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May 2023

Chinese Embrace Brazil as “Global Strategic Partner” as Brazilian President Visits China by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19642/china-embraces-brazil-partner

Chinese President Xi Jinping also apparently persuaded Lula to support the use of China’s yuan to replace the dollar as the global standard currency…. China also might want Brazil to grant permission to purchase additional farmland. China already owns more than 200,000 hectares of Brazilian land.

The Brazilian leader’s fifth visit to China on April 14 was a stark contrast to his cool visit to the US this past February.

Brazil’s warming ties to China also have an economic purpose. China is Brazil’s largest trading partner, and Brazil exports a great deal of agricultural produce to China. Brazil appears hopeful for increased Chinese investment to modernize its industrial plants as well as technology transfer for its semiconductor production.

Above all, Lula has praised China’s rhetoric favoring the establishment of a new, non-US led international order based on multipolarity. China has acknowledged Lula’s support by emphasizing Brazil’s prominent role in the multinational “BRICS” alliance consisting of Brazil. Russia, India, China, and South Africa.

The Chinese triumph, however, may prove short-lived. Bolsonaro — who condemned China as a “predator” and infuriated the CCP by visiting Taiwan in February 2018 when he was campaigning for the presidency — remains popular and may run against Lula in Brazil’s next presidential election.

The mid-April visit to China of newly inaugurated Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) is an apparent triumph for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its effort to broaden its influence in Latin America. The visit also seems to have served Lula’s legacy dream of being perceived as a moral beacon and advocate for the impoverished “Global South.”

Lula, now 76, is serving his third term as Brazil’s president, after barely defeating the pro-US and conservative nationalist former President Jair Bolsonaro. Lula has long been an advocate of a socialist model of economic development. He once expressed his respect for the CCP, on an earlier visit to China, “for having created this grand miracle.” According to Wang Yi , CCP Director of Foreign Affairs, Lula also expressed admiration for China’s having brought millions out of poverty and hunger.

MY SAY: BERGDORF GOODMAN? NO WAY

Bergdorf Goodman was always New York’s toniest department store. Even the sales ladies are soigne and as we said in the Bronx “stuck-up” and clearly cater to the wealthy.
How then to explain how a woman and a six footer lout got into a dressing room to frolic 30 years ago? Women got dirty looks if they wore jeans and sneakers in those days and sales ladies escorted buyers to the dressing rooms and frequently knocked to bring other merchandise.
I can believe a maiden could be escorted by the Secret Service to behold the nether parts of a sitting President.
I can also imagine a damsel getting into a car with Ted Kennedy, or being a waitress pinned between him and Senator Chris Dodd, another one-time Presidential aspirant, who fondled and harassed her in a restaurant until the police were called.
It was proven that a child bearing lass accepted money to cover up her affair with the father, a married candidate running for Vice President with John Kerry.
But porny escapades in a fitting room in Bergdorf Goodman thirty years ago? A lot of people doubt that narrative. rsk

If Reparations Are Due, The ‘Great Society’ Crowd Should Pony Up By Jack Cashill

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/11/if-reparations-are-due-the-great-society-crowd-should-pony-up/
Nationwide, it is estimated that more than five out of every six black children lived with both parents in 1950, a figure that had been fairly stable since Reconstruction. Then everything changed.

In no sane part of this great country are reparations really due, but no one has ever accused California of undue sanity. Last week, as Kurtis Lee of the New York Times reported with a straight face, a California panel approved recommendations “that could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to Black residents to address past injustices.”

By “injustices,” Lee means things like slavery, Ku Klux Klan violence, and Jim Crow. As unjust as they were, these Democratic institutions did not cause the wealth disparities between blacks and whites that reparations boosters like to cite. No, the real damage was done much later by still another Democratic invention, the so-called “Great Society.” 

Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, I had a ringside seat on the change the Great Society wrought. In my forthcoming book, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities, I describe what I and others saw. 

Among the more instructive stories I tell is that of the late black radical Amiri Baraka, the father of current Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. In 1951, Baraka graduated from my integrated neighborhood high school, Barringer. He was one of four blacks in a homeroom of 29 students. 

“His carefree and jovial manner has lighted many of our classrooms,” wrote the editors of Baraka in his senior yearbook. At Barringer, Baraka ran track and cross country and belonged to the science club and the Latin Honor Society. Upon graduation, he was offered a four-year scholarship to Seton Hall University and lesser scholarships to Holy Cross and Rutgers University-Newark.

In mid-century urban America, Baraka’s success was not unusual. In his 1987 memoir, The Autobiography of Leroi Jones, Baraka unwittingly made the case against reparations. Despite slavery and Jim Crow, his friends from the neighborhood were doing just fine—“auto plants, utilities, electronic tube factories, mechanics, white-collar paper shuffling, teachers, small businessmen, security guards, commercial artists.” 

His classmates at the historically black Howard University were doing even better. “At least five of us became generals,” he wrote, “and many more at lower levels. An admiral or two. [Ronald] Reagan’s top Negro. [Spiro] Agnew’s top Negro. Negroes at all levels of state bureaucracy and madness.” 

A Few Thoughts about the CNN townhall with Trump By Patricia McCarthy

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/a_few_thoughts_about_the_cnn_townhall_with_trump.html

Few of his supporters were surprised to learn that Trump was going to do a sit-down in New Hampshire for CNN.  The man does not shy away from potential political disasters; he thrives on them, runs straight at them, unafraid.  

Why?  Because he always comes out of these things having won bigly.  Not only is he quick thinking and knowledgeable when it comes to the facts on all the relevant issues, he is gloriously entertaining, verbally and visually.  His facial expressions and gestures say as much he does with words.  

The CNN sit-down Wednesday night was no exception.  Host Kaitlan Colllins clearly thought she would have the upper hand.  Coming from the bubble of leftist propaganda that is CNN’s principal reason for being, of course she believed she would be the hero of the event.  But she got her comeuppance within the first few minutes.  She acted the fool and Trump does not suffer fools, he eviscerates them with a smile on his face.  

He certainly got the better of Kaitlan Collins despite her rude, smug arrogance.  She set a new record for dismissive interviews.  She forgot that Trump has had years and years of experience with boorish and ignorant pretend journalists who hate, loathe and despise him. She clearly has no experience with an outlier with so many IQ points on her.

With each question she aimed to embarrass him, to humiliate him.  But she had no actual facts, not when it came to protecting schools, the Second Amendment, the documents stored at Mar-A-Lago,  the event of January 6, 2021, the border wall, school shootings (she exaggerated wildly), etc.  

She had what she thought were facts but were just Democrat talking points.  For example, Trump noted that the man who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, Michael Byrd, bragged about having done it, which he did.  He said that killing her saved lives! Collins tried to deny that fact.  

She accused Trump of not keeping his promise to build the wall!  He did, despite the Democrats’ fevered attempts to stop it.  It stopped the day Biden took office, as did the new pipelines and drilling that had provided energy independence for us.  

In short, Collins was overconfident, prepared to crush the man, but he crushed her with some delightful facial mockery and without lifting his little finger.  Collins is the new Candy Crowley of CNN.  It was a very entertaining interview. 

All This Failure Is Deliberate Societal chaos is what leftists have been scheming since the French Revolution. by Mark Lewis

https://www.frontpagemag.com/all-this-failure-is-deliberate/

I recently had a reader ask, “Why is Joe Biden still President?”  While I’m sure there was some facetiousness in his query, it’s actually worth pondering.  The simple answer is, he was elected (ahem) for a four-year term and still has about a year and a half left.  So, he is President because our Constitution allows him to be, and he hasn’t died yet.  But let’s examine the question a little deeper.

Everything Biden has done has been a disaster.  The economy is teetering.  The border is non-existent.  The banking system and the dollar are crumbling.  Our enemies are taking advantage of the weakness they perceive in the White House.  Crime is out of control in most of our once-great cities.  Traditional morality and decency are in the toilet.  Our children are being butchered and groomed for the hedonistic pleasure of a cadre of sexual deviants.  Women athletes are losing hard-earned rights because of the “transgender” movement, something that almost no one had heard of five years ago.  Government spending is without restraint and, as a result, inflation has soared, and America’s middle class is being squeezed into near oblivion.  The education system continues to produce semi-literates who will do—what?—in the future.  No patriot wants to join the military anymore.  The list of Joe Biden’s cataclysms is endless, but my space in this column isn’t, so I mention only a few of the most egregious catastrophes this man and his ideology have foisted upon the nation.  Why is he still President indeed?

Biden is President, but he is far from in control.  The Marxist, Leftist global movement, whatever groups are ultimately behind it, are using Biden and the Democratic Party as pawns in the supreme game of human domination.  Biden does everything he is told to do.  He is nothing but a puppet, a “useful idiot” as I explained recently—totally unable to think for himself.  The Far Left, the Marxist Left, manipulates him and his ideological band.  Biden doesn’t realize it, but some Democrats do.

The Jordan Neely Dilemma: Stay Seated and Do Nothing? When self-defense becomes vigilantism and racism. by Thom Nickels

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-case-of-jordan-neely-stay-seated-and-do-nothing/

Imagine, for a moment, a different scenario in the Jordan Neely case.

Let’s say that Neely, a homeless individual and part-time Michael Jackson impersonator with a record of 40-plus arrests, had not been apprehended and put into a choke-hold by 24-year-old Marine vet Daniel Penny on the Manhattan-bound F-train on May 1, 2023.

Let’s also imagine that Neely’s mental breakdown rant on that same subway train went from threatening violence – “I’ll hurt anyone on this train” – to actual violence in which he attacked several passengers.

Imagine Neely turning on passengers by pushing, shoving, punching and kicking – as Daniel Penny observed the mayhem from the sidelines.

Imagine the press coverage after this fact.

“Passengers watch as homeless man terrorizes train and injures many. Who was there to defend the 80-year-old woman who died of a heart attack as Neely threw kicks and punches?”

The article would give an overview of the able-bodied passengers on the train who could have done something but didn’t.

“On board was a 24-year-old Marine vet who sat and observed as 80-year-old Mrs. O’Rielly fell to the floor and died” – one can envision news stations proclaiming.

The Jordan Neely incident could have easily gone this way.

Why We Need Behavioral Vigilantes This ongoing noise contamination of the public sphere must end. by Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-we-need-behavioral-vigilantes/

Jordan Neely’s death on May 1, 2023 by a Marine veteran who placed him in a chokehold after the 30-year-old, homeless African-American appeared on a New York subway train allegedly hurling garbage and verbal abuse at passengers is one extreme end of a social malady plaguing our society today: individuals who treat the public sphere as an extension of their private sphere (or lack thereof), and who subject others to their obtrusive behaviors.

Neely had been arrested over 40 times previously for various crimes ranging from lewd behavior to assaulting senior citizens. As one commentator noted: This guy has been arrested dozens of times and he is back on the subway causing people to be scared for their safety; either get some law enforcement on the subway or give citizens authority to protect themselves without recourse.

Other recent incidents include two women blasting music from their phones on a plane in flight (pictured above). The women gave the middle finger to annoyed fellow passengers. As the article points out, one of the alarming trends in travel is the rise of people using personal speakers in public and carrying on loud phone conversations without using headphones.

Another recent article describes a woman voted off a Frontier Jet for lobbing a barrage of vulgar expletives in an argument she started with a couple seated rows in front of her.

People who use their phones as personal speakers are polluting every pocket of the public sphere; their boisterous behavior indicates they believe they are entitled to treat shared public space as their own private space—indeed, as an extension of their disheveled bedrooms.

Why is it that so many people have no understanding of their responsibility not to dominate the public sphere, monopolize it, or even make themselves highly conspicuous and obtrusive in it?

DA Bragg to Charge Marine Hero Who Defended Passengers Against Subway Monster The only remaining crime in New York is self-defense.Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/da-bragg-to-charge-marine-hero-who-defended-passengers-against-subway-monster/

DA Alvin Bragg came into office with a ‘day day memo’ promising not to prosecute the worst criminals.

His office will halt prosecution of several non-violent crimes including fare-beating, trespassing, resisting arrest and interfering with cops, unless they are part of a larger, felony case.

Prosecutors were also instructed to downgrade felonies to misdemeanors in certain cases. For instance, suspects initially charged with armed robbery of a store would get hit with petit larceny instead, a misdemeanor, provided no victims were seriously injured and there was no “genuine risk of physical harm,” the memo states.

When Jordan Neely assaulted a 67-year-old woman, breaking her nose and causing injuries to her head, the system colluded to set the deranged monster loose.

In November 2021, Mr. Neely’s aggression seemed to peak, when he punched a 67-year-old woman in the street on the Lower East Side, the police said. The woman suffered severe facial injuries, including a broken nose, according to court documents. He was charged with assault and, awaiting the resolution of his case, spent 15 months in jail, the police said, though his family said the stint was shorter.

He pleaded guilty on Feb. 9 of this year, in a carefully planned strategy between the city and his lawyers to allow him to get treatment and stay out of prison.

Jordan Neely had threatened to kill his grandfather, so his own grandparents wouldn’t let him in the house.

House Republicans held a hearing Thursday highlighting the importance of political speech and Americans’ waning confidence in U.S. elections.Shawn Fleetwood

https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/11/house-republicans-highlight-the-importance-of-protecting-political-speech-in-u-s-elections/

Republicans on the Committee on House Administration held a hearing Thursday highlighting the importance of political speech and Americans’ confidence in U.S. elections.

“Our Founding Fathers enshrined the First Amendment in the Constitution. Unfortunately, in our highly politicized, political culture, and climate, the First Amendment has been under attack through the use of misinformation czars and cancel culture,” said Chair and Wisconsin GOP Rep. Bryan Steil. “As a result, many Americans have grown concerned that their voices will be suppressed or that their beliefs will be weaponized against them.”

As an example, Steil cited the IRS’s targeting of conservative organizations during the Obama administration. About 10 years ago, it was revealed the IRS intentionally delayed applications for “tax-exempt status from right-of-center organizations” leading up to the 2012 election. Numbering in the hundreds, these groups were “improperly subjected to baseless investigations, invasive and improper demands about their donors, and lengthy delays in processing routine paperwork.”

The Department of Justice ultimately settled with dozens of these groups over the scandal in 2017.

In order to uphold the First Amendment and boost voter confidence in elections, Steil said he is focused on introducing the American Confidence in Elections Act (ACE Act), which he claims is a “federalist approach” to increasing integrity and confidence in elections. According to Steil, the bill would “prohibit the IRS and any other federal agency from asking for an organization’s donor list, creating ad-hoc standards, and applying them to ideologically opposed groups.”

Biden And His Party Are Trying To Kill Humanity’s Last Best Hope

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/12/biden-and-his-party-are-trying-to-kill-humanitys-last-best-hope/

The president hates America. No? Then why is he, and his Democratic Party, systematically taking down this nation? Leaders who love their country don’t try to leave it on the ash heap of history.

Konstantin Kisin, a Russian-British satirist, recently said on Bill Maher’s show that “people in other parts of the world are not teaching their young children to hate their own country.” Maher, a man of the left, agreed. “This country,” he said, “is better off than a lot of people who are native to it” are willing to admit.

It cannot be argued that there is not an element, loud and strident, in this country that actively agitates against it and doesn’t miss a chance to weaken it. Its ever-outraged members are always found on the political left, and if they’re not Democrats, they caucus with them because they’re more closely aligned with that party’s agenda.

This faction denies America’s superior goodness relative to every other nation that exists or has existed. It rails against our market economy, which has produced far more prosperity than any system that’s ever been tried. Educators teach Marxism not as history but as guideline, twist past events to vilify this nation’s cornerstones, pervert objective math and science into subjective fields of study, undermine our national identity by pushing global citizenship, and tear away at the fabric of society through critical race theory instruction. The left mourns America’s founding, is at war with free speech, is perpetually in conflict with the Judeo-Christian heritage that has molded a nation like no other in history, and misses no chance to further divide an already polarized people. The moral code of the West has been shattered.