Ambassadorships

Posted on 8 November 2019 by eehines

Unable to make a case against President Donald Trump for anything else that’s remotely impeachable, House Progressive-Democrats now are going to obsess over our erstwhile Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s removal from her post.

There are some questions that won’t be asked on this matter, though, whether by Congressman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) Star Chamber inquisitors or by anyone in the NLMSM.

Is an ambassadorship a lifetime sinecure?
Who appoints (subject to Senate confirmation) our ambassadors?
For whom does any ambassador work—what’s his chain of command?

And, given accurate answers to those questions,

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They’re Only Uighurs

Posted on 7 November 2019 by eehines

People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping and his government henchmen are sending their representatives to “sleep with” the wives of Uighurs whose husbands have been interred in the PRC’s concentration camps reeducation locations for the crime of being Muslim.

The excuse for this?

Party officials who are called “relatives” (but not actually related) visit Uighur families every two months, stay for up to a week, and in some reported instances, share a bed with the women, [Radio Free Asia] reported.

Because, says a PRC Government Man,

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Policing the World

Posted on 1 November 2019 by eehines

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D, HI) had an interesting campaign advertisement op-ed in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal. One campaign promise she made in it jumped out at me.

A Gabbard presidency would mean the end of trying to police the world….

Who does Gabbard think would police the world if we don’t? Can she really believe that a police-less world would be benign, or that our enemies won’t divide up the policing among themselves explicitly for their benefit and just as explicitly for our detriment? Or that their squabbling among themselves over the spoils won’t spill over into serious regional or even global conflict?

This is a preview of Policing the World. Read the full post (142 words, estimated 34 secs reading time)

Doctorings

Posted on 31 October 2019 by eehines

And we have to learn about this from a German newspaper. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council functionary in the Trump administration, appeared in Congressman and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) Star Chamber earlier. Among other things, he claimed, on the matter of asking Ukraine to investigate corruption, including Burisma’s and the Bidens’ possible roles in the corruption,

was “inappropriate.” It “had nothing to do with national security,” he said he told [US Ambassador to the EU Gordon] Sondland.

This is a preview of Doctorings. Read the full post (314 words, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

PRC Personal Savings Rate

Posted on 31 October 2019 by eehines

James Areddy had an extensive article on this in a recent Wall Street Journal. It seems that the personal savings rate of People’s Republic of China’s citizens peaked around 2010 and has been trailing off ever since. Areddy posited a number of reasons for this, and why it’s likely to continue. Chief among them is the usual suspect of an increasingly less poor, if not increasingly prosperous, population wishing to live better rather than save more. Another major reason seems to be the PRC’s one-child policy, lately relaxed legally, but not socially. With fewer kids in the family, there’s less reason for parents to save against those kids’ future.

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Leverage

Posted on 24 October 2019 by eehines

Since so many American businesses—Apple, Alphabet, the NBA, to name a few—put their individual fiscal game ahead of American values, especially regarding Hong Kong and its citizens ongoing struggle for their own liberties (which just happen to lie at the core of our values), here are some thoughts on the fiscal value of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China.

Since 1997, mainland Chinese companies have raised $335 billion by floating in Hong Kong, tapping a broader range of shareholders than they could onshore.
…since the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to its US equivalent, and the city has no capital controls, a listing there can generate hard currency for foreign takeovers and investments. It would be harder to use a Shanghai stock sale for the same goal.

This is a preview of Leverage. Read the full post (502 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Warren’s Assault on Hydrocarbons

Posted on 23 October 2019 by eehines

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) want so ban new leases for oil and gas drilling offshore and on Federal lands, and she wants to ban fracking altogether. This assault on our national energy underpinnings would have far-reaching negative outcomes.

domestic natural-gas prices would jump to somewhere between $9 and $15 per million BTUs from last Friday’s $2.32
oil would rise to the $80-to-$85 range and could run to $150 during market shocks from last Friday’s $53.78
entire oil-field service companies would become obsolete
pipeline owners would suffer without replenishment, as existing wells peter out

This is a preview of Warren’s Assault on Hydrocarbons. Read the full post (249 words, estimated 1:0 mins reading time)

Threat

Posted on 13 October 2019 by eehines

Turkey’s President Recep Erdoğan is telling us and Europe to sit down and shut up about his invasion of Kurdish Syria, or he’ll loose millions of Syrian refugees on Europe. He especially objects to the way the EU is characterization his invasion:

Hey EU, get your act together. If you try to describe our current operation as an occupation, our task will be simple. We will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way.

The irony here is simple. If Europe actually respected Union and national borders, this would be a toothless threat.

This is a preview of Threat. Read the full post (139 words, estimated 33 secs reading time)

Courage Under Fire

Posted on 12 October 2019 by eehines

Republic of China’s President Tsai Ing-wen, against the background of the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s abuse of Hong Kong citizens through his Hong Kong police, his functional abrogation of the solemnly agreed treaty with Great Britain governing the handover of Hong Kong to the PRC, and his parallel functional reneging on his government’s “one country, two systems” pretense vis-à-vis that city, has spoken against the PRC’s pretense of that toward her nation.

That framework, she noted, has brought Hong Kong to the brink of disorder.

This is a preview of Courage Under Fire. Read the full post (256 words, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

Hong Kong Police out of Control?

Posted on 8 October 2019 by eehines

Or is it President Xi Jinping’s staff member, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who’s out of control? Or has she simply lost control?

First, the police shot, at point blank range, an 18-yr-old student (and arrested him for his role in the shooting), during the then-latest round of violence that Lam’s police have been provoking with their approved-thug attacks, water cannon, pepper spray, cudgels, brandished firearms, and then shooting those firearms into the air.

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Category Archives: foreign policy