Monthly Archives: February 2023

Who’s the Racist?

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Progressive-Democratic Party El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego claimed, in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, that those of us who want a secure southern border are racist.

Claiming this [that the border is not closed] continues a false, racist narrative….

Congressman Wesley Hunt (R, TX), an American who happens to be black, demurred.

I’ve been a Black minority in this country for a very long time. But this is actually not about race. This is actually an issue of public safety.
And if I call this an invasion, sir, I’m not a racist. I can assure you I’m not racist. What I can assure you is that I want to make sure that fentanyl doesn’t indiscriminately kill any race, religion, color, or creed. Fentanyl doesn’t care where you’re from. Fentanyl doesn’t care about race. Fentanyl kills indiscriminately.
…
And as somebody that wants to make sure that we do attack racist issues when they do occur, we can’t be the boy who cried wolf and blame racism all the time.

A County Judge making up a racist beef where he knows full well that none exists. Who’s the racists here?

Aiding an Enemy Nation

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In the present case, it’s technically legal, but it’s strictly wrong.

The People’s Republic of China is a global leader in the development of artificial intelligence, and it’s on the way to becoming the global leader. AI has a number of uses of which the PRC is taking advantage, including surveillance of citizens and fighting battles and entire wars.

Despite this threat to our nation’s security, American businesses and investors have comprised more than 40% of the 400 international investments in PRC AI, and those 400 investments were 17% of total international investment in PRC AI.

Here, per the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, are the top 10 American investors in PRC AI—companies that put their lucre acquisition ahead of our nation’s security:

The CSET has reported further that

Collectively, observed transactions involving US investors totaled $40.2 billion invested into 251 Chinese AI companies, which accounts for 37 percent of the $110 billion raised by all Chinese AI companies.

And [emphasis added]

such financial activity, commercial linkages, and the tacit expertise that transfers from US-based funders to target companies in China’s booming AI ecosystem carry implications that extend beyond the business sector. Earlier stage VC investments in particular can provide intangible benefits beyond capital, including mentorship and coaching, name recognition, and networking opportunities. As such, US outbound investment in Chinese technology, and particularly AI, merits additional attention and tracking.

This comes after Google, for instance, infamously refused to continue a contract with the US’ Department of Defense to develop battlefield-capable artificial intelligence packages while continuing actively to support the PRC’s citizen-surveillance and military AI development. Alphabet’s subsequent words and actions concerning its now wholly owned subsidiary now being willing to work with DoD do nothing to mitigate, much less correct, that infamy.

Taliban and CPC—Peas in a Pod

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That similarity facilitates the People’s Republic of China’s government and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers hooking up. With President Joe Biden’s (D) decision to cut and run from Afghanistan 17 months ago, the Communist Party of China and the rest of the government of the PRC have been moving into Afghanistan with enthusiasm, and the Taliban has been opening up to them with increasing enthusiasm.

The PRC is committing genocide against Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province, having already locked away in concentration camps more than a million of them and “reeducating” a million more in the CPC’s effort to erase Uighur Muslim culture.

The Taliban, on the other hand, are moving with zeal to punish Afghan-domiciled Muslims, locking away Muslim women in their own homes, keeping them carefully ignorant, and allowing them out in public only if they’re fully covered and accompanied by family male supervisors. This assault is accompanied by Taliban efforts to limit the ability of Muslim groups to cross the border into Xinjiang and work to liberate the Uighurs—albeit many of those groups being al Qaeda terrorists or supporters.

This alignment has facilitated the PRC-Taliban agreement for the PRC to drill for oil in Afghanistan’s north, an arrangement worth $540 million. The PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative has routes that pass through Afghanistan, directly connecting the PRC with Iran.

PRC exploitation of Afghanistan’s vast rare earth resources, for lucrative fees to the Taliban, won’t be far behind.

It’s almost like they’re friends with benefits.

Two Views

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken was planning to discuss the barbarian invasion of Ukraine with PRC functionaries and then to meet with PRC President Xi Jinping. Now, though, the People’s Republic of China has a spy balloon research airship riding the winds over the US, and Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee are demanding that Blinken confront Xi over the PRC balloon. Blinken has decided to postpone that trip.

There are two likely reasons for Blinken’s decision. One is that, as Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) put it (my paraphrase), Blinken should cancel his trip to demonstrate American displeasure over the balloon.

The other reason is that Blinken is just too chicken to make the trip and publicly call out Xi over the PRC violation; Blinken wants to avoid yet another ass-chewing by PRC functionaries like the one he got in his initial session with PRC personages in Alaska.

Objectivity

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Leonard Downie, late of The Washington Post, and writing in WaPo last Monday, decried the objective use of objectivity in today’s journalism while occupying quite a number of column inches offering “objective” techniques for maintaining credibility in the preferred lack of objectivity. The core of his objection is this:

They [reporters, editors, and media critics] believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change, and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences, and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.

This, though, is just one more way in which these wonders, abetted by folks like Downie, seek to control what us average Americans know about the world around us: they deliberately, consciously, and mendaciously conflate opinion writing with fact and event reporting.

Those concerns—race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change, etc—all are valid subjects about which to write, but they belong on the opinion pages instead of being dishonestly masqueraded as facts. If these…persons…maintained that separation, they truly would be pursuing truth.

Objectivity, after all, really is expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice—everywhere, that is, except in the Left’s Newspeak Dictionary.