What Phyllis Schlafly Knew About China in 1998

The Chinese Military Threat

Communist China views the United States as its major adversary and is building an awesome military arsenal, with modern weapons, planes and missiles. China already has the world’s largest army (3 million men), 5,000 combat aircraft, and 300 nuclear warheads. The Chinese shopping list includes aircraft carriers, missile-equipped warships, nuclear attack submarines, fighter aircraft, and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads.

China is capable of buying such costly, warlike luxuries only because of the U.S. cash that flows from the pockets of Americans, known as our trade deficit, which has been running about $40 billion a year for some years. That’s enough money to build up a military/nuclear force capable of threatening the United States, as well as dominating the Pacific.

China’s expansionist aspirations are no secret. Now that China has pocketed Hong Kong, China can turn its avaricious eyes on Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Guam, and even threaten the sailors of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. When China was harassing Taiwan during its election, General Chi of the People’s Liberation Army crudely commented about China’s ability to deliver a nuclear warhead on Los Angeles.

A classified Air Force report released in May 1997 warned that China’s effort to build an advanced ICBM capability is “steadily increasing.” The report stated that this missile “will be a significant threat not only to U.S. forces deployed in the Pacific theater, but to portions of the continental United States and to many of our allies.”

China is determined not only to become a nuclear superpower but also a world-class industrial power, and the Communist bosses expect slave labor, theft, and U.S. folly to help them achieve those goals. They require a transfer of U.S. high technology as part of every business deal so that, in the next round, they expect to manufacture the goods without U.S. help and become a major exporter of cars, chemicals, steel, electronics, and aircraft. China has made several spectacular deals, which pretended to be merely commercial, but will vastly expand China’s military and industrial espionage and subversive capabilities.

The China Ocean Shipping Company (Cosco), a 600-ship global shipping company controlled by the People’s Liberation Army, is trying hard to acquire a 20-year lease on the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Long Beach. Clinton personally lobbied for the Cosco deal at a White House meeting in September 1995. U.S. taxpayers recently spent $500 million to modernize this deep-water port at the epicenter of our defense research and production in southern California. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) is trying to amend the Defense Authorization bill to stop the deal from going through.

Uh-oh! They let Biden get in front of a microphone again By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/uhoh_they_let_biden_get_in_front_of_a_microphone_again.html

Even ten minutes reading from a teleprompter on a Saturday afternoon was too much for the 46th President of the United States. I suppose his handlers figured that it was important to mark Senate passage of the nearly $2 trillion pork-laden, blue state-bailing out “stimulus” bill with some presidential remarks. It may, after all, turn out to be the high point of the Biden presidency, since Senate passage of the rest of the Biden agenda looks iffy, now that Senators Manchin and Sinema have stated their opposition to ending the filibuster.

But how much longer will the American people accept the spectacle of their command-in-chief visibly incapable of coherence? It’s painful to watch even 35 seconds of it.

When he had all of his (limited) faculties, Biden knew that a bipartisan bill was one that attracted votes from both parties. The husk of his former self does not.

We’re all getting older, and it is no fun at all to notice how addled he is getting.

My guess is that his handlers had some date in mind for pulling the plug on Joe’s presidency via the 25th Amendment, figuring that it would look too fishy to evacuate him from the Oval Office too soon. A year at least, right? Anything less would suggest that they knew he was unable to perform the duties of office but pulled a fast one on the voters with the enthusiastic help of the media. Not even Democrat primary voters were willing to vote for Kamala as president, so he was her human shield, her stand-in.

But poor Joe seems to be fading fast. The awesome responsibilities of office seem to age presidents at a scary pace (except Donald Trump, who looked in terrific form a week ago at CPAC).  Jen Psaki asked for 3+ weeks until he does a press conference. I am beginning to wonder if that will be the one where he announces he is stepping aside?

What China Really Wants: A New World Order By Manyin Li

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/what-china-really-wants-a-new-world-order/?itm_campaign=headline-testing-what-china-really-wants-a-new-world-order&itm_

Translated speeches from a leading Beijing scholar-adviser provide a rare guide to the Chinese Communist Party’s plans for domination. Call it a rhapsody in red.

What does the Chinese Communist Party actually want? Sometimes, the regime’s plans can seem inscrutable. Other times, they are more blunt. The latter is certainly the case for one high-profile Chinese scholar serving the Party: Jin Canrong, the Chinese “State Master,” a professor at the Chinese People’s University in Beijing, a U.S. expert, and an adviser to the Chinese Communist Party’s Organization Department and United Front Department. It’s unclear how close he is to Xi Jinping. But he is one of the intellectuals sarcastically referred to in China as “the Emperor’s Literary Men” or “the State Masters.” He has spoken throughout China and is well-known among Netizens. That the U.S. State Department suspended the ten-year visa of this State Master, along with nine other Chinese scholars, in January 2020 suggests that Donald Trump’s administration must have been aware of him as well.

His speeches may reflect the thought of CCP leaders. In 2018, I first read the transcripts of two of his public speeches from two years earlier. I was greatly alarmed. His words contradicted all the beautiful public utterances of CCP leaders, such as, “We will never become a hegemon” and, “We have no intention to challenge the U.S. leadership.” That was the first time I was truly impressed by the degree of China’s power and ambition. I have kept the transcripts. As the U.S. reckons with the growing CCP threat not only to the U.S.-led international order but also to the U.S. itself, now seems a good time to share the content of these speeches.

The two speeches range widely and erratically. I am not attempting a complete translation. Instead, I am excerpting some parts relevant to the U.S., regrouping them into a “rhapsody” of six “movements.” A rhapsody is an epic poem, or part of one; a medley, with extravagance of ideas and expressions. That describes the two speeches excerpted here. They also serve as part of the ode of the CCP’s grand plan in the so-called “Chinese Century” to dominate the world. The State Master’s own words appear below in a different font from my notes or comments; my comments in the speech itself will appear in unitalicized brackets. The English translations are mine; I am responsible for their accuracy.

In 2012, at the CCP’s 18th plenary, it publicly announced two centenary goals. First, that, at the 100th anniversary of the CCP in 2021, all Chinese people will be free of poverty, and China will be a “well-off” society with per capita GDP of $10,000. Second, that, in 2049, at the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic, China will be a well-established socialist power with per capita GDP at $30,000. In Jin’s words, when the second goal is reached, “China will enter the club of developed countries.”

Deter Beijing from Attacking Taiwan By Dan Blumenthal

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/03/22/deter-beijing-from-attacking-taiwan/

Policies to keep great-power competition from becoming great-power conflict.

Over several decades, the People’s Republic of China has been coercing and intimidating Taiwan in an attempt to force “unification” of the de facto independent democratic island with the mainland. The U.S. has responded through mostly diplomatic means, working to help Taiwan avoid international isolation. But now the risk of a Sino–American military conflict over Taiwan is growing. Chinese Communist Party general-secretary Xi Jinping has stepped up his muscular rhetoric about “recovery” of what he views as lost Chinese territory, and his military is more ready than ever to act forcefully if called upon. But through coercive diplomacy the U.S. still has time to head off Chinese aggression. What is needed is a new diplomatic campaign backed by a quick strengthening of U.S. military posture.

On the matter of Taiwan, Xi is a dangerous man. His strategy for political survival inside the brutal, jungle-like CCP is to initiate constant political purges, mass campaigns to strengthen Communist Party ideology and discipline, crackdowns on dissent, and nationalistic adventures abroad, from Hong Kong to India. Taiwan is the logical next target, and Beijing is beating the drums of war.

On January 2, 2019, General-Secretary Xi declared that the annexation of Taiwan was necessary for China to achieve its “great rejuvenation” — his personal grand strategic ambition. Ending a commitment upon which the one-China policy was predicated, Xi also declared that China would not renounce the use of force to accomplish its Taiwan objectives. The CCP released a policy paper expanding on Xi’s claims. It said: 

Solving the Taiwan problem and achieving complete national unification is in the fundamental interest of the Chinese. It is obviously necessary for achieving the great Chinese rejuvenation. . . . China must be unified and obviously will be. . . . If anyone splits Taiwan off from China, China’s military will pay any price to totally defeat them. 

$2.3 Billion Paid To Chicago Public School Teachers – Who Refused Classroom Teaching By Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/03/01/23_billion_paid_to_chicag

20,927 full-time teachers in the Chicago Public School (CPS) system may be headed into Chicago classrooms for the first time since March 2020, after approximately 13,000 Chicago Teacher Union (CTU) members voted to go back.

In 2020, Chicago taxpayers spent $2.3 billion on teacher payroll, while 347,476 enrolled CPS school children logged on from home.

That’s an average annual teacher compensation package of $108,729 ($81,422 in salary, $27,307 in benefits), according to records obtained by OpenTheBooks.com through a FOIA request. CPS teachers also can accrue 244 days of sick leave (more than an entire 175-day school year) or apply it to their pensions.

We found Janice K. Jackson, CEO of CPS, made $322,839 – a $260,000 salary and $62,839 in benefits. The 522 Chicago principals averaged $194,000 in pay and benefits, with the highest earners making up to $219,000. Another 304 acting, interim, assistant, and resident principals averaged $171,315 in pay and perks. Even custodians had compensation packages as high as $101,177 in 2020, with 22 earning up to $75,066 in base pay.

Last year Maurice Swinney, CPS’s “Chief Equity Officer,” made $214,000 managing a group of six employees. The pay vastly exceeded the $177,412 salary of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

Enlightened thinking in Texas by Nicholas Kerr

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/enlightened-thinking-in-texas

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Tuesday that the statewide mask mandate and all restrictions on business’ operating capacity would be lifted this coming week. The following day, President Biden called these decisions “Neanderthal thinking.”

In making his announcement, Abbott focused on the fact that Texans have mastered individual habits and practices to mitigate against the risks of contracting the coronavirus. In addition, the state has already protected a majority of its most vulnerable citizens. Any seniors not already vaccinated will have access to one by the end of March, and Texas now has therapeutic drugs that are mitigating the risk of pandemic deaths and hospitalization. At its core, this decision is about personal responsibility and the importance of letting residents weigh health risks against the other risks inherent to their lives. Biden’s response was sadly predictable.

While the state mandates are to be lifted on Wednesday, businesses and people in areas that have had higher case rates are retaining mask requirements and other sensible precautions. Within hours of the governor’s decision, we received notices from our Dallas school and local businesses letting us know there will be no immediate change to the way they operate. This is as it should be and what we anticipated given how hard our city has been hit by the virus.

But it also seems appropriate that small towns and counties in the largest state in the continental United States, some of which have not had a single virus fatality, should be able to return to normal. Simply put, Texas’s governor is treating us like adults, whereas others want us to act like sheep.

Border crisis creates new risks for Biden By Brett Samuels and Jonathan Easley

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/541866-border-crisis-creates-new-risks-for-biden

President Biden is facing a growing dilemma at the southern border that shows few signs of abating: the number of unaccompanied minors crossing into the United States steadily increasing in recent weeks.

Thousands of migrants have crossed the border in Biden’s first six weeks in office, many of them unaccompanied minors. The influx has tested the administration’s resources and ability to quickly implement its own strategy as Republicans sound alarms over what they have deemed a crisis of Biden’s making.

The Biden administration is rapidly adapting its approach to meet the need for space and staffing in a reflection of the seriousness of the situation. 

“President Biden has asked senior members of his team to travel to the border region in order to provide a full briefing to him on the government response to the influx of unaccompanied minors and an assessment of additional steps that can be taken to ensure the safety and care of these children,” White House spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a statement.

Officials are reportedly working to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency involved, and The Washington Post reported that the administration is looking to convert family detention centers into processing facilities to more rapidly screen migrant children and their parents.

A Storm Over the American Republic by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17147/storm-over-american-republic

The atmosphere in the United States remains poisonous. Critics claim that stoking in the public is being done on purpose — to create a false narrative that not only is Trump supposedly a “threat to democracy,” but that his more than 74 million supporters are, too. Others, however, claim that the real threat to democracy is actually these serial liars, violators of the Constitution and falsifiers of information.

The right to challenge and criticize, which is an integral part of the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment, appears seriously threatened. The right to defend oneself against charges also appears threatened, and the legal profession dangerous to practice.

Expressing doubts about the November 3 election is now a liability. Substantiated reports show that it was far from perfect. The American economist Peter Navarro, in his private capacity, drew up three meticulous analyses: “The Immaculate Deception,” “The Art of the Steal” and “The Navarro Report”. They have been zealously disparaged — many think unjustly.

Some authors describe what is happening as a slide towards authoritarianism. They note that many Americans and corporations, while behaving in an increasingly authoritarian manner, accuse their opponents of being authoritarian — in other words, blaming their opponents for what they themselves are doing.

For more than three years Trump was accused, without any evidence apart from a fake “dossier”, of being a Russian agent. The accusations eventually proved baseless, but not before $32 million of taxpayers’ money were spent in what the prosecutors knew from the start was a fraud. They also tried to frame, incriminate and send innocent people to prison. The exercise was, at bottom, nothing more than an attempted coup d’état.

Throughout his entire term, Trump was faced with threats, abuse of power and unremitting attacks. Even though Trump is no longer president, the war against him continues.

If H.R.1 becomes the law of the land, it will entrench those “very things that made the election of 2020 such a mess”. These include, among other things, the flooding of states with millions of unsolicited mail-in ballots, failure to verify signatures, no chain of custody of ballots, same-day voter registration, and ballot-harvesting — many of which are invitations to commit fraud. As a bipartisan report in 2005 from the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III, concluded: mail-in ballots “remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” If H.R.1 is passed in the Senate, countless ways of demolishing election integrity will be set in cement.

January 20, 2021. President Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. The scene, however, is devoid of any human presence. The streets of Washington DC are empty. People had been urged to stay at home and Americans throughout the rest of the country asked not to come. The city is under the protection of 25,000 members of the National Guard, heavily armed. High barriers topped with razor wire surround the Capitol area. In the streets planned for the new president’s “parade”, barriers separate the sidewalks from the roadway. The only people visible are men in uniform carrying rifles. A day that is usually a day of celebration in the United States is, this year, strange and sad.

The explanation given by city officials and the FBI was that there was a risk of serious disruption. Other inaugurations had faced disruption, but had never placed the city under siege. On January 20, 2017, during President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, hostile protesters had come to Washington DC, burned cars and smashed windows. The police had protected the ceremony without razor wire and soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of people had cheered the new president.

Biden Should Ditch the Doha Deal with Taliban by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17150/biden-taliban-afghanistan

There is at least one issue on which Biden would be wise to adopt the anti-Trump posture: Afghanistan.

Today, Biden could ditch Trump’s cut-and-run plan and re-commit the US to helping Afghans protect what they have achieved and move on to build more. By doing so, Biden would burnish his anti-Trump credentials and also please Obama nostalgics.

This week, Khalilzad offered the chasing wolves a much bigger morsel: a plan for a coalition government in which the terrorist outfit would secure a leading place.

It is worth remembering that, until the 9/11 attacks, Khalilzad and Karzai were lobbyists for Taliban in Washington…. By early August 2001, those interested in the issue already knew that Karzai was to be the first Taliban ambassador to Washington.

[T]he US has invested heavily, in blood and treasure, in making Afghanistan what it is today, a chunk of the world freed from one of the darkest forces mankind has seen for centuries.

Finally, it is clear to anyone familiar with Afghan realities that a scheme that may have worked 20 years ago has no chance of succeeding now. The Doha “peace deal” would be nothing more than a prelude to a new tragedy.

For the Taliban to enter government in Kabul they should give up their arms, accept the Afghan constitution, take part in elections and let the world see how much support they have.

President Joe Biden’s first foreign policy moves so far make at least one thing clear: he is looking for areas where he can distance himself from his predecessor without committing to dramatically different courses.

He has promised to return to the Paris climate accord that, requiring congressional approval, doesn’t imply doing anything in particular.

He has flattered European allies by talking about multilateralism, forgetting that even the most multilateral arrangement still needs leadership and a program, something he tries to avoid for fear of being accused of Trumpian arrogance.

Tearing Down Our Castles Home and family, bulwarks of freedom and freedom-making in their turn, are hated by those who hate mankind and want to subject it to vast systems of social and political control. By Anthony Esolen

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/06/tearing-down-our-castles/

“Of all the modern notions generated by mere wealth the worst,” says G. K. Chesterton, “is that domesticity is dull and tame. Inside the home (they say) is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety.” As is so often the case when a people derive their opinions largely from mass entertainment, mass schooling, and mass media, all it takes is a little consideration, or a few minutes of experience, to see that a given popular notion is not only false, but wildly and ridiculously so.

Enter the home of someone who really has a home to enter. What will you find there? You can assume there will be beds in bedrooms, a stove in the kitchen, and a table to eat from; you can assume there will be electric lights, and some form of heating; you can (nowadays) assume there will be indoor plumbing. Beyond that, you dare not go. “For the truth is,” our Apostle of common sense goes on to say, “that to the moderately poor the home is the only place of liberty. Nay, it is the only place of anarchy. It is the only spot on the earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim.” 

I have sometimes imagined an Armageddon to bring down our vast structure of standardization in business, schooling, and government: a lone worker at a McDonald’s somewhere in Idaho, in a fit of cheerful and human lawlessness, sprinkles the French fries with paprika. Or a teacher in one of those public enclaves built to resemble a factory or a prison gets a wild idea—perhaps it is springtime, and the scent of a long-forgotten blossom is in the air—and teaches his students an old Hebrew poem, beginning, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Or the workers sitting opposite one another on a commuter train shut their computers and begin to—what is it called?—have a conversation.