Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Survey: Majority of Americans See China as “Greatest Threat”

Wednesday, 01 December 2021 12:35
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, December 1, 2021:  

The results from the latest survey conducted by Beacon Research for the Ronald Reagan Foundation, which were released last week, confirmed the “momentous shift” by Americans toward China first uncovered by the Brookings Institution in March.

Three years ago, just 21 percent of those polled — one out of five Americans — considered China “the greatest threat to the U.S.,” according to Beacon. That percentage moved to 28 percent a year later, to 37 percent in February of this year, and now stands at 52 percent.

In other words, more than half of American citizens now, finally, recognize China as the nation’s greatest threat.

It’s been a long time coming. When former CFR member Michael Pillsbury wrote The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower in March 2016, it was still largely a secret. His thesis began to gain traction when his book became part of the 2017 U.S. Special Operations Commanders’ Reading List. It became a best-seller at the Washington Post while The New York Times called it a “lodestar … for those pushing for a more forceful response to the threat that China’s rise poses to the United States.”

The awakening was first announced by the Brookings Institution, part of the liberal establishment that has for years promoted the canard that if America treats China with respect, China will reciprocate. If the United States “plays nice” with the communists running that country, they will “play nice” back.

That lie has been exposed, and Americans are catching on.

As Gallup noted in March, “The share of Americans who see China as our greatest enemy has doubled in the past year, from 22% to 45%.” Pew Research Center reported at the same time that 67 percent of Americans “now have negative views toward China, up from 46% in 2018.”

After reviewing the various polls back in March, Brookings concluded:

It is evident that the past five years represent a hinge-moment in U.S. perceptions of Beijing. At the public as well as elite levels, the optimistic assumptions that guided our China policy for more than two decades have lost credibility.

One could argue that the lie was deliberate, but that is now beside the point. Beacon reports that more Americans consider the greatest threats come from within the country as a result of the infiltration of Chinese communists into American culture. 

It reports that Americans, in the next five years, fear

 

• Thermonuclear war (61 percent);

• Conventional military attack (55 percent);

• Cyber-attacks (88 percent);

• An attack on our space assets, such as satellites (61 percent);

• Terrorist attacks on the homeland (82 percent);

• Biological attacks on the homeland (78 percent); and

• Global pandemics (81 percent).

Nearly three out of four Americans (71 percent) fear a “war between the U.S. and China” in the next five years.

Most Americans think they know exactly where the present pandemic started, according to Beacon: 72 percent say it’s likely that “the coronavirus was developed by scientists working at a lab in Wuhan (China), but accidentally leaked, and that the Chinese government then hid and lied about the lead to international health public officials.”

Even Democrats aren’t immune to the revelations. In February, 20 percent of Democrats named China as a threat to the United States. Today, 44 percent of them do.

As Sun Tzu, the Chinese general and military strategist, wrote five centuries before the birth of Christ:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Americans are finally coming to know the enemy. And they want something to be done about it. As Brookings noted back in March, Americans want to place sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for human-rights violations, they want to strengthen relations with allies in the region, they want the U.S. government to prohibit the sale of high-tech equipment to China, and they want to prohibit Chinese involvement in building U.S. communications networks.

This reflects the “momentous shift” in Americans’ attitudes towards China first discovered by Brookings back in March and confirmed by Beacon Research last week.

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Backlash Forces Salvation Army to Withdraw “Let’s Talk About Racism” Guide

Monday, 29 November 2021 15:11
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 29, 2021:

The Salvation Army issued its “clarification” over its intentions for publishing and making public its “Let’s Talk About Racism” guide on Saturday. It was a non-apology:

Some individuals and groups have recently attempted to mislabel our organization to serve their own agendas. They have claimed that we believe our donors should apologize for their skin color, that The Salvation Army believes America is an inherently racist society, and that we have abandoned our Christian faith for one ideology or another.

 

Those claims are simply false, and they distort the very goal of our work.

There was no apology. No “upon careful reflection” we have summarily rejected any suggestion that the Salvation Army or its donors and supporters are racists. No “rejection” of the Marxist philosophy oozing from the guide that demands apologies from everyone who, by birth, is guilty of racism.

No. Instead, thanks to reviewers such as this writer at TheNewAmerican.com, “it has since become a focus of controversy.”

If there is any note of sorrow or error, it appears here in the Army’s non-apology:

We have done our best to provide accurate information, but unfortunately, some have chosen to ignore those efforts.

Nevertheless:

At the same time, International Headquarters realized that certain aspects of the guide may need to be clarified.

 

Consequently, for both reasons, the International Social Justice Commission has now withdrawn the guide for appropriate review.

The Army “remains undeterred in our mission … [that we and our] supporters know that ours is a message of love, even for those who disagree or attack us. That is the model set by Christ, and we strive to follow it every day.”

There was no attack. There was merely exposure. From the Army’s guidebook that is being withdrawn for “review,” one finds this:

 

The Salvation Army acknowledges with regret, that Salvationists have sometime shared in the sins of racism and conformed to the economic, organizational, and social pressures that perpetuate racism.

And so, rooting out latent racism in the Army has now been expanded to include rooting out that latent racism in everyone who was being born with a certain skin color:

The Salvation Army is a holiness movement … [which] includes embracing diversity … and rooting out racism, bias, and discrimination from our lives.

Part of that “rooting out” demands that Salvationists must “lament, repent, and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed,” according to the guide.

The Army is now suffering from an increasing awareness among its members and donors about its adoption of the Critical Race Theory and the bullying that goes along with it. As Christian radio show host Greg Koukl noted:

There is a massive number of academics — black and white, Christian and non-Christian, atheist and theist — who have raised the alarm against the aggressive indoctrination and, frankly, bullying of CRT — not to mention that racial essentialism inherent in that view, the false witness it bears against virtuous people, and the general destruction it continues to wreak on race relations in this country.

Those “certain aspects of the guide” that “may need to be clarified” by the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission, which issued the guide, should include identifying the underlying purposes of CRT: division, hatred, and the resulting need to recreate the culture into that of perfect communism: everyone is equal, by force.

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New York Times Declares Democrats Are in Trouble

Monday, 29 November 2021 15:08
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 29, 2021:  

The New York Times assigned four of its political journalists to see just how much trouble the Democratic Party is in, going into the midterms. On Saturday their verdict came in: serious, bordering on disastrous.

The party is not only losing the support of many of the its most loyal supporters, but it’s also losing the support of the critical independent voter who has traditionally supported the party.

The Times journalists reported that “Democrats across the party are raising alarms about sinking support among some of their most loyal voters … [because Biden and the Democrat Party] are falling short on campaign promises and leaving their base unsatisfied and unmotivated ahead of next year’s midterm elections.”

This, despite the expectation that passage of the massive trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and the House’s passage of the even larger “Build Back Better” bill would galvanize their support. Instead, reported the Times, “The president’s central promise of healing divisions and lowering the political temperature has failed to be fruitful.”

While RealClear Politics continues to chronicle the collapse in support for Biden, the damage he is doing to the vital independent voter support is staggering: “Among some of his core constituencies … [there are] double-digit declines among Black, Latino, female and young voters.”

Those voters are unimpressed with Biden’s so-called legislative “victories” and are instead dealing with everyday challenges such as rising inflation at the grocery store and the gas station and the controversy over who has the right to determine who will educate their children (and how).

The Times has a poll to prove their point:

According to a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, only about a third of white battleground voters think that either the infrastructure or the broader spending bill will help them personally.

The reporters’ conclusion was dismal:

The national environment looks difficult for Democrats, who [in addition] may lose seats in redistricting [as well as facing] the historical trend of a president’s party losing seats during his first term in office.

On the other hand, Republicans see what’s happening and are seizing the opportunity to turn out House Democrats next year. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) reported last Friday that, as of that date, nearly 1,000 Republicans have filed candidacy papers in 379 of the 435 House districts across the country, up significantly from the same time in 2019.

That number includes 196 women, 179 veterans, and 177 who are minorities. As Representative Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), chairman of the NRCC, exuded:

In this environment, no Democrat’s seat is safe, and vulnerable Democrats have a choice to make: retire, or lose.

As of this writing, 17 Democrats have done just that, raising further alarm bells for Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball published by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Said Coleman, “Swing district members like Ron Kind (D-Wisc.) [and] Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) leaving … [is] a potential warning sign for Democrats.”

This was echoed by Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the NRCC: “The writing is on the wall: Democrats’ majority is doomed, and smart Democrats are calling it quits while they still can.” 

The history of midterms doesn’t treat the president’s party kindly, especially one whose job approval ratings continue to decline. The party of a president with an approval rating under 50 percent loses an average of 37 House seats in the midterms, according to Gallup. Biden’s approval is anywhere from 36 to 45 percent, report the most recent polls. RealClear Politics reports its average is under 42 percent for Biden, versus 53 percent disapproving, an 11-point negative spread.

 

As Biden goes, so goes the Democrat Party. When Rasmussen quizzed 1,200 likely voters over whether they think Biden should run for reelection in 2024, less than a third agreed. They said that in a rematch with Trump, Biden would lose by double-digits, 45 to 32 percent. Among independents — the key Democrat demographic — Biden would lose, 47-20 percent.

The polling firm Fabrizio, Lee & Associates conducted a poll in five key “swing” states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — asking voters how they would vote in 2024. Trump won in a walk, by 12 points in Michigan, 10 points in Wisconsin, eight points in Arizona, six points in Pennsylvania, and three points in Georgia. This, it seems, would be more than enough to overcome even the most egregious voter manipulations conducted by the Democrat Party in those states. As Tony Fabrizio said, “This new data clearly shows that today the voters in these five key states would be happy to return Trump to the White House and send Biden packing.”

Even the poll from Redfield & Wilton Strategies showed Trump leading Biden in their rematch in 2024, the first time Trump has led Biden in their polling.

It’s no wonder that the New York Times can find no good news for Democrats in the midterms. There just isn’t any.

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Salvation Army Goes Woke; Demands Members, Donors Repent of Inherent Racism

Saturday, 27 November 2021 13:10
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, November 27, 2021:  

Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission shifted its attention to Critical Race Theory. In February this year, Brian Peddle, CEO and the 21st General of the Salvation Army, announced the shift in a video that he claimed would help “overcome the damage [that] racism has inflicted upon the world, and yes, The Salvation Army.”

In a guidebook titled Let’s Talk About Racism, the group claims that the new resource is designed “to fight the evil of racism and create a more just and equitable society.”

From the guidebook:

The Salvation Army acknowledges with regret, that Salvationists have sometime shared in the sins of racism and conformed to the economic, organizational and social pressures that perpetuate racism….

 

The Salvation Army is a holiness movement … [which] includes embracing diversity … and rooting out racism, bias and discrimination from our lives.

It declares that differences in “equity” prove that racism exists in the United States:

Many have come to believe that we live in a post-racial [colorblind] society, but racism is very real for our brothers and sisters who are refused jobs and housing, denied basic rights, and brutalized and oppressed simply because of the color of their skin.

Therefore, says the guide published by the Salvation Army, Salvationists must “lament, repent and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed.”

That’s because “the subtle nature of racism is such that people who are not consciously racist easily function with the privileges, empowerment and benefits of the dominant ethnicity [white], thus unintentionally perpetuating injustice.”

Example:

For instance, devout Christians who naively use racial epithets or a well-intentioned Sunday School curriculum that only uses white photography and imagery [are guilty of racism].

The initiative claims that differences in living standards and income are not attributable to individual effort and other circumstances, but to discrimination. Therefore, repentance is required even if not deserved, according to the Army’s new marching orders.

The organization, founded in 1865, received almost 60 percent of its $3.3 billion in donations from “direct public support,” including volunteers ringing bells and hosting stands holding those familiar red buckets. The group says it helps financially some 23 million American families every year and claims a worldwide membership of nearly two million supporters.

Longtime supporters recognize the insidious and divisive nature of Critical Race Theory that has been adopted by the Salvation Army, including Christian talk-show host Greg Koukl. In an open letter to the group, he wrote:

I recently became aware of your International Social Justice Commission material, “Let’s Talk about Racism.” I read virtually every word of the material in every session and surveyed your bibliography. It rapidly became clear to me that TSA has fallen for critical race theory lock, stock, and barrel….

 

To see that TSA has been taken in by the likes of Ibram X. Kendi (“How to Be an Anti-Racist”), Robin DiAngelo (the author of the thoroughly discredited “White Fragility”), and the (also thoroughly discredited) NYT “1619 Project” has my head spinning.

 

Your material’s baseless claim that “our foundations were built on racism” is beyond belief….

 

CRT is a Trojan horse taking in well-intentioned Christian enterprises that — because they care about justice and oppose oppression — naively promote the most serious threat to biblical Christianity I have seen in 50 years….

 

There is a massive number of academics — black and white, Christian and non-Christian, atheist and theist — who have raised the alarm against the aggressive indoctrination and, frankly, bullying of CRT — not to mention the racial essentialism inherent in the view, the false witness it bears against virtuous people, and the general destruction it continues to wreak on race relations in this country.

 

CRT has set us back 50 years.

As a result, Koukl, who has been a public advocate for the Army for years, is pulling his support:

I spoke at length about this on my radio show this week, inviting my audience to read your material for themselves and make their own judgments.

 

I told them, though, that as for me, I was redirecting my giving elsewhere. I am not “cancelling” you, as many in the CRT movement would gladly do to me. Rather, I am carefully investing my resources in organizations that I fully trust will serve Christ in truth and only in truth, and I no longer trust The Salvation Army to do that.

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Five Democrats Sink Biden’s Comptroller Nomination

Saturday, 27 November 2021 06:38
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 26, 2021: 

Just one Senate Democrat would have sunk the confirmation of Saule Omarova, Joe Biden’s nominee to be comptroller of the currency. Instead, she got five — Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). This, wrote Axios on Wednesday, “effectively kills her nomination.”

Every senator should have opposed her nomination. All Republicans would likely have voted against her if the Senate Banking Committee had moved her nomination to the floor. And every Democrat should have. In fact, the White House should never have offered her nomination in the first place.

But no. The powers that be want so desperately to change the United States into a carbon copy of the old Soviet Union, or Venezuela, that they continued to support her nomination even as it was sinking.

When three of the five senators — Tester, Warner and Sinema — told the committee’s chairman, Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), that they were bailing, he informed the White House that her nomination was, for all intents and purposes, dead in the water. The White House, fully under the control of leftists who are working to change America into a socialist state, continued to back Omarova: “The White House continues to strongly support her historic nomination. Saule Omarova is eminently qualified for this position.”

And then the White House spokesman told Axios: “She has been treated unfairly since her nomination with unacceptable red-baiting from Republicans like it’s the McCarthy era.”

“Red-baiting” is a disparaging term often used by communist sympathizers to deflect legitimate criticism of an individual harboring communist views in an attempt, often successful, of painting the accuser of being driven by xenophobic or fanatical right-wing ideologies. It’s an attempt at smearing opponents to communism and its forced imposition on America.

So, too, is the phrase the White House spokesman used — “like it’s the McCarthy era” — referring to legitimate attempts in the 1950s to expose communists who were infiltrating sensitive and influential agencies of the federal government. 

The senators were no doubt influenced by the letter they received from 41 state banking associations and the Independent Community Bankers of America. They might not have seen her as part of the plan to turn America into a socialist nightmare but they certainly saw that, if successful, private banking, and their profession, would disappear.

 

“We take this unusual step,” they wrote, “based on the nature of Prof. Omarova’s public positions and the impact they would have on community banks … [her] proposal [to eliminate all private banking in the United States] is anathema to community banks and would undermine the role they play in driving local economic activity and development.… [She] stands well outside of … consensus … and could seek as Comptroller to undermine it and thereby jeopardize American economic growth.”

They failed to mention her ultimate purpose, as exposed by the Wall Street Journal:

She proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumers’ bank deposits, effectively ending [private] banking as we know it. [Her plan would] become the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources … [just as] Venezuela and China are doing.

Senator Bill Hagarty (R-Tenn.) wasn’t so inhibited. He told Fox News:

President Biden’s choice for banking regulator is a Marxist academic who wants to destroy the American banking and energy sectors and implement socialism in the United States, proving once again that this White House is beholden to the radical left elements of the Democrat party.

Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), in a speech on the floor of the Senate, said:

There’s a lot that’s extraordinary and radical here — but maybe the heart of it is that Ms. Omarova doesn’t just want tightened regulation of banks. What she wants is to, and I quote — this is her words — “effectively end banking as we know it.” Those are words she wrote just last year.

Much has been written about her Marxist positions on banking. Something little known is her 2020 paper, “The Peoples’ Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy,” in which she offers a “blueprint for a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank’s balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance.”

She expanded on that theme in a lecture she gave in January 2021:

There will be no more private bank deposit accounts, and all of the deposit accounts will be held directly at the Fed.

 

And there are very interesting implications from that thought experiment; for example, with the much more direct and proactive tools of monetary policy, like helicopter money, which is, you know, considered radical, primarily because economists really do not know how to manage the issue of what would happen in the inflationary environment when the central bank needs to contract the supply of money.

 

How is it politically feasible for the central bank to effectively take money away from people’s accounts?

Her plan answers that question: The Fed could simply remove a quantity of those heretofore privately held dollars and thus “shrink” the money supply to fight inflation.

At this writing, the White House hasn’t officially announced that they are pulling her nomination, nor has Omarova decided that the battle is lost and officially withdrawn her nomination. But, for all intents and purposes, it’s over.

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Moderate Democrats Panicking Over 2022 and 2024

Wednesday, 24 November 2021 15:41
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 24, 2021:  

As Joe Biden continues to plummet in the polls, moderate Democrats are panicking about what’s increasingly likely to happen in 2022 and 2024.

First, the polls. Taking RealClear Politics as reliable, Biden is now 11 points underwater (53-42) on his job approval. Some polls are showing him 19 points underwater.

On the economy, he’s 18 points underwater; on immigration, 32 points; on foreign policy, 18 points; and on the 2022 generic congressional vote in 2022 Republicans hold a four-point advantage, with some polls showing more like 13 points favoring a generic Republican over a generic Democrat in the coming midterm elections.

For many Republicans, this is unalloyed good news. For moderate Democrats such as A.B Stoddard, it’s reason for panic, fear, and disbelief. Not that the Democrats’ surrender to the far left isn’t of concern. It’s the consequent rise of the specter of Donald Trump behind the scenes in 2022 and front and center in 2024 that has her worried.

Stoddard has the credentials of a moderate Democrat, having her views acceptable not only at MSNBC and CNN but Fox News as well. Covering the Senate since 1994, she has remained reliably centrist — although vehemently in her dislike for Trump — and now watches with horror at what the progressives are doing to her party.

She bought the line that Biden, having legitimately won (although by the slimmest of margins) the election in 2020, would “return the United States to a state of normalcy after the disruption, and destruction, of former President Trump.” But nothing is normal:

Voters already believe someone else should replace [Biden] on the ticket in 2024, only 10 months after he was inaugurated….

 

Approval ratings for Biden, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, are terrible. Throw in a GOP takeover of potentially both chambers of Congress next year … and you have the makings of a full party crack-up.

Biden is mentally unfit, as Stoddard reviews the latest polls. Especially unnerving is that “a new Harvard-Harris poll found 53% of voters doubt his mental fitness and 58% said he is too old to do his job.” (He turned 79 on November 20.)

She laments:

There is nothing reassuring about the oldest president to ever be elected promising three years out that he can handle a second presidential campaign, let alone a second term, when the odds are that he cannot.

And just who would take his place? Kamala Harris? Stoddard quotes former Democrat Senator Chris Dodd, a confidant of Biden, when he was asked about Harris: “I’m hoping the president runs for reelection, but [if] for whatever reason that might not be the case, it’s hard to believe there would be a short list without Kamala’s name on it. She’s the vice president of the United States.” As Stoddard noted, “If you are the vice president this is no small insult.” 

Stoddard warns that party insiders are already building a list of challengers to Harris, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. But then, she adds, “2022 is currently expected to be wipeout year for the [Democrat] party.”

 

She is already mourning the departure of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, either by choice or by ballot, calling it “an incalculable loss if Democrats are facing minority status with a lame-duck president.”

And she voices fears that, once in control, the Republicans will turn the tables on Biden, bringing charges of impeachment.

She is right to be more than nervous, according to Conrad Black, writing at The Epoch Times. Stoddard “cannot be contemplating the future she envisioned without a sense of revulsion if not terror.”

Any president who could withstand the withering and continuous attacks from the kept media is a force to be reckoned with. Wrote Black:

[Trump] astounded almost everyone by being nominated and elected, and was the subject of an unprecedented sand-bag job from the national political media, the D.C. governmental establishment, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the academy, major league sports, and was falsely accused of being a Kremlin agent by former intelligence directors, dragged through the muck of the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense for most of his term, and subjected to two spurious impeachments, one after he had left office.

 

His reelection was opposed by 95 percent of the media, he was de-platformed by the oligarchic social media cartel, and outspent two to one. Ultimately, a great deal of creative (and constitutionally questionable but never judicially judged) changes in voting and vote-counting in swing states, supposedly to accommodate the COVID pandemic was deployed against him, and with over 40 million harvested votes, he would still have won if only about 55,000 votes had flipped in Pennsylvania and any two of Arizona, Georgia, or Wisconsin.

He is likely to return, according to Black:

Despite the close and questionable election result, it was almost universally assumed by his more fervent detractors like Ms. Stoddard that he was a dreadful aberration who had gone and would not be back.

 

The astounding irony is that, after six years of this colossal political donnybrook, Trump is the likely early favorite for the next election and the winner of this great single warrior combat.

The Democrats are virtually handing control of Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024 to Republicans:

The new administration has been unprecedentedly incompetent even to those of us who feared the worst — millions of illegal migrants, sky-rocketing crime, inflation, and deficits, a very unresponsive president reduced to insipid pleadings to China and OPEC, a completely unfeasible vice president, a shambles in COVID policy, and in Afghanistan the worst and most humiliating fiasco in the history of the U.S. armed forces since General Hull surrendered Detroit to the Canadians and British in 1812.

 

Sophisticated military hardware worth $85 billion was abandoned to the incoming Taliban terrorist-tainted government.

 

The response of the Democrats and their media allies to this shambles is to construe every disagreement as racist, as in their disgraceful misrepresentation, from Biden down, to acquitted Wisconsin murder defendant Kyle Rittenhouse as a white supremacist vigilante.

In 2022 it will be all Republican, and in 2024 it will be Trump or someone he backs, says Black:

In over-reacting to Trump, a successful president, the Trump-haters largely delivered the great Democratic Party to a riffraff of socialists and are tied to a ludicrously inept regime that has little chance of avoiding Donald Trump’s electoral revenge: himself back again or a candidate he supports.

It’s no wonder that moderate Democrats such as Stoddard are in a state of panic. Barring a political miracle (either real or manufactured), Democrats are headed for destruction in 2022 and obliteration in 2024.

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Convicted Chinese Spy Just a Bit Player in China’s Plan for World Hegemony

Tuesday, 23 November 2021 16:57
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 23, 2021:

U.S. intelligence officials celebrated the conviction of the first Chinese spy to be extradited and tried on American soil: Xu Yanjun, a senior official with China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS). Said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen: “This conviction of a card-carrying intelligence officer for economic espionage underscores that trade secret theft is integral to [China’s] plans.… With the support of our allies we will continue to investigate, prosecute, and hold accountable those who try to take the fruits of American ingenuity illegally.”

Acting U.S. Attorney Vipal Patel added:

The jury, by its guilty verdict … held Xu accountable for his classic spy techniques.

 

Xu conspired to commit economic espionage on behalf of the Chinese government….

 

This office will continue to seek to protect American innovation and hold accountable those who attempt to steal our nation’s science and technology.

In making its announcement, the Department of Justice explained those “classic spy techniques”:

According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, beginning in at least December 2013, Xu used multiple aliases to target specific companies in the United States and abroad that are recognized as leaders in the field of aviation.

 

He identified experts who worked for the companies and [invited] them to travel to China, often initially under the guise that they were traveling to give a presentation at a university. Xu and others paid the experts stipends on top of covering travel costs.

 

According to today’s conviction, Xu attempted to steal technology related to GE Aviation’s exclusive composite aircraft engine fan — which no other company in the world has been able to duplicate — to benefit the Chinese state.

 

In March 2017, a GE Aviation employee in Cincinnati, Ohio, was solicited to give a report at a university in China. The employee traveled to China two months later to present at the university and was introduced to Xu. Xu and others paid the employee’s travel expenses and a stipend.

 

In January 2018, Xu requested “system specification, design process” information from the employee and — with the cooperation of the company, who was [now] working with the FBI — the employee emailed a two-page document from the company that included a label that warned about the disclosure of proprietary information.

 

In February 2018, Xu began discussing with the employee the possibility of meeting in Europe during one of the employee’s business trips and asked the employee to send a copy of the file directory for his company-issued computer.

 

Xu traveled to Belgium on April 1, 2018, to meet with the employee and was arrested at that time.

The mistake Xu made was agreeing to meet the company employee/FBI informant outside of China where he could be extradited to the United States for prosecution. He was convicted on five counts of espionage and is in jail awaiting sentencing. He could get up 50 years.

James Olsen, former chief of counterintelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and author of To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, celebrated the conviction but admitted that the CIA and other agencies “have been relatively ineffective [in] stopping the theft of technology and research and development information” by Chinese spies.

Olsen expects retaliation by the Chinese, who will want to get Xu back:

An American businessman or American journalist in China will be framed. [The regime will] fabricate a case against this person and rush him through a trial.

This will give the Chinese “trade bait.” Olsen added, “They’re probably looking at potential targets right now.”

Why would the Chinese want Xu back? Perhaps because of his high position in the Chinese spy apparatus, he could expose the vast network of spies that China has successfully inserted into the United States. As Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers said, “This case is not an isolated incident. It is part of an overall economic policy of developing China at American expense.”

Michael Pillsbury, in his 2016 book The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, exposes China’s plan to become the world’s hegemon by 2050. Part of that plan involves stealing technology from its arch-enemy, the United States.

Although Xu’s strategy of “invitation/flattery/bribery/blackmail” was “classic,” the Chinese regime also uses numerous other methods to obtain what it needs to overtake America and relegate her to second-class status in the world. It exploits commercial entities who want access to the Chinese market by demanding they give up essential secrets in order to do so. It has created a vast network of scientific, academic, and business contacts who are willing to sell out America for a price. It uses cyber-spying to penetrate the computer networks of U.S. businesses and government agencies. It uses its vast wealth to buy up American companies that have the technology Chinese manufacturers need and are unable to create themselves.

They use sex. Consider briefly the case of the Chinese spy Fang Fang, (aka Christine Fang), who pawned herself off as a student in California. As Wikipedia put it: “[Fang Fang has] since at least 2012 been cultivating contacts with California politicians who the Chinese government believed had promising futures in politics.” She slept with at least two mayors and connected with U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell, helping bundle campaign contributions for him in 2014, and inserting a Chinese spy into his office staff.

In July 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray called China the “greatest long-term threat” to the United States, and that “the FBI is now opening a new China-related counterintelligence case every 10 hours.” Of the nearly 5,000 active counterintelligence cases presently open, half of them are related to China.

Xu’s failed attempt to secure proprietary information from GE Aviation revealed that his role in the grand Chinese scheme to become the world hegemon was that of just a bit player. But his conviction reveals the level of infiltration China has already achieved in working toward its goal.

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Liberty Counsel Files Brief in Boston’s “Christian Flag” Controversy

Tuesday, 23 November 2021 16:52
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 23, 2021:  

In Liberty Counsel’s brief filed at the Supreme Court last week, it claimed that Boston’s denial of Camp Constitution’s request to fly the Christian flag violated both the First and the 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution:

When Camp Constitution applied to raise a flag during its flag raising event [on September 17, 2017] to celebrate the civic contributions of Boston’s Christian community, during the week of the national recognition of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, the City denied the request without viewing the flag solely because it was called “Christian” on the application.

Such a denial, said the brief, “conflicts with [the Supreme Court’s] precedents holding that speech restrictions based on religious viewpoint or content violate the First Amendment.”

There are three flagpoles in front of Boston’s City Hall. One of them flies the city’s flag (which depicts the City Seal, containing the inscription SICUT PATRIBUS, SIT DEUS NOBIS — “God be with us as He was with our fathers”). But frequently the city will allow outside groups to fly their own flags from it to celebrate various events.

Camp Constitution wanted to fly the Christian flag for about an hour while some pastors and the founder of the camp made brief presentations about the Christian influence on Boston’s history.

It was expected to be a slam dunk. After all, at no time in the previous 12 years had any of the 284 requests from other groups to fly their flags been denied. But, said Hal Shurtleff, the founder of the camp, “when our application was denied because we wanted to fly the Christian flag, we just simply could not let this go.” He said that it was the word “Christian” that forced the denial. Said Shurtleff, “The fact that we called it the Christian flag was anathema [to the city]. Our application was denied, and we called off the celebration.”

And they filed suit. With the help of Liberty Counsel they appealed lower courts’ support of Boston’s decision, which claimed that somehow the “government speech” being exercised by the city in its denial was not covered by the First Amendment. 

But the Bunker Hill flag to commemorate the Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill was allowed to be displayed, which is virtually identical to the Christian flag (except for reverse color schemes and a pine tree in the upper left corner).

 

In announcing the filing of the brief, Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said:

Liberty Counsel looks forward to presenting this nationally important case to the Supreme Court. It is indisputable that Boston denied the private flag raising solely because the application contained the word “Christian” before the word “flag.” It was this single word that resulted in the first censorship of a private flag raising application after 12 years with no denials.

 

Censoring religious viewpoints in a public forum where secular viewpoints are permitted is unconstitutional. This case will have a national impact. Religious viewpoints must not be excluded from the marketplace.

That is exactly the point made by the brief:

The City’s reason for denying Camp Constitution’s flag raising event was precisely and only because the City deemed the flag objectionable, because it was called a “Christian Flag” on the application, even though Camp Constitution’s purpose — to commemorate the contributions of one of Boston’s diverse communities to the City and the Commonwealth — otherwise fit perfectly with the City’s permitted subject matters according to the City’s purposes for allowing flag raisings.

 

The flag’s appearance was not objectionable to [the city], but the flag’s description as “Christian” on the application triggered the denial.

 

If the flag had not been described as “Christian,” [the city] would have approved it.

 

Because viewpoint discrimination is prohibited in a designated public forum, the City’s exclusion of Camp Constitution’s flag for its Christian viewpoint was unconstitutional.

Oral arguments begin before the high court in January with a decision expected to be rendered in June 2022.

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Internal Survey: More Than Half of NYPD Officers Wish They’d Never Joined

Monday, 22 November 2021 16:31
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 22, 2021: 

According to an internal survey just obtained by the New York Post, more than half of nearly 6,000 NYPD officers polled say they wish they’d never joined the department. Three out of four say that really outstanding officers don’t “receive appropriate recognition” for the work they do, while eight out of 10 said they aren’t supported by the department.

The combination of an anti-police mayor, a pro-criminal DA, a City Council determined to make life difficult for police officers, the “defund the police” movement, and the consequent rise of crime and attacks by communist BLM thugs has made life for the average police officer in the Big Apple difficult.

Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD sergeant and now a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said:

This doesn’t look good for [Mayor-elect Eric] Adams. Not only is he inheriting a lot of bad legislation from the City Council and Albany, it sounds like he is getting an apathetic police department.

 

I don’t blame the cops. DAs that don’t prosecute, feckless politicians … what can they do?

What they can do is move. And an increasing number are doing just that. As Giacalone noted:

New York City police officers are well past [their] breaking point, and [the mayor] and the outgoing City Council are still piling on with policies that punish cops and erode public safety.

 

The intolerable environment and our substandard pay have every cop looking to get out as soon as they can.

A dozen have moved to Lakeland, Florida, to take advantage of Florida Governor Ron Santis’ offer of a $5,000 signing bonus, scholarships to the law enforcement academy, and “relocation support” that includes an additional $1,000 to help pay for the Equivalent Training Program required of new officers moving to the state.

It helps enormously that Lakeland pays more than New York City ($53,000 a year to start compared to $42,000 in the city), and that neither Lakeland nor Florida levy an income tax. New York City and the state levies both. 

DeSantis rolled out the red carpet in announcing the recruiting program, saying “Florida values our law enforcement community.… NYPD, Minneapolis, Seattle, if you’re not being treated well, we’ll treat you better here: you fill important needs for us and we’ll compensate you as a result.”

 

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody added:

These recruitment initiatives demonstrate our appreciation and commitment to the men and women who choose to wear the badge and [they also] serve as a reminder … that we have their backs.

Florida State Representative Kelli Stargel joined in:

Here in Florida we stand with law enforcement and are thrilled to welcome any officer who wants to relocate to a community where you will be respected and valued.

This was sweet music to former NYPD Officer Matthew Soto, who took the offer to move to Lakeland. He recounted his conversation with the recruiter from Lakeland: “[He] said that you could park your police vehicle in front of your house and, to me, I thought that was mind-blowing. I used to have to lie about what I used to do [in New York City]. I used to have to tell people I was … a bartender because … I was ashamed to be a law enforcement officer.”

Patrick Lynch, president of New York City’s Police Benevolent Association, told the Post: “Many New York City cops are weighing our sub-standard salary against the ever-increasing challenges, scrutiny and abuse, and they’re voting with their feet.”

Spokane, Washington, is upping the ante over Florida, offering a $15,000 signing bonus to NYPD police officers looking to move. The sheriff said:

New York [City] was one of the heaviest areas [we recruited because] their local leaders really came out and did not support their law enforcement … actually disrespected them.

The sheriff, Ozzie Knezovich, purchased billboards in Times Square and has targeted unhappy officers in Portland, Seattle, Denver, and Austin, Texas. He needs 40 new recruits and the protests, the anti-police sentiment, and vaccine mandates are making his job easier.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and Indiana Senator Mike Braun are using their Twitter accounts to entice police officers looking to move. Dunleavy wrote: “Consider the 49th state, where we back the blue.”

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Police Officer Fired for Donating to Rittenhouse Defense Fund Wants Job Back

Monday, 22 November 2021 16:27
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 22, 2021: 

Norfolk, Virginia, police Lieutenant William Kelly wants his job back. He was fired back in April when BLM-supporting Norfolk Police Chief Larry Boone learned that Kelly had donated $25 anonymously to Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund. That was back when the world was certain that Rittenhouse, the “white supremacist,” had murdered people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020.

Because Kelly’s donation didn’t fit the narrative according to Boone, he was fired. Explained Boone:

His [Kelly’s] egregious comments erode the trust between the Norfolk Police Department and those they are sworn to serve. The City of Norfolk has a standard of behavior for all employees and we hold staff accountable.

Here is what Kelly wrote on the Christian crowd-funding site:

God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong. Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don’t be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership.

He was surprised to learn that the crowd-funding website had been hacked and that his anonymous donation and comments had been published by the left-wing Guardian. That roused the indignation of enough progressives to cause them to e-mail their outrage — not about the breach but about the disclosure — to Norfolk leaders demanding that they fire Kelly.

In an interview with The Daily Mail, Kelly explained why he made the donation:

I was interested in giving him [Rittenhouse] the chance to defend himself in front of a jury. I know that lawyers are expensive, and it’s hard sometimes to get the message out there. I wanted to make sure that he had the means necessary to make his claim in court. It mattered.

 

The comments I made, my belief that he has a strong claim for self-defense was a personal opinion. I didn’t want my city or police department to be associated with it, so I chose to donate anonymously.

His opinion carried weight:

I’ve been a homicide detective, a violent crimes investigator for years. I have a background.

 

I watched the video of the shooting and I’d seen the video of journalists of Mr. Rittenhouse before the shooting and the protesters before the shooting and I thought it painted a pretty clear picture that Mr. Rittenhouse had a very strong claim for self-defense.

Apparently none of this mattered to the BLM-supporting Boone. 

In his 25-page grievance filing, Kelly wrote:

 

I admit that I privately and anonymously, and solely as an individual and not as an employee of the City of Norfolk, donated $25 to a Kyle Rittenhouse legal defense fund, and posted a message to Kyle Rittenhouse offering emotional support, using a GiveSendGo account for which I registered using my City of Norfolk email address.

 

My donation to that fund, my message, and my association with the City of Norfolk was intended and expected to be private and anonymous, and became public information solely due to unlawful electronic hacking of the account by third parties and subsequent publication of information obtained through that hacking by news media.

 

Nothing in my message presented an impression that I was representing, giving opinions or otherwise speaking on behalf of the City of Norfolk.

He then exposed the staggering hypocrisy of his boss:

My dismissal reflects inconsistency, unfairness and discrimination by the City of Norfolk in regard to speech by members of the Norfolk Police Department.

 

I engaged in speech which was private and anonymous but became public through no fault of my own, and which, when made public, upset a small number of vocal people for a very short time.

 

The Chief of Police of the Norfolk Police Department [Larry Boone], in contrast, has been permitted to parade through the streets of Norfolk, wearing his Norfolk Police Department uniform, holding a “Black Lives Matter” sign while marching with a crowd protesting against police and law enforcement.

He told the Daily Mail:

The hypocrisy is dumbfounding. For the leader of our organization to be able to advocate support for a movement that is at the very least divisive in America today, in uniform while on duty … [the sign] he was holding carried the name of a person who had recently been shot by a Norfolk police officer.

 

The sign demanded justice for that person, but that shooting was still under investigation to determine whether or not that officer should be charged criminally. It’s very inconsistent.

 

Yet I cannot, off-duty, on my own time make a donation and some comments that are well within the realm of public, acceptable discourse?

His attorney filed the grievance in May. It’s now November. The Rittenhouse case is over. Kelly, who is married with three children, is living off of his savings and his wife’s salary as a schoolteacher.

All he wants is that precious commodity that is disappearing in America: justice. He’d like his job back. He’d like assurance that his pension will be vested. And it would be nice if Chief Boone apologized.

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Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann