RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19751/biden-gifts-to-china

The gifts the Biden Administration has already given the Chinese Communist Party in just two years have been nothing short of exorbitant — and often to the detriment of the US.

The Biden Administration intends to spend more than half a trillion dollars on “clean energy and climate action over the next decade”, according to the US Department of Energy. That amount would reportedly include projects for climate change and investments in renewable energy, such as solar panels and wind turbines.

The problem is: these policies are all gifts to China.

In solar energy… China produces between 70% and 98% of the world’s silicon-based raw material and other components for solar panels — a solid world monopoly.

“Most solar panels are imported, with three-quarters of the imports originating from Chinese subsidiaries manufacturing in Southeast Asia…. the US… fell to just 0.5% in 2017.” — USA Facts, August 16, 2022.

Not enough is being invested in the manufacturing of solar panels in the US… The solar cells will mainly be coming from China.

The Biden Administration has placed a massive bet on electric vehicles. The goal is that 50% of new vehicles sold in the US should be electric by 2030. Electric vehicles need lithium-ion batteries. China has almost a global monopoly on producing them.

The average cost of raw materials, including lithium, nickel and cobalt, was more than $8,000 per electric vehicle in June 2022. That amount represented an increase of more than 140% since 2020, resulting in the cost of producing an electric vehicle being 125% more to that of an internal combustion vehicle. How many American consumers can afford such expensive cars? Furthermore, electric vehicles have a tendency to burst into flames. None of these problems seems to bother the Biden Administration.

There are several problems with wind turbines. One is that the US still relies on foreign imports to make them, including from — China. Another is that wind turbines endanger wildlife, such as birds and whales.

The Biden Administration has also set a goal to “achieve a carbon-pollution-free electricity sector by 2035.” All these measures clearly hobble the US and reduce its power to compete, while China, already the world’s largest user of fossil fuels, has announced that by 2030, its carbon dioxide emissions will peak… China last year built more new coal-fired power plants than the rest of the world combined — the equivalent of two new coal-fired plants per week.

The proposal [by the Environmental Protection Agency to limit how much carbon dioxide US coal- and gas-fired power plants may emit] means that US electric power plants would have to transform the way that they operate, either costing them billions in new equipment, or closing them down entirely.

All these Biden policies seem almost custom-tailored to reduce America’s ability to compete internationally, while giving China even more room to grow its economy and gain an even greater edge over the US.

[A]ccording to John Kerry, the Biden Administration’s “climate envoy,” whatever the US does unilaterally, without similar action by China and other major economies, is utterly pointless. Kerry admitted in January 2021 that even if the US were to have zero carbon emissions, “almost 90 percent of all of the planet’s global emissions come from outside of US borders. We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19747/empowering-iran-deadly-regime

Since the Biden Administration assumed office, the Iranian regime has been steadily gaining more power, funds, and becoming more emboldened to export weapons, advance its nuclear program, deepen its presence in Latin America, and spread its radical Islamist ideology around the globe.

Iran has also become key exporter of weapons to Russia. Last week it was reported that the Biden Administration is also planning to release $17 billion in frozen assets to Iran, a country that the US Department of State has called the top state sponsor of terrorism. The mullahs will likely use this windfall to fund terror groups abroad, suppress opposition at home, enrich even more uranium, enlarge its military, export more weapons, and arm Russia even further against Ukraine.

Thanks to the Biden Administration’s policy of reviving the rancid nuclear deal enabling the mullahs to have as many nuclear weapons as they like — and bribing them with $17 billion, most likely not to use these weapons on the Biden Administration’s watch — the regime is at its peak.

Since the Biden Administration assumed office, the Iranian regime has been steadily gaining more power, funds, and becoming more emboldened to export weapons, advance its nuclear program, deepen its presence in Latin America, and spread its radical Islamist ideology around the globe.

When US President Joe Biden was elected, Senator Ted Cruz told Fox News Digital:

“Iran’s nuclear program was in a box, and their economy was in a downward spiral. Biden looked the other way as the Ayatollah steadily advanced to nuclear weapons, and the regime resumed exports of millions of barrels of oil a day.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/mr_secretary_what_are_you_telling_cuba.html

China moving in on Cuba, Antony Blinken about to burst into tears.

Our Secretary of State just got back from China and said this:   

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that the United States would have deep concerns about Chinese military activities in Cuba, after the Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing was planning a new training facility there.

Speaking at a press conference in London after wrapping up a trip this week to Beijing, Blinken said he made clear to his Chinese counterparts “that we would have deep concerns about PRC intelligence or military activities in Cuba”.    

Blinken added: “This is something we’re going to be monitoring very, very closely and we’ve been very clear about that. And we will protect our homeland, we will protect our interests.”

The Wall Street Journal, citing current and former U.S. officials, reported on Tuesday that China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a joint military training facility on the island that could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops just 100 miles off Florida’s coast.

Well, I’m sure that the Chinese are really concerned, too. Don’t expect that ship from China to turn around anytime soon, unless we are prepared to go to “blockade” mode and shut down the island.  

The Chinese are just taking advantage of our weakness.  The key player is Cuba, and that’s where the behind the scenes talk need to be directed.

https://nypost.com/2023/06/19/blinken-ruffles-feathers-by-stating-us-does-not-support-taiwan-independence-after-meeting-chinas-xi/

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised eyebrows Monday, telling reporters the US “does not support Taiwan independence” after meeting in Beijing with officials including Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Blinken’s statement ruffled the feathers of many Republicans in Congress, who viewed the statement – and the secretary’s inability to re-establish military-to-military communications – as an inappropriate kowtow to America’s greatest adversary.

“Blinken flew to Communist China to appease Xi Jinping and state the Biden administration does not support Taiwan’s independence,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said on Twitter. “Why won’t this administration stand up to bullies and stand for freedom?”

The Taiwan issue is among the most contentious in the US-China relationship, with Xi making it his No. 1 priority to “reunite” Taiwan with China — though the island about 100 miles off the country’s southeastern coast has never actually been part of it.

Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) tweeted that Blinken’s statement was a “dangerous display of weakness towards our adversaries on the world stage.”

“The Biden admin is giving China a green light to increase its intimidation of our ally, Taiwan,” he said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/secretary-of-state-blinkens-peculiar-visit-to-china/

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to China this past weekend for meetings with senior Chinese officials, months after canceling his trip there in the wake of the Chinese spy balloon encroachment of U.S. airspace. He met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang for hours, followed by a meeting with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi. It was uncertain whether China’s President Xi Jinping would agree to give an audience to Secretary Blinken until, with about 45 minutes notice, Xi and Blinken ended up meeting for about a half hour.

Secretary Blinken conveyed the same message in person to China’s leadership that the Biden administration has been uttering for months. Keep the channels of communication open “to ensure competition does not veer into conflict,” Blinken told Wang Yi.

China’s message during Secretary Blinken’s visit was also the same as its leaders have uttered many times before. According to China’s view of why tensions between China and the United States have risen so sharply, the U.S. has failed to show due respect for China’s vital national interests, particularly regarding China’s territorial claim to Taiwan. “State-to-state interactions should always be based on mutual respect and sincerity,” President Xi remarked.

A few days before Secretary Blinken’s visit, China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang spoke more bluntly during his phone call with Secretary Blinken. He demanded that the United States “show respect” for China’s core concerns and “stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in the name of competition.” That is a bit rich coming from the country which sent a spy balloon over U.S. sovereign airspace earlier this year to surveil sensitive U.S. military sites, and which set up a secret Chinese police station on U.S. soil.

There was not a single reported acknowledgement of responsibility by China’s leaders, much less an apology, for China’s invasions of U.S. sovereignty and security. Then again, they see no reason to do so with President Biden in the White House. President Biden showed how weak and out of touch with reality he is when he said, shortly before Secretary Blinken’s arrival in China, that the spy balloon incursion was more “embarrassing” for China’s leadership “than it was intentional.”

Secretary Blinken’s face-to-face meetings with China’s leaders were not only a waste of time. As Republican Representative Elise Stefanik of New York warned, Secretary Blinken’s trip would only serve to “legitimize” the Chinese Communist Party’s “continued subversion of our sovereignty.”

The Biden administration would rather patch things up with China as an end in itself than confront the Chinese regime’s increasingly provocative actions. Recently, for example, one of China’s warships came within 150 yards of an American destroyer conducting a freedom-of-navigation exercise with Canada in international waters. And one of China’s jet fighters flew directly in front of an American surveillance plane flying in international airspace. The Biden administration’s response was a feckless call to “keep the lines open with the Chinese to make it clear how unacceptable those particular intercepts are.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/god-save-the-queen-and-bidens-foreign-policy-blinken-china-iran-deal-ukraine-79c598c0?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

‘God save the queen, man!” said Joe Biden, in an unexpected windup to remarks in Connecticut about gun control last week. Like many of his utterances, the strange outburst prompted widespread confusion. What could this latest eructation from the presidential brain mean?

He knows that Elizabeth II, for 70 years the usual subject of the prayer, is already beyond the good Lord’s earthly protection, surely? He was at the funeral, and apparently awake throughout. Perhaps with all those tasteful Pride Month displays around the White House last week, his loyalty has been captured by a queen of the drag variety. Or maybe it was just an indication that he’s decided the nation needs to amp up the deference it’s been showing the first lady, and a more regal honorific than “Dr. Jill” will now be expected.

But to me the remark made a curious sort of sense, inadvertently reflecting the confused, uncertain and slightly out-of-touch approach to the rest of the world that characterizes the administration’s foreign policy.

What else could explain the news last week that the Biden team is putting together a deal that isn’t a deal with the ayatollahs in Iran?

The plan, according to multiple reports, is for Iran to agree not to enrich its uranium too close to the 90% level needed for weaponization and to release some American hostages, in exchange for sanctions relief and other assistance.

Aside from the naiveté you need to think that Tehran will abide by an agreement that doesn’t even require a signature, the tentative deal betrays trademark confusion and inconsistency in Biden administration policy.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/06/18/the-ukraine-american-gordian-knot/

Most Americans sympathize with Ukraine and were and are willing to supply it with defensive weapons to repel Russian aggression. 

Proof of that goodwill is the virtual draining of U.S. weapon stocks—from stockpiles of anti-tank weapons and large-caliber artillery shells to anti-aircraft and surface-to-surface missiles. Yet the more the United States gives, the more Volodymyr Zelenskyy demands—and the more the American people acquiesce in sympathy for his plight. 

Given such U.S. largess, Ukraine currently enjoys the third-largest defense budget in the world, behind only the United States itself and China in annual outlays. That gargantuan expenditure is a result almost exclusively of American massive arms shipments and other NATO countries’ arms transfers, all based on a commitment to help Ukraine repel Russian aggression. Officials in Russia, Ukraine, and the United States have all agreed that the war is a high-stakes proxy conflict between nuclear Russia and nuclear NATO. 

The original mission, as assumed, was to aid Ukraine in pushing the invader back to the prior post-2014 borders, de facto established by prior Russian invasions that had absorbed the disputed eastern border and Crimea. Then supposedly, negotiations would begin to adjudicate the ancient border disputes that had led to the first iteration of fighting in 2014. 

The Disputed Ukrainian-Russian Border 

Ukraine’s latest counteroffensive could, in fact, get close to achieving that goal of reclaiming much of the ground taken after February 2022. 

But apparently, the war’s aims have now shifted to reestablishing the 2013 Ukrainian-Russian border. That is an ambitious agenda and, in the past, neither President Barack Obama nor Donald Trump nor Joe Biden had ever signed on to it. Oddly, those on the Left calling for the utter defeat and humiliation of the Putin regime and the retaking of Crimea (and who also gave us 2009 Russian “reset”) had rarely voiced such agendas after the 2014 aggression during the Obama Administration. (And remember that was not Putin’s first rodeo; he had invaded Georgia and absorbed South Ossetia in 2008). 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19731/biden-arabs-trust

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states apparently still do not trust the Biden Administration, largely because of its perceived abandonment of its traditional Arab allies in the Middle East and President Joe Biden’s hostility to Saudi Arabia. This view began with then-presidential candidate Biden declaring the kingdom a “pariah” state — and is continuing with US attempts, still ongoing, to revive a “nuclear deal” that will enable an expansionist Iran to have nuclear weapons potentially to topple other countries in the region.

Meanwhile, the same Biden Administration has continued to cozy up to the Iranian regime, which the US’s own Department of State has called the “top state sponsor of terrorism” and which has, until recently, has not only been attacking both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates through Iran’s proxy militia, the Houthis in Yemen, but has also been supplying troops and weapons to Russia for attacking Ukraine.

The message being sent is that being America’s enemy pays handsomely, while, as with Afghanistan, being America’s friend can be fatal.

The London-based Rai Al-Youm online newspaper said that Blinken’s visit to Saudi Arabia failed to achieve most of its goals, including promoting normalization between the Kingdom and Israel. According to the newspaper, the Saudi media ignored Blinken’s visit, while playing up the arrival of former Real Madrid soccer player Karim Benzema in the Kingdom….

“There are many obstacles to America’s success in playing these roles, including what is related to the nuclear file, as a nuclear Iran remains a concern for the Gulf and for other countries in the region. The [Saudi] agreement with Iran may alleviate this concern, but it will not dispel it. Washington’s success in settling this file in a way that does not threaten the security and stability of the Gulf states is the bottom line and it is what will determine the future of Washington’s relations with the countries of the region.” — Sam Mansi, Lebanese columnist, Asharq Al-Awsat, June 12, 2023.

“[W]hatever Blinken achieved during his visit to Saudi Arabia will remain weak and incomplete in the face of the dangers of ongoing tensions in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and other conflict areas, most notably the civil war that broke out recently in Sudan, in addition to the comprehensive challenges posed by the fraught relations between Iran and Israel, which may explode if there is no progress in the nuclear talks, and if more daring steps are not taken to limit Iran’s continuation of uranium enrichment, and Iran’s public support for Russia and its cooperation with it in the context of the war against Ukraine.” — Sam Mansi, Asharq Al-Awsat, June 12, 2023.

Judging from the reactions of these Arabs to Blinken’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, it is clear that the Saudis and other Arabs have lost confidence in the Biden administration and are not pinning any hopes on it to bring security and stability to the Middle East.

Moreover, it is evident that the Saudis feel so offended by Biden that they are willing to move closer to Iran and Russia if that enables them to steer clear of the American president. It will take more than a visit by Biden or Blinken or Sullivan to repair the damage that has been done to America’s relations with Arab countries that used to respect the US. In fact, it is safe to assume that the Arabs’ attitudes toward the Biden administration will remain steady regardless of any effort that this administration might choose to make.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19727/capitulation-to-iran

The Biden administration also reportedly wants to pump $17 billion dollars into the Iranian regime’s treasury. These benefits will not only enable the mullahs’ to finalize their nuclear weapons program, but also to send more arms to Russia to attack Ukraine, as well as to further enable the regime’s ruthless expansion throughout the Middle East — in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and the terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip — and throughout Latin America.

The US, intriguingly, seems hell-bent on supporting a regime that its own Department of State has called the “top state sponsor of terrorism.”

Based on Iran’s abysmal track record of complying with its own agreements, any deal in which Iran might promise to stop enriching uranium is just a sick joke.

“I continue to believe, Biden said on July 14, “that diplomacy is the best way to achieve this outcome.”

Someone recently replied, “Neville Chamberlain believed that diplomacy was the best way, too.”

The Biden administration, by keeping the American people and the Congress in the dark regarding these ongoing secret negotiations with Iran, appear to understand that is doing something malign. The countries disastrously affected by any “deal” with the Islamist regime of Iran are “only” the US, the Gulf States, Israel, Latin America and Europe. The Biden administration nevertheless appears determined to give the ruling mullahs of Iran the ultimate $17 billion gift: the deadly nuclear deal — so that Iran will promise not to use their nuclear weapons on this administration’s watch.

In spite of strong opposition from the Congress, the Biden administration has been holding​ ​secret talks in Oman to reward the ruling mullahs of Iran with a nuclear deal that will pave the way for Iran legally to obtain as many nuclear weapons as it likes, empower the ruling mullahs with billions of dollars, lift sanctions, allow it to rejoin the global financial system and enhance the theocratic regime’s legitimacy on the global stage.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-administration-iran-deal-nuclear-weapons-international-atomic-energy-agency-7251bbe1?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Here we go again. The same people who gave us the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 are trying to pull off a new version that would send Iran cash on day one in return for promises down the road.

The deal taking shape, per press reports in the U.S. and Israel, isn’t the “longer and stronger” agreement President Biden promised. He held that out for months but Iran refused. Now, in a remarkable retreat, the Biden Administration is pursuing an unwritten “understanding” with Iran to get to the brink of a nuclear breakout but go no further.

Iran has enough uranium enriched to 60% purity for several nuclear weapons, and it can get to weapons-grade quickly. But the U.S. isn’t asking Iran to turn over enriched material. The deal mooted in the press offers financial relief for Iran via sanctions waivers, plus a promise of no new sanctions or International Atomic Energy Agency censures, while requesting only that Iran not enrich uranium beyond 60%.

Color us skeptical that an unwritten agreement, without clear technical restrictions, would compel Iran to reinstall monitoring equipment, turn over data or submit to enhanced inspections. It isn’t clear what role the IAEA would play, and the U.S. would risk Iranian withdrawal if it insisted on real verification or responded meaningfully to Iran’s foreign aggression or domestic crackdowns.

“Trust but verify” is being turned on its head. There’s no trust and little verification. The new strategy is hope and pay.

Last week the U.S. gave Iraq a sanctions waiver to pay Iran $2.76 billion for gas and electricity. This looks like the kind of goodwill gesture—a bribe to keep talking—that the U.S. ruled out in October 2021. The Biden Administration says the waiver is unrelated, citing past payments driven by Iraqi energy needs, but this one is five times as large.

The Administration says Iran will spend the Iraqi funds only on food and medicine, as if money isn’t fungible. In reality the U.S. is freeing up billions of dollars that will finance the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its imperialism across the Middle East.