Month: April 2023
DR. STEVE TURLEY: GOP Attorneys Are Conspiring to INDICT BIDEN!!!
Rockets Blast Israel After Brutal Attacks At Al Aqsa Mosque
Kim discusses the Israeli occupation with Jamal Dajani, a Peabody award-winning journalist/ producer and co-founder of Arab Talk Radio https://www.facebook.com/ArabTalkRadio/. He is a Palestinian/American with decades of experience in geopolitical analysis. Dajani has a documentary called, “Occupied Minds" available for free online https://www.linktv.org/shows/occupied...
China makes major threat after wrongdoing of US-Taiwan collusion
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., discusses China's response following Speaker McCarthy's meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, the White House downplaying intelligence from the spy craft mission and Trump's indictment.
Nancy Pelosi heckled by crowd members at NYC event~Fox News contributor Charlie Hurt weighs in on war funding and why he thinks war will be a central issue in the 2024 election
Nobody Likes Joe Biden: Poll Shows Biden Near Record Low Approval
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Amid all the excitement over the arrest of Donald Trump and the destruction of our republic, once again the public’s attention has been diverted away from just how badly the Biden regime is doing its job. Unless, of course, its primary job has been demonizing and destroying the possibility of political dissent in the United States, in which case it’s doing great. Americans are, nonetheless, noticing in large numbers that Old Joe Biden has been about as effective a president as Nancy Pelosi has been an effective spokesperson for sobriety. Biden, despite continuing to read off his teleprompter at every opportunity about what a terrific job he is doing, is reaching record lows in a new poll.
Fox News reported Wednesday that most Americans don’t think much of Old Joe, and haven’t for a considerable period: the putative president’s “job performance rating has mostly held steady for more than a year and currently stands at 44% approve vs. 56% disapprove in the latest Fox News national survey. That’s a net negative of 12 points. The last time that he received positive marks was September 2021, and that was by 1 point (50%-49%).” It’s amazing, in light of the disaster that his alleged presidency has been since its very first day, that he ever had positive approval ratings, but it’s no surprise that he has remained in the doldrums for so long now.
Pollster Daron Shaw explained, “Biden’s numbers cratered in the fall of 2021 after the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle and the onset of hyperinflation. Since then, his approval has barely moved, despite a midterm election, economic ups and downs, and several legislative policy rollouts.” That’s understandable. By the time of the woke military’s catastrophically mishandled withdrawal from Afghanistan, the American people knew what they were getting from Old Joe: socialism, stagnation, open borders, rising crime, skyrocketing inflation, and relentless, repeated efforts to circumvent and destroy the First Amendment and criminalize political dissent in the country formerly known as the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. What’s astonishing, really, is not the Biden regime’s low polling numbers; it’s that there is still anyone who voices support for the dementia-ridden corruptocrat.
Fox noted that Biden was scraping the bottom with numerous important groups: “Approval of the president hovers at a low point among several key voting groups, including women (43% now vs. 42% low), voters ages 45+ (41% vs. 39% low), suburban voters (41% vs. 39% low), rural voters (31% vs. 30% low) and Democrats (81% vs. 78% low) – Democratic men in particular (79% vs. 78% low). He’s at a low mark of 41% approval among suburban women.” Women, mind you, are supposed to love Old Joe for his oft-repeated determination to sweep aside all restrictions to sacrificing one’s children to Moloch. Yet this enthusiastic support somehow isn’t showing up.
What’s more, “majorities of voters disapprove of Biden’s performance on each of these issues: 53% disapprove of national security, 54% on foreign policy, 60% on border security, and 64% disapprove of how he’s handling the economy.” Does that mean over 30% of Americans actually approve of our essentially nonexistent Southern border and the smoking ruin that is the American economy? If this poll is accurate, that’s solid testimony to the low standards of the Leftist-controlled American educational system these days.
Related: Biden’s Approval Falls Near the Lowest of His Presidency
The news is, oddly enough, not all bad for The Dumpster-Fire President: the poll asserts that “seventy-four percent approve of his executive order requiring criminal background checks on gun buyers,” which is part of the Left’s larger plan ultimately to disarm the American people. Paradoxically, at the same time, the poll respondents like Biden’s tacking to the Right and, at least temporarily, moving away from his fanatical and destructive green agenda: “54% approve of the administration moving forward with the Willow Project, an oil drilling plan in northern Alaska.”
All in all, Biden’s handlers should greet this poll as a great victory. In light of the fact that Old Joe is solidly on track to go down in history as the worst president ever, the poll shows surprisingly high levels of approval for the doddering kleptocrat who serves as their frontman. That’s testimony to the power of propaganda: every day the establishment media behaves as if Biden were a reasonable president doing a reasonable job, and it doesn’t inform the American people about the threats to the First Amendment, or the Second, or to our freedoms in general. It’s only due to the nagging intrusion of ever-rising gas and food prices and all the other daily troubles that Americans must endure that Biden has scored so low in this poll: despite all the media propaganda, reality keeps breaking through.
This Week In Jihad: Ramadan Iftar Edition with David Wood and Robert Spencer
BRICS Nations To Issue NEW Currency BACKED BY GOLD To Further Weaken The US Dollar
Mark Levin: New York’s Bragg should be disbarred; Atlanta’s Willis ‘a hack’
Sean Hannity: Trump arraignment ushers in dark era in America’s justice system
Biden Wants Us to Sit In the Dark For Climate Change~Darkness Descending Upon America as Biden Bans Incandescent Light Bulbs
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Old Joe Biden and his sinister handlers are doing just what they threatened to do. On July 5, 2020, Old Joe’s Twitter ghostwriter tweeted: “We’re going to beat Donald Trump. And when we do, we won’t just rebuild this nation — we’ll transform it.” They have done so. They have transformed the nation that was once known as the leader of the free world into a crime-ridden, open-borders free-for-all where opponents of the regime are arrested on bogus charges. Meanwhile, there seems to be nothing that Biden’s handlers won’t do in order to torment Americans and fill their lives with petty annoyances: now they are banning incandescent light bulbs. What’s next? FBI agents standing on street corners and poking us with sharp sticks?
Fox News reported Saturday that Biden and his henchmen are “preparing to implement a sweeping nationwide ban on commonly used light bulbs as part of its energy efficiency and climate agenda.” Yes, the nation is going to go dark because of a hysterical junk science myth. “No credible scientific body,” wrote energy and environmental researcher Michael Shellenberger in 2019, “has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization, much less the extinction of the human species.” In fact, the whole idea that temperatures are rising to catastrophic levels is based on circular reasoning. But the Biden regime is all in on the climate change myth, and as always, ordinary Americans are the ones who have to pay the price.
You may recall that we have been here before. Barack Obama banned incandescent light bulbs, and the Trump administration rolled back that ban in Sept. 2019. Fox notes that the Department of Energy (DOE) devised the new restrictions to reverse Trump’s action back in April 2022, meanwhile, and adds that Trump himself “was also personally opposed to LED light bulb adoption, remarking in 2019 that they are often more expensive, not good and make him ‘look orange.’” Ah, so that’s it! How can we all properly hate the Left’s Emmanuel Goldstein if we keep seeing him in lighting that doesn’t show him as Bad Orange Man?
The new rules go into effect on Aug. 1, so you still have some time to stock up on good light bulbs, if you can find any. According to Fox, the DOE “will begin full enforcement of the ban on that date, but it has already urged retailers to begin transitioning away from the light bulb type and, in recent months, begun issuing warning notices to companies.” The way the Biden regime is going, if a store is selling incandescent light bulbs after Aug. 1, watch for ATF or FBI agents to come bursting through the door, armed to the teeth, pointing their guns at dumbfounded, slack-jawed clerks and screaming: “Throw down your light bulb and back away from the cash register!”
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm assures us that all this petty authoritarianism is for our own good: “The lighting industry is already embracing more energy-efficient products, and this measure will accelerate progress to deliver the best products to American consumers and build a better and brighter future.” Yeah, authoritarian socialist regimes that arrest their political opponents are always building toward a better future, but it never seems to arrive. Journalist Mindy Robinson tweeted Sunday: “They can make lightbulbs that would last longer than I’ll be alive…but they won’t do it because ‘repeat business.’ Now this tyrannical regime wants to ban incandescents and push LEDs…which are garbage, distort colors, and give people like me headaches.”
Related: Get Ready to Stink for Climate Change, Thanks to Biden’s New Washing Machine Rules
Rising gas prices, rising food prices, rising crime, and now enforced harsh lighting in order to feed the regime’s climate fantasies. Are Biden’s handlers intentionally trying to annoy the American people? If they actually had that as a goal, would they be doing anything different from what they’re doing now? It is a constant of history: the Leftist regimes that are the most inhuman and inflict the most suffering upon their own citizens are those that most loudly proclaim how dedicated they are to the welfare of the people and how humane and democratic they are.
That’s why the Soviet Union was the workers’ paradise and the appalling hellscape that North Korea calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Biden’s America is not quite that far along yet; we just have the corrupt and authoritarian kleptocrats in Washington constantly nattering at us about how they’re saving “our democracy.” Sure they are. That’s why they’re nodding in approval as the leading critic of the regime is arrested on charges that wouldn’t have gotten anyone else arrested. As we sit in darkness or harsh institutional lighting in our apartments and eat our bugs, we can contemplate how selfless and wonderful the guardians of our democracy really are.
Massachusetts School Official’s Job Offer Rescinded Because He Called Two Women ‘Ladies’
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
The good little Maoist conformists of the Easthampton Public School District in Western Massachusetts dodged a bullet Thursday: they had very nearly hired a wrong thinker, an unenlightened, non-woke individual who was even a cis white male as their new superintendent. But just in time, the school district was saved: the sinister candidate committed an offense against all that is good and holy, and the job offer that had been extended to him was summarily rescinded. The errant near-superintendent’s crime? He called a couple of women “ladies.”
I apologize for not affixing a trigger warning to the immediate beginning of this article. I realize that you likely read that unguardedly, unaware of the enormity of the offense that had been committed. If you need counseling now, I certainly understand. It isn’t every day that one comes across such a flagrant crime against decency as this one, and the shock is indeed severe. The Daily Hampshire Gazette, a paper that publishes out of Northampton, Mass., reported Saturday that a man named Vito Perrone was a finalist for the job of superintendent and indeed, had actually been offered the job before he committed the unpardonable offense that led to the job offer being withdrawn.
Perrone “said Friday that the School Committee rescinded its offer to hire him in executive session Thursday night, alleging that the reason was a perceived microaggression contained in an email he sent to the committee chairperson.” The process of his hiring was so far along that he had already entered into salary negotiations with the district, “after he was offered the position the morning of March 24.” The Easthampton School Committee “offered Perrone a three-year contract with an annual salary of $151,000 — approximately $14,000 less than what he has made [sic] as an interim superintendent of West Springfield Public Schools.” Yet “despite the lower salary, he said he was keen on accepting the role.” He seemed like a good catch for Easthampton. But then he sent the fateful email.
Perrone recounted: “This job was not about the money for me. I honestly felt like I was coming home to Easthampton. I coached football here. I was the principal here when we built the school. I have such wonderful memories … I was excited to come back.” But as the contract negotiations went on, Perrone sent an email to School Committee Chairperson Cynthia Kwiecinski and the committee’s executive assistant, Suzanne Colby. In it, he addressed Kwiecinski and Colby as “ladies,” and all hell broke loose.
Kwiecinski, according to Perrone, charged that his use of the word “ladies” constituted a “microaggression,” and he should have known better. His clumsy word choice demonstrated his dangerous ignorance: “The fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem.” Understandably, Perrone was dumbfounded at this woke lunacy: “I was shocked. I grew up in a time when ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ was a sign of respect. I didn’t intend to insult anyone.” But that’s how authoritarian societies work: you never quite know the rules, which are constantly changing anyway. That way the citizen is always living in fear and always on his toes, extra careful not to offend the elites, who could strike against him without warning at any time. A fearful populace is a compliant populace.
Related: Boston School Latest to Ask Young Kids About Their Sex Lives
Kwiecinski has remained resolutely mum about this entire ridiculous (and ominous) incident, but Perrone thought it was important to clear the air: “I don’t want people to think I was not willing to negotiate in good faith. I have chosen not to just leave it as ‘negotiations stalled.’ I would rather share my truth, my sadness, and disappointment and try to find a way forward positively.”
While his disappointment is understandable, it’s really Perrone, and not the Easthampton Public School District, who has dodged the bullet here. Imagine having to work on a day-to-day basis with these woke harridans. It would be like living Kafka’s The Trial, in which the protagonist is charged with a crime but never told exactly what he is accused of having done. “Honestly,” Perrone reiterated, “I am truly, truly disappointed that I won’t be in Easthampton in that building. I’m just sad.” He should be dancing a jig, were it not for the fact that pretty much anywhere that he does ultimately get a job is likely to present him with the same humorless, censorious, and unforgiving Leftist environment.
UK schools don’t tell parents when kids ‘change gender,’ force classmates to accept gender swaps
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Transgenderism is now deeply entrenched institutionally in Western countries, many times against the rights of children and their parents. The degree of its rapid advance is troubling.
How could such a violation of rights happen so quickly? Where were level-headed teachers in schools, not only in Britain but across the board? Perhaps they were bullied and intimidated into silence. Concerned parents, too, for that matter.
Transgender activism is being endorsed by woke governments all over the West, while defenseless children are left unprotected and vulnerable to abuse. While governments have placed restrictions on children driving, consuming alcohol, and to voting, woke governments are enabling children who say they identify as the opposite gender to be pumped full of hormones, while their bodies are being changed before they could ever understand the magnitude and implications of what is being done to them.
It is past due that Britain’s Department for Education halt this abusive practice. Ditto for other countries.
“English Schools Not Telling Parents If Kids Switch Gender, Require Other Kids to Accept Gender Swaps,” by Jack Montgomery, Breitbart, March 31, 2023:
Research suggests a majority of English schools are not reliably informing parents when children change gender, and are requiring other pupils to go along with supposedly trans classmates’ gender swaps.
Citing previous research that “found that one in four young people (18-20) identify as LGBT”, a report by Policy Exchange said it was likely that “many school leavers [were] exploring their identity at school” — and raised questions about “the appropriateness of current RSHE” — Religious and Sexual Health Education — “and the impact of this teaching on children’s beliefs about their own sex and gender.”
Using the Freedom of Information Act, the think tank asked a representative sample of 304 schools a range of questions regarding supposedly transgender pupils, including whether they inform parents of the gender their children are adopting at school, how gender transitions are facilitated with respect to, for example, single-sex sports, changing rooms, and toilet facilities, and how gender issues are taught in class.
Ninety-one schools did not respond and three refused to respond, compared to 154 which responded “either fully or in part” — with a further 56 special schools excluded from the data “on the basis that many of the issues raised are not applicable or relevant” to them.
Policy Exchange found that fully 62 per cent of schools were not reliably informing parents if their children were transitioning, with a further 10 per cent providing “insufficient detail” — and an even higher 69 per cent of schools required all pupils to “participate” in the social transition of transgender pupils.
Another 18 per cent provided “insufficient detail” as to whether or not accepting transgenderism was mandatory, with only 13 per cent claiming they did not require pupils to indulge their trans peers…..
Israel hits Hamas weapons factories and jihad terror training camps after rocket barrage from Gaza
BY
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) destroyed Hamas weapons factories and other terrorist targets inside Gaza after a barrage of rockets was fired into southern Israel.
The targets belonging to the Islamic terror organization Hamas included weapons facilities and terrorist training camps. “Hamas Radio said the Israeli strikes hit two training camps,” the Israel Hayom newspaper reported Wednesday.
The rocket attacks were carried out by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iran-funded terrorist group that enjoys the protection of Hamas in Gaza. “Some 16-18 rockets were fired into southern Israel, most of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system or landed in open fields,” the Israeli news website Ynet reported. “Military sources said the rockets were launched by the Islamic Jihad faction,” the outlet confirmed.
“IAF strikes Gaza in response to rockets fired after al-Aqsa clashes,” by Tzvi Joffr, Jerusalem Post, April 5, 2023:
The IAF targeted two Hamas weapons manufacturing and storage sites in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning after 10 rockets were fired in three waves from the Gaza Strip towards the Sderot area and Yad Mordechai in response to clashes that broke out at al-Aqsa on Tuesday night, according to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.
It later also struck a military compound and multiple military positions controlled by the terrorist organization.
Palestinian factions in Gaza fired surface-to-air missiles at the Israeli aircraft carrying out the strikes, according to Palestinian reports. Rocket sirens sounded in Sderot and in Mabu’im, near Netivot, during the strikes.
One of the rockets fired overnight hit a factory in the Sderot industrial zone, five fell in open areas and the rest were intercepted by the Iron Dome.
The Gaza-based terrorists fired rockets aimed at Israeli towns and cities as angry Palestinians on Tuesday went on a rampage inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. They were enraged at the prospect of Jewish worshipers visiting the holy site during the Passover.
“On Tuesday night, dozens of masked youths barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque atop the Temple Mount with fireworks, clubs, and rocks following evening prayers, while locking the doors and placing barricades at the entrances, police said,” The Times of Israel reported. “This was an apparent preparation for Jewish visits to the Mount on Wednesday, which is Passover Eve,” the news outlet added.
Silent War Ep. 6308: Final Censorship, DOLLAR DEATH & BANKRUNS – THE SYSTEM IS COLLAPSING
DR. STEVE TURLEY: Media HUMILIATED as Trump Indictment IMPLODES!!!
The Trump ‘POTUS 47 Revenge Tour’ Just Kicked Off Early
BY STEPHEN KRUISER
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Top O’ the Briefing
Happy Wednesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Researchers never did come up with a name for Feldman’s pathological insistence that most people were Justin Timberlake in disguise.
So, did anything happen in the news in the last 24 hours?
America’s banana republic malaise hit a new low with the indictment of former President Donald Trump for, well, nothing. Yesterday’s photo-op circus may have provided some red-meat entertainment for the frothing Democrat hordes, but people who aren’t blinded by a toxic combination of ignorance, hate, and daddy issues know it was a sad day for the Republic.
Here’s the beginning of Athena’s post on said circus:
In a historic first of shredded norms and judicial weaponization — at least in the formerly exceptional United States — a former president and current front-running presidential candidate has been arraigned on criminal charges.
Donald Trump arrived in New York City on Monday to face charges conjured up by Soros-backed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg through a grand jury process in the near-universally Trump-hating city. The former president spent the night in his luxurious upscale quarters in the landmark Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.
Trump will always have luxurious digs to return to, while Alvin Bragg will only have the half-eaten sandwiches he leaves strewn about his workplace when he gets distracted.
For the near future, Bragg will have enough smoke blown up his sizeable backside to think that this is a victory for him. In the long run, this won’t play out well for Soros’s pet. As many of us here have written, Bragg is galvanizing support for Trump. The end game for the Dems was to keep Trump off of the 2024 ballot. None of Bragg’s kangaroo court antics will be able to do that. If he gets convicted while in office, the Democrats will finally have the supersized constitutional crisis that they’ve been trying to manufacture for years.
Bragg keeps telling us that he’s got some new magical mystery evidence that everyone who passed on prosecuting Trump didn’t have. Adding to the lunacy of it all, the crime is also a magical mystery. This is from Paula’s post on Bragg’s press conference:
Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney, told host Neil Cavuto that “the case should be dismissed and actually should be dismissed quickly.”
“But I think this is actually worse than what we anticipated,” he added. “Because what we anticipated was that they were trying to bootstrap a misdemeanor, which, by the way, they’d have a good deal of difficulty proving if it was just a misdemeanor. But they need to show that he concealed another crime in supposedly falsifying the business records.”
“And what we’ve thought up until now is that they were — he was going to use that as an avenue to enforce federal campaign [law],” said McCarthy. “But he’s got to tell us what he’s planning to do. And more importantly, he’s got to tell Donald Trump. So I think this indictment, even before you get to the statute of limitations and whether he’s got jurisdiction to enforce federal law, I would dismiss it on its face because it fails to state a crime.”
So there’s that.
As we are all too painfully aware, if this ends up in front of a liberal activist judge, the law really isn’t going to come into play. There will be more kangarooism (I’m coining that word for all Dem-induced legal proceedings against Trump) until the case moves to an adult court and gets flushed down the toilet.
Kevin wrote something yesterday that was both a brutal takedown of President LOLEightyonemillion and a bit of a pep talk for people over here on the American side of the aisle:
Is this the end? Not a chance.
As Rush Limbaugh presciently predicted, regardless of what happens to Trump, patriotic Americans aren’t going anywhere. In fact, we were here before Trump came down the escalator.
And Trump isn’t going anywhere either. Our greatest battle lies ahead.
First, I congratulate you. You lost your job or business because fascist Fauci needed to flex his impotence and lock us down. You watched your mother die on Zoom because she wasn’t allowed to take ivermectin—and you weren’t allowed into the hospital to say goodbye—all for a virus that more than 99% of Americans would survive. And yet you didn’t lose your cool.
Keep up that American spirit. You need it now more than ever—and we need you. Let the Marxists hoist their appletinis and cheer Trump’s arrest tonight. We have work to do.
Imagine Kevin giving that speech in the style of Bluto in Animal House and you’ll be primed for battle.
I have been writing for a while now that the Democrats don’t have the slightest clue about how this is going to work out for them. They’re cocoon people who believe that the hive mind they wallow in is all of reality. They demonize us so they can be more easily dismissive of what we believe.
And they’ve also been working overtime to shut us up, especially the last three years. Our VIP friends keep the rabid First Amendment haters on the left from having their way with us. You can join us right now for the battle ahead for a whopping 50% off by subscribing here and using the promo code WITCHHUNT. We’d love to have you along for the ride. Yeah, it’s going to be bumpy until next year, but we promise to make the trip as pleasant as we can for you.
Please consider subscribing to the Morning Briefing here. It’s free and it helps keep me off the streets.
The Mailbag of Magnificence contributions can be sent to morningbriefing@pjmedia.com.
Everything Isn’t Awful
Trump Judge Is Biden Donor, Daughter Is Dem Political Pro
Conflict of Interest: Trump Judge Is Biden Donor, Daughter Worked on Biden-Harris Campaign
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Back in the days when there was equal justice for all in the United States, there was this concept known as “conflict of interest”: if someone involved in, say, a legal case had shown clear evidence of favoring one side or another, that was considered to be a disqualifying factor. Now, however, in these exhilarating days of justice of the woke, by the woke, and for the woke, the old rules just don’t apply. If a presidential candidate opposes the regime, he is liable to be arrested for old misdemeanor charges that are suddenly new again and are now turbocharged felonies. If the judge in the case is obviously biased against him, so much the better.
The judge in Donald Trump’s case is Acting New York County Supreme Court Justice Juan Manuel Merchan, about whom our Townhall colleague Mia Cathell has made some interesting discoveries:
“According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, Merchan donated three times to ActBlue in the summer of 2020, once on July 26, 2020, when the judge’s donation was—according to the FEC—earmarked for President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. The other two of Merchan’s contributions were pledged to the Progressive Turnout Project (PTP), a left-wing PAC that rallies voter turnout for Democrat candidates, and Stop Republicans, a PTP sub-project that’s dedicated to ‘resisting’ Trump and the Republican Party.”
Does all this mean that Merchan won’t be able to judge Trump fairly? Not necessarily. But it certainly makes it less likely.
But wait, there’s more. Breitbart reported Tuesday that Judge Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is “president and partner of Authentic Campaigns, a company that runs digital campaigns for Democrat candidates, according to Merchan’s archived LinkedIn account.” Loren Merchan “worked as the ‘Director of Digital Persuasion’ for ‘Kamala Harris For The People’ from February 2019 through December 2019 — which was during the 2020 presidential election. And according to the company’s website, the ‘Biden-Harris’ campaign was also a client.” So were the campaigns of Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker, Gavin Newsom, and a host of other Leftists.
It’s clear that, for the Trump trial, Merchan’s deep involvement with the Leftist elites is not a bug but a feature. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s case couldn’t possibly be thinner. As Andy McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney, stated, “This indictment, even before you get to the statute of limitations and whether he’s got jurisdiction to enforce federal law, I would dismiss it on its face because it fails to state a crime… This is the heart of the case. It’s not a felony unless he was trying to conceal another crime and if you don’t tell them what the crime is, how does that put him on notice and allow him to prepare his defense?”
The perfect judge for such a Kafkaesque case would be one who is so ferociously partisan that the weakness of the case hardly matters because the outcome has been predetermined.
Is Judge Merchan that judge? He may end up being as impartial as the day is long, but if Bragg and his henchmen wanted to make sure that the judge, in this case, was as sympathetic to the prosecution as possible, Merchan’s donation history and daughter’s activities certainly made him an appealing candidate for the job.
Related: DA Bragg Begins Trying Trump in the Court of Public Opinion in Press Conference
So could Trump be convicted? It’s a real possibility. Patriotic observers are concentrating on the weakness of Bragg’s case and the legal legerdemain involved in it, but all that is ultimately beside the point if Merchan turns out to be as desperate to get Trump as Bragg obviously is. Those who have accordingly argued that the case should be moved out of New York City have a point; in Manhattan, it will be easy for Bragg to find a jury of twelve people who hate Trump even more than he himself does, and the former president’s chances of a fair trial will be reduced even more.
Here yet again, we are in uncharted territory. Many have observed that the indictment and arrest of Trump take us into banana republic territory, and it is precisely for that reason that supporters of Trump, and those who aren’t so fond of Trump but realize how dangerous this whole affair is, should not be so sure that the whole case will eventually founder. Stalin didn’t put his enemies on trial just to see them acquitted. Old Joe Biden’s handlers and their allies aren’t likely to do so, either.
Judge Jeanine: This indictment is ‘garbage’
The Frightening Precedent of Indicting an Innocent Former President The U.S. devolves into a Banana Republic – with a deteriorating legal system.
BY RACHEL ALEXANDER
SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-frightening-precedent-of-indicting-an-innocent-former-president/;
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
We are living in an Orwellian era when the formerly most powerful man in the world, who remains very powerful, is being prosecuted in order to stop him from becoming president again. If they can take him down, they can take down any conservative. The left has weaponized lawfare, which started with merely civil lawsuits but has now progressed into disbarring attorneys and prosecution. Once they’ve gone after Trump through prosecution — even if unsuccessful — it will be easier to go after him again on other charges, and easier to go after any other conservative. And they won’t stop there, they’ll go after RINOs and those on the left who side with the right against the abuse of the legal system next.
Left-wing billionaire George Soros contributed $1 million to Color of Change’s PAC, which then spent over $500,000 to support the campaign of Alvin Bragg, the New York DA prosecuting Trump. Soros has been contributing millions to defeat conservative prosecutors and sheriffs around the country in recent years. When Bragg ran for office, he gloated about how he went after the Trump Foundation while serving as New York State’s chief deputy attorney general from 2017 to 2018. His primary opponent Tali Farhadian Weinstein accused Bragg of going after Trump “for political advantage every chance he gets.”
It’s an ethical violation for prosecutors to run for office on a platform of getting someone on the possibility they might find new crimes. The rule regarding trial publicity, which states have adopted, prohibits attorneys “from making an extrajudicial statement that the attorney knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding.”
Everyone knows the old saying, a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. That’s because the grand jury doesn’t get to see any arguments from the defense, they are only shown the prosecution’s case.
After five years of a fishing expedition, the indictment is expected to result in charges that Trump falsified business records on a payment his former attorney Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels, allegedly disguising the payoff as routine legal fees.
Daniels is now saying she was paid to keep quiet about an alleged affair she had with Trump. Hush money payments aren’t illegal. Falsifying records is a misdemeanor, but claiming it benefited him in the election, to cover up another crime, can turn into a felony. However, Trump is required to have known he was committing a crime. Trump denies he had the affair. And the statute of limitations for prosecuting him over the 2016 payment may have run.
Both Daniels and Cohen are not credible witnesses, having made previous contradictory statements. When a witness has conflicting statements, they can be “impeached” when testifying, rendering their trial testimony invalid.
Daniels issued a statement in 2018 that said, “I am not denying this affair because I was paid ‘hush money’ as has been reported in overseas-owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.
A letter Cohen’s attorney Stephen Ryan sent to the FEC in 2018 states that Cohen paid $130,000 to Daniels, Trump was not a party to the deal, and he never reimbursed Cohen. Ryan asked the FEC to dismiss the complaint.
Cohen changed his story a little over six months later as part of a plea agreement, pleading guilty to making an excessive campaign contribution to Trump with the payment to Daniels.
Even if it was a campaign finance violation due to not reporting the payments as campaign contributions, politicians are frequently allowed to modify their campaign finance reports after they’re due with amendments to add omitted contributions or expenses. Look at any campaign’s finance reports online and you’ll almost always see amended reports, it’s routinely done. Unless you’re a juicy target of the left like conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, most quietly amend their reports.
When prosecutors tried to charge former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards with a similar crime in 2008, he argued that he was trying to hide the affair from his wife, not from the voters. The jury acquitted him on one charge and hung on the others, and the Justice Department dismissed the charges.
Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas pointed out that when President Bill Clinton got caught having an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, the RINO special prosecutor “refused to prosecute Clinton for perjury, fraud or anything else,” even though Clinton helped her line up blue-chip job interviews.
Clinton paid off Paula Jones after sexually harassing her. After Jones filed a lawsuit against him, alleging that he exposed himself to her in a hotel room, he agreed to settle it for $850,000 to make it go away. He was never prosecuted.
Daniels lost her defamation lawsuit against Trump and must pay him $300,000 in legal fees. Her former lawyer Michael Avenatti is sitting in prison. Daniels had sued Trump over a tweet he made dismissive of her claim that a man threatened to hurt her daughter if she didn’t keep quiet about the sex allegation. His tweet said, “A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”
The left is throwing everything it can at Trump in order to stop him from becoming president again. They brought impeachment charges against him twice. The FBI was sent to search his home. More indictments by other prosecutors are expected.
The U.S. is turning into a banana republic with this deterioration of the legal system combined with election fraud determining elections. As Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria famously said, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” Similarly, criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverglate wrote a book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” which explains how there are so many vague and broad laws now the average person commits three felonies a day and doesn’t know it. If they want to get you, they’ll figure out a way.
Vatican repudiates papal bulls calling for resistance to jihad violence
BY ROBERT SPENCER
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
They might harm the “dialogue.”
“Rome Cancels Anti-Muslim Papal Bulls As Uncatholic,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, April 4, 2023:
VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) – The Vatican has abrogated three papal bulls claiming that the documents are offensive to indigenous peoples and “have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.”
The bulls Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455) and Inter Caetera (1493) contain the basis for the “doctrine of discovery,” which “is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church,” the Vatican has announced.
Cultural Imperialism
“The Church acknowledges that these papal bulls did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples,” the dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development said in a joint statement published Thursday.
The Vatican dicasteries quoted Pope Francis’ words endorsing the repeal of the bulls: “Never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others, or that it is legitimate to employ ways of coercing others.”
Since the Magisterium “upholds the respect due to every human being,” the “Catholic Church therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery,'” the Vatican statement categorically declared.
The bulls’ contents “were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities,” the statement added.
Modern-day Islamophiles have sought to present these as wars of conquest and colonization.But top Islamic scholars told Church Militant that the Vatican had annulled the bulls not so much because of their purported relationship to colonialism and slavery but because the documents were offensive to Islam and an obstacle to ongoing dialogue.
Appeasing Islam
“The revocation of these bulls is likely the result of Francis’ ongoing ‘dialogue’ with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb,” Robert Spencer, Islamic scholar and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades), told Church Militant.
“That ‘dialogue’ only resumed, after al-Tayeb broke it off during the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, when Francis agreed not to criticize Islam or speak out against Muslim persecution of Christians. Al-Tayeb, meanwhile, made no similar concessions. The ‘dialogue’ is entirely one-sided,” Spencer noted.
“The public repudiation of these long-forgotten documents is intended to buttress the pope’s efforts to engage Islamic groups in this dialogue, which results only in the issuance of soothing falsehoods and will not prevent a single Christian from Muslim persecution,” Spencer added….
In fact, all three bulls are mentioned together in volume seven of the scholarly series Christian–Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History — Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and South America (1500-1600), published in 2015 by the academic publisher Brill.
Enemies of the Cross
“The Dum Diversas of 1452 authorized the king of Portugal to attack, conquer and subdue not only Muslims but also pagans and other unbelievers and to seize their goods and territories, transferring them to his own possession,” the book notes.
In its Latin text, Romanus Pontifex encourages “Catholic kings and princes” to “not only repress the ferocity of the Saracens [Muslims] and the other infidel enemies of the Christians but also conquer their kingdoms and places, even if they exist in very distant and unknown parts from us, for the defense and increase of the Faith.”
The bull Inter Caetera is a historic remnant with no juridical, moral or doctrinal value.The bull condemns “the perfidious enemies of the Cross, especially the Saracens and all the other infidels” and orders the excommunication of those who send the Muslims “weapons and other things prohibited by the law.”
It authorized King Alfonso of Portugal to “invade, conquer, defeat and subjugate all Saracens and pagans and other enemies of Christ” and to “enslave their persons perpetually” and seize their possessions for profit.
Pope Nicholas V ends the bull with a warning that no one may “infringe or rashly contradict his decree. … But if anyone does attempt this, let him know that he will incur the indignation of almighty God and His blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”
In Dum Diversas, Nicholas V commends Alfonso for intending “to subjugate the enemies of Christ, i.e. the Saracens, and bring them back to the faith of Christ with a mighty hand,” noting that “the authority of the Apostolic See supports you in this.”
Dum Diversas ends with a similar proscription:
It is therefore permissible for no man to diminish this page of our concession, reparation, will, indult and decree, or oppose it with rash initiative. If anyone dares to attack her, let him know that he is about to incur the wrath of Almighty God and the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.
Inter Caetera both “confirmed the terms” of Romanus Pontifex and “specified that the spiritual jurisdiction of the regions conquered was to lie with the Order of Christ, the successors to the Knights Templar in Portugal,” the Brill book explains.
The Holy See confirms that Inter Caetera has already been abrogated.“These bulls, with their statements about how important it is to resist the efforts of Islam to conquer and subjugate Christians, embarrass Pope Francis and today’s Vatican,” Spencer said, lamenting how the pope “is wholeheartedly committed to the fond and false notion that ‘dialogue’ with Islam will blunt, and possibly even extinguish, the jihad imperative.”
“The recent histories of Nigeria, Iraq and elsewhere show how false and damaging that idea really is,” Spencer warned.
In July 2022, two protestors with a large banner confronted the pontiff during Mass at the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré Basilica outside Quebec City and asked him to rescind the “doctrine of discovery.”
However, in a statement to the United Nations Ninth Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in April 2010, the Vatican argued it had abrogated the doctrine as early as 1494.
“The bull Inter Caetera is a historic remnant with no juridical, moral or doctrinal value,” the statement said. “The Holy See confirms that Inter Caetera has already been abrogated and considers it without any legal or doctrinal value.”
President Trump Responds to Arraignment in Historic Mar-a-Lago Speech
FULL BUT SHORTER VIDEO:
VIDEO LEADING UP TO SPEECH
SEE: https://abcnews.go.com/US/york-ag-letitia-james-files-250m-lawsuit-trump/story?id=90240332
'Trump makes us energized': supporters outside Mar-a-Lago react to Donald Trump's speech
Trump Felony Charges Explained By Former Trump Attorney
LEGAL ANALYSIS BY ALAN DERSHOWITZ
BY MATT MARGOLIS
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
On Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump was formally arraigned on 34 charges in what many believe to be a politically motivated prosecution by a George Soros-funded district attorney who campaigned on the promise that he would get Trump.
Though he was expected to speak to the media at the courthouse, Trump entered and exited quietly, saving his first public comments for an address at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday evening. During his speech, which included elements of his standard campaign stump speech, he discussed the events that led up to his arraignment.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America,” he began. “I never thought it could happen. The only crime that I’ve committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”
He then recalled how Democrats spied on his campaign and launched fraudulent investigations against him, including the Russian collusion investigation and two partisan impeachment trials. He also accused the FBI and DOJ of relentlessly pursuing Republicans, while protecting Hunter Biden.
“And now this massive election interference at a scale never seen before in our country,” he continued. “Beginning with the radical left to George Soros-backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg of New York, who campaigned on the fact that he would get President Trump, ‘I gotta get him. I’m gonna get him.'”
Trump noted how experts on both sides of the aisle “say there is no crime and that [the indictment] should never have been brought.”
“Everybody—even people that aren’t big fans—have said that this is not the right thing to do. It’s an insult to our country as the world is already laughing at us.”
Related: Why the Trump Indictment Is Worse Than We Thought
He’s right. We’ve covered this many times here at PJ Media, and we’ll continue to do so with your help. You can support us by becoming a PJ Media VIP member and helping us uncover the left’s abuse of the justice system to target Trump. Use the promo code WITCHHUNT to take advantage of a 50% discount on your membership.
Trump also spoke of the other efforts by Democrats to target him, including the “racist Democrat district attorney” in Atlanta [Fani Willis], who he said is “doing everything in her power to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call—even more perfect than the one I made with the president of Ukraine.”
He also spoke of the ongoing case regarding the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, noting that “there is no criminality under the Presidential Records Act.” Yet Biden took classified documents as vice president when he had no power to declassify them.
Biden “doesn’t come under the non-criminal Presidential Records Act,” Trump pointed out. “He comes under the very criminal Federal Records Act, unfortunately for him. But it’s not going to matter because they don’t follow the law, which has very severe penalties. He had classified documents that he took while he was a senator, which is absolutely inexcusable, and other senators, including Democrats, are outraged.”
“But he’s not being harassed and hounded like the people who work for me are,” Trump pointed out. “In fact, they seem to have forgotten about his documents entirely.”
When he pivoted back to Bragg’s case, he noted the many experts who agree there is no case. “They kept saying there’s no case—virtually everyone, but it’s far worse than that because he knew there was no case. That’s why last week he delayed for a month and then immediately took that back and threw this ridiculous indictment together, which came out today. Everybody said this is not really an indictment. There’s nothing here. I learned this came to me and they said, ‘There’s nothing here. They’re not even saying what you did.’ The criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked massive amounts of grand jury information for which he should be prosecuted, or at a minimum, he should resign.”
Toward the end of the speech, Trump spoke of how the United States is declining rapidly under Joe Biden.
“If you took the five worst presidents in the history of the United States and added them up, they would not have done near the destruction to our country as Joe Biden and the Biden administration have done.”
Related: Are You Ready for the Knock on Your Door?
“Incredibly, we are now a failing nation. We are a nation in decline. And now these radical-left lunatics want to interfere with our elections by using law enforcement. We can’t let that happen. With all of this being said, and with a very dark cloud over our beloved country, I have no doubt, nevertheless, that we will make America great again.”
However you feel about Trump, this is a historic time and a watershed moment in our country. The radical left, thanks to Bragg, is now further emboldened to use the justice system to target political enemies. The witch hunt against Republicans will not stop with Trump. If they can go after him, they can go after you.
China Controls Your Medications
BY
SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/china-controls-your-meds/;
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Democrats and Republicans battered TikTok’s CEO at a House of Representatives hearing on Thursday — for good reason. The Chinese app poses a national security risk, accumulating troves of data on its American users. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s slithery comment that “I don’t think spying is the right way to describe it,” only heightened concerns.
Too bad another Chinese threat — bigger and more immediate — isn’t getting the same attention. China has a chokehold on our medication supply chain. Beijing controls many — in some cases, all — active ingredients for the remedies in our medicine chests, the drugs used in emergency rooms, and even antibiotics administered to soldiers on the battlefield.
The med bottles in your cabinet don’t say “Made in China,” but nearly all are, including 97% of U.S. antibiotics, by some estimates.
In a tense situation, Beijing could simply cut off shipments of antibiotics, cancer drugs, and other meds, forcing the U.S. to cede to its demands. Our survival hinges on their goodwill. Terrifying.
China cornered the market for drug ingredients fast. Until the mid-1990s, the West and Japan produced 90% of the world’s active pharmaceutical ingredients. By 2017, China was producing 40%. Now almost all drug pipelines start in China. Even India, the other drug-producing giant, relies on China for 70% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Gary Peters warns that foreign dependence is “an unacceptable national security risk.” But talk is cheap.
As China’s grip tightens, the federal government is doing next to nothing, according to the Committee’s report released last week.
In 2019, Congress requested the Food and Drug Administration list the lifesaving drugs Americans rely on and which countries supply them. The FDA still hasn’t done it. FDA bureaucrats pathetically plead, in so many words, that it’s too much work to pore over the applicants filed by drug producers for the information.
It gets worse. In 2021, the Department of Defense inspector general issued a scathing report that DOD lacked strategies to circumvent reliance on foreign drug suppliers. Yet as of last week, DOD still hadn’t assembled data on where its drugs originate or what can be done to overcome chokeholds.
President Joe Biden’s Defense Department considers securing medicines for the military a lower priority than woke goals such as pronoun lessons, sex change surgery for transgender personnel, and climate change.
Biden himself told Air Force personnel that global warming was the greatest threat facing America. Biden proposes spending “billions” converting every military vehicle to electric, but only $60 million — a tiny fraction of that sum — to incentivize domestic manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. That says it all.
Sorry, Mr. President, but China should not control access to medicines for our soldiers and citizens.
Even in peacetime, America’s dependence on far-away drug suppliers is a problem. Parents are frantically racing from one drug store to the next for amoxicillin for their child’s strep throat and meds for ADHD.
Reliance on China also means accepting drugs made in squalid factories that are seldom, or never, inspected by the FDA, according to a General Accountability Office report. In 2008, contaminated blood thinner from China, heparin, killed 81 American patients.
It’s time to bring drug manufacturing home. One obvious way is to restore Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code, which Congress enacted in 1976 to attract industry to Puerto Rico. It gave companies a tax credit equal to what they would have to pay the federal government on their earnings there. Pharmaceutical plants sprang up fast there, and by 1990, 17 of the 21 most prescribed drugs in the U.S. were made in Puerto Rico. When Congress ended the subsidy, drug manufacturing moved halfway around the world to China, but some factories still sit idle.
In ordinary times, Democrats would reject tax breaks for drug companies. But even oncologist Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a Democrat, and former Obama health adviser, has recommended this quick solution to a menacing situation.
For all the money Americans spend on medications, there’s no reason to settle for cheap, sometimes contaminated Chinese ingredients and the looming threat of a Chinese blockade. Tell Congress to act.
China Threatens Retaliation if Speaker McCarthy and Taiwan’s President Meet
Afraid to offend China, the Biden administration lays low
BY JOSEPH KLEIN
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen is planning to meet with House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy during her upcoming stop in Los Angeles on April 5th, following her earlier stopovers in New York and Central America. The Chinese regime is furious, claiming that such a meeting, even on U.S. soil, would somehow harm China’s own sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Communist dictatorship is threatening grave consequences if the meeting proceeds.
Zhu Fenglian, the spokeswoman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, warned that if a meeting between President Tsai and Speaker McCarthy takes place, China would “definitely take measures to resolutely fight back.”
Xu Xueyuan, charge d’affaires at China’s embassy in Washington, delivered a similar threat, telling reporters that a meeting between President Tsai and Speaker McCarthy “could lead to another serious confrontation in the China-U.S. relationship.” She added, “We have made solemn representations to the U.S. side on many occasions and clearly told them that all consequences should be borne by the U.S. side.”
China certainly means business as it demonstrated last August when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. China’s response was a blunt show of force, including launching missiles over Taiwan and conducting live-fire military drills in the waters surrounding Taiwan.
Nevertheless, Taiwan’s President Tsai is unbowed. “We are calm and confident, will neither yield nor provoke. Taiwan will soundly walk along the path of freedom and democracy and go global,” she declared.
As for President Biden, despite his bluster about defending Taiwan with U.S. military forces if the Chinese regime invades Taiwan, which his aides had to walk back to several times, the cat has got his tongue this time.
The Biden administration should be objecting vociferously to China’s brazen attempt to veto whom U.S. government officials are permitted to meet with, especially within the sovereign territory of the United States. But instead of standing up for Speaker McCarthy’s decision to meet with President Tsai in Los Angeles, the administration’s response to China’s threats has been milquetoast so far.
Aggressive dictatorships respect strength and exploit any sign of weakness. The only way to deal effectively with China’s bullying is to push back even harder. But that is not what the Biden administration has done.
At a March 29th White House press briefing, the Biden administration’s National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby, said that the Chinese should not “react harshly or overreact in any way” to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with Speaker McCarthy during her “transit” in the United States. “This transit is consistent with our longstanding, unofficial relationship with Taiwan, and it is consistent with the United States’ One China policy, which remains unchanged,” Mr. Kirby added. “It is Taiwan’s decision to make these transits based on their own travel. Transits are not visits. They are private, and they’re unofficial.” (Emphasis added)
John Kirby, speaking on behalf of the White House’s National Security Council, should have unambiguously backed Speaker McCarthy’s right to meet with President Tsai whenever and wherever he wishes. He should have told the Chinese regime in no uncertain terms to butt out.
But Kirby took the opposite approach. He failed to deliver even a tap on the wrist to the Chinese regime for using intimidation tactics to try and derail the meeting in Los Angeles between Speaker McCarthy and President Tsai. Fortunately, neither Speaker McCarthy nor President Tsai has given any indication of backing down from holding their meeting.
Mr. Kirby is correct that the United States has followed a One China policy for decades. Yes, this means that the U.S. does not have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan as an independent nation. And yes, the United States recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole sovereign state representing China at the United Nations and other inter-governmental bodies. But the United States and Taiwan have strong commercial, economic, technological, defense, and people-to-people ties. Informal meetings between American and Taiwanese government officials are part of that unofficial relationship, whether the Chinese Communist regime likes it or not.
Walking on eggshells to avoid offending the PRC because of an informal, unofficial meeting between President Tsai and Speaker McCarthy is yet another sign of weakness that the Biden administration regularly displays to America’s adversaries.
The PRC has been engaging in carrot-and-stick policies to isolate Taiwan on the world stage for years. It has successfully used its economic prowess, including trade and major investments, to bring most nations to its side in asserting complete dominion over Taiwan. Thus, only a handful of countries still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
The latest county to sever its ties with Taiwan and switch its allegiance to the Chinese Communist regime is Honduras. That is why, in addition to her stopovers in the United States, President Tsai’s travel itinerary has included Guatemala and Belize, two Central American companies that so far have stuck with Taiwan. She is trying to stave off any more defections.
The Communist regime has also co-opted the United Nations bureaucracy in the service of treating Taiwan as a pariah and its people as personae non gratae.
Taiwanese, for example, have not been permitted to participate in U.N. activities, including attendance as observers at the World Health Organization’s annual forum at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Taiwanese reporters have not been allowed to attend U.N. press briefings to ask questions. Even Taiwanese tourists who lack an official government ID issued by a U.N. member state are prohibited from entering the U.N. premises to take a visitors’ tour. IDs issued by the Taiwanese government do not count although Taiwanese passports are good enough for entry into the U.N.’s host country, the United States.
The justification for the U.N.’s giving the cold shoulder to Taiwan is United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, adopted in 1971. This resolution set forth the U.N. member states’ decision to recognize the representatives of the People’s Republic of China as “the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations.” The resolution also provided that “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek,” the leader of the Republic of China, would be expelled “from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it.”
Nothing in the resolution, however, said anything about prohibiting Taiwanese citizens from participating in or observing U.N. proceedings or even taking a tour of U.N. facilities without the approval of the Chinese Communist regime. Nevertheless, in 2007, former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, citing Resolution 2758, declared that “the United Nations considers Taiwan for all purposes to be an integral part of the People’s Republic of China.” (Emphasis added)
The United Nations system continues to this day to treat the Taiwanese people and their leaders as vassals of the Chinese Communist regime who must get the regime’s permission before having anything to do with the United Nations.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement in October 2021 encouraging the international community to join the United States in “supporting Taiwan’s robust, meaningful participation throughout the U.N. system.” He noted that while people from all over the world regularly participate in a variety of activities at the U.N., the Taiwanese people are the exception. “Taiwan‘s scientists, technical experts, business persons, artists, educators, students, human rights advocates, and others are blocked from entry and participating in these activities simply because of the passports they hold,” Secretary of State Blinken said.
But the Biden administration as usual is all words and no action. Simply praising what Taiwan can do for the U.N. will not overcome the Chinese regime’s use of its considerable economic leverage to pressure U.N. member states and the U.N. itself into treating the Taiwanese people as unwelcome intruders.
The United States, as the largest contributor to the U.N. by far, should use its own leverage over U.N. financing to insist on “Taiwan’s robust, meaningful participation throughout the U.N. System.”
Moreover, it is not too late for a senior State Department official, if not Secretary of State Blinken himself, to join President Tsai’s meeting with Speaker McCarthy in Los Angeles. We all know, however, that with this weak-kneed administration, there is a ghost of a chance for that to happen.
ALERT: Taxpayer Funded Abortion in DELAWARE
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Nandi Randolph