The Great China Shell Game: The U.S. Must Stop Playing Sanctions Whack-A-Mole with the CCP by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20740/china-sanctions

There is no mystery why China’s big banks have run from Russia: These behemoths — the four largest banks in the world ranked by assets are Chinese — know the U.S. can effectively impose a death sentence. The Secretary of the Treasury, for instance, can designate, pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Chinese banks to be of “primary money laundering concern.” Designated banks can no longer clear dollar transactions through New York, where every dollar transaction clears.

Because the dollar reigns supreme in international transactions, Section 311 designations would put the Chinese state banks out of business most everywhere outside China and even reduce their business inside that country. The Treasury Department, to great effect, imposed Section 311 on Bank of Dandong, a small Chinese bank, in 2017 for participating in prohibited transactions with North Korea.

Moreover, Washington has other tools to hit Chinese banks. In 2012, Treasury also cut China’s Bank of Kunlun off from the U.S. financial system by invoking the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010.

“Transactions between China and Russia will increasingly go through underground channels.” The underground channels include cryptocurrency, generally banned in China. — “[T]he head of a trade body in a southeastern province that represents Chinese businesses with Russian interests” to Reuters.

China’s regime is playing Americans for fools. It is time for Washington to sanction all Chinese banks, all other Chinese financial institutions, and all Chinese corporates, treating them as one single organization.

Sanctions will work… if they are immediately applied against all Chinese entities to produce maximum shock.

There is no point in imposing sanctions that never have a chance of stopping offending behavior.

The larger Chinese banks, in response to stern U.S. warnings, have this year been exiting transactions involving Russia.

Are America’s sanctions efforts finally working?

No. Beijing is merely shifting transactions to smaller banks and non-banking channels. China, to help Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, is employing a decades-old stratagem: the shell game.

Every Leftist Cause Begins as Humanitarianism and Ends as Terrorism by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20739/leftist-humanitarianism-terrorism

Every leftist cause is founded on empathy.

Somewhere there is an oppressed group to be liberated. And he, she or they is the one to fight for their liberation.

And then people die. Sometimes it’s those he considers the oppressed or the oppressors. Usually both. The humanitarians become terrorists and their revolutions lead to tyranny.

Leftists genuinely do care a lot. They care about rising oceans, polar bears, women in hijabs, men in dresses, drug dealers in the ghetto and eco-terrorists in prison, racist highways and dead terrorists, and if you think of something that they don’t care about yet, they will soon.

As long as it fits the larger agenda of asserting their will over society from a moral high ground.

That is why they also don’t care about the horrifying death toll among young black men from crime, how many Muslims are being killed by Muslim governments or the state of the gay rights movement in Marxist dictatorships. If the state of oppression does not conform to the narrative of external social oppression to be overthrown by a liberation movement it is useless to the political movement and to the individual ego of the aspiring freedom fighter.

To a genuine humanitarian, the oppressed are an end, but to a leftist they are a means. A leftist cares a great deal about a coal miner until he votes for Trump or a black man until he runs as a Republican. Or until, even through no fault of his own, like the coal miners and steelworkers for whom leftists once bled, he is replaced by a new pathway to the ultimate revolution.

Really fixing anything robs him of his motivation. That is why the standard leftist position is that black people are as oppressed today as they were under segregation. If they were to admit that black people were equal and free, what would they do with their time?

Given a large enough palette, the leftist can vandalize art, bomb events and assault people because he’s trying to save millions, billions and the entire planet.

The Green Tide Turns in Europe Rebecca Weisser

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2024/07/the-green-tide-turns-in-europe/

This month I’ve been editing Quadrant from the offices of the Danube Institute. Located in Aranybastya—the Golden Bastion—it affords a bird’s eye view not just of the picturesque spires of Budapest but of the fault lines dividing Europe. While the picture is mixed, the good news is that the great Green tidal wave that swept over the EU in 2019 has passed its high point and is receding. Green parties and their liberal technocratic and social democratic fellow travellers were the biggest losers in the EU parliamentary elections held from 6 to 9 June. 

The problem for Europeans is that the EU has a Potemkin parliament constructed to create the illusion of democratic control when in reality it is run by faceless Eurocrats inexorably claiming ever more power from member governments. The ability to draft legislation is the exclusive prerogative of the EU Commission, which styles itself as the “executive” arm but is appointed by the European Council which is made up of the leaders of the EU states. The parliament is relegated to approving, rejecting, or proposing amendments. So, until the right-wing insurgents become leaders of countries there is not much hope of seeing change in the EU.

Nonetheless, even though the turnout is only just over 50 per cent overall, the European parliamentary elections do serve as a useful barometer of public opinion. What they show is not just a rise in parties on the Right and a fall in the parties of the liberal technocrats (like Macron in France) and leftists generally but a collapse in the vote for the Greens.

In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats won less than 14 per cent of the vote, their worst result in a national poll since 1949, and even fewer votes than the much-maligned Alternative for Germany which increased its vote by almost 5 per cent compared with the last election.

The German Greens were even bigger losers, falling almost nine percentage points to less than 12 per cent. Ironically, having campaigned to lower the voting age to sixteen, their vote crashed to only 10 per cent among those aged sixteen to twenty-four, with 17 per cent of this age group voting for the Christian Democrat Union and another 17 per cent voting for Alternative for Germany. 

In the next most populous country, France, the Ecologists only got a tad over 5 per cent, a steep fall from over 13 per cent in 2019 and more than 16 per cent in 2009.

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

If you want to be depressed by stories about violence, tragedies, and lies about Israel, there are many websites you can link to and email groups you can join.  But if you want the truth about the positive achievements of the only Jewish State, then Read It Here! Michael Ordman

Could not say it better! rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
Israel’s largest flag. (TY Yanky) 50 meters above Moshav Netiv HaAsara flies is probably the biggest flag in Israel at 17 meters wide and 12 meters tall. It is visible from Gaza, as a symbol of defiance to the Hamas terrorists who tried to overrun the Moshav on Oct 7.  https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/hyuhfkwl0
 
CAM-supported volunteers honored.  Members of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) received Presidential Volunteer Medals in Jerusalem for helping those impacted by Oct 7. They included Yahaloma Zechut (Ofakim Resilience Center), Racheli Tadesa Malkai (Ethiopians), and Wahid Alhuzeil (Bedouins).
https://www.jns.org/herzog-honors-cam-supported-volunteers-for-post-oct-7-response/
 
Volunteers learn resilience. Some 100 US college students just completed the Jewish National Fund-USA’s “Alternative Break” week, supporting families in southern Israel impacted by the Oct 7 attacks. They repaired houses, worked on farms, and made food packages for IDF soldiers and admired the spirit of all the Israelis.
https://www.jns.org/wire/college-students-volunteer-in-israel-on-alternative-break/
 
Cooking for soldiers. (TY Yanky) Yehudit and a group of volunteers make Shabbat food for IDF soldiers. An online order mix-up resulted in a donation to pay for the food. She blogged the story and got more donations. Soldiers love it when she brings the food to the bases. They are hungry for home cooking.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-jewish-mothers-way-to-the-soldiers-stomachs/
 
How does a comedian deal with Oct 7? (TY UWI) Israeli standup comedian Modi was flying to Paris on Oct 7 to perform to European audiences. In this interview on Israeli Internet TV channel I24 he relates how Jewish humor can give respite in times of crisis.  (see also Seinfeld below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wMmT0yygo
 
IDF rescue tortured Gazan donkey. The IDF found a donkey in Gaza that had been tortured and tied up and released it. Earlier in the war, the IDF rescued dogs, cats and exotic birds (see here previously). They even took care of a neglected lion from a Gazan Zoo.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-idf-rescues-tortured-tied-up-donkey/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Taking research to heart. As cells age, they stop dividing. Our immune system removes them, but they build up as we age. Scientists say that all these “senescence cells” must be removed to prevent aging, but scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered that those formed after heart injury are needed, to protect the heart.
https://www.israel21c.org/cellular-aging-mechanism-may-actually-heal-hearts/  
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-024-00493-1
 
Candida gets the blue-light treatment. Israel’s Zero Candida has developed a device to treat candidiasis – an infection that affects hundreds of millions of women per year worldwide. It uses high-energy blue light to destroy the fungus quickly and without side effects. The device has been patented in South Africa!
https://nocamels.com/2024/06/israeli-femtech-startup-patents-candida-treatment-in-south-africa/
https://zero-candida.com/
 
Cancer immunotherapy clinical trials. Israel’s Biond Biologics (see here previously) has begun multi-center trials of BND-35. It is already trialing BND-22. Both are immunotherapy treatments for solid tumors.
 https://nocamels.com/2024/06/novel-cancer-immunotherapy-drug-given-to-first-patient-in-trial/
https://www.biondbio.com/clinical-trials/
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06274437?term=BND-35&rank=1
https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04717375?term=BND-22&rank=1
 
Shining light on pancreatic cancer. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to illuminate previously undetectable pancreatic tumors. They injected deuterium-enriched glucose into the bloodstream. The tumors eat the glucose and excrete lactate that MRIs can reveal.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/392102
 
Med-tech and fast response saves mother’s life. After giving birth to her second child in Israel, Nofer’s vital signs plummeted. Her midwife alerted emergency teams who found multiple blood clots and a heart defect. A cardiologist then used advanced ultrasound technology and minimally invasive surgery to save Nofer’s life.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-midwifes-quick-thinking-saves-mothers-life/
 
The youngest doctor? Doron (31) was only 25 years-old when he received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Technion in 2018. Today he is a fourth-year Technion medical student and intends to combine his expertise in mathematics with medicine to help people with mental illness. As a child, Doron “operated” on his toy animals.
https://ats.org/our-impact/doron-elad-the-young-technion-scholar-on-a-mission-for-answers/
 
Kidney exchanges save lives. (TY Nevet) Israeli Ronit and a kidney transplant recipient in Czechia (Czech Republic) underwent a kidney exchange thanks to Israel’s National Transplant Center. Ronit’s friend Yair donated his kidney to the Czech recipient, whose wife donated her kidney to Ronit. https://www.jpost.com/international/article-804396
https://www.gov.il/en/departments/units/transplant_center/govil-landing-page

Bates College Silent as Antisemitism Infects Campus By Roy Mathews

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bates-college-silent-as-antisemitism-infects-student-body/

For the crime of volunteering in Israel earlier this year, Bates College student Phoebe Stern has been subjected to vile antisemitic harassment.

Some students have expressed a wish that Stern, the co-president of Bates’s Jewish Student Union, and her classmates would have perished in the Holocaust. One student remarked on social media, “Big nose mafia going to cancel me but you know should’ve finished the job.” Another agreed, “Hitler should’ve finished the job.”

In addition to the hateful words, multiple swastikas have been drawn around campus over the last six months. The Bates administration has not released any findings as to who was responsible for the swastikas or commented on the harassment that Stern and others have endured, though Bates president Gary Jenkins did promise to install more cameras “across campus to identify vandals.” 

The Bates administration has found it necessary to issue public statements regarding George Floyd and multiple Supreme Court cases, but has not issued any statement condemning the rape and murder of Israeli citizens in the October 7 attacks or denouncing Bates students’ praising Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust.

One donor has spoken out. Alumnus Blair Frank (class of ‘89) outlined his concerns with Bates’s culture of illiberalism and antisemitism during an April meeting with President Jenkins but was “politely dismissed,” Frank told NR. Frank, who has endowed scholarships for international students and helped launch Bates’s Digital and Computational Studies department, pointed out that the very students he and fellow donors have supported are now harassing Jewish students on campus and praising the Holocaust, while also cowing professors and administrators for not embracing their beliefs wholesale.

In the Pacific, China Isn’t Just Threatening Taiwan By Mike Coté

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/in-the-pacific-china-isnt-just-threatening-taiwan/

Crisis in East Asia may hit the Philippines first. America must deter it.

Repeated hostile Chinese military incursions into another country’s sovereign territory. CCP claims over this same territory and attempts to exclude the rightful owner. Use of civilian cover to bolster Beijing’s military capacity. Deliberate pushing of international legal boundaries to the limit of outright conflict. Bogus narratives denying this truth and blaming the victim.

This malign cycle repeats over and over, always rising in intensity and slowly but surely bringing China’s favored policy outcomes closer to realization.

You would be forgiven if you think this story is about Taiwan, but it isn’t. It’s actually about another island archipelago just to its south: the Philippines. And the ever-increasing danger to this Asian nation from Beijing is perhaps even more concerning for the United States than the threats to Taiwan.

This trend menacingly accelerated just last week, when eight Chinese Coast Guard vessels attacked a two-boat Philippine naval-resupply mission to the Second Thomas Shoal, a disputed atoll firmly within Manila’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). In that brazen assault, Chinese military personnel were armed with various weapons, including axes and knives, while their counterparts were unarmed.

Biden’s Failing Brain Exposes Deep State Treachery By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/biden_s_failing_brain_exposes_deep_state_treachery.html

I know the country’s going to hell in a handbasket.  Inflation is killing working-class families.  Illegal immigrants are raping and murdering little girls.  “Woke” corporations are pushing “transgender” madness on young children.  Public schools are telling students that they will not survive the “climate apocalypse.”  Biden and the build back better buffoons in control of Western governments are doing everything they can to drag us into WWIII.  Still, if you are a Trump supporter who believes the status quo must go, Thursday’s presidential debate was awfully fun.

Perhaps you couldn’t bring yourself to watch the event “live” because you knew CNN was going to do everything it could to prop Biden up and tear Trump down.  If that is the case, then surely you were happy to awaken the next morning and find your usual newsfeed filled with two types of headlines: one recognizing Trump’s winning performance and the other recounting Biden’s total humiliation.  For all of you suffering daily out there, I hope the words provided momentary relief. 

You knew that Biden lost his marbles long ago, but the propaganda press has been telling the world that he’s just fine for years.  For those people who rely upon Deep State programmers to tell them what to believe, seeing Biden disintegrate on the debate stage must have been stunning.  Mainstream news corporations have been covering up Biden’s mental infirmities for so long that too many Americans watched Biden struggle to form sentences for the first time.  Just as reporters in the first half of the twentieth century lied to the American people about FDR’s reliance upon a wheelchair, reporters in the first quarter of the twenty-first century have lied to the American people about Biden’s debilitating dementia.  On June 27, the lid on journalists’ barrel of Biden-protecting lies shot right off.

Cultural Marxism: A Century Old and Thriving The Marxist view on the source of “oppression” is still very much with us. by Larry Sand

https://www.frontpagemag.com/cultural-marxism-a-century-old-and-thriving/

In 1923, a group of professors known as the Frankfurt School came to the fore. These German Marxists—notably Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse—harbored a deep disdain for capitalism and traditional morals. Unfortunately, the professors did not stay in their homeland long. Adolph Hitler’s rise to power forced them out of Germany, and they reemerged at Columbia University in New York City in 1935.

And a century later, the malign effects of their teachings are still with us.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Critical Race Theory (CRT), Black Lives Matter (BLM), gender indoctrination, wokeism, etc., fade in and out of the news cycle, but they have established a secure foothold in the nation’s culture, notably in our schools.

Cultural Marxism is still pervasive in a significant number of our colleges. In Illinois, legislators want to embed racial considerations into state appropriations for public universities. According to its website, Yale’s Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry faculty are told to place “DEI at the center of every decision” when making hires.

There are a few bright spots, however. Public universities in Texas, Florida, and Utah have banned DEI. However, those decisions came from state governments, not from the colleges themselves.

At MIT, a private university, President Sally Kornbluth confirmed in May that the school would “no longer require diversity statements in faculty hiring.”

CHAPTER 25: Philanthrocapitalism and Collectivism Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is (forthcoming release July 2024) by Linda Goudsmit

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/27868/chapter-25-philanthrocapitalism-and-collectivism
Pundicity page: goudsmit.pundicity.com and website: lindagoudsmit.com

In order to fully comprehend the scope of the planned globalist assault on your children’s minds, it is helpful to review Norman Dodd’s 1982 interview with G. Edward Griffin, and Dodd’s stunning 1954 Report (Chapter 9). You will recall that Norman Dodd was appointed Director of Research of the Reece Committee to investigate tax-exempt foundations and determine if their activities could justifiably be labeled un-American. Dodd examined the recorded minutes of the Carnegie Corporation’s board meetings and discovered how tax-exempt foundations in America, since at least 1945, had been operating to promote a hidden agenda. The foundations’ real objectives were to influence American educational institutions and control foreign policy agencies of the federal government in order to condition Americans to accept world government. The government was to be based on the principle of collectivism (socialism) and ruled by the same interests that control tax-exempt foundations.

Twenty years after the Dodd Report, in 1974, Congress passed and President Gerald Ford signed into law the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). Steve J. Sands explores its seismic societal consequences and reviews the history of third-party investment management in America in his previously referenced article, “Who Owns Corporate America?”[i] Prior to 1980, most investments were made directly by each corporation. Sands asks, “What changed around 1980 to make the market shift toward third-party investment management?” The answer is fascinating:

In 1974 The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was passed. One of the elements of ERISA was that it made it clear that companies could use third-party investment management. Hence the rise of third-party investment management by companies like BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard Group. BlackRock was founded in 1988. Vanguard was founded in 1975. While State Street was founded in 1792 [as Union Bank], it created the Standard & Poor’s Depositary Receipt (SPDR) in 1993. State Street’s SPDR 500 (SPY) Trust exchange-traded fund (ETF) was the first of its kind, and they are now one of the largest ETF providers worldwide. Trading on SPY began January 29, 1993. ETFs are widely used for mutual fund investments by third-party investment companies. The clear demarcation from direct to third-party investment management was the passage of ERISA.

It is interesting to note that while ERISA’s intent was to fix pension problems [crisis], one of the solutions was to introduce the allowance of third-party investment firms. The report from the WEF states:

With economic and demographic fundamentals promoting ever faster growth in institutional assets since around 1980, the stage was set for the emergence of the modern asset management industry.

Biden White House is ‘Proud to Have Tyler on the Team’ Distinguished by hatred of police and Israel. by Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-white-house-is-proud-to-have-tyler-on-the-team/

Tyler Cherry has been newly appointed as Associate Communications Director at the White House. He is distinguished by two things. First, there is his hatred of the police — any police, all the police, the very idea of the police. During the Baltimore riots in 2015, he tweeted that he was “Praying for #Baltimore but praying even harder for an end to a capitalistic police state motivated by explicit and implicit racial biases. In another tweet he wrote “Time to recall that the modern day police system is a direct evolution of slave patrols and lynch mobs.”

Second, there is his virulent hatred of Israel. He tweeted on July 25, 2014 that he’s been “Cheersing in bars to ending the occupation of Palestine – no shame and f– your glares #ISupportGaza #FreePalestine,” Cherry wrote on July 25, 2014. And there is much more in that vein, including his calling for an end to American support for Israel. He sees Israel not as a tiny, imperiled country surrounded by enemies but, rather, as a nasty little Sparta that deserves to disappear.

His hatred of the police, and of Israel, were expressed in 2500 tweets that he deleted between June 23 and June 24 — I can well imagine his panicky attempt to get rid of all that incriminating evidence of his hideous views — but alas for Tyler Cherry, if screen shots were taken of some of those tweets, they can be retrieved. And there are other ways as well to retrieve more than a handful. And I have no doubt they will be.

Here is Tyler Cherry’s description of Tyler Cherry, posted at LinkedIn. It is a perfect specimen of its type, where bland bureaucratese and shameless self-advertising blend seamlessly.

My experience in political and communications strategy helps me untangle the complexities of today’s hyperpartisan, fragmented, and fast-paced media ecosystem into effective, winning messages. Working at the intersection of politics, policy, and advocacy, I have crafted and executed strategic communications plans for dozens of governmental, political, non-profit, advocacy, corporate, and legal organizations, including earned, paid and digital media strategy, crisis communications, speechwriting, debate and hearing prep, litigation strategy, and thought leadership and brand-building.