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September 2022

China’s Commentary on Mistakes of Gorbachev to Make Sure the Chinese Communist Party Endures by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18899/communist-china-gorbachev

Social commentary by Chinese Communist Party organs continue to urge members to be vigilant against the West’s strategy of “peaceful evolution,” meaning the eventual adoption by the Party of reforms that might sap it of its revolutionary aggressive stance against liberal democracies.

Under Xi’s tutelage, the CCP strengthened its role in the life of the ordinary Chinese citizen. President Xi galvanized CCP bureaucrats to accelerate a mass migration of China’s rural peasantry to urbanized environments. Consequently, tens of millions of Chinese were forced to learn new skills in manufacturing jobs. This transformation helped lift many out of abject poverty, thereby expanding China’s middle class as well as the domestic market for Chinese goods. The urbanization process also helped the CCP to better control China’s huge population by concentrating people in cities.

The USSR had failed to improve the quality of life of the Soviet citizenry. CCP leaders possibly reasoned that, because of this failure, Soviet citizens began to challenge Communist rule…. As openness became the norm, people in the USSR quickly saw that citizens in Western countries had freer and more comfortable lives.

Instead of imitating Gorbachev’s “Glasnost” (political openness) China constructed the “Great Firewall” which filters all traffic on the Chinese Internet. Chinese authorities also ban the citizenry access to Facebook and Wikipedia.

China conducts its diplomatic relations even with foreign countries strictly on a transactional business basis. The CCP did not seek to export its revolution violently, as did Iran. Beijing also refused to allow its few allies, such as Pakistan, to drain its national resources. That was another self-inflicted burden that Moscow shouldered: its burden of bankrupt colonies in Eastern Europe.

China, instead, is offering its own model of governance — a one-party system, tight control, a controlled economy, social stability rather than individual freedoms, internet control, and “to protect the dominant role of the CPC” — to the world as a viable alternative to the American system…. China remains resolute in its campaigns against any movement that might possess the energy to compete with the CCP, whether the Falun Gong movement or Christianity.

China’s leaders apparently still worry, otherwise they would not be investing such enormous resources in domestic espionage and repressing their own people.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commentators reacting to the death of Mikhail Gorbachev blamed the former Soviet leader for the demise of the Soviet Union. Hu Xijin, former editor of the CCP’s Global Times, wrote that Gorbachev garnered praise in the West “by selling out the interests of his homeland.” Xiang Ligang, a hardline journalist on international relations, claimed that Gorbachev was responsible for the war in Ukraine and unspecified disasters to follow. State controlled academia echoed similar themes. Beijing-based Renmin University Political Science Professor Shi Yinhong said: “The Chinese Communist Party is very critical of [Gorbachev], believing that he betrayed the Soviet Union.”

U.S. Cities: Worse Murder Rates than Ukraine’s Civilian Death Rate What has the Democrat leadership of these U.S. cities done to make the situation better? by Michael A. Letts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/u-s-cities-worse-murder-rates-than-ukraines-civilian-death-rate/

You might have thought that when you hear a newscaster or reporter call a major U.S. city a “war zone” because of the high crime and murders occurring there that it was just an exaggeration. It turns out that it isn’t.

“Per capita murder rates in major U.S. cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis are outpacing Ukraine’s recorded civilian death rate from Russia’s invasion,” according to Just The News.

Think about that. Cities that get touted as examples of successful progressive places to live have more people dying, relatively, than a nation at war. Cities that held “most peaceful protests” are less safe than a nation at war.

Now ask yourself this: If we are so upset with what is happening in Ukraine, why aren’t we even more upset with what is happening in our own country?

The website compiled information from the United Nations Human Rights Office, U.S. Census Bureau, and other sources to calculate the murder rates between the Ukraine and U.S. cities.

In Ukraine, 5,401 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s attack began in February (this is actually believed to be an underestimate). With a population of about 41,167,300, this makes Ukraine’s civilian death rate 13.12 per 100,000 people using official statistics from the United Nations, according to Just The News.

Sadly, there are American cities where this would be an improvement. Baltimore’s homicide rate is 37.3 so far this year or 215 deaths. If the city had the Ukraine’s war-time death rate, the city would have had only 76 murders.

St. Louis’s murder rate is 38.2 per 100,000 so far in 2022. Chicago’s is 14.8 per 100,000.

“Using pre-pandemic data, 52 U.S. cities had worse homicide rates than Ukraine’s civilian death rate. However, crime in the United States has skyrocketed since then, meaning that there may be more cities that qualify as deadlier than Ukraine under assault by Russian forces,” Just The News reported.

How scary is that?

Ukraine with a Whimper or a Bang? Putin deserves what he’s getting, but that moral and strategic victory is still a very different story from America sliding into a nuclear confrontation with a desperate autocrat. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/ukraine-with-a-whimper-or-a-bang/

Russia started the war with Ukraine in late February with a shock-and-awe effort to grab Kyiv. It failed both to decapitate the government and absorb half the country in one fell swoop. 

Soon the conflict descended into a war of attrition in Eastern Ukraine over the occupied majority Russian-speaking borderlands. 

That deadlock was eventually going to be resolved by relative morale, manpower, and supply.

Would the high-tech weaponry and money of the United States and Europe allow heroic Ukrainian forces to be better equipped than a larger Russian force—drawing on an economy 10 times greater and a population nearly four times larger than Ukraine’s?

After the latest sudden Ukrainian territorial gains and embarrassing Russian retreats, we now know the answer. 

Russia may be bigger and richer than Ukraine, but it is not up to the combined resources of the United States, along with the nations of NATO and the European Union. 

Most are now in a de facto proxy war with an increasingly overwhelmed Russia. And so far, a circumspect China has not stepped in to try to remedy the Russian dilemma. 

So, what will become the next, and most dangerous, stage III of the war? 

A heady Ukraine believes it now has the wherewithal to clear out the entire occupied Donbass and turn southward to free Crimea. To complete that agenda of rolling back all Russian aggression since 2014, it may step up hitting strategic targets across the Russia border and on the Black Sea.

Again, what will a nuclear Russia—run by an ailing, desperate autocrat—do when a far smaller Ukraine finally and deservedly humiliates her before a global audience?

Will Putin cut off all European energy supplies to force a European end to supplying Ukraine? 

Russia has all but done that. But so far Putin has gained little strategic advantage on the battlefield, despite current European fears of an impending bitter winter.

Will Putin go fully medieval on Ukraine, like the carnage in Chechnya when he leveled Grozny in 2000? 

But a European Ukraine is vast compared to tiny Chechnya. And the Chechens even without allies still withstood a decade of savage Russian brutality.

Daniel Greenfield :Harvard’s Sanctuary for Failed Leftists No matter how badly you fail, Harvard will take you.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/harvards-sanctuary-for-failed-leftists/

What’s the best way to get to Harvard?

Don’t study and don’t know anything. Just have the right politics. Just ask former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who washed out of the presidential primaries, abandoned a gubernatorial bid after polling at 12%, and then dropped out of a congressional primary after polling next to last at 5%. At least that was better than the 0% that he polled during his presidential campaign.

Where could the most hated politician in New York go? To Massachusetts. Bill de Blasio has become the 2022 visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.

What can Bill de Blasio teach Harvard students besides how to have your wife lose $850 million and get away with it? According to De Blasio, he’ll use his time at Harvard-Kennedy’s Institute of Politics to “to help inspire our nation’s next generation of leaders.” If his track record holds up, half of them will be inspired to move to Florida and the other half to stage a massive race riot.

At Harvard’s Institute of Politics, De Blasio will serve alongside other “prominent elected officials” like Secretary Natalie Tennant, one of the beneficiaries of Soros’; Secretary of State Project, who, despite claiming to oppose Obama while being endorsed by Michelle Obama, lost a Senate race by 62% to 34%. But 34% is still better than DeBlasio’s 5%.

Also on deck at Kennedy Street is former Prime Minister Stefan Löfven of Sweden, a leftist hack, who boasted, “my Europe doesn’t build walls” before folding and agreeing to some border security as the Muslim mass migration mobs swarmed out of control. His deputy famously burst into tears on camera as she announced that Sweden couldn’t take any more illegal migrants.

Neither cared about Sweden, but about their jobs.

Löfven met with terrorists, announced that he would recognize the Islamic terrorist entity inside Israel, and claimed that Muslim terrorists stabbing Jews doesn’t count as terrorism.

COVID Fascism Fizzles Out in New Zealand By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/covid_fascism_fizzles_out_in_new_zealand.html

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (she/her) held such promise. In the spring of 2020, the then 39-year-old New Zealand prime minister emerged on the world stage as the COVID drama’s anti-Trump.

Ardern was calm, we were told, where Trump was capricious, compassionate where Trump was callous, and disciplined where Trump was improvisational. She was, in short, the modern major general of the emerging fascist new world order, and the media swooned.

The New York Times headlined an April 2020 op-ed, “In a Crisis, True Leaders Stand Out: Swift action, compassion and trust in science mark the most effective responses to the coronavirus.”

When the “liberal” Ardern promised “the most significant restrictions on New Zealanders’ movements in modern history,” the Times praised her for her “swift and decisive action.”

The Atlantic outgushed the Times. “Since March, New Zealand has been unique in staking out a national goal of not just flattening the curve of coronavirus cases,” wrote Uri Friedman, “but eliminating the virus altogether. And it is on track to do it.”

Ardern was common sense personified. “She justified severe policies with practical examples,” Friedman continued. “People needed to stay local, because what if they drove off to some remote destination and their car broke down?” OMG!

Added Friedman, “She said she knows as a parent that it’s really hard to avoid playgrounds, but the virus can live on surfaces for 72 hours.” Right… science.

New EPA Regulations are Bureaucratic Overreach at Their Worst

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/15/new-epa-regulations-are-bureaucratic-overreach-at-their-worst/

The use of “chemicals” always sounds bad, especially if they have unpronounceable laboratory names. Nobody really wants chemicals in their food, water, house, clothing, or landfills. But what is a chemical? Look it up and you’ll find that any substance consisting of matter is a chemical, including every liquid, solid, and gas. That means any pure substance or any mixture, natural or manmade. The only things that are not chemicals are those not made up of matter: things like light, heat, sound, or ideas.  

When someone calls for eliminating chemicals, therefore, it is vital to define very precisely what they seek to ban. Even manmade chemicals include practically everything in our consumer world, so specifics are essential. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ratcheting up its two-year plan to ban the manufacture, use, and disposal of PFAS, short for perfluoroalkyl substances and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Those sound horrible. Most people probably wouldn’t want to be even near anything sounding like that, so banning them sounds right. But what exactly are they?

Beginning with everyday products coated with Teflon, PFAS are a broad range of compounds that prevent sticking and that repel moisture. That includes most plastics, nonstick cookware, water-resistant clothing, and products that resist grease, water, and oil, such as pizza boxes, tents, sleeping bags, and even dental floss. But that’s not all. PFAS are also in photographs, computers, printers, cell phones, cars, air conditioners, laundry detergent, shampoo, lotion, soap, makeup, carpets, prescription bottles, glass and windows, and hundreds of medical devices, from implants and catheters to surgical mesh and sterile containers. These chemicals are central to the function of fire extinguishers and firefighting foam (which airports are required by law to use) and are important components of windmills and solar panels. PFAS are everywhere.

ATTENTION CONSERVATIVES! THEY’RE COMING FOR YOUR PODCASTS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/15/attention-conservatives-theyre-coming-for-your-podcasts-next/

So many on the increasingly fascistic left are eager to censor talk they don’t like.

Conservatives have found a way to communicate that is free from Big Tech censors. But how long will it last?

Over the weekend, the liberal Brookings Institution released what it calls “a tool to monitor political broadcasts” on increasingly popular podcasts. Why? To combat “misinformation.”

Brookings treats the growth of podcasts the way Count Floyd would describe one of his movies on the classic Monster Chiller Horror Theater sketch on SCTV. “Ooh, that’s scary, kids, scary!”

Podcasts, it warns, “played a central role in disseminating election fraud narratives in the lead up to January 6.” Scary, kids!

Podcasts “also offered a prime avenue for the spread of pandemic-related misinformation.” Very scary, kids!

What’s really got the left scared is that nobody is controlling what gets said on podcasts. Valerie Wirtschafter at Brookings laments that “despite the real-world harms caused by this misinformation and the medium’s growing reach and influence,” podcasters “can say whatever you want.”

“The nature of the RSS feed, which is open-sourced and accessible by design, represents a significant hurdle for content moderation. Although Apple can remove the RSS feed from its platform, some smaller platforms allow any content on an RSS feed to be played through their services, making it easy for listeners to access a removed podcast elsewhere.”

The horror!

How Robert Mueller Shredded the FBI’s Credibility His post-9/11 attempts to change the culture led to politicized investigations like Crossfire Hurricane. By Thomas J. Baker

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-robert-mueller-shredded-the-fbis-credibility-centralization-intelligence-investigation-crossfire-hurricane-bush-911-clinton-email-sussmann-11663173014?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Mr. Baker is a retired FBI special agent and legal attaché and author of “The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy,” forthcoming in December.

Four days after 9/11, Robert Mueller was summoned to the presidential retreat at Camp David. It was little more than a week since he’d become director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

That Saturday morning, Mr. Mueller gave President George W. Bush the FBI’s initial report on the attacks. The Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing Investigation, or Penttbom, would become the largest ever conducted by the FBI. It had already identified the 19 hijackers as well as their roles, nationalities, travel documents and histories. The focus had turned to establishing links between the hijackers and al Qaeda.

Mr. Bush, wearing a leather bomber jacket, sat at the head of a big square conference table in the rustic oak cabin. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, was at the president’s right. Mr. Mueller, as he later acknowledged, was confident in the report. The FBI had done what it does best—investigate.

Expecting praise or thanks, Mr. Mueller was taken aback when the president interrupted him. “Bob, I expect the FBI to determine who was responsible for the attacks and to help bring them to justice,” he said. “What I want to know from you—today—is what the FBI is doing to prevent the next attack.” That same morning Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet presented a proposed plan of action. At the conclusion of Mr. Tenet’s presentation, Mr. Bush exclaimed, “That’s great.” He turned toward Mr. Mueller and said, “That’s what I want to hear.” Mr. Mueller told me later that he felt humiliated.

Delayed Repairs Shrink the U.S Navy Submarine Fleet Amid China’s threats to Taiwan, maintenance woes hobble a key weapon in the Indo-Pacific. By Seth Cropsey

https://www.wsj.com/articles/delayed-repairs-shrink-the-submarine-fleet-taiwan-china-navy-amphibious-assault-aircraft-private-shipyards-deployable-boats-materials-11663162266?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet, America’s essential war-fighting instrument in the Indo-Pacific, is about three-fifths the size it should be, chiefly because of maintenance and production delays. This comes amid stepped-up threats to Taiwan by China.

Contesting such an assault would require a submarine force at maximum strength. Congress and the White House should act swiftly to integrate private shipyards that repair submarines into the Navy’s maintenance plans.

American strategists rarely concern themselves with the material issues that determine victory or defeat. They tend to regard international strategy as a question of will, not means. This takes for granted the traditional and outsize U.S. economic-material advantage.

America’s objective in a struggle over Taiwan would be to deny China a rapid victory. The war must become a slog, one that China labors to sustain in a geographically limited form. Generating this situation requires contesting China’s ability to stage an amphibious assault on Taiwan. Submarines would be crucial in such a contest.

The U.S. military today lacks the air forces, air defenses, and surface combatants with sufficient range to contest Chinese air control over Taiwan indefinitely, absent an interdiction campaign against the Chinese mainland that the U.S. has signaled it doesn’t wish to wage. Chinese anti-ship and ground-attack missiles, moreover, would cause damage. Recent war games suggest that in defending Taiwan, the U.S. would lose half its active air force and at least one carrier strike group—a collection of warships defending the aircraft carrier and its air wing. In such a scenario, China would lose 150 to 200 warships and tens of thousands of men.