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Macron Blunders on Taiwan—and Ukraine He weakens deterrence against Chinese aggression and undermines U.S. support for Europe.

Posted By on April 10th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macron-blunders-on-taiwan-and-ukraine-france-asia-military-china-xi-jinping-military-support-303181c5?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Emmanuel Macron fancies himself a Charles de Gaulle for the 21st century, which includes distancing Europe from the U.S. But the French President picked a terrible moment this weekend for a Gaullist afflatus following his meeting with Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Mr. Macron said in an interview with a reporter from Politico and two French journalists. “The question Europeans need to answer . . . is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

No one wants a crisis over Taiwan, much less to accelerate one, but preventing one requires a credible deterrent. Mr. Macron seemed to rule out European help with that when he told the journalists that “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it.”

If Mr. Macron wants to reduce American public support for the war against Russia, he couldn’t have said it better. Without U.S. weapons and intelligence, Russia would long ago have rolled over Ukraine and perhaps one or more NATO border countries. Mr. Macron says he wants to make Europe less dependent on U.S. weapons and energy, which is fine. But then how about spending the money and making the policy changes to do it?

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“Does This Compromise President Biden?” by Peter Schweizer

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19539/does-this-compromise-biden

The notion that a declining power like Russia, which has domestic problems, a shrinking economy, a shrinking demographic base, is somehow a bigger threat than China is laughable. It is indicative of a larger issue, which is that Biden essentially has a soft spot for Beijing. The question, of course, is why?

This is a commercial relationship that not only has made the Bidens money. It has advanced the strategic and military interests of the Chinese government itself.

The first one is a private equity arrangement or deal that Hunter Biden has with the Chinese government itself. This is a deal that began and was finalized in December of 2013. It led to the creation of something called Bohai Harvest RST or BHR Partners…. the Chinese government poured in a billion dollars. They later expanded that to a-billion-and-a-half dollars…. One of the partnering firms that created BHR was Hunter Biden’s firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners.

Hunter Biden was put on the board of directors of BHR Partners…. What is astonishing about this is, first of all, that the Chinese government funded this venture. Again, these are not individual Chinese companies. This is Chinese government money.

In 2017, his lawyers admitted that he [Hunter Biden] also took a personal stake. In addition to the firm that he owned part of, he took a personal stake in these deals. That is deal number one. Then there is deal number two with the Chinese government. This involves a real estate firm called Rosemont Real Estate, of which Hunter Biden was a co‑founder.

Rosemont then becomes Gemini Rosemont Realty. The Chinese government is later to put in more than $100 million in cash. They publicly say that they are going to put billions of dollars of equity into this entity to make it even more successful. Here you have two large deals.

When you look at what that private equity firm does, the first thing they do is they become an anchor investor in a Chinese firm called China General Nuclear (CGN). Why is this interesting? This is a nuclear energy firm that about eight months after Hunter Biden’s BHR becomes an anchor investor, they are charged by the FBI in the United States. That firm was stealing nuclear secrets in the United States.

In particular, CGN is trying to gain technologies related to the small nuclear reactors that are put on submarines, which provide a huge military advantage to the United States.

Another acquisition they make is that Hunter Biden’s BHR firm buys half of a company called Henniges in Michigan — and another Chinese entity buys the other half. That other half is bought by AVIC, which is the Chinese state‑owned aviation military contractor. AVIC builds all the military aircraft for the Chinese military.

What I think is important about the Biden story is not simply the fact that the Biden family made money because of the Chinese military and that Joe Biden speaks very kindly about the Chinese since those deals have gone down, but also that the Biden family involving the son of the vice president directly benefit the Chinese military.

China is a power that has demonstrated over the last decade that they want, by 2025, to supplant the United States as the major economic power in the world. Then by 2030, they want to match the United States militarily.

The Chinese government has also spoken openly about their desire to upturn and change the global order for their benefit. What we have in the Biden family is a family that has become wealthy by enabling, helping, aiding and abetting the Chinese in doing exactly that.

In terms of Hunter Biden doing nothing wrong, it does not seem that there has been anything illegal. I have always contended that the problem in Washington DC is that some of the worst crimes or worst acts of corruption are done by people who engage in legal behavior. In Washington DC, the political class gets to make their own rules. They get to rig the game, as it were, to ensure that the real lucrative stuff that is corrupt — and should be illegal — is the very stuff that they engage in.

Hunter Biden has stepped off the board of directors of BHR. Here is the problem: he still retains his equity stake with this Chinese firm. He still has other deals that he conducted with the Chinese from which he benefited.

The Biden team has lied repeatedly. I can go into greater detail…. It has been subterfuge from the beginning. They need to be called out on it….. The American people understand if somebody’s giving you a sweetheart deal, particularly an actor like China… without getting something in return. They are not that stupid.

The problem is the way that rules are written in Washington DC, they are written by the political class themselves. They carve out certain things…. If [Biden] gets a $250 campaign contribution from a GE executive, it is disclosed by the FEC…. If his adult son flying on Air Force Two, clearly close with the vice president, strikes a series of deals with a foreign government that are lucrative and beneficial to him, there is no requirement for disclosure — which, to me, is shocking. One of the things that has to change is that we need greater transparency.

The great gold mine that they have discovered are these foreign entities. With Hunter Biden, you have these deals in China. You also have the deal in Ukraine that everybody’s familiar with…. [Hunter Biden] is given a million dollars a year by a company even though he has no background in Ukraine and no background in energy. Everybody knows what is going on. Unfortunately, it is legal.

There ought to at minimum be a requirement that you disclose any foreign dealings involving the family members of politicians, Republican, Democrat, executive branch, legislative branch. That would be very, very helpful. The way you discuss this and you explain this to people is: It is not a question about what is legal. There are lots of things that are legal in Washington that are highly corrupt. The key thing is, does this compromise Joe Biden?… Has he done favors for that foreign power?

One of the things that the great Roger Robinson has been working on…. He is looking into the fact that in 2013, the Obama administration signed a letter which said that the Chinese companies listed in the New York Stock Exchange did not have to conform to Sarbanes‑Oxley auditing and some of the other requirements that US and other foreign firms do. It is quite a cutout for the Chinese.

The question about blackmail, to be blunt about it, is, are they going to need to blackmail Joe Biden? Joe Biden’s posture towards China is incredibly soft.

[T]here has been a complete lack of curiosity by the media, and even, as we have seen, suppression.

Something may emerge but I am not sure there is something that they want that he is not already prepared to give them.

China is a rival power. They are supplanting the United States on the global stage, both in terms of their economic capability and in terms of their military capability.

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Swimmer Riley Gaines Ambushed, Assaulted, and Held Hostage By Trans Mob After Speech at San Francisco State University By Debra Heine

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/07/swimmer-riley-gaines-ambushed-assaulted-held-hostage-by-trans-mob-after-speech-at-san-francisco-state-university/

Swimmer Riley Gaines was ambushed, physically assaulted and held hostage for three hours late Thursday by a violent trans-rights mob who disrupted her speech at San Francisco State University about protecting women’s sports.

“I was physically assaulted by one person. I was struck twice, both times hitting my shoulder with the second strike grazing my face,” Gaines told CNN Friday. “The rest of the protestors just ambushed and cornered me before I was able to move out with the help of campus police.”

Gaines is a 12-time All-American champ, and a former competitor of trans swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male who has taken the sport by storm since he started identifying as a female.

Her appearance at SFSU was booked by a conservative student organization and organized by Turning Point USA. Footage showed Riley being partially drowned out with chants as she was giving her speech. The agitators “rushed in when the event was over,” according to a university Turning Point USA spokesperson.

“Why are you running!” a protester yelped, after Gaines was ambushed. Flanked by university police, she made her way down a hallway.

Another agitator screeched “trans rights are human rights” before jumping in front of her to scream profanities in her face. “Yeah you f—ing transphobic bitch, I f–ing see you!” the unhinged woman bellowed as the distressed guest speaker was hustled away. “The prisoners are running the asylum at SFSU,” Gaines wrote in a video she posted on Twitter. “This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces. Still only further assures me I’m doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder,” she said.

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Then and Now This is Easter, a holiday commemorating a miracle. That is good, because we are going to need one. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/08/then-and-now/

On Good Friday, I chanced across a photograph of the lower Manhattan skyline at night from Good Friday in April 1956. Three skyscrapers, dominating the space, feature certain windows illuminated to form gigantic crosses to commemorate that most solemn of Christian holidays. The year 1956 was not that long ago. But how much has changed in those 60-odd years! Can you imagine such a public display of Christian affirmation in New York today? Nor can I. 

That was then. Now things are different. 

I thought about that disjunction between then and now when reading through Washington’s Farewell Address this weekend. Washington had intended to withdraw from politics when his first term ended in 1792. He asked James Madison to draft a valedictory statement but, when the time came, bickering among some of his Cabinet, especially between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, convinced him to run again. He set the original document aside. 

But when 1796 rolled around, he was weary and determined to leave politics. He enlisted Hamilton to revise the statement to which he added his own observations. The document is known as Washington’s “Farewell Address,” though Washington did not deliver it orally. Instead, he had it published in Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser in September 1796, about 10 weeks before the election to choose his successor.

It was widely reprinted and became, in the words of the historian John Avlon, a sort of “civic scripture,” more widely reprinted even than the Declaration of Independence in the early years of the Republic. During the Civil War, both Houses of Congress began to hold annual readings of the document. The House abandoned the practice in 1984. I am told that the Senate continues to this day, selecting a senator (and alternating between parties) to read the document aloud on the Senate floor to commemorate Washington’s birthday. 

Several passages from the Farewell Address have become inscribed on the collective memory of the nation. But what struck me rereading the 6,000-word statement is how much it appears as a period piece, a blast from an apparently unrecoverable past. Anyone who has read the Farewell Address will recall Washington’s stirring warnings against “the fury of party spirit,” foreign entanglements, his cautions against excessive debt, his insistence on the place of religion as the foundation for civic order. The question is: what relevance do such injunctions have in present-day America? 

It pains me to say it, but I suspect the Farewell Address retains but a rhetorical claim on America circa 2023. Then, in 1796, Washington’s exhortations and admonitions had purchase in the political, economic, and moral reality of America. Now, they mostly echo like antique sentimentalities, more or less like the phrase “with liberty and justice for all” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Who still takes that seriously? 

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The Smearing of Clarence Thomas The left gins up another phony ethics assault to tarnish the Supreme Court.

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-propublica-harlan-crow-1c4c2f41?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The left’s assault on the Supreme Court is continuing, and the latest front is the news that Justice Clarence Thomas has a rich friend who has hosted the Justice on his private plane, his yacht, and his vacation resort. That’s it. That’s the story. Yet this non-bombshell has triggered breathless claims that the Court must be investigated, and that Justice Thomas must resign or be impeached. Those demands give away the real political game here.*

ProPublica, a left-leaning website, kicked off the fun with a report Thursday that Justice Thomas has a longtime friendship with Harlan Crow, a wealthy Texas real-estate developer. The intrepid reporters roamed far and wide to discover that the Justice has sometimes traveled on Mr. Crow’s “Bombardier Global 5000 jet” and that each summer the Justice and his wife spend a vacation week at Mr. Crow’s place in the Adirondacks.

The piece is loaded with words and phrases intended to convey that this is all somehow disreputable: “superyacht”; “luxury trips”; “exclusive California all-male retreat”; “sprawling ranch”; “private chefs”; “elegant accommodation”; “opulent lodge”; “lavishing the justice with gifts.” And more.

Adjectival overkill is the method of bad polemicists who don’t have much to report. The ProPublica writers suggest that Justice Thomas may have violated ethics rules, and they quote a couple of cherry-picked ethicists to express their dismay.

But it seems clear that the Court’s rules at the time all of this happened did not require that gifts of personal hospitality be disclosed. This includes the private plane trips. ProPublica fails to make clear to readers that the U.S. Judicial Conference recently changed its rules to require more disclosure. The new rules took effect last month.

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Paul Singer, the Man Who Saw the Economic Crises Coming He warned about subprime mortgages before 2008, Dodd-Frank in 2010, and inflation in 2020. After Silicon Valley Bank, what does he think is next? By James Freeman

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-who-saw-the-economic-crises-coming-paul-singer-banking-signature-svb-financial-downturn-asset-hyperinflation-recession-debt-federal-reserve-cd2638fe?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

New York

“Men and nations behave wisely,” the Israeli statesman Abba Eban observed, “when they have exhausted all other resources.” Imagine if our economic policy makers listened to Paul Singer instead. Mr. Singer, 78, is founder of Elliott Management and one of the world’s most successful hedge-fund proprietors. Before the financial crisis of 2008, he tried to alert investors and public officials about the dangers of subprime mortgages. In the 15 years since, he’s repeatedly warned that the landmark Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, and the expansive monetary policies along the way, were inviting disaster.

Will policy makers finally start listening? He isn’t betting on it. “I think that this is an extraordinarily dangerous and confusing period,” he says at the Manhattan office of his charitable foundation. (Elliott’s headquarters moved to West Palm Beach, Fla., in 2020.) Mr. Singer is dressed casually and appears relaxed, but his message won’t put investors at ease.

“Valuations are still very high,” he says. “There’s a significant chance of recession. We see the possibility of a lengthy period of low returns in financial assets, low returns in real estate, corporate profits, unemployment rates higher than exist now and lots of inflation in the next round.”

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Leak of Classified Documents on Ukraine, China, and the Middle East a ‘Nightmare’ Says Pentagon By Rick Moran

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/04/08/leak-of-classified-documents-on-ukraine-china-and-the-middle-east-a-nightmare-says-pentagon-n1685557

Pentagon sources are telling the media that more than 100 classified documents including Ukrainian war plans have been leaked to several social media sites. The leak first came to light on Thursday when the New York Times published details of Ukraine’s military buildup and plans for an offensive.

The Pentagon says some of the figures in the documents appear to have been altered, overstating American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed. Experts say this is common practice when using documents to spread disinformation.

Then on Friday, dozens of more documents were also posted to the social media site 4chan.

The documents on Ukraine’s military appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries, troop and battalion strengths, and other plans. Pentagon officials acknowledge that they are legitimate Defense Department documents, but the copies appear to have been altered in certain parts from their original format. The modified versions, for example, overstate American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and underestimate estimates of Russian troops killed.

On Friday, Ukrainian officials and pro-war Russian bloggers suggested the leak was part of a disinformation effort by the other side, timed to influence Ukraine’s possible spring offensive to reclaim territory in the east and the south of the country.

The notion that this is a Western disinformation campaign designed to mislead Russia was being advanced by Russian war bloggers. It’s also possible that Moscow leaked the documents to try and drive a wedge between Ukraine and the U.S.

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John Kirby’s Clean-Up on Aisle Kabul The Biden administration has been lying about the evacuation from Afghanistan from the day that it began Roger Kimball

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/john-kirby-clean-up-aisle-kabul-afghanistan/?utm_source=

I almost feel sorry for John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman tasked with tidying up after the icky messes deposited about the landscape by Joe Biden. 

Let me emphasize the adverb “almost.” Kirby’s job is unenviable. Basically he has to lie and pretend that his boss and that excruciating, illiterate muppet of a press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, make sense. It’s always a horrible goulash that Kirby has to contend with. He has my sympathy for that. 

But yesterday, when Kirby stood before the press to answer questions about the administration’s report on Ameirca’s humiliating flight from Afghanistan in August 2021, his performance was not just cringe-making. It was infuriating.  

There was, said this wretched tool, “a lot to be proud of” in the way the administration handled the withdrawa- no, it wasn’t a “withdrawal.” It was a panicked flight from Bagram Air Base and Kabul. Why? Because our laughably named “intelligence services” once again bungled the job. The Taliban, they said, were making advances, but not to worry, it will take weeks if not months for them to take control of the capital. 

Wrong. America’s flight from Afghanistan, after twenty years, trillions of your dollars, Dear Reader, and countless classes in “transgressive” modernist art for the natives, was the most spectacular military and public relations failure for the United States since our choppers took flight from our embassy in Saigon in 1975. 

Where does the buck stop, Mr. Kirby? With Donald Trump, bien sûr. Kirby repeatedly echoed the party line: “President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor.” But does anybody, anybody believe that if Donald Trump were still president in 2021 that Afghanistan would have been consumed in the humiliating maelstrom that John Kirby now wants us all to forget?

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Son of George Soros scored multiple visits to Biden White House, records show Gabe Kaminski

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/george-soros-son-alexander-visits-biden-white-house-disclosures

A son of left-wing billionaire and philanthropist George Soros has scored several recent visits to President Joe Biden’s White House as he showers Democrats with campaign donations and promotes his meetings with top lawmakers, records show.

Alexander Soros, chairman of the Open Society Foundations grantmaking network that his father founded in 1993 to influence left-leaning politics and culture matters, has increasingly posted images on social media of himself with Democratic lawmakers whose campaigns he has bankrolled. The 37-year-old, who the Washington Examiner reported has met with top Biden administration officials since at least 2021, spent more time at the White House in December 2022, according to federal visitor logs released Thursday.

“Alexander Soros is poised to lead his family’s multi billion-dollar political and philanthropic network,” Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, a conservative investigative think tank, told the Washington Examiner. “Like his father, he cozies up to White House and congressional leaders willing to do the family’s bidding on such issues as crime, immigration, election policy, and more, as the Soroses exploit every type of giving: money to parties, independent expenditure groups, and so-called ‘charities.'”

Walter added: “No wonder former staffers and grantees of their foundations, donor groups, and lobbying shops are found throughout the Biden administration, from the State Department to the Domestic Policy Council.”

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“The great re-shoring charade” David Goldman

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/the-great-re-shoring-charade/

China’s position in global supply chains strengthens as US pretends to ‘friend-shore’ its imports

Moving factories from China to Mexico is one of the few hot topics in an otherwise listless market, US investment bankers say.

As American hostility to China rises, US corporations scramble to assure the public as well as inquisitive congressional committees that they are moving operations out of the Middle Kingdom to friendlier venues.

It’s all a pantomime for political consumption. US imports from Mexico, Vietnam, India and other “friend-shoring” venues depend on imports of Chinese components, according to an Asia Times study of international trade data. China’s exports to non-Japan Asia and Latin America are booming, and Chinese companies are investing billions of dollars in Mexico.

The charade permits American politicians to flaunt success in decoupling from China, and gives corporate leaders a chance to display their patriotism – while America’s indirect dependence on China’s industrial power increases.

“Friend-shoring” venues including India, Vietnam and Mexico show a lockstep relationship between imports from China and exports to the United States. Econometric analysis confirms that this relationship isn’t simply the result of a rising trend in both measures.