Saturday, July 9, 2022

Fear and Loathing in an Islamic Republic - Hugh Fitzgerald

 

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Iran's tyrants turn to internal purges.

 


Iran is in a parlous state. Its economy is in a shambles. The Iranian rial has lost 90% of its value in the last three years. 80% of Iranians now live below the poverty line. Its farmers are suffering from the worst drought in fifty years, made worse by the mismanagement of water resources. Exports of Iranian oil have sunk to about one million barrels a day. Unemployment has surpassed 10%, and is now three times that in the United States. All over the country, Iranians have gone out on the streets to protest the corruption of the leaders and the mismanagement of the economy; the regime has answered their calls for an end to the regime – the cry “Death to Khamenei” is unambiguous – by ordering that the protesters be beaten up and arrested. The mysterious deaths of a half-dozen high-ranking Quds officers has led to an atmosphere of fear and despair. No one is quite sure who is responsible for the killing of IIRGC commanders and other military men. Is it a foreign adversary, that is, Israel, with its Mossad operatives, or domestic assassins who belong to the increasing opposition within the country, or members of the regime itself who are either settling scores with political rivals, or eliminating extra-judicially those whom they suspect of being traitors to the regime and therefore deserve to die? The free-floating suspicion has not spared anyone. In late June the highest-ranking suspect so far, Brigadier General Ali Nasiri, was secretly arrested and charged with being a spy for Israel.

A report on Iran’s paranoid regime is here: “Iran’s regime increasingly unstable, turning to purges out of fear,'” Israel Hayom, June 30, 2022:

The Iranian regime is increasingly unstable and is turning against itself due to mounting economic pressure, an exclusive source in the nation’s capital, Tehran, told i24NEWS.

Most significantly the source – an opponent of the regime – suggested that a number of recent killings of officers from the Quds Force were the result of internal purges, rather than assassinations by external intelligence agencies.

Increasing economic woes caused by sanctions on Iran are becoming a threat to the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. As the Iranian public struggles to pay for basic essentials and even the government has difficulty paying salaries, discontent is growing, the source said.

The relentlessly increasing impoverishment of the Iranian people has led to a collapse in loyalty to the regime. At the same time that they become poorer, enraged Iranians are keenly aware of the corruption at the top, as exemplified by the Ayatollah Khamenei’s $95 billion net worth – which the American government believes to be a low figure, estimating the Supreme Leader’s real net worth at a colossal $200 billion. Iranians know how their leaders live, and it maddens them.

“The companies controlled by the Revolutionary Guards have gone bankrupt; their corruption has increased and the thefts have worsened,” the critic said.

The worse the economic situation, the more those in Iran’s government are willing to sell favors to the highest bidder. Corruption – the powerful being paid for favors rendered, from awarding state contracts to providing someone’s family members with secure government sinecures — has increased, and so has the outright theft of government assets. Those who remain honest become increasingly disheartened at the spectacle of dishonesty all around them.

As well as being the ideological vanguard of the Iranian regime, the IRGC is a huge economic player inside the country, owning a large portfolio of properties and business interests.

The properties that the IRGC has invested in have, like the rest of Iranian assets, sunk in value. And there is nothing the IRGC can do to prevent this; those assets rise or fall in value with the overall economy. Right now they are in free fall.

The Quds Force is the branch within the IRGC responsible for conducting operations outside of Iran and liaising with proxies. It too is feeling the pinch.

“These purges… started with the Quds Force. A number of [its officers] were killed by the regime itself,” the source said, noting that the resulting fear is causing some commanders to mistrust their bodyguards and to avoid sleeping in their own homes at night.

Imagine being so terrified that, despite your rank, you worry about being killed by your own bodyguards. Or that you insist on spending nights not in your own house, but in constantly changing safe houses, to avoid assassins. 

Some IRGC officers, like Hossein Taeb, who had been the head of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization, were fired for incompetence, But others, who had been discharging their duties correctly, mysteriously died. Why? Some were suspected of being connected to Israel’s Mossad. Others were thought to be members of, or dangerously sympathetic to, the leading domestic opposition group, the secretive People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known as Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). Still others may simply have been loyal to the wrong powerful figure, and consequently eliminated by that figure’s rivals.

Adding to the paranoia gripping the establishment is that some of the killings are likely conducted by foreign intelligence agencies – with Israel often labeled as the most likely culprit. This is creating an atmosphere of uncertainty in Iran with individuals dying in unexplained circumstances, with no clear answer as to whether the killing was ordered from abroad, or at home.

“This has caused an earthquake in the trunk of the system, and this is just the beginning of the assassinations,” the opposition figure said.

Iran has now descended into the paranoid world of the Moscow Purge Trials, of Lenin’s Bolshevist slogan “Kto kogo” (“Who Will Defeat or Kill Whom?”), of Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives, of the Peruvian Sendero Luminoso, of Cambodia’s Pol Pot, head of the Khmer Rouge, murdering those he suspected of being secretly allied to the old order, or to the Vietnamese, or simply because they were deemed to be too highly educated). Once the grim atmosphere of free-floating suspicion has set in, any one can be seen as a potential killer, or as someone deserving to die.

An ongoing dispute between Major General Mohsen Rezaee – a twice presidential candidate and former head of the IRGC –and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, is behind much of this infighting, the source said. Further killings are likely to occur as the division between the two conservative figures continues, the source predicted.

The Rezaee-Raisi dispute is not over ideology – both are conservatives – but over power, money, and access to the Supreme Leader. Why not try to eliminate your rival’s band of loyalists, getting them fired, or arrested, or even killed, before he does it first to yours?

In recent weeks a number of high-profile IRGC commanders have been moved into new roles, or were fired from their positions. This is because senior figures “no longer even trust their own agents. The information holes have become so large that they are afraid of their own shadow,” the regime critic said.

The latest example of such firing was that of Hossein Taeb, a cleric who was dismissed from his position as head of the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in June 2022. This is assumed to be the result of the latest example of Taeb’s incompetence — the incident where an alleged Iranian operation to attack Israeli tourists in Turkey was outed, resulting in the arrest of the agents and a diplomatic spat with Turkey, and also to other incidents inside Iran that suggested successful Israeli spy operations that Taeb failed to prevent. Taeb’s dismissal also coincided with the arrest of Brig. General Ali Nasiri on suspicion of spying for Israel. When Israeli operations – sabotage, assassinations — succeed inside Iran, someone must be blamed. Taeb had a record of incompetence, and though powerful friends for a while could protect him, the Istanbul fiasco was the last straw; he had to go.

Was Brigadier General Ali Nasiri a spy for Israel? Or was he falsely accused by someone higher up who didn’t like him, so that he would become the fall guy for the regime’s systemic failures, including its inability to foil Mossad agents? It would certainly be terrifying for the Iranian government if Israel had managed to turn someone that high up in the regime’s hierarchy, persuading him to feed them information. Clearly Mossad has agents in high places all over Iran. How else could Israel’s cyberwarriors have known just where, and how, to implant the Stuxnet computer worm in 2010? How did Israeli assassins manage to kill, seriatim, four of Iran’s top nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012? How did Mossad agents locate the nondescript warehouse where Iran had kept its entire nuclear archive, and manage to sneak that archive out of Iran and back to Israel? How did Mossad manage to sneak a massive explosive device onto the floor of the centrifuge plant at Natanz? Perhaps one or two arrests of people as high up as Brigadier General Ali Nasiri will calm down members of the government who have had a sinking feeling that they are being bested on all sides by Israeli agents, a way to reassure them that they mustn’t be alarmed, that “something is being done.” Of course, another few successes by Mossad in hampering Iran’s nuclear program will make Iranians, who had been tentatively reassured both by the firing of the incompetent Taeb and by the arrest of General Nasiri, the supposed “Israeli spy,” even more alarmed than before. And then the government purges will start up again, with a vengeance. And the Iranian regime will not know where to put its feet or hands.

 

Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/fear-and-loathing-hugh-fitzgerald/

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Wanting the Iran Nuclear Deal for the Wrong Reasons - Majid Rafizadeh

 

by Majid Rafizadeh

The objective of any nuclear deal with a rogue state ought to be anchored in completely and permanently halting that regime from obtaining nuclear weapons. The objective should not be to further empower and embolden it, or to facilitate it becoming a nuclear state.

  • The EU partly wants the deal so it can buy oil and gas from the Iranian regime.

  • The EU also appears to want the nuclear deal in order not to lose its other economic relationships and trade with the ruling mullahs of Iran. Despite US sanctions, European countries are still trading with Iran; the Biden administration has yet to hold them accountable.

  • According to the Financial Tribune, Germany is Iran's top trading partner, and Italy comes in second.

  • By reaching a nuclear deal, the Biden administration may think that it can claim a foreign policy accomplishment and a political victory, as the Obama administration did, by arguing -- falsely -- that it had finally curbed Iran's nuclear program and prevented the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, that was about as accurate as Obama's claim – which he repeated 37 times -- that "If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it."

  • After the 2015 nuclear deal, however, the ruling mullahs of Iran were not only gifted a newfound global legitimacy. The removal of sanctions also generated billions of dollars in revenue for Iran's military institution, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as for Iran's militia and terror groups. The regime used those revenues to expand its influence throughout the region, especially in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq....The Iranian-armed Houthis ratcheted up their efforts to cause death and destruction in Yemen, and Hezbollah escalated its involvement and control of large swathes of Syrian territory. The region also saw a greater propensity for Houthi rocket launches at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, the deployment of thousands of Hezbollah foot soldiers in Syria, and the constant bombardment of southern Israel with Hamas rockets funded by Iran.

(Image source: iStock)

The objective of any nuclear deal with a rogue state ought to be anchored in completely and permanently halting that regime from obtaining nuclear weapons. The objective should not be to further empower and embolden it, or to facilitate it becoming a nuclear state.

It seems, nonetheless, that the Biden administration and the European Union have other motives. The EU partly wants the deal so it can buy oil and gas from the Iranian regime. The EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, surprisingly acknowledged this to the Financial Times:

"We Europeans will be very much beneficiaries from this [nuclear] deal, the situation has changed now. For us it was something... 'well, we don't need it', now it would be very much interesting for us to have another [oil and gas] supplier."

Borrell clearly appears to be stating that the EU's motive behind the nuclear negotiations is to buy oil from a country that, according to the US State Department, is "the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism." The Iranian regime, desperate for cash to fund its terror activities around the world as well as its militia and terror groups in the region, would undoubtedly be delighted to be the EU's supplier of energy and oil.

The EU also appears to want the nuclear deal in order not to lose its other economic relationships and trade with the ruling mullahs of Iran. Despite US sanctions, European countries are still trading with Iran; the Biden administration has yet to hold them accountable. As the Tehran Times reported:

"The value of trade between Iran and the European Union reached €4.863 billion in 2021, registering a nine-percent growth compared to the previous year.... According to the data released by the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA), Iran exported €554 million worth of commodities to the union during the said nine months, while importing goods valued at €2.7 billion".

According to the Financial Tribune, Germany is Iran's top trading partner, and Italy comes in second.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, has been investing all its political capital to resurrect the Obama's catastrophic nuclear deal that would permit Iran to have unlimited nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The Biden administration keeps appeasing the mullahs with almost any policy they want.

Currently, according to a Gallup poll, the majority of the American people disapprove of President Joe Biden's handling of foreign affairs. By reaching a nuclear deal, the Biden administration may think that it can claim a foreign policy accomplishment and a political victory, as the Obama administration did, by arguing -- falsely -- that it had finally curbed Iran's nuclear program and prevented the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, that was about as accurate as then US President Barack Obama claim -- which he repeated 37 times -- that "If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it."

At the time, Obama also pledged that he was "confident" the nuclear deal would "meet the national security needs of the United States and our allies".

After the 2015 nuclear deal, however, the ruling mullahs of Iran were not only gifted a newfound global legitimacy. The removal of sanctions also generated billions of dollars in revenue for Iran's military institution, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as for Iran's militia and terror groups. The regime used those revenues to expand its influence throughout the region, especially in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq. Iran's aggressive expansion campaign proved immensely successful. The Iranian-armed Houthis ratcheted up their efforts to cause death and destruction in Yemen, and Hezbollah escalated its involvement and control of large swathes of Syrian territory. The region also saw a greater propensity for Houthi rocket launches at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, the deployment of thousands of Hezbollah foot soldiers in Syria, and the constant bombardment of southern Israel with Hamas rockets funded by Iran.

Furthermore, as we now know, the Iranian regime was violating the nuclear deal by having a secret nuclear weapons program during the agreement.

At present, the ruling mullahs of Iran will continue skillfully to play the EU and the Biden administration to obtain as many concessions and as many billions as they can before, they doubtless hope, being handed the ultimate gift they wish for: the nuclear deal.

 

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18681/iran-nuclear-deal-reasons

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Why Do So Many Top Democrats Have No Problem Associating With a Virulent Anti-Semite? - Robert Spencer

 

by Robert Spencer

Apparently, their views are compatible.

 


It seems as if Maher Abdel Qader of the Palestinian American Congress is everywhere. He knows everyone, at least in the Democrat Party, and has a hand in everything. He is close to Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah) and Cori Bush (D-Race Hate Hysteria), as well as a prominent former congressman, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Abdel Qader has also hosted numerous fundraisers for New York City Mayor Eric Adams and was part of a committee putting together a fundraiser for Jesse Jackson’s son Jonathan Jackson, who is running for the House in Illinois. There are lots of well-connected, well-heeled people out there, but Abdel Qader is striking because he is a vociferous anti-Semite. So why is he palling around with so many prominent Democrats? Apparently, their views are compatible.

Abdel Qader appears to be closest to Tlaib, who has, according to Fox News, “participated in several events with Abdel Qader over the years, with the most recent fundraiser posted to his Instagram account on September 25, 2021. One day after the fundraiser, Abdel Qader posted a picture of himself alongside Tlaib on a Manhattan, New York, rooftop. He has been quite generous to Tlaib: “Abdel Qader has not only been a key fundraiser for Tlaib, donating $6,500 to her campaign since 2018, but he was also the chairman of her finance committee during her successful 2018 Congressional campaign. Tlaib introduced Abdel Qader by the title at a campaign event. And in 2018, Tlaib presented Abdel Qader with a medal as a sign of gratitude for his help with her inaugural campaign.”

Tlaib, a vehement critic of Israel, was apparently untroubled by Abdel Qader’s anti-Semitism. The other Democrat candidates Abdel Qader supported didn’t seem to be bothered by it, either. In May, Abdel Qader posted on Instagram: “May 18, 2022, Fundraiser for Keith Ellison the 30th attorney general of the State of Minnesota in Manhattan- New York. Also attended by Michael J. Garner, Chief Diversity Officer, MTA Department of Diversity and Civil Rights.” Of course it was. Of Jonathan Jackson, Abdel Qader wrote: “Jonathan Jackson son of Jesse Jackson/ Chicago is running for congress and needs our support. He is a staunch supporter of Palestine, Palestinians and our Arab American community.”

As for Cori Bush, Fox reported that “in early November, Abdel Qader posted a Bush fundraising flier for a reception hosted by the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Muslim Community of St. Louis, which solicited donations between $100 and $2,500 for Bush’s campaign, according to the flier. It appears he donated $250 to her campaign for the fundraiser.” Apparently, Abdel Qader likes Tlaib better than Bush.

The oddest friend of Abdel Qader is Eric Adams, who has courted New York’s Jewish community and appointed two Orthodox Jews to his administration. But they are friends nonetheless. Early in 2021, Abdel Qader was one of only six community leaders to speak with Adams on a Zoom call and talk over the then-candidate’s “campaign vision [and] issues,” as well as to “engage in his campaign.” Abdel Qader noted in an Instagram post that has apparently been removed that Adams was “on board with our community and will stand to support us.” Then in September 2021, Abdel Qader posted on Instagram in another post that was later removed or concealed: “Arab and Muslim community leaders met at Marriott hotel – LaGuardia and held a Fundraising for Eric Adams the democratic nominee for New York City mayor….Event was organized by the Muslim Agenda 2021 Coalition.”

It is, therefore, clear that Adams was publicly friendly with Abdel Qader years after Abdel Qader posted an article on Facebook in 2016 that charged Jews with being “satanic” and claimed that they “practice subversion and treason.” In 2017, Abdel Qader posted a list of the Jewish members of Congress, headed “U.S. Senators and Congressmen with Duel [sic] Citizenship with Israel,” strongly implying that those listed have dual loyalty to Israel and the United States, as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu) alleged back in 2019. In November 2019, he shared a video that repeated the claim that Jews are “satanic” and added the paranoid anti-Semitic trope that they control the media, while he also minimized the Holocaust.

Was Adams’ campaign so careless that it didn’t pick up this material about Abdel Qader? Or was Adams’ election such a sure thing, since New York is essentially a one-party state with a moribund Republican Party, that the campaign figured that Abdel Qader’s anti-Semitism simply didn’t matter? The worst possibility is that Adams’ campaign calculated that Abdel Qader’s anti-Semitism would resonate with the Democrats’ hateful, far-Left, pro-BDS base and counterbalance the street cred the candidate lost by being a former police officer.

Is anti-Semitism now so mainstream on the Left that an open Jew-hater such as Maher Abdel Qader can become an influential mover and shaker for Democrat candidates? There doesn’t seem to be any doubt as to the answer.

 

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 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 book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/why-do-so-many-top-democrats-have-no-problem-robert-spencer/

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Stop The Border Invasion Now - Joseph Klein

 

by Joseph Klein

Will the border states assert their constitutional right to protect their lawful residents?

 


The United States is being invaded by criminal Mexican cartels smuggling hordes of illegal immigrants into the country. The United States is also being invaded indirectly by China, which supplies lethal fentanyl to the Mexican cartels who smuggle the drug across the border, killing many thousands of Americans. Think of it as an undeclared war by the Chinese regime against the American people, aided and abetted by the Mexican cartels.

Several Texas counties declared a border invasion on July 5th in the hope of goading Texas Governor Greg Abbott to end his foot-dragging and make an official declaration of invasion under the Texas and United States Constitutions.

“We’re being invaded. The facts are there,” said Kinney County Judge Tully Shahan at a press conference. His Texas county is located at the U.S.-Mexico border. “This is real.” Judge Shahan blamed the Biden administration for not doing a thing about it. “We’re in over our head," he added. "We need help and we need for Attorney General Ken Paxton and our governor to adopt an invasion under its definition in the constitution. Adopt that invasion and let’s move forward.”

The Biden administration has released more than a million immigrants who were apprehended after managing to enter the United States illegally and has allowed them to stay in the country. This is not counting the so-called “got-aways” who managed to elude apprehension as well as unaccompanied minors still in the U.S.

Mexican cartels who are engaged in smuggling desperate immigrants into the United States are raking in billions of dollars from their criminal human trafficking enterprises. Shadowy figures have organized huge caravans of immigrants, intent on crossing into the U.S. in large groups. Many of the U.S.-bound migrants end up in the hands of the Mexican cartels, who transport their human cargo by the thousands every day into the United States.

In addition to profiting from human trafficking, the Mexican cartels are making money from drug smuggling on the backs of the American people.

“Fentanyl is killing Americans at an unprecedented rate,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram earlier this year. “Drug traffickers are driving addiction, and increasing their profits, by mixing fentanyl with other illicit drugs. Tragically, many overdose victims have no idea they are ingesting deadly fentanyl, until it’s too late.”

The Biden administration’s efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico have failed. Its open border policies have caused border agents to focus overwhelmingly on the apprehension, processing, and release of record numbers of illegal immigrants, diverting valuable resources needed to interdict the smuggling of fentanyl before it is too late.

“Instead of admitting error and moving to keep out illegal migrants, Biden has instead moved to process and admit them more quickly,” a Washington Examiner editorial explained last year. “As a result, more keep coming — breaking new records for border apprehensions every month and further burdening border agents. Drug cartels not only know the border patrol is overwhelmed from processing migrants, but they also know how to use it to their advantage. They drop off hundreds of children at the border in the dead of night. When border patrol agents are forced to deploy resources to process them, they race across the border with fentanyl.”

The Washington Examiner editorial pointed to the increasing financial integration of the Mexican drug cartels and Chinese companies who often have ties to the Chinese Communist government. “What better way to weaken and destabilize America than killing its citizens with deadly drugs and degrading its border security?” the Washington Examiner editors asked rhetorically.

Mexican cartel violence has spilled over into the United States. As Texas Department of Public Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez noted last November, “These criminal organizations come across from Mexico to the US side and they kill individuals. They carry out these killings, these horrendous acts of violence and then go back to Mexico.”

Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution provides, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature or the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.” (Emphasis added)

The Biden administration has knowingly violated these guarantees with its open border policies. Conditions will only get worse with the abandonment of the “Remain in Mexico” program and the likely termination of Title 42 expulsions in the near future.

The legislatures or governors of Texas, Arizona, and other states most affected by the invasive and sometimes violent actions of the human and fentanyl drug smugglers should take advantage of the constitutional guarantee of federal government protection. They should call upon the U.S. government to protect them “against Invasion” and “domestic Violence,” which have been exacerbated by the Biden administration’s refusal to fully enforce the nation’s immigration laws.

But what happens if the Biden administration, as expected, tells these states to pound sand? The Biden administration will insist that the power to regulate immigration lies exclusively in the hands of the federal government, even though the administration has completely dropped the ball.

The administration also will argue that the states are not constitutionally authorized to conduct foreign policy with allies or adversaries, nor are they authorized to wage war. However, Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution makes an exception allowing the states to defend themselves where the states are “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

The border states in particular are being invaded by foreign smugglers. These states are facing the imminent danger of violence and massive drug fatalities as a result. There is no vetting to speak of at the border by federal border agents who are overwhelmed by the sheer number of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. every day. The border states face imminent danger from terrorist suspects, murderers, and rapists who enter their states. The border states are also the first points of entry for lethal fentanyl that kills their people.

“Acting as if they are above the law, Mexican and Central American cartels are engaging in brazen attacks on Arizona, trafficking in drugs, weapons, and human beings,” wrote Arizona’s Attorney General Mark Brnovich last February. “The cartels' smuggling of humans and drugs is bringing more violence to the border crossing into the United States…Border area ranchers have experienced this violence firsthand, including one who was killed the day after he reported a drug load to authorities.”

Attorney General Brnovich issued a legal opinion noting that “cartel and gang members are entering Arizona in a hostile manner that attacks, encroaches on, and violates Arizona.” The Attorney General concluded:

“The on-the-ground violence and lawlessness at Arizona’s border caused by cartels and gangs is extensive, well-documented, and persistent. It can satisfy the definition of ‘actually Invaded’ and ‘invasion’ under the U.S. Constitution. Two conclusions flow from this. First, the federal government has a duty to protect Arizona under the Invasion Clause. Second, Arizona retains the independent authority under the State Self-Defense Clause to defend itself when actually invaded.”

“The federal government is failing to fulfill its duty under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution to defend the States from invasion. The State Self-Defense Clause exists precisely for situations such as the present, to ensure that States are not left helpless.”

Texas and Arizona should band together to challenge the Biden administration’s failure to carry out the federal government’s constitutional duty to protect. They should declare the constitutional right of the states in such circumstances to defend their own lawful residents from invasion and imminent danger. The states unfortunately may face an uphill battle, however, as the courts so far have been reluctant to become involved in what they have characterized as political matters concerning foreign policy and defense. The Supreme Court itself by a slender majority erred in allowing the Biden administration to end the Remain in Mexico program.

Perhaps this time will be different. The border states are being confronted with unprecedented, unchecked, invasive actions conducted by hostile organized criminal enterprises launched from foreign soil into the United States. Unvetted illegal immigrants with violent criminal pasts who are let loose and threaten security in these states pose imminent danger to their lawful residents. So does fentanyl coming from China that is smuggled into the states by the Mexican cartels. The Supreme Court may get the chance to do the right thing this time and rule on behalf of the states trying to  protect their own people and territory from the imminent dangers that the Biden administration has intensified.

 

Joseph Klein

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/stop-border-invasion-now-joseph-klein/

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'Too much red flag for bank': The tale of Hunter Biden's payments to alleged Russian prostitutes - John Solomon

 

by nJohn Solomon/b>

Senators' pressure on DOJ to probe wire transfers part of larger concerns about Biden family being compromised by overseas business dealings.

As his father was ramping up his 2020 presidential run, Hunter Biden was busy texting a woman with a Russian email address about finding a way to evade bank suspicions so they could complete a wire transfer.

"Email with .ru flags wires," Hunter Biden texted the woman named Eva in early January 2019, according to evidence two members of Congress have sent the Justice Department.

"Too much red flag for bank," Hunter Biden texted another time when wire coordinates for the payment to the woman were sent. "That its [sic] what got my accounts frozen and reviewed by bank. Send me Julia and I will give her the cash."

The text messages — first reported in the news media and now recounted in an official letter from Congress to DOJ — raise a tantalizing question: Should Americans be concerned that a presidential son was texting and exchanging wire transfers with alleged prostitutes using a Russian email address?

Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley, two Republicans who have spent more time than any investigating the Biden family's overseas business dealings, believe the answer is a resounding "Yes."

"These findings of potentially criminal behavior must be thoroughly investigated by law enforcement entities according to the highest ethical standards," the senators wrote this week to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Chris Wray and U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss in a letter pleading for action.

The letter provided a pointed reminder that Hunter Biden was aware banks had suspicions he was engaged in wrongdoing, flagging his accounts for reviews, and was in his own words trying to evade those suspicions.

Johnson and Grassley have disclosed that dozens of financial transactions involving the president's son and his business deals were flagged to the U.S. Treasury Department by banks that filed Suspicious Activity Reports.

Just the News has confirmed that one former executive of a bank has filed a whistleblower complaint to the IRS and Securities and Exchange Commissioner suggesting there is far more to the Hunter Biden story than what is public.

And documents obtained by Just the News show Hunter Biden was warned repeatedly starting in 2016 that he had failed to pay taxes on money he had earned from one of his more controversial business clients, the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

It a picture now well documented in the public but frequently blacked out by a Democrat-led Congress and news media unwilling to ask the hard questions, Grassley and Johnson argue in their letter.

"Rather than take these disturbing revelations seriously, the partisan press quickly rushed to dispel any notion of potential wrongdoing connected to Hunter Biden," they wrote. "Instead of investigating potential links between Hunter Biden and human trafficking rings, the media falsely characterized our findings as little more than a rehashing of unproven allegations that echoed a Russian disinformation campaign."

At first blush, the letter might seem like an exasperated plea for investigation and a complaint that DOJ hasn't answered GOP lawmakers. But it is also a reminder that the dynamics in Washington  may soon change if Republicans win back control of Congress and its investigative committees and have the power of subpoena.

"Due to your agencies' continued failure to provide Congress with answers to its legitimate oversight questions, we have serious concerns about your review of this matter as well as the ongoing Hunter Biden criminal case," Grassley and Johnson wrote.

"What is the Justice Department trying to hide from Congress and the American people?" they asked.

The senators said their concerns included questions about ethical conflicts of interest with some of the law enforcement officials involved in investigating or supervising the Hunter Biden probe, which began in late 2018 and is focused on issues that include money laundering, unpaid taxes and influence peddling.

"Most recently, on May 9, 2022, we wrote to U.S. Attorney (USA) David Weiss with respect to our concerns about conflicts of interest infecting the criminal investigation," they told Garland in the new letter, dated Thursday.

"In that letter, we reiterated our concerns about [Deputy Assistant Attorney General] Nicholas McQuaid's conflicts with the Hunter Biden criminal case in light of his prior working relationship with Hunter Biden's criminal defense attorney.

"We also asked USA Weiss whether, in light of the Biden family's connections in Delaware, anyone in his office is recused from the matter. To date, the Biden administration has refused to answer whether there have been any recusals from the Hunter Biden criminal case based on conflicts of interest or other reasons."

You can read the full letter here:

Johnson and Grassley conducted an extensive investigation for years into Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings, concluding they posed serious conflicts of interests and national security concerns that potentially compromised his father's dealings with countries like Russia, China and Ukraine.

They also made public Suspicious Activity Reports from banks to the government flagging certain Hunter Biden-tied transactions for possible money laundering, including payments to Russian and Ukrainian women tied to a suspected sex trafficking operation.

The senators said in their new letter that recent allegations suggesting Joe Biden sent some money to his son that was then redirected to pay for prostitution further heightens their concerns.

"In our September 2020 report," they wrote, "we noted that records in our possession indicated that 'Hunter Biden paid nonresident women in the United States who are citizens of Russia and Ukraine' and that some transactions are linked to what appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring."

The senators demanded that Garland, Wray and Weiss answer a half dozen questions including whether the FBI is "investigating Hunter Biden for criminal violations relating to his reported use of escorts linked to human trafficking rings" and whether the U.S. government has "defensively briefed Hunter Biden for counterintelligence concerns raised by his close financial associations with individuals linked to the communist Chinese government and other foreign nations."

 

John Solomon

Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/too-much-red-flag-bank-tale-hunter-bidens-payments

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President Biden and His Admiral Have Boarded a Sinking Ship - Jay Tucker

 

by Jay Tucker

This transgender madness can't last forever. People are catching on.

 

Admiral (not a Navy admiral) "Rachel" Levine is a so-called transgender woman, a pediatrician, and now a U.S. asst. secretary for health.  Levine has joined President Biden and many others in the LGBT campaign to promote "gender-affirming care" for youths.  "There is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care[.]"   

Levine's "no argument" assertions are hogwash for many obvious reasons.  Here are three.

First, the 2012 Report of the American Psychiatric Association Task Force (Report), at 4, emphasized that there is no consensus regarding treatment of children with GID (now called G.D.), because "opinions vary widely among experts" as to treatments.

Second, the 2012 World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care asserts that social transition for children, which would include use of opposite-sex bathrooms and participation in opposite-sex sports, "is a controversial issue."

Third, the American College of Pediatricians has concluded: "Ethics alone demands an end to the use of pubertal suppression with GnRH agonists, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries in children and adolescents.  The American College of Pediatricians recommends an immediate cessation of these interventions, as well as an end to promoting gender ideology via school curricula and legislative policies."

So much for Levine's nonsense about "no argument."  Such assertions can be only explained as willful attempts to persuade uninformed vulnerable children and their parents. 

In the same vein, President Biden has climbed on board with the admiral by announcing his social transition proposal that K–12 schools must allow males who claim to be females to access female private spaces, such as showers, bathrooms, and sleeping areas.  In addition, schools must require staff to use false and confusing pronouns when referring to so-called transgender people and must allow male staff to dress as women while on the job.  Specifically claiming reliance upon reasoning of the Supreme Court in the Bostock Title VII employment case, Biden proposes to accomplish his goals by applying Title IX prohibitions of sex discrimination in education also to sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination.

It appears that Biden did not read the Court's wise warning in the Bostock opinion.  The Court warned that it did not purport to address issues such as use of "sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes or anything else of the kind," whether under Title VII or any other law.  Nonetheless, Biden has cavalierly declared that the reasoning in Bostock applies to the world of K–12 education under Title IX.

Biden's proposal ("Proposal") was issued not only in spite of the Court's warning, but also in spite of the fact that the DOJ in a January 2021 Memorandum for the Civil Rights Division (Memorandum) determined that reasoning to be defective.  Below is an explanation of just four of the DOJ's determinations:

  1. In Title IX (unlike in Title VII), Congress expressly provided that "notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in this chapter, nothing contained herein shall be construed to prohibit any educational institution receiving funds under this Act, from maintaining separate living facilities for the different sexes."  The DOJ determined (as to separate bathrooms and locker rooms, etc.): "This provision supports the conclusion that Title IX's prohibition on sex discrimination does not prohibit different treatment of the sexes where the physiological differences of the sexes are relevant" (Memorandum, p. 15).
  2. The interpretation of a statute in Bostock has no bearing on the proper interpretation of the Constitution, including whether classifications based on sexual orientation or transgender status should be treated as sex-based classifications (or otherwise trigger heightened scrutiny) (Memorandum, p. 22).
  3. "The Civil Rights Division will not lightly assume that Title IX should be interpreted in a way that "would frustrate the purposes" of that law, Gebser v. Lago Vista Indep. Sch. Dist., 524 U.S. 274, 285 (1998). It would frustrate Title IX's purpose to read its text as prohibiting the single-sex teams that have ensured women equal opportunity in athletics for nearly 50 years. It would likewise frustrate those purposes to read Title IX to prohibit sex-specific facilities that allow men and women privacy from the other sex, particularly given that many boys and girls will be undergoing physiological changes associated with their biological sex at the same time that they are participating in, or attempting to participate in, education programs and activities" (Memorandum, p. 17).
  4. "At a bare minimum, no statute should be read to require or permit giving transgender individuals special — as opposed to equal — treatment. ... Bostock does not prevent recipients from adopting sex-specific policies and facilities when the physiological differences of the sexes are relevant, including with respect to living assignments, bathrooms, locker rooms, and competitive sports teams. ... Thus, for example, a women's volleyball team, ice hockey team, weightlifting team, or rugby team may not allow men who identify as women to play on the team if other men are not allowed to, because doing so would discriminate against non-transgender men and in favor of transgender men based on sex, which is unlawful under Bostock" (Memorandum, p. 17).

Parents, children, legislators, judges, and medical professionals are all becoming aware of the material risks and consequences (including irreversibility) of medical interventions such as puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and "sex reassignment" surgery.  Such awareness has caused states (like Arkansas) and medical authorities in sovereign nations (Sweden and Finland) to prohibit or recommend against administration of such treatments for most minors.  Other states (like South Dakota) have enacted prohibitions on participation by males in opposite-sex sports to protect constitutional rights of fairness and other rights.  A teacher sued his school board for compelling him to affirm opposite-sex pronouns in violation of state and federal constitutional and statutory protections.

Studies conclude that men who transition by taking testosterone suppressants can rejuvenate whatever muscle mass, strength, and power they may lose initially through proper training.  A Mayo Clinic doctor has confirmed that from a scientific standpoint, male swimmer "Lia" Thomas absolutely does have a biological edge over teammates and competitors.  A study of endocrinologists, the physicians most likely to care for so-called trans patients, found that "over 80% have never received training on care of transgender patients."  Further, leaders in "gender" health care are admitting that many gender-care professionals are recklessly violating their own presumed standards of care.  Across the country, parents are suing school boards for overtly and/or secretly grooming children in false and dangerous gender ideology in violation of parental Constitutional rights to control the education and upbringing of their children. 

The time has come for parents, voters, legislators, judges, and the public to aggressively reject both false transgender narratives and unlawful government meddling in health care.

Image via Pexels.

 

Jay Tucker

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/07/president_biden_and_his_admiral_have_boarded_a_sinking_ship.html

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NeverTrump Republicans Just Can’t Let Go of Trump - Bruce Thornton

 

by Bruce Thornton

Basking in progressive praise - while demonizing Trump supporters as a "cult."

 


The Congressional show-trial disguised as a House committee investigation of the January 6 “insurrection” serves several partisan purposes. Most obviously, it attempts to distract the voters from Joe Biden’s and the Dem’s dismal record of failure both at home and abroad. But it’s also useful for NeverTrump Republicans who may find it difficult to attack President Trump given how starkly Biden’s failures contrast with the policy successes of their bête orange.

The hearings, then, provide Republican NeverTrumpers an opportunity to rehash some of their typical hyperbolic smears from the last six years, as well as potentially ending Trump’s political career. But in the end, all they will achieve is to remind us why ordinary voters distrust the Republican establishment and its fifth-columnist pundits like Bret Stephens.

A New York Times house-conservative and terminal NeverTrumper, Stephens recently posed the question whether the January 6 House investigation “can begin to steer some of the Trump faithful toward the kind of cult deprogramming they so desperately need.” Stephens here is reprising a favorite NeverTrump cliché that the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump in 2016, and the 74 million in 2020, are members of a “cult of personality,” as NeverTrumper Jonah Goldberg put it. Indeed, Stephens speculates that “Americans may someday come to understand Donald Trump as the most successful cult leader of our times.”

The first problem with Stephens’ question is its obvious approval of a House committee that is a transparent exercise in partisan propaganda rather than a good-faith effort to establish facts. We knew this was the case when Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of Republican Minority House leader Kevin McCarthy’s recommendations for the Republican members of the committee. Instead Pelosi picked arch-RINOs Liz Chaney and Adam Kinzinger.

This move insured that there would be no one to challenge the statements of witnesses, or otherwise publicly hold the Dems accountable for their blatant rigging of the process. As a result, the Committee has publicized specious, unchallenged testimony based on second- and third-hand gossip. For example, ex-Trump administration staffer Cassidy Hutchinson claimed last week that on January 6 Trump tried to take control of his limo and choke a Secret Service agent––charges that were immediately debunked by agents.

Add the mass arrests of participants in the January 6 riot, the vast majority for misdemeanors; the lengthy time they have spent isolated in dismal unsanitary jails; the numbers of Trump’s advisors who have been dragged manacled from their homes by heavily armed FBI agents, and the “show trial” comparison is an apt one.

Indeed, the purpose of the House “investigation” also recalls that of the Soviet terror.  In 1918, Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Bolsheviks’ secret police, explained its goal: “We are not waging war against individual persons. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class.... The first questions that you ought to put are: To what class does he belong? What is his origin? What is his education or profession? And it is these questions that ought to determine the fate of the accused.”

Change “bourgeoisie” and “class” to “Trump supporters” and you get the purpose of the House investigation––to liquidate Trump’s political career and “cancel” his supporters. But our media fonts of moral rectitude and upholders of “democratic norms” have fulminated more over Trump’s “mean tweets” than this government violation of half the Bill of Rights.

This very selective outrage, of course––this straining out the Trump gnat while swallowing the Obama, Hillary, and now Biden camels––has been the NeverTrumpers’ modus operandi. What is most remarkable is that they still don’t get that they are insulting millions and millions of Trump supporters. When a “conservative” pundit like Bret Stephens writes of Trump’s “irrepressible bigotry, misogyny, bullying,” as he hyperventilated after the 2016 election, normal people outside the D.C. establishment silo see rank hypocrisy and inveterate class snobbery.

These NeverTrump defenders of “norms,” after all, seldom got so passionate over Barack Obama’s blatant race-baiting and support for racist outfits like Black Lives Matter that incite riots and assassinations of police officers; or Hillary’s felonious influence-peddling, violations of security protocols, and callous lies she told about the cause of the violence in Libya that killed four Americans––while she stood face-to-face with the parents of the dead as they grieved over their children’s coffins.

Or take the “cult of personality” charge Stephens flogs in this column. There has never been a president who while alive came as close to being the object of a personality cult than Barack Obama––especially Donald Trump, whom the establishment media, universities, and popular culture have been viciously attacking for over six years.

Think I’m exaggerating? Peruse this catalogue of cringe-inducing worshipful praise of Obama:

He is a “rock star,” the Democrats’ “Tiger Woods,” a politician “it’s hard to be objective when covering,” who made one reporter’s leg “tingle,” and whose very trouser-crease astonished another; one “so impressive, so charismatic,” “something special,” possessing “chiseled pectorals,” a “keen analytical intelligence,” “prodigious talents,” who promotes an “amazing legislative agenda,” and possesses “huge achievements”; “one of our brightest presidents,” a “huge visionary,” “our national poet,” “the most noble man who has ever lived in the White House”; the “political equivalent of a rainbow,” “a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy,” “something special, a man who makes difficult tasks look easy,” the “visionary leader of a giant movement”; a president “able to game out scenarios before the experts in the room,” “a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph,” Hegel’s “world historical soul”; “the perfect father, the perfect husband, the perfect American,” a president “better than the body politic deserved,” and “a great speech writer” whose words comprise “one of the most moving, inspiring valentines to this country that I’ve ever heard.”

Let’s not leave out my personal favorite, from SFGate: “Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.”  But what do you expect when Obama, typical of a cult leader, preposterously claimed in 2008 that his securing the nomination “was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”?

Rhetoric doesn’t get any more cultish than all this embarrassing drivel, all of which was encouraged by a besotted media that carried on a “slobbering love affair,” as Bernie Goldberg put it, with a politician whom the media are supposed to monitor like a “watchdog of the public weal,” as journos like to fancy themselves.

It also puts one in mind of Charles Mackay’s classic Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, where he observes that

[L]ike individuals, [nations] have their whims and their peculiarities, their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.

Cults display this same delusional fixation, along with a fierce intolerance for heretics and critics who must be silenced, slandered, and smeared for their blasphemy. And true believers must be exalted for their doctrinal conformity to the sacred narrative. Here’s Stephens from March of 2018:

Liberals tend to admire NeverTrumpers, because they see them as conservatives with a moral sense and, perhaps, a brain. By contrast, MAGA Republicans — whether of the fully or merely semi-Trumpified varieties — detest NeverTrumpers with an animus they can scarcely extend to liberals or progressives.

Typical are the smug self-congratulation, the implied validation of progressives’ claims that they are “brights” smarter than doltish “MAGA Republicans,” and the unseemly delight in being praised by progressives––all while serving as their “useful idiots,” which is the real reason liberals “admire NeverTrumpers.”

Stephens gives us a classic case of projection. It’s the NeverTrumpers who “detest” Trump supporters with an “animus” they have never extended to Barack Obama, a disaster for the country both at home and abroad; or Hillary Clinton, who committed numerous violations of her oath to uphold the Constitution and the nation’s laws; or Joe Biden, who in just 18 months has in both domestic and foreign policy managed to be the most destructive president ever. Nothing Trump did equals a fraction of the Democrats’ substantive failures of character and governing.

But NeverTrumpers have never been about actual deeds and achievements that are good for the country, but rather class snobbery and disdain for the 63 million Americans who aren’t part of the credentialed cognitive elite, and who offended the self-appointed global village-explainers by ignoring the mandarins and laughing at Trump’s relentless exposure of their hypocrisy and pretensions. Calling fellow citizens members of a “cult” who need “deprogramming” just reminds them why they voted for Trump in the first place.

 

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/nevertrump-republicans-just-cant-let-go-trump-bruce-thornton/

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European Scientists Empowering China's Military - Judith Bergman

 

by Judith Bergman

There is no doubt that European scientists, through their collaboration with Chinese researchers working directly for China's military, have contributed to China's accelerating military modernization.

  • "Western universities need to understand that Chinese military scientists have only one client, and that is the People's Liberation Army." — Meia Nouwens, researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Politiken, May 19, 2022.

  • "[T]here is an attempt to take as much knowledge as possible from our research communities back to China. In my home country, the Netherlands, there are researchers who have been working on artificial intelligence with Huawei instead of with NATO. It's the world turned upside down." — David van Weel, NATO's Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, Politiken, May 23, 2022

  • In one Danish case... a Chinese military engineer, saying that he came from a Chinese research institute that turned out to not exist, collaborated with Aalborg University in Denmark on advanced radar technology. The engineer was, instead, from the People's Liberation Army Information Engineering University.... [T]he university did not take steps to vet the Chinese engineer's credentials. — Politiken, November 30, 2021

  • "If you look at... 40 years ago, [the CCP] had zero satellites... They had no ICBMs... They had no nuclear weapons... They had no navy.... Look at what they have today.... We're witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geostrategic power that the world has witnessed." — General Mark Milley, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, breakingdefense.com, November 4, 2021.

  • British universities have accepted £240 million from Chinese institutions, many with links to the military, including £60 million from institutions sanctioned by the US government for supplying the Chinese military with fighter jets, communications technology and missiles. In... just six years, the number of research collaborations between scientists in the UK and Chinese institutes with deep connections to the country's defense forces tripled to more than 1,000. — The Times, February 4, 2022.

  • [O]ne of the UK's "foremost" high-tech weapons experts, Professor Clive Woodley at Imperial College London – one of the British universities that has received the most funding from China -- had been freely working with China for years.... Most of Woodley's research has been funded by the Ministry of Defence.... He has advised the MoD about many of its key lethal systems." — David Rose, investigative journalist, Unherd, May 21, 2022.

  • "Adapting to a world affected by the rise of China is the single greatest priority for MI6" — Richard Moore, UK's spy chief, head of MI6, Sky News, November 30, 2021.

New research has found that European scientists have "shared militarily sensitive knowledge with the Chinese army on a large scale." 2,994 scientific collaborations between Europe and China have taken place with the Chinese military, nearly half of which involved scientists affiliated with China's elite National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). Pictured: The NUDT campus in in Changsha, Hunan Province, China. (Image source: Huangdan2060/Wikimedia Commons)

New research done by Follow the Money, a Dutch platform for investigative journalism, and ten other European media outlets, found that European scientists have "shared militarily sensitive knowledge with the Chinese army on a large scale."

The project, known as the China Science Investigation, collected a staggering 353,000 scientific collaborations between Europe and China and found that, of these, 2,994 have taken place with the Chinese military, defined as, "studies where scientists from Western European universities collaborated with Chinese colleagues directly linked to an institute that is part of the Chinese army."

Moreover, for the past ten years, these collaborations had also increased all throughout Europe. According to Deutsche Welle, nearly half of the scientific 2,994 collaborations that the China Science Investigation evaluated were published by scientists affiliated with China's elite National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) at universities in the United Kingdom, followed by the Netherlands and Germany. The NUDT's explicit purpose is to "strengthen the armed forces and the nation."

"It [NUDT] is the top institution of the People's Liberation Army, which among other things is known for its research into supercomputers and hypersonic missiles," noted Rebecca Arcesati, a researcher at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics) in Germany. "The fact that this particular university is so actively engaged in research collaborations in Europe should cause the warning lights to flash." In Germany alone, at least 230 research articles were published from 2000 through early 2022 in which Chinese military researchers had collaborated with German research institutions.

According to the China Science Investigation, "Collaboration took place in all kinds of areas: from drone studies to artificial intelligence, from space travel to shipping, and from radar to underwater communication."

There were also collaborations with the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, known for its research into nuclear and other weapons.

In the Netherlands alone, where the Dutch intelligence services had already warned in 2010 that China's intelligence services were showing interest in high-quality technology and science developed in the Netherlands, more than "90 military scientists from China have gathered knowledge at Dutch universities and knowledge institutions. They conducted research into militarily sensitive technologies, such as hypersonic aircraft and reinforced concrete."

One Ph.D. student, He Lei from NUDT, who received his degree at Delft University in the Netherlands, told a Chinese newspaper that:

"The country and the military chose us for foreign studies to learn and master groundbreaking science and technology. This way, we will be able to take on the heavy task of strengthening and modernizing the army."

In Denmark, as well, the China Science Investigation project identified 91 research articles in which Chinese military researchers had collaborated with one or more Danish research institutions. In November 2021, Reuters revealed how a Chinese professor, Guojie Zhang, working at the University of Copenhagen had conducted genetic research with the Chinese military without disclosing the connection:

"Zhang and a student he was supervising worked with a People's Liberation Army (PLA) laboratory on research exposing monkeys to extreme altitude to study their brains and develop new drugs to prevent brain damage – a priority the PLA has identified for Chinese troops operating on high plateau borders."

Such studies could, for instance, assist Chinese troops stationed on the mountainous border with India.

"Western universities need to understand that Chinese military scientists have only one client, and that is the People's Liberation Army," Meia Nouwens, who is a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, told Politiken.

"Their raison d'être is to modernize the Chinese army. Your study shows that although the EU has identified China as a 'systemic rival', Europe needs to do more to protect our research. Especially when it comes to technologies that we believe will be crucial for the future of warfare."

These revelations have caused consternation in NATO, where David van Weel, NATO's Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, says that European universities need to stop being naïve. "We have noticed that Chinese scholars linked to the People's Liberation Army, as well as Chinese investment firms, are very, very active in our research ecosystems," Weel said.

"It's about becoming less naive about the fact that there is an attempt to take as much knowledge as possible from our research communities back to China. In my home country, the Netherlands, there are researchers who have been working on artificial intelligence with Huawei instead of with NATO. It's the world turned upside down. This is because we have not invested enough and committed enough in recent years. But we are changing that now."

Several factors seem at play here. Naïveté combined with an almost extreme form of carelessness is one factor. In one Danish case, for instance, Chinese scientists from the NUDT collaborated for several years with Denmark's Technical University (DTU) on technologies with military potential, such as quantum physics, cryptology, optical communication equipment, battery technology and navigation systems. Several of the Danish scientists knew that they were dealing with Chinese military scientists, but did not consider that a problem because they "did not give the Chinese access to confidential information."

Deception is another factor, but, again, combined with carelessness on the part of European universities. In another Danish case, for instance, a Chinese military engineer, saying that he came from a Chinese research institute that turned out to not exist, collaborated with Aalborg University in Denmark on advanced radar technology. The engineer was, instead, from the People's Liberation Army Information Engineering University. The problem, however, was not only deception on the part of the engineer, but that the university did not take steps to vet the Chinese engineer's credentials.

There is no doubt that European scientists, through their collaboration with Chinese researchers working directly for China's military, have contributed to China's accelerating military modernization.

"If you cooperate with NUDT, then you cooperate directly with the Chinese military. It would be the same as the Russian army having a university, of which the Chief of Defense was the top leader," said Emily Weinstein, nonresident Fellow at the Global China Hub at the Atlantic Council.

"It is possible that you as a Danish or German researcher think the research is completely harmless. But to that I would say that civilian scientists are not trained to think in the same way. We are talking here about active military officers, and we should basically expect that no matter what they research, even if it seems harmless, they do it from a military point of view. They are trained to absorb knowledge and apply it in a military context."

In November 2021, General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed his concern at how fast China had accelerated its military modernization after testing a hypersonic weapon:

"If you look at, again, 40 years ago, they had zero satellites... They had no ICBMs... They had no nuclear weapons... They had no fourth or fifth-generation fighters or even more advanced fighters, back then... They had no navy... They had no sub-force. Look at what they have today... So if you look at the totality, this test [of a hypersonic weapon] that occurred a couple weeks ago, is only one of a much, much broader picture of a military capability with respect to the Chinese. That is very, very significant. We're witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geostrategic power that the world has witnessed."

The collaborative articles between European scientists and Chinese researchers working for China's People Liberation Army that the China Science Investigation has uncovered are just a small part of the knowledge that Chinese researchers have accumulated, according to Alex Joske, an independent researcher formerly with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. "What is particularly worrying is that the number of published articles constitutes only one part of the relationships between the researchers," Joske said.

"For every handful of articles we see here, there has probably been a Chinese military scientist who has worked and studied at a European university, where he has built relationships and knowledge. This data is just the tip of the iceberg."

China also has invested large sums in many European universities, not least in the UK. An investigation by The Times published in February showed that British universities have accepted £240 million from Chinese institutions, many with links to the military, including £60 million from institutions sanctioned by the US government for supplying the Chinese military with fighter jets, communications technology and missiles. In addition, in just six years, the number of research collaborations between scientists in the UK and Chinese institutes with deep connections to the country's defense forces tripled to more than 1,000.

Recently, investigative journalist David Rose published a piece in Unherd, revealing that one of the UK's "foremost" high-tech weapons experts, Professor Clive Woodley at Imperial College London -- one of the British universities that has received the most funding from China -- had been freely working with China for years:

"Most of Woodley's research has been funded by the Ministry of Defence. A former president of the International Ballistics Society, he served as Chief Scientist at the MoD-controlled company QinetiQ from its inception in 2001 — when the MoD privatised its own labs — to 2018. He has advised the MoD about many of its key lethal systems...

"[O]ver the past eight years, Woodley has participated at least seven times in seminars and lectures for senior figures from China's defence industry and university departments that work with its military. He is also a co-editor of two Chinese journals funded by weapons firms. Since 2014, he has had eight papers either published in Chinese journals or co-written with Chinese scientists working with Chinese arms makers — the most recent, in 2021."

"This case raises serious concerns about the integrity of our military secrets and the level of cooperation between a British expert and a potentially hostile state," Tom Tugendhat, chairman Britain's Foreign Affairs Select Committee said.

According to the Unherd report, however, the Ministry of Defense denied that Woodley's activities had posed any risk.

"Its spokesperson refused to answer a single question about Woodley's involvement with China, other than to say: 'We have robust procedures in place to make sure research contracts do not contribute to overseas military programmes and that individuals or organisations with foreign-state links cannot access our sensitive research... we ensure that stringent vetting checks are carried out.'"

"Adapting to a world affected by the rise of China is the single greatest priority for MI6," the UK's spy chief, head of MI6 Richard Moore said in November 2021.

"We are deepening our understanding of China across the UK intelligence community and widening the options available to the government in managing the systemic challenges that it poses."

 

Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18660/europe-scientists-china-military

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