Tag Archives: China

Something To Watch

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On September 23rd, The Geller Report reported the following headline:

World’s second-largest economy offloaded US$13.6 billion worth of US debt in July

But China still remains the second-largest foreign holder of US Treasury bills, having been surpassed by Japan in mid-2019

The article reports:

Amid persistent concerns over the safety of its overseas assets – most of which are US dollar-denominated – China has slashed its holdings of United States Treasury bills for the fourth straight month.

The world’s second-largest economy offloaded US$13.6 billion worth of US debt in July, bringing China’s holdings to US$821.8 billion, according to the latest data from the US Department of the Treasury.
China’s overall holding of US debt remains at a 14-year low, after reaching that level in June.

Beijing has been continuously cutting China’s US debt holdings since early 2022, with two exceptions – in March of this year and July 2022, when it increased holdings by US$20.3 billion and US$320 million, respectively.

Beijing remains the second-largest foreign holder of US Treasury bills after being surpassed by Japan in June 2019.

Keep in mind that we are seeing a global move away from the U.S. Dollar as a global currency. That has a lot to do with the reckless spending by our government. As oil is traded in currency other than PetroDollars, we can also expect a move toward digital currency. There is nothing wrong with digital currency as long as it is not Central Bank Digital Currency, which gives the government control over how much money you earn and how you spend that money. If you are going to invest in digital currency, treat it like buying a stock–do your research first! Meanwhile, keep an eye on China as it unloads American debt.

It Only Works If We All Do It

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I am not at all convinced that man is capable of changing the earth’s climate. However, if we are going to attempt such a thing, we all need to participate. It does no good for America to cripple its economy by demanding more higher usage of inefficient green energy while China is building coal plants at a rapid rate.

On Friday, Cowboy State Daily reported:

As much as it’s reported that the world is going through a transition away from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy, the data doesn’t support it. 

The International Energy Agency released its 2023 Coal Market Update on Thursday, which shows that global coal consumption in 2022 rose by 3.3% to a record 8.3 billion tons. While the use of coal in European countries and the United States has declined, those reductions are offset by increases in Asian countries, primarily India and China. 

Thirty years ago, the U.S. and European share of coal consumption was 40%. By 2024, the IEA predicts it will fall to 8%. 

Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, told Cowboy State Daily that the efforts to reduce emissions in the U.S. by shutting down coal plants will have no impact on global warming because Asian countries are moving full steam ahead with coal. 

“The environment doesn’t have glass walls surrounding the United States,” Bear said. 

The article concludes:

Bear said the Biden administration’s drive to lower the United States’ emissions while China rebuffs any attempt to drive its down will put America at a disadvantage with the Asian country. 

“The more that we put constraints on the United States emissions, the more difficult it is for us to compete with Asia, economically and militarily. And those are dangerous things,” Bear said. 

Bear said that as the nation moves toward wind and solar energy, which drive up energy costs and degrade reliability on the nation’s grid, the more American businesses and industries will suffer. 

“If the cost of energy is so high that you can’t, as a young person, create something new and build a business, then you’re killing the American dream,” he said.

The Biden administration’s energy policies are working very hard to make America a third-world country.

What Were The Goods Or Services Provided?

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On Thursday, Breitbart reported the following:

Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Chris Clark, admitted in court Wednesday the president’s son received $664,000 from CEFC China Energy Co. in 2017, contradicting President Joe Biden’s claim Hunter Biden never received money from a Chinese entity.

During a hearing before U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, Clark revealed Hunter made over one million dollars in foreign business transactions, including $664,000 from CEFC, a company linked to the CCP and Chinese intelligence.

“During calendar year 2017, Biden earned substantial income, including: just under $1 million from a company he formed with the CEO of a Chinese business conglomerate [BHR Partners]; $666,666 from his domestic business interests; approximately $664,000 from a Chinese infrastructure investment company[CEFC]…” Clark told the judge, according to the court transcript obtained by not-for-profit Marco Polo.

The article concludes:

The House Oversight Committee James Comer (R-KY) revealed the Biden family business, over the course of several years, received over $10 million from business schemes in Romania and China in return for what appears to be influence peddling. In addition, Burisma paid the Biden family business $7.3 million over the course of many years, including when Joe Biden was vice president, IRS agent Joseph Ziegler told Congress last week.

Suspicious Activity Reports obtained by the committee revealed a Biden associate, Rob Walker, received a $3 million wire transfer from CEFC China Energy Co. In turn, four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — received a collective $1.3 million cut from the $3 million wire transfer.

The committee is investigating the entities that accepted and passed money through to the Biden business. The Biden business opened more than 20 shell companies to hide payments and launder money, Comer said in July.

The Biden family makes the Gambino Mafia family look like pikers.

Weaponizing Climate Change

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Author: R.Alan Harrop, Ph.D.

A rational discussion of climate variation should be acceptable to everyone. Question: Do Marxist climate extremists want a rational discussion and investigation? Obviously not. They are increasingly using climate change as a weapon to further their radical Marxist ideologies. Let’s see how they are doing this.

First of all, they are acting more like cultists than objective, rational investigators. Cults are based on emotional commitments that exclude others who do not share their beliefs. Labeling people who question their beliefs that climate warming is caused by man-made use of fossil fuels rather than natural causes as “climate change deniers” does not foster rational inquiry and debate.

Second, as a recent book by Jeremy Williams shows, they are now claiming that climate change is racist and an example of white supremacy. He claims that Blacks and other minorities suffer disproportionately from the negative impacts of man-made climate change. Since the United States, Canada and Australia, use much more electricity per person, than say, African countries like Madagascar it must be due to racism. Also, since many polluting factories are located in communities with a higher concentration of Blacks; this is more evidence of white privilege.

Third, the Marxists are good at re-inventing the meaning of words to further their agenda. Jeremy Williams claims that climate change is actually a form of violence perpetrated on Black people. He equates it with alleged police brutality using George Floyd’s death as a parallel. All this is intended, of course, to justify the actions of groups like Black Lives Matter and give them another reason (i.e. climate change) to strike out towards Whites.

Clearly, the climate extremists are using these tactics to attack Western civilization, industrialism, and capitalism. Their solution is a typical Marxist one: more extensive government control of our lives– including what we eat, where we live, where we travel, etc. They are very pleased with the Biden regime not only greatly expanding tax money spent on solar/wind energy, blocking pipelines and drilling, and encouraging Federal agencies to implement restrictive regulations against gas stoves, reasonably priced home appliances, and gas vehicle emissions. All of these actions will increase the cost of living for all Americans, especially the middle class.

This Marxist attack on Western Civilization must be stopped if we are to survive as a nation. China is applauding our caving in to the destruction of our own country by these Marxist extremists while they build a new coal powered plant on average of one per week!

 

A Major Green Energy ‘Whoops’

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On July 3, a website called environmental progress posted the following:

Last August, in an amalgamation of ‘The Green New Deal’ meets ‘Build Back Better’, President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act gifted the renewables industry with billions of dollars worth of taxpayer-funded subsidies. What few backing the bill realized was that the largest beneficiary would likely be China due to its expansive grip on the global solar photovoltaic (PV) industry.

Worse than that, it might end up misdirecting the world’s clean energy efforts into dirtier than appreciated energy technologies because of the country’s ongoing dependence on coal-fired energy.

Information unearthed by Environmental Progress points to a gaping oversight in how the figures influencing government net zero policy and investments in solar worldwide are compiled and collated due to the difficulty of collecting accurate information out of China, especially for the purification processes used to create silicon wafers.

Key to this blind spot is that the source material for most of the assessments is provided by a small number of data compilers, many if not all of them working in collaboration with the International Energy Agency (IEA). The data is voluntarily submitted by the industry in response to academic surveys. The nature and profile of the respondents is never publicy revealed, so that there is the potential for conflicts of interest to develop.

A further puzzle is how that data feeds into an organization called Ecoinvent, a Swiss-based non-profit founded in 1998 that dubs itself “the world’s most consistent and transparent life cycle inventory database”. This data is relied on by institutions worldwide, including the IPCC and IEA itself, to calculate their carbon footprint projections, including the sixth assessment report published as recently as March 2023.

Based on such data, the IPCC claims solar PV is 48 gCO2/kWh. But, as we’ll see below, a new investigation started by Italian researcher, Enrico Mariutti, suggests that the number is closer to between 170 and 250 gCO2/kWh, depending on the energy mix used to power PV production. If this estimate is accurate, solar would not compare favorably with natural gas, which is around 50 gCO2/kWh with carbon capture, and 400 to 500 without.

On July 24, in a similar article, Hot Air noted:

I think we all know how the Chinese came to be at the forefront of solar panel manufacturing – the same way they’ve done everything else. They don’t have an innovative bone in their collective billion bodies, but what they do have is conniving. Plus cheap labor, no environmental strictures, and enterprise once they steal what they need to make something. And that’s exactly what happened with the solar industry. There were once German leaders in solar technology who are long out of business because of the Chinese filching their designs.

I think it’s time to rethink this ‘green energy’ thing.

 

Changes Made Due To Being Under Scrutiny?

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On Thursday, The Epoch Times posted an article about a grant that was part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) that was rescinded.

The article reports:

House Republicans have voiced worries about the Biden administration’s energy-related spending, questioning a Department of Energy (DOE) official about how a Chinese-owned battery manufacturer was on pace to get hundreds of millions in taxpayer money before the Biden administration yanked the money away last month.

That company, Microvast, somehow qualified for a $200 million grant to build a battery separator facility in Tennessee as part of spending doled out through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL).

The Department of Energy announced the decision in October 2022 as part of $2.8 billion in what its announcement repeatedly described as “funded projects” for the American battery sector.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the money would “supercharge the private sector to ensure our clean energy future is American-made.”

“Shortly after the announcement, Microvast’s association with the Chinese Communist Party became apparent,” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said in his opening statement at the June 21 hearing.

“According to Microvast’s own SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] filings, the government—referring to the People’s Republic of China—’exerts substantial influence over the manner in which we must conduct our business activities, and may intervene at any time with no notice,’” Griffith continued.

“Uncertainties with respect to the PRC legal system could limit the legal protections available to you and us,” that same filing states. It also describes the firm’s receipt of Chinese government subsidies and states that “most of [Microvast’s] current customers” are in China.

The article notes:

At the June 21 hearing on Microvast, Griffith and his colleagues questioned David Howell, principal deputy director of the DOE’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains.

The Virginian asked Howell how companies are vetted by the DOE for funding.

The DOE official said “detailed negotiations are started” over BIL grants after selections are made.

“Most of us did not understand that, because it appeared from the press statements that these people were awardees,” Griffith said.

“The in-depth vetting began the day after those announcements,” Howell said, before stating that previous “in-depth vetting” of the applicants focused on “technical capacity and capabilities of the companies.”

Griffith pressed Howell on the official’s assertion that Microvast is “a majority-U.S. owned company.”

“If they’re majority U.S.-owned, how can the Chinese Communist Party through the Chinese government say … why would they say that they could be stopped or change course because of what the government said in China?” he asked.

“Simply because Microvast’s major production operations are in China,” Howell answered.

“All of the other companies that you vetted do not have that problem?” Griffith asked.

“That is correct,” Howell responded.

We have a budget deficit. We have tons of money that we have borrowed from China. Why in the world would Congress be passing laws that benefited the Chinese economy?

Protecting America’s Farmland

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On April 25th, The Washington Examiner posted an article about China’s continuing purchase of American farmland–particularly near American military bases. Even on the surface that sounds questionable.

The article reports:

A spy balloon floated over most of the continental United States. A Chinese government-linked corporation purchased a plot of land near a sensitive military base.

The recent brushes with China have crystallized a challenge for lawmakers and defense experts that has long sat in the shadows — Beijing’s steadily increasing share of U.S. land poses a serious “national security threat.”

On April 25th, Houston Public Media reported:

Senate Bill 147 was approved by Texas lawmakers Tuesday afternoon. The legislation is a watered-down version of the original proposal, which would have banned citizens of China, Iran, North Korea and Russia from buying land and homes in Texas.

…The new version would ban governmental entities, along with companies headquartered in one of the countries listed on the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community put out by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, from buying “real property” in Texas.

That list only names China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Were the bill to become law, citizens of the four countries who are not lawful residents, dual citizens or people seeking asylum would be able to buy homes in Texas. However, they would only be able to buy up to 20 acres of land.

The bill clarifies that “real property” means “agricultural land, an improvement located on agricultural land, a mine or quarry, a mineral in place, or a standing timber.”

The article at Houston Public Media also notes:

The measure needs to clear one more procedural vote before it’s sent to the Texas House for consideration.

According to the Associated Press, the legislation comes two years after the Texas Legislature passed a bill banning deals on infrastructure with countries like China.

It also comes after news reports of a Chinese real estate billionaire purchasing land for a wind farm in Val Verde County, the home of Laughlin Air Force Base.

The billionaire is a veteran of the People’s Liberation Army, and has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, Forbes reported in 2021.

Please follow the link above to The Washington Examiner article. It further explains the reason more states need to follow the example of Texas.

It Is Really About The Environment?

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On Wednesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the Biden administration’s push toward electric vehicles.

The article reports:

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers continue to grow faster than their European and U.S. competitors in 2023, even as the Biden administration pushes rules that could eventually end the sale of gas-powered vehicles, according to Semafor.

Chinese electric vehicle titan BYD has introduced its vehicles in Germany this year, while Chinese automakers outperformed foreign competitors in their domestic market, Semafor reported. While China continues to dominate both the supply chain for and sales of EVs, President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced its strictest ever proposed set of vehicle emissions rules on April 12, which the agency forecasts would lead to over two-thirds of all vehicles sold after 2032 being all-electric.

The new regulations would severely limit the sale of gas-powered vehicles, which critics allege is the administration’s first step toward a California-like ban on new gas-powered passenger cars, something that EPA Director Michael Regan denied in a statement. Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, told the Daily Caller News Foundation at the time that the Biden administration is “trying to bend every federal rule they can find to force people into buying EVs.”Similarly, the Biden EPA previously approved a set of California regulations that experts say would effectively result in a nationwide ban on new diesel-powered truck sales by 2035, since automakers would be unlikely to sell different models in both California and nationwide markets. The California regulations would essentially act as a “backdoor … for California that sets standards for the U.S.,” Dan Kish, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the DCNF at the time.

The article concludes:

China produced roughly 60% of rare earth minerals worldwide, and 60% of the world’s graphite supply, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In terms of refining, China processes 60% of all cobalt and lithium worldwide, in addition to 30% of global nickel and copper processing.

Domestically, Chinese firms gained significant ground against their foreign competitors in 2022, as Chinese consumers purchased more than 4 million all-electric vehicles in 2022, with BYD unseating German automaker Volkswagen as the nation’s top seller of EVs, according to The Wall Street Journal.

So why is the Biden administration pushing electric cars when the result of Americans buying electric cars would be to strengthen the Chinese economy and weaken the American economy? China not only has the manufacturing capability, it has the natural resources to make electric cars. Even it this is not a conscious effort to undermine the American economy, that will be the result of the administration’s push for all Americans to buy electric vehicles.

The Risk Of Upside-Down Priorities

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On Saturday, Red State posted an article with the following headline:

As China’s Blue-Water Navy Continues Massive Expansion, US Navy Secretary Says Climate Is His ‘Top Priority’

Wow. Doesn’t that make you feel well-protected?

The article reports:

Let’s begin with a sobering — to the sane among us — reality.

China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) surpassed the U.S. Navy in fleet size sometime around 2020 and now possesses roughly 340 warships, according to the Pentagon’s 2022 China Military Power Report, released in November. Moreover, China’s fleet is expected to grow to 400 ships by 2025.

Meanwhile, the U.S. fleet consists of fewer than 300 ships, with a Pentagon goal of 350 manned ships by 2045, according to the U.S. Navy’s Navigation Plan 2022, released last summer.

Incidentally, a blue-water navy is a maritime force capable of operating globally, essentially across the deep waters of open oceans. While definitions of what actually constitutes such a force vary, the constant is a requirement for the ability to exercise sea control at long range. In other words, the more dominant a nation’s blue-water navy, the better chance that nation has of controlling the world’s strategic sea lanes.

So, what is the U.S. Navy under Joe Biden doing about this sobering reality?

As reported by the Washington Examiner, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro has said, multiple times, that fighting climate change has been one of his biggest priorities since taking office. During a recent trip to the Bahamas to meet with Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis, the two men talked at length about… wait for it… climate change, and what the United States is doing to fight it. Here’s Del Toro:

As the Secretary of the Navy, I can tell you that I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps team has been working on climate and energy security for a long time, and we are accelerating and broadening those efforts.

If they were truly working on energy security, they would be telling the government to resume drilling in America. It would be really nice if the Secretary of the Navy cared about protecting America from foreign aggression. His priorities as he explains them are upside-down.

Dealing With China

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

Article: Dealing With China              Author:  R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D       harropcrew1@gmail.com 

How the United States has dealt with China over the past few decades is a classic example of not putting America first along with wishful thinking which has put us in very dangerous situation of our own making.  Instead of isolating an evil communist regime, our leaders believed if we gave them special considerations like trade agreements that they would realize that communism is a failed system and become democratic trading partners and respect us as their friends.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.    Instead the Chinese Communist Party outwitted us and  profited immensely from an extremely favorable trade balance in their favor.  We have made a communist country a strong military and economic powerhouse that now exceeds us in many ways.   We may have sold our freedoms and security for cheap consumer goods.    

The question now is what do we do about it and is it too late?  Only time will tell if it is too late, but here are some things we must do.  First, we must recognize and act like they are the threat that they present.  Second, we must re-direct our manufacturing so that we eliminate our dependence on China.   We have an abundance of fossil fuel energy which they do not; so we must return to energy independence.  Stop the move toward windmills, solar panels and electric cars that depend on China for production.   Essential medical supplies and medicines must be made in America.  Third, we must cease allowing China to fund research and send their students to our universities. We must cease investing in their economy instead of ours.  For example, some state governments are investing their pension funds in China through asset managers like BlackRock.    Fourth, we must protect our food supply by stopping communist China from owning our essential agricultural land and food processing facilities (e.g. Smithfield Foods).   China currently owns an estimated 400,000 acres of agricultural land some of it located close to military bases.  Allowing a communist regime to control part of our food supply is absolute lunacy.   Fifth, the fentanyl poisoning of Americans from Chinese manufactured chemicals  processed by the Mexican drug cartels is killing over 100,000 Americans per year which is more than the death toll of the Korean War(36,574) and Vietnam War(58,148) combined.  And this is every year!  Why are we putting up with this?  Would we retaliate if China was killing 100,000 Americans with weapons?  What we should do is inform China that if the shipment of their chemicals to Mexico is not stopped we will stop all shipments of American coal (13 million tons) and food products (such as soy beans 14 million tons) to China. This will get their attention. 

The above represent some of the things that need to be done if we are serious about dealing with the threat from communist China.  Why are we not taking these and similar actions?  Try greed.   We have funded the growth of the China threat and the profits made by big corporations (and corrupt polititians) keep this going and will ultimately   result in the destruction of America.   It is clear that the weak and corrupt Biden administration will do nothing.   The only hope is that  Republicans will have the courage to take action before it is too late.   Let’s hope so for ourselves, children and grandchildren. 

 

Destroying Our Children On Social Media

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Most children over the age of twelve have access to TikTok. I wonder how many of their parents are actually paying attention to what is on that site.

On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article written by a woman  in her 30’s who posed as a 14-year-old boy on TikTok to see what would show up for her to view. The results were frightening.

The article reports:

My aim wasn’t to use Jayden’s profile to interact with other people online but rather just to see what sort of content the algorithm fed him if he was completely passive.

Within seconds of opening TikTok and YouTube as him, I was bombarded with a dizzying stream of videos of girls lip-syncing and twerking in mini-shorts.

After about a minute, things took a darker turn.

Mega influencers like stuntman-turned-boxer Logan Paul, 27, started popping up.

Paul stars in videos alongside the Sidemen, a popular British YouTube group known for offensive content — one member faced a backlash for his “rape face” video series in 2015.

In their “Sidemen Tinder in Real Life” YouTube series, the men often talk graphically to the women who are invited to their studio to make a potential love connection.

But instead of finding Mr. Right, the girls are often pummeled with insults about their physical appearance.

The most disturbing video I came across on TikTok, however, featured slow-motion footage of a boy, likely around Jayden’s age, in a classroom standing over a girl and swinging his closed fist toward her face as she recoiled.

Jayden was fed another TikTok video stamped with title “Calling my girlfriend the ‘B’ word for her reaction” featuring a young guy repeatedly barking the epithet at his significant other in the hopes of infuriating her for laughs.

Obviously this is not entertainment.

It is interesting to know that in China, the youth version of TikTok offers educational content including “novel and interesting popular science experiments, exhibitions in museums and galleries, beautiful scenery across the country, explanations of historical knowledge, and so on,” according to ByteDance. (article here) China also limits the amount of time its children spend on social media. What is the end goal of those who are feeding garbage to America’s children?

The Trojan Horse In American Ports

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Many Americans are slowly waking up to the threat to America posed by China. Russia openly stated, “We will bury you,” but China is much more subtle. They are slowly undermining us economically, socially, and culturally. The amount of industrial espionage, copyright violations, and spying that has been going on right under our noses is frightening. Every Chinese exchange student in America has ties to the communist government or they wouldn’t be here. China has established Chinese police departments in some of our major cities to keep watch over its citizens in this country (article here).

On Monday, Townhall posted an article about China’s presence at American ports.

The article reports:

The highly visible but generally ignored ship-to-shore cranes at American ports are responsible for loading and unloading tens of millions of shipping containers each year. In addition to being a critical component of American supply chains, they’re also used in some cases by the U.S. military. 

Some of these cranes are innocuous, but an estimated 80 percent of ship-to-shore cranes operating at U.S. ports are made by ZPMC, a China-based manufacturer, leading to rising concern among American defense and national security personnel that have compared the cranes to a “Trojan horse,” according to an exclusive report in The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ reports that the ZPMC cranes made by the Chinese company are “comparably well-made and inexpensive” compared to other cranes produced by other manufacturers, but “they contain sophisticated sensors that can register and track the provenance and destination of containers, prompting concerns that China could capture information about materiel being shipped in or out of the country to support U.S. military operations around the world.”

The article also notes:

The WSJ report quoted the former cybersecurity lead at the port of Houston who warned “[i]t wouldn’t be hard for an attacker to disable one sensor on a crane and prevent the crane from moving” because the “systems aren’t designed for security, they are designed for operations.”

Among other worries enumerated in the report, some fear that the ZPMC cranes could, in addition to being shut down by an outside attacker or tracking what is moving in and out of U.S. ports, be turned into sabotage devices to cripple American ports without a foe needing to float its navy into U.S. waters.

We are definitely paying the price for relying on China for cheap manufactured goods.

How Much Money Does China Funnel Into Congress Every Year?

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I don’t have concrete information that China funnels money into Congress; however, that is the only logical explanation for some of the decisions that Congress makes.

On Tuesday, Breitbart reported the following:

Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s efforts to block China from buying up farmland in her state were thwarted this week when a supermajority of state Senators rejected her proposal.

As Breitbart News previously reported, Noem had proposed a bill that would “create a state-level version of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)” in order to curtail foreign Chinese entities from buying agricultural land in her state:

Currently, CFIUS is a federal board that approves or disapproves of foreign entities engaging in major U.S. transactions. Noem’s proposal would establish a CFIUS-South Dakota, or CFIUS-SD, which would review proposed transactions in the state where foreign entities including but not limited to Chinese entities seek to purchase land. The board, if established — which would require the legislature to pass Noem’s proposal — could block such land sales as it sees fit.

Essentially, Senate Bill 185 would have granted the South Dakota governor the power to unilaterally veto any purchase reviewed by the panel. The state senate rejected the bill on Tuesday with an 11-23 vote.

“The bill faced opposition from nearly every agriculture industry group in committee testimony. But the proposal’s supporters on the Senate floor said any flaws would be rectified before it becomes law,” reported South Dakota Public Broadcasting (SDPB).

The article concludes:

“What’s been interesting about the debate so far on this bill I’m proposing with help from a couple legislators,” she continued, “is that the opposition has not come to the table and given us other solutions and other things they think would work that would give us this kind of accountability and make sure that we have a review of land that’s purchased in South Dakota. They haven’t given us articulated reasons as to why they’re opposed to the bill, so for me, this is an issue the public has brought to me for many, many months. They care about this.”

Opposition to this bill makes no sense–letting a country that seeks to defeat us control the land that supplies our food is insanity. Controlling the food supply controls the population. That is a political tool of a tyrant.

Color Me Skeptical

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Today, NewsMax posted an article about some recent comments by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin.

The article reports:

China on Monday said more than 10 U.S. high-altitude balloons have flown in its airspace during the past year without its permission, following Washington’s accusation that Beijing operates a fleet of surveillance balloons around the world.

The Chinese allegation comes after the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon that had crossed from Alaska to South Carolina, sparking a new crisis in bilateral relations that have spiraled to their lowest level in decades.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin gave no details about the alleged U.S. balloons, how they had been dealt with or whether they had government or military links.

I suspect I could use that statement to fertilize my garden! How long would a U.S. high altitude balloon last over the skies of China? Do you really think that we would not have heard about incidences of spying on China via balloon before this?

The article concludes:

The Chinese balloon shot down by the U.S. was equipped to detect and collect intelligence signals as part of a huge, military-linked aerial surveillance program that targeted more than 40 countries, the Biden administration declared Thursday, citing imagery from American U-2 spy planes.

Part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” following the alleged Chinese spy balloon, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of NORAD and the U.S. Northern Command, said in a briefing with reporters.

The United States has since placed economic restrictions on six Chinese entities it said are linked to Beijing’s aerospace programs as part of its response to the incident. The U.S. House of Representatives also voted unanimously to condemn China for a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty and efforts to “deceive the international community through false claims about its intelligence collection campaigns.”

Wang, the Chinese spokesperson, repeated China’s dismissal of such claims, saying, “the frequent firing of advanced missiles by the U.S. to shoot down the objects is an overreaction of overexertion.”

At this point in history, is there a government on earth that is actually telling the truth about anything?

Why Is It Still Up There?

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How long do you think an American spy balloon would last over the mainland of China? China has had one sitting over the middle of America for a couple of days now.

On Friday, PJ Media reported:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has given the Biden administration’s response to President Xi Jinping and China for their brazenly illegal act of sending a balloon over U.S. territory to spy on the United States.

How do we know it’s a spy balloon? We don’t have to know. We can, should, and must assume that’s what it’s doing.

Blinken, along with his advisors Wynken and Nod, has come up with a brilliant riposte to this Chinese transgression. The United States will deny China the pleasure and honor of hosting the U.S. secretary of state this week as planned.

It’s the well-practiced “comfy chair” response to China. Unfortunately, it’s not likely to impress President Xi. In fact, Xi couldn’t care less if Blinken comes to Beijing or not. He must be watching the diplomatic byplay with amusement.

Blinken and one of his deputies spoke with the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday night, and on Friday morning, he told China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, that the balloon’s course was a violation of sovereignty and “unacceptable,” according to a State Department official.

Oh, dear! Did ya hear that Xi-man? It’s “unacceptable” to fly your aircraft over U.S. territory.

The New York Times reported:

Beijing had sought to defuse tensions with Washington on Friday over the balloon, expressing its regret over the incident, and saying the balloon was for civilian research and had “deviated far from its planned course.”

The explanation from the Chinese Foreign Ministry came after Pentagon officials said on Thursday that they had detected a balloon, “most certainly launched by the People’s Republic of China,” over Montana, which is home to about 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos.

The article at PJ Media notes:

The experts at The Drive’s The War Zone disagree that there’s no added benefit to floating a balloon above U.S. military installations: “The idea that a terrestrial aerial platform in close proximity and floating for long periods above major military installations and other sensitive locales is not significantly more of a threat than what can be collected by satellites in orbit is a debatable claim.”

Don’t shoot it down–find a way to make a small hole in the balloon so that it floats gently to the ground, and then reverse engineer whatever electronics it is carrying.

 

Where Do The Parts For Green Energy Come From?

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On Sunday, Breitbart reported that Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives want to reverse President Biden’s tariff waivers for suspected Chinese companies that are reportedly funneling their solar panels through other countries to evade United States trade rules.

The article notes:

In June 2022, Biden announced a 24-month tariff moratorium on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Commerce Department officials suspect that the solar panels are actually made in China or by Chinese companies but have been routed through the four southeast Asian nations to evade tariffs.

The tariff moratorium came even as Biden’s Commerce Department found that BYD Hong Kong rerouted its production through Cambodia, Canadian Solar and Trina through Thailand, and Vina Solar through Vietnam to specifically evade U.S. tariffs on China-made solar panels.

Already, about 80 percent of solar panels installed in the U.S. are made in China or by Chinese companies.

The article concludes:

Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming U.S.-China trade deficit. In 1985, before China entered the WTO, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.

While skyrocketing U.S. trade deficits have led to devastation across America’s working and middle-class communities over the last two decades, tariffs would be a boon for reshoring jobs and boosting wages, studies show.

A recent study from economists at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, for instance, finds that tariffs on nearly all foreign imports would create about 10 million American jobs while boosting domestic output.

I have very mixed emotions on tariffs. I will concede that tariffs are probably needed on the large amount of Chinese goods that make their way into America. However, looking at history, we can’t ignore the impact of The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which raised the United States’s already high tariff rates. That tariff contributed to the early loss of confidence on Wall Street and signaled U.S. isolationism. By raising the average tariff by some 20 percent, it also prompted retaliation from foreign governments, and many overseas banks began to fail. It planted the seeds for the Great Depression. The world’s economy is not in a really good place right now, and we need to consider carefully the impact of any tariff we pass.

The Problems With Depending On China For Manufacturing

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On Monday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the slowdown in America of solar installations in the third quarter.

The article reports:

U.S. solar installations fell in the third quarter of 2022 and are projected to fall by nearly 25% in comparison to 2021 after the Biden administration began blocking Chinese solar imports from Xinjiang, a region where Uyghur Muslims are allegedly being forced to work, according to a Tuesday report.

The U.S. installed 4.6 GW of solar capacity in the third quarter of 2022, a 17% decrease from 2021’s third quarter and a 2% decrease from the second quarter of 2022 as the government continues to impound Chinese solar panel products under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), according to a Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie report. The act, which Congress passed in December 2021, bans imports from Xinjiang due to the allegations that Uyghurs are forced to manufacture polysilicon, a key input in solar panels, exacerbating supply chain constraints and meaning that the total number of solar installations in 2022 is projected to decline by 23% compared to 2021 levels.

The article notes:

China dominates solar panel manufacturing and is responsible for 80% of polysilicon production, according to an International Energy Agency report. In June, President Joe Biden waived tariffs designed to protect domestic businesses from unfair competition in order to get more Chinese solar panels on the market and accelerate his “clean energy” transition.

The Biden administration wants to generate all of the country’s electricity from green energy, such as solar or wind power, by 2035, up from just 40% in 2020. To achieve this objective, the yearly rate of solar installations may need to more than double, according to the Energy Department.

Dependency on green energy is similar to the search for the perpetual motion machine. There may actually be an answer in nuclear fusion, but we are not there yet. Countries like Iceland make use of geothermal energy very successfully, but they also live on top of the volcanoes that produce that energy. I am not sure I like that trade-off.

Our Role Model?

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On November 27th, I posted an article reporting that Klaus Schwab recently stated that China Will Be a ‘Role Model’ in the ‘Systemic Transformation’ of the World. I really don’t like the idea of China as a role model. Currently Chinese protestors are being beaten in the streets, and many will be jailed and tortured for their protesting. The protests began in response to the draconian lockdowns (supposedly due to Covid) that resulted in people in an apartment fire dying because they were locked into their apartment building.

On Tuesday, The Washington Free Beacon posted the following:

Uyghur activists are demanding that the Biden administration extract details from China about the fire that the Chinese government says killed 10 people trapped in a building, alleging that the true number of deaths is far higher due to China’s coronavirus lockdowns.

“The Chinese government officially recorded 10 deaths,” said Salih Hudayar, who heads a human rights group focused on China’s genocide of the ethnic minority group. “Photos suggest the number of Uyghurs slain was much higher.”

Social media posts and photos place the death toll at 44, said Hudayar, who on Monday led a protest outside the State Department in Washington, D.C. Residents reportedly couldn’t escape their homes because their doors were bolted and barred for quarantine. Barricades at the building prevented fire trucks from getting close enough to fight the fire—video of the incident shows firefighters spraying water that failed to even reach the building. Huyadar said it took hours for help to arrive.

“Residents stated firefighters arrived three hours after the fire began,” Hudayar said.

The deaths have sparked unrest across the country, with residents calling for the easing of restrictions and the resignation of President Xi Jinping. Chinese authorities have tried to clamp down on the protests, searching residents’ phones in Beijing and Shanghai for use of illegal messaging apps. Chinese bots on Twitter, meanwhile, tweeted pornographic content to drown out posts about the protests and criticism of Xi.

It takes a lot of courage to protest in China. Free speech is not a way of life. Prison and torture are likely to be the results of protesting. China is not a role model we want to follow.

This Is Not A Happy Thought

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On Thursday, Breitbart posted the following headline:

WEF’s Klaus Schwab Says China Will Be a ‘Role Model’ in the ‘Systemic Transformation’ of the World

China, the country that imprisons Uighurs, uses slave labor, puts anyone who disagrees with the government in jail, uses an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) scale to control its population, etc., is the country Schwab thinks we should emulate.

The article quotes Klaus Schwab:

“I respect China’s achievements, which are tremendous over the last over 40 years, I think it’s a role model for many countries,” the Davos chief said, adding that while he believes countries should be able to choose the system they prefer to live under, the “Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model for quite a number of countries.”

“I look very much forward to having a strong Chinese voice in Davos to explain even better to the world what it means to see the party Congress which laid down the principles of the policy [and] what it really means for global collaboration and for global development,” Schwab added.

He concluded by saying that he has taken “great satisfaction” in seeing the European Union become more “unified” in its thinking following the Chinese virus and the war in Ukraine and that this could lead to deeper ties between Brussels and Beijing.

“I’m very pleased that we speak not only about Chinese-U.S. relations but also again about European-Chinese relations, and I feel despite all the question marks and to a certain extent cautious approach which we see in Europe, I think that very close ties can be established again between China and Europe because there’s such an interwoven economy.”

The article concludes:

China also seems to be in broad agreement with the World Economic Forum on using the issue of climate change to usher in radical changes.

For example, at this year’s WEF summit in Davos, the president of the Alibaba Group Chinese tech giant, J. Michael Evans said the firm, which like all other companies in Communist China is closely linked to the state, will be seeking to implement an “individual carbon footprint tracker” to monitor the behaviour of individuals in terms of their supposed environmental impact.

“We are developing through technology the ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint… where are they travelling, how are they travelling, what are they eating, what are they consuming on the platform,” Evans said.

It’s time for Americans to wake up. We need to elect people who will stand firm to protect our freedom. It is obvious that many of the world leaders are moving away from freedom to embrace tyranny. We need not to be part of that.

Giving Away Important Technology

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On Wednesday, The Daily Wire reported that the Department of Energy’s Inspector General is investigating why the Biden administration gave promising green energy technology to China instead of creating manufacturing jobs in America.

The article reports:

The Department of Energy’s Inspector General is reviewing why the Joe Biden administration gave promising battery technology, developed by taxpayer dollars, to a Chinese company instead of making the batteries in the U.S.

China is now reportedly building one of the largest battery grids in the world using the technology, which could store huge amounts of solar energy without degrading over time or requiring lithium, mitigating a major environmental impact of current green technology that ends up in landfills.

The article continues:

In 2021, there was an “illicit Department of Energy (DOE) transfer of a fifteen million dollar, taxpayer-funded advanced battery technology to China,” Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) wrote in a letter to the DOE’s internal watchdog.

The company that received the license “plainly stated on their official website that they planned to manufacture the batteries in China,” even though the license included “a requirement that the batteries be ‘substantially manufactured’ in the U.S. As these stipulations were continuously violated, DOE never raised any concern,” they wrote.

“We are concerned that this is an overt dereliction of duty by DOE, and that this case may be emblematic of a department that routinely and flippantly permits government-funded technology to be transferred to China,” the senators concluded.

The article explains exactly what happened:

In 2017, Yang (Gary Yang, one of the scientists who helped develop the technology, so that he could commercialize it) — an American citizen who was born in China — obtained a sublicense from the DOE to allow a Chinese firm to make the batteries. In 2021, he transferred the license outright to a Dutch company called Vanadis Power, which said it would make the batteries in China but eventually move production to Europe to comply with European rules.

America had those rules too, but seemed less strict about enforcing them. On July 7, 2021, UniEnergy emailed a government manager at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to request approval to transfer the license to Vanadis, and within 90 minutes, the government granted approval, even though Vanadis’ website said it would make the batteries in China.

Unnamed DOE officials told NPR they often rely on “good faith disclosures” — in other words, the honor system.

I would love to see a list of Americans who are in some way involved in the finances of the Chinese company involved.

The Inflation Reduction Act

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The Inflation Reduction Act has passed through Congress and will undoubtedly be signed into law by President Biden by the time you read this. So what exactly does this law do? Well, for starters it does not reduce inflation and it will not impact the climate. However, it will help China’s economy (they dominate the green energy field) and it will let Democrats celebrate that they passed something through Congress. It will also raise the cost of living for all Americans in the form of increased energy costs and some tax increases.

On Monday, The New York Post reported:

An analysis by the CBO estimates those earning less than $400,000 — the group on which Biden promised not to raise taxes — will pay an estimated $20 billion more in taxes over the next decade as a result of the Democrat-pushed $740 billion package, which also sets aside $80 billion to hire 87,000 IRS agents.

The bill has yet to be scored in its entirety by the CBO — which typically gives each piece of legislation a price tag before it is voted on — but the agency scored the impact of the IRS expansion on middle-class taxpayers on Aug. 12 after a provision from Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) sought to exempt those making under $400,000 from increased IRS scrutiny.

Crapo’s proposed amendment would have kept those taxpayers from being targeted by the new IRS hires, but his provision was shot down 51-50 in the bill passed by the Senate last week.

On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog reported the following:

Democrats quickly gave up on the Inflation Reduction Act, since they couldn’t sell the idea that another $700+ billion in deficit spending would somehow reduce inflation. So now it is alleged to be a climate control act, instead.

But the bill won’t affect the climate any more than it would have reduced inflation. Even if you assume the UN’s inflated estimate of the impact of CO2 emissions on global warming, the bill’s impact is nil:

[W]e get somewhere between 0.028 and 0.0009°F reduction in temperature by 2100 for about 400 billion dollars in climate spending contained in the bill.

But the oceans will stop rising! Which, by the way, they have been doing for the last 15,000 or so years.

The article at Power Line Blog concludes:

So the Democrats’ prize legislation is an exercise in futility. Unless, of course, you are one of the many Democratic Party constituents who will be cashing the checks that add up to more than $700 billion, with a little over half ostensibly going to benefit the climate.

The purpose here is to buy votes, obviously, and the Democratic Party press is ecstatic over the idea that Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer finally have a “win” to brag about. But I wonder. I haven’t seen much evidence that the Democrats’ deficit spending extravaganzas are especially popular outside the precincts of those who cash the checks. (And, by the way, the number one beneficiary of this particular $700 billion will be the Communist Chinese, who dominate “green” energy.) My guess is that most Americans have caught on to the Democrats’ game, and understand that this legislation will no more dictate the Earth’s climate than it will bring our crippling inflation under control.

That’s where we are, folks.

Biting The Hand That Feeds You

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This article is not going to be about the need for new Republican leadership in Congress. It is going to be about what the current leadership has done to undermine the American middle class worker.

On Monday, The Conservative Review posted an article about the semiconductor bill passed by Congress that is supposed to help America manufacture the computer chips for cars and other electronic devices.

The article notes:

Republicans are all unanimous in their opposition to the reconciliation “Build Back Better” bill, but Mitch McConnell and 16 other Senate Republicans voted for the mini BBB bill, dumping billions of dollars into companies that have created a brain gain for China’s trade theft to drain our supply chains. Not only did McConnell agree to the bill despite the refusal of Democrats to entertain amendments ensuring that the jobs stay in America, but now these same companies are turning around and demanding more foreign workers to hire.

“In the near-term, the U.S. educational system does not produce enough Americans with the required qualifications to meet the demand of companies, not just in the semiconductor industry, but across the technical sector,” the HR officers of nine semiconductor companies wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. The nine companies were: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.; Ampere Computing; ASML US; Broadcom Inc.; Americas Global Foundries; Infineon Technologies; Americas Corp.; Intel Corporation; Samsung Semiconductor, Inc.; and Texas Instruments Incorporated.

Maybe we should fix our educational system instead of hiring foreign workers. However, blaming our educational system is a red herring. The problem is that foreign workers do not demand the salaries and benefits that American workers demand, thus increasing the profit margin of the companies involved.

The article notes:

Massive corporations lobbying for endless corporate welfare along with visa pork is what has demographically gerrymandered the American worker out of entire industries and what has ultimately led to China’s gain and our drain. The pipeline begins with F-1 student visas. In the case of foreign students, it’s really the god of public education, which is being subsidized happily by the Chinese. The universities get cash from the Chinese government, while the Chinese get operatives and intelligence officers into the country to work in academic fields and occupations. The rest of the American people lose. We bring in roughly 369,548 Chinese foreign students a year, together with 80,000 more on immigrant visas. In other words, there are about as many Chinese students in the U.S. as the entire university enrollment in the state of Maryland.

Noted right-wing outlet CNN reported in 2019, “The sheer size of the Chinese student population at U.S. universities presents a major challenge for law enforcement and intelligence agencies tasked with striking the necessary balance between protecting America’s open academic environment and mitigating the risk to national security.” Yet these tech companies think we are not bringing in enough Chinese immigrants. The director of national intelligence warned, “China’s intelligence services will exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific community, using a variety of means.”

The article concludes:

Indeed, corporate welfare mixed with endless visa pork has destroyed our sovereignty as citizens and has sold us out to transnational corporations that now have us over the barrel. Naturally, Congress will aggravate the very variables that got us into this mess.

This is only one example of the reason we need to drain the Washington swamp.

Quote Of The Week

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The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was a disgrace, but I wonder if the Biden administration (yes, I think they all knew it was going to happen) thought about how the raid would play around the world.

Breitbart reported the following on Tuesday:

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele criticized the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) raid on former U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal residence at Mar-A-Lago on Monday in a statement posted by Bukele’s official Twitter account, the Spanish news agency Agencia EFE reported.

This is the tweet:

I think that is a very good question.

The article at Breitbart reports:

Bukele’s administration (2019-present) maintained friendly diplomatic relations with that of Trump during his presidency (2017-2021), Agencia EFE recalled on Monday, writing:

The Government of President Bukele was close to the Administration of former President Trump and the Salvadoran president maintained a close relationship with his ambassador -at the time- in Salvadoran territory, Ronald Johnson.

However, El Salvador’s relationship with the United States changed with the arrival of President Joe Biden and is currently tense due to some decisions made by Bukele that have been criticized by the Biden Administration.

The article concludes:

The U.S. State Department released a list on May 17, 2021, that labeled 17 Central American politicians, including current and former members of Bukele’s administration, as “corrupt.” The action seemingly prompted El Salvador’s congress to ratify a 2019 cooperation agreement with China — one of Washington’s top foes — the next day. El Salvador’s Congress ratified an economic cooperation agreement with Beijing on May 18, 2021, that was originally signed in 2019. The deal called for China’s government to invest $62 million in various infrastructure projects across El Salvador, including a water purification plant.

Bukele and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro both issued public statements in support of U.S. podcaster Joe Rogan on February 2. The two leaders expressed hope that Rogan would continue fighting for “freedom of the press” and “freedom of speech,” respectively, in America amid increased scrutiny of his podcasts from establishment media outlets.

And those are only some of the diplomatic accomplishments of the Biden administration.

It’s Long Past Time To Reconsider Our Relationship With China

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The Daily Wire recently posted an article about organ donations in China.

The article reports:

Dr. Enver Tohti, a former physician in China, remembers the day with horror. The whistleblower said his chief surgeon approached him and asked, “Do you want to do something wild?” The surgeon then took Dr. Tohti and other medical professionals to the site of a public execution, pointed to one of the criminals, and told him, “As quick as possible, remove the liver and two kidneys.” 

“Then, I saw he was alive,” Dr. Tohti, who is now an Uber driver in London, recently told Vice TV. 

Stories of China harvesting organs from live “donors” have proliferated for decades, but a new and credible scholarly article has exposed concrete evidence that China has engaged in the gruesome practice. Researchers Matthew P. Robertson of Australia and Jacob Lavee of Israel combed through 2,838 papers on Chinese organ transplantation published in medical journals, covering prisoner organ donations between 1980 and 2015. They published their findings on April 4 in an article titled “Execution by organ procurement: Breaching the dead donor rule in China,” in the American Journal of Transplantation, a peer-reviewed journal.

The article continues:

Robertson told me it is important that the media not misreport their data about live organ transplants. “It’s not that there were only 71 of this sort,” he said. “It’s 71 that we found.” 

He and his co-author are almost certainly undercounting the incidences when CCP officials killed prisoners by removing their beating hearts, because they counted only those officially documented in medical journals. “We don’t know how many transplants actually end up in a medical paper,” said Robertson. “It could be one in 100; it could be one in 1,000; it could be 1 in 10.” 

Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but estimates abound — and none of the numbers add up. In 2019, the China Tribunal found that Chinese physicians likely performed 60,000 to 90,000 organ transplants a year from 2000 to 2014, but the number of eligible organ donors registered in 2017 numbered only 5,146. Another estimate places the number of organs taken from Falun Gong practitioners at 41,500 over a five-year period. For his part, Robertson said once Chinese Communist Party officials perfected the process, they employed this form of organ removal “probably with all heart transplants” in the nation.

The article concludes:

These allegations also illustrate the legacy media’s perpetually favorable coverage of the People’s Republic of China. “China used to harvest organs from prisoners. Under pressure, that practice is finally ending,” The Washington Post told its readers in 2017. “China vows to battle corruption in organ harvesting,” reported the Associated Press a year earlier. But human rights attorney Hamid Sabi told the UN Human Rights Council in 2019 that forced organ harvesting in China “continues today.” 

Such silence makes it all the more important for Western media outlets to cover these atrocities. “China and their advocates will do everything they can to belittle or discredit” such findings, said Andrew Bremberg, a former ambassador and now CEO of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. “And all too often, people in the U.S. and the West will do their best to ignore” them. 

But in order for such human rights abuses to end, the West must act. Thanks to Robertson and Lavee’s research, some of the doctors who took part in China’s forced organ harvesting are now known, Bremberg said. “But we don’t know all of their relationships with U.S. or other Western-based hospitals or universities, or whether they collaborate or publish with other Western academics.”

A bipartisan collection of legislators — Senators Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Chris Coons (D-DE) and Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), and Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) — introduced the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act last March. The bill would allow U.S. officials to identify and sanction those involved in organ harvesting, including revoking their passports. 

“It’s past time to hold Beijing accountable for these heinous acts,” said Sen. Cotton.

This is not an acceptable practice and needs to be addressed. No country engaged in the practice of live organ harvesting should be allowed to trade on any world markets. The only way to end this ghoulish practice is to hit China in the pocketbook.

Who Wins In The War On Coal?

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On Wednesday, The Conservative Review posted an article about the war on coal and natural gas that is being waged by the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Oil is king when it comes to energy policy, but coal and natural gas are just as important. In the case of all three fossil fuels, Western governments have engaged in an all-out war on exploration, production, and generation, banned Russia’s exports of those products, and then gave a monopoly to China, inducing the worst possible outcome for the American consumer and our national security.

Despite the two-decade war on coal by the climate Nazis, coal is still the largest source of electricity around the globe and is the second-largest source of energy in general. In the U.S., coal was once king, composing roughly half of our electricity source just 15 years ago, but has dropped precipitously because of the natural gas boom and because of destructive eco policies. Yet it still accounts for 21% of our electricity source, so shocks to the system are going to harm American consumers.

The article includes the following chart showing the rise in the price of thermal coal:

So who is making money on the increase?

The article notes:

…Given that coal accounts for 35% of global electricity use and Europe gets 70% of its coal from Russia, the coal crisis is now worse than the oil crisis. And guess who stands to benefit? China, of course. Thanks to the disdain for our own coal by our own politicians, the evil communist regime is now the global champion of coal production and exports.

America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, but the environmentalists are not willing to let us produce coal. Instead other countries use the same amount of coal as they would if we produced it, except it’s not from us.

The article includes the following chart showing the changes in coal production:

The article concludes:

Between the war on leasing and restrictions on fracking, transportation, pipelines, and export terminals, this administration is stifling the cleanest, most efficient fuel that could lower prices of electricity and serve as a bulwark against China and Russia. Thus, LNG prices remain unnaturally high because the climate Nazis would rather we feel the pain than actually end dependence on bad actors.

Much as with COVID, where we saw a government that cried over the human death toll but downright declared war on anyone who would treat the virus early, those who complain about the energy crisis are the ones inducing it. Crushing the American consumer is not a bug of their plan, it is the primary feature, greasing the skids for the next step in the “Great Reset.”

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.