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September 2021

We Can’t Let Foreign Influence Compromise Our Universities By Rachelle Peterson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/we-cant-let-foreign-influence-compromise-our-universities/

Donors, and the terms of their gifts, must be disclosed to reveal possible conflicts of interest.

Tucked inside the Innovation and Competition Act, recently passed by the Senate and now on the House’s agenda, are crucial updates to foreign-gift transparency laws — and some big opportunities for improvement.

The public should know when foreign donors make substantial gifts to colleges and universities. In the last few years, foreign governments have bought the right to pick curricula, as the Chinese Communist government did with Confucius Institutes. Royal-family foundations endow campus centers in their own names, as did Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal with $20 million gifts to Harvard and Georgetown. Foreign tech companies such as Huawei and ZTE, both designated by the FCC as “national security threats,” contract with colleges for research collaboration.

Since the 1980s, colleges have been required to disclose gifts and contracts with foreign sources that exceed $250,000 per year. But from the beginning, colleges and their lobbyists have fought that law, Section 117 of the Higher Education Act. Many institutions simply do not file the required disclosures.

When the Trump administration reviewed Section 117, it found widespread noncompliance. A scathing 2020 report from the Department of Education found that Yale “underreported its foreign gifts and contracts by $375 million.” Another university, whose name is redacted, professed itself “dumbfounded” when the department asked how it forgot to document more than $760 million in foreign funding. In 2020, colleges back-reported over $6.5 billion in foreign funding that should have been disclosed years before, but never was.

State Dept trying to steal credit for rescue of 4 Americans from Afghanistan, organizer says: ‘Total lie’ By Peter Hasson , Houston Keene

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/09/07/bidens_withdrawal_from_reality_146362.html#comments-container

Cory Mills and a private team of military veterans led the effort to rescue Mariam and her three children from Afghanistan

The organizer of a private mission to rescue an American mom, Mariam, and her three children from Afghanistan says the U.S. State Department is now trying to insert itself into the story of her evacuation, despite playing little to no role for much of the rescue effort.

Senior State Department officials on Monday announced that the “U.S. has facilitated the safe departure of four US citizens by overland route from Afghanistan. Embassy staff was present upon their arrival.” 

But those actually involved in the dangerous rescue operation say the State Department deserves little to no credit for Mariam’s escape from Afghanistan. 

Cory Mills and a private team of military veterans, drawing on funding by private donors including the Sentinel Foundation, led the effort to rescue Mariam and her three children from Afghanistan, where they had been left behind by the Biden administration, multiple sources with knowledge of Mariam’s evacuation confirmed to Fox News. 

Mills and his team worked for weeks to get Mariam’s family out of Afghanistan after Republican Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson alerted him to the family’s plight.

Mills’ team first sought to get the family aboard one of the last government flights out of Kabul, but she was unable to gain admission into the airport. The State Department repeatedly urged the four Americans to go to the airport gate, braving Taliban checkpoints along the way, only for them to be refused admission each time, Mills said. 

Biden’s Withdrawal From Reality J Peder Zane

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/09/07/bidens_withdrawal_from_reality_146362.html

The Democratic Party and its apparatchiks in the media keep asking the American people variations on a single question: What are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

From the Trump/Russia collusion fantasy and concocted claims that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation,” to ongoing efforts to cast an America that has never been freer or fairer as a nation riddled with “systemic” racial oppression, they keep insisting that we reject clear and convincing evidence and embrace politically driven falsehoods.

The latest example is President Biden’s refusal to even acknowledge the catastrophic failure of his withdrawal from Afghanistan. The nation heard him say on July 8 that it was highly unlikely that the Taliban would overrun the country. The Washington Post reports that his senior leadership team was caught so unaware by the Taliban’s August advance that many were on vacation when Kabul fell. Then came the images of chaotic panic at the airport, a grim scene turned violently grisly when a suicide bomber murdered scores of people, including 13 Americans.

Biden subsequently described the withdrawal as an “extraordinary success” even as he left behind lethal state-of-the-art military equipment worth billions of dollars as well as many Americans and Afghans who had aided us during the 20-year struggle – including the interpreter who helped rescue Biden himself in 2008.

Slowly but surely the mainstream press, which initially covered the debacle forthrightly,  is beginning to embrace Biden’s narrative. Ezra Klein offered his New York Times readers a fatuous counterfactual defense: “A better withdrawal was possible — and our stingy, chaotic visa process was unforgivable — but so was a worse one.” Jonathan Karl of ABC News played the Trump card: “The truth is that Biden accomplished exactly what Trump had tried to do in his final year in office. The only real difference is that Trump wanted to withdraw more quickly and with less regard for the Afghan citizens who worked with the United States.”

Expect to hear more of the same in the coming weeks. Don’t be surprised if Biden is nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The brazenness is stunning. This is not your typical political spin, it is propaganda. It is the willful effort to corrupt our perception of reality. Say it loud and long enough and people will believe it. If they don’t, get Twitter mobs and cancel culture to silence and punish them. That is increasingly becoming the Democrats’ playbook.

Palestinians: Why Biden’s Aid Will Not Bring Peace by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17722/palestinians-biden-financial-aid

Most Palestinians, however, are clearly unimpressed with both the Biden administration’s renewed financial aid and the Israeli government’s gestures…. These Palestinians are saying that they prefer Hamas, the Islamist group that seeks the destruction of Israel, over Abbas.

“[T]he Biden administration is deluding itself by assuming that US funds could change the hearts and minds of the Palestinians.” — Arab World for Research and Development, August 25, 2021.

Those who want the Oslo Accords rescinded are, bluntly, saying that they are opposed to a peace process with Israel. They are also saying that they do not recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Another crucial finding the Biden administration needs to take into account is that the poll found… a majority of those surveyed believe that Israel has no right to exist and should be replaced with a Palestinian state, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

US taxpayer dollars will not drive Palestinians to accept Israel’s right to exist. The same applies to the Israeli gestures, which are not likely to achieve the Biden administration’s hope of bolstering the PA’s standing or advancing the “two-state solution.”

The results of the poll are clear: many Palestinians have been so successfully radicalized by their leaders that they want to see Israel removed from the face of the earth.

The only way to change this brutal reality is by halting the messages of hate and the delegitimization of Israel. Until that happens, Palestinians will continue to pocket money from the US and other Western donors, while at the same time moving closer to Hamas and further from any peace with Israel.

As the Biden administration steps up its efforts to bolster the Palestinian Authority (PA), Palestinians seem to be increasingly losing faith in their leaders.

The Palestinian public also appears to be losing faith in any peace process with Israel. Many are even saying that they support the annulment of the Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 between Israel and the PLO and that the only peace process they would support is one that leads to the elimination of Israel.

Afghan Fallout: Biden Ruins America’s Most Important Relationship — India by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17724/afghan-fallout-india-china

If Washington is going to deter a militant China, it needs the support of democratic India. Unfortunately, India looks like the country most immediately — and perhaps most adversely — affected by the Biden-created debacle. As a result, New Delhi could decide to side not with America but with a Chinese ally, Moscow.

India saw the Afghan government as a friend in blunting extremism in neighboring Pakistan, which has always defined itself as India’s enemy.

The Biden administration may in fact be willing to defend Taiwan, but that is not all that counts at this crucial time. What also counts are perceptions, and the perceptions that especially count are those in Beijing. Chinese propagandists promoted two narratives as Kabul fell: The United States will not defend Taiwan and an America unable to deal with the Taliban cannot hope to stand up to China.

Those two narratives appear to in fact reflect Chinese thinking, especially because the withdrawal from Afghanistan signaled to Beijing a complete failure of the U.S. intelligence community, the Pentagon, and the White House national security apparatus. Chinese exercises in areas adjacent to Taiwan in August and an August 13 simulated attack on Taiwan with a short-range missile are, in this context, ominous.

India’s close ties with Vietnam are an indication that India perceives its security as dependent on an open South China Sea and even East China Sea. Taiwan, which sits at the intersection of those bodies of water, is essential in keeping sea lanes there open.

President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has ruined, perhaps for decades, America’s most important bilateral relationship of this era.

If Washington is going to deter a militant China, it needs the support of democratic India. Unfortunately, India looks like the country most immediately — and perhaps most adversely — affected by the Biden-created debacle. As a result, New Delhi could decide to side not with America but with a Chinese ally, Moscow.

The Greatest Victory Since Napoleon Left Moscow Roger Kimball

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2021/09/the-greatest-victory-since-napoleon-left-moscow/

Maybe someone should hire Joe Biden to teach philosophy, or at least be in the classroom. You don’t have to be Ludwig Wittgenstein to appreciate the important philosophical lesson that our understanding can be bewitched by language. This can happen in a number of different ways, many of them illustrated daily by the President of the United States.  One lesson revolves around the unpalatable truth that saying something is so does not make it so. Joe Biden gave a sterling illustration of that lesson the other day at one his weirdest press conferences to date.  His withdrawal from Afghanistan, he barked madly at the cameras, was an “extraordinary success.” 

Yes, he really said that.  It was a success more or less in the same sense that Napoleon’s withdrawal from Moscow in 1812 was a success, that is to say, it was so extraordinary a success that it was an abject failure.  It was not quite so bad as the withdrawal of Maj. Gen. William Elphinstone from Kabul in 1842, perhaps—the only European to make it out alive from that debâcle was a badly wounded army surgeon—but it was certainly nothing to brag about.  

It will be many years before we get a full and accurate measure of the repercussions of this humiliating event. It has gravely damaged the already tottering administration of Joe Biden. It has disconcerted our friends. It has emboldened our enemies.  And it is marked another waypoint on the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of American power.  

The world has been especially stunned by two things the Biden administration left behind in Afghanistan.  The first was the huge armory of military hardware and supporting matériel. Estimates of the value of that gift to the Taliban have varied widely from many hundreds of millions to $80 billion. Whatever the figure, it was a lot.   

According to one assessment, the US left scattered in seven Afghan army garrisons across the country, from Kabul and Kandahar to Herāt, Mazār-i-Sharīf, and Kunduz, 22,174 armored Humvees, 42 pickup trucks and SUVS, 64,363 machine guns, 162,043 radios, 16,035 night-vision goggles, 358,530 assault rifles (the real ones, not the “assault rifles” that Joe Biden warns about in the United States), 126,295 pistols, and 176 artillery pieces. There was also plenty of ammunition to go along with all of that loot.

NEW COLUMNIST AT THE WSJ?

BlackRock’s China Blunder George Soros  September 7, 2021

Pouring billions into the country now is a bad investment and imperils U.S. national security.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blackrock-larry-fink-china-hkex-sse-authoritarianism-xi-jinping-term-limits-human-rights-ant-didi-global-national-security-11630938728?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Xi’s Dictatorship Threatens the Chinese State George Soros- August 14, 2021

In his quest for personal power, he’s rejected Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform path and turned the Communist Party into an assemblage of yes-men.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-deng-xiaoping-dictatorship-ant-didi-economy-communist-party-beijing-authoritarian-11628885076?mod=article_inline

Complete the wall … around Biden By Edward R. Zuckerbrod

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/complete_the_wall__around_biden_.html

Let’s hope Joe Biden has finally gone a fib too far: taking to the airways with false indignation to harangue us for daring to question his execution of the lethally inept Afghanistan “retrograde” action he engineered along with his Team of Trivials. Biden’s purpose of course was to obscure the fact that he’d blithely and needlessly thrust fine, dedicated troops into a tactical straightjacket that could logically have had no other result than multiple casualties; perhaps though in the process causing some heretofore tightly shut eyes to be pried open concerning the character and abilities of our overmatched chief executive.

If there is any degree of justice in the world, across this nation, many self-anointed sophisticates are staring at the yellowing diplomas hanging on their walls, contemplating how someone so demonstrably smart and accomplished could have been so utterly misguided in his/her 2020 assessment of presidential fitness.

It’s unfortunate that we don’t have the voter equivalent of a remedial safe-driving course.

Somehow, someway, over his many years of feeding at the public trough (and multi-national deals) Mr. Biden has succeeded in cultivating the image of an amiable, even-tempered spinner of yarns, whose repertoire of self-aggrandizing tales served — at least in his mind — as parables illustrating deeper truths. And if, in pursuit of his overarching message, the factual bases of these stories were suspect, then what of it? Underneath it all, Joe’s a good egg, don’t you know, so why don’t we just let it slide?

That protective aura: of a good-natured, basically decent guy despite his obvious intellectual shortcomings and weird personal peccadillos, made — along with Covid-19 and its concomitant voting irregularities — Biden, the un-Trump, and his presidency possible. But it’s also catapulted one of the biggest liars in American public life into a position he can’t successfully navigate through the copious shoveling of BS.

New January 6 Stories That Complicate the Media Narrative What really happened? The story just keeps getting weirder. By Adam Mill

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/06/new-january-6-stories-that-complicate-the-media-narrative/

The Associated Press reported in August that Robert Reeder, a Maryland man, pleaded guilty to “parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.” He argued for leniency because, “he is a registered Democrat who wasn’t a supporter of former President Donald Trump.” So why did he join the incursion into the Capitol building? Because, he says, he was an “accidental tourist” with nothing better to do.

But an online group that calls itself Sedition Hunters recently tweeted a picture it says shows that same “accidental tourist” attacking a police officer. Curiously, the “accidental tourist,” who didn’t support Donald Trump, happened to be wearing a red “MAGA”-style hat. His attorney argued in court, “Mr. Reeder is not politically active, is not and has never been a member of any right-wing or anti-government or extremist group and has, unfortunately, been publicly grouped with many others (whose) views he abhors.”

The story reminds one of John Sullivan, a Black Lives Matter activist who infiltrated the January 6 incursion to encourage violence, bully police officers, and generally stoke mayhem. While many of the trespassers remain locked up without bail, Sullivan mysteriously received pre-trial release.

But there’s more. As I’ve written before, the January 6 event has a statistically anomalous count of suicide victims among police officers. Additionally, one officer’s widow has now sued two men she says inflicted a grievous head injury on her husband, possibly leading to his suicide. Her complaint claims, 

Open-source intelligence materials found at https://seditionhunters.org/insider-1107/ appear to depict Defendant [Taylor F.] Taranto throughout the Capitol Insurrection engaged in other unlawful acts. In addition, and upon information and belief, said website appears to show Defendant Taranto with the weapon used to assault Officer Smith. Upon information and belief, the weapon appears to be the Ka-Bar TDI ‘self-defense’ cane.

What Did the Capitol Celebrity Cops Do to Roseanne Boyland? After eight months, we finally have an answer to who shot Ashli Babbitt. Next question: Who killed Roseanne Boyland? By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/06/what-did-the-capitol-celebrity-cops-do-to-roseanne-boyland/

The most violent clashes between police and protesters on January 6 occurred inside and outside the west terrace tunnel. The tunnel leads to doors that open into the Capitol building; according to federal documents, “the Lower West Terrace Door was heavily guarded by U.S. Capitol Police and [D.C. Metro Police] personnel, who had formed a defensive line to prevent unauthorized access into the U.S. Capitol via the tunnel.”

Dozens of people have been arrested and charged with various offenses, including assaulting police, for their conduct at the tunnel that afternoon.

It also is the location where Roseanne Boyland lost her life. The Georgia woman was one of four Trump supporters who died on January 6. While her death was ruled an accidental drug overdose by the highly political D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office—the chief officer refers to January 6 as “an unprecedented incident of civil insurrection”—new court filings and video footage raise plenty of questions about what actually happened to Boyland.

And congressional testimony by Officers Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell, the two U.S. Capitol Police officers who have become media celebrities for their near-death accounts of January 6, should raise eyebrows about their potential involvement in the death of Roseanne Boyland.

A sworn statement in a motion filed last month in the case of Jacob Lang provides jaw-dropping details on police behavior in the moments before and after Boyland, 34, died.

Phillip Anderson, a protester who was near Boyland when she passed out, accuses law enforcement of using “excessive force” and spraying a highly noxious gas on protesters in the west terrace tunnel. Anderson told the court that Lang, who’s been behind bars since January awaiting trial, saved his life on January 6.

“I do not know what type of gas the officers used, but I know for sure that it was not tear gas,” Anderson said in an affidavit signed August 22. “After the officers sprayed this gas at me, I could not breathe for longer than a few seconds. This gas caused me to collapse, where the police then proceeded to push others on top of me. There were many others who collapsed because of these toxins, as I did. The police continued . . . hitting me and others. One of the people that fell in the crowd was a woman by the name Roseanne Boyland.”

Police pushed the mob, most of whom had been doused with the toxic gas, out of the tunnel as bodies tumbled on top of one another. Boyland was crushed and lost consciousness. Anderson said Boyland grabbed his hand but her firm grip quickly “loosened.” Several people attempted to administer CPR “while the police officers hit them over the head repeatedly.”