occurrence took place—carrying out the idea of a “germ game” similar to what Gates proposed.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) partnered with the Munich Security Conference to imagine a pandemic scenario with monkeypox. Following the hypothetical warning from Gates, the germ game imagined a strain of monkeypox, released through a bioterrorist attack, that had been altered to be resistant to vaccines.

On Nov. 23, 2021, the NTI published its results from the tabletop game, which showed the spread of the virus over the course of 18 months.

“By the end of the exercise, the fictional pandemic resulted in more than 3 billion cases and 270 million fatalities worldwide,” it states.

In an incredible act of foresight, the exercise from last year imagined that monkeypox would appear almost exactly when it did: in mid-May this year.

The NTI also published a detailed report on its results. According to a timeline on page 12 of the report, it imagined that in May 2022, the initial outbreak of monkeypox would infect 1,421 people and kill four people. By January 2023, it would spread to 83 countries, infect 70 million, and kill 1.3 million. At that point, it would be discovered that monkeypox had been engineered to be vaccine-resistant, and supply chain challenges would make a response more difficult.

After one year, on May 10, 2023, it was predicted to infect 480 million people and kill 27 million, and it would be revealed that a bioterror attack on a civilian biolab had been the origin. Then, by Dec. 1, 2023, the virus would be estimated to infect 3.2 billion people and kill 271 million.

Of course, the important caveat with their estimates is that the monkeypox strain they imagined was one that had been engineered to be vaccine-resistant. Accurate or not, the exercise gives authorities a predictive scenario to justify “pandemic response” policies. And we’ve seen this happen before.

A very similar “germ game” was held just before the outbreak of COVID-19, with many of the same figures involved now making noise about monkeypox and a new “pandemic.”

New York Magazine reported in February 2020 that “two months before the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 emerged in central China, a group of public-health experts gathered in New York City for a simulation.” It also noted, “The characteristics of the virus currently causing global havoc are remarkably similar to the one proposed in the simulation, dubbed ‘Event 201.’”

Partners in the exercise included the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Similar to the monkeypox “germ game” before the monkeypox outbreak, the coronavirus “germ game” before the coronavirus outbreak made predictions of a mass fatality scenario. It estimated that 65 million people would die.

The Center for Health Security issued a statement on its coronavirus exercise on Jan. 24, 2020. It stated that they weren’t predicting that COVID-19 would kill 65 million people, as the simulated virus was different from the CCP virus.

Yet the important thing wasn’t the specifics of the “germ game,” but instead, how the game and its participants went on to inform government policy.

And now, with monkeypox, we’ve arrived at a similar impasse. A “germ game” imagined the potential effect of the virus, and produced inflated numbers of deaths and infections by an imaginary version of monkeypox as the model, which was resistant to vaccines. Most importantly, this also coincides with the international community weighing whether the WHO should be granted powers to govern global health emergencies.

Among the trends of COVID-19 is that governments may now be more inclined to use a seasonal virus, already declared as endemic, to justify an indefinite global emergency. Additionally, small outbreaks can also be used to justify deeply authoritarian policies that aren’t limited to health care.

Read More

Narrative and Ideological Warfare: The Ongoing Battle Between Liberty and Authoritarianism

The worst example of this is the CCP, which is claiming to use single-digit infections to lock down entire megacities. And remember that under the Trump administration, the WHO was shown to be unable to demonstrate its independence from the CCP.

Health emergency response is also no longer limited to just medicine. The COVID-19 model included mass changes to election systems that undermined the basic integrity of elected government, and widespread censorship under the narrative of fighting “disinformation” and “misinformation.” Remember that at the beginning of the pandemic, the WHO and various U.N. agencies declared an “infodemic” that required controls and censorship of public information.

In the backdrop of the monkeypox scare, the world is preparing to hand the keys to the kingdom to the WHO. And with the strange track of “germ games” and overblown numbers by the so-called experts pulling the strings, the groundwork for this public takeover has already been laid.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/monkeypox-games-could-lay-groundwork-for-who-pandemic-takeover_4484764.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2022-05-25&utm_medium=email&est=i4v9KVNQquvDGcYdeKLlx2GFFoOWP0TumpFPaBFA2PHLg9jb0rqWHrfwkhUL1K0ZRA%3D%3D

CONVENIENT THING TO LOSE.

The World Economic Forum has removed a document from its website, which revealed the attendance of the Mayor of the Chinese city of Wuhan – which hosts the lab believed to be responsible for COVID-19 –  at one of its events.

Former Wuhan Mayor Tang Liangzhi is included on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) list of attendees to its 2013 “Meeting of the New Champions.” The event, hosted in China, is described by the WEF as the “premier gathering in Asia of leaders of multinational corporations [and] governments.” “The Meeting was held in close collaboration with the Government of the People’s Republic of China,” explains the WEF meeting summary.

A link containing a 42-page document, which revealed hundreds of attendees at the event, reroutes users to an error page reading “Apologies – this section of our website is currently unavailable.” An archived version of the webpage, however, reveals a document containing a list of the event’s participants, including the then-Mayor of the Wuhan Municipal Government Tang Liangzhi.

Tang, 61, served as Mayor of Wuhan from 2011 to 2014 before serving in the same role in other cities including Chengdu and Chongqing. He was later promoted in December 2021 to the Party Branch Secretary of the Anhui Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which has been identified as the “highest-ranking entity overseeing” China’s United Front by the U.S. government.

The 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 overseas Chinese communities, foreign governments, and other actors to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.” The U.S. State Department also compares the United Front to the Chinese regime’s “magic weapon” to compromise Western politicians and elites.

MUST READ: Mask Mandates Caused MORE COVID Deaths, Study Alleges.

Tang’s ties to Wuhan follow controversy of the city and one of its premier laboratories, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, potentially being the source of COVID-19. The lab, which is under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, manipulated bat coronaviruses with striking genetic similarities to COVID-19 to become deadlier to humans.

The WEF has also been accused of exploiting COVID-19 to advance its transformational social, political, and business agenda through its push for the “Great Reset.”

IS YOUR REPRESENTATIVE GOING TO DAVOS, AND WHY?

The World Economic Forum has announced a list of public figure attendees for its upcoming Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Taking place May 22nd through 26th, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting will count 50 heads of government and thousands of corporate, philanthropic, and scientific leaders in attendance.

Twenty-five American officials, including two White House representatives, are going to the meeting. An additional 12 Democrat and 10 Republican politicians, listed below, will accompany them.

Visit TakeDownTheWEF.com for more on the World Economic Forum.

U.S. and Ukrainian attendees outnumber those coming from other leading nations, which includes just three from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany respectively.

The names of U.S. delegates appear below, with a full list of public figure attendees in the embedded spreadsheet following.

American Attendees of the World Economic Forum 2022:

• Gina Raimondo Secretary of Commerce of USA
• John F. Kerry Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the United States of America
• Bill Keating Congressman from Massachusetts (D)
• Daniel Meuser Congressman from Pennsylvania (R)
• Madeleine Dean Congresswoman from Pennsylvania (D)
• Ted Lieu Congressman from California (D)
• Ann Wagner Congresswoman from Missouri (R)
• Christopher A. Coons Senator from Delaware (D)
• Darrell Issa Congressman from California (R)
• Dean Phillips Congressman from Minnesota (D)
• Debra Fischer Senator from Nebraska (R)
• Eric Holcomb Governor of Indiana (R)
• Gregory W. Meeks Congressman from New York (D)
• John W. Hickenlooper Senator from Colorado (D)
• Larry Hogan Governor of Maryland (R)
• Michael McCaul Congressman from Texas (R)
• Pat Toomey Senator from Pennsylvania (R)
• Patrick J. Leahy Senator from Vermont (D)
• Robert Menendez Senator from New Jersey (D)
• Roger F. Wicker Senator from Mississippi (R)
• Seth Moulton Congressman from Massachusetts (D)
• Sheldon Whitehouse Senator from Rhode Island (D)
• Ted Deutch Congressman from Florida (D)
• Francis Suarez Mayor of Miami (R)
• Al Gore Vice-President of the United States (1993-2001) (D)

“The Annual Meeting 2022 will embody the World Economic Forum’s philosophy of collaborative, multistakeholder impact, providing a unique collaborative environment in which to reconnect, share insights, gain fresh perspectives, and build problem-solving communities and initiatives,” explains the group, whose efforts to exploit COVID-19 for its “Great Reset” has come under intense scrutiny.

“Against a backdrop of deepening global frictions and fractures, it will be the starting point for a new era of global responsibility and cooperation,” posits the WEF, which selected “history at a turning point” as its event’s primary theme.

The event focuses on eight key areas: Climate and Nature; Fairer Economies; Tech and Innovation; Jobs and Skills; Better Business; Health and Healthcare; Global Cooperation; and Society and Equity. Panel discussions include “Economic Weaponry: Uses and Effectiveness of Sanctions,” “Safeguarding Global Scientific Collaboration,” “Blue Foods for a Sustainable Future,” “The Journey towards Racial Equity”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will also be giving a special welcome address on the opening day of that event and will be followed by executives from companies such as COVID-19 vaccine maker Pfizer.

The event also counts dozens of corporate and philanthropic partners, including Alibaba Group, which is a key component of the Chinese Communist Party’s social credit score system, Google, Amazon, AstraZeneca, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BlackRock, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, Meta, Johnson & Johnson, Huawei Technologies, Pfizer, and the Wellcome Trust.

Read the full list of attendees:

Parkland student-turned-liberal activist in interview with Chinese propaganda paper slams US as ‘white supremacist country’

A survivor of the 2018 Parkland, Fla., high school shooting who has since become a liberal activist labeled the United States a “white supremacist country” during an interview with a Chinese propaganda outlet.

“This is a white supremacist country,” Ryan Deitsch told the Global Times, which is operated by the Chinese Communist Party. “Our constitution was written by slave owners and white supremacists. We continue to uphold these doctrines.”

“This is a white supremacist country. Our constitution was written by slave owners and white supremacists. We continue to uphold these doctrines.” @Ryan_Deitsch, a survivor of Parkland shooting massacre, told @WenwenWang1127 what he thought of the Buffalo attack in #ITalk show. pic.twitter.com/qmv9aWpdTj

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) May 18, 2022

After the shooting, Deitsch made multiple media appearances, including a confrontation with Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) at a 2018 CNN town hall, and has since became a left-wing activist. He says he was a delegate on the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee, appointed by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.). His LinkedIn profile says his work on the committee was focused on “clarifying language around sex worker protections.”

China for years has been carrying out a genocide against the ethnic Uyghur minority. In December, Congress passed a bill sanctioning China for its human rights abuses and banning imports from Xinjiang, where a large Uyghur population lives and works.

Left-wing pundits and Democratic politicians have frequently accused their opponents of “white supremacy.” In August, a Minnesota Democratic official celebrated the rioters who burned down the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct during the summer of 2020, saying that “fetishizing decorum … is a hallmark of white supremacy.” Activists have similarly overwritten traditional educational curricula and abolished admissions tests as vestiges of “white supremacy.”

While Deitsch talked about the Saturday shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, in which an 18-year-old white nationalist gunman on Saturday shot and killed 10 black people, he did not mention the separate racially motivated shooting that occurred the next day. A gunman on Sunday shot up a California church filled with Taiwanese congregants. The local sheriff’s office reported the shooter was a Chinese immigrant motivated by his hate for the Taiwanese.

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/the-other-david-hogg-is-now-a-willing-chinese-propaganda-tool/

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Tuesday placed a hold on President Joe Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, saying he does not fully understand the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“Nicholas Burns has a long career in public service, but it is a career defined by the failure to understand the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party,” Rubio said of the procedural move in a statement.

Rubio, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a senior member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said that Burns has “displayed no remorse or concern” about his current business relationships with “nationless corporations” operating in China.

“Burns is exactly the type of nominee I expect from President Biden given this administration’s weak approach toward China, including lobbying against my bipartisan Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.”

Longtime diplomat Burns, 65, formerly served as U.S. ambassador to NATO and Greece.

Rubio added, “The last thing we need is another caretaker of American decline in the room with the Chinese Communist Party.”

It comes weeks after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has placed a hold on more than two dozen of the president’s picks, reportedly signaled that he does not intend to block Burns’ confirmation, according to Bloomberg.

Burns at his Senate confirmation hearing last month called China the “most dangerous competitor” to the United States and said the Chinese regime’s “genocide in Xinjiang,” abuses in Tibet, its “smothering” of Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms, and “bullying of Taiwan” must stop.

He also said China’s military threat to Taiwan was growing, but that maintaining the One China policy was the smartest and most effective way to deter China from exercising force over the self-ruled democratic island.

“This is a policy that can succeed if we execute it consistently and with some strength,” Burns told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, adding that the most important deterrent was for the United States to maintain its military standing in the Indo-Pacific.

Still, he said Congress and the executive branch had every right to “expand our arms provisions to Taiwan.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Burns and the Biden administration for comment.

Rubio’s hold on Burns also comes one day after Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping engaged in talks in their first virtual summit as heads of state. Both leaders did not reach any “breakthrough” on issues concerning both nations in the three-hour talks.

Reuters contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/sen-rubio-blocks-bidens-ambassador-pick-for-china_4108414.html

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) publicly released a letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland questioning contradictory claims by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about Hunter Biden’s connection to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interests.

The son of President Joe Biden has been in the spotlight since the 2020 election, when a laptop recovered at a computer repair shop revealed distasteful information about the private life and business dealings of Hunter Biden.

However, Hunter Biden was in the crosshairs of the DOJ long before the 2020 presidential election: In a 2018 court filing, the DOJ expressed its intention to gather information under the standards set out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on one of Hunter Biden’s many foreign business associates, Chi-Ping “Patrick” Ho (pdf), who is associated with CCP intelligence services.

The DOJ’s request to gather this information was approved by a federal court.

In Dec. 2017, Ho was charged with international bribery and money laundering for the China Energy Fund Committee, a subsidiary of one of China’s largest corporations, which itself has extensive links to the CCP. Ho was a top executive at the firm.

In March of this year, Grassley and Johnson submitted a request to the DOJ, now led by Biden-appointed Garland, asking for information related to investigations concerning Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships.

Following that request, the DOJ sent a belated reply to the senators in July, telling them that the DOJ is “not in a position to confirm the existence of the information that is sought” (pdf).

Now, Grassley and Johnson are asking the DOJ to reconcile these conflicting claims.

“Based on the extensive relationships between and among Hunter Biden and individuals connected to the communist Chinese regime, our letter requested ‘all intelligence records, including but not limited to, all Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act-derived information,’” wrote the senators.

“Our request was based, in part, on reporting and a federal court filing by the Department that said it had obtained at least one Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant relating to Patrick Ho, indicating his potential counterintelligence threat to the United States,” the letter added.

The senators then cited the DOJ’s own words from its 2018 filing, which reads in part, “The United States intends to offer into evidence, or otherwise use or disclose in any proceedings in the above-captioned matter, information obtained or derived from electronic surveillance and physical search conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.”

“Despite this sworn acknowledgement by the Department you oversee, your July 12, 2021, response to our letter denied knowing whether the Department even possessed the information,” Grassley and Johnson continued.

The duo then blasted the DOJ for the apparent contradiction.

“Both statements cannot be true. Either the statement in your July 12, 2021, letter is true—that the Department is unaware of whether it possesses the relevant material—or the Department’s February 8, 2018, statement to federal court that the Department is aware of the fact that it possesses the relevant material is true,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. “Therefore, one statement is false.”

To reconcile this inconsistency, Grassley and Johnson have demanded an official DOJ response to their letter by no later than Nov. 22 and for the DOJ to “either amend [its] July 12, 2021, letter to correct the inaccurate statement or confirm in writing that the Department’s February 8, 2018, court filing stating that the Department possesses FISA-related information on Patrick Ho was an inaccurate statement to federal court.”

Thus far, the DOJ has not publicly responded to Grassley’s and Johnson’s allegations in the letter.

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the letter.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/grassley-johnson-question-doj-over-contradictory-claims-about-hunter-biden-associate_4108177.html

Another January 6th Commission member is compromised by the CCP

Rep. Elaine Luria – a member of the Congressional January 6th Commission – has six-figure investments in a Chinese Communist Party-linked tech firm flagged by the U.S. State Department for aiding the regime’s military and espionage capabilities, The National Pulse can reveal.

The Virginia Congresswoman‘s most recent financial disclosure reveals an investment worth $250,000 to $500,000 in Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant whose executives include powerful members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Alibaba 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 “state security bureaucracy,” former Assistant Secretary for International Security and Nonproliferation Christopher Ford revealed.

The State Department has also flagged the company as a “tool” of the Chinese Communist Party, aiding in its build-up of “technology-facilitated surveillance and social control.”

The report states:

Significantly, the modern “China Model” is built upon a foundation of technology-facilitated surveillance and social control.  These techniques for ruling China have been – and continue to be – in critical ways developed, built, and maintained on behalf of the Party-State by technology firms such as Huawei, Tencent, ZTE, Alibaba, and Baidu.  As these companies export their products and services to the rest of the world, the security and human rights problems associated with this “China Model” are progressively exported with them.

Companies including Alibaba “have 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 report adds.

Biden Climate Advisor Lauded ‘Global Benefit’ Of China’s Exploitative Belt And Road Initiative In Unearthed Op-Ed.

Yesterday, The National Pulse revealed how Rep. Adam Schiff, another Jan 6th commission member met with a Chinese Communist Party official previously responsible for spearheading the regime’s foreign influence operations on a visit to Washington, D.C. sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation.

Furthermore, the Chairman of the Commission, Bennie Thompson, has a history of backing extremist guerilla warfare groups in America. Read more here.

Mitch Landrieu will oversee $1.2 trillion in infrastructure spending

President Joe Biden’s pick to oversee $1.2 trillion in infrastructure spending is a top adviser to a trade organization that seeks Chinese investment in American infrastructure.

Mitch Landrieu serves as strategic adviser to the United States China Heartland Association, which supports cultural and business exchange between China and 20 states in the American heartland. The association frequently partners with Chinese Communist Party front groups that operate abroad.

Landrieu’s position with the Heartland Association could raise eyebrows given the organization’s promotion of Chinese investment in domestic infrastructure projects. American officials have expressed concern that the Chinese government and state-linked companies use infrastructure investments in foreign countries to influence policy abroad. Heartland Association chairman Bob Holden, the former Democratic governor of Missouri, this year urged Chinese investment in U.S. infrastructure, saying it presents a “win-win” for both sides.

Landrieu is an unpaid adviser to the Heartland Association, according to Executive Director Min Fan. Fan said that the association’s advisers—a list that includes Export-Import Bank nominee Reta Jo Lewis—”are all Governor Holden’s friends who agreed to be consulted when we need their advice.” Fan told the Washington Free Beacon that she is not aware of Landrieu’s providing any advice to the Heartland Association.

Biden on Sunday appointed Landrieu, the former Democratic mayor of New Orleans, to serve as infrastructure coordinator, a position in which he will supervise spending on roads, bridges, ports, and other infrastructure across the country. The White House says Landrieu’s work on rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina makes him qualified for the post.

The Heartland Association has worked closely with two Chinese Communist Party organizations, the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the Chinese People’s Association for Relations with Foreign Countries. An executive with the China-United States Exchange Foundation serves on the Heartland Association’s board of directors.

CIA director William Burns testified this year that in his previous role as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, he severed ties with the Exchange Foundation because of its efforts to influence American policymakers. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo last year cancelled a diplomatic event sponsored by the Chinese People’s Association for Relations with Foreign Countries, saying the group sought to “malignly influence” state and local leaders to advance China’s foreign policy goals.

While the Heartland Association does not disclose its financial backers, the group has touted partnerships with Chinese automotive glass maker Fuyao Group and solar panel maker Wanxiang New America.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/biden-infrastructure-czar-advises-pro-china-group/