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Ruth King

China Overtakes U.S. as World’s Leading Destination for Foreign Direct Investment Flows into America nearly halved as Covid-19 dragged on the economy in 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-overtakes-u-s-as-worlds-leading-destination-for-foreign-direct-investment-11611511200?mod=hp_lead_pos2

China overtook the U.S. as the world’s top destination for new foreign direct investment last year, as the Covid-19 pandemic amplifies an eastward shift in the center of gravity of the global economy.

New investments by overseas businesses into the U.S., which for decades held the No. 1 spot, fell 49% in 2020, according to U.N. figures released Sunday, as the country struggled to curb the spread of the new coronavirus and economic output slumped.

China, long ranked No. 2, saw direct investments by foreign companies climb 4%, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said. Beijing used strict lockdowns to largely contain Covid-19 after the disease first emerged in a central Chinese city, and China’s gross domestic product grew even as most other major economies contracted last year.

The 2020 investment numbers underline China’s move toward the center of a global economy long dominated by the U.S.—a shift accelerated during the pandemic as China has cemented its position as the world’s factory floor and expanded its share of global trade.

Investment RetreatsForeign investment in the U.S. fell sharply in2020 as the country ceded its position as thetop destination for overseas businesses toChina.FDI inflows for some leading hosteconomies, change from 2019 to 2020Source: United Nations Conference on Trade andDevelopment

ChinaU.S.IrelandSingaporeIndiaBrazilCanadaMexico-60%-40-20020

While China attracted more new inflows last year, the total stock of foreign investment in the U.S. remains much larger, reflecting the decades it has spent as the most attractive location for foreign businesses looking to expand outside their home markets.

What Can Israel Learn from the Descent of Lebanon? By Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-lebanon-lessons/

Lebanon was founded to serve as a home for Christians and other minority groups in the region. Over the years, however, it gave up its national character and symbols and began to fall apart from within. If Israel does not learn from the Lebanese case, it could find itself in a situation no less serious.

Lebanon, like Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Israel, was born on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after its lands were conquered by Britain, which, together with France, was given a mandate by the League of Nations to establish independent states in those territories. The idea that dominated the Arabic-speaking intellectual-nationalist world was to set up a big state in the region that would include the Muslim, Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Jewish religious communities.

But many of the Christians in Lebanon, particularly the Maronites, didn’t like this idea, as they were well aware of the fate the Armenians and the Assyrians had suffered in WWI—a dark period during which more than a million Armenian Christians were murdered by Muslims in strange and barbarous ways. They knew a big Syrian state would have a large Muslim majority while the Christians would constitute a minority, just as they had in the days of the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the Lebanese Christians saw an opportunity to free themselves of the Muslim majority’s yoke. Their guiding principle was that the Lebanese state could solve their problem as Christians. The French—who held the Syria mandate—identified with the Christians’ yearning for independence and cooperated with the effort to turn Lebanon into a separate state for them.

Biden’s First Signal on China: Fond Memories by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16986/biden-china-signal

In “Four Principles to Guide U.S. Policy Toward China,” the Atlantic Council’s Ali Wyne suggests a weakened America needs to accommodate the People’s Republic of China.

China also cannot get along with the United States, which maintained China-friendly policies for more than four decades. In fact, People’s Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, in May 2019 carried a piece that declared a “people’s war” on America.

China’s “unrestricted warfare” on the United States has taken a toll. Recently, Chinese leaders deliberately spread the coronavirus beyond their borders, making deaths in America mass murder as well as “genocide,” as that term is defined by Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Moreover, in late January of last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in the International Falls Port of Entry in Minnesota seized 900,000 counterfeit $1 bills, made in China…. Nobody, in China’s near-total surveillance state, can counterfeit American currency without authorities knowing about it. [C]ounterfeiting another country’s currency is considered an act of war.

Leaders of democracies, despite all the good will in the world, will find they cannot cooperate with thugs.

“I was asked a long time ago when I was with Xi Jinping,” said President Joe Biden in his first hours in office, as he swore in officials, “and I was on the Tibetan plateau with him, and he asked me in a private dinner he and I and we each had an interpreter he said can you define America for me, and I said yes and I meant it. I said I can do it in one word, one word: possibilities. We believe anything is possible if we set our mind to it, unlike any other country in the world.”

In Beijing, Communist Party leaders must be ecstatic. For one thing, during the 10-minute ceremony Biden mentioned no other country.

Moreover, ruler Xi Jinping will think the Tibetan plateau reference significant. Biden’s words, after all, came one day after then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a determination that China was committing crimes against humanity, including genocide, against minorities. Pompeo’s declaration presumably includes the minority Tibetans. Beijing is suppressing them in many of the same ways as it is liquidating Uyghurs, the focus of his historic statement.

Xi and other Chinese leaders will doubtless take Biden’s fond recollection as a sign the new president is not serious about China’s atrocities against minority peoples.

A Hardcore Libertarian Take on the Storming of the Capitol Building Our country is not to be equated with our Capitol. By Ilana Mercer

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/24/a-hardcore-libertarian-take-on-the-storming-of-the-capitol-building/

Hardcore libertarians differentiate between pro-Trump patriots and Black Lives Matter detritus. 

BLM rioters trashed, looted, and leveled their countrymen’s private property, their businesses. 

Democratic stormtroopers harassed their fellow Americans—meek men and women in eateries, in shopping malls, in the inner sanctum of their homes—often forcing innocents to kneel or recite repulsive, self-incriminating racial catechisms. 

These Mao-like cultural revolutionaries descended like locusts on places where their fellow Americans shop and socialize, sadistically threatening, and often visiting, physical harm upon their countrymen, unless they knelt before them like slaves. 

In contrast, the ragtag men and women of the MAGA movement stormed only the seat of power and corruption that is the State. 

Yet, in reply to the fact that “entire cities were burned to the ground” by the Left’s militarized BLM troops, some of the staunchest of conservatives, staffers at Breitbart, purportedly concluded in error that “storming the Capitol building” is much worse than “than burning down strip malls.” 

Wrong.

Hardcore libertarians, very plainly, think the opposite. Like us or not, the radical, libertarian propertarian—who does not live inside and off the Beltway—will strongly disagree with the contention of the Trump-blaming Breitbarters. 

A certain kind of libertarian, the good kind, distinguishes clearly between those who, like BLM, would trash, loot and level private property—the livelihoods and businesses of private citizens—and between those who would storm the plush seats of state power and corruption. 

The River of Forgetfulness Before we are all reprogrammed, remember for a bit longer that the reset of memory and truth is not just a political agenda, but a holistic effort to redefine our past, present, and future.  By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/24/the-river-of-forgetfulness/

Riotous rogue Trump supporters who broke into the Capitol on January 6 were properly and widely condemned by conservatives. They were somewhat reminiscent of the mobs of fanatic leftists and union members that a decade ago stormed the Wisconsin state capitol at Madison, or the unpunished hundreds of rioters who created havoc on Washington, D.C. streets during the Trump 2016 inauguration. We expect the Capitol stormers will be punished, and not in the lax fashion of the latter two groups that were not. 

Within a few days, the talking points were finalized that all of Donald Trump’s supporters deserved blame for the violence. That riot, the Trump defeat, and the loss of the Senate have greenlighted left-wing talk of “deprogramming,” “de-Baathification,” “re-educating,” and “reprogramming” half the country to ensure they think correctly and act properly from now on—the exact methodology of such brain rinsing apparently to be announced later. 

So we are beginning a great reprogramming of America. The construction of Trump and all of his supporters as abettors, terrorists, seditionists, and traitors is certainly proving useful. After the Capitol conundrum, we have seen over the past two weeks a coordinated and synchronized effort by Amazon, Twitter, and Google to destroy Parler, a small conservative-friendly rival to their social media and internet monopolies. More of such humanitarian taking care of business will follow—all as preemption for the most leftwing agenda in a half-century now rolling out. 

Round-up Time

Silicon Valley’s continued use of social activism to mask 19th-century robber-baron monopolization of its markets remains diabolically brilliant. After all, those who have rings in their noses, and wear tie-dye and flip-flops cannot have anything in common with either John D. Rockefeller, Jay Fisk,  or Big Brother, right? 

Don’t we remember how hipster Apple idealists once fought stodgy Microsoft? Or how liberal techies at Microsoft earlier took on dour, big blue, coat-and-tie IBM and “print” media? Surely, good Harvard drop-out tech revolutionaries cannot possibly have become bad, trillion-dollar corporate cartels? 

Serious Big Brother was never coming to America kicking and screaming in a suit and in a mile-long tie, but rather eagerly welcomed in with jeans and sneakers without socks. The First Amendment could always survive a crude, inebriated Joe McCarthy, but not so easily a social justice ex-barista, doing vanity selfies about diversity, egged on by the “progressive” media, while saving the planet, and “reining” in a hurtful, racist media.

The Conservative Purge Isn’t Over, It’s Just Getting Cranked Up

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/25/the-conservative-purge-isnt-over-its-just-getting-cranked-up/

Not quite two weeks ago we noted that Big Tech was settling the family business with its suspensions, bans, and deletions of then-President Donald Trump and as many of his supporters as it could pull into its dragnet. It was only a start. The left wants to wipe the right from the political map as quickly and effectively as possible.

Playing the role this week of Michael Corleone, who in the first of “The Godfather” installments eliminated his families’ enemies, is the Democratic Party. Congressional Democrats are going forward, with the blessing of the new president, whose plea for unity is clearly a sham, with a domestic terrorism bill in both chambers of Congress.

The public is being told the legislation is needed to thwart “the potential threat of more terrorist attacks in Washington and around the country,” says Rep. Brad Schneider, an Illinois Democrat and co-sponsor of the House version. Among other co-sponsors is Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., who in July denied that Antifa, which was wrecking Portland at the time, even existed.

One lone Democrat stands out among this jihad, and, unfortunately, she’s no longer in Congress. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii told Fox News on Friday that should the bill become law, it would undermine “our civil liberties, our freedoms in our Constitution,” while “targeting of almost half of the country.” That half being a collection of Trump supporters, conservatives, Christians, and anyone who refuses to go along with the Democrats’ legislative agenda, surrender to Black Lives Matter intimidation, and yield to the dominant narrative.

Are the Republican NeverTrumpers Happy Now? How are “principles” and “democratic norms” served by aiding the Democrats in reversing Trump’s successes? Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/are-republican-nevertrumpers-happy-now-bruce-thornton/

In less than a week Joe Biden has issued a slew of executive orders rolling back many of Donald Trump’s orders that returned some sanity to our country after the Obama-era policies weakened us at home and abroad. Soon we also will see attempts to undo Trump’s positive achievements in reviving a sluggish economy and restoring America’s credibility as a great power other powers may not like, but definitely had to respect.

Are you happy now, Republican NeverTrumpers, that your orange bête noir demonized for his scorn for your managerial elite protocols and “norms” has been driven from the Republican, Inc. country club?

Take Biden’s return to the Paris Climate Accords, a globalist orgy of virtue-signaling by Western nations, and serial grifting by China, the world’s largest emitter of CO2 who isn’t required to do anything but make promises. Three decades of such gab-fests have not achieved as much as the fracking revolution did in reducing emissions. So of course, Biden has forbidden fracking and oil development on federal lands, thus ending the economic boon of cheap energy and good jobs at home, and geopolitical leverage abroad that come from being the world’s largest producer of oil.

Compounding that blunder, he’s stopped construction on the Keystone pipeline, killing thousands of jobs and subjecting the environment to the risks of transporting oil with trucks and trains. And our ally Canada, none too pleased, will likely look for new markets to sell their oil–– perhaps to our geopolitical rival China. Why has Biden taken these self-wounding steps? Because upscale progressives aren’t comfortable with icky things like producing and transporting oil, which offend their Disneyfied natural world.

Snarky Celebs Give Melania a Hateful Sendoff Her heinous crime was to be married to the man who exposed the fathomless depths of leftist hate and hypocrisy. Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/snarky-celebs-give-melania-hateful-sendoff-mark-tapson/

Remember those halcyon days of yesteryear when American comedians managed to poke fun at politicians on both sides of the aisle and make all Americans laugh together, instead of dividing us by mocking grotesque stereotypes of Americans in flyover country? Remember when late-night television was dominated by Johnny Carson, who managed to make clever quips about current events without descending into vicious snark aimed at half the country?

That is a distant memory, and our culture is immeasurably the worse for it. Now the Left enjoys total political domination in the field of entertainment, and late-night TV features a gaggle of uniformly leftist comedians/hosts who spent eight years refusing to mock Progressive Messiah Barack Obama, and the subsequent four years spewing increasingly angry nightly monologues about the Man Who Is Not Obama who occupied the White House until last week.

And not just Donald Trump, but his wife Melania as well, whom they despise because she is not Michelle Obama. In fact, The CBS Late Show, hosted by the eminently punchable and politically uninsightful Stephen Colbert, gave the First Lady an insulting musical sendoff Wednesday as she and her husband prepared to leave the White House.

Colbert’s comedy chops are only slightly less worthless than those of fellow propagandist/faux comedian Seth Myers from the NBC version of Colbert’s show, Late Night With Seth Myers. Myers, you may recall (but more likely not), is most notable as the unfunniest Saturday Night Live alumnus in the leftist propaganda outlet’s 45-year history.

Joe Biden and the crisis of the New World The Biden-supporting woke elites pose a graver threat to the American republic than Trump did.Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/01/20/joe-biden-and-the-crisis-of-the-new-world/

America is saved. The republic has been rescued. The healing of the nation can begin now that authoritarian populism has been defeated and ‘the adults’ are back in charge. That’s the narrative swirling around the inauguration of Joe Biden today. It couldn’t be more wrong. The Biden-supporting woke elites pose a graver threat to the American republic, to its visionary founding ideals, than Donald Trump did. Behind the facade of today’s restoration of normalcy, the New World trembles.

The hyperbole has been cranked up to 10 ahead of today’s inauguration. America is talked about as if it were a patient recovering from a bout of madness. Trump was the disease, Biden is the cure. A CNN anchor described the lights running alongside the reflecting pool at the National Mall in Washington, DC as ‘extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America’. British Labour Party politician Lisa Nandy is giddily celebrating the fact that a ‘woke guy’ and an ‘amazingly strong woman of colour’ – cringe – are now in the White House, providing a ‘source of hope’ to the world. Praise be!

One of the most common cries of the vast pro-Biden lobby is that ‘the adults’ are back in charge. You can even buy a Biden-Harris t-shirt that says ‘The Adults Have Arrived’. ‘Here come the adults’, says the New Republic. It cheers the fact that Biden and his Cabinet are all ‘experienced and non-controversial’ (boring?), meaning they can help to restore American democracy and heal a confused, divided world.

This metaphor of the adults re-entering the room is a revealing one. The vote for Trump in 2016, like the vote for Brexit in the UK in the same year, is clearly viewed by the managerial elites as a temper tantrum, an explosion of rage among overgrown children.

THE D.C. OCCUPATION WILL CONTINUE UNTIL DEMOCRACY IS SAVED: DANIEL GREENFIELD

http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2021/01/the-dc-occupation-will-continue-until.html?ut

On a cold, windy day with a small group of spectators watching from behind barbed wire, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. swore another in a long series of false oaths before his motorcade passed between a long row of soldiers with their backs to him looking outward for threats.

No inauguration has been this empty in a century of American history. And at no inauguration have the spectators been outnumbered by a raw display of armed force. American presidents have been inaugurated in wartime and during actual national emergencies with a better turnout.

Through world wars and wars on terror, Washington D.C. has remained a national capital where the hundreds of millions of taxpayers who labor to pay for its grand edifices, free museums, and lavish lifestyles could briefly come to enjoy a little of the life lived by the ruling class in the Imperial City. Now the ruling class has made it clear that it doesn’t want peasants entering D.C.

Even as Biden’s team prepped the executive orders that would end the national emergency at the border and shut down construction of the wall, new walls topped by razor wire were rising across the imperial city. The new Fortress of Government sealed off two miles of the National Mall and parts of downtown D.C. and filled it with more soldiers than are deployed in Iraq.