Iran seizes ship in Gulf of Oman, US Navy says - Timothy H. J. Nerozzi

 

by Timothy H. J. Nerozzi

Marshall Islands-flagged vessel was en route to Houston before being seized by Iran after leaving Kuwait

The U.S. Navy announced Thursday that the Islamic Republic of Iran has seized a foreign vessel in the Gulf of Oman.

A Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker was taken by Iranian forces after leaving Kuwait on its way to Houston, Texas.

FBI SAYS CHINA, IRAN USING NEW TACTICS TO TARGET CRITICS IN THE US

"The oil tanker issued a distress call during the seizure," the US Navy's 5th Fleet said. "Iran‘s actions are contrary to international law and disruptive to regional security and stability.

 

NAVCENT statement on Iran's unlawful seizure of a merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman today: pic.twitter.com/EJxcsynA1m

— U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. 5th Fleet (@US5thFleet) April 27, 2023

 

The statement added, "Iran should immediately release the oil tanker."

The incident comes amid wider conflicts regarding Iran's nuclear programs.

SENIOR SHIITE CLERIC FATALLY SHOT IN ATTACK IN NORTHERN IRAN

US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) released a statement attributing the vessel's seizure to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.

The Gulf of Oman is a strait which connects the Arabian Sea with the Strait of Hormuz. The Gulf borders Iran, Pakistan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.  ( (Photo by Heritage Space/Heritage Images/Getty Images))

"Advantage Sweet was seized by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy while transiting international waters in the Gulf of Oman," NAVCENT said.

"Iran's continued harassment of vessels and interference with navigational rights in regional waters are a threat to maritime security and the global economy," the statement continued. "In the past two years, Iran has unlawfully seized at least five commerical vessels sailiing in the Middle East.

The US Navy's 5th Fleet is reportedly monitoring the situation as it develops.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

 

Timothy H. J. Nerozzi is a writer for Fox News Digital. You can follow him on Twitter @timothynerozzi and can email him at timothy.nerozzi@fox.com

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-seizes-ship-gulf-of-oman-us-navy-says

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GOP-led House passes bill to extend debt limit by 1 year and reduce domestic spending - Nicholas Ballasy

 

by Nicholas Ballasy

The White House says that Biden would veto the legislation if it arrived at his desk.

 

The GOP-led House passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 on Wednesday evening to increase the debt limit for one year by $1.5 trillion and reduce the growth of domestic spending.

The bill passed 217-215 with four Republicans voting against it.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had told reporters earlier on Capitol Hill that the vote would take place in the evening but he didn't say if there were enough votes to pass it at the time.

In addition to extending the nation's debt limit, the bill would limit domestic spending growth by 1% per year. It also eliminates many of the green energy tax credits in the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act. The bill would also block President Biden's student debt forgiveness plan from implementation, which he announced through an executive order last year.

“House Republicans just delivered a plan that will address the country’s debt crisis. Our conference came together to pass the only plan in Washington that will tackle the debt ceiling, stop excessive federal spending and inflation, and put our country back on track for sustained economic growth,” McCarthy said after the vote.

Democrats objected to the legislation, expressing opposition to the federal spending reductions in the bill and arguing that it doesn't extend the debt limit long enough.

The House Rules Committee had made several changes to the bill overnight following negotiations between McCarthy, House Republican Whip Tom Emmer and a group of conservative GOP lawmakers.

The modifications were related to work requirements for recipients of federal benefits such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, according to the text of the amendments.  Tax incentives for alternative fuels like biodiesel were retained as opposed to repealed in the original version.

The White House formally announced on Tuesday that Biden would veto the legislation if it arrived at his desk.

Nicholas Ballasy

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/gop-led-house-passes-bill-extend-debt-limit-1-year-and-reduce-domestic-spending

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Biden Leans Even Further Left to Secure the Votes of ‘Progressive’ Young Adults - Joseph Klein

 

by Joseph Klein

But will it be enough?

 

“The national Democratic leadership is going so far left, they’ve left America,” former President Ronald Reagan said nearly 40 years ago. How correct he has proven to be.

 

President Biden and Democratic Party leaders in Congress are catering to the left-wing progressive base in their party, which is animated by young voters who are increasingly receptive to the idea that socialism is preferable to capitalism.

 

In April 2020, a coalition of Millennial and Generation Z-led far-left organizations released an

open letter to then-candidate Joe Biden declaring that to secure their support he had to commit to a laundry list of progressive policies. These policies included cancelling student loan debt and adopting the framework of the anti-fossil fuel Green New Deal. The letter demanded that to win their support, Biden “must demonstrate, authentically, that you empathize with our generation’s struggles.”  

 

The letter’s signatories wrapped themselves in the cloak of “social justice.” But as an

essay on the Discover the Networks website explained, “The ‘Social Justice Movement’…endorses socialism and economic redistribution as a means of redressing the alleged evils of capitalism and producing a programmatic equality that it acknowledges will be purchased at the price of individual liberty.” 

 

Democratic Socialist Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) personifies this movement. Using the adjective “Democratic” before “Socialist” is simply putting lipstick on a pig. AOC believes in concentrating vastly increased power in the federal government to direct the distribution of wealth and achieve government-defined social ends. Displaying her authoritarian tendencies, she wants the government to “rein in our media,” particularly Fox News.

 

AOC believes that the country’s electorate is moving to the Left because of a “generational shift” in political beliefs driven by young voters. Sadly, some recent polling proves her point.

   

According to a Pew Research Center poll published in September 2022, twice as many Democrats/lean Democrats between the ages of 18 and 29 viewed socialism positively (58%) compared to those with a positive view of capitalism (29%).  

 

As it became much easier to vote in the 2020 presidential election than ever before because of lax and expanded mail-in voting, vote harvesting, and extended periods for early voting, young eligible voters’ turnout significantly increased from 2016. The majority of them voted for Joe Biden.

 

“Voters ages 18-29, particularly young people of color, supported Biden at a greater rate than any other age group, NBC News exit polls show,”

CNBC reported.  

 

“Young voters (ages 18-29) preferred Biden over Trump by a 26-point margin in 2020, and Democrats over Republicans by 28 points in the 2022 midterms,”

according to Axios. 

 

President Biden knows that to greatly improve his chances of winning a second term, he needs to replicate or exceed the 2020 voter turnout of his supporters in the 18-29 age bracket. So, he has put his foot on the accelerator in offering programs via executive orders and legislation that tap into the demands from this increasingly socialist leaning voting bloc. And social media influencers are being enlisted to get the message out to young voters that President Biden is on their side. 

 

As perhaps the most striking example of how President Biden has reached out to young voters with a windfall, last year he issued an executive order letting millions of higher education students off the hook for student debts they had willingly incurred. His executive order, now under review by the Supreme Court to determine

whether the president exceeded his authority, would stick the rest of us with the tab to the tune of an estimated $400 billion. 

 

The many millions of workers without a college education, who have taken out loans to pay for the tools of their trade or for the vehicles they use for work, do not get the same taxpayer-funded debt relief. The parents who paid the full freight for their children’s higher education would not be reimbursed under President Biden’s executive order. Neither would the students who managed to pay off their loans for higher education themselves.

 

That does not matter according to AOC, who has been a vigorous supporter of President Biden’s executive order and would like to see it expanded. In response to a question from one of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram followers who asked her how cancelling student debt would help those who paid their loans, AOC responded, “Not every program has to be for everybody. Maybe student loan forgiveness doesn’t impact you. That doesn’t make it bad.” 

 

Yes, it does. What makes this executive order so bad is that it would turn the traditional American notion of individual responsibility on its head. All for the benefit of a privileged class of higher education students who want a taxpayer-funded escape hatch from their higher education debt obligations.

 

But President Biden and his Democrat comrades in Congress know that this giveaway is crucial in securing the votes of young adults.

 

In October 2022, pollster John Della Volpe tweeted that the reason for “40% of likely #GenZ voters stating they are more or much more likely to vote for a Democratic candidate in November” was “due specifically to President Biden’s action on student loan debt.” 

 

Sure enough, on election night Mr. Volpe

tweeted, regarding the Democrats’ surprisingly strong showing in the 2022 midterm elections, “If not for voters under 30 … tonight WOULD have been a Red Wave. #GenZ did their job.” 

 

Student debt relief was not the only top-down government redistribution scheme designed by the Biden administration. As the 2024 presidential election approaches, the Biden administration’s Federal Housing Finance Agency is moving forward with a rule set to take effect on May 1^st that represents the reverse of normal mortgage lending practices. The rule will make home borrowers with excellent credit scores pay more for their mortgages than they should based on their own credit risk profiles. The purpose is to subsidize mortgages for borrowers with lower credit scores who will then pay less for their mortgages than they should based on their own credit risk profiles.  

 

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Sandra Thompson sought to justify the new rule as a measure designed to “increase pricing support for purchase borrowers limited by income or by wealth.”  But it would be accomplished at the expense of borrowers who have scrimped and saved over time to build up their credit scores on their own. 

 

On average, credit scores tend to increase with age. As an

analysis published by American Express in 2022 stated, “A younger person is more likely to have a lower credit score than an older person simply because they have shorter payment and credit histories than their older counterparts.” 

 

Once again, the Biden administration is looking to give an undeserved break to borrowers, which would be especially helpful to young adults looking to buy a home perhaps for the first time that is probably above their means.

 

We have seen an earlier version of this movie before. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s,

the federal government’s policies to make housing more affordable led the government sponsored lending enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lower their own credit standards in underwriting bank mortgage loans. This in turn incentivized banks to make high-risk mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers with little means to pay them back. The banks tried to spread the risks by issuing and selling mortgage-backed securities. When the high-risk borrowers defaulted on their loans, the house of cards collapsed, leading to the subprime mortgage crisis and the Great Recession that started in 2007. 

 

This time, the Biden administration is pursuing the same affordable housing objective but with the twist of using a rule to force borrowers with high credit scores into becoming the benefactors of those with low credit scores. Strategic Wealth Partners CEO

Mark Tepper labeled the rule “socialism for homeowners.”  

 

President Biden’s war on fossil fuels keeps intensifying with massive government spending to speed the transition to a fully green energy economy and the imposition of more government controls over the nation’s economy and Americans’ everyday lives. The Biden administration, for example, is proposing to clamp down on tailpipe emission standards that will effectively lead to the end of the sale of gas-powered cars, forcing Americans to

purchase more expensive electric vehicles. It is preparing to prohibit retailers from selling commonly used incandescent light bulbs. And so on and so forth.  

 

AOC is not entirely pleased, however. In her mind, President Biden has not gone far enough.

 

In an interview with the Socialist magazine Jacobin, AOC criticized President Biden for what she called his “lurch to the right” by approving a big oil drilling project in Alaska. “I think the Biden administration has been very disappointing on climate,” AOC said. And with no subtlety, she warned President Biden that “it is extremely risky and very perilous should the Biden administration forget who it was that put him over the top. When you look at the places — not just abstract levels of turnout, not just where numbers came from, but these swing places that gave Joe Biden the edge on an [Electoral College] victory — it was young people that that (sic) won him this election, communities of color, high turnout areas.”   

 

Younger Democrats are not so enthusiastic about another term for President Biden, considering his advanced age. Nevertheless, “51% of younger Democrats say they would probably vote for Biden in a 2024 general election,”

according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.   

 

President Biden is hoping that he has done enough for young voters to earn their support in large numbers in 2024. Biden is counting on their realization that, given the alternatives, he would be the best choice for young voters in the general election to give them at least some of what they want.

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer, and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, The United Nations & Radical Islam.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-leans-left-to-secure-the-votes-of-young-adults/

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Biden Establishes ‘Interagency Task Force With Senior Government Officials’ to Stop ‘Islamophobia’ - Robert Spencer

 

by Robert Spencer

Do the feds really need to step in to protect Muslims in America?

 

Old Joe Biden’s ghostwriters issued a statement Thursday to congratulate Muslims on Eid al-Fitr, the feast marking the end of the fasting-by-day-and-gorging-by-night month of Ramadan. Predictably, it was anodyne and obsequious in the extreme, with Biden celebrating how Muslims “decorate their homes, give gifts to loved ones, wear new clothes, and visit family and friends.” The faux president is made to add: “I am moved by the generosity that is shown from families that can provide food and give charity to those in need through Zakat-al-Fitr.” In the course of all this flattery, Biden’s writer drops in a serious note: there is now a U.S. government task force dedicated to fighting “Islamophobia.”

The statement quickly shifts from telling us how wonderful it is that Muslims wear new clothes and visit family and friends to depicting Muslims as victims: “Eid al-Fitr marks the completion of a holy month dedicated to devotion, charity, and reflection—a time when we also remember Muslim communities around the world that are enduring conflict, poverty, hunger, and disease, and those that are displaced from their homes.” That served to set up the big announcement. Biden’s ghostwriter continued: “As we celebrate our blessings this Eid, let us also recommit ourselves to the timeless work of building peace and standing up for the rights and dignity of all people.” When the White House writers start depicting Old Joe babbling about peace and human rights, you know something bad is coming.

Doing this work for peace and human dignity will apparently require new restrictions on speech: “My Administration is also committed to addressing all forms of hate, including Islamophobia. This is why I established an interagency task force with senior government officials to tackle this and related challenges and encourage every American to build a more inclusive nation.” Good, because Lord knows we aren’t “inclusive” enough yet. Every last person in the world doesn’t live here on the taxpayer dime yet, so there is a long way to go.

Meanwhile, exactly what pressing need is this interagency task force designed to address? Are Muslims in the U.S. really subjected to such widespread discrimination and harassment that the feds need to step in? The record shows otherwise. FBI hate crime statistics show that Muslims are rarely targeted in hate crimes, which far more often victimize Jews and others. In fact, anti-Muslim hate crimes actually declined by 42% from 2020 to 2021. But those facts don’t fit the narrative that Muslims face widespread discrimination and harassment in the United States, and so the facts have to take a back seat.

And how is the new “interagency task force with senior government officials” going to “tackle” “Islamophobia”? No doubt we will now be inundated with taxpayer-funded material about how wonderful Islam is. In the nature of things, however, there will still be human disputes, and some of them will involve Muslims. Now that “Islamophobia” has been established as targeted by the government, these disputes will all be ascribed to “Islamophobia” and offered as evidence of how urgently needed this “interagency task force” really is. The “Islamophobia” task force will therefore likely enjoy ever-increasing budgets. That’s how government agencies work: they have to justify their existence, so they keep having to find more and more of the thing they’re supposed to be stamping out.

Most importantly, since the Biden regime is now officially committed to efforts to convince us of the wonderfulness of Islam, it is not likely to look kindly upon critics of the religion, including opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. Will the interagency task force make any efforts to protect the right of Americans to oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression? Will it be careful to distinguish such criticism from the alleged hatred that this task force is supposed to be combating, or will it act upon the assumption that any and all criticism of Islam, and even of jihad terror, subjects Muslims to “hate” and must accordingly be silenced?

Since the Left has been insisting that opposition to jihad violence is “hate” ever since 9/11, my money is on the latter. But this is a preposterous claim that, if followed logically (which of course it never will be, as this “Islamophobia” business is fundamentally illogical), would preclude any criticism of anything as possibly leading to “hate” and violence. In practice, it will preclude all criticism of anything the Left favors. And the freedom of speech will be eroded even further.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur’an and The Sumter Gambit. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-establishes-interagency-task-force-with-senior-government-officials-to-stop-islamophobia/

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Slavery, the Left, and Truth - Dennis Prager

 

by Dennis Prager

And the Left's Great Lie.

 

A generation of Americans is being raised on half-truths and lies about the history of slavery in America. They are given the impression that America was uniquely bad and that American slavery was uniquely bad. They learn nothing about slavery elsewhere. Among the many lies they are told are that “black slaves built America” and that America is systemically racist.

Since the only mortal enemy of the Left is truth, here are some truths about slavery.

AMERICA’S SLAVERY COMPARED TO SLAVERY ELSEWHERE

If you are interested in morality and committed to truth, you do not ask, “Who had slaves?” You ask, “Who ended slavery?”

Who had slaves?

Every civilization throughout history had slaves: Asian societies, Africans, Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples around the world, and the Muslim/Arab world, which may have had the most slaves of all.

Who ended slavery?

There was only one thing unique about slavery in the West: It raised the issue of the morality of slavery, ferociously debated it and finally abolished it there, before it was abolished in any other civilization. If you care about moral truth rather than, for example, promoting America-hatred, you must recognize — and you must teach — that America was one of the first slave-holding societies to abolish slavery. This even includes Africa. Cornell professor Sandra Greene, a black scholar of African history, notes, “Slavery in the United States ended in 1865, but in West Africa it was not legally ended until 1875, and then it stretched on unofficially until almost World War I.”

The numbers of slaves

According to the authoritative SlaveVoyages.org, the total number of black slaves imported from Africa into America was 305,326. The number of black slaves other countries imported from Africa into the rest of the New World — i.e., into the Caribbean and South America — was 12,521,337. In other words, other countries imported 41 times the number of black slaves into the Western Hemisphere than the United States did (including the years before American independence). Yet, the American Left never mentions this important moral point — because the Left-controlled education system suppresses facts it finds inconvenient, and the Left is not interested in morality or truth, but in vilifying America.

And then there is Arab/Muslim enslavement of blacks. Professor Paul Lovejoy, in his “Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa” (Cambridge University Press, 2012), reveals that from the beginning of Islam in the 7th century through the year 1600, the estimated number of Africans enslaved by Muslims was about 7 million. After 1600, it was about a million per year. Do American students ever learn about the Arab/Muslim slave trade? How many know, for example, that a great percentage of the African male slaves were castrated so that they could not have families?

“BLACK SLAVES BUILT AMERICA.”

This is another lie of the Left.

Those who make this argument point to the lucrative cotton manufacturing and trade in the 19th-century — the industry in which black slaves were primarily used in the American South.

But University of Illinois professor of Economics, Deirdre McCloskey, answered this:

“Growing cotton, unlike sugar or rice, never required slavery. By 1870, freedmen and whites produced as much cotton as the South produced in the slave time of 1860. Cotton was not a slave crop in India or in southwest China, where it was grown in bulk… That slaves produced cotton does not imply that they were essential or causal in the production…

“The United States and the United Kingdom and the rest would have become just as rich without the 250 years of unrequited toil. They have remained rich, observe, even after the peculiar institution was abolished, because their riches did not depend on its sinfulness.”

But one need not know anything about cotton to understand how false “Black slaves built America” is. All you need is common sense.

First, even if slavery accounted for much of the wealth of the South, the Civil War that brought slavery to an end in the United States wiped out nearly all of that wealth and cost the Union billions (in today’s dollars).

Second, if slavery built the American economy, the most robust economy in world history, why didn’t Brazil become an economic superpower? Brazil imported four million black slaves, about 12 times as many as America. Why did the slave-owning American South lag so far behind the North economically? Why did England, which, though it played a major role in the transatlantic slave trade until the beginning of the 19th century, had almost no slaves, become the most advanced economy of the 19th century?

“Black slaves built America” is left-wing propaganda to vilify America and to discredit capitalism.

“America is systemically racist.”

This is the Great Left Lie.

Four million black people have emigrated to the United States since the 1960s — and tens of millions more would if they could. Are they all fools? Why would anyone move to a country that is systemically bigoted against them? Did any Jews emigrate to Germany in the 1930s?

Blacks have emigrated to the United States because they know what Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the black woman who fled her homeland of Somalia and who now writes and lectures in America, knows:

“What the media do not tell you is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you.”

Blacks emigrating to America know what Algerian writer Kamel Daoud, writing in Le Monde and Le Point, knows:

“It is forbidden to say that the West is also the place to which we flee when we want to escape the injustice of our country of origin, dictatorship, war, hunger, or simply boredom. It is fashionable to say that the West is guilty of everything.”

As regards American slavery and everything else, always remember this: Truth is a liberal value, and truth is a conservative value. It is not a left-wing value.

Dennis Prager

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/slavery-the-left-and-truth/

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The Chinese Communist Party's Secret Projects in the US: What Is Going On? - Pete Hoekstra

 

by Pete Hoekstra

[T]he state of Michigan is making a big bet on electric vehicle (EV) technology in concert with the Chinese Communist Party. What could go wrong?

• Two Chinese companies, Gotion and CATL, are on the verge of building two new battery manufacturing facilities in Michigan. These companies were lured by billions in state and local tax incentives and infrastructure investments, and the environmental requirements buried in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

• [T]he state of Michigan is making a big bet on electric vehicle (EV) technology in concert with the Chinese Communist Party. What could go wrong?

• The answer to that is simple: Plenty. At a time when bipartisan members of Congress on the Select Committee on the CCP are conducting war games simulating a U.S. response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, one has to ask is this the right moment to seek more Chinese investment in the state. Especially when one of those projects is just 100 miles from where the U.S. is training Taiwanese troops to defend against a Chinese Communist invasion.

• Already, Virginia, home to numerous military and intelligence facilities, has rejected one of the two projects out of national security concerns.

• As... outlined in the unprecedented joint news conference by the FBI and MI-5, the threat from the Chinese Communist Party is real, dangerous and pervasive.

• Another red flag is the secrecy shrouding the projects. Although the state is in the process of providing substantial sums in taxpayer money to private entities, many of the details have been covered by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). Members of Congress, state legislators, local elected officials, and state and congressional staff have been forced to sign NDAs so they can access information taxpayers and the media have been prevented from seeing. What is so secret that it requires taxpayers to be shielded from information about the projects that their dollars will fund? Local newspapers have requested information through Freedom of Information Act requests, but they have been denied.

• Not only are the projects shrouded in a veil of secrecy, there are legitimate concerns about various organizations actually adhering to the Foreign Agents Reporting Act (FARA). This act requires individuals working on behalf of a foreign entity to register their activities with the Justice.... Former Ambassador Joe Cella and I have... have jointly submitted a request to the Justice Department to review specific individuals and their compliance with federal disclosure laws.

• [N]ow is the time for both battery projects to be paused. It is time for legislators to engage in their fiduciary responsibility, recognize the changed environment, and reevaluate plans to spend taxpayer dollars to fund two Chinese companies, the CCP, and potentially even the Taliban and the re-emerging Islamic State. It is a new day and US taxpayer money should not be backing potential adversaries.

Two Chinese companies, Gotion and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL), are on the verge of building two new battery manufacturing facilities in Michigan, lured by roughly $4 billion in economic incentives, tax benefits, and infrastructure improvements the state of Michigan is handing out. Ford Motor Company is "licensing" Chinese Communist Party technology for its plant with CATL. Pictured: Ford's CEO Jim Farley (L), Ford's Executive Chairman Bill Ford (C), and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer celebrate the announcement of the CATL plant on February 13, 2023, in Romulus, Michigan. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

In 2018, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) celebrated "Michigan-China Week" to highlight the growing economic ties between Michigan and China. At the time, Michigan already had more than 300 Chinese companies located in the state, with more than $4 billion in investment, supporting roughly 6,000 jobs. MEDC wanted to publicize this story in its bureaucratic hopes that more Chinese businesses would follow.

Michigan may be reaping the fruits of this engagement in the coming months as more Chinese money and workers are set to come to the state. Two Chinese companies, Gotion and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL), are on the verge of building two new battery manufacturing facilities in Michigan. These companies were lured by billions in state and local tax incentives and infrastructure investments, and the environmental requirements buried in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

Recently, MEDC CEO Quentin Messer stated, "Generational bets are being made, and we want to make sure that Michigan has what it takes. We've got to win." Building on Messer's thinking, the state of Michigan is making a big bet on electric vehicle technology in concert with the Chinese Communist Party. What could go wrong?

The answer to that is simple: Plenty. At a time when bipartisan members of Congress on the Select Committee on the CCP are conducting war games simulating a U.S. response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, one has to ask is this the right moment to seek more Chinese investment in the state. Especially when one of those projects is just 100 miles from where the U.S. is training Taiwanese troops to defend against a Chinese Communist invasion.

Already, Virginia, home to numerous military and intelligence facilities, has rejected one of the two projects out of national security concerns. Additionally, various law enforcement and security agencies within the U.S. government have been warning about the growing threat from China, specifically the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that controls the government.

In July 2022, FBI Director Christopher Wray and the head of MI-5, Britain's domestic security agency, held a joint press conference to discuss the threat from the CCP to the business community — the first time in history the two agencies have spoken to the press jointly. As Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5 stated:

"By volume, most of what is at risk from CCP aggression is not, so to speak, my stuff. It's yours. The world-leading expertise, technology, research and commercial advantage developed and held by the people in this room, and others like you."

McCallum was speaking to the leading businesses in the West that were represented in the room.

The CCP wants to make friends and use those friendships to gather information that otherwise would not be available legally or commercially. They also want to use these friendships to promote the interests of the CCP in Western nations. This is a well-thought-out strategy by the CCP to shortcut its path to global economic dominance. As McCallum outlined in the unprecedented joint news conference by the FBI and MI-5, the threat from the Chinese Communist Party is real, dangerous and pervasive.

Also, in July 2022, the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center issued a briefing statement on the threat from the CCP titled, "Protecting Government and Business Leaders at the U.S., State, and Local Level from Peoples Republic of China (PRC) Influence Operations." It states:

"The PRC ... may press state and local leaders, to take actions that align with their local needs, but also advance PRC agendas, sometimes over national U.S. interests."

It provides a detailed description of the influence operations conducted by the Chinese Communists to promote the CCP agenda. If successful, the CCP will co-opt and destroy the core of the U.S. industrial and economic base.

For the projects in Michigan, there are all sorts of red flags flying around the roughly $4 billion in economic incentives, tax benefits, and infrastructure improvements the state of Michigan is handing out as incentives to CATL/Ford and Gotion to locate the two projects in Michigan. Ford is "licensing" CCP technology for its plant with CATL while Gotion is a subsidiary of a Chinese-based company subject to Chinese surveillance laws. Both already have seen support from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the state legislature, which last week began the process of approving nearly $200 million for the Gotion project in Michigan.

Another red flag is the secrecy shrouding the projects. Although the state is in the process of providing substantial sums in taxpayer money to private entities, many of the details have been covered by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). Members of Congress, state legislators, local elected officials, and state and congressional staff have been forced to sign NDAs so they can access information taxpayers and the media have been prevented from seeing. What is so secret that it requires taxpayers to be shielded from information about the projects that their dollars will fund? Local newspapers have requested information through Freedom of Information Act requests, but they have been denied.

Not only are the projects shrouded in a veil of secrecy, there are legitimate concerns about various organizations actually adhering to the Foreign Agents Reporting Act (FARA). This act requires individuals working on behalf of a foreign entity to register their activities with the Justice. Violations of FARA can have significant and severe consequences. Former Ambassador Joe Cella and I have been working as citizen activists fighting these projects to highlight these concerns. We have jointly submitted a request to the Justice Department to review specific individuals and their compliance with federal disclosure laws.

The final straw that should end the Gotion project is the recent announcement that a Chinese company identified as "Gochin" is negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan to secure the mining rights for lithium, a key component in EV batteries, to the tune of $10 billion. While it has not been possible to make a direct linkage between the Gotion involved in the Big Rapids project and the "Gochin" lithium project, the possibility is one that should be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) to ensure taxpayer dollars flowing from Michigan to Gotion won't be finding their way into Taliban coffers. This review is even more timely and critical given the recent news that Afghanistan has once again become a hub of international terrorism, especially for Islamic State, which is reportedly using Afghanistan for planning attacks, according to classified leaks. Individuals who have reviewed the data believe there may be a connection Gotion and "Gochin," but at a minimum, as with all Chinese companies, there is the CCP's military-civil fusion that connects them.

The circumstances and international dynamics have changed drastically since 2021, when these two battery plants were first considered by Michigan. With all of the geopolitical changes since then, concerns over MEDC's vetting process, and the total lack of transparency, now is the time for both battery projects to be paused. It is time for legislators to engage in their fiduciary responsibility, recognize the changed environment, and reevaluate plans to spend taxpayer dollars to fund two Chinese companies, the CCP, and potentially even the Taliban and the re-emerging Islamic State. It is a new day and US taxpayer money should not be backing potential adversaries.

Pete Hoekstra was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the second district of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19607/communist-china-michigan

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Stolen Youth: How the woke, like all totalitarians, are targeting our children - Karol Markowicz , Bethany Mandel

 

by Karol Markowicz , Bethany Mandel

The insidiousness of wokeism isn’t a twist of fate; it’s a strategy of brainwashing that has affected every corner of our culture

 

 

Editor's note: The following essay is excerpted from the co-authors' new book, "Stolen Youth."

My great-grandfather, Aron Gelberg, died in a gulag near the Kuril Islands in eastern Russia sometime in the late 1930s. Gulag stands for Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-Trudovykh Lagerey or Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps, a bureaucratic name for forced labor camps maintained during the time of the Soviet Union. 

Aron and his wife, Chaya, had owned a bakery in Gomel, Belarus, when private enterprise became illegal under the rule of Josef Stalin.

Other people in the gulags were politicians, intellectuals, artists or simply related to one of those objectionable persons. Some were there because they had said the wrong thing, others because they didn’t say the right thing strongly enough. My grandmother and her siblings were children when their father was taken away, but they learned the lesson: obey.

A Soviet-sponsored youth rally in the Lustgarten in Berlin, Germany, on June 1, 1950. The youth carry huge portraits of Communist leaders such as Josef Stalin. (FPG/Getty Images)

I was raised with the knowledge that the freedom I have gotten to experience in the United States should not, for a single moment, be taken for granted, but America is in danger. People are not being carted off to work camps, that’s true, but that was also true for much of the Soviet Union as well. Gulags only existed for about 30 of the USSR’s 69 years. And yet the stifling of speech, the fear of committing a crime today that wasn’t a crime yesterday, the indoctrination, the censorship, all persisted in Soviet society until the USSR’s last day.

THE LEFT THINKS YOUR KIDS SHOULD BE THE LEADERS IN PARENTING AND THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS FOR AMERICA

America is in a conformist moment of its own, and the signs are all too familiar for families like mine. There are a lot of terms associated with this time: "wokeness," "cancel culture" and "indoctrination" are all front and center. There is a push from schools, corporations, media and elsewhere for one woke monoculture.

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The right way of looking at wokeness and woke culture is as a set of deeply toxic ideas that are force-fed to the populace, in particular to children. Part of the philosophy, and indeed the definition of staying awake to offenses, is to always be seeking new targets for re-education. Racism, sexism and general wrongthink are always lurking somewhere and must be rooted out.

The insidiousness of wokeism isn’t a twist of fate; it’s a strategy of brainwashing that has affected every corner of our culture. Leftism is deeply unpopular in America, which is why this woke language and behavior gets enforced through social and political pressure. 

The insidiousness of wokeism isn’t a twist of fate; it’s a strategy of brainwashing that has affected every corner of our culture.

The majority of Americans are not woke, and yet, wokeness has an outsized influence at the top of academia, culture, business and across media. The result: the power of this narrative vastly outstrips its actual popularity and general level of acceptance.

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The conformity of totalitarian regimes always had to begin with children. Children were the great hope of the realized utopian future. They belonged to all of society—not just the family to which they were born. If children could be convinced into the ideas the totalitarians wanted, their parents would follow. And if not, the disobedient parent could easily be removed from the equation.

YOUR CHILDREN BELONG TO YOU, NOT A SCHOOL. IF YOU DON'T FIGHT, YOU'LL LOSE THEM

In the Soviet Union, the Communists kept trying to push the idea that family was secondary to the state. Kids were taught to be like the hero child Pavlik Morozov, who had discovered his father was hoarding grain and informed on him to the authorities. 

"Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation"

Statues of Pavlik were erected all over Russia. Poems and songs were written about him. Children were taught to be like Pavlik, to put the state above all, even their family. Especially their family. It was an understandably powerful lesson. Do the right thing, listen to authority, believe what we believe, act how we want you to act, and you will be celebrated like Pavlik. Don’t, and you’ll end up in a ditch like his accused family members.

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The erasing of problematic aspects of the past is a typical feature of those seeking to stifle dissent. If we have nothing in common, no shared experiences or familiar rituals and ideas, we are easier to sway and control.

This history erasure has come to America. In the riots after the George Floyd killing, removing Confederate statues was the order of the day, but plenty of non-Confederates were dragged in along with them. Statues of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were removed or defaced. When history cleansing gets going, it’s hard to stop it. 

A 700-pound bronze statue of George Floyd near City Hall in Newark, New Jersey. (STRF/Star Max/IPx)

Across the country, statues of George Floyd popped up. His imperfections were not up for debate. His brutal death, captured on video, had shocked Americans. We had united in disgust and grief over what had happened to him, but even that unity, in our totalitarian-mimicking moment, was simply not enough. "Black lives matter" is an idea as uncontroversial as "the Earth is round." But because everyone already agreed with it, it couldn’t simply be believed. You had to put a sign in your window to signal support for an idea that everyone already favored. You had to imagine there were people to convert to the cause, those who didn’t believe strongly enough or didn’t use the exact right words like "anti-racist" to describe it.

Tyrannical societies have always demanded conformity and spectacle in the same way. Aron died in that gulag, but his family had to learn to endure. When Stalin’s death was announced, Aron’s two daughters immediately got to work making a scrapbook of Stalin’s glorious life.

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The spectacle was survival.

The home is the last line of defense. In totalitarian societies, parents have to pretend to believe the lies that kids are taught at school, lest they make themselves or their children a target. In a free country, you don’t have to do that. 

Whose kid is this? In the home, you provide the answer: mine.

 

Karol Markowicz , Bethany Mandel

Bethany Mandel is the editor of a children’s book series Heroes of Liberty, a former contributing writer for Deseret News and a homeschooling mother of five children. Find her on Twitter: @BethanyShondark and and on Instagram: @bethanyshondark.

Karol Markowicz is a columnist for the New York Post and writes frequently for Fox News Opinion. She has also written for Time, USA Today, The Observer, Heat Street, Federalist, Daily Beast and other publications. She is the co-author of the new book, "Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation." Follow her on Twitter @Karol.

 

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/stolen-youth-how-woke-like-all-totalitarians-targeting-our-children

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RFK Jr. Slams Dems for Rigging the System - Robert Spencer

 

by Robert Spencer

And continues to send the Democrat establishment into fits.

 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to give the Democrat establishment fits, and it’s wonderful to see. Just when the far-Left authoritarians who control the party thought that they had their entire membership (with the partial exception of Joe Manchin) marching in lockstep, along comes RFK Jr., daring to think his own thoughts. As a scion of the nation’s most celebrated political family, Kennedy is hard to ignore altogether, but the Democrat leadership is doing its best. On Sunday, in what must be a first for a Democrat presidential candidate, RFK even appeared on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday and took the occasion to denounce the Democrat establishment’s efforts to sabotage his candidacy and make sure that Old Joe Biden coasts to renomination.

Kennedy slammed the Democratic National Committee for having “rigged” the primary system in several ways, chiefly by ruling out the possibility of debates. This deprives us of the spectacle of Old Joe trying to formulate a coherent sentence while RFK denounces “the corrupt merger of state and corporate power” and Marianne Williamson refuses to apologize for being “brilliant, talented, gorgeous, rich, or smart.”

“The DNC, at this point,” RFK observed, “has taken the official position that there will be no debate, and I think that’s unfortunate.” Unfortunate is an understatement. Biden’s poll numbers are in the dumpster (yeah, the same one that holds his presidency), and if he is reelected, the already doddering corruptocrat will be president until he is 86 years old. If Democrat voters were to get a glimpse of RFK Jr. in the primary debates being coherent and convincing, the Democrats’ coronation plans could be upended.

If that happened, more people than just Old Joe Biden would stand to lose a great deal, as Kennedy famously challenges the pharmaceutical establishment that has made out like a bandit over the last few years, as well as the state and corporate fascism that threatens America’s survival as a free society. Can’t have that. And so the Democrats are apparently trying to keep RFK under wraps.

Kennedy added Sunday, “I think what the DNC did to New Hampshire is also unfortunate.” New Hampshire has held the nation’s first primary ever since primaries started to matter, but no longer. The DNC has moved South Carolina to the first position. RFK explained that this was done to protect Old Joe from slipping on yet another banana peel: “President Biden didn’t do well there [New Hampshire]; he came in fifth. So they took New Hampshire, and they kicked it out of first place. And now they’re gonna say — they’re saying that they’re going to completely remove the delegates from New Hampshire, and that, we should be at this point in history.” Completely remove the delegates from New Hampshire? What better way to protect “our democracy” than to disenfranchise whole segments of it?

RFK criticized the move, asserting that New Hampshire was “an exemplar for American democracy.” He detailed why the tiny New England state is perfect for holding the first presidential primary: “It’s very cheap to campaign in. And it has the largest independent bloc in the country. And people [don’t] make their minds up until they see the candidates again and again and again, and they shake the candidate’s hands five times before deciding who to vote for. They vet these candidates for the whole country, they vet them like you would get vetted if you were running for a city council seat.” That sounds like the way a healthy republic should function, so it’s no surprise that the Democrats would be against it.

Kennedy stated that these were ill-considered moves for the Democrats to make, as people already distrust the system and their rigging efforts here are transparent: “When you have so many Americans who are concerned about election integrity, we should be doing everything we can in our party to show that, you know, this is not rigged, rigged system. That it is actually democracy…people can run, and that they can get to debate and that the public is gonna be able to see them, and they’re doing kind of the opposite.” Of course they are, because they don’t really believe in the democracy (yes, it’s really a republic) that they claim so loudly and repeatedly to be guarding and protecting.

“There’s too many Americans,” Kennedy concluded, “who already think that the whole system is rigged against them. And this is confirmation of that. And I think that’s troubling.” It sure is.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur’an and The Sumter Gambit. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/rfk-jr-slams-dems-for-rigging-the-system/

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