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October 2021

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hunter Biden and the Art of Corruption by Peter Schweizer

By on October 1st, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17811/hunter-biden-corruption

It is the latest in a string of scams Hunter Biden has undertaken. First, it was his being named, with no expertise whatsoever in either Ukraine or the oil and gas business, to the board of directors of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company under investigation for fraud. Then it was the deluxe payday in 2012 for his Rosemont-Seneca real estate investment partnership, which was bankrolled to the tune of more than $1.5 billion by Chinese investors with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

It is genius-level corruption, an ethical nightmare for the White House, and a masterpiece of congressional and media dereliction of duty.

Bergès himself has said he is eager to expand his business into the Chinese market. Who will know if China’s art-loving billionaires, all connected deeply to the Communist Party and in some cases to the Chinese military, are Hunter’s benefactors?

Are we really supposed to believe that the anonymity of the buyers will remain a tight secret, and that Chinese government-connected buyers will not somehow let the Bidens know they are Hunter’s newest and biggest fans?

Money-laundering in the art market is nothing new. A Senate Homeland Security and Government Oversight committee report last year identified the art market as the “largest legal, unregulated market in the United States” and a significant weakness in the nation’s sanctions and anti-money laundering regimes. Simply put, art transactions are not covered under what’s known as the Bank Secrecy Act, which require financial institutions to maintain anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing controls.

Is there any reason to doubt that the proceeds from Hunter’s artistic payday will somehow once again find their way into the Biden family estate?

Why are they failing to scrutinize what is so obviously a back-door scheme to funnel money to the president’s son from foreign sources? Every American who cares about transparency in government should be outraged.

They say the beauty of art is in the eye of the beholder, but does that apply to corruption as well?

President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, has now plunged into the world of international art, with a New York gallery owner brokering art sales for the rare, emerging talent. Apparently, Hunter’s paintings might sell for as much as $500,000 to various anonymous aficionados, according to Hunter’s new art dealer, Georges Bergès.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Kabul University Shuts Down as Taliban Ban Women By Mitch Picasso

By on October 1st, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/mitchpicasso/2021/09/30/kabul-university-shuts-down-as-taliban-ban-women-n1520839

All women have been banned from studying or teaching in any public university in Afghanistan, and the students from Kabul University have been sent home, according to the Washington Post.

Kabul University, which is normally very active, was quiet today. Classes were suspended and all students, male and female, were sent home until the two genders can be segregated.

In a message to the Washington Post, Taliban official Bilal Karimi stated that they are “working on a comprehensive plan to ensure a peaceful environment for female students.” He said that when  this is done “[women] would be allowed to continue their education.”

Ironically, the women in Afghanistan were already in a generally “peaceful environment” until the Taliban seized power after Biden pulled out U.S. troops.

The Taliban’s new minister of higher education, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, stated that Afghanistan under the Taliban “will not allow boys and girls to study together.” Haqqani said that the country “will not allow coeducation,” according to The Hill.

Not to worry. Haqqani assured the public that things will not be the way they were the last time the Taliban was in charge 20 years ago, saying, “We will start building on what’s today.”

So far, they are off to bad start.

Not only are women not allowed to study, but they are not even allowed to work at the university “until an Islamic environment is created,” said the school’s new Taliban-appointed chancellor Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s SCO Entry Could Complicate U.S.-Israeli Strategic Options Lawrence Haas

By on October 1st, 2021

https://www.newsweek.com/irans-sco-entry-could-complicate-us-israeli-strategic-options-opinion-1633488

Iran’s impending entry into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Eurasian bloc that China and Russia lead, has great potential to limit U.S., Israeli and Western leeway in confronting Tehran’s nuclear and hegemonic aspirations, sponsorship of international terrorism and efforts at regional de-stabilization.

Iran’s SCO entry comes as the Institute for Science and International Security, a leading nonproliferation think tank, reported that due to its aggressive nuclear enrichment of recent months, the Islamic Republic now has enough enriched nuclear fuel to produce a single nuclear weapon within no more than about a month – if it chooses to do so.

Iran’s entry also comes amid mounting evidence that it continues to impose roadblocks to international monitoring of its nuclear activities. Tehran admitted recently that it removed surveillance cameras that the International Atomic Energy Agency had previously installed at a key centrifuge manufacturing site in the city of Karaj.

Nuclear experts have cautioned that, in advancing its nuclear program, Tehran may be seeking to pressure Washington to quickly resurrect the 2015 global nuclear deal with Iran, from which former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018, prompting Iran to surpass the deal’s limits on its nuclear activity.

By focusing on U.S.-Iranian maneuvering over the nuclear deal, however, policymakers and pundits may miss the strategic forest for the trees. That’s because whether the issue is Iran’s nuclear progress or its regional behavior, its entry into the SCO will raise increasingly serious strategic issues for Washington, Jerusalem and the West.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Broadway’s ‘Slave Play’ Holding Performances for ‘Black-Identifying’ Audiences Only By Stephen Frank

By on October 1st, 2021

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/broadways-slave-play-holding-performances-for-black-identifying-audiences-only/

The KKK must be laughing at the racists on Broadway.  Imagine a play where only one color can attend performances.

“The critically acclaimed drama Slave Play will bring back performances for black-only audiences when it returns to Broadway for a limited engagement starting November, with producers saying the invitation-only performances will be limited to “Black-identifying” people.

Slave Play was nominated for 12 Tony Awards but struck out during Sunday’s ceremony, taking home no awards despite being hotly tipped to dominate Broadway’s biggest night. The time-hopping drama, written by Jeremy O. Harris, tells the story of interracial relationships throughout American history, using slavery as the central motif to explore racism, microaggressions, and other contemporary ideas.”

Can you make believe a play only allowed white people to see a performance—the BLM, ANTIFA and the NAACP would close it down.  This is modern day racism.

The critically acclaimed drama Slave Play will bring back performances for black-only audiences when it returns to Broadway for a limited engagement starting November, with producers saying the invitation-only performances will be limited to “Black-identifying” people.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

America’s descent into totalitarianism advances unabated By Terry Paulding

By on October 1st, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/americas_descent_into_totalitarianism_advances_unabated.html

If you look around you can’t find a single thing America is doing right, unless “right,” means to deliberately destroy the nation. In light of the comprehensive assault against Americans, we who notice are told we’re crazy, we should ignore it, or we’re “canceled.” Yet the obvious trap that’s been strung leads inevitably to totalitarianism unless we break free from blind complacency or fear.

Energy policy threatens our gas supply and the government, simultaneously heightening COVID fear and promising to keep us “safe,” is abetting rapid inflation.

Commerce is a good indicator something’s wrong. There’s a flotilla of container ships languishing off Long Beach, California, our busiest port—and it turns out that this was already a problem in January:

It can take 8,000 trucks to haul the cargo away from a ship, Marine Exchange executive director Kip Louttit said in March. When all those trucks hit the road, there aren’t enough available when dockworkers are trying to unload the next ships in port.

Nine months later, nobody’s addressed this issue adequately, except that Costco’s again limited toilet paper purchases.

The shortage of hogs, leading to a lack of product and increased retail cost, is just one example of our broken supply chains. The industry can’t find workers, can’t transport products, and feed costs are sky-high. I talked to the butcher at Whole Foods, who said he “had no idea” when his supplies would be replenished—maybe in a few days, maybe not.

The labor market is a mess with simultaneously high unemployment and high worker demand. We’ve trained the entire service sector to be overly fearful of COVID, and many can’t rely on sending their kids to school. Government subsidies encouraged unemployment. Inflation makes hard (and allegedly deadly) work seem useless.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The disastrous impact of illegal immigration on public education By Carole Hornsby Haynes

By on October 1st, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/the_disastrous_impact_of_illegal_immigration_on_public_education.html

Public school students have been subjected to school shutdowns, online learning at home, social distancing, plexiglass cubicles, all day wearing of masks, and now vaccinations with an experimental drug that is causing myocarditis and other serious reactions in healthy children.

At the university level, at least 78 students at LSU who have refused vaccination have been unenrolled from the university with 50 percent of their tuition forfeited.  The University of Virginia unenrolled 238 students for not complying with its vaccine mandate.  Penn State has suspended students who failed to get their weekly COVID test.  Hundreds of other universities have mandated the vaccine for this fall, with some even reimposing mask mandates on fully vaccinated students due to the rise in delta variant cases.

Yet illegal immigrants cross the southern border without being asked to show proof of vaccination.  They’re not required to wear masks or to distant themselves even though they’re bringing in communicable diseases.

With the resettlement of thousands of Afghans in 46 states, there is the frightening chance of an epidemic of diseases that have been all but wiped out in America. 

According to the CDC, there have already been outbreaks of viruses such as varicella, mumps, tuberculosis, malaria, leishmaniasis, hepatitis A, and coronavirus.  Most frightening of all is the possibility of an outbreak of polio which can lead to paralysis or even death.   Afghans also are expected to bring in gastrointestinal infections, including shigellosis, giardiasis, cryptosporidiosis, hepatitis A, rotavirus, and viral diarrheal diseases.

These migrants are flooding our already packed classrooms for a free education at the expense of the American taxpayer. 

To further complicate matters, numerous foreign languages are spoken within a classroom and the children are unaccustomed to our culture — in some cases, they don’t know how to use a toilet.  These children require an enormous amount of a teacher’s time at the expense of American students.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: FLORIDA DISTRICT 20 NOVEMBER 2, 2021

By on October 1st, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/muslim-congressional-candidate-feels-extremely-joe-kaufman/

Muslim Congressional Candidate Feels ‘Extremely Blessed’ to Visit Terror-Linked Mosques Barbara Sharief has troubling Islamic credentials — and a good shot at a Congressional seat. Joe Kaufman

On September 12th, Emgage, a politically-active Islamist group, held a candidate forum for the special election to replace US Representative Alcee Hastings (Florida District 20), who recently passed away. 7 of the 17 candidates who qualified to run showed up for it, each trying to outdo the others’ verbal affection for the Muslim community, boasting about what mosques they have frequented. One candidate in particular, though, Barbara Sharief, flashed overwhelming – and troubling – Islamic credentials, mentioning how she grew up in the Muslim community, how she worked with the radical Muslim Students Association, and how she visited “all” the mosques.

During the introductions for the forum, Sharief, currently a Broward County Commissioner, stated about her background, “My father and my mother were a member of Masjid Al-Ansar, in Miami. I attended the Sister Clara Muhammad elementary school.” The Clara Muhammad School was founded by the Nation of Islam (NOI), the black separatist group that is today headed by rabid anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Masjid Al-Ansar (MAA) is the mosque where the school was and still is housed. According to the South Florida Times, Sharief gives “credit for her success in part… to the Clara Mohammed School system.”

The candidates were asked by forum moderator Emgage Florida Executive Director Ancel Pratt III to discuss their “level of engagement” with the Muslim community. Sharief stated, in part, “I’ve worked with the Muslim Student Association. I sponsored scholarships under my father’s name, the late James Muhammad Sharief. I’ve also sponsored community events and supported student activities… I am currently working with Sister Ghany and others within the South Florida Muslim Association to get Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr recognized as holidays off in the Broward County school system.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

You’ve Got Mail California completes the institutionalization of voter fraud.  By Lloyd Billingsley

By on October 1st, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/29/youve-got-mail/

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation “permanently requiring a vote-by-mail ballot be mailed to every active registered voter in the state.” For Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who tried to keep Larry Elder off the recall ballot this month, the “more people who participate in elections, the stronger our democracy and the more we have assurance that elections reflect the will of the people of California.” And so on. 

Weber failed to mention the “people of California,” now include millions of false-documented foreign nationals ineligible to vote. For years, the Pew Research Center pegged the national figure at 11 million, but a recent study by scholars at MIT and Yale estimates more than 22 million people reside illegally in the United States. Eleven million is more likely the number illegally present in California alone.

“California is home to over 10 million immigrants,” read a chart displayed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Newsom in 2019 as they announced a lawsuit against the Trump Administration’s public-charge rule. “Immigrants” is California code for “illegal aliens,” a term the state’s ruling class has just banned. State Democrats have also hinted at how many illegals are violating the law by voting. 

In 2015, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla told the Los Angeles Times, “At the latest, for the 2018 election cycle, I expect millions of new voters on the rolls in the state of California,” with “new voters” being code for ineligible voters. True to form, by March 2018, more than 1 million “undocumented” immigrants received driver’s licenses from the state Department of Motor Vehicles. 

Padilla knows how many illegals voted in the 2016 election but refused to cooperate with a federal voter-fraud probe. Padilla also knows how many noncitizens voted in 2018, and with perhaps more than 10 million illegals in the state, 1 million illegal voters is probably a low guesstimate. 

Newsom’s first budget included nearly $100 million for illegals’ healthcare, in addition to the in-state tuition and welfare benefits false-documented illegals already receive. They also get protection from deportation through the state’s sanctuary law. True to form, early in his term Newsom flew to El Salvador, which is, like Mexico, a source of the state’s imported electorate.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Whitmer Case Exposes Pattern of FBI Misconduct The conduct of FBI assets in the Whitmer case probably is not an outlier but rather, as increasingly appears to be the case, standard operating procedure at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. By Julie Kelly

By on October 1st, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/30/whitmer-case-exposes-pattern-of-fbi-misconduct/

As the first shoe related to the FBI’s involvement in the breach of the U.S. Capitol dropped—the New York Times last week reported at least two informants tied to the Proud Boys were working with the FBI before, during, and after January 6—another high-profile case continues to expose the bureau’s corrupt role in what the government also considers an act of domestic terrorism: a concocted plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation cottage in October 2020.

In fact, Joe Biden’s Justice Department has tied the two events together in an attempt to convince the public that right-wing militiamen, ostensibly loyal to Donald Trump, pose a looming threat to the country. In a recent sentencing memorandum for one man who pleaded guilty in the Whitmer case, government prosecutors wrote, “as the Capitol riots demonstrated, an inchoate conspiracy can turn into a grave substantive offense on short notice.”

Especially when at least a dozen FBI agents and informants take charge.

The Whitmer caper came to light when six men were arrested on federal charges of “conspiracy to commit kidnapping,” a felony punishable by life in prison. (A superseding indictment filed in April added a charge of domestic terrorism to the five remaining defendants. Several others face state charges.)

Headlines blared the shocking news just as early voting was underway in the crucial swing state. Team Biden and the Democrats made the most of this timely political gift: “There is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one. He is giving oxygen to the bigotry and hate we see on the march in our country,” Biden said in a statement on October 9.

During a press conference the same day, Whitmer suggested Trump was responsible. “When our leaders meet with, encourage, and or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions. They are complicit.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Blinken Gives Chinese Government His Congrats By Jimmy Quinn

By on October 1st, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/blinken-gives-chinese-government-his-congrats/

The well wishes for the 72nd anniversary of the PRC come a month after Beijing’s new envoy told U.S. officials to ‘please shut up.’

S ecretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday congratulated China on the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the state controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, the latest in a flurry of activity that could undermine the Biden administration’s efforts to address Chinese atrocities and malign activity around the world.

The statement’s wording particularly could inflame worries that officials are willing to make concessions on core issues in order to jumpstart stalled cooperation.

“On behalf of the United States of America, I would like to extend our congratulations to the people of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the country celebrates its National Day on October 1. As the United States seeks to work cooperatively to solve the challenges we all face, we wish the people of the PRC peace, happiness, and prosperity over the coming year,” Blinken said.

In addition, China’s newly arrived ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, tweeted a message on Tuesday evening thanking Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Kritenbrink and others for joining a virtual reception at the Chinese embassy.

Although Kritenbrink, who was confirmed to his role this month, did not appear on video, a State Department spokesperson confirmed that he “sent digital greetings to the Embassy extending his congratulations to the People’s Republic of China on their national day and wishing the people of the PRC peace, happiness, and prosperity.”

Like Blinken’s own statement, Kritenbrink’s is fairly anodyne, but it’s worth asking whether the department should have sent its greetings at all. For one, Qin arrived in Washington with a stridently anti-U.S. message. As National Review exclusively reported, during a virtual welcome event attended by members of the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations at the end of August, Qin was asked how the two countries could rebuild their relationship. “If we cannot resolve our differences, please shut up,” he advised U.S. officials, in remarks that shocked meeting participants and indicated the hard line he will take in this post.

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