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SEE ANTI-COMMIE 3 SINO

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see tiktok

9/20

new/old (cold war commie) bogeyman (but sorta like 80's anti-Japan economic anxiety?); recall basic conspir = ONE villain/cause

some good old fashioned xenophobia yellow peril, some leftover cold warrior reflex; they took our mfg jobs and now hold our debt

trump pals w/ but then pivot to dumb tariffs to look tough master negotiator, sells out working class/mfg massive tax break subsidies to corps and bizilionare donors;

also 180 to blame for pandemic (and deflect from putin gru ira meddling)

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see china india 3rd w BS myth

tho china expand coal AC heat wave 7 23

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Fox News’ pro-data center coverage increased by 420% following sobering GOP memo about data centers and midterms

The gap between the network’s pro-data center and anti-data center coverage widened significantly after a memo warned tech companies that the issue could cost Republicans competitive midterm elections

*Special* ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 10/27/26

The volume of pro-data center claims made by Fox News personalities and guests increased 420% after August 18, when the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned in a memo to tech companies that their communication strategy is failing to generate positive discourse around the issue and could cost pro-data center Republican candidates in the upcoming midterms.

Data centers and concerns about Big Tech more broadly have emerged as major issues for voters in the 2026 election cycle, while industry leaders have given hundreds of millions of dollars to AI-friendly candidates.

Media Matters reviewed Fox News’ data center-related coverage from the two weeks before the memo was reported and compared it to the two weeks that followed in order to determine what impact, if any, the memo potentially made on the network’s approach to covering data centers. Researchers examined pro-data center claims, which highlighted the benefits the facilities could bring to host communities, as well as anti-data center claims, which highlighted the leading concerns that communities have about the technology.

The research found that:

Fox News figures and guests made more than five times more pro-data center claims (203) from August 19 through September 2 than they did from August 5-18, when they made just 39.

In the two weeks before the memo was reported, Fox aired 39 pro-data center claims and 27 anti-data centers claims. The gap between pro- and anti-data center claims increased during the period following the memo’s release, from August 19 through September 2, when the network aired 203 pro-data center claims, or more than twice as many as the 86 anti-data center claims it made during the same period.

Of 242 total claims supporting the construction of new data centers during the entire study period, more than half (56%) specifically argued that the technology is essential for progress and prosperity (136), and 105 claims (43%) argued that opposition to data centers in the U.S. is being fueled by bad actors such as the Chinese government.

Fox News’ data center coverage earlier this year often reflected right-wing media splits on the issue

Over the spring and into the summer, some Fox personalities blamed “far-left activists” and the Chinese government for driving data center opposition around the country, ignoring evidence that the controversy has been bipartisan. The network also attempted to quell fears about data centers contributing to rising electric rates.

Video

Citation

From the May 15, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime

Other network figures expressed sympathy for Americans who are reluctant to embrace new data centers and related infrastructure in their communities. The Big Weekend Show’s Johnny “Joey” Jones and Tomi Lahren cautioned against assuming that only Democrats take issue with these projects and urged Republicans to address the concerns of their voting base more directly, especially in rural communities.

Video

Citation

From the July 19, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Big Weekend Show

In two weeks after the GOP messaging memo, Fox aired more than twice as many pro-data center claims as negative ones

On August 19, Axios reported that “the Senate GOP campaign arm, in a private memo to top AI companies, warns that toxic views of U.S. data centers are killing the party's chances of holding a vital seat in Ohio.” Using a competitive Senate race in Ohio as a case study, the National Republican Senatorial Committee argued that Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown was treating data centers as his “de facto opponent” in his race against Republican incumbent Jon Husted, calling the strategy “significantly more effective than traditional messaging tracts.”

The committee urged tech companies to “fix how Ohioans see” data centers and to explain “who benefits, who pays, and why a community should want one.” The alternative, it warned, would be a “Democrat candidate who wants to stop data center construction altogether, which will cause America to lose the AI race to China.”

Fox News apparently went to work, dramatically increasing its pro-data center coverage.

Beginning on August 20, the day after the memo was reported by Axios, Fox started to air segments focused particularly on Virginia’s Loudoun County, “home of the world’s largest concentration of data centers.” Fox portrayed the county as a success story illustrative of what data centers could do for others like it, with host Will Cain referring to Loudoun as “data center alley, the richest county in America,” during an August 20 segment of The Will Cain Show.

“Over the past two years, a new $102 million rec center, a $22 million going into a new park, and two new schools have opened in Loudoun County. The source of it all? Data centers,” he said. “Now that’s the economic case.”

Between August 20 and 21, the network ran at least five segments covering Loudoun County, and in the two weeks that followed the memo’s release, the network aired 203 total pro-data center claims — more than twice as many as the 86 anti-data center claims it made during the same period.

Even in the two weeks prior to reporting on the NRSC memo, when the network aired drastically less coverage of the issue, Fox was already making more arguments in favor of data centers than against them — airing 39 pro-data center claims compared to 27 negative examples between August 5-18.

“What we’re seeing in Virginia is these are becoming hubs for data centers,” Fox Business’ Cheryl Casone said on Fox & Friends First during an August 5 segment. “I think at the end of the day, I think it’s a good thing for these economies. And look, AI is changing our world. … President Trump also told Trace [Gallagher] last night, look, you don't want the Chinese to get ahead because whoever wins the race wins AI.”

Fox’s most frequent claim — that the data center buildout is essential for American progress and prosperity — accounted for 56% of all pro-data center claims

Fox heavily relied on the narrative that communities can benefit from tax revenue generated by data centers through new infrastructure, pay raises, or investments in community services. Fox hosts Jesse Watters and Will Cain suggested, respectively, that Loudoun County doesn’t “even know what to do with all the money” because data centers “make you too rich.”

Fox News also framed data centers as essential to modern life. Because many existing data centers host servers that “help us stream videos, search the internet, email and play online games,” some network personalities argued that pushing back against future projects would leave Americans deprived of new technology and stall progress.

“Any time you're streaming, you need a data center. Any time you're DoorDashing, any time you're watching me on Instagram or TikTok, you need a data center,” Watters said on August 24, referring to himself as an “unpaid consultant” doing “PR for Big Tech for free.”

Fox also repeatedly reassured viewers that data centers would create prosperity in communities where they are built by providing jobs, even as the impact of AI on the labor market remains uncertain.

Fox’s second most frequent claim, which represented 43% of pro-data center claims during our study period, suggested that anti-data center sentiment across the country was being heavily influenced by China, underscoring what the Trump administration says is an urgent need to minimize industry guardrails in the U.S.

Network host Brian Kilmeade combined all of these arguments in making “the case for data centers” on August 23.

Video

Citation

From the August 23, 2026, edition of Fox News' One Nation with Brian Kilmeade.

BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): So if you say no to data centers, don’t complain when your cloud storage rates go up, your phone bill rises, or the internet speed slows down, because we are asking for more computing — you are, too — every single day. You may not realize it.

And saying no to data centers nationwide also means saying no to the tax dollars that can flow into a community. You’re talking about generating a lot of money. You’re talking about millions of dollars a year for a small town, tens of millions for a large campus. So the initial surge of great-paying blue collar jobs will be there, then construction gets the green light and the hard hats will go on. Those construction jobs, I know, don’t last forever, but they’ll be there for a while to build it and the tax base will remain.

So if Americans don’t build the infrastructure to meet the demand, somebody else will. One country would love to see America slow down. That name goes like: China.

As midterms approach, Fox personalities and guests continue to insist that data center opposition in the U.S. is being fueled by China

Fox has been remarkably consistent in using China as a boogeyman to try and sway viewers on data centers, portraying the facilities’ construction as critical to national security and American dominance. This trend has continued since the study period well into October, as next month’s midterm elections approach.

In an October 5 interview with Fox anchor Harris Faulkner, Trump’s former acting head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Bridget Bean said, “We need to win the race. Because whoever wins the AI race really sets the rules for the next century.” She continued, “I think that a world in which China runs the most sophisticated technology in history is not one … where our American freedoms can survive.”

On October 11, Fox contributor Clay Travis said on The Big Weekend Show, “China is spending tons of money to tell us that we shouldn’t be building data centers. And to me this ultimately comes down to who is going to control the future?” He then characterized “allowing China to influence us to build less” as a “bad decision.”

Some of Fox’s recent conversations about data centers have attempted to downplay the risks of AI development in the U.S., even as some industry leaders have expressed concerns about the government’s ability to “implement regulation” quickly and effectively.

On October 18, above the chyron “Ensuring America’s AI Dominance,” Fox host and former GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy asked AI company Exiger CEO Brandon Daniels what people “who don’t want data centers living beside them” should know. Daniels assured viewers that in terms of building a “framework for safety,” the Trump administration is “moving at a pace that is actually keeping up with the technology.”

“It’s not doomsday, because we can control these systems,” Daniels concluded. “And if we harness the technology, if we’re the first in the race — if we actually deliver on our technological capacity and technological innovation — we certainly will be the beneficiaries of literally hundreds of millions of potential future trades and jobs.”

Methodology...

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mma

Nick Fuentes: Chinese people “are just, like, soulless” and “like bug people” | Media Matters for America

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MMA // gt replacement bs

Laura Loomer takes credit for Trump’s Panama policy

Loomer: Trump “called me” about Panama and he “took my advice, and now you see President Trump calling for the United States to take back the canal” and an “audit of all NGOs”

Written by Alex Kaplan

Published 02/11/25

Far-right activist Laura Loomer, a self-proclaimed “proud Islamaphobe” who has said she is “pro-white nationalism,” stated on her Rumble show that during the 2024 election, she consulted with President Donald Trump on the Panama Canal, migration in Panama’s Darién Gap, and non-governmental organizations. Loomer claimed that Trump then “took [her] advice” on those subjects.

Loomer has a history of promoting virulent xenophobia and anti-Black bigotry, conspiracy theories about mass shootings, and white nationalism. Despite this history, Trump has associated with Loomer, attempting to hire her for his 2024 presidential campaign and traveling with her to both his debate against then-Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and to a September 11 memorial ceremony. Trump has also repeatedly promoted Loomer’s content online, and Loomer has even claimed that Trump told her, “You’re so smart. ... I read your website every day.” (Trump’s campaign later tried to distance itself from Loomer, though Trump refused to denounce her, calling her a “free spirit” and a “supporter.”)

On her show, Loomer has repeatedly pushed claims that Panama, along with the Darién Gap, is a pipeline for an “invasion” of migrants to America that could lead to terrorism. According to The New York Times, Loomer also traveled to Panama — as did some other right-wing media entities — and she posted reportedly deceptively edited content from her travels, falsely suggesting that “Democrats are encouraging” migration “to create new, illegal voters” and casting international aid organizations as “profiteers making money off human misery.” Trump reportedly reposted one of her videos from the trip on Truth Social.

On February 7, Loomer claimed that Trump “actually called me one day, during the last election season, and was asking me about the Darién Gap, and he was asking me about my videos and my trip to Panama,” and she noted that she urged him to “make it a policy position to take back the Panama Canal” because “the CCP has an enormous presence in the Canal Zone and how they are facilitating illegal immigration, and that’s why we have such an influx of Chinese invaders coming into our country.”

She further elaborated that Trump told her that “he was going to be looking into it” and specifically wanted her “input on the issue of the Panama Canal” and “on the issue of the illegal alien invasion taking place in the Darién Gap and Panama.” She additionally claimed that she “had several conversations with President Trump and also Marco Rubio and other officials in the Trump administration about these NGOs and about the activities in Panama.”

Loomer then claimed that Trump “took my advice,” and boasted, “I’ve been told directly by people who work for President Trump that my videos have played a massive role in opening President Trump’s eyes to NGO corruption and the chaos that is happening down in the Panama Canal Zone.” Last year, Loomer claimed on her show that undocumented immigrants in Panama were being “supported” by NGOs and urged Trump to seize the Panama Canal as a supposed solution.

Ahead of Trump’s second inauguration, he threatened to take back the canal, and Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said that the administration would “shut down” the Darién Gap. In early February, Trump also ordered an audit of federal funding to NGOs.

Video

Citation

From the February 7, 2025, edition of Loomer Unleashed, streamed on Rumble

LAURA LOOMER (HOST): Somebody said the Darién Gap story was only Laura. So on top of all the news with USAID tonight, I was mentioning in my monologue how the NGOs are directly tied to USAID because they’re getting their funding through USAID. Well, as many of you know, I’m close with President Trump. I do not work for President Trump. But when I traveled to the Darién Gap last year, and, of course, we crowdfunded all the expenses for that trip here on Loomer Unleashed, I went to the Darién Gap migrant camps, and I uncovered a lot of fraud and a lot of illegal activity by NGOs, including groups like HIAS, that were giving maps to illegal alien invaders who were coming into our country. And these videos ended up going viral.

And believe it or not, President Trump actually called me one day, during the last election season, and was asking me about the Darién Gap, and he was asking me about my videos and my trip to Panama. And I told the president, I said, “I really think that, in your second administration, you should make it a policy position to take back the Panama Canal.” And he was like, “Oh, well, you know, what makes you say that?” And I explained to him the CCP interference and how the CCP has an enormous presence in the Canal Zone and how they are facilitating illegal immigration, and that’s why we have such an influx of Chinese invaders coming into our country. You see they’re coming in through the Mexican border, but they’re getting to the Mexican border through the Darién Gap, and then they’re making their way up through Costa Rica through these buses.

And long story short, President Trump took my advice, and now you see President Trump calling for the United States to take back the canal. Senator Marco Rubio, who is now the secretary of state, has traveled to Panama and the Darién — and the Panama to have discussions about taking back the Panama Canal. And now President Trump yesterday signed an executive memo calling for an audit of all NGOs. And so it’s really amazing because you’re going to see groups like HIAS now get audited.

…

And I received a phone call from President Trump who said that he was going to be looking into it and wanted my input on this. He wanted my input on the issue of the Panama Canal, and he wanted my input on the issue of the illegal alien invasion taking place in the Darién Gap and Panama. And so I’m proud that I have had several conversations with President Trump and also Marco Rubio and other officials in the Trump administration about these NGOs and about the activities in Panama. And so I was very excited yesterday to see President Trump sign this executive memo, calling for all of the NGOs to be audited. So this is really incredible and it’s exciting.

…

And I’ve been told directly by people who work for President Trump that my videos have played a massive role in opening President Trump’s eyes to NGO corruption and the chaos that is happening down in the Panama Canal Zone.

//

  1. ### Donald Trump and “pro-white nationalism” pundit Laura Loomer: A guide to their relationship

09/12/24

  1. ### Sean Hannity says he would love to see the Panama Canal and Greenland “become part of the United States”

01/06/25

  1. ### Donald Trump refuses to denounce Laura Loomer's extremism, calling her a “free spirit” and a “supporter”

09/13/24

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mma 1 25

President-elect Donald Trump has corruptly flipped on his previous position that TikTok should be banned in the United States unless the social media platform disentangles from Chinese government control. His stark reversal — which one ally suggested came about because the app was “great for his campaign” — stands in contrast to the public statements of his top foreign policy, homeland security, defense, and intelligence appointees, who are on the record describing a TikTok ban as a crucial matter of national security and in some cases denouncing Democrats for using the platform.

Then-President Trump issued an August 2020 executive order requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell, spin off, or shut down the app’s U.S. operations, citing “credible evidence” the company “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” President Joe Biden ultimately rescinded the order, but following further reporting of Chinese government influence over TikTok, in April 2024 Congress passed and Biden signed bipartisan legislation requiring ByteDance’s divestment. ByteDance refused, instead preparing to shut down TikTok in the U.S. by the law’s deadline of this Sunday.

But Trump subsequently rejected the position he had once championed and is now poised to take action “to keep TikTok from going dark.” After a March 2024 meeting with hedge fund manager Jeff Yass, a GOP megadonor who reportedly held a major financial stake in ByteDance, Trump abruptly reversed his support for TikTok’s divestment, saying that “young people will go crazy without it.” The platform also reportedly altered its algorithm to benefit Trump’s presidential campaign, which used TikTok to great effect; indeed, in a January 15 interview, incoming national security adviser Michael Waltz said Trump would sign an executive order to “create the space” for a “deal” in part because TikTok “was great for [Trump's] campaign and getting his message out."

This abrupt reversal exposes as craven hypocrites not only Waltz, but also Trump’s nominees for secretary of state, Marco Rubio; defense, Pete Hegseth; and homeland security, Kristi Noem. The four are among the right’s harshest critics of TikTok and foremost proponents of banning it. They describe the platform as a Chinese “Trojan Horse” that “the communists” are using to “compromiz[e] national security” and “propagandize to 150 million Americans,” allowing them to “poison the minds of young Americans” and get kids to “trans themselves” as part of China’s “long-term goal to destroy the United States.”

Moreover, Noem was the first governor to ban state employees from using the platform on state-owned devices, while Rubio introduced legislation banning it nationally if it was not sold.

Either they were all lying about the pressing national security threat of a ByteDance-controlled TikTok back then, or they are willingly leaving the United States exposed because they don’t want to stand up to the incoming president.

Waltz: We can’t let the Chinese Communist Party use TikTok to “propagandize to 150 million Americans ... . We would have never stood for this with the Soviet Union.” Waltz, then a member of Congress, said of TikTok in a March 2023 Fox Business appearance, “We cannot have, on the one hand, our greatest adversary ... have access to 150 million Americans, be able to propagandize to 150 million Americans, and to be able to collect [data] on us. We would have never stood for this with the Soviet Union. We shouldn't be today.” Fox Business, *Mornings with Maria*, [3/23/23]

Waltz: The Biden campaign “should be ashamed of themselves” for joining TikTok and “legitimiz[ing] this app and the harm it’s doing to kids for its own political gain.” When Biden’s campaign joined TikTok in February 2024, Waltz told Fox the campaign “should be ashamed of themselves” because “the Chinese Communist Party are using this as a data-collection bonanza” and could use it as a “superhighway” to “adjust the algorithms should they so choose.” He added that a presidential campaign should not “legitimize this app and the harm it’s doing to kids for its own political gain.” He added that he’s “called for a full-on ban” of the app, calling it “long overdue” because “we should not allow our greatest adversary to access 150 million Americans and their data.” Fox News, *Your World*, [2/23/24]

Waltz on X: TikTok is “an arm of the communists” and must be removed from Chinese government control “for the safety of all Americans,” and it’s “craven” for Democrats not to ban it.Waltz, in dozens of posts to X over five years, has repeatedly criticized TikTok and called for a ban on the platform, warning that it’s “an arm of the communists,”“Chinese spyware and a national security threat,” and “a Chinese Communist Trojan Horse.” In August 2020, he posted, “For the safety of all Americans, including the millions of children using this app, we cannot allow TikTok in the US under ByteDance’s ownership.” He accused members of Congress, “almost all Democrats,” who use the app of being “complicit in allowing China to hurt our national security” and posted that “it would be craven for Biden & Democrats not to ban TikTok because it helps their campaigns.”

Rubio: We should ban TikTok to keep a “wholly-owned subsidiary of the Communist Party of China” from using it as “a danger to America.”In a 2022 Fox interview to discuss a bill he introduced to ban TikTok if it were not sold, then-Sen. Rubio said TikTok can’t be allowed to continue as “wholly owned subsidiary of the Communist Party of China,” in part because “the Chinese tried to interfere in our midterm elections” using the platform. He further called its ownership “a privacy danger to America, to our national security,” adding that “we shouldn't have the Communist Party of China having access to a treasure trove of American data that they can use to try to influence and divide us at the same time as they collect valuable information now and for the future.” Fox News, *Tucker Carlson Tonight*, [12/14/22]

Rubio: A ByteDance-owned TikTok is “a Trojan horse living inside our country.”He explained during a March 2024 Fox appearance that TikTok’s parent company is “under the complete control” of “a foreign government that’s hostile to the United States” and could “decide to weaponize that against us to convince soldiers not to go fight, to convince their families that it's not worth going to fight, to get involved in our elections, to spread things that make us fight against each other and further divide this country or keep us distracted, or to convince American teenagers to kill themselves because the world's about to end.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [3/11/24]

Rubio: We can’t let the Chinese Communist Party use TikTok to “poison the minds of young Americans … so that their society crumbles.” Rubio called for ByteDance to sell TikTok during a March 2024 Fox appearance, explaining that “ByteDance is a Chinese company” and under that country’s laws, “if the Chinese Communist Party goes to ByteDance and says, we want you to change the TikTok algorithm so that Americans will not be willing to defend Taiwan or surrender to China on this and that, or poison the minds of young Americans over a long period of time so that their society crumbles, if they tell them that they have to do that, ByteDance will have to do that, they will do that, and you will not be able to perceive it.” [Fox News, Hannity, 3/19/24]

Hegseth: “Someone’s got to step up and say” TikTok “is compromising national security” and “poisoning the minds” of kids and “ban this.”Hegseth, then the host of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition, said of TikTok in March 2023, “This is time for leadership. I don't care how many kids use it, I don’t care how many influencers are out there, someone’s got to step up and say, not one is it compromising national security — which it is; who knows where that data is going and how it will be used in the future — but it’s poisoning the minds of our next generation.” He added: “Think how much time you spend cultivating the mind and soul and heart of your child and then you hand over a phone and then on that phone is an app controlled by communists who are pumping things to poison their mind. Wake up!” He further called for “courageous leadership” in Congress, “especially Democrats,” to “ban this.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/24/23]

Hegseth: China uses TikTok to “poison” American kids and get them to “trans themselves,” and it’s “like giving the Soviets a portal into our kids in the ‘80s.”Hegseth, then the host of Fox & Friends’ weekend edition, alleged in a February 2024 segment that China was trying to “poison” American children by using TikTok to get them to “dance and trans themselves and be distracted” while Chinese children are taught science and math. He went on to say that “the fact that we allow this is one of many, but actually near the top of the list, of the most foolish things we are doing in our society,” adding that TikTok is “like giving the Soviets a portal into our kids in the ‘80s. It’s insane!” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [2/1/24]

Noem: China uses TikTok on kids “to manipulate their thoughts and their minds and how they feel about the United States of America.”Noem, who as governor made South Dakota the first state to ban TikTok on state-owned devices, said during a March 2023 Fox appearance that China is “using that platform to spy on our people, to communicate with them,” and “to change perceptions.” She went on to say that parents should tell children who use TikTok “to knock it off. Tell them they slept in their beds last night safe and secure because of sacrifices that were made for this country, and that, to respect that, they should not allow our enemies to come right into their homes and to manipulate their thoughts and their minds and how they feel about the United States of America.” Fox News, *Sunday Morning Futures*, [3/12/23]

Noem: TikTok is part of China’s “long-term goal to destroy the United States.” During another March 2023 interview, Noem said that the Chinese Communist Party uses TikTok “to influence our children, to spy on us, gather personal data, and they’re doing it to destroy us.” She added that “China has a long-term goal to destroy the United States of America” and that “when I watch people talk about how much they enjoy TikTok, I'm concerned Americans aren't even willing to be inconvenienced anymore to protect their freedom.” She went on to say that she didn’t think Biden would sign the bill banning TikTok because “over and over again this president has proven that he won’t protect America.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [3/24/23]

Noem: “If you are using TikTok, you are helping China destroy America. You are facilitating it. So get off of TikTok.”During a November 2023 Fox interview, Noem agreed that TikTok is a “national security threat” and a “spy mechanism.” She concluded: “If you are using TikTok, you are helping China destroy America. You are facilitating it. So get off of TikTok. Take a little bit of pause on what you think is fun and let's start doing the hard work of saving freedom.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [11/29/23]

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6 24

the U.S. military launched a clandestine operation to undermine trust in China's COVID-19 vaccines, a Reuters investigation has revealed. Amid the global health crisis, the Pentagon used fake social media accounts to prey on vulnerable populations, sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of life-saving inoculations.

The Pentagon's secret anti-vax propaganda campaign continued for months into the Biden administration before finally being shut down in 2021.

According to the Reuters report, "The effort to stoke fear about Chinese inoculations risked undermining overall public trust in government health initiatives, including U.S.-made vaccines that became available later."

One senior officer admitting, "We weren't looking at this from a public health perspective," said a senior military officer involved in the program. "We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud." Not suprising. It's not the military's job to protect lives, especially when corporate profits are at stake!

Infectious disease specialist Daniel Lucey of Dartmouth called it indefensible, saying he was "extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned" that the U.S. government would engage in such tactics. Public health experts warned that stoking skepticism of one vaccine can lead to broader distrust of all inoculations.

The next time the Pentagon wants to fight foreign influence campaigns, maybe they should look in the mirror before weaponizing a global health emergency.

Previously:

• Gripping oral history of the Pentagon Papers from the New York Times

mma

ROB SCHMITT (HOST): I mean, again, this trial was so meaningless. In the grand scheme of what this family's been doing, this is the psyop. Here it is.

MONICA CROWLEY (GUEST): Yeah exactly. I mean, it's not meaningless in the sense that it was a head fake. It's meant to distract the American people with Hunter's shiny little object of a gun away from the much larger crimes of the Biden crime family, and that is influence peddling and making bank by selling America out to some of our worst enemies, including the --

SCHMITT: China, Russia.

CROWLEY: Chinese Communist Party, the Russians, and deeply corrupt entities and regimes like Ukraine. 6 24

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6 24 mma Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy falsely claims there were Chinese bioweapons labs found in California

06/05/24

fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy falsely claims there were Chinese bioweapons labs found in California

In reality, as The Associated Press reported at the time, “The charges deal with federal health regulations, nothing related to online conspiracy theories about China purportedly trying to engineer biological weapons in rural America”

WRITTEN BY MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

:{PUBLISHED 06/05/24

During a June 5 diatribe about the dangers of Chinese influence within our hemisphere, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy wrongly asserted that “bioweapons labs [were] found in California.” The host was seemingly referring to debunked conspiracy theories that had circulated the previous fall.

In 2023, an investigation by the Food and Drug Administration found an unauthorized lab in Fresno, California, which was owned by Jia Bei Zhu. Zhu was arrested on “charges of not obtaining the proper permits to manufacture tests for COVID-19, pregnancy and HIV.”

Discovery of the lab had fueled conspiracy theories about bioweapons, but as The Associated Press reported at the time, “The charges deal with federal health regulations, nothing related to online conspiracy theories about China purportedly trying to engineer biological weapons in rural America.” Additionally, according to the article, “The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said there was no sign that the lab was illegally in possession of the materials or had select agents or toxins that could be used as bioweapons.”

Yet during a morning rant about the supposed dangers permeating American borders, Campos-Duffy seemingly referred to the lab while fearmongering about “the Chinese exerting influence all over our hemisphere.” She went on to allege that “some people [are] saying the election in Mexico, the Chinese were very much involved in that election.”

Video

CitationFrom the June 5, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY (CO-HOST): What's happening in our own hemisphere, you have Mexico turning into a narco-state but, more importantly, you have the Chinese exerting influence all over our hemisphere: flying, you know, spy balloons over our country, buying up farmland, setting up secret police, bioweapons labs found in California, and then buying up all kinds of, you know, mines and infrastructure and ports all over Latin America. This is unheard of in our own backyard. This is a massive problem. Many people are saying it's actually the biggest problem. And some people saying the election in Mexico, the Chinese were very much involved in that election. And we had 34 candidates who were killed in this campaign season in Mexico. Mexico is a very hot spot right now.

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review mma 12 23

During his tenure at Fox News, Jesse Watters has risen from compiling blatantly racist on-the-street ambush interviews for disgraced former Fox host Bill O'Reilly to becoming one of the network’s highest-rated hosts.

That rise has been fueled in part by Watters' embrace of the network's favored conspiracy theories, including questioning the integrity of the 2020 election, casting doubt on a 10-year-old rape victim to push radical anti-abortion narratives, and baselessly scapegoating offshore wind energy development for the deaths of endangered whales.

Since the departure of top-rated Fox host Tucker Carlson, Watters has taken up his former colleague’s mantle in the Fox prime-time lineup as the network’s preeminent merchant of nonsense — which, like Carlson, he often camouflages in “just asking questions”-type language. In fact, irresponsibly floating outrageous conspiracy theories with no evidence has become a hallmark of Watters’ top-rated show.

Media Matters found that in 2023, Watters toyed with at least 24 different conspiracy theories, ranging from the threat of “transhumanism” turning everyone into mindless robots to baseless accusations of corruption at the highest levels of government.

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https://www.alternet.org/ted-cruz-2662301818/

barbie ccp prop

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aha NOTE DATE reboot // fauci target, CCP, WHO // WEF klaus  //Soros

https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/**2023/05**/boebert-promotes-globalist-conspiracy-at-rally-opposing-world-health-organization/53533/

rww5 23

no lnx grt pix

NEWS

Boebert Promotes ‘Globalist’ Conspiracy at Rally Opposing World Health Organization

by

Erik Maulbetsch

posted on

May 18, 2023

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO) joined many of her Freedom Caucus colleagues in a full-blown “globalist” conspiracy press conference yesterday.

In addition to a dozen or so members of Congress, the “Exit the WHO [World Health Organization]” event at the Capitol featured organizer Frank Gaffney, a notorious Islamophobe whose Center for Security Policy is an anti-Muslim hate group.

Gaffney and the lawmakers, including Boebert, made numerous unsubstantiated claims, from the World Health Organization being controlled by China, to blaming it for the COVID pandemic, to claiming it is the vehicle for a plot to force all nations under a single worldwide government.

Image created by Gaffney’s Sovereignty Coalition blames the WHO for all American COVID deaths.

Gaffney kicked off his remarks with a claim that has been repeatedly debunked:

“The Chinese Communist Party runs the World Health Organization,” said Gaffney. “It runs the World Health Organization in furtherance of its long-standing objective of global governance- that’s one world government.”

In advance of the rally, Gaffney’s Sovereignty Coalition has created a “meme library” for the purpose of attacking the WHO. The images are rife with unsubstantiated conspiracies, including one that says: “The W.H.O. killed over One Million Americans?” presumably blaming the organization for all American COVID deaths.

None of this is true. The fact checks debunking the various claims are legion, and longstanding. Here’s a line from the Associated Press:

“CLAIM: A legally-binding World Health Organization ‘pandemic treaty’ will give the organization the authority to control U.S. policies during a pandemic, including those on vaccines, lockdowns, school closures and more.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The voluntary treaty, which is in draft form and is still far away from ratification, does not overrule any nation’s ability to pass individual pandemic-related policies, multiple experts, including one involved in the draft process, told The Associated Press.”

Boebert mentioned several classic conspiracy tropes in her brief speech. As the fact-check above makes clear, the U.S. is not surrendering its sovereignty to the WHO. She then lists three reasons the WHO is bad: she claims it’s controlled by China, it’s linked to the World Economic Forum, and it sabotaged the investigation of COVID’s origin. None of these are true. The WHO is a specialized agency of the United Nations, governed by an executive board of 34 countries that currently includes the United States and China.

While there are disputes over how aggressively the WHO pursued the COVID origin investigation, it’s Boebert’s second point that raises the conspiracy red flag. Without any context or follow-up, she links the WHO to the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is a dog-whistle reference that “globalist” conspiracists no doubt heard loud and clear.

“On Day One Biden made it clear he wasn’t fit for the job when he brought the United States back into the World Health Organization,” said Boebert. “The results of Biden’s failed foreign policy is absolutely astonishing. The Biden Administration plans to surrender U.S sovereignty to unelected bureaucracy— [interrupted by heckler]. To paint a clear picture the Biden Administration is giving the same organization that is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, the same [that has an] affiliation with the World Economic Forum, and the same organization that sabotaged an investigation into the origin of COVID, more control over the American people’s lives. The WHO continues to spread lies and disinformation by praising China’s response to the virus as transparent, which frankly isn’t true. 

“Before Biden took office the WHO was unable to do anything without written permission from our government. Now, if Joe Biden gets his way the WHO will have even more control over the most most private parts of our lives. This is not about public health! The WHO made it very clear they will censor anyone who does not agree with their agenda to control every aspect of people’s lives. They want total control over vaccinations, digitalization of health records, and your travel. Under this plan the Biden Administration is adopting Marxismby distributing medicine based on “equity.” This is not what a constitutional republic looks like. This is a dictatorship and we must defund the WHO and stop this radical agenda being put forward by the Biden Administration.”

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Sovereignty Coalition tweet promoting John Birch Society’s petition to defund the WHO.

Responding to an email request for evidence of her claims and comment on her participation in the rally, a spokesman for Congresswoman Boebert sent a number of links to previous statements and two published reports.

With regards to why she references the World Economic Forum, the spokesman offered five previous tweets she wrote attacking the WEF.

Those include:

“Rather than trying to please Klaus Schwab and George Soros, the people elected to serve our nation should try and actually make the lives of the American people better.”

“Klaus Schwab: ‘The future is being built by us.’ Take it from me, you don’t want to be a part of ANY FUTURE designed by the WEF – because globalism isn’t about YOU, it’s about THEM CONTROLLING YOU.”

Another tweet references a conspiracy that “the WEF announced they hired hundreds of thousands of “information warriors” to police the social media narrative.” The conspiracy was debunked the same day as Boebert’s tweet.

Conspiracies accusing the World Economic Forum of attempting to control the planet and place all humans under a single global government are widely understood to be antisemitic.

Her office also shared a May 2022 opinion column by former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that contained nearly all the points Boebert made in her speech, some in nearly identical language.

A week prior to yesterday’s rally, Gaffney’s group also shared content from another organization making the same “call: “defund and withdraw” call: the infamously racist and conspiracist John Birch Society.

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U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Chip Roy (R-TX) urged the public to call Congress and demand passage of a pair of bills they have introduced that would end American payments to the WHO and withdraw the United States from the agency.

The John Birch Society also supports their legislation, as well as the overall “Exit the WHO” demand. It echoes the Sovereignty Coalition’s conspiracist claims on its own website:

“The WHO’s threat to national sovereignty and individual freedom is becoming increasingly blatant and obvious,” claims the John Birch Society. “Not only is the WHO effectively controlled by Communist China and other subversive globalist interests, but it is actively seeking greater, totalitarian control over its member nations, along with all of humanity. If the WHO gets its way, U.S. national sovereignty will become a thing of the past, and the WHO will have total power to mandate vaccinations, impose vaccine passports, and implement a digital health ID— worse, the Biden administration is trying to help the WHO achieve its tyrannical goals.”

Another Sovereignty Coalition meme links the WHO to drag queens, apparently implying some sort of international plan to introduce LGBTQ content to children.

Boebert isn’t the only Coloradan connected to the Sovereignty Coalition. Dede Laugesen, a former Trump campaign staffer and wife of Colorado Springs Gazette editorial page editor Wayne Laugesen works for Gaffney.

She promoted the rally on social media and was praised by longtime anti-WHO activist James Roguski, who after the event wrote “All the credit for the press conference goes to Frank Gaffney, Reggie Littlejohn, DeDe Laugesen, everyone at Sovereignty Coalition.”

The full video of the press conference is available to watch here.

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& friends co2 chartchinano src, top coal producer? vs user/ totalitarian hu rts mining BS covid lockdown test for tyr US BS, apple biden granholm love china NYT...

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-admin-outlines-plan-cut-vital-water-supplies-western-states

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trans

https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-says-chinese-military-installations-are-using-tiktok-make-our-children

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Republican lawmaker recently shared a bizarre analogy of how the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and he's tying it into politics.

:{:{On Thursday, March 2, Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) appeared on Newsmax where he discussed the COVID outbreak and its origin. When asked about the White House's hesitance to publicly agree on the origin of the virus, the Florida lawmaker offered his take.}:

}:

According to Steube, a lot of the circumstances surrounding the virus stem from the Chinese Communist Party.

READ NOW: Connecticut Republicans demand 'guardrails' on medical marijuana: report

"If there is reporting that determines that this was released from this laboratory as a bioweapon to your point," he said. "I, I, I think I would not be shocked. The Chinese Communist Party is the number one national security threat to the United States. I obviously don't have evidence that there was an intentional leak right now."

He added, "Uh, but uh, I certainly wouldn't be shocked that that was something. Look, you had Trump coming into his reelection. Uh, they hated President Trump because of the policies that he took. Strong on China, would love nothing more, uh, than having somebody like Biden who's compromised in the White House. So it would not shock me at all."

Steube also went on to offer a conspiracy theory about the World Health Organization (WHO) as he suggested that it is secret Chinese-operated.

"And if that is the fact, then this administration in our government needs to act accordingly. So does the rest of the world, quite frankly.So does NATO, the un, the World Health Organization that's basically run by the Chinese Communist Party," Steube said. "We need to take a strong action against that type of release from the Chinese Communist Party, if that in fact is true."

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During the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush years, members of Republican presidential administrations often used the phrase "peace through strength" when arguing in favor of a large military budget and an interventionist foreign policy. But Christopher C. Miller, who served as acting secretary of defense during the final months of the Trump Administration, is calling for the United States to "dramatically" reduce its military budget.

During an interview for CBS News’ podcast "The Takeout," Miller — a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel — told host Major Garrett that the United States’ military budget could be cut by as much as half.

The 57-year-old Miller argued, "We have created an entire enterprise that focuses economically on creating crisis to justify outrageously high defense spending. You have to starve the beast to make people come out of their cubby holes and start thinking creatively."

READ MORE: 'National insecurity': Military budget tops $1.4 trillion

During the interview, Miller also urged politicians toquit obsessing over China.

Miller told Garrett, "I think by constantly harping on the fact that China is the new threat and we’re going to go to war with them someday actually plays right into Chairman Xi’s hands and the Chinese Communist Party. They need to have an enemy that they can, you know, focus their people’s anger and attention on, and I think we provide them that opportunity by constantly harking on the fact that the Chinese are the greatest threat to America and what not."

Miller, author of the new book "Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield & the Pentagon about America’s Most Dangerous Enemies," joined Trump's administration on November 9, 2020 after then-President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

READ MORE: Why Rand Paul is right to push 'Pentagon spending cuts': journalist

Read CBS News’ full article at this link.

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rt wing experts says ~ china is new ctr of maga hard rt = anti-commie, hates am to weaken for one world gov't

On today’s show, we explore the growth of the Far Right in both the US and Europe.

Laura Jedeed joins us to discuss embedding with a right-wing “Constitutional Defense” and handgun training camp in Texas, about which she recently wrote an article for The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/169563/patriot-academy-right-wing-constitutional-defense-training-camp

Laura Jedeed is an investigative and features journalist based in New York City. She often writes about housing justice, military interventionism, and the American far right.

Check out Laura Jedeed’s website: https://laurajedeed.com/

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U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), the former chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus and an extremist whose own family members called for him to be removed from office over his activities surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, on Monday labeled First Lady Dr. Jill Biden “compromised” and said she must be investigated.

Congressman Biggs, who just last month was one of 28 House Republicans voting against legislation to protect child sex abuse victims, has a long history of extremism.

Before his congressional career Biggs served as a policy advisor to United Families International, which for at least a decade has repeatedly appeared on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups. According to a 2012 article in the Phoenix New Times (archived), “Republican state Representative Andy Biggs is the former policy adviser to the group, and his wife Cindy Biggs is currently listed as the organization’s secretary and treasurer on its website.”

Far right activist and conspiracy theorist Ali Alexander, one of the organizers of the Stop the Steal campaign that promotes Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen, credits three GOP Members of Congress with helping him start the movement.

“I was the person that came up with the Jan. 6 idea,” Alexander has said, “with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and then Congressman Andy Biggs.”

Arizona’s Copper Courier reports Biggs asked then-President Donald Trump for a preemptive pardon for his actions related to the Jan. 6 insurrection. It also reports Biggs “was one of two Congress members who voted against the COVID-19 bill. His reasoning was because he objected to the fact that the bill’s definition of “couples” included same-sex partners.”

Biggs “falsely claimed” that supporters of the bill “redefined family for the first time in a piece of federal legislation to include committed relationships,” according to GLAAD, which noted, “the same language has been included in proposed legislation as far back as 2015.”

As for Congressman Biggs’ attack on First Lady Biden, Monday night he tweeted, “The Biden family highly concerns me. Joe, Hunter, and even ‘Dr.’ Jill. They are compromised and must be investigated.”

The tweet apparently came in response to news that a small number of documents with classified markings had been found in a locked closet that was part of then-former Vice President Joe Biden’s offices. Those documents were reportedly immediately handed over to the National Archives and the Dept. of Justice was notified.

A Google search found no news reports that tie Dr. Biden to the documents in any way.

READ MORE: Far Right GOP Congressman Boycotts House Gun Violence Hearing – Claims It ‘Exploits’ Kids After 19 Were Shot Dead

Biggs tweeted more lies, stating: “Biden stole classified documents and stored them at his think tank while he was VP. The VP does not have any authority to declassify classified documents. And this ‘think tank’ received $54 million in funding from the CCP.”

Although he did not support any of his claims, Biggs is likely referring to a sum total of $54.6 million given by Chinese donors not to the think tank but to the University of Pennsylvania, according to a New York Post report last year.

“The Ivy League college raked in a total of $54.6 million from 2014 through June 2019 in donations from China, including $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016, according to public records,” The Post said. The school is home to a think tank named for President Joe Biden, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

“A University of Pennsylvania spokesman denied any anonymous Chinese money had gone to the center,” the Post added.

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aha trifecta: clear eyes rationalist on what is possible, ~ chiComm, waste, tyranny...

mma 9 22

MARK LEVIN (HOST): And we're plowing ahead with hundreds of billions of dollars to impose andcompel people to use electricity, and we simply do not have the grid for it. We do not have the backup systems for it. We do not have processes in place to do this, and our reliance on basically one source of energy -- and when it comes to vehicles,a reliance on a foreign enemy, Red China.You can see now in real time that a natural disaster [refers to what? on top of a man made disaster is a catastrophe. An absolute catastrophe. This so-called climate change ideology must be stopped in its tracks.

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CMD 3 22

CNP

...Pushing Back Against China, the Left, and a “Woke” Military 

Placing China “at the heart of the greatest challenges facing the United States in recent years”—from Covid to currency manipulation, climate policies, and “undue influence over American corporations”—Economic War Room host Kevin Freeman led a discussion titled “The 21st: An American or Chinese Century?”

Freeman was joined in the panel by Beau Brunson, Consumers’ Research Director of Policy and Regulatory Affairs. Consumers’ Research has committed millions in dark money to fight environmental, social, and corporate governance concerns (ESG) and “woke” capitalism, where BlackRock has emerged as a top target of its campaign for its “hypocritical” investments in China.

CMD recently exposed Consumers’ Research as one of the largest sponsors of the State Financial Officers Foundation, a group of Republican treasurers, auditors, and staff from 16 states, which has  also prioritized fighting the ESG movement and “woke” capitalism.

Also on the panel were Pete Hoekstra, former ambassador to the Netherlands under Trump, and Steve Milloy, a FoxNews contributor and paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil, and other corporations.

The three also participated in a CNP Action panel on “Countering China,” where they collectively worked “on ways to combat the increasing and pervasive threat China poses to the United States and American life.”

Leading an CNP Action panel discussion on “Defunding the Left,”Buckeye InstitutePresident and CEO Robert Altfacilitated a tutorial on how to cut off contributions to “left-wing causes” by targeting public employee unions, trial lawyers, and investment management firms. O.H. Skinner, executive director of Alliance for Consumers, and Bridgett Wagner, vice president of policy promotion at the Heritage Foundation, joined the discussion.

New CNP Executive Member Boykinled a panel discussion focused on the question: “Can a Woke Military Address Future Threats?” with Mike Berry, First Liberty’s general counsel, and Keith Kellogg, retired Army lieutenant general and co-chair of AFPI’s Center for American Security.The three talked about “extreme policies [that] have been implemented through the Department of Defense” and “how woke ideologies have influenced our armed services.”

Two other CNP meetings are scheduled for this year, May 18–20 in McLean, VA, and September 15–17 in Frisco, TX.

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trying to trash via foreign bilionaire BS  ~ sino

https://unherd.com/2021/12/does-the-ccp-control-extinction-rebellion/

no lnx

Does the CCP control Extinction Rebellion?

Western activists are blind to President Xi's ambition

BY DAVID ROSE

. Is he just a useful idiot? (NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP via Getty Images)

David Rose is aninvestigative journalistand author. His next book is about caving.

DavidRoseUK

December 15, 2021

Filed under:

Global affairs BeijingCCPCensorshipChinaClimate changeCommunismDon't missEducationEnvironmentExtinction RebellionFossil fuelsUniversityWEFXi Jinping

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A few blocks away from Tiananmen Square, amid the cavernous splendour of the Beijing Hotel Convention Centre, an array of senior Communist Party officials gathered in September to proclaim a clear message: by “focusing on cutting carbon emissions… China will promote green development, and continuously improve its ecology”. The annual general meeting of the China Council for International Co-operation on Environment and Development (the CCICED) was in full swing.

Rapturous applause filled the room, though that was hardly unexpected. Conferences run by the CCP are not usually marked by dissent, especially when they’re attended by the likes of Xie Zhenhua, who led China’s delegation to Cop26, and vice premier Han Zheng, one of the seven standing committee members of the Politburo, the Party’s supreme elite. Indeed, as the room fizzled with optimistic eco-rhetoric, you could almost forget that China is the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gases — and that the new coal-fired power stations in its construction pipeline alone have a greater capacity than Britain’s entire generation fleet.

What was remarkable about this meeting, though, was the surprising presence of an external delegation: joining the CCP apparatchiks on a collection of screens dotted around the room were a number of enthusiastic Britons and other Westerners. According to the official conference report, the “foreign committee members and partners lauded China’s ecological civilisation building and its new and greater contributions to promoting the construction of a clean and beautiful world”.

Who were these people? Strange to tell, they consisted of a veritable Who’s Who of British, European and American climate activists.

Here, for example, was Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, Chairman of the Grantham Centre on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, and a longstanding government adviser who wrote a report for Blair’s Labour government on the need to go green. He told the meeting the world is beginning a “new growth story” that “fits well with China’s vision of an ecological society”.

Here too was Kate Hampton, chief executive of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which is mainly bankrolled by the billionaire Sir Christopher Hohn, a key financial backer of Extinction Rebellion and one of the world’s biggest sources of green largesse. During the meeting,Hampton said she “supported Chinese leadership on setting the global path for fulfilling Paris goals”— the attempt to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius — and praised China for “supporting green Covid-19 recovery”.

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BY CLIVE HAMILTON]

Others were equally fulsome, including Laurence Tubiana, France’s former climate ambassador and now chief executive of the European Climate Foundation, which also gives millions to British green campaigns, such as UK100, an alliance of local authorities pledged to turn Net Zero by 2030; and the Conservative Environment Network.

Also present were representatives from ClientEarth, a law firm that tries to block development in Britain and other countries on environmental grounds in the courts; the Worldwide Fund for Nature, whose president is Prince Charles; and representatives from rich and influential organisations based in America including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the World Resources Institute and the Energy Foundation.

And yet in the weeks since the CCICED meeting, Cop26 has come and gone; and largely thanks to China, any hope of a meaningful deal has evaporated. On the last day, British minister Alok Sharma was reduced to tears when India and China refused to promise to phase out coal. Back in the real world, President Xi Jinping has said China will increase annual coal production by 220 million tonnes.

Such moves have, unsurprisingly, attracted robust criticism. Professor Jun Arima of Tokyo University, one of Japan’s Cop26 negotiators, told me that allowing China to benefit from cheap, coal-fired energy will only consolidate its industrial domination. Lord Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, pointed out that China’s leaders have repeatedly shown they are not “men of their word”.

Yet those in attendance at the meeting in September have been unified by their reticence. Why?

Last year, in their book Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World, Clive Hamiltonand Mareike Ohlberg revealed how China influences Britain and other Western democracies by seducing their elites. Its ‘useful idiots’ often believe they are acting for the common good, but become blind to Xi’s avowed ambition: for China to achieve global supremacy by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Maoist revolution.

Nowhere is this more effective than in the climate movement. I asked a specialist researcher fluent in Mandarin to examine open-source material from the Chinese web. The results suggest Western greens have become prime targets. Perhaps this isn’t so surprising: before he was a climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua helped run the Party Discipline Commission, which operates a secret prison network where torture, according to Human Rights Watch, has long been rife.

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BY AUSTIN WILLIAMS]

I asked Hamilton if China’s wooing of Western environmentalists explains why the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide has aroused so little protest? He believes it is likely: “They’ve fallen for what the Party calls ‘discourse control’ — to shape the way the rest of the world thinks and talks about China, presenting the Chinese government in a favourable light. Toadying to the Party leadership is letting them off the hook.”

For Lord Stern, this is nothing new: his environmental record is littered with papers saying CCP leaders are making great progress, and suggesting — prematurely — that their coal use and emissions have already or will soon peak. In 2014, for example, he claimed in a paper for the World Economic Forum that China was “emerging as a global leader in climate policy”. His co-author was He Jiankun, a ‘counsellor’ to China’s top administrative body, the State Council, and the director of the Energy, Environment and Economy Institute at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Three years later, following the the annual WEF jamboree at Davos, Stern said: “The world is looking for a climate champion. In China, it has one.”

Has Stern been naïve and let himself get too close to the CCP? Certainly for the Party, Tsinghua University has a special role: it is Xi Jinping’s alma mater, and home to multiple labs conducting secret research for the People’s Liberation Army. Yet the pair still work together: Stern’s spokesman told me that Tsinghua and the LSE are joint leaders of the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate, which held two international meetings before Cop26 with contributions from Alok Sharma, US climate envoy John Kerry,and — of course — Xie Zhenhua.

This year, for what it’s worth, Stern has called on China to stop building new coal-fired plants. But he still spoke at this year’s CCICED, while his spokesman told me that China remained “keen to learn from the UK’s example of world-leading action on climate change” and said the rate of increase in its emissions had slowed enormously. While this may be true, China’s emissions continued to rise even through the pandemic, and now exceed the total produced by rest of the developed world.

On paper, at least, you might argue there’s no harm in that. After all, the CCICED’s “mission” is to build “a more beautiful China and a green and bountiful world”. Who could possibly object?

Hardly anyone, I suspect, until they learnt that, the CCICED’s Chinese members include not only top Party bosses but officials who work with China’s United Front Work Department, one of the CCP’s main instruments for exerting influence abroad. Among them is Li Xiaolin, a top party cadre and the daughter of China’s late president Li Xiannan. Until recently, she was the chair of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries — which, as Hamilton and Ohlberg show in their book, is one of China’s most important foreign influence organisations.

What does this mean in practice? According to Patricia Adams, director of the Toronto-based environmental think tank Probe International, in 2017 a new Chinese law forced foreign NGOs there to submit to “close supervision” by the Ministry of Public Security, responsible for crushing dissent and controlling China’s secret police. Any organisation deemed to have “harmed the national interest” risks having its assets seized, its staff jailed, and being permanently banned.

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How America can save Taiwan

BY ARIS ROUSSINOS]

Adams knows this fully well: in 2014, when the new law was being discussed, two Chinese academics she was working with were arrested and later jailed, and Probe International named as co-conspirators. Their crime? “Picking quarrels and provoking troubles” for speaking out on issues such as the rule of law. After that, Adams tells me, “it was no longer safe for us to work in China”. As for the Western environmentalists who still do, she adds: “They hope they can influence China’s leadership. But they are also aware that for them, to publicly criticise China’s policy would be suicide.”

Take, for example, the aforementioned CIFF, whose Chief Executive attended the CCICED gathering in September. Along with the WWF and ClientEarth, it has a branch in China which is subject to CCP control. There, the CIFF employs one Wang Yi as its “independent adviser on climate projects”. As chance would have it, he also happens to be a high-ranking member of China’s puppet parliament, the National People’s Congress.

To what extent that compromises his impartiality is anyone’s guess. But it is striking that the CIFF — a registered UK charity — gives away millions of pounds to projects in China. These include an £18 million grant to “help contribute to peaking China’s emissions”, £14 million to give China “evidence-based recommendations” for renewable energy, and, most astonishingly of all, £8 million to assist China “in global climate governance”.

This might not matter quite so much were Sir Christopher and the CIFF not prominent funders of green causes in Britain and Europe. He has personally given £50,000 to Extinction Rebellion, with a further £150,000 from the CIFF. When these payments emerged in 2019, Hohn said: “I recently gave them £50,000 because humanity is aggressively destroying the world with climate change and there is an urgent need for us all to wake up to this fact.”

But not, apparently, to China’s role in it. When I asked an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson why they never said anything about China, she told me: “It would be divisive to put pressure on one particular nation. It would be hypocritical.”

Yet the CIFF’s China connection extends well beyond Extinction Rebellion: it is also the biggest funder of the European Climate Foundation, based in Brussels but with an office in London, to which the CIFF donated £29 million last year. Strikingly, the ECF’s deputy chair is a familiar figure: the CIFF’s Kate Hampton.

Like the CIFF, the ECF website provides few details of the groups it funds. But its UK ‘grantees’ include ClientEarth and the Conservative Environment Network, an alliance of more than 100 Tory MPs and peers set up by environment minister Zac Goldsmith and his plutocrat brother Ben.

SUGGESTED READING

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BY PHILIP COWLEY]

Its ‘global ambassador’, meanwhile, is the Prime Minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, a self-declared “Sinophile” who said last year that China “will come over to our side”, and it was vital “not to raise the temperature” by criticising them. He added he had recently enjoyed “a wonderful, wonderful meeting with the Chinese ambassador”, at which, after discussing global warming, they had sung the Flanders and Swann song ‘Mud, Glorious Mud’ together, inspired by mud’s supposed ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

And yet for all the pledges made in recent years by China and Western environmentalists, the evidence suggests that any future action will be strictly on China’s terms. For many years, Chinese leaders avoided trying to promote the Communist system in the West, but since Xi took power in 2012, this has changed. China, says Clive Hamilton, now touts the ‘China model’ as superior to the West’s.

Anyone doubting this had only attend yet another Beijing meeting, held in June at a Chinese government office by the Foreign Environmental Cooperation Centre, part of China’s environment ministry. The meeting’s attendees included staff from the CCICED, and discussed “the building of ecological civilisation and the community of common destiny”. One leading participant was Chen Xiangyang, the Director of China’s Total State Security Outlook Research Centre — an arm of the Ministry of State Security, which has helped to direct a regime of surveillance against Chinese citizens.

Meanwhile, Qiushi, the CCP’s theoretical journal, published an article in Chinese this year which explores how foreign environmentalists can be utilised. The idea of ecological civilisation, it says, is “Marxist and scientific by nature”, and will have a big role in spreading the China Model’s appeal.

None of this is hidden. This article uses Chinese documents, but all are available on the Mandarin web. Yet climate change activists continue to blindly give China a free pass on its emissions and continued use of coal.

An ECF spokesperson told me: “Climate change impacts every country and so we work with every country, and of course that includes China.” A CIFF spokesperson added: “China is the world’s largest emitter and its transition to a net zero economy is therefore of utmost importance to the entire world. CIFF’s work in China aims to accelerate this transition.”

ClientEarth said: “As a result of our work delivering legal training, the legal system in China is now used to hold Chinese government bodies to account… We are focused on reducing pollution and bringing down emissions both in China and from its overseas investments.” And a WWF campaigns chief added: “All countries need to contribute towards reducing emissions to net zero by 2050. By promising to stop building coal plants abroad, China had ‘given an important signal’.

Ultimately, however, the meaning of that “signal” remains unclear. Is it a sign that President Xi is seriously committed to saving the planet? Or is it a sign that he understands how to fool an influential group of Western environmentalists, with the intention of making that planet his own?

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BS myth china india 3rd w must go 1st:

standard BS excuse for US action is that more polluting, developing world puts out more ghg and will not cut back, thus it's pointless b/c emissions will go up whatever we do PLUS it will give them an economic advantage over US; reductionistic b/c it ignore the 100 year headstart we had (in both development and pollution, and they don't have the money to act agressively b/c their ppl are poor/hungry; US largely abandoned green R&D that could save them (and we could still lead/sell to the world]

sparked by 

Statements of Support

Heather Reams, Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES) Executive Director: “CRES applauds US Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) and the 51 other House Republicans who today announced the creation of the Conservative Climate Caucus and looks forward to working with Members and staff on its agenda. The climate is changing and to address it, our country needs a commonsense approach that works by reducing energy prices, not energy choices; 

shrinking our emissions, not our economy; and, 

exporting American innovation, not American jobs. Despite what fringe activists and their Capitol Hill champions say, overregulatingAmerica will not lower emissions globally.This caucus understands that climate change is a global issue.Today, 85 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions occur outside of the United States – a share that will increase to 90 percent by the end of the next decade. This means that U.S. climate and energy policy must foster innovation and commercialization pathways that work forIndiana as well as for India. Achieving emissions-reduction solutions are possible with the leadership demonstrated by the creation this caucus today.”

Rich Powell, ClearPath Executive Director: “Republicans have real solutions for climate change – ones that are technologically realistic, economically feasible, and politically sustainable. Over the past decade, conservatives have institutionalized big, bold goals anchored by clean energy breakthroughs as the best approach to solving the climate challenge. Higher taxes and more regulations won’t solve it – and this Conservative Climate Caucus will continue advancing solutions that strengthen the American economy, and reduce global carbon emissions.”  

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omg

https://www.mediamatters.org/one-america-news-network/oan-pitches-new-carriers-one-its-top-personalities-pushes-conspiracy

no lnx twt vid

As OAN pitches to new carriers, one of its top personalities pushes conspiracy theories with Alex Jones

WRITTEN BY BOBBY LEWIS

PUBLISHED 02/11/22

On February 9, One America News Network’s Pearson Sharp appeared on Alex Jones’ eponymous show on Infowars for a nearly 40-minute interview with the conspiracy theorist who was recently found liable for defamation in lawsuits brought by some of the families of children murdered in the Sandy Hook school shooting. 

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During the appearance, Sharp suggested pandemic restrictions could lead to a revolution; claimed Democrats might welcome an invasion by China to help fight dissenters; and compared the tracking of unvaccinated Americans to events that preceded the Holocaust.

OAN is currently trying to get picked up by mainstream cable providers like Spectrum and Dish Network after DirecTV announced it would not renew its contract with the network, starving OAN’s parent company of 90% of its income.

Though Jones is most infamous for lying about the Sandy Hook massacre, he has also regularly promoted far-right extremists calling for anti-government violence. He was also involved in funding and fomenting a January 6 event that devolved into the attack on the Capitol, and he has capitalized on his lies about the 2020 election by promoting his line of ineffective supplements.

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During the interview, Sharp praised Jones, saying, “It’s really an honor to be on here. You’re one of the few truth-tellers in our country right now.” Jones also effusively praised Sharp, telling him, “I watch [OAN] hours a day. We have it on here at the office, all over the building. We don’t have Fox on anymore, other than Tucker Carlson occasionally.” Jones also told Sharp that “you have the same views as I do on this crazy world” and at the end, he invited him to come back anytime and guest host The Alex Jones Show. 

Some highlights from Jones and Sharp’s lengthy conversation follow:

Sharp predicted that COVID-19 restrictions could spark a revolution, leading to Democrats inviting a Chinese invasion to keep power

CitationFrom the February 9, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

PEARSON SHARP (OAN REPORTER): What worries me is we are pushing back, but the American people -- you know, we’re supposed to be the cowboys. We’re supposed to be the rebels and the renegades and the revolutionaries. But throughout the last two years, we have just shown a shocking tolerance for this kind of oppression and this tyranny, and we just go along with it and bend over and accept what they’re saying. And I didn’t expect that. I thought we were going to have more of a backbone and push back.

Now, we’re not like New Zealand. We’re not like England. We haven’t been pushed that far, and I think the only reason that’s happened is because we have guns and they don’t. But they’re doing everything they can to get rid of those as well.

ALEX JONES (HOST): I totally agree with you. So why do you think they’re suddenly claiming, “OK, we’re going to back off the masks, we’re going to back off forced injections for now.” I think that’s because they see that finally people see them, and they’ve pushed too far. They hope people go back to sleep.

SHARP: They do. They absolutely do. They have pushed too far. But I wonder, what is going to be the sparking point? What is going to be the Boston Massacre of our generation? What is going to be the flint stone that sets this off?

And the other thing that worries me, and I’d like to get your take on this, is when we do push back, and we push back hard enough, I’m concerned that whether it’s Biden or Kamala, or whoever it is -- someone in Washington is going to say, “Look, this is too much for us to handle. Hey China, you want to help us out here? You’re good at putting down riots and oppressing people. Why don’t you come on over?”

…

SHARP: I’m legitimately concerned that it could be a very real possibility that we have an initially soft invasion from China — where Washington rolls out the welcome mat and we have Chinese peacekeepers coming over and filling our streets — to a hard invasion where there is no rebellion against Washington anymore, but we’re just fighting an outright war against China on our doorstep.

…

SHARP: Where we’re at now, how bad things have gotten, do you think that we can have -- can we recover from where we are? Can we have a peaceful recovery from where we are? Because everything I’ve seen, it looks like the democratic process has failed. Negotiations have failed. And I hate to think that a revolution is the only answer, but I don’t see these people ever giving up power or backing down.

Sharp argued that the “globalists” want to turn America into China, where “everyone is just totally controlled and cowed into submission”

CitationFrom the February 9, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

PEARSON SHARP (OAN REPORTER): China -- astonishingly, China is the end goal for these globalists. They want everything to be like that, where everyone is just totally controlled and cowed into submission.

When I was over there, I was a teacher at Xuchang University, which is in central China, about 12 hours west of Beijing, and it was a town of about 4 million people, which is considered small over there. And my students were really nice. But I have never met a more indoctrinated group of people in my life. And it was everybody.

Everybody you would run into was just -- it’s difficult to explain to someone in the West, the difference in behavior between a Chinese national and an American. And this is a total cultural thing, before anyone jumps to racism, because you talk to people from Hong Kong, and it’s night and day. They’re like Americans. You talk to people from Taiwan, they’re like Americans. They understand what freedom is --

ALEX JONES (HOST): This is three generations under communism and they’re like Martians.

SHARP: Yeah. They are. They absolutely are like Martians. They’re totally obedient, they don’t question anything. And they have a concept over there called “saving face,” where you know the person you’re talking to is lying, they know you know that they’re lying, but you both continue with it because you want to preserve face. And that interaction happens in everything that you do.

…

ALEX JONES (HOST):So all they do is just gaslight and just go on. That’s why they have so many disasters, so many plants melt down [japan?], because no one will tell anybody they’re wrong.

SHARP: Exactly. Yep. It’s endemic to their culture. And that, I’m afraid, is what’s going to happen here. People are just going to buy what’s being fed to them.

Sharp compared federal agencies’ alleged tracking of unvaccinated employees to the beginning of the Holocaust: They are “curating a list of enemies of the state”

CitationFrom the February 9, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

PEARSON SHARP (OAN REPORTER): We just found out a couple days ago that there are 55 federal agencies, including five cabinet-level agencies, who are now tracking Americans and employees -- specifically of them, Treasury Department, even the military -- tracking employees who have objections to the vaccine, who apply for an exemption or something, who don’t want to get it. They’re tracking these people. And you’d better believe they’re watching them closely.

They’re basically, what this is is curating a list of enemies of the state. And what’s terrifying is, we’ve seen this before. All of this has happened before. In 1930s Germany, IBM created a database of Jewish people in Europe, which really greatly facilitated the Nazi Germany government going after the Jews in their country.

And now, I feel like that’s what we’re seeing here. They’re going after red-blooded Americans who are standing up for their country and don’t want to be a part of this genocide. They’re tracking them. And we know where this leads.

ALEX JONES (HOST): That’s right, this is all -- if you had a list of like a hundred things that tyrants would do, and like Hitler did 60, and Stalin did 50, and Mao did 75, they’ve done like a hundred. They’re going down everything a tyrant would do, and they’re checking the box off.

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Roger Stone pitches nutritional supplement from Alex Jones' Infowars store as COVID-19 recovery aid

02/07/22 3:24 PM EST

OAN reporter: The survival of our country depends on COVID-19 vaccines killing liberals

02/04/22 2:14 PM EST

Alex Jones: “The ADL is Adolf Alois Hitler incarnate”

02/03/22 4:01 PM EST

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no lnx doc

Feds release Covid reports that destroy right-wing talking points and conspiracy theories

How ‘anti-science’ Republicans are ‘torturing the truth’ with their anti-Fauci hysteria: journalist

David Badash October 30, 2021

The federal government on Friday quietly released two reports that together destroy many right wing conspiracy theories and talking points on the coronavirus and the COVID-19 vaccine.

Contrary to the false claims from right wing extremists that "natural immunity" is more powerful and "better" than the coronavirus vaccines, the CDC released a report finding those who are unvaccinated and contracted COVID-19 are five times more likely to be re-infected than those who are fully vaccinated.

That report, CBS News adds, shows that "vaccine-induced immunity was more protective than infection-induced immunity."

"We now have additional evidence that reaffirms the importance of COVID-19 vaccines, even if you have had prior infection. This study adds more to the body of knowledge demonstrating the protection of vaccines against severe disease from COVID-19," said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

Epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding weighs in with results from the study showing for the elderly "natural immunity" is even worse than for younger patients.

Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence also on Friday released a report that finds the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 "was not developed as a biological weapon."

Further destroying right wing claims the DNI's report adds the coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2 "probably was not genetically engineered," and says that "two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way."

"Finally, the IC [Intelligence Community] assesses China's officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged."

The report leaves the door open on exactly how the coronavirus came into being, and how it came into contact with humans.

Different Intelligence Agencies have different position, the report says, with some saying "SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it," and other agencies say it "most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The report also calls for China to be more transparent.

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aha-let // to blame narcos for drug US problem, blame china for everything

an imi 10 21

The U.S. wars lost in Iraq and Afghanistan showed imperial overreach beyond what even 20 years of war could manage. That the defeats were drawn out for so many years shows that domestic politics and the funding of the domestic military-industrial complex were, more than geopolitics, the key drivers of these wars.Empires can die from overreach and sacrificing broadly social goals for the narrow interests of political and economic minorities.

The United States has 4.25 percent of the world's population yet accounts for about 20 percent of global deaths from COVID-19. A rich global superpower with a highly developed medical industry proved to be badly unprepared for and unable to cope with a viral pandemic. It now wrestles with a huge segment of its population that seems so alienated from major economic and political institutions that it risks self-destruction and demands the "right" to infect others. Refusing to accept lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates in the name of "freedom" mixes a frightening stew of ideological confusion, social division, and bitterly rising hostility within the population. The January 6 events in Washington, D.C., showed merely the tip of that iceberg.

Levels of debt—government, corporate, and household—are all at or near historical records and rising. Feeding and thereby supporting the rising debts is the Federal Reserve with its years of quantitative easing. Officials at the highest levels are now discussing the possible issuance of a trillion-dollar platinum coin to have the Fed give that sum in new credit to the U.S. Treasury to enable more U.S. government spending. The purpose goes far beyond political squabbling over the cap on the national debt. The goal is nothing less than freeing the government to inject still more massive amounts of new money into the capitalist system to sustain it in times of unprecedented difficulty.The Fed learned that today's capitalism needs such quanta of monetary stimulus thanks to the three recent crashes (2000, 2008, and 2020) witnessed by the capitalist system. A desperate empire approaches a version of the Modern Monetary Theory that empire leaders mocked and rejected not very long ago.

Extreme inequality, already a distinguishing feature of the United States, worsened during the pandemic. This inequality fuels rising poverty and rising social divisions among the haves, the have-nots, and the increasingly anxious think-they-haves. Attempts by employers to recoup the profits lost to the pandemic and to the capitalist crash during 2020 and 2021 have led many to impose additional squeezes on employees. This has led to official and unofficial strikes that continue amid a reawakening labor movement. On an individual level, the rate of workers who have been quitting their jobs has been hitting record highs.

Attempts by employers to recoup profits lost over the last two years also show up in the ongoing inflation besetting the empire. Employers set prices for what they sell. They know the Fed has juiced up the potential purchasing power by flooding markets with new money.Demand, pent up by the pandemic and the economic crashes, will help, at least for a while to support inflation. But even if temporary, the inflation will further worsen income and wealth inequalities and thereby set the U.S. up for the next crash. On top of this new century's three crashes (2000, 2008, and 2020), each worse than the one before, another crash, which could be still worse, could challenge the capitalist system's survival.

Fires, floods, hurricanes, droughts: the signs of climate catastrophe—not to mention its fast-climbing costs—add to the sense of impending doom provoked by all the other signs of empire decline. Here too, the tiny minority of fossil fuel industry leaders has succeeded in blocking or delaying the social action needed to cope with the problem. Empires decline when their long habits of serving minority elites blind them to those moments when the system's survival requires overriding those elites' needs, at least for a while.

For the first time in over a century, the United States has a real, serious, ascending global competitor. The British, German, Russian, and Japanese systems never reached that status. The People's Republic of China now has. No settled U.S. policy vis-à-vis China has proven feasible because of internal U.S. divisions and China's spectacular growth. Political leaders and "defense" contractors find China-bashing attractive. Denouncing China serves as popular scapegoating for many politicians in both parties and as support for an ever-increasing defense spending by the military. However, major segments of large corporate business have invested hundreds of billions in China and in global supply chains linked to China. They do not want to risk them. In addition, for decades, China has offered one of the world's lowest-cost, better educated and trained, and most disciplined labor forces coupled with the world's fastest-growing market for both capital and consumer goods. Competitive U.S. firms believe that global success requires their firms to be well established in that nation with the world's largest population, among the world's least-costly workers, and with the world's fastest-growing market. Everything taught and learned in business schools supports that view.Thus the U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposed former President Donald Trump's trade/tariff wars and now opposes President Joe Biden's hyped-up program of China-bashing.

There is no way for the United States to change China's basic economic and political policies since those are precisely what brought China to its now globally envied position of being a competitor to a superpower like the U.S. Meanwhile, China is expected to catch up to the United States with equality of economic size before the end of this decade. The problem for the U.S. empire grows, and the United States remains stuck in divisions that preclude any significant change except perhaps armed conflict and an unthinkable nuclear war.

When empires decline, they can slip into self-reinforcing downward spirals. This downward spiral occurs when the rich and powerful respond by using their social positions to offload the costs of decline onto the mass of the population. That only worsens the inequalities and divisions that provoked the decline in the first place.

The recently released Pandora Papers offer a useful glimpse into the elaborate world of vast wealth hidden from tax-collecting governments and from public knowledge. Such hiding is partly driven by the effort to insulate the wealth of the rich from that decline. That partly explains why the 2016 exposure of the Panama Papers did nothing to stop the hiding. If the public knew about the hidden resources—their size, origins, and purposes—the public demand for access to hidden assets would become overwhelming. The hidden resources would be seen as the best possible targets for use in slowing or reversing the decline.

Decline provokes more hiding, and that in turn worsens decline. The downward spiral is engaged. Moreover, attempts to distract an increasingly anxious public—demonizing immigrants, scapegoating China, and engaging in culture wars—show diminishing returns. Empire decline proceeds but remains widely denied or ignored as if it did not matter. The old rituals of conventional politics, economics, and culture proceed. Only their tones have become those of deep social divisions, bitter recriminations, and overt internal hostilities proliferating across the landscape. These mystify as well as upset the many Americans who still need to deny that crises have beset U.S. capitalism and that its empire is in decline.

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York. Wolff's weekly show, "Economic Update," is syndicated by more than 100 radio stations and goes to 55 million TV receivers via Free Speech TV. His three recent books with Democracy at Work are The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us From Pandemics or Itself, Understanding Socialism, and Understanding Marxism, the latter of which is now available in a newly released 2021 hardcover edition with a new introduction by the author.

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aha 10/21 all purpose threat, economic, military, political. biological....racial dogwhistle too?

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an 1021 salon an

bad faith, he know infra is crucial in compete w/ china?!

...The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in particular has become a flashpoint of conservative ire after endorsing a small number of Democratic candidates in Congressional races last year. The group, along with a number of other influential pro-business organizations, also stopped PAC donations to hundreds of Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn the 2020 election results on the evening of Jan. 6.

Following that news, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has taken to saying the U.S. Chamber "sold out" and that he no longer considers it an ally.

"I didn't even know the Chamber was around anymore," McCarthy told the political newsletter Punchbowl News.

The feud reached a head this week when Republican leaders kicked representatives for the U.S. Chamber off its conference calls.

Brett Horton, the chief of staff for House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., didn't hold back when asked about Republicans shunning the pro-business group.

"People care what their local Chambers of Commerce and business owners have to say, not the U.S. Chamber," Horton told The Hill. "If the U.S. Chamber sent me a meeting request right now, I wouldn't even staff that meeting out to an intern, and I don't see that changing."

In response to being iced out of the Republican inner circle, Axios reported this week, the group abruptly reversed its support for the bill. The Chamber disputed the report by arguing that it still supports the bill "as a stand-alone bill unlinked to the proposed tax and spend reconciliation bill" that it has been linked to from its inception — which makes its support for the infrastructure package merely theoretical.

In addition to the Republicans' beef with business groups over the pending infrastructure legislation, the two sides also clashed over their differing opinions on raising the U.S. debt ceiling this past week. Business groups saw the writing on the wall if Congress decided to default on the country's sizeable debts, and feared catastrophic consequences if the limit was not raised.

But most Republican lawmakers, especially Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, instead concluded that their responsibilities to their constitutents lay in obstructing the Democratic agenda — no matter what.

"Democrats have the full ability to raise the debt ceiling as a part of reconciliation," Cruz told POLITICO on Thursday. "They want political cover."

After a last-minute deal brokered by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the debt ceiling was ultimately raised Thursday night — though only for a few months. McConnell said Saturday that he does not intend to make another deal come December, when the deal will likely expire — regardless of what business groups say.

McConnell's justification for the obstruction appeared to be rooted in a statement Sen. Chuck Schumer made after the Thursday vote, blasting Republican efforts to stymie any change to the debt ceiling.

"I am writing to make it clear that in light of Senator Schumer's hysterics and my grave concerns about the ways that another vast, reckless, partisan spending bill would hurt Americans andhelp China,I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement," McConnell said in a statement.

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BENDOMENECH ([fox]HOST): One of the things that we've learned over the years is that with exporting these jobs to communist China, we've ended up importing not just their cheap goods, but also their values as well. That's something that I think we've seen happen in a really dangerous way in the NBA and in other sports context. mma

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a wacko thot olympics in china?

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/anti-vaxxer-rick-wiles-blames-chinese-agents-for-his-covid-19-infection/

cd not make up

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/anti-vax-covid-19-conspiracy-theorist-rick-wiles-hospitalized-with-covid-19/

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/wuhan-lab-leak/

an salon

Last month, seemingly spurred on by this column from a controversial former science reporter for The New York Times, it became suddenly fashionable in some journalistic circles to scold the mainstream press for dismissing or ignoring something called the "lab leak theory" regarding the origins of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

To be sure, the possibility that the coronavirus was released in a lab accident in Wuhan, China, has never been fully discounted by the scientific establishment but long treated as less likely than that it emerged from a purely natural origin. Still, led by Matt Yglesias from his (sigh) Substack blog, a narrative started to form in May that the mainstream media was deliberately ignoring a scientifically valid hypothesis because of a, heaven help us, bias against conservatives. Otherwise reputable opinion writerslike Jonathan Chait of New York, eager to demonstrate that they are Not Biased© and Care About Hearing All Sides©, took up the mantle, scolding the mainstream press for supposedly dismissing the "lab leak hypothesis" out of hand, simply because Donald Trump and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., were fond of it.

The scolding worked.

As Jon Allsop of Columbia Journalism Review wrote earlier this month, "we've seen a gusher of opinion essays in the same vein, indicting the mainstream press and prominent experts for characterizing a plausible hypothesis as a conspiracy theory for essentially political reasons." This, in turn, resulted in a slew "of news articles asserting that the lab-leak theory has 'gone mainstream,' and is getting a 'second look.'" Here at Salon, we addressed the sudden surge of interest in this theory by highlighting the basic reality: Scientists do not think it's likely, plus there is no new evidence that would suggest that it's become any more likely than it was before the pearl-clutching about "bias" began. Soon, however, President Joe Biden gave in to the pressure and ordered an intelligence investigation into the theory.

The problem with all this moralizing about "bias," however, is that the original reason that the media wasn't doing more to hype the "lab leak" hypothesis had little to do with politics and everything to do with science. As science educator Rebecca Watson explained in a video responding to the controversy last week, "There is currently no evidence that COVID-19 originated in a lab. None." And, as Justin Ling of Foreign Policy argued Tuesday, "Despite proclamations to the contrary, there has been scant new, hard evidence pointing to the lab leak theory," and, in fact, the hype around the idea is literally "just speculation."

Indeed, the finger-waggers had it backwards. The media isn't biased against the right but biased in favor of the right.

If it weren't for conservative pressure, there would probably be no substantive media interest the "lab leak" hypothesis. Typically, news outlets are loathed to publish speculation that emerges from fringe conspiracy theory boards that have offered little in the way of real evidence for their claims. But when the conspiracy theorists are politically motivated right-wingers, they tend to get more of a media hearing than say, Bigfoot enthusiasts.

Wednesday morning, the "why won't the media do more to indulge this evidence-free right-wing speculation" crowd got egg on their face with a new report from the Washington Postthat wreaked havoc on claims that the "lab leak hypothesis" failed to get a fair hearing. On the contrary, there has been "an ongoing, sometimes politicized and so far fruitless effort inside the U.S. government to determine whether the virus, SARS-CoV-2, could be the result of engineering or a lab leak."

The report documents an extensive hunt for evidence of the "lab leak" theory throughout the federal government. Much of it driven by Donald Trump's desire to blame someone else, ideally China, to divert attention from his own failures. But more responsible actors in the federal government, including prominent health officials like Director of the National Institutes of Health Francis Collins and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci also gave the "lab leak" hypothesis a good deal of time and attention. But while the White House was heavily pressuring every bureaucrat in sight to give them something, anything, they could use to push this "lab leak" hypothesis, the evidence simply wasn't there.

The report doesn't completely rule out the possibility of a lab leak, to be clear. But it is a reminder that it was incredibly irresponsible of mainstream media to hype an unevidenced theory simply to prove they aren't "biased" towards Republican actors like Cotton, Trump, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, people who have proven time and again that they will lie through their teeth for political gain.

The people with unsavory political motivations in this situation are not journalists who hesitated to run stories about a theory that has no real evidence to support it. It's Trump and his Republican enablers who, as Lindsay Beyerstein of Alternet explains, feel that if they "can convince his supporters that COVID is China's fault, they'll forget the parts that were his fault."

Attention journalists: The way to avoid political bias in media is to, well, avoid political bias. Which means avoiding giving life to poorly evidenced ideas, simply because they're being hyped by the right. What happened instead is that the press gave into right-wing bullying. In doing so, the press ignored the usual journalistic standards for weighing facts and evidence. Now it's likely most Americans have heard more about lab leaks than they have about the far more plausible theory that the coronavirus pandemic emerged from nature.

To make it all worse, the hyping of the "lab leak" hypothesis meant politely ignoring the fact that Trump, Cotton, and Pompeo were winking at an even less plausible conspiracy theory that holds that China deliberately manufactured the coronavirus as a bioweapon. People who have heard this bioweapon conspiracy theory and see headlines or cable news chryons touting the "lab leak" theory will assume that's what is being discussed, and assume that it's now been proved. And once that kind of misinformation is out there, it's pretty hard to claw it back.

A lot of critics who accused the media of ignoring the "lab leak" hypothesis claim to be interested in putting facts before political bias. They worry that mainstream journalists are disregarding good information simply because the sources are conservative or even because they have a history of lying. (As if credibility isn't an important consideration in sourcing information!)

But what this debacle shows is that the mainstream media has the opposite problem. They all too often give in to Republican bullying and allow themselves to be used as conduits for right-wing disinformation campaigns. Yes, prioritizing truth over politics often leads to news stories that have a "liberal" feel to them. That's because the American right is wholly committed to lying and disinformation. But journalism should put reality before the tender feelings of lying right-wingers. Especially when it comes to scientific disputes where we all supposedly agree it would be better if politics were kept out of it.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/lab-origin-theory/

ah

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump went from bragging about his ability to make deals with Chinese government officials to pushing the conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 coronavirus was invented in a lab in Wuhan, China and leaked out. Never Trump conservative David Frum, in an Atlantic article published by The Atlantic on May 18, lays out some ways in which Trump and his sycophants are still trying to use that conspiracy theory as a political weapon in the United States.

Although Frum's article is critical of Trump, it is also critical of the Chinese government's initial response to COVID-19. The novel coronavirus was first reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and spread rapidly in January 2020, when Chinese officials downplayed its severity — which is the same thing Trump subsequently did when COVID-19 spread rapidly in the United States. But Frum rejects the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan.

"Early on, it became clear that Chinese authorities were lying about the disease's human toll," Frum explains. "Nick Paton of CNN, in December 2020, reported on 117 pages of internal Chinese government documents suggesting that the local authorities in Wuhan had massively underreported COVID-19 infections in the early weeks of the outbreak. In January 2021, HBO aired a documentary by the director Nanfu Wang minutely detailing the Chinese undercount. From the beginning, though, many have suspected the Chinese authorities of concealing an even darker secret about the outbreak than China's count of the sick and the dead. Those doubters suspected that the Chinese were also lying about how the outbreak started. They suspected that the official story of a spread from bats to humans was an excuse to conceal the fact that the virus had originated in a Chinese lab."

Frum adds that on January 29, 2020, the Washington Post published an article headlined "Experts Debunk Fringe Theory Linking China's Coronavirus to Weapons Research." And on February 17, 2020, the New York Times published an article headlined "Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins." Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, has been a devoted Trump supporter.

"Over time, the suspicious modulated their accusation a little," Frum notes. "In the spring of 2020, Trumpworld was also arguing that the virus was no big deal, no reason to shut down the U.S. economy. The president and his supporters wanted to argue that masking was stupid and that public-health officials were hysterical. You couldn't argue both that the virus was absurdly exaggerated and that it had begun its existence as a Chinese superweapon. By the time Secretary of State Mike Pompeo endorsed a lab-origin theory of the virus in May 2020, the suspicion about the virus' origin had been downgraded from 'superweapon' to 'medical experiment gone wrong.' Despite this softening, the scientific community, for the most part, continued to emphatically reject the lab-origin theory."

Scientists, Frum points out, are unsure exactly how COVID-19 started — adding that Trump supporters are happy to toss science aside if it is politically advantageous.

"If there is any group of people more disliked by Trump supporters than Chinese Communists," Frum observes, "it is the U.S. scientific community. For months, scientists had irritated Trump supporters by not falling in line with the pro-Trump argument that the coronavirus was much exaggerated and no big deal."

Frum adds, "Anthony Fauci in particular has become a hate figure to the pro-Trump world and the Fox News network. It's weird, it's hard to explain, but it is an organizing fact of American politics: More than Biden, more than Vice President Kamala Harris, more than any Democrat in Congress other than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Fauci has become the emblem and totem of everything that Trumpists resent."

The Never Trump conservative stresses that although COVID-19-releated "misconduct" on the part of Chinese officials needs to be called out, that shouldn't include pushing bogus conspiracy theories.

"Pro-Trumpers want to use Chinese misconduct — real and imagined — as a weapon in a culture war here at home," Frum warns. "They are not interested in weighing the evidence. They want payback for the political and cultural injuries inflicted on them by the scientists. They want Fauci to have time in the barrel. What the rest of us should want is the truth…. By actively seeking the truth, the Biden Administration will deny the Trump dead-enders the culture-war weapon they want."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/pompeo-china/

2024 bid?  tariff on tomatoes and cotton?

by Cate Cadell and Tony Munroe BEIJING (Reuters) - With hours left in Donald Trump's presidency, China's foreign ministry took aim at its chief U.S. antagonist, "lying and cheating" Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and said it would seek cooperation with the incoming administration of Joe Biden. Pompeo, who has unleashed a barrage of measures against China in his final weeks in office, delivered his own parting shot on Tuesday when he announced that the Trump administration had determined that China has committed “genocide and crimes against humanity” by repressing Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang. "...

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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note rhet, note always defensive, it's kraken that is coup

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/prepare-for-war-gop-official-pushes-dangerous-conspiracy-theories-over-election-outcome/

ME

It has been three days since the Electoral College confirmed President-elect Joe Biden's victory, but an overwhelming number of Republicans are still refusing to accept the outcome of the election. Propaganda articles and infotainment videos on conspiracy theories are still circulating as Trump supporters continue their fight to "stop the steal."

Now, an article published by the Seattle Times highlights another problem with the spread of misinformation. The writer notes that it is one thing when dangerous falsehoods come from unknown websites that lack credibility, but some of the latest threats are coming from members of the Republican Party.

According to the publication, on Monday, Rep. Robert J. Sutherland, a representative of the 39th legislative district of Eastern Snohomish County along with Skagit County, took to Facebook with a number of dangerous claims about the election.

In multiple posts, he referenced reports and claims from right-wing influencers and propaganda sites as he said,"prepare for war. Joe Biden is not now, nor will ever be my President. Am I a sore loser? No. I'm pro-America and anti-communist. Joe Biden is a bought and paid for Communist China puppet. Stay tuned, big things happening soon at the Federal level."

In a series of other Facebook posts and discussions, Sutherland also insisted that he supported the idea of going to war over the so-called "coup against the sitting president."

"Is the 'coup' against the sitting President the start of a second 'Civil War' here in the USA?" Sutherland asked as he noted his support of Trump possibly using the military to maintain his presidential power.

"What good and decent person [xian crusade? deus vult?] would not conduct a war to defend Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of happiness, their families, their neighbors?" Sutherland asked.

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// hunter biden BS?

1220

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-work-scandalize-report-about-rep-eric-swalwell-and-china

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kung flu, china virus

rudy's star witness tells SarahPalin.com: 'The Obamas funded that Wuhan lab to make COVID'

Aldous Pennyfarthing Daily Kos

December 10, 2020

So you probably heard that Benito Shit-giggles is trying to overturn our election, and he's sent Four Seasons Total Lawyering founder Rudy G

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/montana-gop-senator-got-influx-of-cash-after-vote-to-extend-investor-visa-program-rampant-with-fraud/

igor salon

the republicans have attacked Montana Gov. Steve Bullock for encouraging Chinese investment in his state even though Sen. Steve Daines, a GOP incumbent, voted to reauthorize a visa program that had been criticized for "rampant" fraud.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently released an ad alleging that Bullock, who is challenging Daines in a neck-and-neck race that could decide control of the Senate, has a "dangerous relationship" with China because he urged investment in Montana under the EB-5 visa program, which provides visas to immigrants who invest at least $500,000 in the United States.[vid?]

video in the ad was first reported by National Review, which noted that Bullock has called for reforms to the program. The report also noted that the top beneficiary of the fraud-plagued program in Montana has been the Yellowstone Club, a resort in Big Sky, Montana, whose owner has donated to Bullock and where the governor has hosted fundraisers.

The article added that the top executive at CrossHarbor Capital Partners, which owns the club, also donated to Daines, who "has not co-sponsored legislation" that would implement reforms to the program. Investor Brian Su, who advocates for EB-5 visas, donated tens of thousands to Daines and other Republicans after Daines voted to extend the program without any reforms to address potential fraud.

Daines reportedly met with Su, a major Republican donor, at the Yellowstone Club at the invitation of CrossHarbor Capital Partners before voting for the extension. He received an influx of donations from the company's executives two days after the vote.

Daines, who has extensive ties to China, and then-Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., who later served as President Trump's Interior secretary, met with Su at the Yellowstone Club in 2016 to court Chinese investment in Montana.They promised to provide investors with maximum support and assistance, according to a translation of an article published in the Chinese media outlet Chuansongme.

Su is the founder of the Artisan Business Group, which helps Chinese investors establish relationships in the U.S., and is a "leading authority on EB-5 marketing and promotion." Su visited the Yellowstone Club at the invitation of CrossHarbor Capital Partners, according to Chuansongme.

Su donated $3,000 to Daines' Big Sky Committee around the time of the meeting, the only individual contribution on the committee's September 2016 Federal Election Commission report. Su has donated $6,500 to Daines' campaign, leadership PAC and super PAC since 2016. He has also donated $10,000 to the Montana Republican Party and more than $59,000 to the NRSC and Republican candidates and political committee

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no lnx

Pro-China Conspiracy Campaign Attacks COVID Drugmaker

BAD MEDICINE

Facebook took down troll accounts linked to pro-China disinformation for spreading conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and pharma giant Gilead

Adam Rawnsley

Updated Aug. 21, 2020 4:45AM ET / Published Aug. 20, 2020

Samantha Hill’s crazed COVID-19 spaghetti chart looks like something out of an It’s Always Sunny meme—with blame for everyone from Steve Bannon to seafood export companies. But the intricate conspiracy isn’t an organic act of lunacy. Instead, the content and fake accounts pushing it are linked to a known pro-China disinformation outfit that’s looking to blame both the U.S. and Gilead, maker of a popular COVID-19 drug, for the global coronavirus pandemic.

Facebook says the fake accounts found by The Daily Beast are linked to a previous effort by sock puppets to attack the Chinese Communist Party’s adversaries and spread myths about the origin of the coronavirus. So what’s behind this latest attempt to hoodwink social media users about where COVID-19 came from and the drugmaker helping to fight it?

Welcome to Rabbit Hole, where we dive deep on the biggest story. It’s for Beast Inside members only.

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https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/497093-republicans-blasting-china-forget-that-the-gop-enabled-beijings

5/20

a deadly pandemic wreaks havoc in an election year, Republicans are leveling relentless attacks against China. To be sure, Beijing’s initial response to the coronavirus outbreak was littered with errors, egregious injustices and conspiracy-mongering.

But the GOP’s tough talk on China – which, ironically, also strays into conspiracy theory territory – marks the culmination of a particularly stark turnaround. After all,Republicans eagerly enabled China’s meteoric ascent from a sleepy, insular country to the world’s second-largest economy.

Time for a quick history lesson. Throughout the 20th century, China was a poor, agricultural country. In 1978, sweeping economic reforms set China on a path of rapid urbanization. The mass migration of millions of people from China’s rural hinterlands to mega-cities changed the country at a stunning pace.

Indeed, in the span of a few short decades, a vast pool of inexpensive, newly-urbanized labor transformed China from an impoverished, rural economy into a manufacturing juggernaut.

But China’s enormous capacity to build and make things on the cheap needed an equally massive market to buy its products. Enter Republicans and corporate America who, along with a handful of “centrist” Democrats, eagerly handed an enormous strategic gift to Beijing.

Beginning in 2000, China’s economic growth began to skyrocket. Beyond its entry into the World Trade Organization, much of China’s rapid expansion over the last two decades can be traced to a single act of Congress.

In a seminal vote, the United States normalized trade with Beijing, opening the floodgates to the mass outsourcing of well-paying American manufacturing jobs to China. Indeed, the astounding, post-2000 decline in U.S. manufacturing employment fits neatly with a surge in cheap Chinese imports around the same time.

A whopping 75 percent of House Republicans voted in favor of shipping American jobs to China. Democrats, wary of the myriad economic, environmental and labor repercussions of normalizing trade with China, rebuked a “centrist” president and voted against the measure by a two-to-three margin.

A year later, George W. Bush formalized Congress’s vote, granting preferential trade status to China.

Republicans, in short, enabled Beijing’s astounding economic and military rise by swapping millions of good-paying American jobs for cheap Chinese imports. But the GOP’s overwhelming vote in favor of unfettered trade with China came at a staggering cost.

Beginning in the 2000s, the United States witnessed an alarming increase in so-called “deaths of despair.” Driven largely by opioid overdoses, alcohol abuse and suicide, white, blue-collar Americans – Trump’s base – began dying at shocking rates. While an increasing mortality rate is unheard of in first-world countries, several studies have directly linked trade-inflicted manufacturing job losses to the opioid-fueled “deaths of despair” devastating America.

In other words, the GOP’s eagerness to inflate corporate and shareholder profit via cheap, overseas labor has decimated countless American families and communities. But this did not start with Republicans’ vote to normalize trade with China. NAFTA, for example, was negotiated by the first Bush administration, passed Congress with overwhelming GOP support and fulfilled Ronald Reagan’s “vision.”

More broadly, four decades of post-Reagan Republican ideology have gutted America’s middle class. As the United States confronts a historic pandemic, startling images of miles upon miles of cars – each representing an American family – awaiting supplies at overwhelmed food banks expose this dangerous and depressing reality.

Such visceral scenes of poverty – unheard of among the United States’s first-world allies – should be equally unfathomable in a country with America’s immense wealth and capacity for broadly-shared prosperity. Mass food insecurity is not the hallmark of a great nation.

Ultimately, the flaws in China’s early response to this devastating pandemic must be thoroughly investigated. But instead of distracting Americans to protect a failed president, Republicans would be wise to reflect on the immensely damaging long-term repercussions of their ideology and policies. A healthy dose of moral, patriotic soul-searching is long overdue.

Marik von Rennenkampff served as an analyst with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, as well as an Obama administration appointee at the U.S. Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter @MvonRen.

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an 920

no lnx

Amanda Carpenter is not a liberal. She not even a moderate. She’s worked for two of the most right wing Republican Senators and at several far right wing publications. Now a CNN conservative contributor, Carpenter is also anti-Trump. And she’s warning about how she thinks President Donald Trump is already rigging the election.

Wednesday evening she posted a Twitter thread in response to Attorney General Bill Barr’s disastrous and disturbing CNN interview. One part of his comments, she says, that “set off alarm bells” for her was Barr’s odd insistence that a foreign government could send thousands of fake ballots to rig the election – and that he refused to offer and evidence, other than what he says is “logic.”

More than anything in the interview, this set off alarm bells in my mind. Loud ones. https://t.co/BhCHfmbNb9

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) September 2, 2020

Here’s Barr making the strange claim to Wolf Blitzer. Notice how Blitzer seems stunned and for a moment speechless when Barr says “logic.”

Attorney General Barr says he doesn’t have evidence that foreign countries could successfully interfere in the election with fake ballots. He says he’s “basing it on logic.”

Wolf: Pardon?

Barr: “Logic.” pic.twitter.com/FzzIRL2PrK

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 2, 2020

Carpenter, who by the way was a senior staffer for Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Jim DeMint, goes on to explain her reasoning.

Basically, she’s saying Trump is going full-force against mail-in ballots, while the Trump administration lays the groundwork to blame China for rigging the election against him. Carpenter explains how:

“Let me tell you why. Trump has said the election will be rigged. He has cast aspersions over mail-in ballots. And now the AG is suggesting foreign interference w mail in ballots. While the Admin refuses to provide oral briefings about election interference to Congress.”

Yes, the Trump administration has notified Congress it will no longer provide them with in-person intelligence briefings. Only written information.

“That means whatever written story about election interference that goes to Congress is the story,” she continues. “No pushback. And print material leaks. They will set the narrative. Barr and others are saying don’t worry about Russia. It’s China that’s the problem.”

China allegedly is in favor of a Biden presidency over as Trump presidency.

“You don’t need a crystal ball to see it. Blame China for rigging mail-in ballots,” she warns.

So whattya think Trump and friends are angling to do here. You don’t need a crystal ball to see it. Blame China for rigging mail-in ballots somehow against Trump. Keep your eyes open people.

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) September 2, 2020

“This isn’t a cover-up. It’s what’s ahead.”

I saw this coming over the weekend when we got the news oral intel briefings were donezo. Here was my reaction. This isn’t a cover-up. It’s what’s ahead https://t.co/JKbUt5VlTp

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) September 2, 2020

By the way, CNN Anchor and Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto seems to agree with Carpenter:

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