Tag Archives: china

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Daily Broadside | If Your Kids Are Using TikTok They Are Probably Exposed to Chinese Influence Operations

So you know that I strongly oppose any more aid to Ukraine and am deeply unhappy with the $95 billion slush fund that was just passed by the U.S. House on Saturday. If I had to find a silver lining it would be this:

After weeks of being bogged down, legislation that could lead to a ban on TikTok is being fast-tracked by Congress.

The US House on Saturday approved a bill that would require the popular social media platform’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell TikTok to a buyer deemed fit by US officials. The measure, which was attached to an aid package for Ukraine and Israel, now moves to the Senate.

While some oppose forcing a sale or an outright ban, there seems to be some evidence that the Chinese are using it for psychological warfare against the U.S., and particularly teens and young adults.

The bill is aimed at forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok to a buyer that American officials are OK with, as well as guaranteeing that ByteDance no longer has access to US user data or control over the TikTok algorithm that decides what videos American users see. 

TikTok is the international version of Douyin, the short-form video platform introduced in 2016 and owned by Beijing-based ByteDance. More than 150 million Americans—almost half the U.S. population—use the app. But there’s evidence that TikTok (in particular, but part of the larger impact of social media) is having a corrosive effect on the mental state of younger generations.

Concerns about the hugely popular Chinese-owned video app have been bubbling for years. Besides its effects on young people’s mental health, lawmakers, security officials, and experts have sounded the alarm that the app’s data can be accessed by Beijing and that the communist regime could use the app to run influence campaigns and spread disinformation.

[…]

Geoffrey Cain, a journalist and technologist, said the mental health of Generation Z in the United States is suffering, and a great deal of that stems from an addiction to TikTok.

By comparing the content exposure of a fake 13-year-old with parental control settings across various social media platforms, his research discovered that such users had the easiest access to harmful content on TikTok.

However, his team’s tests showed that the same harmful content available to 13-year-old American TikTok users isn’t accessible by 13-year-olds who use Douyin, China’s version. Instead, Chinese users see a Ministry of Public Security warning of inappropriateness when they try to view the same videos.

“So, clearly, the Chinese government knows that this is extremely harmful content,” Mr. Cain told The Epoch Times. “Considering that they essentially control ByteDance, why do they allow TikTok to show this in America, whereas, in China, this same material is all banned?

“They know that it has a horrible effect on kids, yet they’re okay with it being shown here.”

No. I refuse to believe it! I shan’t! The same country that’s facilitating the U.S. fentanyl crisis is intentionally dumping psychologically damaging video content on Americans, too? Tell me it ain’t so!

At a Senate hearing earlier this year, FBI Director Christopher Wray affirmed that ByteDance owns TikTok’s algorithm and that the only way the algorithm could work is if ByteDance also has access to the data collected by TikTok.

TikTok has repeatedly maintained that it is independent from its Chinese parent company. According to TikTok, its U.S. customer data are stored in Virginia and backed up in Singapore, and it has never, and will never, share its U.S. data with the Chinese regime.

However, leaked audio of internal TikTok meetings held in September 2021 mentioned a Beijing-based engineer as a “Master Admin” with access to all data, according to a BuzzFeed report. A recent article in Fortune said that a senior data scientist at TikTok reported to a ByteDance executive in Beijing in 2022.

Oh. Never mind.

It seems that TikTok could actually be a nefarious influnce operation aimed at undermining our society.

In March 2023, the Chinese regime’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson strongly objected to any sale, citing a technology export issue. Recently, Chinese authorities also signaled to ByteDance that Beijing would choose a ban in the United States over a forced sale, according to The Wall Street Journal. Reuters reported that the CCP took a similar stance in 2020.

All this suggests that the CCP treats the algorithm like a “state secret,” according to Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, a think tank.

“To me, that’s indicative of what their true interests are here. It’s not to provide a platform for commercial activity; it is to create a platform as an influence operation,” he recently told The Epoch Times.

Lots more at the link including a section on “Cognitive Warfare.”

Know what your kids are absorbing on social media because it’s possible it’s wrecking their minds.

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Daily Broadside | It’s Difficult Not To Believe Our Rulers Are Intentionally Sabotaging Our Nation

In the wake of the censorship and “cancelling” that took place on social media platforms during the Trump presidency, one of the platforms that rose as a sanctuary for political writers and others was Substack.com. I haven’t (yet) decided to move Daily Broadside over to that space, but I do subscribe to a number of independent writers and podcasters. Many of them are able to survive in a hostile environment because they aren’t dependent on the biased whims of monopolies like Google or Twitter or Amazon, instead being financially supported by readers.

Today I want to simply offer related content from two Substacks to which I subscribe. The first is Don Surber, who offers his content for free, and to whom I strongly recommend you subscribe. In his latest essay, he writes,

Meanwhile, Biden went to India and made an ass of himself. First, he messed up the name of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, then he went to Vietnam and messed up an international press conference.

Earlier, he accused the crown prince of murder — and then asked for him to cut the price of oil. The prince almost laughed in his face. After 80-plus years of being a trusted ally, the House of Saud is aligning with Russia and Red China.

These mistakes are deliberate. Biden is weakening America and ending its post-USSR status as the world’s only superpower. The world tires of dealing with a bipolar America that one year is the leader of the free world and the next year a doddering old fool.

Trump held NATO accountable and forced our allies to live up to their commitments to spend money on their militaries. Biden made an Irish exit from Afghanistan without telling our allies. The Council on Foreign Relations cheered.

There’s no doubt that in my mind that undermining American strength is exactly what is intended. It started with Obama’s replacing hundreds of officers in the armed forces with handpicked replacements who have turned our military into a laughing stock. It continues with a lack of urgency for our Navy, whose number of ships are well behind China’s navy, the world’s largest. Add to that a cratering of recruitment numbers and the depletion of our strategic oil reserves by Brandon, and you have a serious problem of battle readiness on your hands.

You see, friends, Washington not only does not want to make America great again but DC denizens do not want the USA to be a superpower. They want Red China to be No. 1.

Consider Congress. Eric Swalwell had an affair with a Chinese spy. He did not lose his seat on the Committee on Homeland Security. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s chauffeur for two decades turned out to be a Chinese spy. She did not lose her seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

When Obama told token Russian president Medvedev he would be more flexible in his second term, Republicans did nothing because they agreed. How ironic that in a debate, he mocked Romney’s anti-Russian rhetoric by saying, “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Now all of Washington is anti-Russian as they shovel billions in unmarked bills to the Money Laundering Republic of Ukraine, where prosecutors who ask too many questions lose their job. Putin fires his prosecutors — with a cannon.

It’s almost impossible to believe that’s true, but consider the evidence. Now add what CDR Salamander says in the second Substack account I want to quote.

The Pacific is dominated by the tyranny of distance. Logistics, and specifically the ability to get fuel to forward deployed forces and keeping them in the fight, it one of the most critical parts of being able to reach across that vast water to project power. [The Navy’s underground Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility at Pearl Harbor] exists as a result of the hard lessons of the previous large war in the Pacific. Without its capacity – there is no substitution.

People forget that for much of the opening year+ of WWII, many of our battleships were not sent to the Southwest Pacific because we had yet to generate the capacity to transport the fuel to support them.

CDR Salamander is writing about a plan to close the Red Hill fuel depot while maintaining battle readiness. He calls this reassurance a lie and goes on to write,

At the opening of WW2, Hawaii held 4.5 million barrels. That is 189 million gallons.

Red Hills’ capacity was 250 million gallons.

Spin is one thing. Deflection is another thing. This is something altogether different.

I will remind everyone that the disaster at Red Hills derives from the same problem that begat the fires in Lahaina this summer. Anyone who has lived in Hawaii knows what it is and that this to true. The strategic stability of the entire nation in the Pacific is being sacrificed to avoid upsetting the system of political and union corruption, patronage, cronyism, and incompetence that characterizes the state, local, and federal civilian controlled projects in that one-party state.

We are tempting defeat in any war west of the International Date Line because we refuse to hold people accountable and speak truth to long standing problems that are, in the end, people based and politically centered.

Hawaii’s problem is now our military’s problem … but in some ways, it is the same problem.

A culture of petty lies with big consequences.

It’s almost impossible to imagine that anyone wants to degrade our ability to compete economically or militarily with China or any other large nation, but if you pay attention to what’s happening, it’s equally as difficult to imagine THAT’S NOT what is happening.

Hold onto your hats. It’s going to get worse — much worse — before it gets better.

If it ever gets better.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | All the Single (Chinese) Men Put Your Hands Up

There’s never a shortage of outrageous topics to choose from to write about when I review the news every day. Everything from the latest prosecution persecution of Donald J. Trump to the latest tale of corruption and scandal of Resident Brandon and his corrupt progeny to the latest attempts of the far-leftists to mis-educate our children to the administration selling off unused parts of the border wall to the woke nonsense that likely led to the Maui wildfires that killed dozens and destroyed an entire town.

But the one that deserves your attention today happens out of sight, is under-reported, and could be a serious national security threat to the United States.

Border Patrol agents recorded a roughly 800% increase in Chinese migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, according to federal data updated Friday.

There were roughly 17,678 illegal migrant encounters of Chinese nationals between October 2022 and July, compared to 1,970 in all of fiscal year 2022, according to the data. In March, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sent a memo exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation to agency officials warning of a surge in Chinese migrants.

Chinese immigrants? Coming over the southern border? That seems rather indirect.

Apparently, some of them claim to be escaping religious persecution, specifically those who are Chinese Christians.

“According to CBP, custodial interviews indicate that Chinese citizens are requesting asylum claiming religious persecution by the Chinese Government due to their Christian faith. Additionally, Chinese nationals reportedly make their own smuggling arrangements for most of their journey, only utilizing elements of smuggling networks to cross the border,” the memo stated.

I’d be one of the first to welcome Chinese Christians to the U.S., but I still think they should be crossing the border legally, at formal checkpoints. In fact, this claim makes me scratch my head a little bit, because Chinese Christians are known for faithfully meeting in secret house churches in spite of the persecution they experience. I’m not saying there aren’t any that try to escape to the U.S., but a “surge” doesn’t seem to be in keeping with what is known about the underground church in China.

Another report quoted Dr. Kenneth Allard, a retired Army Colonel and former Dean of Students at the National War College.

“Totalitarian governments like China are great exploiters of opportunity,” Dr. Allard told Breitbart. “They recognize weakness and capitalize on it immediately. What we are seeing reflects a deliberate policy choice by the regime.”

When asked about the potential for China to take advantage of the current crisis along the southern border, Allard says the regime most certainly recognizes the weakness President Biden has exhibited on the international stage, adding “its obvious he is not entirely in control at present, China realizes that as well.”

What little information that is retrieved from the migrants would indicate most are fleeing the repressive regime due to the aftereffects of the extreme COVID-19 lockdowns imposed by Xi Jinping’s government. Another reason cited by the migrants is the negative economic effects of China’s strict COVID-19 policies regarding the exportation and importation of goods.

One of the most worrisome aspects of the surge in Chinese immigrants is that the majority of them seem to be single adult men. It is the same concern that we observed early on in the migrant caravan crisis, that so many of the migrants were single young men.

Nearly three-quarters of those in the caravan of Central American migrants traveling through Mexico to the United States are adult men, a senior Border Patrol official told the Washington Examiner.

Families and unaccompanied children make up “about 20 to 30 percent” of the caravan, according to Roy Villareal, deputy chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector.

“The rest of that is single, adult males,” Villareal said during a recent tour of the region.

I don’t have any evidence that any of the young adult Chinese males are here on a nefarious mission, but why aren’t we being more cautious? Why do we put up with the erasure of our southern border? Why do we open ourselves up to the possible threat of sabotage from one of our greatest enemies militarily and economically?

For all we know they’re sending carriers of some new disease cooked up in a Chinese lab.

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Daily Broadside | The US Ship of State is Swamped and in Danger of Sinking

I hate to miss posting, but this past week was absolutely packed with activity. One of the little’s is getting married this fall, and there were all kinds of tasks associated with hosting guests and putting on a bridal shower that was a beautiful event for all involved. We’re getting to know the future in-laws and some of their extended family, too. I’m slightly more of an introvert than extrovert so expending that much energy with so many people tends to deplete my reserves and will take some time for me to rebound.

But I couldn’t not post with all that’s going on in this bizarre country called the United States of America. At one time the envy of the world, it has been twisted into a grotesque, unrecognizable parody of itself, claiming all the virtues of a free society but acting like a third-world banana republic.

We’re being led by a doddering, angry, dementia-riddled, imbecilic fabulist whose natural language is lying. He’s bought and owned by the Chinese, the Russians and the Ukranians. He’s done nothing worth remembering in his fifty years in government, but we will remember him because of the immense damage he’s inflicted on the economy, politics and the culture in the two-plus years he’s been in office.

Our political elites have weaponized the Constitution and are conducting open lawfare on the previous president while ignoring the crimes of the current one and his family. Lawfare is even being conducted at the state level against conservative politicians, like Texas AG Ken Paxton.

We’re being swarmed with some 7 million foreigners who have crossed our non-existant border illegally without vetting and are actually shlepped around the country to large “santuary” cities, so much so that even hard-left mayors are complaining that they can’t handle the influx and are now asking citizens to open their homes to the invaders.

The Chinese float spy balloons over mainland US with impunity and are apparently behind an illegal biolab full of diseased mice, pathogens, blood, coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes and other infectious agents that was operating in secret without a permit in California, and an illegal police station in New York City to hunt down Chinese dissidents. We’re dependent on China for our pharmaceuticals. It’s shameful embarrassment to our sovereignty and safety.

The chucklehead in the White House printed $4 trillion and set off the worst inflation in 40 years. Interest rates have tripled and gas prices are doubled.

Our cities, once the envy and destination of the world, are turning into third-world $#!+holes full of crime and drugs, homelessness and death. Stores and businesses are closing because it’s unsafe to operate in those fetid markets.

Americans are fleeing “blue” states to “red” states in an effort to escape the insanity that progressives have unleashed in their states. We’re segregating ourselves into “rational” and “irrational” populations — and it depends on which one you identify with that shapes your definition of “rational.”

Our military is more interested in being woke than in being prepared as evidenced by dismal recruiting that has left us thousands of soldiers short. In addition, we are short on munitions and are far behind China in naval readiness.

As Victor Davis Hanson writes,

We are in the midst of one of the most radical revolutions in American history. It is as far-reaching and dangerous as the turbulent years of the 1850s and 1860s or the 1930s. Every aspect of American life and culture is under assault, including the very processes by which we govern ourselves, and the manner in which we live.

The Revolution began under the Obama administration that sought to divide Americans into oppressed and oppressors, and then substitute race for class victimization. It was empowered by the bicoastal wealth accrued from globalization, and honed during the COVID lockdown, quarantine-fed economic downturn, and the George Floyd riots and their aftermath. The Revolution was boosted by fanatic opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump. And the result is an America that is unrecognizable from what it was a mere decade ago.

There’s little that one person can do to fight the assault on our way of life. It will take a critical mass of citizens who have decided they’ve had enough and are ready to fight — and sacrifice for — the survival of America.

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Daily Broadside | China Floats a Trial (Spy) Balloon Over the Continental U.S.

If Trump was in the White House, as he should be, this wouldn’t have happened.

Pentagon Tracking Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon Over Northern US

The U.S. military is currently tracking a suspected Chinese spy balloon over Montana, according to a senior Pentagon official.

“The United States Government has detected and is tracking a high altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder in a Feb. 2 statement.

A senior defense official told reporters the Pentagon has a “very high confidence” that the balloon comes from China.

The high-altitude surveillance balloon allegedly floated over the Aleutian islands and Canada before crossing over the airspace of Montana, according to an NBC report that cited three unnamed government officials.

That the Chinese feel free to violate our airspace with impunity is very telling. They aren’t being very stealthy and don’t expect that a large balloon would escape our notice with all of our surveillance capabilities.

This is a deliberate provocation to test our response.

Of course, it also raises the question of whether they feel free to be so bold because they’ve got Brandon by the shorthairs, so if he retaliated, they’d release damning information about his grift with them? Not that we need any more evidence of his corruption involving the Chinese. Just how deep it runs is the real question.

Kevin McCarthy brings the pressure. “China’s brazen disregard for U.S. sovereignty is a destabilizing action that must be addressed, and President Biden cannot be silent. I am requesting a Gang of Eight briefing.”

I suppose a briefing is appropriate, but why would we even hesitate to bring that sucker down? Bring it down, confirm whose it is, then call their ambassador in and read them the riot act. We are a sovereign nation and the incursion is a violation of that sovereignty.

Who are we afraid of offending? It’s the government’s job to protect its citizens from foreign threats. But they’d rather chase paper tigers like all the white supremacists who are the greatest terror threat we face.

We’ve often had to intercept Russian aircraft off the coast of Alaska and few times off the coast of California. Here’s one from 2006, one from 2014, one from 2015, one from 2019, one from 2020, the 14th time from 2020, and one from 2022.

But none of them were over the continental United States. The only time that happens is when it’s a part of “the Open Skies Treaty––a 17-year-old program that permits many countries, including Russia and the U.S., to send surveillance flights over each other’s territories each year.“

So far, all we know is that the Pentagon has engaged the PRC through several channels, including the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. and the U.S. Embassy in China.

As The Epoch Times also reports,

Experts have warned with increasing frequency that the CCP is preparing its military for a war to seize Taiwan that would likely draw it into conflict with the United States. As such U.S. officials have said that the regime is studying the United States’ military capabilities and building technologies with the explicit purpose of overcoming them.

I suppose we could take it down with ground-to-air missiles, but maybe that would give the Chinese government what they want. Probably dangerous for civilians along the balloon’s path, too.

Whatever the reason it’s there and we’re not taking it out, the incursion is unsettling to me and I’m not happy with our government’s response.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | Bombshell Email Reveals Who the “Big Guy” Really Is

Daily Verse | Isaiah 22:16
What are you doing here and who gave you permission to cut out a grave for yourself here, hewing your grave on the height and chiseling your resting place in the rock?

Friday’s Reading: Isaiah 24-27
Saturday’s Reading: Isaiah 28-30

Happy Friday and welcome to my last post for July 2022.

As I’ve written before, one of the biggest challenges writing this blog is that I run into limitations on my time when I’m required to be away and that’s happening again. I will be without access to the Internet next week, so the Daily Broadside will be on hiatus until August 8. I’m working on a solution to that dilemma, but not sure how it will eventually work out.

Before I sign off for the next week, I need to point out that we no longer have a fair and impartial system of justice but have rather a two-tiered system; one for the ruling elites and their people, and another for the peasants.

It’s not hard to find examples: how about Hillary Clinton’s home-brew server that she used to illegally bypass our governmental system, potentially exposing classified information or top-secret documents to our enemies, especially China? Instead of being punished, James Comey let her skate with nothing more than a harsh rebuke. Anyone lesser—a Republican, maybe—who had done something like that would have faced criminal charges and been fined or imprisoned, or both.

How about Adam Schiff-for-Brains and his outright lies about the “evidence” he claimed to have that proved Trump colluded with Russia? Or Anthony Fauci’s claims that NIH never funded gain-of-function research?

If you or I lied to Congress we’d face the consequences, including jail time. Our dear leaders, however, continue to draw paychecks and lead institutions that investigate fake insurrections or demand universal compliance with virus protocols that destroy people’s lives.

Enter Hunter Biden.

On Thursday, Miranda Devine reported that the same day the New York Post broke the story about Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop (in 2020), including an email “from an executive at the corrupt Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, thanking Hunter for introducing him to Hunter’s then-VP ­father in Washington” …

… panicked phone calls and messages started flying between Hunter’s business partners and their advisers, even as social media giants Facebook and Twitter moved to censor the story and lock The Post’s account, while candidate Biden went into hiding.

That was because the email undermined Brandon’s claim that he didn’t know anything about Hunter’s overseas business dealings, which put his presidential campaign in jeopardy.

But whistleblowers have now shared emails with congressional investigators in which one of Hunter’s business associates, James Gilliar, unambiguously calls Joe Biden “the Big Guy.”

“It would be crazy to do that with all the information and all the facts we have [but what happens if] they try to make it ‘Oh, we were never involved. That was [Joe Biden’s brother] James’ idea . . . and try to basically make us collateral damage?” the person asks Gilliar in a message provided by a whistleblower to Republican congressional investigators and obtained by The Post.

Gilliar is unconcerned about potential backlash from the Biden family and Joe’s campaign: “I don’t see how that would work for them,” he replies.

“I think in the scenario that he wins they would just leave sleeping dogs lie.

“If they lose, honestly, I don’t think that the Big Guy really cares about that because he’ll be too busy focusing on all the other s–t he is doing.”

The communication, obtained by The Post Wednesday, is significant because it bolsters the claim by ex-Hunter business partner Tony Bobulinski that the Big Guy was a code name for Joe Biden.

The only person positioned to “win” or “lose” a campaign at that moment was Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.

The reason the identity of the “Big Guy” is important is because it adds to the weight of evidence suggesting that Joe Biden not only knew about Hunter’s international influence-peddling scheme, but allegedly was cut in for a slice of the profits.

In an email written by Gilliar to Hunter on May 13, 2017, the “Big Guy” was allocated a 10% stake in a lucrative joint venture with Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC.

“10 [percent] held by H[unter] for the Big Guy,” Gilliar wrote.

The evidence that Hunter Biden and his father are corrupt, grifting leaches on the body politic has been building for years. Now we’ve got strong evidence that the “Big Guy” is, in fact, Joe Brandon.

Hello?

Where is the DOJ? The FBI?

Why hasn’t Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate the overwhelming evidence we now have?

Didn’t “whistleblowers” cause the whole of Washington, D.C. to jump all over President Donald J. Trump on the thinnest of pretexts? Didn’t a whistleblower lead to his impeachment?

Where is the urgency to root out the corruption and self-dealing of U.S. presidents that Congress and the DOJ showed during the last administration? Aren’t they still concerned about our precious (*spit*) democracy?

No, they’re not concerned about any of that because Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are the right people. Donald J. Trump is the wrong people.

Imagine if the situation was reversed: Donald J. Trump is still in the White House but the evidence the Post has concerns Donald J. Trump, Jr. Do you have any doubt that Congress, the FBI, the DOJ and every other alphabet agency would be all over it like white on rice?

I don’t.

If any of what we now know about the Biden’s is true (and there’s very little reason to doubt it is) then it raises all kinds of questions about just how beholden Biden and his son are to the Chinese or to the Ukrainians. Is Biden making policy decisions based on the money he got or is still getting? How much money did Biden make off Hunter’s deals with the Ukrainians or the Chinese while Vice President of the United States? What do the Chinese or the Ukrainians hold over him or Hunter?

The answers to these questions potentially rise to the level of treason and betrayal—certainly to an abuse of office—and there’s a lot more evidence that Biden personally profited from the corruption than what was cited as an excuse to impeach Trump.

No, the system of justice has been weaponized by the progressive elites—especially the Democrats—to punish their political enemies, while they themselves get away with crimes that under a fair and impartial system would remove them from power.

It’s part of the corruption that has moved our country away from a government of the people, by the people and for the people. And that has a lot of normal Americans wondering what it’s going to take to restore our rightful form of government.

Have a good week. I’ll see you August 8.

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Daily Broadside | So Glad We’re Back to a Stable World

Daily Verse | Exodus 12:40-41
Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt.

Monday’s Reading: Exodus 15-18

Monday and we’re now into the first full week of Brandon’s second year as Resident as Russia! Russia! Russia! threatens to invade Ukraine at the invitation delivered last week by the dunce in the White House; “minor incursion” and all that. Do you know that Trump was the only president in the last 30 years to not start or escalate existing foreign conflicts or war? Barring some kind of intervention, that’s all about to change as our military service members in their high-heels, pregnancy flight suits and vaccines prepare to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression and mockery of our woke civilian military.

The US and its allies will deliver a “swift, severe and united response” if Russia invades Ukraine, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, warned on Sunday amid rising tensions.

Maybe. I don’t trust anything that Blinken says nor the administration’s competence to deliver or sustain a smack-down on the Russians. Perhaps their attitude is the same as Megamind’s:

The only reason Russia is even making the move on Ukraine is that Brandon is an empty suit who reads whatever is put on his teleprompter. He’s certainly not a geopolitical genius, as his catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan showed us. Effects of the invasion could be harsh for the U.S.

Treasurys are a traditional haven during periods of geopolitical and economic stress. A rally in Treasurys would pull down yields, which move in the opposite direction of prices. A Treasury selloff has pushed up yields, with the 10-year Treasury rate TMUBMUSD10Y, 1.778% finishing near 1.77% Friday after hitting a nearly two-year high earlier in the week.

The Swiss franc, another popular haven, could also rally, with the euro/Swiss franc EURCHF, 0.12% currency pair likely to fall to CHF1.03 “on a frozen rope if Russia moves,” Donnelly said. The euro bought 1.043 francs Friday.

Also:

If Russia invades Ukraine, inflation-weary Americans will likely pay even higher prices at the pump.Oil prices have already shot up to seven-year highs in recent days. A conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which the White House has warned could be imminent, would have the potential to drive them much higher.That’s because Russia is the No. 2 oil producer on the planet, behind only the United States. And Ukraine is a key energy transit hub, where a large amount of Russian natural gas exports to Europe flow through.

An invasion of Ukraine would trigger immediate fears of sanctions from Washington on Russia’s vast energy resources, damage to the region’s energy infrastructure and raise the specter of Vladimir Putin weaponizing exports of natural gas and crude oil.

Investors would buy first and ask questions later.

What does Russia want?

The Kremlin wants what it says: an end to NATO expansion, a rollback of previous expansion, a removal of American nuclear weapons from Europe, and a Russian sphere of influence. However, Putin may accept less. The Kremlin’s primary goal is a guarantee that Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia will never belong to a military or economic bloc other than the ones Moscow controls and that Russia will be the ultimate arbitrator of the foreign and security policy of all three states. In essence, this conflict is about whether 30 years after the demise of the Soviet Union, its former ethnic republics can live as independent, sovereign states or if they still must acknowledge Moscow as their de facto sovereign.

The G7 is threatening harsh economic sanctions that would severely hurt Russia, so it’s possible that an invasion can be avoided. But maybe not:

The United States has ordered the families of all American staff at the US Embassy in Ukraine to leave the country amid heightened concern that Russia, which has massed troops on the border, is about to invade.

In a statement on Sunday, the State Department also said that non-essential embassy staff could leave Ukraine at government expense and that all Americans should consider departing immediately.

[…]

The US Embassy in Kyiv warned that “military action by Russia could come at any time and the United States government will not be in a position to evacuate American citizens in such a contingency, so US citizens currently present in Ukraine should plan accordingly.”

Take them at their word, embassy staff.

A Russian invasion could lead to a much bigger conflict and pull focus away from Brandon’s problems at home and perhaps trigger aggression by China and Iran, two other foes who have, respectively, designs on Taiwan and avenging the loss of top commander Qasem Soleimani who died by a US drone strike two years ago. If either of them act while we’re dealing with Russia, all bets are off.

But at least the tweets are nice, right NeverTrump?

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Daily Broadside | New Book Says Milley Usurped Trump’s Authority

Daily Verse | Daniel 12:3
“Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.”

Happy mid-week my friends. The gnome in my garden won’t give me back my copy of The Hobbit.

We live in an increasingly lawless land, led by men and women who not only overstep the boundaries of their constitutional roles, but actively undermine duly elected leaders. It is not too much to say that the United States cannot function as designed if some “leaders” disregard the rule of law and other “leaders” let them get away with doing so. Not only can our nation not function, it will fall apart and land most heavily on innocent civilians who are considered the “out group” — namely, anyone who questions or resists what the party in power is doing.

The latest troubling example of this lawlessness is a claim in a new book that US Army General Mark Milley-Vanillie, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, secretly reassured the Chinese that he would warn them if President Donald J. Trump planned to attack them.

Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “was certain that Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election,” authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post write in their forthcoming book, “Peril,” set for release on September 21.

For the record, I think Woodward is a hack. But if this is true, it’s big. Milley, an Army general, plays psychologist and takes matters into his own hands.

These reports suggest that Milley may have over-stepped his role as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a role that advises the president and defense secretary but is not part of the chain of command for operational decisions like the launching of nuclear weapons.

He “may have” overstepped his role? Ya think? A role that “advises” the Commander in Chief and his defense secretary, but isn’t “part of the chain of command” goes behind his Commander’s back and conducts diplomacy without anyone’s knowledge based on his lone psychological assessment of a sitting president?

Milley was so concerned that Trump might start a war with China, he privately called his Chinese counterpart twice to assure him that the US would not strike, per the book.

Who’s running the country? Not Milley — he wasn’t elected. He went rogue. He doesn’t have the authority to be making policy. This is treasonous behavior. He actually interfered with the military action Trump could take as president.

But hey, why not? The Deep State had wrapped itself around Trump’s ankles for five years.

This is the same guy who “advised” the dementia patient currently in the White House about Afghanistan and I don’t hear him fretting by saying he is certain that Biden has “gone into a serious mental decline,” even though everyone else and the family dog can see it.

And get a load of this further reporting by CNN (with my emphasis):

Milley’s fear that Trump could do something unpredictable came from experience. Right after Trump lost the election, Milley discovered the President had signed a military order to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by January 15, 2021, before he left the White House.

The memo had been secretly drafted by two Trump loyalists. No one on the national security team knew about it, according to the book. The memo was eventually nullified, but Milley could not forget that Trump had done an end run around his top military advisers.

“Trump had done an end run around his top military advisers.” Can’t have the duly elected president and COMMANDER IN CHIEF making decisions about troop movements!

Pulling the troops out between November and January 15 may not have been smart military strategy, but that’s not for an “adviser” to decide! It’s certainly not an “end run,” as though the president needed their approval to proceed — it’s the president’s authority and responsibility as the military commander!

Here is the key graph: “The authors write, ‘Milley was overseeing the mobilization of America’s national security state without the knowledge of the American people or the rest of the world.'” And, I might add, the President!

This is frightening. Who, exactly, is in charge? How do we know? If we have military brass operating on their own, outside the chain of command (and definitely outside the scope of the U.S. Constitution), then we can’t ever be sure that there won’t be a coup next time a Republican is in office because some general decides that the president is in “mental decline” according to his own personal observations.

We are heading pell mell into a world of hurt right now.

Brace yourselves for impact.

by

Daily Broadside | It Takes a Village Idiot

Daily Verse | Jeremiah 17:9-10
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind,
to reward a man according to his conduct,
according to what his deeds deserve.”

Friday and the end of another week — and what a week it has been.

When the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium building collapsed in Florida back in June, initial reports found that, while the cause of the collapse isn’t known, “the structural slab was deteriorating because it was flat instead of sloped. That meant the water didn’t drain off the concrete’s waterproofing quickly” and that “failure to complete the ‘extremely expensive’ repairs … would ’cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.'”

It feels like the United States has finally slid off its “structural slab” after decades of neglect and abuse, and is collapsing in a heap on the world stage. Perhaps the anti-American wokesters and progressive Marxists who pollute our country are learning that facts don’t care about your feelings.

But probably not.

It’s a pleasant LARP, with self-reinforcing loops of hashtags, New York Times puff pieces and Psaki ‘circling back’, until one day the Taliban roll in and everyone is running for the helicopters. It’s like US elites finally had the VR headset knocked from their faces and actually had a look around. And what they saw was a roomful of men with faces out of an illustrated bible looking like they’d just pillaged a Cabela’s—that’s how much top-shelf, modded-out AR hardware they captured—sitting down for a super-awkward Zoom meeting announcing a sudden change of plans for American foreign policy.

While there is plenty of blame to lay at the feet of George W. Bush, Barack Hussein Obama, and Donald J. Trump for the situation in Afghanistan, the one who matters is Joseph Robinette Biden. The most far-left executive ever to hold office (and that includes Obama), Biden has proven to be a one-man wrecking crew. It’s not that he’s doing it all himself; he has plenty of help from the junta installed after the hijinked election in 2020.

But he’s the acting head of our government.

More like acting the village idiot:

10,000-15,000 (!) American citizens are trapped in Taliban-held Afghanistan.

The U.S. government cannot go out and give them safe passage to the airport.

The U.S. government cannot guarantee the safety of American citizens in Afghanistan.

The Biden administration is making Americans pay $2,000 for a flight out of Afghanistan. (Hunter needs new shoes, baby!)

Afghan parents so desperate they’re passing their babies and kids over the crowd at the airport!

US soldiers stuck at Kabul airport while UK and French soldiers are getting their citizens out.

The Taliban are using our abandoned equipment. Say, where do you suppose the surplus will end up?

State Department won’t say why it killed Pompeo’s crisis evacuation unit. (One hint: #OrangeManBad!)

Joe Biden reacts to George Stephanopolous bringing up Afghans falling off our planes as if he’d “brought up irrelevant ancient history.” (Listen, fat.)

Joe Biden calls it a day for the weekend while Afghanistan burns. (He’s tired, doncha’ know.)

Our closest allies for more than a century, the UK, just held Biden in contempt for the disaster in Afghanistan.

Can one man literally be this incompetent? Or is there something more sinister at work here? I mentioned in yesterday’s post that Biden has been compromised by China, so one can legitimately wonder if there’s more than just poor management at work here.

Lara Logan thinks that the United States “chose this outcome” and it’s tough to deny her logic.

“Whoever is in power right now, whoever is really pulling the strings — and I don’t know [who is pulling the strings] — they could do anything they want to change this. And they’re not.” — Lara Logan

Are Biden and his cabal so utterly ruthless that they would proactively destroy all the work we did in Afghanistan just so that the U.S. would be humiliated before a watching world? So that our reputation as a so-called superpower would take such a massive hit as to be mocked by China and censured by the UK? To degrade the intimidation factor that Trump had recently brought back? To wreck a country with no regard for how many people die?

Honest answer? Yes, I believe they would. They are in a “no holds barred” situation because 2022 is coming and they know they have the potential to be slaughtered (figuratively speaking!) in that election. That is, unless they depend on late-arriving ballots to swing the elections to themselves.

It’s no secret that the far-left has taken over the Democrat party, and they HATE America. They hate our founding, they hate our constitution, they hate our rights, they hate whites’ skin color, they hate men, they hate normal marriage, they hate normal sex, they hate normal gender, they hate God, they hate Christianity, they hate Christians, they hate churches, they hate law and order, they hate our traditions, they hate our history and they hate our norms. These people are filled with a seething rage and indignation over the Western tradition and wisdom that gave us the most powerful and wealthy nation in all of human history.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see a logical connection between the unmitigated disaster that is Afghanistan, the Left’s control of our government, and the beating that our country’s standing in the world is taking right now. What other country in its right mind would trust the United States to be a strong and stable partner with financial and military might when they need it?

More to the point, what confidence do regular Americans have in our government and the vast military that it wields? I speak for myself when I say that when I see the fustercluck in Afghanistan and contrast that with “pregnancy flight suits” and pride flags and transgenders in the armed forces, I no longer feel confident in my country’s ability to protect me from our enemies or, for that matter, to protect me from my own government’s overreach.

Maybe they should start focusing on winning wars instead of helping men walk in stilettoes.

In fact, I’m starting to suspect that the military is being prepared to lock down and harass and possibly arrest all those “potential terrorists” who oppose Covid lockdowns, question the 2020 election or support Trump.

I’ve never felt so unsettled about our country as I have this week.

Have a good weekend.

by

Daily Broadside | Planning to Fail: No Good Way to Get All U.S. Citizens Out of Afghanistan

Daily Verse | Jeremiah 15:1
Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people.”

It’s Thursday, my friends. Styrofoam cups do not a good flotation device make.

I wish there were other things to write about this week, but the catastrophe in Afghanistan remains the top story as even more bad news continues to surface in the wake of our incompetent Washington fool’s monumental failure in that stone age disaster of a country.

When Joe Biden was running for president, he hid in his basement for the majority of his campaign. We all knew that if he couldn’t handle the rigors of the campaign trail, he couldn’t handle the rigors of the office. Now that he’s been installed as Resident, he’s proved the assumption. After being summoned from his vacation to address the American people, he fled back to Camp David after making a threadbare speech that blamed everyone but himself for the disaster in Kabul.

Now we’re told that he cut his vacation short, returning Tuesday rather than on Wednesday as originally planned. Gosh, that had to be tough! All those pesky politicians disturbing his rest over a little intelligence failure and some lost armaments.

*shrugs* Big F***ing Deal, amirite?

But the lie that anybody but Joe Biden is responsible for the calamity in Kabul ain’t gonna hold. The National Pulse dropped a rather interesting story yesterday claiming that the Biden administration killed funding for a Trump-era “critical State Department program aimed at providing swift and safe evacuations of Americans out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul.”

It wasn’t about Afghanistan per se, but it was about situations just like the one we’re facing in Afghanistan. A couple of key graphs:

In a lengthy article in Vanity Fair from May 2021, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR) – also referred to in overlap with a predecessor/partner bureau called “OpMed” is described as a “little-known team of medics and miracle workers—hidden deep within the U.S. Department of State.”

“Even before COVID reared its head, OpMed was finding ways to do all sorts of things, serving as the hidden hand behind daring and often dangerous operations to rescue Americans from peril abroad,” the article states, before going on to quote Secretary of State Tony Blinken on the importance of the program’s goals.

“The Bureau of Medical Services’ Directorate of Operation—or ‘OpMed,’ as we call it—is a lifeline for the Department of State and the American people… Though perhaps lesser known outside of the Department, it’s vital to our operations. That’s because OpMed provides the platform and personnel to save American lives around the world, especially in times of crisis. During the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, OpMed was integral to our evacuation and repatriation of 100,000 Americans to the United States as countries began locking down their borders.”

But The National Pulse understands that career officials inside the State Department objected to the Trump-era aim of creating a Contingency and Crisis Response bureau with the express purpose of avoiding a future Benghazi-style situation for Americans overseas.

Instead, Biden’s team revoked the funding and the approval for the plan, even as the COVID-19 crisis reasserted itself, and and Afghanistan withdrawal loomed. (Emphasis mine.)

“Career officials.” And now we’re hearing that the State Department has no plan—at least one based in reality—for evacuating American nationals or Afghans who want out.

President Joe Biden’s pledge to evacuate thousands more at-risk Afghans who worked for the U.S. government will run into the cold reality of a fast-closing window of time, insecurity all over Afghanistan and major logistical hurdles.

As one U.S. official told Reuters “too many things have to go 100 percent correctly” to execute the plan to move out those going through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process. The Pentagon is aiming to evacuate up to 22,000 SIV applicants, their families and other at-risk people.

But officials and refugee resettlement groups said that number, while admirable, will be much more difficult to reach now that the Taliban have seized the capital Kabul and most of the country.

Biden’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, who’s chasing “white supremacists” (read: wrong-think conservatives) out of the armed forces, seems to confirm that, really, if you’re in Afghanistan and want out, you’re on your own.

In another report, Secretary Austin admits, “We don’t have the capability to go out and collect up large numbers of people.”

Biden the foreign policy expert! Wisdom gained after more than 50 years in Washington, right fellas? So wise! So stunning! Why, it’s almost as if the American draw down was planned this way!

Wait—maybe it was! Remember the little dust-up over the Hunter Biden laptop left at a Delaware computer repair shop? Remember his emails outlining his deal with a Chinese-funded company that included “10 held by H for the big guy,” the “big guy” being then-vice president Joe Biden?

The Biden criminal family is owned by the Chinese. And guess who benefits from the collapse of American support in Afghanistan?

Gropey Joe pulled out of Afghanistan after 20 years, zillions of dollars, and thousands of lives were lost. China stands to gain a great deal from this evacuation. The same China that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to Hunter Biden since 2009, and really kicked things into high gear in 2015 when Gropey Joe was vice president. Coincidence? You decide! You’ll have to do so without asking any questions because Biden, VP Harris, and Jen Psaki are all mysteriously AWOL.

The reason the Chinese are first in line as America exits is that they are pursuing world domination through their “Belt and Road” initiative, a program that has to run straight through Afghanistan, where there lies “an estimated trillion dollars worth of rare-earth minerals under its soil.“

Either China has Biden by the short-hairs, or he’s a incompetent moron. Or both.

But at least the tweets are nice, right? We all good with that?

Give me so-called mean tweets, gas for $1.96, and a strong military over this milquetoast pretender any day. I truly wonder if we’ll survive until mid-terms in 2022.