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January 2022

U.S. Brings a Pea-Shooter to a Gunfight With China BY David P. Goldman

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2021/12/31/u-s-brings-a-pea-shooter-to-a-gunfight-with-china-n1545733

Many of my conservative friends are spinning their wheels with pea-shooter-gauge measures against China—kicking Chinese companies out of the U.S. stock market, for example. On Dec. 10 the U.S. government canceled an initial public offering for the Chinese AI startup SenseTime, whose facial recognition software may help Chinese authorities identify Uyghurs. Two weeks later SenseTime moved its IPO to Hong Kong; it rose 44% in the first two days of trading. China has a trade surplus, $3.2 trillion in reserves, and a 40% savings rate. It is an exporter, not an importer of capital. American capital markets are a convenience, not a necessity for Chinese companies.

We’ve brought a pea-shooter to a gunfight. There’s a big difference between winning, and making ourselves feel better while we’re losing.

Pandemic Intelligence Failure: A 2021 Report Card How the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, the nation’s “medical CIA,” has failed the American people. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/pandemic-intelligence-failure-2021-report-card-lloyd-billingsley/

“I’m very sorry, but not this time. Maybe another time when this is all over.” That was Dr. Anthony Fauci last week, telling people not to invite unvaccinated family members to their home for Christmas. The Biden medical adviser also called for those vaccinated and boosted to stay away from gatherings of 30-50 people. As Fauci explained, “those are the kind of functions — in the context of COVID, and particularly in the context of Omicron — that you do not want to go to.” As 2021 closes out, those contexts have yet to gain the attention they deserve.

In early November, health workers in South Africa discovered the Omicron variant and on December 1, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced the first Omicron case in the United States. In November, 2020, medical authorities in India identified the Delta variant of COVID-19, which swept through that country and the UK before arriving in the United States, “where it quickly surged.”

On December 12, 2019, according to the CDC, “a  cluster of patients in Wuhan, Hubei Providence, China begin to experience shortness of breath and fever.” On January 17, 2020, the CDC deployed a team to Washington State in response to the first reported COVID-19 case in the United States. Americans had a right to wonder what their nation’s Epidemic Intelligence Service had been doing, if they knew that such a service existed.

The CDC deploys the EIS, as Diana Robeletto Scalera of the CDC Foundation explains, “to ensure epidemics in other countries do not hit American soil.” EIS disease detectives are “are the ones responsible and they take this role very seriously.”

The EIS had boots on the ground in China, but the disease detectives failed to stop the virus that causes COVID-19 from showing up in America. When the virus did show up, nobody from the EIS told the American people how that that had happened, how the EIS might have failed, or anything the EIS knew about the true origin of the virus.

The “service” itself dates back to the Korean War but in recent decades, considerable mission creep has become evident. As UC Berkeley molecular biologist Peter Duesberg noted in Inventing the AIDS Virus, the EIS came to be known as the nation’s “medical CIA.”

EIS vets have worked in the CDC other federal agencies, international bodies such as the World Health Organization, and they are also embedded in the media. EIS vet Lawrence Altman became a medical journalist for the New York Times and Bruce Dan served as a medical editor with ABC News and the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association.

Such EIS activists rarely advertise their affiliation, and after the spring of 1993 the EIS membership directory was withdrawn from public view. As Duesberg learned, EIS members “constitute an informal surveillance network,” and can “act as unrecognized advocates for the CDC viewpoint, whether as media journalists or as prominent physicians.”

Happy Un-Woke Year! Here’s hoping that 2022 will see a halt to the spread of Critical Race Theory. Larry Sand

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/thursday-happy-un-woke-year-larry-sand/

Watching teachers unions, government school honchos, the media, etc., deny that Critical Race Theory (which makes race the prism through which its proponents analyze all aspects of American life, categorizing individuals into groups of oppressors and victims) is taught in our schools reminds me of that memorable scene from an otherwise forgettable movie, A Guide for the Married Man. A husband gets caught by his wife in bed with another woman, and he simply denies it. And he does so, vociferously and repetitiously to the point that his wife actually starts to believe him.

A typical example of this gaslighting is “Who is Behind the Attacks on Educators and Public Schools?,” posted earlier this month by the National Education Association on its website. The union claims, “Small groups of radicalized adults, egged on by…bad actors, have been whipped into a furor over…the false notion that children are being taught ‘critical race theory.’” At the same time that NEA is denying that CRT is taught, the union published its Racial Justice in Education Resource Guide, in which teachers are advised how to directly address issues such as white supremacy, implicit bias and acknowledging how race influences their work.

In November, an American Enterprise Institute report definitively showed “how legacy and education media refuse to acknowledge the hard evidence — numerous clear examples of CRT curriculum taught to students, a CRT pledge on a state website, and the political implications of parents speaking out about CRT at school boards.” And just last week, John Murawski at RealClearInvestigations gave us abundant evidence that CRT does indeed exist in our schools. One of the myriad examples he gives is Manuel Rustin, a high school history teacher, who helped oversee the drafting of California’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum. He discloses “Ethnic studies without Critical Race Theory is not ethnic studies. It would be like a science class without the scientific method. There is no critical analysis of systems of power and experiences of these marginalized groups without Critical Race Theory.”

Is a Pushback Against Soft Despotism Coming in 2022? Bruce Thornton   The ruling elite are not going to surrender power without a fight.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/pushback-against-soft-despotism-comin

Over the last two years, many of us have been surprised and troubled at how eagerly millions of citizens have surrendered their freedoms to the shifting, contradictory, nakedly politicized diktats of various “experts” and government agencies. Coerced vaccinations, boosters, masks, and social distancing continue to be mandated and just as eagerly obeyed, even in the case of the mild Omicron covid variant. The technocratic Left currently ruling the country has wrung every ounce of unconstitutional power from the sovereign people, a large cohort of whom, especially the cognitive elites, have willingly gone along with every new crisis and command.

As the year ends, signs of a pushback are multiplying. But will such resistance reach the critical mass of voters necessary for liberating us from such “soft despotism” and its wardens?

We shouldn’t be surprised that progressives have seized the opportunity to aggrandize themselves through serial changes on the pretext of an exaggerated crisis. It has long been a truism of history that, as James Madison said in 1788, “there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of power, than by sudden usurpations.”

Nearly half a century later, Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw an even more insidious stealth despotism that could arise in American democracy: “An immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure [the people’s] gratifications and to watch over their fate.” And he prophesized that the bureaucratic regulatory state would be the instrument of this “soft despotism”: a power “absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild” that “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform.” The goal is “to keep [the people] in perpetual childhood,” for this power is “well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.”

The last hundred years have seen such a regime gradually become reality. Crises such as the Great Depression, Two World Wars, and other conflicts and recessions provided the pretexts for expanding and concentrating the powers of federal agencies and their “network of small complicated rules.” And like children, too many citizens have accepted these encroachments, willingly ceding their autonomy and freedom to overseers who bribe them with the redistribution of other people’s money, and with promises “alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate” from the cradle to the grave ––what we call “entitlements” but think are unalienable rights.

Dramatic Testimony from the Maxwell Case Will Shock You! by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18088/dramatic-testimony-from-the-maxwell-case-will

You will be surprised to learn that the woman who was paid to find, bring and “groom” Carolyn was not Ghislaine Maxwell, although the above testimony was given at Maxwell’s trial. The older woman – who was well over the age of consent when she brought the 14-year-old Carolyn to Epstein – was Virginia Giuffre, the same woman who has falsely accused me of having sex with her, and who has also accused … other prominent people who have all denied the accusation.
Although Giuffre was a central figure in the Maxwell case, mentioned repeatedly throughout the trial, she was not called as a government witness. Why was she not called? Probably for two reasons: first she would be cross-examined by the defense about her own crimes in being paid to bring underage girls to Epstein; and second, she would be confronted with the numerous lies she has told under oath. Her own lawyers have disputed her and acknowledged that she was “wrong” in accusing prominent people. And her own emails, book manuscript and prior interviews with the FBI contradict her current accusations.
Moreover, prosecutors would have to explain why she is not being prosecuted for enticing a 14-year-old to have sex with Epstein…. Pursuant to the theory under which Maxwell was convicted, Giuffre is guilty of a felony carrying a long prison term.
The question is will she be indicted for perjury and enticing a minor, or will she get a pass because she may once have been victimized by Epstein? Does her alleged victimization excuse her for victimizing others? She has already been well compensated for any victimization. Estimates range between 6-10 million dollars she and her lawyers have received. Nor have those underaged girls who she helped victimize been compensated by her.
The testimony by Carolyn regarding Giuffre’s sordid role in victimizing very young girls cannot be ignored, especially since the government elicited it from their own witness in the Maxwell case. Nor can her rampant perjury, which can be proved through her own words. So, stay tuned. The truth will come out. And it may surprise you.

Germany’s New Government: Business as Usual with China by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18081/germany-china-business

* Olaf Scholz, who succeeded Angela Merkel as chancellor on December 8, pledged [in a telephone call with China’s President Xi Jinping] to strengthen economic ties with China, but he failed to mention human rights or the destruction of democracy in Hong Kong.

*The telephone call will disappoint those who had hoped that Germany’s new government would break with the past and take distance from Merkel’s policy of appeasing dictators and sacrificing human rights on the altar of financial gain.

*If Scholz promised to advance bilateral economic relations without linking them to the protection of human rights, it would be a direct violation of Germany’s coalition agreement, which pledged to make human rights the centerpiece of German foreign policy.

*The Merkel government, apparently under pressure from German industry, largely ignored human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

*China is Germany’s biggest trading partner, with €212 billion in goods exchanged in 2020, according to the German Foreign Ministry. More than 5,000 German companies operate in China, according to the German Chamber of Commerce in China.

* “Did the new German Chancellor pressure the Chinese dictator during their phone call over the Chinese blackmail of Lithuania, EU and NATO ally of Germany? Or does Germany still not care about the strategic reality and is its foreign policy still driven by greed and appeasement?” — Jakub Janda, Director of the Prague-based European Values think tankץ

* “Merkel will be judged harshly by future historians. She has done little to prepare Germany and the European Union for the challenges that the Putin and Xi regime pose to liberal democracies. And Scholz is doubling down on her failed foreign policies vis-a-vis autocracies. It will end in tears.” — Andreas Fulda, German political scientist and expert on EU-China relations