FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Pompeo: Biden’s Weakness on Spy Balloon Assures Chinese Aggression Steps the Biden administration should take in response to China’s reconnaissance balloon Mike Pompeo

Posted By on February 5th, 2023

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/full-of-hot-air-how-bidens-weakness-assures-chinese-aggression/

President Joe Biden’s weakness with China is once again on display. Earlier this week, U.S. officials tracked a Chinese reconnaissance balloon over the American mainland. A Chinese Communist Party spokesperson claimed this was nothing more than a “weather research” balloon that had simply blown off course. Sure, the CCP’s harmless weather balloon just happened to pass over multiple sensitive military sites vital to America’s national security—nobody should believe that nonsense, especially not the Biden administration.

Even if it were true, the CCP’s policy of civil-military fusion—which requires all available research and technology, from China’s private sector or otherwise, to be shared with the Chinese military—makes such an excuse an impossibility. Thus, this appears to be an intentional act of espionage, and it signals that the CCP is feeling ever more emboldened with Biden in charge. If the Biden administration does not act to change this paradigm quickly, the threat of conflict will only continue to grow. Weakness breeds aggression. America must demonstrate clear strength and resolve.

This is far from the first time the CCP has engaged in acts of espionage against the American people. China is, and has been for years, aggressively engaged in acts of espionage and propaganda against the American people at all levels of American society. The threat from the CCP is very real here at home, in places like Des Moines, Tallahassee, and Pittsburgh. Its malign activity doesn’t stay in Beijing or Wuhan; it is already inside our gates.

The CCP has targeted officials in our federal government, like congressman Eric Swalwell and Senator Dianne Feinstein, as well as our universities, local governments, media, think tanks, and more. The CCP underwrote a program of “Confucius Institutes” at American universities, ostensibly to foster cultural connections on our campuses, but in reality, to spy on students and professors and steal intellectual property. China’s economy was built on the backs of Americans not only by taking American jobs but also, crucially, by an unparalleled campaign of corporate espionage that has robbed Americans of billions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property. Even seemingly innocuous apps like TikTok have been revealed to be little more than tools for collecting the private information of Americans and spreading CCP propaganda.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biggest Gift to Iran’s Mullahs, China and Russia: Biden Administration’s Weak Leadership by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on February 4th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19371/biden-gift-iran-china-russia

Thanks to the Biden administration’s weak and vacillating leadership, Iran, Russia and China have been emboldened to levels never before seen.

[T]he Biden administration has not been taking any action to deter, disincentivize or punish those who breach the sanctions. Ever since the Biden administration assumed office, in fact, Iran’s oil exports have been on the rise… of which more than 800,000 barrels a day are being exported to China.

Thanks to the Biden administration’s abject posture towards China; its dithering over help to Ukraine; its ruining the US economy by shutting down America’s energy independence then rushing to buy oil from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela rather than Canada; the unconscionable abandonment of Afghanistan and our allies there; the Biden family’s appearance of influence-peddling, and, by closing down the China Initiative, the administration’s failure to stop Communist China’s runaway espionage, Russia, Iran and China are simply not taking the US seriously.

So long as the Biden administration does not demonstrate real leadership, Iran, Russia and China will continue to seize all opportunities to become more empowered and emboldened. The Biden administration’s legacy so far appears to be leaving the world a far more dangerous place.

Thanks to the Biden administration’s weak and vacillating leadership, Iran, Russia and China have been emboldened to levels never before seen.

First, the US sanctions against Russia are completely being smoothly violated by Iran’s mullahs and China. Despite the Biden administration’s sanctions, Iran’s oil exports have reached a new peak last month.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

George Soros: The Man Who Wants ‘Cities to Fall Apart’? by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on February 4th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19373/goerge-soros

According to published reports, George Soros is teaching college courses these days to thousands of students.

To be clear, he is not actually on campuses in front of the class. Rather, exhaustive investigations by journalists reveal how his reach, influence, and above all, money, is resetting curriculum to reflect his political ideology wherever and whenever he can.

Investigative author Matt Palumbo wrote in the New York Post last month:

“In 2020 alone, Soros’ Open Society Foundations budgeted more than $63 million, or just over 5% of its budget, toward influencing higher education here and abroad….

“More than 19 colleges had individually received at least $1 million from Soros, including Harvard University, Columbia University, Indiana University, and Georgetown University, among others.”

One institution in particular, Palumbo reveals, has significantly benefited from Soros’ campaign of campus influence, Bard College.

“Bard College had received nearly $80 million total from Soros when he announced in 2020 that he’d be awarding it an additional $100 million over the next decade.”

For what purpose?

It would appear that Soros is seeking to leverage his enormous wealth to create a new political cadre from an emerging generation that will pursue his goals today, and long after he is gone. It is what these goals are that is being questioned (for instance here , here and here).

Soros was a student of Karl Popper (author of The Open Society and Its Enemies) in London. Later, to promote freedom and defeat totalitarianism, Soros donated millions to such causes as Lech Walesa’s Solidarity Movement, which led Poland out of the grip of the Soviet Empire, and to financing democracy movements in Yugoslavia working to oust Slobodan Milosevic.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Theater of the Absurd in J6 Courtrooms As judges hand down one absurd sentence after another, one might be inclined to laugh at the absurdity of it all except, of course, it’s not funny. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on February 4th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/03/theater-of-the-absurd-in-j6-courtrooms/

The Department of Justice carefully crafted the dramatic moment in court.

A federal prosecutor handed an enclosed paper bag to an FBI agent responsible for investigating members of the Proud Boys, now on trial for seditious conspiracy related to their participation in the events of January 6. The bag contained “evidence of the unlawful entry of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 and evidence of the disruption to the certification of the 2020 presidential election,” FBI Special Agent Elizabeth D’Angelo told assistant U.S. Attorney Nadia Moore on Wednesday.

D’Angelo cautiously pulled the evidence out of the bag to present to the jury.

Spectators in D.C. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly’s courtroom were on the edge of their seats. What would the mystery bag reveal?

Would it disclose the group’s intricate but failed plot to overthrow the government? A detailed list of weapons the “seditionists” planned to use in service of their dastardly deed? Names of targeted officials?

A nervous hush fell over the room; sweat beads formed on furrowed brows. Finally, the big moment arrived.

It was—a set of challenge coins.

Moore: Can you give a brief description of what they are?

D’Angelo: They are challenge coins. This one is black and gold—and this package contains four black and gold colored challenge coins.

Moore: Are these the same coins that were seized from Zachary Rehl’s home?

D’Angelo: Yes.

What?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A pregnant Iranian woman is about to be executed By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on February 4th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/a_pregnant_iranian_woman_is_about_to_be_executed.html

Not only will Iran also execute the innocent life within her, but you won’t believe what led to this dual death sentence.

Increasingly, indoctrinated American college students agree that life would be better without the First Amendment. After all, that pesky First Amendment means that they are routinely exposed to ideas that frighten them or with which they disagree. What they fail to understand is that, once the government has the power to dictate what is acceptable speech and what is not, you discover yourself in a world like Iran, where the government plans to execute a pregnant woman for daring to burn a picture of the Ayatollah Khomenei.

This appalling report originated with IranWire:

Iranian judicial officials have sentenced a pregnant woman in her early-20s to death, and her execution is imminent, IranWire understands.

Shahla Abdi, an ethic Kurd from the northwestern province of West Azerbaijan, was arrested in Urmia in mid-October at the peak of nationwide protests triggered by the September death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of morality police.

Abdi is said to have received capital punishment for setting fire to a portrait of Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding father of the Islamic Republic.

A fellow woman inmate told IranWire that Abdi was held in Urmia Central Prison for about a month. Some prisoners say the young woman was transferred to Tabriz Prison about three weeks ago; according to others, she was taken to the detention center of the Ministry of Intelligence.

“When I saw this woman, she looked very young but weak and abused, and I realized that she was four months pregnant,” the inmate said. 

Another inmate said that Abdi is 21 or 22 years old.

This story is so surreal that I double-checked to see whether it’s been confirmed anywhere else. Daily Tribune/News of Bahrain, a regional outlet in the Middle East, has relied on IranWire to report the same story. Likewise, The National, a Canadian Broadcast Corporation outlet published in the UAE, has the same report. In other words, those geographically closest to the story believe it’s true.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

American Students — Dumber and More Woke By Robert Weissberg

Posted By on February 4th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/american_students__dumber_and_more_woke.html

Professors often complain about the current crop of students being less intellectually talented than when they began their careers decades back. Such griping is, of course, easy to dismiss — it has occurred for millennia. Unfortunately, this time around the grumbling may be true and not the usual nostalgia for “the good old days.”  The anecdotal evidence from textbook reading levels, shortened college syllabi, scrapbook-like research assignments, proliferating college remedial classes, grade inflation, and the popularity of “gut” college majors such as Gender Studies, is indisputable. We have also invested hundreds of millions in our schools yet test results such as the SAT are flat over the past half century. Add the countless stories of illiteracy among high school “graduates” despite falling class size and expensive reforms. Judged by the standards of evolution, Americans may be going backwards.

The best evidence of this decline are data from the highly respected General Social Survey on mean IQ by decade among graduate students, undergraduates, and high school students (a tip of the hat to Charles Murray on Twitter). This is a complicated subject given how America’s demography has altered, and measuring IQ via surveys might be iffy, but the numbers, even if a bit unsure, are alarming.

These data are divided into three groups: those with high school diplomas, undergraduate degrees, and graduate degrees. Then the data are then divided by decades beginning in the 1960s through to the 2010 onward decade. The overall pattern is a steady decline in IQ scores for each group from decade to decade. For example, high school graduates in the 1960s had an average IQ of 99.3 but this figure declined so by 2010 and onward, it was 93.5. A similar drop occurred among college graduates — from 113.3 in the 60s to 100.4 in the 2010 decade. For those with graduate degrees, the fall was from 114.0 to 105.8.          

These are depressing numbers. That in 2010 the average college student had an IQ of 100.4 (almost exactly our national average) signifies that we are miles away from trying to educate the brightest youngsters. Worse, with an average of about 100, many of those enrolled must score below 100 and thus suitable only for low-skill occupations. This picture may even be worse than these numbers suggest if we subtract out the many smart international students now enrolled in U.S. higher education.  

MEDIA Comments turned off

That Didn’t Age Well! Read The Most Clownish Takes About The Laptop Hunter Biden Admits Was His By: Tristan Justice

Posted By on February 4th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/03/that-didnt-age-well-read-the-most-clownish-takes-about-the-laptop-hunter-biden-admits-was-his/

Hunter Biden admitted, in a roundabout way through his lawyers, that the infamous laptop featuring a trove of explicit content that surfaced in 2020 was his. On Wednesday, his attorneys demanded that Biden allies in the Justice Department launch investigations of the people who found the computer.

Biden’s lawyers sent two 14-page letters to the Delaware attorney general and the Department of Justice this week calling on officials to probe whether the people who gave the laptop — which was abandoned property at a Delaware computer repair shop owned and operated by John Paul Mac Isaac — to the New York Post violated state or federal laws.

“There is considerable reason to believe” that the individuals involved “in accessing, copying, manipulating, and/or disseminating Mr. Biden’s personal computer data” may have committed crimes, the attorneys wrote. “Mr. Mac Isaac has admitted to copying that data without Mr. Biden’s consent, and Mr. Mac Isaac has admitted to distributing copies of that data from his place in Delaware.”

In other words, the laptop is undoubtedly Hunter Biden’s despite the remarkable spin from Democrats, the president, and the media who were desperate to dismiss the computer as Russian disinformation. Below are some of the statements that aged the worst.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Blinken Stays Home to Avoid Confronting China Over Spy Balloon Cowardice in the face of the enemy. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 4th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/blinken-stays-home-to-avoid-confronting-china-over-spy-balloon/

“The Biden administration talks tough to Americans, but is gutless in the face of the enemy.”

“Should I stay or should I go?”

Blinken had been scheduled to meet with top officials in China Feb. 5-6 in a follow-up to President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping in Bali in November, in which Biden pledged to “maintain open lines of communication” with Beijing at a time of worsening bilateral tensions.

But that was scuttled after the Pentagon announced Thursday that it had discovered a Chinese airship hovering over Montana, saying it had “very high confidence” the balloon had been sent to the U.S. to collect sensitive information.

The balloon’s intrusion constituted a “clear violation of our sovereignty” and prompted the State Department to indefinitely delay Blinken’s visit until “conditions are right,” a senior State Department official said in a press briefing.

Conditions will be right when Americans forget about the spy balloon (and these days that takes about 24 hours) and then Secretary of State Blinken can make the trip to focus on “partnering with China” in the fight against the weather by buying garbage Chinese ‘green’ technology and taxing Americans to pay for it.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

George Washington University Prof Goes Berserk on Jewish Students By Kevin Downey Jr.

Posted By on February 4th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/kevindowneyjr/2023/02/03/george-washington-univ-prof-goes-berserk-on-jewish-students-n1667306

Indoctrination 101
A George Washington University (GWU) commie professor allegedly went berserk on some Jewish students in her mandatory diversity class.

Clinical psychologist and professor Dr. Lara Sheehi—who is also part of the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network—is accused of verbally attacking a student who dared to use the phrase “terror attack.”

According to a complaint, Sheehi “took offense at the student’s use of the term ‘terrorist attack,” going so far as to say the phrase was “Islamophobic.”

The complainant also says Sheehi brought in a class speaker who “advocated violence against Israelies—and by extension, Jews.”

The complaint also states the speaker made a Jewish student feel “deeply unsettled and unsafe.” One student cried.

Sheehi responded by calling the student’s complaint “damaging, Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian.” She added, “a stone is nothing compared to an army.”

The trouble began on the first day of class when the Sheehi, who has a history of public antisemitism, asked students for their names and how they “identify.” Things got weird when a student said she was from Israel.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Helium Supply-Chain Failure Worries Hospitals, Crime Labs, Welders, and Even Balloon Retailers By Greg Byrnes

Posted By on February 4th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gregbyrnes/2023/02/03/helium-supply-chain-failure-worries-hospitals-crime-labs-welders-and-even-balloon-retailers-n1667789

The United States is beginning the third year of a helium supply-chain crisis. Some experts think it will last until at least 2024. Consumers may have noticed some party retailers going out of business, with helium prices in a few markets almost doubling. A Texas retailer reports tanks went from $195 to $365, and they can only get half tanks because of shortages. The Party City chain, where balloons were a key profit center, has filed for bankruptcy.

But helium shortages mean more than fewer fun diversions like blimps, party balloons, or Daffy Duck floating down Broadway.

Last year the Miami-Dade Police crime lab and the Medical Examiner’s Office had to pay $1,800 per tank for helium to run instruments to identify deadly drugs and complete autopsy blood tests. Helium is used by semiconductor manufacturers and welders, and of critical importance, it is used to cool MRI machines in hospitals.

Without a reliable supply of helium in medical care, the public may face hard choices: rationing, sky-high pricing, or limiting tests patients can get. All could be on the horizon. This may not represent a complete regression to third-world medical care, but the supply chain failure is not without consequences for public health and safety. That this is happening in one of the most natural resource-rich countries in the world is more than strange. If one consequence of Biden’s green energy policy is the collapse of this vital supply chain, what can Congress do to reverse course?

The U.S. is one of the world’s largest sources of helium, but with supply not meeting demand, prices are skyrocketing. Helium is captured as a byproduct of natural gas drilling, which has been targeted by the Biden administration as part of its war on fossil fuels. Currently, the United State’s helium reserve is in Amarillo, Texas, a state replete with natural gas.