Monthly Archives: January 2024

The PRC Doesn’t Want to Lead the World?

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That’s the claim of Michael Singh, Washington Institute for Near East Policy‘s Glazer Program on Great Power Competition and the Middle East Director, in his Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

I disagree, beginning with his subheadline:

China doesn’t aspire to lead the world, much less to establish peace, but only to undermine the US.

Only that last is accurate. The PRC most assuredly does intend to “lead the world,” and to do so by overriding and replacing us. Xi has said as much regarding replacing us in other venues.

Singh added this near the end of his piece:

A China that aimed to replace the US-led international order with one of its own devising might see….

No, those “opportunities” are irrelevant by being too soon and too far away to be moves by the PRC just yet. The PRC is focused on the South China Sea and its coming invasion of the Republic of China. Succeed there, as it’s already doing in the Sea, thereby driving the US out of the Western Pacific and taking control of the sea lines of commerce on which Japan and Korea depend for their very independence, and on which we so heavily depend, with 40% of our international economic activity coming through those lanes to our West Coast, and our nation loses credibility globally.

At that point, it’ll be time to move in on the ME and Africa, and then a meek Europe.

With each success, the PRC will be able to further isolate us and to exert increasing pressure on our foreign policy, potentiating our retreat from the world.

Dishonesty Doesn’t Always Pay

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The intrinsically mendacious press industry—the industry that spiked the Hunter Biden laptop story; that pushed Russia collusion; that announced no more balanced reporting, instead picking one political side in the news it presents; that cherry-picked Wuhan Virus data and associated vaccine and alternative palliative data; whose LA Times announced it would no longer print Letters to the Editor from readers who disagreed with the press guild’s predetermined “climate” narrative; and on and on—that industry, has seen 2024 start off with a layoff bang.

  • Los Angeles Times announced last week that would terminate at least 115 reporters, roughly 20% of its staff
  • TIME magazine laid off 15% of our unit members, with additional layoffs in edit and business
  • several Sports Illustrated staff members were let go, though not all of them, it turns out
  • National Geographic terminated all staff writers
  • Pitchfork is being merged into GQ, and all Pitchfork employees are being terminated
  • NBC News terminated “50 to 100” employees

Some press unions are protesting the layoffs and pending layoffs.

  • New York Daily News struck over chronic cuts ordered by the paper’s owner
  • Condé Nast struck for 24 hours to protest planned cuts

Those unions, IMNSHO, are self-identifying who goes in the next layoff round.

All of that is just in January. The year is yet young; it’s a start.

Amorality of the Progressive-Democratic Party

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Senior advisors of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s reelection effort are worried.

Some of President Biden’s senior aides are becoming increasingly worried that his support for Israel’s war in Gaza risks damaging his re-election prospects amid cratering support from young voters.

Make no mistake about it: those senior aides are far more typical of the Progressive-Democratic Party than are others who support Biden’s nominal support for Israel.

Party putting its power ahead of pushing for what’s right regarding terrorism. That’s what’s campaigning for government positions at all levels of government in our nation.

More Reasons to Disband

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Now the Biden administration is actively seeking to undermine our friends and allies on top of destroying our energy industry.

The White House on Friday announced a temporary pause on pending decisions of exports of liquefied natural gas to non-free trade countries, until the Energy Department can factor climate change into its reviews of the projects.

Two changes (for starters) are badly needed, and these changes badly need significant majorities in the House and Senate and a Republican in the White House (which puts a premium on the elections this fall).

One of those changes is enactment of a statute giving the relevant approval authority(s) 10 calendar days in which to approve an export application or to provide a detailed explanation for denial, which explanation must have only concrete, measurable reasons, be devoid of generalities, and be publicly available NLT the 11th day. Absent such a decision, the application must be deemed approved.

The other change is the disbandment of the Department of Energy with all Department personnel returned to the private sector, not reassigned elsewhere in the Federal government. The only functions remotely worth retaining are ARPA-Energy and Science and Innovation, which should be folded into ARPA with circumscribed funding authorities.

Another change, in furtherance of the concept of the second change, is the disbandment of the Environmental Protection Agency, with its personnel also returned to the private sector, rather than reassigned within the Federal government. This agency—the managers in charge of it, along with its employees, have for too long conflated environmental protection with climate “protection,” with its cockamamy decisions exemplified by its ruling that plant food in our atmosphere—CO2—is a pollutant.

Contemptibly Unsurprising

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Israel has uncovered evidence that UNRWA operatives personnel participated in Hamas’ 7 October ’23 butchery inside Israel, and the nation has passed that evidence along to relevant authorities, including to the UN.

The commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East announced Friday that UNRWA was suspending the alleged participants and launching an investigation.

Suspended their employees—ooh—that’ll show them. UNRWA will conduct an investigation? Say, rather, UNRWA will whitewash itself.

This unsurprising behavior by the UNRWA is merely an extension of its long and active support of the terrorist gang that is Hamas and its Gaza Strip predecessor, the Palestinian Authority, reaching at least as far back as the terrorists’ 2014 attacks on Israel, when the UN agency served as weapons storage facilities for Hamas’s predecessor.

It’s long past time for our own government to stop its timid finger-wagging and take more serious action about the UNRWA’s terrorist support than temporarily paus[ing] all additional funding to the agency and the moderately firm words of welcome[ing] the decision to conduct such an investigation and Secretary General Guterres’ pledge to take decisive action to respond, should the allegations prove accurate.

That more serious action should begin, but not stop, with formally announcing that, aside from permanently halting funding to this UN terrorism-supporting agency, all further statements by the UNRWA will no longer be heard and no action in response to them will be taken, and more concretely on the one hand, getting out of the way of Israel and letting that nation prosecute its existential defense in the war Hamas is waging, and on the other hand, actively supporting the nation in its defense for its own survival.