As the House Energy and Commerce Committee convenes on Thursday to explore the threat of TikTok this week, it will be faced with a daunting challenge — how to position U.S. policy over popular U.S. practice. In fact, when it comes to TikTok, the chasm between American foreign policy and American commercial interests could not be wider. On the one hand, Congress and the Biden administration are inching up to impose an outright ban on TikTok in the coming weeks if it does not sell to an American company.
The company itself is arguing that the U.S. should mend it but not end it.
On the other hand, American advertisers, brands, marketers, ad agencies and influencers are embracing TikTok like there’s no tomorrow. While U.S. policymakers are preparing to make history through an unprecedented ban on a social media app, U.S. companies are spending unprecedented sums on TikTok marketing, advertising and promotion. Not a week goes by without an announcement of seminars, conferences, webinars, and workshops by ad agencies and marketing experts on how to profit from TikTok.
Led by budding entrepreneurs and marquee names, TikTok tutorials have become a cottage industry. One ad exec who did not want to be identified, noted: “I have advised all my creative directors to find a way to get our clients on every social media app, beginning with TikTok and Instagram. If not, they are missing golden opportunities to engage with viewers for extended periods of time. We have a chance to reach over 885 million viewers and that number is growing.”
With the average TikTok user on the app for well over an hour and a half every day, it is a great marketing opportunity to be sure. These data show that America is a tale of two cities when it comes to popular social media.
Privacy activists caution against the lack of personal data protection on the one hand, and in the case of TikTok, serious national security implications. Yet social media mavens have come to rely on the app for their very livelihood and profitability.
Many of the leading brands in America (and indeed the world) are on TikTok.
For example,”TikTok was the fastest growing app in America, and brands are finally realizing the advertising opportunity. In fact, viewers who engage (share, like, or comment) on a brand’s video are 150% more likely to purchase their product or service. Even more convincing, 350% of engagers are more likely to visit the brand’s physical store and 40% are more likely to visit the brand’s website! These are conversion opportunities you do not want to miss out on!
Companies and brands such as Chipotle, Red Bull, The Washington Post, NBA, Taco Bell, Fortnite, Nickelodeon, Crocs, Netflix, the NFL, HP, ESPN, Vineyard Vines, Levi’s, WWE, Bentley Motors and others are using TikTok to bolster their sales and customer engagement.
And it is not just average brands, but major companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft that have joined the party.
“Google, Apple and Microsoft all have TikTok accounts, with over 8.5 million likes between the three. While Apple has more than 1.3 million fans on the platform, Google and Microsoft have 403,000 and 143,000, respectively. But unlike Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or any social platform where these companies also have a presence, TikTok is being used to showcase the brands beyond traditional advertising.”
But there is yet another dimension to the debate which bears examination. According to Pew Research, 31 percent of American TikTok users are Hispanic and 30 percent are Black. These numbers reflect the growing embrace of social media expression by ethnic groups who use TikTok, Instagram and Facebook in higher proportions than others.
Former ad exec Sanford Moore pointed out the targeted marketing opportunities for brands in reaching Hispanic and Black consumers is “tremendous.” He noted that “while some advertisers overlook their demographic, Black and Hispanics over-index in consumption and brand loyalty. These consumers should not be taken for granted.”
All of this suggests not only a policy divergence, but a generational dichotomy as well.
It is clear that younger social media users can and will adapt to a new national policy. With new social media apps such as WeChat, QQ, Telegram and others, there are alternative outlets for TikTok users to segue if the U.S. imposes an outright ban.
The tough task for Congress is not convincing privacy activists and security stalwarts about the dangers of TikTok. Nor is it finding a way to mend it but not end it.
The enduring test for U.S. policy is educating and convincing the next generation of Americans — including brands, companies and marketers– that China, Russia and other sworn enemies will use any means necessary to compete and dominate.
And that includes a seemingly harmless, simple app that has us singing and dancing our way to data subversion. That is an infinitely more difficult challenge than legislating a ban on TikTok, but equally important to our national interests.
Adonis Hoffman is CEO of The Advisory Counsel LLC. He served in senior posts in Congress and at the FCC, was legal counsel to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, and adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
This verse came up in my devotions this morning. I was prompted by The Holy Spirit to make this image and publish it. False prophets have always been a problem with numerous cultures, and dealing with them varies with severity. Knowing who are the “false” prophets has always been the rub. God’s answer? If their prophecy does not come true, then they’re false.
Above are some of the High Priests of the Climate Change Religious Cult. They also clam to be prophets, though they do not use that term. They claim science is behind their forecasts, when in reality they are tyrannical prophecies that have never come true.
Name any other discipline, and any of them had the same record of false claims of catastrophes that never happen, and they would be derided is all the main stream press, and the political elite would make their lives a living hell.
For 40 plus these false prophets have forecasted disasters that never happened. Using terms that gender fear, they prey on the weak minded. Fear is their only tool, because science is NOT with them, neither is their forecasts. Running their climate change religion as any typical tyrannical organization, they have amassed a large portion of the wealthiest people and organizations, they seek to amass more wealth, and more control. Working with the World Economic Forum, they quest for “One World Government” proceeds with freighting results.
When you consider the number of nations that have been dupped into acting on the “Green New Deal”, and have failed miserably, you’d think that the entire World would rise up and deal appropriately with these false prophets of climate change.
All prophecies have failed. All scientific claims have proven false. All attempts to apply their demented Green New Deal has proven disastrous. Their quest for One World Government is becoming more obvious. The false masks they wear to decieve are beginning to slip, revealing who they really are.
When is enough? How much more are we suppose to take?
Apologies in advance for making you consider something uttered by David French and Jennifer Rubin, but the two work for prominent news publications that unfortunately shape our national dialogue, so bear with me.
“DeSantis actually called Russia’s grotesque, aggressive invasion of a sovereign country a ‘territorial dispute.’ … Astonishing. Dangerous.”—French, New York Times columnist
“[DeSantis] has decided that if you can’t beat the pro-Putin wing of the Republican Party, then join them. He declared that Russia’s brutal and unjustified war of aggression against a sovereign Ukraine is actually ‘a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia…’”—Rubin, Washington Post columnist
The “territorial dispute” quote is from Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recently released statement about the ongoing war in Ukraine (a place our elected leaders in Washington sometimes refer to as “Our Last Great Hope.”) What he said more fully is that “becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia” is not a “vital interest” to the United States.
That’s a view shared by anyone who thinks yet another foreign war without clear and substantial strategic benefit to America is not something we should busy ourselves with. (It’s not like we have any pressing problems here!) But French, Rubin and the rest of the national media really hate that view. It’s “pro-Putin”! It’s “astonishing” and “dangerous”!
DeSantis should say it one more time for the people in the back. The war is literally a dispute over territory. Russian leadership claims Ukraine as its own and the Kremlin’s settlement offers are based almost solely on territory concessions (with some details related to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
“I believe that Russians and Ukrainians are one people … one nation, in fact,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2019. In some parts of Ukraine, even Ukrainians claim that. “Many In Eastern Ukraine Want To Join Russia,” read a NPR headline in 2017.
The Washington Post last year found at least 15 percent of residents of Ukraine’s Donbas region said they wanted to join Russia. Maybe, just maybe, this has something to do with Russia and Ukraine being literally part of the same nation for more than half a century.
I know that’s not very sexy for the nerds in the media who prefer to think of the war like a Marvel movie where a corny villain can be overpowered by a united and freedom-loving Justice League, but that’s not the case.
Democracy is at stake!
*Cue Max Boot solemnly removing his little hat in reverence.*
It turns out that discussing the conflict doesn’t first require the speakers to confess their love for Ukraine and hatred for Putin while shedding a tear. It’s not the romantic affair that Rubin, French, et al. want it to be.
Four Americans were kidnapped in Matamoros, Mexico having traveled to the country for medical treatment. Two of the four American citizens kidnapped in Mexico are dead while the other two remain alive, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing the governor of Tamaulipas.
Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said Tuesday that one of the surviving Americans was wounded and the other was not, while two of the four U.S. citizens who traveled to Mexico were found dead.
The FBI is still working to return the missing Americans, who were abducted after being caught in the crossfire of rival cartels shortly after crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a Tuesday news conference that he has been briefed by the FBI on the situation unfolding in Mexico and said the State Department was working with Mexican authorities on the investigation.
Garland offered sympathies to the families of the victims of the attacks, but did not confirm the reports that two of the Americans died in the attack.
The attorney general added that the Justice Department would be working to prosecute the cartel members behind the incident.
Dramatic video shows the moment four Americans were kidnapped shortly after crossing into Mexico, in what authorities have called a case of mistaken identity.
The video of the violent incident shows armed men in body armor dragging one person across the pavement and pushing a woman into the bed of a white truck, then dragging two more men who appear to be wounded across the pavement and loading them into the bed of the same truck.
Photos from the scene show a white minivan with North Carolina plates riddled with bullet holes shortly after the kidnappings, with a woman who reportedly witnessed the attack telling the Associated Press she saw the minivan collide with another vehicle before hearing gunfire and seeing armed men approach the van.
“All of a sudden they (the gunmen) were in front of us,” said the woman, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. “I entered a state of shock, nobody honked their horn, nobody moved. Everybody must have been thinking the same thing, ‘If we move they will see us, or they might shoot us.’”
A member of the Mexican security forces stands next to a white minivan with North Carolina plates and several bullet holes, at the crime scene where gunmen kidnapped four U.S. citizens who crossed into Mexico from Texas, Friday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo)
She added that she saw the men force one woman who was able to walk into the bed of their truck, while another victim who she said could move his head was loaded into the truck.
“The other two they dragged across the pavement, we don’t know if they were alive or dead,” she said.
According to law enforcement, the group of Americans were traveling to Mexico for health services last week when the minivan they were driving was attacked by a group of armed men, who shot at the vehicle before dragging the Americans out and loading them into a truck. The four Americans were not thought to be the intended target of the attack.
The group crossed from Brownsville, Texas, into the Mexican city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, an area that has been plagued by cartel violence and carries a travel advisory from the State Department warning Americans to avoid visiting.
Mexican Natioanla Guard prepare a search mission for four U.S. citizens kidnapped by gunmen at Matamoros, Mexico. (AP Photo)
One of the four Americans in the group, Zindell Brown, was identified by his sister, Zalandria Brown of Florence, South Carolina, on Tuesday, saying she has been in contact with the FBI and Mexican authorities since the incident.
“This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from,” Brown told the Associated Press. “To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable.”
Brown said her younger brother is from Myrtle Beach and was visiting Mexico with three friends, one of whom was there to get a tummy tuck surgery.
She added that her brother was hesitant to make the trip, warning his friends about the dangers before they departed.
Mexican army soldiers prepare a search mission for four U.S. citizens kidnapped by gunmen in Matamoros, Mexico. (AP Photo)
“Zindell kept saying, ‘We shouldn’t go down,’” Brown said.
The victim’s father, O’dell William Brown, said the family is reeling from the news.
“I don’t know which way to go right now,” he said. “We don’t know what’s what.”
It is unclear if Brown is one of those who died in the incident.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the return of the victims and arrests of those responsible.
THE Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
Michael Lee is a writer at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @UAMichaelLee
A parliamentary committee has called for expanding Canada’s assisted suicide program so that “mature minors” whose deaths are “reasonably foreseeable” be allowed to hasten their deaths without parental consent.
The Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying presented its report last week for discussion in the House of Commons, recommending that minors should be eligible for doctor-assisted suicide. Minors “deemed to have the requisite decision-making capacity upon assessment” should be eligible for the country’s Medical Assistance in Dying Program (MAID), the report states in a list of 23 recommendations.
The committee urged the Canadian government to “undertake consultations with minors on the topic of MAID, including minors with terminal illnesses, minors with disabilities, minors in the child welfare system and Indigenous minors, within five years of the tabling of this report.”
MOVE OVER MOLECH and Margerete Sanger. Canada wants to abort children at any age simply because they deem them less than “normal”.
The report also recommended that parental consent is not always necessary in certain cases if a minor is eligible for assisted suicide.
“That the Government of Canada establish a requirement that, where appropriate, the parents or guardians of a mature minor be consulted in the course of the assessment process for MAID, but that the will of a minor who is found to have the requisite decision-making capacity ultimately take priority,” Recommendation 19 in the report reads.
While the report recommended expanding MAID to minors, it called for restricting it to only young people whose death is “reasonably foreseeable.”
The report did not propose an age limit for assisted suicide, stating “eligibility for MAID should not be denied on the basis of age alone.” Regarding parental consent, the final report recommends parents be consulted “where appropriate.”
The majority of the committee’s members called for the government to hold formal consultations with Canadians under 18 within the next five years and to provide funding for research into the issue of minors being eligible for MAID. In addition, the committee called for the creation of an independent expert panel to evaluate the criminal code provisions in MAID for “mature minors” within five years.
Recommendation 22 calls on the Canadian government to “work with provinces and territories, regulatory authorities, provincial and territorial law societies and stakeholders to adopt the necessary safeguards for advance requests.”
Conservative members of Parliament objected to the proposal to expand MAID eligibility to minors, highlighting how decision-making capacities, even for mature young people, remain questionable. Citing Dr. Maria Alisha Montes, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics, the report states: “I would argue that MAID for mature minors carries the highest amount of risk, as the consequence is death.”
“It’s irreversible,” Montes wrote. “We need to ask ourselves if we should be legalizing this for mature minors when biology shows us that the ability to balance risks and rewards is one of the last areas of the brain to mature.”
As The Christian Post reported, Canada legalized doctor-assisted suicide in 2016 but was limited to citizens or permanent residents at least 18 years old with “a serious and incurable disease, illness or disability” that included “enduring and intolerable suffering.”
Canadian Parliament expanded the law in 2022 to patients with non-threatening physical disabilities, intending to offer assisted suicide to people with mental illness by March before the Canadian government announced a temporary delay in December.
MAID provider Dr. Madeline Li, who has overseen hundreds of patients hasten their deaths through the program, recently expressed concerns that MAID has gone too far and is “missing fundamental safeguards for vulnerable people.”
In an op-ed published earlier this month by the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, Li voiced disapproval towards offering assisted suicide to people with mental illnesses or patients with curable conditions that refuse care.
The provider recalled a cancer patient determined eligible for MAID despite his condition having a 65% chance of a cure. The MAID assessors approved his case just because the patient declined care and had a “grievous and irremediable condition.”
“[I]t was irremediable because they didn’t want the treatments available. That’s what the law currently states: as long as the patient doesn’t want the treatment, their condition is considered irremediable — even if there are effective treatments,” she wrote.
“But not treating a cancer with such a high chance of cure goes against medical practice standards. The doctors involved had a lot of moral distress about this person’s request for MAID. This person signed consent for me to share their story, but I feel differently about it than they did. They saw it as an expression of their autonomy; I saw it as dystopian.”
Canada wouldn’t be the first country to legalize assisted suicide for minors, as the Netherlands and Belgium have allowed the practice. In the Netherlands, children 12 and older can request assisted suicide but must have parental consent unless they are 16 and older. In Belgium, children must have a terminal disease or be near death. They must also have the consent of their parents.
Less than 24 hours after his staged trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, President Joe Biden told thousands of spectators in Warsaw, Poland, that he plans to indefinitely squander U.S. taxpayer dollars on a proxy war, despite Americans indicating they oppose this involvement.
“Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire,” Biden yelled on Tuesday during his occasionally incoherent remarks.
The event was promoted as a somber affair to mark one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. Biden’s speech, however, kicked off with the light-hearted air of a campaign stop, featuring background music by the Foo Fighters and Coldplay and photo opportunities with children waving American, Polish, and Ukrainian flags.
Back home, Americans plagued with sky-high inflation, a growing border crisis, and hazardous chemical spills are not as enthused by Biden’s words. Less than half of Americans support shipping weapons and cash to the Eastern European country, especially because, with no oversight, those funds are lining the pockets of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose regime is plagued with allegations of corruption.
Despite Americans’ opposition to prolonging an overseas war, Biden falsely claimed to his audience in Poland that Americans “are united in our resolve” to sponsor the Zelensky regime “for as long as it takes.”
“All across my country, in big cities and small towns, Ukrainian flags fly from American homes. Over the past year, Democrats and Republicans in the United States Congress have come together to stand for freedom. That’s who Americans are, that’s what Americans do,” Biden said.
In a full embrace of the uniparty’s interventionist agenda, Biden claimed this commitment to “the people of Ukraine and the future of Ukraine” is rooted in the belief that Ukraine should be a “free, sovereign, and democratic” nation. “There’s no sweeter word than freedom. There is no nobler goal than freedom. There’s no higher aspiration than freedom. Americans know that, and you know it,” Biden said.
While his homeland crumbles, Biden touts dragging the U.S. into a global war in the name of advancing “democracy” and “sovereignty” overseas with no word about the negotiations required for de-escalation. On the contrary, Biden said the only end to this war he will accept is Russia ceasing its invasion, something President Vladimir Putin said he doesn’t plan to do.
“If Russia stopped invading Ukraine, it would end the war. If Ukraine stopped defending itself against Russia, [it] would be the end of Ukraine,” Biden said.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Americans received a pristine view of Democrats’ disastrous America-Last policies this morning as Joe Biden paid a surprise visit to Ukraine while his own country literally burns with manmade disasters he continues to inflame.
Biden’s Federal Emergency Management Agency denied any money to help clean up a burning chemical disaster zone in the Republican state of Ohio, but Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that Biden will get a blank check to slosh around hundreds of billions from U.S. taxpayers to prolong the carnage of war in Ukraine — and the profits from it from insane deficit spending that also threatens U.S. national security.
Not only is key U.S. infrastructure on fire stateside, but Biden, in violation of his oath of office, also set the U.S. border figuratively on fire immediately upon assuming the presidency by lifting former President Trump’s effective enforcement of U.S. national security laws. Cities and towns across the United States are overwhelmed with mass human trafficking and the outsourcing of U.S. border control to international drug cartels allied with the top U.S. foreign adversary, Red China.
It’s no surprise that American support for expanding the U.S. proxy war with Russia is declining. They can see that their neighbors have to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for health insurance even if they never see a doctor because they’re really paying off the health expenses of illegal migrants, and that their neighbors are dying from the fentanyl trafficked with the human flood of misery across the border.
And where is Biden as his country is in flames? Hiding from his crimes against Americans, our laws, and our Constitution by urging continued atrocities while doing a dog and pony show in Ukraine. While forcing his own people — and those whose migration keeps the cartels supplied with the billions to buy military-grade weaponry — to suffer murder, rape, and other heinous crimes, Biden is abroad encouraging ongoing violence in Ukraine.
War is hell, especially for the vulnerable — women, children, and the elderly. But Democrats and their military-industrial complex believe death, rape, starvation, and continued demolishing of Ukranian homes and towns are a worthy trade for a shiny new excuse to open U.S. coffers wide to high-dollar campaign donors with no oversight. It’s no coincidence, surely, the dollar spigots are also flooding toward the very same country that supplied millions to politically influence Biden’s family — and, according to his family, to influence Biden himself.
This is Joe Biden’s “mission accomplished” moment. Or, it would be, if the hapless and embarrassing George W. Bush were as patently evil as the Democrats running Biden.
Remember, six weeks after he invaded Iraq, Bush stood in front of a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.” U.S. troops remained in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 more years, spending precious soldiers’ lives and trillions in American treasure to weaken our national security by distracting us from higher foreign policy priorities, such as China. Right after Bush gave the “Mission Accomplished” speech, Iraqi insurgents redoubled their efforts.
U.S. Navy Photo by Photographer’s Mate Third Class Juan E. Diaz. Public domain / Wikimedia
Democrats’ media mouthpieces may have controlled U.S. discourse so much that only the brave like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis can point out the foolhardiness of tempting another world war by refusing to seek peace for Ukraine. But the rest of the world is not fooled. They’re aware that Democrats are weak, that they hate America, and that they are willing to sell the labor, security, and peace of their American brethren to the highest bidder.
Biden may be trying to look tough by visiting Ukraine weeks after allowing Chinese spy balloons to traverse the United States and then shooting down $6 hobby balloons with $400,000 missiles. But the only person he’s fooling is himself.
Biden’s weakness is the Democratic Party’s weakness is the U.S. foreign policy cabal’s weakness. And weakness invites aggression. Photo ops are not going to reduce the threat of a world war. Patently weak appearances by Biden in fact escalate the threat of world war. Seeking to de-escalate is the only prudent choice. We all had better pray someone with power figures that out before China and Russia continue to align against us. History tells what happens when leaders fiddle after setting their cities ablaze.
Elon Musk used an unlikely forum this week to protest the formation of a single global government: the “World Government Summit.”
Speaking at the conference in Dubai via remote signal, Musk warned that a one-world government creates “a civilizational risk” that could result in the collapse of modern society.
“I know this is called the ‘World Government Summit,’ but I think we should be a little bit concerned about actually becoming too much of a single world government,” Musk said.
“If I may say, we want to avoid creating a civilizational risk by having — frankly, this may sound a little odd — too much cooperation between governments,” he added.
Musk explained that throughout history civilizations have risen and fallen. But neither their rise nor their fall “meant the doom of humanity as a whole because there’ve been all these separate civilizations that were separated by great distances.”
Specifically, Musk cited the rise of Islam in the Middle East and the simultaneous fall of the Roman Empire, probably referring to the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, which ultimately fell to the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century. He observed that this separation of empires led to the preservation of knowledge and advancement of science.
“I think we want to be a little bit cautious about being too much of a single civilization because if we are too much of a single civilization, then the whole thing may collapse,” Musk went on to say.
“I’m obviously not suggesting war or anything like that. But I think we want to be a little bit wary of actually cooperating too much,” he said. “It sounds a little odd, but we want to have some amount of civilizational diversity such that if something does go wrong with some part of civilization that the whole thing doesn’t collapse and humanity keeps moving forward.”
Not only does Musk believe that a one-world government threatens society and humanity, but he has previously warned that “civilization will crumble” if people do not start having more children.
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The U.S. military shot down an “object” that was flying in territorial waters over Alaska, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Friday afternoon during a White House press briefing.
“I can confirm that the Department of Defense was tracking a high altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours. The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight. Out of an abundance of caution and the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object. And they did. And it came in inside our territorial waters,” Kirby said.
Kirby added that the “object” landed on frozen waters, and that “Fighter aircraft assigned to U.S. Northern Command took down the object within the last hour.”
He also added that the “object” was “much, much smaller than the spy balloon that we took down last Saturday.”
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby speaks during a news conference in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Friday. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“The way it was described to me was roughly the size of a small car as opposed to a payload that was like two or three buses sized,” Kirby said.
Kirby said that he doesn’t know of any “outreach” to the Chinese government about the object, and said that the government doesn’t know who owns the unmanned object.
“We do not know who owns it, whether it’s state owned or corporate owned or privately owned,” he said.
President Biden speaks to reporters as he and first lady Jill Biden leave the White House and walk to Marine One on the South Lawn in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 27, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker)
Kirby said that the object was shot down because it was flying at around 40,000 feet and could have posed a threat to civilian aircraft versus the Chinese spy craft discovered last week, which Kirby said was at 65,000 feet and posed no threat to civilian aircraft.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, said Friday afternoon that the military has located a significant amount of debris from the object, stating that it was shot down by an F-22 using an A9X missile out of Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. He said the object entered U.S. airspace on Thursday.
“Debris that’s been recovered so far is being loaded on to vessels taken ashore, cataloged, and then moved onwards to labs for subsequent analysis. And while I won’t go into specifics due to classification reasons, I can say that we have located a significant amount of debris so far that will prove helpful to our further understanding of this balloon and its surveillance capabilities,” Ryder said.
Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
“We have no further details about the object at this time, including any description of its capabilities, purpose or origin,” Ryder added.
Just over a week ago, defense officials said that a Chinese spy craft was spotted over Billings, Montana. After it traveled at high altitudes around 60,000 feet, it was shot down on Saturday by an F-22 using a single A9X missile.
President Biden ordered on Feb. 3 that the spy craft should be shot down whenever the military determined that it’s safe to do so without potentially harming civilians on the ground.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement after the balloon was shot down that “President Biden gave his authorization to take down the surveillance balloon as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to American lives under the balloon’s path.”
U.S. forces recover debris from a shot-down Chinese surveillance balloon. (US Fleet Forces)
“After careful analysis, U.S. military commanders had determined downing the balloon while over land posed an undue risk to people across a wide area due to the size and altitude of the balloon and its surveillance payload. In accordance with the President’s direction, the Department of Defense developed options to take down the balloon safely over our territorial waters, while closely monitoring its path and intelligence collection activities,” Austin said.
Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.
Adam Sabes is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Adam.Sabes@fox.com and on Twitter @asabes10.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Indian Catholic devotees offer the way of the cross prayers after an Ash Wednesday service at Saint Mary’s Basilica in Secunderabad, the twin city of Hyderabad, on March 5, 2014. | AFP via Getty Images/Noah Seelam
Christians faced harassment in more countries than any other religious group amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to a recent Pew Research study finding an increase in 45 countries where followers of Christ face social or government abuse or violence since 2012.
The data on restrictions to religion around the globe, released last November, was featured in a Jan. 27 report showing that Christians face harassment in over 155 countries in 2020, an increase from 110 in 2012. The organization’s definition of “harassment” can include a wide range of actions, including verbal abuse to physical violence and killings committed by governments, social groups or individuals. The study captured “cases where individuals or groups feel singled out or unable to express their religious belief or nonbelief.” The study rated 198 countries and territories by their levels of government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion using the same 10-point indexes used in the previous studies.
Pew’s Government Restrictions Index (GRI) measures government laws, policies and actions that restrict religious beliefs and practices, while its Social Hostilities Index (SHI) measures acts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations or groups in society. Researchers sifted through over a dozen publicly available data sources for the report, including the U.S. Department of State’s annual peports on international religious freedom and annual reports from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
Overall, physical harassment related to religion occurred in more than two-thirds of countries in 2020, the research shows. Muslims faced harassment in 145 countries, an increase from 109 in 2012. Jews, who make up 0.2% of the global population, face harassment in 94 countries, up from 71 in 2012.
The study found that Christian groups were “targeted by private individuals and organizations in nine countries” as Christians were often blamed for the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In Turkey, an Armenian Orthodox church’s door was set on fire, and news reports said the man told police that he acted because “they [Armenian Christians] brought the coronavirus” to Turkey,” the Nov. 27 Pew report states.
“In Egypt, conspiracy theories blamed the pandemic on the Coptic Orthodox Christian minority, which international Christian observers said exacerbated the discrimination the minority group already faced.”
In India, two Christians were beaten and killed while in police custody for violating COVID-19 curfews in Tamil Nadu, according to the U.S. State Department’s annual international religious freedom report.
The study also found a nine-fold increase in countries where non-religious people face harassment. Pew named the United States among 27 countries where “religiously unaffiliated people” were harassed in 2020.
“Restrictions on religion don’t just affect those who are religious. Religiously unaffiliated people also are harassed because of what they believe,” states the Jan. 27 report by research analysts Sarah Crawford and Virginia Villa, which focuses on harassment against the religious unaffiliated.
Pew study says religiously unaffiliated face harassment in the US | Screenshot/Pew Research
The report also found that the religiously unaffiliated faced harassment in 12 majority-Muslim nations and six majority-Christian countries.
Forms of government harassment for atheists, according to Pew, included atheist groups in Croatia — a majority-Catholic country — who alleged the presence of the cross and other Roman Catholic symbolism in public buildings like hospitals and courtrooms were unconstitutional.
And in countries like Pakistan, where Islam is the state-sanctioned religion, atheists are not given a “no religion” option for their identification cards, although the “government requires people to state their religious affiliation.”
Examples of social harassment cited by Pew included a political satirist in Lebanon who called atheism the “religion of donkeys” during a program on a TV channel backed by that nation’s Christian Free Patriotic Movement political party.
While the rise of the religious “nones” isn’t new, Pew predicts the trend could result in the number of Christians of all ages shrinking from 64% to as low as 35% of all Americans by 2070.
The Pew findings come as the global persecution watchdog organization Open Doors reported last year that over 360 million Christians experienced high levels of persecution and discrimination across the globe.
But even as more people shy away from identifying with any religion, many of those who report no religious affiliation still partake in a wide variety of religious and spiritual practices and beliefs.
According to a 202 Baylor University study, many “nones” still attend religious services, pray, meditate, believe in God or a higher power, have religious experiences, and believe in Heaven, Hell and miracles.
MTN News and @MMtTreasures video screenshot composite
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A viral video depicting what appeared to be an explosion over Billings, Montana Friday night was met both with skepticism and concern amid widespread reports of a Chinese spy balloon flying over the state earlier in the week.
“We’re monitoring the situation. I’m talking to our National Guard to find out if they have additional information,” Gov. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) told Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson in an on-air interview shortly after the video was posted.
Later in the evening, the City of Billings reported on its Twitter account that they confirmed with Montana’s Disaster Emergency Services and Gov. Gianforte that there were no explosions “in, around, or across” the state. In addition, the City of Billings said the video “cannot be substantiated.”
The “explosion” video, posted by an account called @MMtTreasures, appeared to show a vertical pillar of white smoke or vapor, a flash of light, and something falling from the sky. In the text accompanying the video, @MMtTreasures also describes seeing a jet and witnessing what she described as an “explosion.”
“Ok, so here’s what I just caught on video I [sic] few minutes ago out my window. I saw a jet go by so fast and then explosion in the sky. Holy crap! Billings MT.”
Ok, so here’s what I just caught I few minutes ago out my window. I saw a jet go by so fast and then explosion in the sky. Holy crap! Billings MT. pic.twitter.com/swr8ERC6pf
Dolly Moore, the woman who posted the video, described her experience in an interview with MTN News on Friday night, which was shared in a report by KRTV.
“All I could think was, oh my gosh, this is happening again from two nights ago with the spy balloon over Billings,” Moore said in the interview.
By 9:45 p.m. on Friday night, Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder, had made contact with Moore.
Linder said at that time that they believed the video was legitimate, according to a report by NBC affiliate KULR. The sheriff also reportedly added it was difficult to tell exactly what the video showed and that there was no evidence of an aircraft going down nor any evidence of an actual explosion over Billings.
Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.) also says there has been no confirmation of an explosion over the state or the city of Billings, per KULR‘s reporting on Saturday.
Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), responded to the City of Billings tweet, saying he was “still following all these events closely and will keep Montanans informed as any new information becomes available.”
I am still following all of these events closely and will keep Montanans informed as any new information becomes available. https://t.co/Ja9avfxt1J
Gianforte did not address the video in an interview on Fox News Channel’s Fox and Friends Saturday morning.
“Honestly, if this had been up to Montanans, we would have taken it out of the air the moment it came into our sovereign airspace,” Gianforte said, referencing the balloon seen in the area long before the unsubstantiated “explosion” video posted Friday night.
Gianforte also noted the Biden administration’s seeming failure to take action on the Chinese spy balloon, “endangers the American people and emboldens our enemies.”
I went looking for aliens in Roswell two years ago on a reporting trip to New Mexico. The aliens might not exist, but the conspiracies certainly do.
In 1947, a rancher discovered a field of debris wider than a football field after a July thunderstorm at the height of the U.S. flying-saucer wave. Air Force officials initially said the material was from a flying disc before claiming it was a crashed weather balloon, but many remain skeptical of the government’s explanation given that such balloons don’t leave behind a wide area of destruction.
The military acknowledged the debris was part of a secret atomic project in 1994, but records remain classified. Though President Donald Trump said in 2020 he’s heard “very interesting” things about Roswell, he refused to declassify any documents.
Now, more than 75 years after the incident, more questions are arising over an apparent airborne espionage object 1,000 miles north of Roswell.
On Thursday afternoon, NBC News revealed that a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon is hovering over Billings, Montana. The supposed weapon of espionage had apparently flown from the Alaskan Aleutian Islands and over Canada before making its way to airspace above the U.S. nuclear arsenal. According to NBC News, the balloon was spotted over the state that’s home to 150 warheads on Wednesday, near where the Chinese have been buying up American farmland.
“The U.S. military has been monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been hovering over the northern U.S. for the past few days,” NBC reported. “Military and defense leaders have discussed shooting it out of the sky, according to two U.S. officials and a senior defense official.”
Defense officials told reporters that military leaders refused to shoot the balloon down because a widespread debris field would pose a threat to civilian life in the rural state. According to The Wall Street Journal, President Joe Biden was briefed on the issue on Wednesday.
If the Pentagon knew the surveillance tool was on its way to the nuclear arsenal, however, why didn’t the president have it shot down when it was over Alaska? Was Biden’s Wednesday briefing his first? Why wasn’t he told sooner? Why didn’t officials inform the public when it crossed into U.S. airspace? Did our government maybe not catch the balloon and are now covering for their own negligence? And why didn’t the Canadians shoot it down?
Even more troubling is why the Chinese would have a surveillance balloon over Montana in the first place, considering Beijing’s advanced satellites in low-earth orbit that provide all the bird’s eye images they need. Are they sending a message before Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to the Chinese capital next week? Is espionage through TikTok not enough? We might not have ever known about the balloon had the press not snapped a photo of it.
We don’t know what happened at Roswell, and we probably never will. Was it actually a weather balloon that crashed? Was the object part of a military experiment? Could it have even been from a foreign government? Was it from the Empire — either an alien one from a galaxy far, far away or Red China?
Will Billings be the new Roswell?
SEE MY COMMENTARY BELOW
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
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A British Army veteran was confronted by police for standing silently near an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, England. The man’s apparent crime: He was silently praying for his murdered son.
Adam Smith-Connor of Southampton is the second Briton in recent months to have been arrested, not for speech or actions, but for silent prayer — for the thoughts in his head.
Censoring silence
Smith-Connor told the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) UK, a faith-based freedom advocacy group, that “22 years ago, I drove an ex-girlfriend to a facility where I paid for her to have an abortion. Many years later, I came to realize what I had done and it has been a source of great grief to me in my life.”
“I now pray for my son and to God for forgiveness,” said Smith-Connor, adding, “I would never have imagined being in a position to risk a criminal record for praying silently.”
Smith-Connor approached a British Pregnancy Advisor Service abattoir in the English county of Dorset on Nov. 24 to pray “for my son Jacob, for other babies who have lost their lives to abortion, for their grieving families, and for abortion clinic staff.” The BPAS is the leading provider of abortions in the United Kingdom and boasts on its website that one in three U.K. women will “have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old.”
The National Catholic Register reported that Smith-Connor was standing silently with his back to the facility to respect the privacy of staff and visitors, when a pair of officers confronted him, pressing him on what he was doing and why. Footage of the incident shows one of the officers ask, “What is the nature of your prayer today?”
Smith-Connor responds, “What is the nature of my prayer? I’m praying for my son.”
The female officer notes that that there is “a clause within the Public Space Protection Order around prayer and around disapproval around the activities at the clinic here.”
The Scotsman reported that in October, the abattoir in Bournemouth became the fifth in the country to get a PSPO. Accordingly, in the area around the facility, various activities such as protests are verboten. Those found in violation could incur a fine of £100 ($123.65 USD) or face a conviction at a magistrates court. Among the things that are forbidden in such a buffer zone are protests via “graphic, verbal or written means” and “holding vigils where members audible pray, recite Scripture, genuflect, sprinkle holy water on the ground or cross themselves if they perceive a service-user is passing by.”
Concerning the establishment of the no-free speech zone in Bournemouth, Councilor Bobbie Dove stated, “Whilst we acknowledge the right of anyone to conduct a peaceful protest, we had to balance this against the distress caused or likely to be caused, and the detrimental impact of behaviours experienced by those accessing medical services or doing their jobs.”
Having clarified that Smith-Connor was in the buffer zone, the female officer can be heard in the video attempting to establish whether Smith-Connor’s silent prayer may have had something to do with the abattoir.
In response to Smith-Connor’s admission that he is silently praying for his dead son, the officer says, “I’m sorry for your loss. But ultimately, I have to go along with the guidelines of the Public Space Protection Order, to say that we are in the belief that therefore you are in breach of clause 4a, which says about prayer, and also acts of disapproval around the activities at the clinic.”
“What is the nature of your prayer?” authorities interrogate army veteran youtu.be
The ADF UK reported that Smith-Connor was ultimately fined on the basis of the PSPO. He is now challenging the resultant council fine, stating, “This cannot be right in a country that values freedom.”
“Freedom of thought has to be one of the most fundamental freedoms that any human being can have,” he said. “I spent 20 years in the military including spending time in Afghanistan defending the very principle of freedom.”
“I’m not a criminal,” Smith-Connor emphasized. “I am a husband. I am a father. I’m a military veteran and I’m a Christian. But I have been censored.”
TheBlaze previously reported that a woman was similarly arrested by police over her silent prayer on Dec. 6 in Birmingham, England. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was charged with breaching a PSPO.
“Nobody should be arrested for the thoughts they have in their own mind. The arrest and charge appears to be premised entirely on her admission that she was praying internally,” Jeremiah Igunnubole, Spruce’s legal representative, said in a statement. “The clinic was closed and she was standing, in a public space, without once engaging anyone. As a public space, she was not banned from being present there.”
Igunnubole noted that in Adam’s case, he “could now face prosecution for holding thoughts, and lifting those thoughts to God in prayer, within a censorship zone..”
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FIRST ON FOX: A coalition of 20 states and a top conservative legal group is suing the Biden administration over its recently-expanded humanitarian parole program that allows tens of thousands of migrants from designated countries a month into the U.S. — arguing that the program is unlawful. The lawsuit, filed by Texas and America First Legal in the Southern District of Texas, is joined by 19 additional states who are seeking to block the Biden administration’s parole program which allow up to 30,000 migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela into the U.S. each month.
The Biden administration announced the program for Venezuelans in October, which allowed a limited number to fly directly into the U.S. as long as they had not entered illegally, had a sponsor in the U.S. already and passed certain checks.
Earlier this month, President Biden announced that the program would be expanding to include Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans, and that the program would allow up to 30,000 a month into the U.S. It was announced alongside an expansion of Title 42 expulsions to include those nationalities.
Around 60 recently arrived Venezuelan migrants are seen entering a shelter at Bellevue early Wednesday morning, Oct. 12, 2022, in Manhattan, New York. ((Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images))
“We anticipate this action is going to substantially reduce the number of people attempting to cross our southwest border without going through a legal process,” he said.
In the lawsuit, led by Texas and America First Legal and joined onto by 19 additional Republican-led states, plaintiffs argue that the program is illegal given the “exceptionally limited” parole power available to the federal government. The lawsuit notes that parole is limited by Congress to be used on a “case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit” — a standard which the lawsuit says the program fails to meet.
“The parole program established by the Department fails each of the law’s three limiting factors. It is not case-by-case, is not for urgent humanitarian reasons, and advances no significant public benefit. Instead, it amounts to the creation of a new visa program that allows hundreds of thousands of aliens to enter the United States who otherwise have no basis for doing so. This flouts, rather than follows, the clear limits imposed by Congress.”
The Biden administration has said the program is one of a number of ways it is expanding lawful migration pathways as a way to combat the ongoing migrant surge at the border that has seen historic numbers hit the border each month –and is calling on Congress to pass a broader immigration reform bill. Separately, it has used humanitarian parole to allow Afghans and Ukrainians into the U.S. in the last year. But conservative critics have said the latest program is illegal, and facilitates rather than stops the migrant surge.
The lawsuit says that the program is also unlawful as it did not engage in the notice-and-comment rulemaking required by the Administrative Procedure Act — by which a number of immigration policies have been at least temporarily struck down in recent years. It also argues that the states “face substantial irreparable harms from the Department’s abuse of its parole authority, which allow potentially hundreds of thousands of additional aliens to enter each of their already overwhelmed territories.”
“Every state in America, especially border states like Texas, is being crushed by the impacts of illegal immigration,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The Biden open borders agenda has created a humanitarian crisis that is increasing crime and violence in our streets, overwhelming local communities, and worsening the opioid crisis. This unlawful amnesty program, which will invite hundreds of thousands of aliens into the U.S. every year, will only make this immigration crisis drastically worse.”
The lawsuit also marks the latest in a flurry of legal challenges to the Biden administration’s policies by America First Legal — a conservative legal group launched by former Trump White House official Stephen Miller, who he described as being “at the forefront of the legal battle to save America’s borders from complete annihilation at the hands of this lawless administration.”
Miller labeled the Biden program as “pre-amnesty for what would be illegal aliens before they even arrive at our border.” He also compared it to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which granted protection from deportation to illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors.
“This is a dramatic escalation in the open borders crusade – not only is Biden freely admitting illegal aliens who arrive at our borders, but he is now going to foreign countries to pre-approve innumerable illegal aliens to flood into our country without any legal basis whatsoever. It is illegal, unconstitutional, and contemptible,” he said.
The states joining onto the lawsuit with Texas are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The new parole program came after more than 250,000 migrants were encountered at the southern border in December, a new record. However, the Biden administration has said it believes that the new measures are already having an effect and that there has been a drop in migrant encounters at the border from those nationalities.
“The December update shows our new border enforcement measures are working. Even as overall encounters rose because of smugglers spreading misinformation around the court-ordered lifting of the Title 42 public health order, we continued to see a sharp decline in the number of Venezuelans unlawfully crossing our southwest border, down 82% from September 2022,” acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement last week. “Early data suggests the expanded measures for Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans are having a similar impact, and we look forward to sharing the additional data in the next update.“
Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital, primarily covering immigration and border security. He can be reached at adam.shaw2@fox.com or on Twitter.
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” shares a clip of Rebel News’ Ezra Levant and Avi Yemini asking all the hard questions about COVID transmission and vaccine efficacy of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
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Dozens of House Democrats joined Republicans on Thursday to pass legislation that would prevent the Biden administration from selling any more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to China or Chinese-owned companies. The House easily passed the bill in an 331-97 vote. Every Republican voted for it, and 113 Democrats — more than half of the House Democratic Caucus — joined the GOP.
It was the second vote this week that saw large numbers of Democrats help House Republicans pass legislation. Two days earlier, more than two-thirds of House Democrats voted with Republicans to create a committee to address U.S. strategic competition with China.
The bill was brought up by Republicans after the Biden administration’s decision last year to sell nearly 1 million barrels of oil from the SPR to Unipec America, a U.S.-based company owned by China. The Department of Energy announced that sale in April, and Republicans warned on the House floor that it makes no sense to deliver vast energy resources to entities controlled by America’s largest competitor.
“America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve is meant for true energy supply disruptions, like those caused by hurricanes and natural disasters, not to help China,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., who will chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the new Congress.
House Republicans, led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, passed legislation on Thursday that would prevent Strategic Petroleum Reserve sales to China. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“Draining our strategic reserves for political purposes and selling portions of it to China is a significant threat to our national security,” she said. “The administration is not just hurting our own ability to respond to emergencies and national security events, they are actively bolstering the oil reserves of our most dangerous geopolitical adversary: the Chinese Communist Party.”
The Biden administration has released more than 200 million barrels from the SPR to ease rising energy prices in the U.S. over the last year, and McMorris Rodgers said those releases were designed to “cover up his failed policies driving our energy and inflation crises.”
She added that some of the oil that was not sold directly to Chinese-owned entities ended up in China’s hands.
“As we know, much of that oil went to China because our refineries and pipelines are full. It now has nowhere to go here,” McMorris Rodgers said. “Millions more barrels went to overseas traders who eventually sent it to China. We also know that China is ramping up its purchases of crude oil from Russia and the U.S. to boost its own reserves.”
President Biden has overseen a historic reduction of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
The bill says the energy secretary shall not sell SPR reserves to any entity under the control of the Chinese government, “except on the condition that such petroleum products will not be exports to the People’s Republic of China.”
While most Democrats voted for the bill, the debate featured only Democrats who tried to dismiss it by saying sales to China are the GOP’s fault because congressional Republicans in 2015 lifted the long-standing ban on crude oil.
“As a result, our exports of crude oil to China surged, averaging a half billion every day during the last year of the Trump administration,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J.
Republicans countered that this policy change happened under the Obama administration, when Republicans were working with that administration to “unleash American energy” and export it around the world. Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said that plan continued under President Donald Trump, under which “record production” of energy took place.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., will chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the new Congress, and urged lawmakers to pass her bill to stop Strategic Petroleum Reserve sales to China. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
However, Guthrie said this has changed under the Biden administration and during the last two years of the Democratic Congress, which have been pushing to reduce energy production even as they support record withdrawals from the SPR.
“The problem we’re facing today is because of President Biden and the Democrats’ in Congress war on American oil,” Guthrie said. “That’s the problem we’re here to address.”
SPR reserves have remained well above 600 million barrels since the turn of the century, but fell below that level in early 2022 as the Biden administration began selling off reserves. The reserve level fell below 400 million barrels late last year.
Pete Kasperowicz is a politics editor at Fox News Digital.
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Jordan Peterson has been ordered by a Canadian psychology governing body to enter what Peterson called a “re-education” program reportedly over his past comments and speech that “may cause harm.” Not surprisingly, Peterson said Wednesday he “formally indicated” his “refusal to comply” with the demands of the College of Psychologists of Ontario.
Peterson posted to Twitter parts of a document from the College of Psychologists of Ontario that outlined its concern over his “public statements made on social media and during a January 25, 2022, podcast appearance” that “may have lacked professionalism.“
The document indicates that Peterson is to work with another professional to “review, reflect on, and ameliorate [his] professionalism in public statements” and complete a “Coaching Program.”
Here are the demands made of me with regard to my re-education. I have formally indicated my refusal to comply @CPOntariopic.twitter.com/Nl2poxgW2c
Peterson’s stated refusal to comply could result in discipline for professional misconduct, according the document’s language.
According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the College of Psychologists of Ontario last March appointed an investigator to examine complaints about Peterson’s Twitter comments as well as things he said on a Joe Rogan podcast.
The Journal — citing images provided by Peterson — said the College’s panel in November ruled that “the comments at issue appear to undermine the public trust in the profession as a whole and raise questions about your ability to carry out your responsibilities as a psychologist.”
More from the Journal:
What are these comments? Calling Elliot Page, the transgender actor, by his former name, “Ellen,” and the pronoun “her,” on Twitter. Calling an adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “prik.” A sarcastic crack at antigrowth environmentalists for not caring that their energy policies lead to more deaths of poor Third World children.
Calling a former client “vindictive.” Objecting to a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover of a plus-size model: “Sorry. Not Beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.” In Canada even offenses begin with “sorry.”
The Journal added that the panel found “the impact risk in this case is significant” since Peterson’s comments “may cause harm” — and decided that coaching Peterson would help “mitigate any risks to the public.”
The College of Psychologists of Ontario declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality, the Journal reported.
“Who exactly was harmed, how, when, to what degree, and how was that harm measured?” Peterson asked, according the the Journal.
Peterson also posted a Twitter thread telling the College of Psychologists of Ontario that he’s “making what is happening public. If the public believes I’m guilty then I will take the required course of communication and then resign.”
He added to the College that if its “allegations … are revealed publicly to be both baseless and politically motivated then a public apology and the resignation of everyone involved in the process on your side is appropriate.”
Peterson also appeared to take a page from Twitter owner Elon Musk’s playbook, setting up a poll so the public can weigh in and side with Peterson or with the College.
Twitter reinstated Peterson to the platform in November. He had been banned in July for “hateful conduct” regarding tweets mentioning Page.
When it comes to vaccine injury, silence is certainly golden, because it’s the only currency valuable enough to cover up the atrocity of what was done to the entire global population over the past two years. The medical establishment has relied on doctors to turn a blind eye to vaccine injury, allowing those injured to languish without a proper diagnosis and treatment, and continue doubling down on even more doses of this dangerous therapeutic. Thankfully, a few of the former top enforcers of this dogma in the key Western countries of Australia and Israel are making amends for their past misdeeds.
As a lesbian who is married to a woman, a lifelong leader in sex education, former left-wing member of parliament, and former head of the Australian Medical Association, Dr. Kerryn Phelps is not exactly your candidate for right-wing conspiracy theorist. But in a wide-ranging interview with the Chronicle, the Sydney-based doctor publicly acknowledged her own injury as well as that of her partner and divulged how she faced censorship, a lack of treatment options, and a painful journey countless others are facing, a number she says is a lot higher than governments are willing to admit.
“This is an issue that I have witnessed firsthand with my wife, who suffered a severe neurological reaction to her first Pfizer vaccine within minutes, including burning face and gums, paraesethesiae, and numb hands and feet, while under observation by myself, another doctor, and a registered nurse at the time of immunization,” the 65-year-old former AMA president said to the Chronicle.
“I continue to observe the devastating effects a year and a half later, with the addition of fatigue and additional neurological symptoms including nerve pains, altered sense of smell, visual disturbance, and musculoskeletal inflammation. The diagnosis and causation has been confirmed by several specialists who have told me that they have seen ‘a lot’ of patients in a similar situation.”
Phelps noted that the Therapeutic Goods Administration failed to follow up with her reported injury, and many
doctors have told her that not only are they seeing the injuries in droves, but many practitioners themselves were injured but refuse to speak out.
“Regulators of the medical profession have censored public discussion about adverse events following immunization, with threats to doctors not to make any public statements about anything that ‘might undermine the government’s vaccine rollout’ or risk suspension or loss of their registration,” she said.
In other words, there are thousands of doctors who know what is going on, many experiencing it themselves, but who refuse to speak out. Some remain silent; others downright continue promoting the shots. What is quite telling is how even Dr. Phelps herself was still promoting the shots on social media a month after she claims to have been injured by the shots.
For “ineligible for a vaccine”, substitute “inadequate supply of vaccine available for his age group”. #covid19 Profound sympathy for this 15 yo boy’s family as his death has just been confirmed 💔 https://t.co/batoAnRBtD
It demonstrates how entrenched the vaccine cult is and how long it took for even someone injured this badly (along with her partner) to speak out.
The bombshell from Dr. Phelps is significant enough given her biography, but an even more explosive convert to the cause of truth is Professor Shmuel Shapira, who headed the Israel Institute for Biological Research from 2013 to 2021 and literally led the development of Israel’s coronavirus vaccination scheme, in the country that Pfizer referred to as the laboratory for its experimentation. Shapira has been speaking out against the shots for months, but not after he was personally injured by his third dose. Last week, he wrote a series of tweets describing his conversion:
I was wrong 3 times: * In the first shot * In the second shot * and in the third shot Who said that those who are injected do not admit that they were wrong?
The pigs from the animal farm, got time off for the final and were sent to trash. I touched them at a painful point. Yes then I will repeat it, I was wrong 3 times when I was injected the first, second and third time. Unlike the dwarfs, I'm proud of everything I've being doing.
Why aren’t others speaking out? Well, when even the man who was almost the Fauci of Israel gets this much blowback, it’s no wonder few have the courage to fight.
You have no idea what a campaign of slander and anonymous threats I go through. Some of it is quoted to me by journalists and others. The traces clearly lead to what used to be the Ministry of Health ,but not only to him. They aren't even smart enough to clean a fingerprint.
What this means is that there are likely a great many others who know this is going on – perhaps from personal experience – and yet, like a death cult, they will not admit they were wrong. They are trained to find only medical ailments they are primed to look for. If it’s not in their memorized and regimented protocols, then it doesn’t exist. The medical system has become so monotonized and streamlined that almost no doctor is willing to even cognitively question the hierarchy, much less articulate opposition.
This code of silence would be bad enough if the vaccination campaign were over and it was just an issue of treating those already injured. Yet the pressure and even mandates still exist in some settings, and almost all doctors still promote the vaccines. Furthermore, they are pushing mRNA technology for flu and RSV shots as early as next fall.
Silently accepting this degree of short-term and unknown long-term risk would be bad enough if the shots actually worked against COVID. But as we’ve known for well over a year and a half, the more you inject, the more you infect. The latest evidence is from a Cleveland Clinic preprint study of over 50,000 of CC’s in-house health care workers. The retrospective cohort study shows a strong positive correlation between an increase in vaccine doses and a stronger likelihood to test positive for the virus. The unvaccinated performed the best, and the boosted were three times more likely to get infected.
This is just over 90 days. We’ve seen in the past from other studies that the negative efficacy intensifies over the months, which might explain why for the first time in history this virus shows no signs of going away, except in Africa, where few people were vaccinated. Last year, long before the negative efficacy of the shots associated with Omicron that we are seeing today, Sweden conducted the most comprehensive long-term study of vaccine effectiveness in the world and found that after six to seven months, “no effectiveness could be detected” from the Pfizer shot. In fact, the study found negative efficacy after 210 days for those over 50, which harmonizes with what we are seeing before our very eyes throughout the world. For some older adults, the shots are as much as -77% effective, and the numbers seem to drop every month.
Shockingly, this cycle of failure allows the same duplicitous doctors to fearmonger even more people into getting even more doses, perpetuating and exacerbating an endless cycle of viral immune escape, mutations, and pathogenic priming that leads to negative efficacy reflective of suboptimal antibodies and a leaky vaccine.
For months, Walgreens has been posting the results of its weekly COVID testing by vaccination status. They have consistently shown the unvaccinated to have the lowest number of cases relative to the number of tests (the unvaccinated are subjected to more testing mandates in the workforce).
As you can see, the unvaccinated have the lowest positivity rate. It’s also self-evident that the negative efficacy intensifies over time since the duration of the last dose. And even the Omicron boosters, which were tested on eight blind mice, are now addressing a variant that is nearly extinct. According to the CDC, BA.4 is extinct and BA.5 represents only 10% of cases and is rapidly declining.
Yet the FDA just approved these extinct, dangerous, negative-efficacy shots for babies! It’s no longer a tenable position for Republicans to merely oppose mandates. Mind you, so many red states still have mandates on health care and in public colleges. They must completely stop promoting the shots, oppose any future mRNA shots under the current design, sponsor treatment for those injured, create state-based vaccine reporting, and encourage rather than punish doctors to speak out and dissent. “See something, say something” needs to be the catchphrase in the medical profession. Too many lives are on the line to remain silent.
Father Frank Pavone, a firebrand pro-life activist who has stirred controversy over the issue within the Church, was removed from the Roman Catholic priesthood this fall. Pavone was officially removed from the clergy on November 9 following receipt of a letter from Pope Francis’ representative in the U.S., according to the New York Times. The letter ordered that Pavone was to be removed with no possibility of appeal.
“This action was taken after Father Pavone was found guilty in canonical proceedings of blasphemous communications on social media, and of persistent disobedience of the lawful instructions of his diocesan bishop,” the letter reportedly reads, without specifying the communications.
Pavone claimed he had received no communication from the Vatican in an interview with the Catholic News Agency Saturday. Nevertheless, he said his removal comes as little surprise.
“I’ve been persecuted in the church for decades, decades. This is nothing new for me,” he told CNA. “They just don’t like the work I’m doing for these babies.”
Father Frank Pavone, left, celebrates Catholic Mass for attendees at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Florida, on Feb. 27, 2021. (SOPA Images / Contributor via Getty Images)
VATICAN – 2021/12/19: Pope Francis greets and blesses the children assisted by the Vatican’s Santa Marta Pediatric Dispensary at the Paul VI Hall. (Photo by Stefano Costantino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) ((Photo by Stefano Costantino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images))
He went on to mention the circumstances of his “blasphemous communication,” saying that he had typed the world “goddamn” in a Tweet in 2020.
“I used the word G-D in a response to somebody in a tweet and for that they want to throw me out of the priesthood,” he said.
Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Pope’s representative to the United States, alerted U.S. bishops of the decision on Dec. 13, according to the Times.
“As you will know, Father Pavone was a very public and high profile figure associated with the Right to Life Movement in the U.S.,” Archbishop Pierre told the bishops. “His dismissal from the clerical state may, therefore, be a matter of interest among the faithful. In anticipation of that potential interest, the attached statement regarding Father Pavone is provided for your information.”
Demonstrators march and gather near the state capitol following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Austin, Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is being sued by health care providers over allegedly threatening ot prosecute abortion providers. (AP)
Pavone’s defrocking comes months after the U.S. pro-life movement achieved a landmark victory when the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The ruling thrust abortion into the limelight for the 2022 midterm election cycle, something many commentators believed actually helped Democrats.
Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.
‘Sunday Night in America’ panelists discuss the looming threat that China poses and how America should respond.
FIRST ON FOX: Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee are alleging in a newly released report that there are “indications” that COVID-19 could be tied to China’s biological weapons research program and “spilled over” to the general human population during an incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The information was released in a minority staff report by members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday night.
“Contrary to the implication of the [Intelligence Community’s] declassified report, based on our investigation involving a variety of public and non-public information, we conclude that there are indications that SARS-CoV-2 may have been tied to China’s biological weapons research program and spilled over to the human population during a lab-related incident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” a summary of the report states. “The IC failed to adequately address this information in its classified Updated Assessment. When we attempted to raise the issues with the IC, it failed to respond.”
In a declassified assessment on the origins of COVID-19 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in October 2021, the report states that SARS-CoV-2 was “probably not a biological weapon,” adding, “We remain skeptical of allegations that SARS-CoV-2 was a biological weapon because they are supported by scientifically invalid claims.”
Members of the World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease are seen. (Reuters/Thomas Peter)
Wednesday’s report released by House Republicans also alleges that its investigation “revealed serious shortcomings with both the classified and declassified versions of the Intelligence Community’s,” and states that the omissions “likely skewed the public’s understanding of key issues and deepened mistrust.”
“The Committee believes the IC downplayed important information relating to the possible links between COVID-19 and China’s bioweapons research based in part on input from outside experts,” the report states, adding that the intelligence community “refuses to be transparent with the Committee regarding which experts it relied on.”
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, speaks during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 15, 2021. (Al Drago/Pool via AP) (AP)
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital that Americans deserve answers regarding the origins of COVID-19
“The American people are owed answers about the origins of COVID-19. Our report states that COVID-19 may have been tied to China’s bioweapons research program and that the Intelligence Community (IC) withheld key information from the American public’s authorized elected officials, deepening public mistrust,” Wenstrup said. “Our findings also show that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bears more responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic than what has been publicly known or transparently communicated to the American people.”
“As a physician and Army veteran, I believe it is vitally important that we understand the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and strive to do everything within our power to pursue policies that will help prevent our country from being vulnerable like this in the future.”
A security person moves journalists away from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)
While alleging that COVID’s origins were likely tied to China’s biological weapons research program, the report states, “We have not seen any credible indication that the virus was intentionally, rather than accidentally, released.”
Security personnel gather near the entrance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology during a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province on Feb. 3, 2021. (AP)
“Nor do we claim the information we have found is a smoking gun that definitively resolves the question of the origins of COVID-19 beyond all doubt. However, the information is important to furthering the public’s understanding, and we will seek to declassify the classified version of our report in the next Congress to further the conversation,” the report states.
Adam Sabes is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Adam.Sabes@fox.com and on Twitter @asabes10.
Prime Minister and Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu smiles as he enters an election night event for the Likud party on November 1, 2022, in Jerusalem, Israel. | Amir Levy/Getty Images
Benjamin Netanyahu has once again become prime minister of Israel in the country’s fifth election in less than for years. Yair Lapid conceded defeat on Thursday after nearly all the votes were counted, allowing the 73-year-old Netanyahu to claim victory in the election.
“The State of Israel comes before any political consideration,” Lapid said. “I wish Netanyahu success, for the sake of the people of Israel and the State of Israel.”
Netanyahu’s return to the executive office came as his Likud Party formed a political alliance with two other political parties known as Jewish Power and Religious Zionism.
Religious Zionism and its allies have weathered claims that they are extremists who will target the nation’s minority Arab community, and the LGBT community if they take power.
“We’re not going to hammer anyone,” said MK Orit Strock, a member of Religious Zionism, as quoted by the Times of Israel. “We will serve all citizens, including those who do not think like us and whose lifestyles are different.”
Strock did say that her party wants to “bring order to the public space,” apparently taking issue with lewd, vulgar and pornographic aspects of LGBT pride events.
“Regardless of pride, there shouldn’t be marches of people walking down the street naked or half naked,” she added. “The problem is with years-long efforts, not just here but around the world, to force things on the public.”
Before Thursday, multiple news outlets had predicted a victory for Netanyahu and the creation of a more right-leaning national government.
With 99% of the votes counted, the Jewish News Syndicate reported that the total number of seats for the coalition government had decreased from an expected 65 seats to 64. Nevertheless, the JNS added, Netanyahu only needed 61 seats to have a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.
In 2019, Netanyahu became the first sitting prime minister in the history of the modern state of Israel to be indicted, with various charges, including breach of trust, bribery and fraud.
“This is a hard and sad day,” said Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit in a speech given before the Justice Ministry at the time, as reported by The Jerusalem Post. “I am bringing an indictment on public corruption against the prime minister in three cases. It is sad for me personally and for the country.”
For his part, Netanyahu denied the allegations, labeling the indictment “a political coup” and “a contaminated process,” in which he felt the investigators “were after me personally.”
In June 2021, Netanyahu lost his position as prime minister after 12 years in the role, being replaced by Naftali Bennett, who held on to power with a very slight majority in the Knesset.
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said that the Biden administration’s announcement of its decision to end Title 42, which never came to fruition, unleashed a wave of migrants bound for the U.S., in a sit-down interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation in his presidential palace.
Guatemala has recently seen large waves of illegal migrants because of Biden administration policies in the U.S., including its announcement to scrap Title 42, the public health order used to expel certain migrants to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Giammattei told the DCNF. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on April 1 that Title 42 would end on May 23, but the move was blocked in a lawsuit led by Republican states. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Guatemalan President Says Biden Admin Refused To Help Him Deport Illegal Migrants Bound For The US Border)
“We have recently seen a very serious increase in the number of migrants seeking to cross our border,” Giammattei said. “When Title 42 was eliminated, we see an even greater increase in the crossings through Guatemala, illegal crossings through Guatemala to reach the United States illegally as well.”
WATCH:
The Biden administration also instituted a new rule to expel illegal migrants from Venezuela, while granting legal entry to 24,000 other Venezuelans that meet certain qualifications. Giammattei said that the program is also leading to problems for his country as Venezuelans continue to pass through with a new uncertain fate.
“And now that the Venezuelans we understand that have the possibility of obtaining a visa, that means another problem for Guatemala. We have no relationships with Venezuela, we do not have diplomatic exchanges, we don’t have an embassy here or there,” Giammattei said.
“Therefore, we cannot issue passports or any kind of identification for Venezuelan nationals here in Guatemala and that means a huge amount of a floating population that is going to become a serious problem for this country. While we remain stopping them here,” he added.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Guatemala’s interior minister has intelligence that large caravans of migrants will try to get to the U.S. in anticipation of the midterm elections, he said in an exclusive sit-down interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Migrants, who believe the midterm elections could end with Republicans taking back control of Congress, are heading to the U.S. border in large caravans, Guatemalan Interior Minister Napoleon Barrientos told the DCNF. The migrants think that they have a short window to make the trek because it may not be as easy to immigrate to the U.S. after the midterm elections, with Republican lawmakers promising to beef up border security and tighten oversight. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Afghan Migrants Say UN Workers Gave Them Directions To US Border)
Courtesy of Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei’s office
“We have information that caravans will be coming in the next few weeks, particularly before the date of November 8. So we’re doing operations in our borders to stop the flow migration,” Barrientos said.
Recent polling suggests that Republicans are likely to take back the House and stand a decent shot of winning the Senate as well. If Republicans take power, they are likely to push for stricter border policies that include finishing the construction of a border wall, increasing funding to federal border authorities and reinstating several Trump-era expulsion tools, though it’s unclear how successful these efforts will be.
Jennie Taer//Daily Caller News Foundation
“The information that these migrant caravans have is that after that date, policies will be hardened,” he said.
In preparation of the caravans’ arrivals, Guatemala is staging military drills with its partners in Mexico, Barrientos explained. But the country hasn’t had as much luck at its southern border with Honduras, where illegal migrants continue to cross and where bi-lateral cooperation has been difficult.
“For that reason, Guatemala plans different actions, up until that date, to keep our borders secure, and to stop irregular migration,” he said.
Government delegations from Mexico and Guatemala met at the port of entry on Friday in El Carmen to affirm their commitments to border security, the DCNF observed. Dozens of soldiers from both countries blocked the border entry in a strong show of force.
Henry Rodgers and Foreign Minister of Hungary Péter Szijjártó:Daily Caller Obtained
WASHINGTON, DC – The foreign minister of Hungary, Péter Szijjártó, in part, blamed the current war between Ukraine and Russia on President Joe Biden in an exclusive interview Wednesday with the Daily Caller. He argued that if the 2020 election had played out differently, there would be no war.
Szijjártó sat down for an interview with the Caller after speaking at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) International Ministerial Conference and discussed a variety of different issues affecting the U.S. and Europe, including the war in Ukraine. Throughout the interview, Szijjártó made it clear he believes that if former President Donald Trump and former Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel were still in power, the war would not have started.
“The European economy is suffering. Europe is suffering. That is why the only solution for Europe is peace. But definitely, peace will not come with this behavior. What the U.S. administration has been showing. Why? Because in order to create peace, you would need to talk. You would need to communicate,” Szijjártó said during the interview. “And you know, I am usually under very heavy pressure and criticism of why I still talk to the Russians. But, you know, I mean, you cannot afford not to talk to them when you are almost hundred percent dependent on their energy sources and Russia is a reality in Europe, and Russia will remain a reality in Europe regardless of the outcome of this war.”
He continued:
“So, you know, what we are definitely sure about is that if your presidential election had played out differently in 2020, this war would not have broken out. As much as I can be sure about things that didn’t happen, I am pretty sure that this would have been the case because we are currently, globally speaking, we are currently lacking leaders. President Trump was a real leader. Chancellor Merkel was a real leader. So what I know is that if Chancellor Merkel. And if President Trump had stayed in power, this war, I’m pretty sure, would not have been broken out. So that’s why what we hope is that there will be some American-Russian talks in this regard because don’t be misled. Don’t be misled. This is necessary to create peace. Russian-American talks.
(Henry Rodgers and Foreign Minister of Hungary Péter Szijjártó: Daily Caller Obtained)
Szijjártó echoed their concerns, however, mentioning the upcoming November G-20 summit in Indonesia, which Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to attend, as an opportunity for the two leaders to talk. The Hungarian minister’s suggestion comes despite claims that U.S. officials are making sure Biden does talk with Putin, per Politico. Biden himself previously told CNN’s Jake Tapper said he will not meet the Russian president except maybe to discuss American Britney Griner, who is serving a 9-year sentence in Russian prison. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Here’s Why Hungary Is Incentivizing Children, Marriage)
“I do hope that those discussions, which are necessary to finish the war, will take place soon. And I don’t want to degrade anyone, but I am pretty certain that these negotiations must take place between the American and the Russian administration,” Szijjártó said. “And, you know, I hope that both of them will behave responsibly because I understand that there will be a G20 meeting. I understand that there is a chance that both of the presidents might be there. And to be honest, I think it would be very, very complicated to explain to the world from both perspectives, why they have not met, if they. If they are on the same place. So, you know, we in Hungary cannot do anything more than just wish, hope, and pray.”
“I want to underline that I really do believe and think that if he had stayed in power, this wouldn’t have broken out,” he added.
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said the Biden administration refused to provide Guatemala with the tools to deport illegal migrants heading to the U.S., in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation from his presidential palace.
Giammattei told the DCNF that he’d requested that the Biden administration move its deportation planes and buses to Guatemala for the country to use in returning illegal migrants to their home countries before they reach the U.S. He said it would save the Biden administration hefty costs of such large migration waves and allow migrants from far away places to go home immediately. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: What Happens To Illegal Migrants After They’ve Been Deported? We Went South Of The Border To Find Out.)
Guatemala hopes to deter such action by working with the Biden administration to deport them as soon as they can.
“Having all of these people in the United States costs the U.S. government millions and millions of dollars. We have suggested that they should keep the airplanes here, so that we ourselves can deport them back to their countries of origin, be it Haiti or be it whatever the country. If they keep their airplanes here, we can send them back. Otherwise, why wait until the people reach U.S. soil to then spend millions and millions of dollars to then send them back?” Giammattei said.
Currently, Guatemala expels non-Central American illegal migrants to Honduras. Several illegal migrants from Afghanistan who were expelled to Honduras recently crossed back into Guatemala and reached Mexico in a matter of days, they told the DCNF.
“We have also stated that we could use the buses to return these people to their countries of origin,” Giammattei said. “And they have told us that they cannot do that because their laws don’t allow it.”
The U.S. has invested a total of over $109 million in programs in Guatemala in 2022.
On Oct. 13, the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala announced that it gave 95 vehicles, including Toyota Hilux vehicles, Hino 5 and 12 ton trucks, Toyota Land Cruisers and Suzuki ATVs to the Guatemalan military to support border security efforts. The donation is meant to support Guatemala’s efforts in combating transnational crime and drug trafficking.
Despite the large amounts of aid for programs that support humanitarian, governance and health needs, as a few examples, Giammattei says there’s been little aid given to actually send illegal migrants back to their countries of origin. The Biden administration has emphasized that while giving aid, it’s working to crack down on corruption in Guatemala.
“We have requested assistance from the United States. And in this sense, we have received very little assistance,” Giammattei said.
Daily Caller News Foundation
Giammattei also mentioned the United Nations Office of International Migration (OIM or IOM) is aiding in the movement of illegal migrants. The U.S. government partially funds the agency.
“And as far as the IOM, they will take action only when a person becomes a voluntary returnee, they will say, ‘Oh, no, he doesn’t want to go back.’ So they just let them go through. And this is something we cannot allow,” Giammattei said.
The White House, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and IOM didn’t respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss signaled support for a police investigation into the trans charity Mermaids, saying it should be “properly looked at” during prime minister’s questions in the Commons Chamber.
The Department for Education in England has stopped referring schools to the controversial charity, which promotes transgenderism to youth, amid increased scrutiny of the organization’s health recommendations for children and a scandal involving one of its trustees giving a speech for an organization that promotes resources for pedophiles.
As The Times reported Wednesday, the Charity Commission is assessing complaints against Mermaids following a report by The Daily Telegraph last week that the group sends “chest binders” to girls as young as 13 without their parents’ knowledge. Binders are often used by girls seeking to flatten their breasts to resemble a boy, and they can potentially cause breathing difficulties, damage healthy breast tissue and lead to cracked ribs.
On Wednesday, Miriam Cates, the MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, asked the prime minister: “Does my right honorable friend agree that it has taken far too long for these concerns to be taken seriously and does she also agree that it is high time for a police investigation into the activities of Mermaids?”
Truss replied: “What I would say on the subject of the investigation she raises, of course those matters should be … properly looked at.”
Earlier this month, The Times also reported that Jacob Breslow, a trustee for Mermaids, resigned after it was discovered he spoke at a U.S.-based B4U-ACT event in 2011. The organization promotes resources for individuals who are sexually attracted to children. In his presentation, Breslow reportedly claimed that pedophiles are misunderstood.
Andrea Williams, the chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, credited parents Nigel and Sally Rowe for the Education Department’s decision to stop promoting Mermaidsas a mental health resource in schools. The British charity affirms children’s gender confusion and is led by Susie Green, whose son identifies as female and was put on puberty blockers at age 12.
Williams noted that the focus must now be directed toward the Church of England, which still utilizes Mermaids’ strategies in its “Valuing All God’s Children” (VAGC) guidance. In 2017, VAGC cited Mermaids as a model of care. While this citation was removed in 2019, the content reportedly still influenced the current trans-affirming approach, according to CLC. Over 4,000 of the Church of England’s primary schools utilize the VAGC guidelines, according to a November 2017 Daily Mail report.
“The Church of England has over one million children under its care — will senior leaders finally listen and scrap this untenable advice?” Williams asked.
Christian Concern, the organization associated with CLC, launched a petition Tuesday that will be delivered to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, calling for the Church of England to scrap its trans-affirming policies. The petition currently has over 12,150 signatures.
In addition to instructing schools not to require students to wear uniforms that may “create difficulty for trans pupils,” VAGC discourages using faith or the Bible to justify refusals to accept a child identifying as the opposite gender.
You can’t be serious?!?! Valuing All God’s Children, supposedly a Christian organization, does not want scripture used to make the point that all this transgenderism is NOT of God. Do we really look that stupid? – Jerry Broussard
Last week, the Rowes penned a letter to the archbishop, urging the Church of England to discard its VAGC policies, expressing concern that the guidance allows children as young as 5 to identify as the opposite sex.
“In U.K. law you cannot change legal gender until you are 18 years old. Scientifically, you cannot change your biological sex,” the parents wrote.
“Furthermore, basic Christian teaching is that we are all created male or female and that the differences between the sexes are beautiful, designed and complementary, and should be respected in society. We are all created male and female (Genesis 1:27).”
Despite opting to homeschool their children, the parents wrote that they remain concerned about the effect that the school’s policies may have on other children. According to the Rowes, much of the “confusion” and “distress” their sons experienced in school from having to refer to their friends as the opposite sex has lifted since their parents pulled them out.
The letter follows a $24,956 (£22,000) settlement the Department of Education paid the Rowes in September for “legal costs and a commitment from the government to reform transgender policies,” according to the Christian Legal Centre.
The CLC supported the parents’ taking legal action against the department in 2021 after the Church of England’s Portsmouth Diocesan Board of Education dismissed their complaint in 2017, citing the VAGC guidelines. One of the Church of England’s primary schools had labeled their son “transphobic” for refusing to abide by the school’s trans-affirming policies.
The parents also raised concerns about the school allowing two 6-year-old boys in their sons’ classes to identify as girls without a psychological assessment. In opposition to the school’s policies, the Rowes decided to homeschool their children instead.
The letter cites an August speech at the Policy Exchange by Suella Braverman, who was then the attorney general, and said there is no “absolute legal obligation” to affirm children who might be questioning their gender identity. She noted that schools sometimes allow children to use pronouns or compete on sports teams designated for the opposite sex without their parents’ knowledge.
“Anyone who questions such an approach is accused of transphobia. In my view, this approach is not supported by the law,” Braverman said.
The Rowes contended in their letter that this statement from the then-attorney general proves that the Church of England’s VAGC policies in schools have no legal basis.
“We, therefore, ask you to commit to scrapping the Valuing All God’s Children guidance as a matter of urgency so that staff and children in Church of England schools are properly safeguarded and protected from harmful transgender ideology and practice,” the parents wrote.
“We also request a meeting with you to discuss these points and what the Church of England will do about them at your earliest convenience.”
In July, the Church of England responded to a question from the General Synod, the denomination’s legislative body, about its definition of a woman. The Rev. Robert Innes, the denomination’s bishop in Europe, responded that “There is no official definition, which reflects the fact that until fairly recently definitions of this kind were thought to be self-evident, as reflected in the marriage liturgy.”
Innes cited the church’s “Living in Love and Faith” project, which the church website describes as a “discerning way forward” for the church regarding “identity, sexuality, relationships, and marriage.”
Pointing to “the marriage complexities associated with gender identity,” Innes claimed that the project “points to the need for additional care and thought to be given in understanding our commonalities and differences as people made in the image of God.”
During the COVID-19 EU hearing, Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, Janine Small, admitted that the vaccine had never been tested on its ability to prevent transmission, contrary to what was previously advertised.
Robert “Rob” Roos, a politician from the Netherlands who is also a member of the European Parliament, exposed the lie that people from all over the world had been led to believe.
“If you don’t get vaccinated, you’re antisocial. This is what the Dutch prime minister and health minister told us. You don’t get vaccinated just for yourself, but also for others. You do it for all of society, that’s what they said. Today, this turned out to be complete nonsense.” Roos said in his viral bombshell video posted on Twitter.
“In a COVID hearing in the European Parliament, one of the Pfizer directors just admitted to me at the time of introduction, the vaccine had never been tested on stopping the transmission of the virus,” Roos said.
In one of the most atrocious crimes against humanity, all the governments worked together with big pharma and big tech to deceive the general public into taking the COVID shot. They lied to us. They coerced millions of people into being vaccinated on the lie of preventing transmission.
“This removed the entire legal basis for the COVID passport. The COVID passport that led to massive institutional discrimination as people lost access to essential parts of society. I find this to be shocking, even criminal,” Roos added.
During the hearing, when asked by Ross if the Pfizer COVID vaccine tested on stopping the transmission of the virus before it entered the market, Janine Small responded while smiling:
“Regarding the question around did we know about stopping immunization before it entered the market? No. We have to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market.”
Watch the video below:
🚨 BREAKING:
In COVID hearing, #Pfizer director admits: #vaccine was never tested on preventing transmission.
“Get vaccinated for others” was always a lie.
The only purpose of the #COVID passport: forcing people to get vaccinated.
Remember when the globalists and elites told us to take the vaccine to stop the transmission? This is scandalous.
Watch the video below:
Dr. Ladapo recommended that young males from 18 to 39 refrain from taking the COVID Vaccine.
Today, we released an analysis on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines the public needs to be aware of. This analysis showed an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39. FL will not be silent on the truth.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Germany is reportedly working on reducing the nation’s economic dependency on Communist China due to concerns about “human rights abuses and the risks of being beholden to an increasingly assertive authoritarian state,” Reuters reports.Berlin finally learned one lesson from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: it’s dangerous to economically rely on authoritarian regimes.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policies — building an economy based on Russia’s energy supply and China’s market demand — were primarily responsible for German’s economic predicament today. Zealous in fighting climate change, Merkel shut down coal mines and retired the majority of nuclear power plants in Germany while relying on Russia for energy and raw materials, despite repeated warnings from the Trump administration. By 2020, Russia supplied more than half of Germany’s natural gas and about a third of all the oil that Germans burned to heat homes, power factories, and fuel vehicles.
While paying Russia billions of euros for energy supply (the money no doubt helped finance Putin’s war chest), Merkel neglected to invest in German’s armed forces, even after Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. She outsourced Germans’ and, to a larger extent, Europe’s security to the United States and simply hoped for the best. When Merkel retired in 2021, after being in office for 16 years, German’s military was left “in a weak position and require years of renewal to become a credible deterrent to Russian aggression,” according to The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.
Strengthened China Ties
Besides empowering and enriching Russia, Merkel was keen on strengthening Germany’s economic ties with China while in office. No other leaders from Western democracies had visited China more often than Merkel (she had 11 state visits to China).
To promote Germany’s export-oriented economy, Merkel was indifferent to China’s aggression in the South China Sea, its geopolitical expansion through the “Belt and Road” infrastructure project, and its increasingly assertive foreign policies. In addition, she avoided criticizing China’s mishandling of Covid-19 in the early days of 2020 and turned a blind eye to many human rights abuses in China, especially the genocide of Uyghur Muslims and suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
Under Merkel, China became Germany’s largest trading partner in 2016. German’s auto industry especially relies on China — about 50 percent of German car maker Volkswagen’s profit comes from China. Merkel’s China policy has made Germany’s economy vulnerable and helped speed up the Chinese military’s modernization.
Beijing reportedly focused on investments in Germany to obtain critical technologies, especially those with dual-use, meaning both civilian and military applications. For example, engines made by German companies have powered several types of Chinese navy warships, Deutsche Welle found.
Although Merkel retired in 2021, the effects of her economic policies continued. According to a German Economic Institute (IW) study, Germany’s economic dependency on China has continued to grow in 2022. “China’s share of German imports rose to 12.4 percent in the first half of 2022, compared with only 3.4 percent in 2000. German imports of Chinese goods… have surged by 45.7 percent year-on-year in the comparable period of the first six months. Germany’s trade deficit with the country had leapt to almost EUR 41 bn by mid-2022.”
A Wake-Up Call
After Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany joined other EU nations in imposing punitive economic sanctions on Russia. Putin retaliated by weaponizing his energy supply to Europe, sending energy prices soaring and dealing a blow to the German economy.
Inflation in Germany has reached a 40-year high. Suppose Putin shut off the natural gas supply to Europe, as he threatened. In that case, many predict an energy-induced recession in Europe is inevitable, and Germany could lose close to $240 billion in economic output over the next two years.
The grim economic outlook, and the fact that Beijing refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and helped Russia evade the West’s economic sanctions by purchasing Russian energy and agriculture products, have become a wake-up call for Germany. Additionally, Beijing’s “zero-Covid” policy that has kept dozens of cities and millions of Chinese people in lockdown means German businesses have had limited access to the Chinese market, and the trend will continue in the foreseeable future.
The German Economic Institute called for the government to change its economic policy, “specifically a reduction in incentives for doing business with China and a shift towards more trade with other emerging markets.” It also warned German businesses to “curb their dependency on China.” Otherwise, companies may expose themselves to bankruptcy due to Western sanctions imposed on China in the event of the People’s Liberation Army’s invading Taiwan.
Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing also warned, “When it comes to dependencies, we also have to face the awkward question of how to deal with China.” He appealed to the German government to decouple economically from China and acknowledged such a move would “require a change no less fundamental than decoupling from Russian energy.”
Germany Stepping Back
These calls for action have reached their desired audience. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock acknowledged Germany couldn’t afford to “just behave following the motto ‘business first,’ without taking into account the long-term risks and dependencies.”
Reuters reports that Germany’s economic ministry is considering several actions to cut Germany’s reliance on China, including reducing or scrapping investment and export guarantees for China and no longer promoting trade fairs and manager training there. It is also contemplating screening not just Chinese investments in Germany but also German investments in China. It also might submit a complaint to the World Trade Organization about unfair Chinese trade practices, together with the Group of Seven, an intergovernmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
While Germany is waking up to the risks of economic dependency on authoritarian regimes, the Biden administration has deepened our nation’s economic reliance on China with a green revolution that centers around replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind, and gas-powered cars with electric vehicles (EVs). China dominates the global supply chain of raw materials and parts for EV batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. The nation has been able to keep the manufacturing cost low by burning coal and employing forced labor from Uyghur and other ethnic minorities.
Even Politico has had to admit the dirty truth: “The U.S path to clean energy goes straight through China.” Germany’s economic woes should serve as a timely warning to the Biden administration that relying on an authoritarian regime is both dangerous and foolish.
Helen Raleigh, CFA, is an American entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. She’s a senior contributor at The Federalist. Her writings appear in other national media, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Helen is the author of several books, including “Confucius Never Said” and “Backlash: How Communist China’s Aggression Has Backfired.” Follow her on Parler and Twitter: @HRaleighspeaks.
While you wouldn’t know it by following America’s legacy media, citizens across the globe are expressing widespread dissatisfaction with their respective government’s failed leadership. Whether it’s at the ballot box or in the streets, tens of thousands of people are openly rejecting the globalist ethos permeating governments worldwide that has resulted in higher costs of living, skyrocketing energy prices, and increasing difficulty among citizens addressing their families’ basic needs.
Spanning from Europe to South America, the backlash has been broad in both message and scope.
Indonesia
Thousands of Indonesians turned out en masse in some of the country’s biggest cities on Tuesday to demand that their “government reverse its first subsidised fuel price increase in eight years amid soaring inflation.”
According to Reuters, “[u]nder pressure to control a ballooning energy subsidy budget, President Joko Widodo on Saturday said he had little choice but to cut the subsidy and let fuel prices rise by about 30 percent,” with oil costs “32% higher than a year ago.”
“Protests took place in and around the capital, Jakarta, and in the cities of Surabaya, Makassar, Kendari, Aceh, and Yogyakarta, among a series of demonstrations led by students and labour groups that police say could draw big crowds this week,” the Reuters report reads. “Thousands of police were deployed across Jakarta, many guarding petrol stations, fearing they could become targets of mounting anger over a price increase that unions say will hurt workers and the urban poor the most.”
As noted by Bloomberg News, Indonesia “has one of the highest poverty rates in the world at 9.5%,” with the cost of necessary items like food set to become more expensive amid the country’s inflation increase.
“Workers are really, really suffering right now,” said Abdul Aris, a union official.
Italy
In Naples, Italians gathered in the streets outside the city’s town hall this past weekend to voice their displeasure with the nation’s rising energy costs. Protestors at the demonstration were filmed burning their energy bills in metallic bins while purportedly chanting phrases such as “We don’t pay the bills!” and “Now it will be chaos!”
“We don’t want [soaring bills] anymore!” protestors also shouted.
According to The London Economic, “Residents in the country will be asked to turn down the heating starting from October to help curb energy use, with limits on the use of central heating in public buildings also being brought in.”
Given that Italy is “heavily reliant on Russia for gas imports,” the European sanctions put on Moscow and Rome’s acceleration towards “green energy” are expected to leave Italians facing a rough winter ahead.
People in Naples burn their energy bills and besiege the town hall: "We don't pay the bills! Now it will be chaos!" In Naples they don't joke. pic.twitter.com/X2ZN82AfAT
Voters in Chile over the past weekend overwhelmingly rejected a newly proposed, left-wing constitution that would have provided the government with vastly more power and control over the country’s citizenry.
According to The Blaze, the “170-page document containing 388 articles” would have “enshrine[d] 100 rights including the right to: a ‘nutritionally complete’ diet; ‘leisure’; ‘neurodiversity’; equality for ‘sexual and gender diversities and dissidences, both in the public and private spheres’; housing; sex parity in all public institutions; and to free education.”
With nearly two-thirds (61.9 percent) of Chileans opposing the measure, the vote represents a humiliating defeat for the country’s socialist president, Gabriel Boric, who supported the proposed constitution.
“I commit to put my all into building a new constitutional itinerary alongside congress and civil society,” Boric said.
Opponents of adopting the radical document celebrated voters’ decision, with Carlos Salinas, a spokesman for the Citizens’ House for Rejection, saying that “[t]oday we’re consolidating a great majority of Chileans who saw rejection as a path of hope.”
“We want to tell the government of President Gabriel Boric… that ‘today you must be the president of all Chileans and together we must move forward,” he said.
Czech Republic
In the Czech Republic, approximately 70,000 citizens showed up in the nation’s capital of Prague on Saturday to protest their government’s handling of the ongoing energy crisis and to express opposition to the European Union and NATO. Organized by a wide swath of ideologically diverse political groups, “including the Communist Party of the Czech Republic and the Eurosceptic Tricolor Citizens’ Movement,” demonstrators “held Czech flags, as well as placards against the EU and NATO, Prime Minister Petr Fiala, rising energy prices, and calls for neutrality and dialogue with Russia.”
Protestors also demanded “the resignation of the current coalition government of conservative Prime Minister Petr Fiala, whom they criticize for following pro-Western policies and allegedly paying more attention to war-torn Ukraine than to his citizens.”
“The purpose of our demonstration is to demand change, mainly in solving the issue of energy prices, especially electricity and gas, which will destroy our economy this fall,” event co-organizer Jiří Havel said.
The head of the Tricolor Party, Zuzana Majerová Zahradníková, echoed similar sentiments, saying that the “Czech Republic needs a Czech government” and that “[Prime Minister Petr] Fiala’s government may be Ukrainian, maybe Brussels, but not Czech.”
Event organizers are currently scheduling another protest for Sept. 28, according to The New Voice of Ukraine.
WATCH: Protests against the government erupted in Prague, the Czech's capital.
The protest is called "Czech Republic in First Place."
Protesters spoke out against rising gasoline prices, power outages, health-care costs, and military neutrality.pic.twitter.com/zNL5cNvdKK
Other countries that have experienced protests against their governments in recent weeks include New Zealand and Germany, among others.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
British Prime Minister Liz Truss said Thursday that she is lifting the ban on fracking to help her country reduce exorbitant energy prices.
Truss, who was appointed as the new Conservative Prime Minister on Tuesday, announced in the House of Commons that she will enable oil and gas developers to seek permission from the government to increase domestic fuel supplies as the U.K. looks to combat its energy crisis. Truss said she hopes to get fracking operations started within the next six months and is also approving 100 new exploration licenses for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. (RELATED: British Pound Hits Lowest Level Against US Dollar In 37 Years)
“We will make sure that the U.K. is a net energy exporter by 2040,” Truss told parliament. “We are supporting this country through this winter and next, and tackling the root causes of high prices so we are never in the same position again.”
Fracking, a process that harvests oil and gas from buried shale rock, was banned in England in 2019 by the Conservative Party due to concerns about the safety of the practice, according to the 2019 Conservative Party Manifesto.
PRESTON, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 16: An aerial view of the Cuadrilla shale gas extraction (fracking) site at Preston New Road, near Blackpool on September 16, 2019 in Preston, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Truss also placed a £2,500 ($2,888) cap on skyrocketing household electricity bills for two years as part of an economic package that could cost the U.K. about £150 billion ($172 billion). Soaring utility costs have caused thousands of Britons to protest price hikes and refuse to pay their bills until they are reduced by the government, according to the protest group Don’t Pay U.K.
“We are facing a global energy crisis, and there are no cost-free options,” she stated.
Sanctions on Russian fuel supplies as well as the cut-off of natural gas via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline are causing British and European electricity prices to spike as countries look to ration fuel supplies ahead of winter. Additionally, the U.K. aims to reach net-zero emissions targets by 2050 by implementing a carbon emissions trading scheme that lowers the competitiveness of fossil fuels and accelerates investments in green energy, according to the U.K. government.
The British Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Queen Elizabeth II arrives with for the opening of the sixth session of the Scottish Parliament on October 02, 2021, in Edinburgh, Scotland. | Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, died Thursday at age 96 after 70 years on the throne and serving as head of the Church of England.
“The Queen died peacefully at Balmoral this afternoon,” stated the official Royal Family Twitter handle on Thursday. “The King and The Queen Consort will remain at Balmoral this evening and will return to London tomorrow.”
The news came shortly after Buckingham Palace announced that the queen was under medical supervision at Balmoral due to health concerns, though they noted that she was comfortable.
“Following further evaluation this morning, the Queen’s doctors are concerned for Her Majesty’s health and have recommended she remain under medical supervision,” they stated.
All of the queen’s children and the Duke of Cambridge traveled to Balmoral to be by her side.
On Tuesday, the queen appointed the new Prime Minister Liz Truss as her last public duty.
Earlier this year, Elizabeth II had missed multiple ceremonies, including Easter Sunday worship in April and events tied to her Platinum Jubilee celebration in June, due to health and mobility issues.
Born April 21, 1926, in Mayfair, London, Princess Elizabeth was the first child of King George VI, who ruled from 1936 after his brother King Edward VIII resigned, until his death in 1952.
During World War II, Princess Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service of the British Army, where she served as a mechanic and rose to the rank of Junior Commander.
Before taking the throne, Elizabeth married Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in 1947. The union produced four children and lasted until April 9, 2021, when Philip died at age 99.
Queen Elizabeth II had her coronation at Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953, with the ceremony being overseen by Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher.
In addition to secular responsibilities as monarch, Elizabeth II also held the title of “Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England,” and oversaw various Church affairs.
The position goes back to King Henry VIII, who made himself head of the Church of England after splitting from the Roman Catholic Church when the pope refused to grant him a divorce.
“On the advice of the Prime Minister The Queen appoints Archbishops, Bishops and Deans of the Church of England, who then swear an oath of allegiance and pay homage to Her Majesty,” explained The Royal Family website.
“In 1970 The Queen became the first Sovereign to inaugurate and address the General Synod in person. Since then Her Majesty has inaugurated and addressed the opening session of the General Synod every five years after diocesan elections.”
The gradual breakup of the British Empire that had begun under her father’s reign continued during the 1950s and 1960s, as numerous overseas holdings gained independence.
Over time, the British Empire transformed into the Commonwealth of Nations, a body that includes many former British colonies, but now voluntarily cooperates as equals to promote economic development and peaceful political goals.
“Elizabeth II has thus made visits to other countries as head of the Commonwealth and a representative of Britain, including a groundbreaking trip to Germany in 1965. She became the first British monarch to make a state visit there in more than five decades,” explained Biography.
“During the 1970s and 1980s, Elizabeth continued to travel extensively. In 1973 she attended the Commonwealth Conference in Ottawa, Canada, and in 1976 traveled to the United States for the 200th anniversary celebration of America’s independence from Britain.”
On Sept. 9, 2015, Elizabeth set the record for the longest reigning monarch in British history, with the queen officially opening the Scottish Borders Railway on that day.
“Many including you, First Minister, have also kindly noted another significance attaching to today, although it is not one to which I have ever aspired,” she stated in a speech at the opening event.
“Inevitably, a long life can pass by many milestones; my own is no exception. But I thank you all, and the many others at home and overseas, for your touching messages of great kindness.”
The queen is survived by her four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Throughout its history, but with renewed vigor in recent years, the atheistic communist Chinese regime has sought to crush or at the very least control Christianity within Chinese borders. Christianity is regarded by the communist leadership as a foreign threat to its control and well-being — one that Mao Zedong endeavored to eliminate altogether. Although Chinese Christians of all denominations have routinely been subject to harassment, torture, detentions, and executions inside China’s borders, the CCP has recently taken more brazenly to hounding those who have fled abroad.
Exodus
Pastor Pan Yongguangand 61 congregants belonging to the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church fled China to the South Korean island of Jeju in 2019, seeking asylum. The CCP required that the SHRC and its members should join a registered church, one strictly regulated by the regime, or otherwise be disbanded and barred from assembling.
Registered churches are required to display images of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and communist propaganda alongside or in lieu of religious images. Homilies are censored. Surveillance cameras installed on altars record all church happenings. Additionally, to ensure state atheism takes, people under the age of 18 are barred from participating in religious ceremonies.
Pastor Pan had no intention of registering.
Pressure mounted when the regime, responding to the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, sought to everywhere re-exert its dominance. Pastor Pan said that “quasi-martial law” was consequently imposed on Shenzhen and upon his parish. The SHRC mulled over what to do. The church put the matter to a vote, and the majority elected to leave.
Though they successfully made it to South Korea, it was made abundantly clear both by local authorities and U.S. officials that Pastor Pan’s congregation would be unable to stay. Less than 1% of asylum seekers were permitted to stay in 2019.
Bob Fu of the non-governmental Christian nonprofit China Aid warned, “If they get deported back to China by Korean officials, every member of this church will face extreme punishment.” Fu was not speaking hyperbolically.
Within months of the SHRC’s exodus, Pastor Wang Yi, the founder of one of China’s largest unregistered churches, was sentenced to nine years in prison, denied all political rights, and fined. Yi’s fate is commonplace for Christians in the region.
Spanish journalist Pablo M. Diez has elsewhere noted how Catholic Bishop James Su Zhimin, like others who refused to subordinate themselves to CCP religious regulators, was “disappeared” after “having spent most of his life deprived of his freedom.”
For fear of being returned by South Korea to China to suffer the kind of fate met by Zhimin, Yi, and Zen, the SHRC congregants migrated instead to Thailand, where they believe CCP agents are still stalking them.
Repercussions
Despite escaping China, Pastor Pan and his parish have nevertheless been subject to continued harassments, threats, and surveillance by the CCP. Those they left behind in China have also paid the price for their families’ Christianity, in the way of intimidation, interrogation, and other statist abuses, including the prohibition of a newborn child’s legal status.
The pastor, whom CCP agents have accused of “treason,” “collusion with foreign forces,” and “subversion of state power,” learned that his siblings and mother have been penalized as a result of his actions.
Another congregant’s relative in the mainland was told by communist officers, “Your descendants may suffer.”
The presumed objective of the CCP’s mistreatment of the expat Christians’ relatives is to coerce Pastor Pan and his parish back to China, where if not executed, they may be placed in reeducation camps and forced to renounce their faith.
China is home to tens of millions of Christians. Although the communist Chinese regime stated in 2018 that there were only 44 million Christians within its borders, this is regarded by many to be a gross undercount, as official figures only factor in members of registered Christian groups (in which the SHRC, house Christians, and the underground Catholic Church are not numbered).
A 2011 Pew Forum report indicated the number of Christians, including Protestants and Catholics, exceeded 67 million. The Economist similarly indicated in 2020 that official numbers aren’t reflective of the reality; that Chinese Christians and Muslims together outnumber the membership of the communist party (92 million).
A broader problem
The CCP does not only send its agents abroad to stalk Christians who have fled. Freedom House issued a report last year indicating that China “conducts the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression in the world.” It targets religious and ethnic minorities (e.g., Christians, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners), political dissidents, human rights activists, and others.
For instance, over 1,500 ethnic Muslim Uyghurs have been detained in the Middle East and North Africa, many of whom have been extradited back to China. Thousands more have been targeted, hit with cyber attacks, or have had their families back in China threatened.
The CCP has also activated agents in the United States. Earlier this year, five CCP spies were charged with stalking, harassing, and spying on Chinese nationals in New York.
In October 2020, eight illegal agents of the CCP were charged for surveilling, locating, and intimidating targets of the communist regime. These agents intended to coerce their targets back to China, where “they would face certain imprisonment or worse following illegitimate trials.”
The New York Times asked TikTok, a social media app with known connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to censor American users sharing election integrity concerns on its platform.
In a recent article titled, “On TikTok, Election Misinformation Thrives Ahead of Midterms,” Times writer Tiffany Hsu details how “TikTok is shaping up to be a primary incubator of baseless and misleading information” ahead of the 2022 midterms, with the issue of voter fraud being a prominent topic shared across the platform. Buried within the article, however, Hsu tacitly reveals that as a result of the Times reaching out to the CCP-connected company, TikTok began censoring users from using a popular hashtag associated with fears about election interference.
“Baseless conspiracy theories about certain voter fraud in November are widely viewed on TikTok, which globally has more than a billion active users each month,” the article reads. “Users cannot search the #StopTheSteal hashtag, but #StopTheSteallll had accumulated nearly a million views until TikTok disabled the hashtag after being contacted by The New York Times.”
Hsu goes on to note the platform’s failure to address the spread of “misinformation” in foreign elections, citing those in France and Australia as examples.
“The app [also] struggled to tamp down on disinformation ahead of last week’s presidential election in Kenya,” Hsu wrote, referencing a report by Odanga Madung, a researcher for the Mozilla Foundation. “Mr. Madung cited a post on TikTok that included an altered image of one candidate holding a knife to his neck and wearing a blood-streaked shirt, with a caption that described him as a murderer. The post garnered more than half a million views before it was removed.”
As reported by Federalist Senior Contributor Helen Raleigh, TikTok “is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based internet company” and “collects an enormous amount of data on its users, including IP addresses, browsing history, and biometric information.” While ByteDance argues that American user data “is safe because it is stored on U.S. soil,” China’s national intelligence law mandates that “all Chinese tech companies must turn over any data they collect if the government demands it.”
“[A] recent BuzzFeed News report, based on leaked internal TikTok meetings, shows that ByteDance’s Chinese employees have repeatedly accessed nonpublic U.S. user data,” Raleigh said. “One employee of TikTok’s trust and safety department said in a September 2021 meeting that ‘Everything is seen in China.’”
The actions by the Times to push TikTok into censoring Americans isn’t the first time the news outlet has played footsy with the CCP. Late last year, the Times faced public backlash after purportedly downplaying the role Chinese leader Xi Jinping played in the genocide of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region of China.
“For unknown reasons, the New York Times appears to have intentionally withheld documents that directly linked top Chinese Communist Party officials, including General Secretary Xi Jinping, to the ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region” wrote Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio in a letter to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger. “In those now-released ‘Top Secret’ transcripts — documents that the New York Times has allegedly had in its possession since at least 2019 — Xi explicitly authorized changing local counterterrorism laws, rounding up and sentencing Uyghurs, the use of forced sterilization, and the use of slave labor in Xinjiang.”
The paper has since denied such accusations, with Assistant Managing Editor for International Michael Slackman claiming Rubio was “simply wrong on the facts.” But a pattern seems to be emerging.
Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Concern is growing over Chinese interests purchasing large swaths of land, particularly farmland, in the United States – including one sensitive parcel in North Dakota in the proximity of a military installation.
Investigative reporter Sara Carter told Fox News on Monday that the USDA estimated the CCP government owned about 192,000 acres of U.S. land in 2019, which she added has been augmented since March 2021 with a collective $6.1 billion in land.
“Most of the land is very close to sensitive US military installations,” she told Fox News. “For example, in 2021, 130,000 acres of land was purchased right here in Del Rio, Texas, along the US-Mexico border by a former Chinese military official. That land is very close to Laughlin Air Base. It actually surrounds that sensitive airbase.”
Not only is Laughlin a security concern given Chinese proximity, but the open, uncontrolled U.S.-Mexican border presents another complication, given the amount of Chinese-linked fentanyl is being smuggled in from Mexico, she added.
Xi Jinping (Bikash Dware/The Rising Nepal via AP))
Carter also noted what North Dakota officials are becoming wary about – a Chinese company’s purchase of 370 acres in the vicinity of Grand Forks Air Force Base. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., recently told Fox News the facility houses sensitive drone technology used for space and satellite operations.
Joe Biden meets with China’s President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the Roosevelt Room. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Carter told Fox News’ Sean Hannity the most important purchase transacted in Montana near a U.S. nuclear site.
“Right now, the federal government is actually conducting an investigation to see whether those Huawei cell towers were intercepting and could block our communications within our nuclear silos and systems,” she said.
(Fox News)
“This is very concerning. I spoke with U.S. intelligence as well as foreign intelligence officials about this. And they say they’ve been sounding the alarms for quite some time and they’re very concerned that it already might be too late.”
Carter noted much of what would be considered the Chinese private sector are mostly linked to the Chinese Communist Party government anyway, meaning most any purchase of land in the United States is cause for concern toward Beijing.
“[These] massive land grabs by the Chinese government [come via] Chinese firms: Chinese firms connected to the Chinese Communist Party.”
Fox News’ Joshua Nelson contributed to this report.
Charles Creitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital.
Paivi Rasanen must make God laugh. The 27-year member of Finland’s Parliament on trial for tweeting a Bible verse confounds so many pagan slogans.
She’s a mother of five children and grandmother of 10 who didn’t need abortion to simultaneously pull off two demanding careers: medicine and politics. An empathetic woman who eagerly shows pictures of grandbabies on her phone and expresses concern for strangers’ travel plans, Paivi (pie-EE-vee) also refuses to subjugate her reason to emotional manipulation.
She holds fast to Christian teachings about sex as reserved exclusively for lifelong marriage between one man and one woman, for which she’s been prosecuted and investigated now for three years and will be in court again this November. Her case could affect international law and is a foreboding example of where identity politics policies are quickly heading across the world.
“If we break the gender system and if we break the natural marriage system between one man and one woman, then we have dangerous consequences, especially to children,” Paivi told The Federalist in person this summer in Chicago.
This woman of science also firmly believes in supernatural revelation. In her pamphlet on Christian marriage that Finland’s top prosecutor is seeking to ban as “hate speech,” Paivi writes that “Jesus’s death and resurrection is the core of the entire Christian faith. On this the Bible stands or falls. If one does not believe it, there is nothing left of Christianity. And … if I believe this, it follows logically that I must believe everything else Christ teaches in the Bible through the Apostles and Prophets.”
Paivi speaking to a sold-out audience of Christians in Chicago, Illinois, this summer. (Joy Pullmann / The Federalist)
Persecution Spreads the Gospel
As it has often in history, persecution has created global opportunities for Paivi to spread Christian theology: about sex, its design for lasting human happiness, and Christianity’s warm welcome to those struggling with every kind of sin from the God “who hates nothing He has made.” The 2004 booklet “Male and Female He Created Them,” which prosecutors want to ban entirely and fine Paivi for writing, has gone from a few copies in a few conservative Lutheran churches to translated into half a dozen languages and read all over the world.
Rasanen’s 2004 booklet, printed from the online PDF and in its new second edition distributed worldwide.
Paivi and her husband Niilo (nee-loh) spoke this June in Budapest alongside megastar Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and his wife. Paivi said she’s seen especially strong support from Eastern European countries because many there still remember the Communists interrogating people about the Bible, as Finnish police did to Paivi three times for a total of 13 hours.
The Rasanens flew to Chicago right after Budapest so Paivi could speak at the sold-out Christian “Issues, Etc.” conference on June 25. In pearls, a flowered dress, and silvered golden hair, the petite 62-year-old asked the American crowd to pray that her case would “allow for more chances to preach the gospel in public.”
Rasanen’s case is on appeal in Finland and may end up in the European Court of Human Rights, developing precedents that could affect the world. If she loses in court, Paivi told a Christian outlet last year, “It will also affect religious freedom in other Western countries. LGBT groups have a very good network across national borders. They will try to achieve the same in other countries in Europe.”
In Q&A after her talk, Paivi said Finnish Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen is expected to push the case as far as possible because Toiviainen has said identity politics is her top priority. Paivi’s legal help from Alliance Defending Freedom International has told The Federalist they are also prepared to appeal her case as far as possible should she lose.
Image courtesy Issues, Etc.
Persecution Amplifies Word of God’s Mercy for Sinners
Toiviainen claims agreeing with the Bible that sodomy is a sin is a criminal expression of hatred toward homosexuals. Paivi and her legal team have pointed out that if the court interprets the law this way, it will effectively outlaw Christianity and free speech in Finland.
Rather than rejecting homosexuals, as she’s been accused in court, Paivi glows with happiness when relating that gay people have disclosed her “Bible trial” has brought them to faith. In speeches and court testimony, Paivi has emphasized she not only bears no animosity toward homosexuals or transsexuals, she earnestly desires them to join her Christian family by receiving the eternal life that Jesus Christ offers freely to every person.
Paivi has been dragged into European courts and smeared in the press for years as a spewer of “hate speech.” Yet while battling severe jet lag that her husband said often gives her migraines, Paivi expressed not even a flicker of animosity toward her persecutors in Chicago.
Instead, when The Federalist asked if her three-year-and-counting prosecution might be orchestrated by political enemies, she seemed stumped. She conferred with her husband and finally suggested she was simply an easy target as a well-known figure in Finland.
“In all my career I have been known as a Christian and as a biblical Christian who doesn’t accept abortion and homosexual acts and so on,” Paivi told The Federalist. “And that’s why I think that perhaps it is the reason why the prosecutor has targeted just me.”
Family Unites to Fight for Other Families
Acknowledging the Biblical directive that only men serve as pastors has never tied Paivi to the kitchen — although perhaps she’d like to retire there given the suffering her political career has inflicted. Niilo prodded Paivi into running for office nearly three decades ago to try to stop Finland from forcing doctors like her to perform abortions, they told The Federalist.
Niilo Rasanen is a pastor and theology professor at a Lutheran Bible college. Niilo’s widowed mother lived with the couple while their children were young, and Paivi’s parents moved nearby and “helped a lot,” Paivi said. That, with Niilo’s flexibility while earning his doctorate, allowed Paivi to enter public service without sacrificing their children’s needs, they said.
During the five years when Niilo was writing his dissertation, “he was always at home when the children came home” from school, Paivi noted. Paivi and Niilo occasionally pulled out their phones to translate Finnish words into English or check they were using the right words, but Finns learn at least two foreign languages in school, Swedish and English.
Niilo and Paivi Rasanen in Chicago, Illinois, in June 2022. (Joy Pullmann / The Federalist)
In response to a question from the Chicago audience, Paivi revealed threats against her family. When she campaigned against child pornography, she said, a convicted pedophile entered their front yard and threatened their children: “It was quite a difficult time because we had to keep safe our children and they were a little bit afraid many years after that.” The most violent of the recent threats include a rape threat against her son, she said.
These external threats may have helped strengthen family bonds. Paivi and Niilo’s faces light up when they talk about their now-grown children, whom the Rasanens say are a great joy and regularly text their parents Bible verses and prayers.
“The task is communal, we do it together,” Niilo said of their marriage and family. “It has been so busy and hard time in this politic area — very, very busy, very long days. If you are not doing it together, it will not work.”
“I think what has been a great power in our life is that we have felt that these callings and tasks that we have, that they are common,” Paivi added.
From Church Only at Christmas to Global Witness
Born in 1959, Paivi grew up in a remote area near Finland’s border with Sweden, in the village of Konnunsuo. Her father was the agricultural director for a prison there. He oversaw the prisoners raising vegetables and animals to feed and support themselves. Paivi remembers as a girl watching piglets being born.
Her parents went to church only at Christmas, she said, but she learned the Bible from Sunday School and at prison church services. Her family also hosted missionaries to the prison, and they explained Christianity to Paivi and her two younger siblings.
A skilled student, especially in mathematics, young Paivi read all the books in her tiny village library that was open only two hours per week, she said. An adult biography of Nobel Prize-winning Polish scientist Marie Curie particularly inspired Paivi: “I admired her. I thought that I would like to be like her, to do something great.”
At the University of Helsinki, she studied both mathematics and medicine for a half year, but it was too much. So Paivi decided to focus on medicine because “I wanted to work with people.”
Organizing up to 70 Christian students for five years of weekly door-to-door evangelism in university deepened her faith, Paivi told The Federalist: “It was a very important time for me because there were students from different faculties and I had to defend my views, and I had to know [the] Bible because they asked difficult questions.”
She met Niilo doing summer missionary work among immigrants in London, and they married in February 1985, a year after Paivi started working as a doctor. They welcomed their children in 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1996.
Because Paivi kept organizing debates and speakers about abortion among fellow medical students and doctors, the Christian Democrat political party asked her to run for office. The Christian Democrats are a small party that focuses on faith and family. From 2011 to 2015, Paivi served as Finland’s Minister of the Interior as part of a coalition government.
She Fights Like a Woman
Paivi has fought steadfastly not by disposition, but by compunction. She and Niilo chuckled quietly when noting that in university, she flatly refused all public speaking offers and leadership positions.
In person, the two Finns are true to type and their “Minnesota nice” American cousins: polite, soft-spoken, and deferential. In Chicago, Paivi and Niilo attempted for some 15 minutes to get the Uber app to work on their Finnish cell phones before they could be prevailed upon by this journalist to accept a ride.
She would have walked the mile to the conference, Paivi assured, as they had the day before, but that morning’s rain would bedraggle her hair and dress right before her speech. After a bit of emotional discomfort at allegedly imposing, followed by a quick, rain-unaffected arrival, Paivi laughed softly, expressed thanks, and commented that this would be a good anecdote for The Federalist profile.
Paivi Rasanen during audience Q&A in Chicago. Because English is a second language for Paivi, she was given the written questions in advance.
Although she’s a public figure who regularly appears on TV, including a variety show that dressed her in a bear costume to sing to her grandchildren (she showed photographic evidence), Paivi habitually asks for others’ thoughts rather than discussing her own. It’s yet another contradiction to women’s mag-celebrated attributes: expressing her femininity not only doesn’t abrade Paivi’s character, it complements it.
Paivi doesn’t assert herself as a “girl boss” who assumes masculine prosthetics, despite years of public leadership that could have taught her to do so. Her apparent emotional security in being the woman God made her bestows its own authority and charm.
Only Men and Women Fit Perfectly Together
That acceptance of one’s sex as a gift from God is also a foundation of the theological booklet that helped land Paivi in court indefinitely. Cultural Marxism foments a war between the sexes, but the Bible teaches that love means total self-giving: Husbands sacrifice everything to love their wives, and wives submit to their husbands as they do to God. The true war is not between the sexes, but against them, and in war clear chains of command are necessary to protect everyone.
The 1960s feminist war fomented between the sexes has now expanded into a war on sex itself. Now even recognizing the differences between men and women and the exclusive fertility of natural marriage is heading toward being criminalized across the West, and with it the Christianity that protects and celebrates these natural realities.
When she wrote the booklet, Paivi was already well-known as a Christian member of Parliament representing Hame, a rural Finnish province about an hour north of Helsinki. Pastor Juhana Pohjola, elected bishop of Finland’s non-state Lutheran church in 2021, had asked Rasanen to respond to proposals for government licensing of homosexual relationships. Here was a government endorsement of severing natural biological bonds between parents and children that raised both political and theological concerns.
Rasanen’s resulting 24-page booklet is a succinct summary of Christian sexual ethics. “People who submit themselves to God’s guidance in the Bible are repeatedly amazed at how the very Bible teachings hardest to understand contain God’s deep wisdoms,” Rasanen writes in the English translation.
“No choice of policies is ethically neutral,” she notes. “…In actuality, the acceptance of homosexual partnerships meant a more profound change in values than was willingly acknowledged at the time.” For example, she notes, in Finland, those proposing a homosexual partnerships act promised it would affect adults only. Yet immediately after the act passed, the proponents moved to make taxpayers pay for lesbians to be artificially inseminated and for homosexual couples to adopt children who could never know either a father or mother.
The act’s proponents also promised that Finland’s state church could maintain Christianity’s historic teachings if state recognition of homosexual couples passed. Paivi’s trial today, under a law passed seven years after the booklet was published, directly refutes that claim. It also highlights how impossible it is to reconcile the hard-won natural law framework that protects everyone equally with the identity politics that provides special rights to only government-favored groups.
Seeking an Internet Interdiction
Writing the booklet is one of three charges Toiviainen has filed against Paivi. It forms the sole count against Pohjola, the pastor who published the booklet. The two other counts against Paivi relate to her tweet of a Bible verse at the nominally Lutheran state church for sponsoring a homosexual pride parade and comments in a public radio debate she participated in years ago.
How can the #church ’s doctrinal foundation, the #bible, be compatible with the lifting up of shame and sin as a subject of #pride ?” #lgbt#helsinkipride2019 Finnish Christian MP under hate crime investigation for quoting scripture – Premier
How can the #church ’s doctrinal foundation, the #bible, be compatible with the lifting up of shame and sin as a subject of #pride ?" #lgbt#helsinkipride2019 Finnish Christian MP under hate crime investigation for quoting scripture – Premier https://t.co/0GEJ5tZEb6
In 2019, several Finns lodged complaints against Paivi’s tweet. Police investigated, interrogating Paivi about her beliefs three times. Although the police ultimately recommended against prosecuting Paivi, prosecutors sifted through her three-decade public record. They dug up the three alleged hate crimes and charged her.
The charges against Paivi fall under the legal category of “war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The prosecutors have asked for Paivi’s writings and audio clips to be completely banned from the internet and for her, Pohjola, and his church to be fined up to a third of their annual incomes, but courts could put Paivi in prison for up to six years if she’s found guilty. Pohjola could be imprisoned for up to two years.
During Paivi and Pohjola’s trial in early 2022, thousands of Finnish supporters gathered in Helsinki outside the court. Free speech supporters in other countries rallied at Finnish embassies. The American Family Research Council sent Pastor Andrew Brunson, whom Turkey detained for two years for preaching Christianity, to give Paivi a pledge of prayers from Christians around the world. U.S. members of Congress, international human rights groups, and coalitions of religious believers have also petitioned the Finnish government to stop prosecuting Rasanen and Pohjola’s human rights to free speech and religious exercise.
“It is important that we have the freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” Paivi told The Federalist in Chicago. “Freedom of speech because it is important for everyone. It is important for every minority and majority. For Christians, it is crucial because we have the commandments of Jesus to tell the good gospel to all people…”
“Also I think that it is important to respect in society also everyone’s right to speak and argue and oppose you,” she continued. “So this is [a] fundamental issue.”
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.
Quemoy and Matsu, officially known as the Kinmen and Lienchiang Counties respectively, are groups of islands located directly off the coast of mainland Communist China but are under the administration of the Republic of China, Taiwan.
Quemoy and Matsu are not fortified, making their capture by the People’s Liberation Army an easy, but highly symbolic victory.
In the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, also called the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the People’s Republic of China shelled the islands of Quemoy and Matsu Islands in part to probe the extent of the United States’ defense of Taiwan’s territory. During the 1960 Presidential campaign between Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon, the defense of Taiwan, as represented by Quemoy and Matsu, became a major issue during three of their debates.
According to recent reports, footage uploaded by civilians in China shows large military movements of troops and equipment as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is expected to arrive in Taiwan.
The large military movements have occurred on major highways and railways throughout the Chinese province of Fujian, directly adjacent to Quemoy and Matsu.
In the last 24 hours, commercial flights have been abruptly canceled from airports in several cities in Fujian province. These airports include Xiamen, Fuzhou and Quanzhou. Xiamen Airlines put out a statement saying that the flight cancelations were due to “regional traffic control” and did not elaborate further.
This could be considered an invasion warning, the military occupation of the Quemoy and Matsu Islands as the first step by Communist China to subjugate Taiwan and eliminate U.S. influence in the Western Pacific.
Joe Hoft is the twin brother of TGP’s founder, Jim Hoft, and a contributing editor at TGP. Joe’s reporting is often months ahead of the Mainstream media as was observed in his reporting on the Mueller sham investigation, the origins of the China coronavirus, and 2020 Election fraud. Joe was a corporate executive in Hong Kong for a decade and has years of experience in finance, IT, operations and auditing around the world. The knowledge gained in his career provide him with a unique perspective of current events in the US and globally. Joe’s weekday radio show at Realtalk933.com has received rave reviews. He has ten degrees or designations and is the author of four books. His new book: ‘The Steal – Volume One: Setting the Stage’ is out now. It addresses the stolen 2020 Election and those activities that led up to November 3, 2020 – please take a look and buy a copy.
The first lady of Ukraine was in Washington last week to be feted by the Biden administration, Congress, and the corporate press. Olena Zelenska, the attractive and patriotically dressed wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was given the Jackie Kennedy/Michelle Obama treatment by fashion columnists while also helping to reinforce the message that Ukraine’s effort to defend itself against Russian aggression is a battle for democracy and the survival of the West. This is an easy story to tell a receptive American audience. Since the war began in February, American sympathy combined with the stiffer-than-expected struggle put up by Ukrainian forces and Zelensky’s deft public relations campaign has reinforced the message that the Kyiv government is a democracy whose defense is essential to Western security.
Yet the question to be posed about this is not whether Russia and Putin are bad but whether Ukraine is the paragon of democracy Biden says it is.
Congress recently passed a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine in May with bipartisan support. Grassroots Republicans and even portions of the Democratic base have been critical of the way Ukraine’s security has come to dictate national priorities. That $40 billion is likely to be only the first installment of a steady flow of aid to pay for the $10 billion per month that the war is costing Kyiv.
That’s what made the appearance of a story about Ukraine in The New York Times this past week, which showed a different side of Zelensky’s government, so significant. The story, titled “Zelenskyy Fires Two Top Law Enforcement Officials,” buried the lead. The Times emphasized the fact that this was the first government shakeup in Kyiv since the war started as well as the fact that one of the two people fired was a boyhood friend of Zelensky. But while that is true, the substance of the story was that the sympathy and support for the Russians among a not insignificant portion of the Ukrainian population and members of the security services has damaged the war effort.
An earlier story in the Times discussed how paranoia about potential Russian spies had spread throughout Ukrainian society. The latest dispatch made clear just how much of an issue this had become. It’s one thing to report about 200,000 spy allegations being submitted to Ukrainian authorities every month. Zelensky’s sacking of security measures made clear how “treason” cases have become something of an obsession for the Ukrainian government.
Even more alarming is the fact that several hundred of these treason investigations involved security personnel. Many Ukrainian officials, including those who were employed by the prosecutor’s office, remained behind in Russian-occupied territory and are now working for Moscow.
Still, that partly explains the large number of Ukrainian personnel helping the Russians. But the way this vast security state has been empowered by the war to turn its malevolent gaze on Ukrainian citizens — whether guilty of sympathy for Moscow or not — is chilling.
Previously, Ukraine was widely acknowledged to be as corrupt as the rest of the former Soviet Union, with a fledgling democratic system that was far from entirely free. Even after Zelensky became president, newspapers that were critical of his government were shut down. Since the war started, journalists have struggled to retain their ability to report freely and fairly.
That the majority of Ukrainians want their country to remain independent is obvious. So is their willingness to fight to prevent their nation from falling under Putin’s thumb. But the ability of the Russians to get so many Ukrainians to sympathize with or aid their assault on Ukraine illustrates that what is going on is, in part, a civil war as well as a foreign invasion.
Yet equally true is the fact that the Ukrainian state that is being defended so bravely is still deeply flawed and possessed of attributes antithetical to democracy. Though some of its problems would be present in any country at war and under direct attack, the more we learn about Ukraine, the less it resembles the Jeffersonian democracy that Biden tries to conjure up in his speeches on the subject.
While sympathy for Ukraine and hostility to Russia is understandable, these are factors that ought to be taken into consideration if the United States is to undertake the kind of financial commitment in this war that is starting to remind us of the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Or, at least, it should if Americans are to be permitted to have a debate about making such a dubious commitment.
Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.
Buyers from the People’s Republic of China purchased $6.1 billion in real estate last year, the most of any foreign buyer. Many of these purchases over the past few years have been of farmland or ranchland near U.S. military bases.
Revelations from a groundbreaking exclusive CNN story published on July 23 about telecommunications equipment from China’s Huawei installed in rural America suggest that Chinese land purchases could pose a severe national security threat as well.
CNN chronicles the Chinese government’s more than decade-long effort to establish a massive electronic intelligence and jamming capability in the U.S. adjacent to military installations and in Washington, D.C. Such a system could deliver a crippling electronic Pearl Harbor against American nuclear weapons systems and strategic communications vital to deterring and defeating a military surprise attack. The report details how China’s state-supported telecommunications giants, Huawei and ZTE, sold cell tower equipment and routers, often at a loss, to small, rural telecommunications providers in the heartland. Much of the made-in-China equipment was installed adjacent to the land-based leg of America’s nuclear triad — the 400 Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) — in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.
Chinese telecommunications equipment presents four threats:
real-time communications intelligence,
real-time imagery intelligence,
offensive signals jamming,
and internet attacks.
In the age of software reprogrammable digital electronics, cell tower transmitters and receivers can be remotely reconfigured to listen to nearby military transmissions. Cell tower transmitters can be ordered to broadcast on certain frequencies used by the military, a tactic known as jamming. Similarly, cell towers’ connectivity to the internet could be used to overwhelm or degrade internet service in the early hours of a conflict. Many of the cell towers installed cameras in recent years to provide real-time traffic and weather conditions. Many of these cameras also monitor traffic around sensitive U.S. military installations.
The FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into this threat was so sensitive that senior policymakers in the White House and Congress weren’t told until 2019. Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission issued a rule banning small telecoms from using certain kinds of Chinese manufactured equipment. In 2020, Congress appropriated $1.9 billion to rip out and replace about 24,000 pieces of Huawei and ZTE equipment in rural America. But none of it has yet been removed, and carriers insist that the federal government is $3 billion short of making them whole. Chinese telecommunications equipment remains a ticking timebomb, with resistance to its removal ranging from economic justifications to cries of xenophobia.
How did we get here? The Chinese Communist Party practices strategic mercantilism, fostering key technologies with dual-use civilian and military applications while driving competing industries in other nations out of business.
In the 1970s, the world’s two largest manufacturers of telecommunications gear were headquartered in the U.S.: Western Electric and ITT. Less than two dozen years ago, the two largest were U.S.-based Lucent and Canada’s Nortel. America saw its manufacturing dominance slip from producing one-third of the world’s telecom equipment in 1997 to barely more than one-tenth today. The People’s Republic of China played a key role in that decline. In 1979, China declared its telecommunications industry as strategic and stated that it required “absolute control.” In 1982, China imported 100 percent of its telecommunications equipment. By 2000, it was self-sufficient, importing no foreign equipment.
China’s path to dominance was simple: It leveraged Western demand for quarterly profits by telling foreign suppliers that they had to manufacture the products they sold to China in joint ventures with Chinese firms. China then built its supply chain to provide the inputs for these joint ventures as well as to steal the intellectual property with the goal of eventually being able to make high-end equipment. The result is that today, U.S. telecommunications service providers rely almost entirely on Chinese or European suppliers—with China routinely offering cheaper prices.
The Importance of Real Estate
Voluntarily purchasing problematic Chinese equipment is one thing, but what happens when China controls real estate near military bases or important government facilities?
An odd 2017 deal illustrates the importance of strategic real estate. That year, China offered to pay the entire $100 million cost to build the National China Garden on 12 acres at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. Concerns voiced by American counterintelligence officials resulted in the project being rejected just before construction was due to begin. Among their misgivings: The proposed pagoda on one of D.C.’s highest points would be built from materials shipped to the U.S. in diplomatic pouches, meaning no import inspections.
This Chinese project attracted attention because it was on federal land in the nation’s capital. On the other hand, purchases of land in private transactions frequently escape attention until after the fact.
But the $2.6 million land purchase is a good thing, some might argue. The Chinese firm plans to invest another $700 million in the area and generate 200 jobs—besides, America has a trade deficit with China, and those dollars must go somewhere, so why not see them reinvested in the U.S.? Further, it’s not like the Chinese can pack up American land and take it back to China with them. And, while some express concern about China owning agricultural land (Chinese interests now own 192,000 agricultural acres worth almost $2 billion), even if China were to decide to divert all production to China or cease agricultural operations, production could easily be restarted.
The CCP Problem
But what most Americans don’t know is that every Chinese company with 50 or more employees must have a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official embedded in it. This CCP political officer is a looming presence in any firm hailing from a nation with no rule of law other than what CCP officials say it is. Thus, while the Fufeng Group likely has legitimate business purposes for investing in Grand Forks, so too does the CCP have strategic military purposes for using Fufeng’s North Dakota base for its own purposes.
In April, U.S. Air Force Major Jeremy Fox wrote an unofficial memo highlighting concerns that the Grand Forks perch was well sited to intercept military communications between “unmanned air systems” and “space-based assets.” A USAF spokesman subsequently downplayed Major Fox’s concerns as his “personal assessment of potential vulnerabilities.”
Similar concerns have been expressed about the purchase of a 130,000-acre ranch on the border with Mexico near Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas. The site is home to a wind turbine project that, due to its connection with the Texas grid, could be used to disrupt the state’s electric system. Further, the land—which features a large airstrip, as do many Texas ranches—could be used to coordinate activities with the transnational drug cartels across the border.
In both cases, in North Dakota and in Texas—and on any other large agricultural or industrial facility—equipment might be positioned for purposes other than purely commercial reasons. And, since Chinese nationals and companies must obey the CCP, if they don’t cooperate, they risk losing everything up to and including their freedom and their lives.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told CNN that the FBI opens a new China counterintelligence investigation every 12 hours with about 2,000 active investigations, excluding cyber theft, which is a criminal matter.
Retired U.S. Navy Capt. James “Kimo” Fanell was the chief of intelligence for the Pacific Fleet and notes that large parcels of land or industrial sites could host signals intelligence or electronic warfare equipment such as jammers. He observed, “While our Customs inspectors are hardworking people, they’re overloaded, especially today with the Biden administration’s de facto open border policies. The idea that a strategic adversary could buy land near U.S. military bases does not pass the commonsense test.” He added, “We’ve got to do better as a nation to defend our citizens from these kinds of obvious threats.”
Given the sluggishness of the American response to the grave danger posed by communist China—a response slowed over fears of being accused of racism or by economic arguments made by well-funded lobbyists for Chinese interests or U.S. multinationals—it doesn’t take much to imagine the varied nature of attacks we might see on the homeland during the first few days of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
The time for talk is over; we need action.
Chuck DeVore is Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He’s the author of two books, “The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America,” and “China Attacks,” a novel.
Chinese government-backed student groups pose a clear and present danger to U.S. colleges, a report from The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal said Monday.
Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSA) — “campus organizations for Chinese students studying abroad” — have coordinated with the Chinese government to engage in intimidation, censorship and surveillance while maintaining “furtive financial practices,” the center’s report claims. Many of the approximately 150 CSSAs across the country “receive guidance” and funding from the Chinese government, according to a 2018 congressional commission.
Some CSSAs have been “active in carrying out overseas Chinese work consistent with Beijing’s United Front,” according to the congressional commission. The United Front Work Department (UFWD) is a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agency whose members engage in propaganda, espionage and physical violence, according to the State Department.
One instance involved members from the University of California San Diego’s CSSA chapter who condemned the Dalai Lama’s 2017 commencement speech by issuing a statement and publishing an op-ed in protest, Time reported. Along with Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, pro-democracy advocates and Taiwan independence activists, the CCP considers Tibetans one of the “Five Poisonous Groups” that supposedly threaten China, according to a 2005 congressional hearing.
Similarly, the University of Washington’s CSSA protested a screening of “Letter From Masanjia” — a film about Chinese slave labor — and “made a scene” in 2019, Leon Lee, a Peabody Award-winning director, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in February.
CSSA chapters have also reportedly engaged in surveillance activities against Chinese students, Politico reported. For example, a University of California Berkeley graduate student affiliated with the school’s CSSA was reportedly working with China’s secret police to report on other Chinese students, an anonymous former official told Politico. (RELATED: Math Professor Convicted Of Hiding China Ties To Get Taxpayer Funding)
Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, The Dalai Lama, speaks to reporters during a news conference in Seattle April 13, 2008. (REUTERS/Robert Sorbo)
Many CSSA chapters reportedly receive funding from the Chinese government, the report states, citing a Foreign Policy piece that determined chapters frequently take money from Chinese embassies and consulates. However, the funding provided to any given CSSA varies and “not all CSSA members are comfortable” with Beijing’s influence, according to the congressional commission.
Meanwhile, many of the nation’s Confucius Institutes — Chinese language and culture centers — recently rebranded and then reportedly rekindled relationships with U.S. colleges after the Department of State designated the Chinese government-backed organizations a “foreign mission” in August 2020, according to a National Association of Scholars report in June.
The Chinese Embassy, the State Department, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Pembroke, Charlotte, East Carolina University, North Carolina State University and their related CSSA chapters did not respond immediately to the DCNF’s request for comment.
A major Chinese semiconductor producer secretly developed advanced chip technology, and the U.S. Commerce Department’s lax export control policies may be the culprit, according to Republican lawmakers.
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) shipped a Bitcoin-mining semiconductor to technology analysis firm TechInsights, who found that the chip’s sophistication had caught up to those produced by firms like Intel in a Tuesday report. The U.S. has banned sales of equipment that can be used to manufacture these more advanced semiconductors, 10 nanometers and below, since 2020, according to Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS).
The U.S. blacklisted SMIC in 2020 due to “evidence of activities between SMIC and entities of concern in the Chinese military industrial complex,” according to the text of the rule. However, Republican lawmakers have alleged the Commerce Department’s “ineffective” export control licensing policies allowed firms associated with the Chinese military, including SMIC, access to U.S. technology.
“A serious U.S. export control policy should be predicated on denying foreign adversaries’ efforts to supplant American economic, technological, and military leadership,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas wrote in a letter to the Biden administration in March.
BIS denied less than 1% of license applications to SMIC during a six-month period that spanned the Trump and Biden administrations, approving applications that together with Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei totaled $100 billion, McCaul said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday.
“Despite an ongoing genocide and systematic program to divert private sector innovations to its military, dual use technology exports to China received little to no scrutiny,” said McCaul.
TechInsights found that the chip’s transistor width reached 7 nanometers, two generations more advanced than SMIC’s established 14nm product. A narrower transistor width allows the chip to process data at greater speeds, according to Bloomberg.
LR @RepMcCaul “18 months ago Sen @marcorubio and I told @BISgov it’s licensing policy for SMIC-the leading Chinese chip manufacturer-would be utterly ineffective. Now, we’re learning the policy has failed. It’s unacceptable for BIS to continue to ignore U.S. national security.” https://t.co/tsqHTBcWA7
— House Foreign Affairs GOP (@HouseForeignGOP) July 21, 2022
“This is a groundbreaking discovery because the U.S. Department of Commerce was supposed to be restricting export licenses for any equipment which can be used on technologies more advanced than 14nm,” Dylan Patel, chief analyst at the SemiAnalysis blog, wrote. “Of course, the Department of Commerce handed out export licenses like candy.”
China’s MinerVa Semiconductor Corp., a customer of SMIC, advertises a 7nm chip, although Bloomberg could not establish SMIC as the manufacturer.
“The Biden Administration will continue working to grow and strengthen our cooperation with allies and partners to ensure effective controls on semiconductor production,” a Commerce Department spokesperson told Bloomberg.
— Financial Services GOP (@FinancialCmte) July 21, 2022
U.S. and U.K. spy chiefs issued an unprecedented joint warning against Chinese espionage activities, including attempts to steal and exploit U.S. technology, on July 6.
SMIC, the Department of Commerce, the International Trade Administration and BIS did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Discontent with left-wing policy failures is triggering massive protests all over the world. Just don’t expect to read all about it in the New York Times.
If you skim the front pages of major corporate news outlets, you’ll find no mention of the economic protests raging in Spain, Morocco, Greece, and the United Kingdom.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which records protests worldwide, 11 countries are currently seeing protests of more than 1,000 people in response to the rising cost of living and other economic woes in 2022. As of July 5, Carnegie had recorded protests of more than 120,000 people in France, 100,000 in Spain, 10,000 in Greece, 10,000 in Kazakhstan, 10,000 in Sri Lanka, 10,000 in India, 5,000 in Iran, 5,000 in Peru, 1,000 people in Argentina, 1,000 in Morocco, and 1,000 in the U.K.
When vaccine passports were being implemented, protests took place around the world – but there was hardly any coverage from the media.
Due to the cost of living crisis, protests are happening around the world – but again, the media turns a blind eye.
Many of the French protesters took to the streets on May Day for salary increases and against President Emmanuel Macron’s increase of the retirement age. Fifty-four people were reportedly arrested in Paris after some demonstrations turned violent. France’s economy, Europe’s third-largest, shrank in the first quarter of 2022, and in June, inflation shot up 5.8 percent compared to last year. Protesters also held demonstrations in March, with some complaining they had lost 15 to 20 percent of their purchasing power. Meanwhile, France’s answer to inflation? Keep spending; the country is throwing $20.4 billion at the problem.
In Spain, with gas subsidies, direct grants, and an increase in the minimum wage, the socialist-leaning government has seen only rising inflation rates (10.2 percent), and the accompanying price hikes are driving thousands of people onto the streets to protest. The country is finding out the hard way what a 40 percent reliance on renewable energy will do to the labor market. With its high unemployment rate at 13.65 percent as of the first quarter of 2022, labor shortages are raising prices on staple grocery items to an almost 30-year high. Thousands of demonstrators protested in March for relief in the form of tax cuts.
Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that any supply issues, aggravated or initiated by the Russia-Ukraine war, would burden Greece’s weakened economy that only just emerged from a decade-long crisis in 2018 to be sent right back by Covid shutdowns in 2020. In April, thousands gathered at a labor union-organized rally outside parliament in protest of inflation, which followed a February demonstration where about 10,000 people showed up to protest electricity prices that had leaped 56 percent, fuel prices that had jumped 21.6 percent, and natural gas prices that had skyrocketed 156 percent in January.
In India, a country locked in a vicious cycle of going into debt to pay off interest of former debts, the increasing cost of living is racking the country. In March, an estimated 50 million workers participated in a two-day strike to protest the loss of jobs and income, with communist groups organizing rallies in May decrying the high rate of inflation.
The socialist government in Argentina that led the country to default seven times and produced the largest decline in the relative standard of living in the world since 1900 is trying to do something new. On Monday, Argentina’s new economy minister Silvina Batakis announced her plan to cut the fiscal deficit — a proposal more than a thousand Argentines are protesting.
Decades of government spending and faulty economic policies have led to Argentina’s inflation rate growing to 58 percent. Prices are liquid and through the roof, with iPhones costing six months’ rent and a two-hour plane ticket equaling the cost of a month’s college tuition. Batakis plans to hold Argentina to the terms of a $44 billion debt deal it made earlier this year with the International Monetary Fund. Thousands of Argentines meanwhile flocked to protest against the economic hardships felt by the country upon cutting spending and took up banners crying for Argentina’s separation from the IMF.
The United Kingdom is suffering from a high 9.1 percent inflation rate as of May, and many are tired of the government’s response. Brits flocked out in February to protest rising costs of living, with demonstrations held in at least 25 towns and cities and signs reading, “tax the rich” and “freeze prices not the poor.” The U.K.’s inflation rate was already at 5.4 percent in January of this year due in part to the 2020 Covid shutdowns, but it has since almost doubled, largely due to the EU’s sanctions on Russian oil. In June, thousands marched down central London in protest, wanting the government to boost its welfare response.
Still reeling from the worst drought it has had in 40 years, Morocco is seeing price spikes on even the most basic goods. Thousands of Moroccans joined protests in February to decry the increasing cost of living, with unions staging more demonstrations in April. The country has high unemployment rates and large public debt, along with a heavy reliance on imports.
Aside from a scant headline here and there, America’s most popular news providers, The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and NBC, did not cover these protests, despite the French and Spanish protests being 10 to 100 times larger than the protests these corporate media giants did report.
None of these four major outlets wrote a single line on the protests of more than 100,000 demonstrators in Spain, more than 10,000 in Greece, more than 1,000 in Morocco, and more than 1,000 in the U.K. The New York Times published one lone article on the strike in India, where an estimated 50 million people walked off the job. The Washington Post has two small articles on the Argentinian protests of more than 1,000 as inflation appears set to hit 70 percent, and it has reported once on the May Day protests in France where more than 120,000 people protested government pension reforms. NBC mentioned the May Day protests once in a world report. This is the entire 2022 coverage by these media giants of these countries’ protests over economic turmoil.
Of these 11 countries, only four made any major headlines. The corporate press oftentimes only highlights these economic protests when they get so loud they can no longer be ignored, as we saw with Kazakhstan’s kill order to quell protests and the Sri Lankans’ attack on their president’s home. Over the weekend, the biased media finally began covering the Sri Lanka protests that are over 10,000 people strong — but only because footage of demonstrators swarming the president’s residence by the thousands on Saturday went viral.
Corporate media won’t talk about the rest of these protests because the countries are struggling from economically disastrous policies akin to President Joe Biden’s. Any show of economic turmoil in EU member states could be traced back to EU sanctions on Russia or green energy failures, which would fly in the face of the corporate media’s agenda. Many of these countries have inflationary monetary policies.
The leftist media will tell you about Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Peru, however, but only to bolster its pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia narrative that denies the realities of war to promote Biden’s efforts to empty our pockets and replenish Ukraine’s.
In its treatment of the Kazakhstan protests, The Washington Post made sure to mention the country’s relationship with Russia. The Times’ articles on the Sri Lanka protests framed the economic downturns in terms of problems stemming from Russia’s invasion and ignored Sri Lanka’s Green Deal ban on chemical fertilizer that ultimately crashed its economy. Both CNN’s coverage of protests in Iran and NBC’s reports of those in Peru likewise stressed the Russia-Ukraine war as the cause for economic turmoil.
The media only highlight these world protests when they grow too big to ignore or when the facts can be skewed toward their preferring narratives. Cherry-picking which protests to highlight gives media cover to paint them as isolated incidents in non-Western countries instead of a worldwide trend showing the consequences of embracing left-wing policies. After all, Biden is making the same blunders in the United States, and corporate media can’t have Americans connecting those dots.
The U.S. labor market is in shambles. Inflation has skyrocketed to a 40-year high at 9.1 percent. The Biden administration is drawing down our emergency oil reserves, shipping it overseas to nations that can’t function on their “Green Energy” policies any more than we can. Irony alert: The oil will go through a European pipeline despite Biden citing climate conservation to shut down our own Keystone pipeline.
Discontent with these policy failures is triggering massive protests all over the world. Just don’t expect to read all about it in the New York Times.
Beth Whitehead is an intern at The Federalist and a journalism major at Patrick Henry College where she fondly excuses the excess amount of coffee she drinks as an occupational hazard.
Using Covid as an excuse for more restrictions, the CCP and its lackeys in Hong Kong are hoping to further assimilate the city into the top-to-bottom-run system used in China.
In a bid to further cripple the freedom of their citizens, Hong Kong government officials are ramping up their response to Covid with a series of new draconian policy measures.
On Monday, the city’s Health Secretary Lo Chung-mau announced several new restrictions allegedly aimed at curbing the spread of the virus, including a mandate that requires positive Covid patients quarantined at home to “wear an electronic tracking bracelet.” Used earlier during the pandemic to keep tabs on new arrivals to the city, the revamped policy seeks to ensure that people who have tested positive for the respiratory virus do not leave their homes without government authorization.
Moreover, Lo also announced that the city will be updating its contact-tracing app, which will now include a requirement that citizens register by name when using the software. As Reuters reported, users were previously “not required to register with their personal details, and the app was used to enter venues and display vaccination records.”
Taking a page from the Chinese communist’s playbook, Hong Kong will also be implementing a traffic light color-code system, which aims to “restrict movement of infected residents and close contacts.” As Lo described, residents who test positive will receive a red code and “be barred from entering a list of premises, including ‘high-risk’ places such as hospitals and nursing homes,” while all people arriving to the city will automatically be flagged as yellow. Lo did not, however, explain what the codes “would entail specifically in terms of access to venues.”
“I’d like to say that we would make use of technology to put in place a precision strategy,” Lo said in response to concerns about the government’s invasion of privacy. “This is to reduce our cost in our fight against the epidemic and to maximize effectiveness.”
Covid is a Means to an End for the CCP
While officials such as Lo and newly sworn-in Chief Executive John Lee will cast the city’s draconian measures as an attempt to save lives, the arbitrary policies actually serve as a mechanism for the China-backed government to further suppress the liberties of the Hong Kong people. Since the enaction of a so-called national security law in June 2020 by the Chinese government in response to the citywide protests of 2019, Hong Kong authorities — with the backing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — have initiated a government crackdown on basic freedoms throughout the administrative region.
As demonstrated in mainland China, the primary interest of CCP-aligned officials has never been to preserve life, but rather to maintain the current power structure. By using Covid as an excuse for more restrictions, the CCP and its lackeys in Hong Kong are hoping to further assimilate the city into the top-to-bottom-run system used in China, while attempting to uphold the image of Hong Kong as a free system independent of influence from Beijing.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping alluded to such desires during his July 1 speech marking the 25th anniversary of Great Britain’s handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, in which he repeatedly emphasized the need for “patriots” to maintain their rule over the city.
“Keeping political power in the hands of patriots is a political rule commonly practiced in the world. No people in any country or region in the world will ever allow political power to fall into the hands of forces or individuals who do not love, or even sell out, or betray, their own country,” Xi said. “To keep the power to administer the Hong Kong [Special Administrative Region] firmly in the hands of patriots is essential for safeguarding the long-term governance and security of Hong Kong; at no time should this principle be allowed to be compromised.”
Just as CCP officials in China used the country’s health code system to suppress citizens protesting corruption, expect Hong Kong officials to abuse their newly adopted restrictions to carry out similar actions against their people. For the CCP and their Hong Kong allies, employing disproven lockdown policies is simply a steppingstone in maintaining greater dominion over the region’s civilian population — thus putting a final nail in the coffin for a once-free city.
Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
As the drama around Hunter Biden continues to unfold, it has come to light that he has been under federal surveillance for ties with Chinese figures, according to a recent report. Paul Sperry, a reporter for Real Clear Investigations, tweeted U.S. counterintelligence officials told him about Biden coming under surveillance and looking into his contacts and deals in China.
DEVELOPING: US counterintelligence officials tell me Hunter Biden has come under federal surveillance amid growing concerns his partnerships with CCP-tied figures–notably Che Feng, aka "Super Chairman"–could "compromise" the president or help Beijing gather US intel thru Hunter
DEVELOPING: US counterespionage officials investigating alleged contacts between Hunter Biden and members of CFIUS during Chinese takeover of US firm making automotive parts w/ dual-use technologies. CFIUS approved the sensitive 2015 deal, which had national security implications
This is not the first time that the issue of Hunter Biden and his connections to China have made headlines. Former President Donald Trump actually claimed that the Biden family had suspicious ties to China in 2019, Reuters reported.
Trump particularly accused Hunter Biden of using his position of influence to secure the financial backing of China for his investments. But at the time Trump provided little evidence of his claims about Biden, and many dismissed it. But since the contents of Biden’s laptop have been discovered by the New York Post, the connection between Biden and China has some real evidence behind it now. It has become clearer that the Biden family has strong ties to China and Chinese business and have profited from the connection.
“The Biden family has done five deals in China totaling some $31 million arranged by individuals with direct ties to Chinese intelligence — some reaching the very top of China’s spy agency,” the New York Post reported in January.
“Indeed, every known deal that the Biden family enjoyed with Beijing was reached courtesy of individuals with spy ties. And Joe Biden personally benefited from his family’s foreign deals,” the Post continued.
These deals have been going on for years it appears. When President Joe Biden was vice president under Barack Obama, Hunter Biden tagged along with him on a trip to China in 2013. While the older Biden was working on the tensions in the South China Sea, Hunter Biden paid a visit to Jonathan Li, a Chinese financier who ran the private-equity fund Bohai Capital, the New York Post reported.
“Ten days later the Chinese business license for Bohai Harvest — a new company which would invest Chinese cash in projects outside the country that Hunter Biden had been trying to launch for more than a year — was approved by Chinese officials,” the New York Post reported.
As more and more of these connections between Hunter Biden and China have been examined, there seem to be clear indication that the Biden family has immensely profited from their business deals in China.
Hunter Biden’s laptop continues to provide evidence of the connections in China that have helped along the way.
“Hunter Biden’s hard drive contained an enviable lineup of contacts for top US officials tasked with overseeing the US-China relationship, and at least 10 senior Google executives — raising new questions about the extent to which Joe Biden’s well-connected son could have leveraged his connections for personal profit,” the New York Post reported.
But now it has landed Hunter Biden in a tough spot as the security concerns surrounding his connections and business practices are raising questions.
Abby Liebing is a Hillsdale College graduate with a degree in history. She has written for various outlets and enjoys covering foreign policy issues and culture.
The Toronto Police Service raised eyebrows on Thursday by tweeting about a “Missing Woman” while posting the photo of an individual who looks like a bearded man.
“The Toronto Police Service requests the public’s assistance locating a missing woman. Isobella Degrace, 27, was last seen on Saturday, June 25, 2022, at 3 a.m., in the Ryerson Avenue and Bathurst Street area. She is described as 5’10″, with a thin build, shaggy blonde hair, and a full goatee. She was last seen wearing a black t-shirt and grey pants. Police are concerned for her safety,” a news release states.
The Toronto Police Service’s seemingly preposterous post caught many people’s attention, including Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon who remarked, “My goodness. It’s real. The absolute dumbest time to be alive.”
Seth Dillon, CEO of the popular satire website The Babylon Bee, tweeted, “The world has become too absurd to be satirized.”
“You’ve spelt ‘Man’ incorrectly @TorontoPolice,” former Brexit Party MEP Christina Jordan tweeted.
Actor Matthew Marsden wrote, “I mean, I’m not a biologist, but….”
Some people mocked the police’s post with satire: “Guys my dog is missing, let me know if you see her,” someone tweeted while sharing a picture of a bird.
The post highlights the absurdity of radical gender ideology, but leftists in the U.S. and abroad continue to peddle the ridiculous concepts that fly in the face of reality.
Halifax, a bank over in the UK, recently faced backlash for tweeting“Pronouns matter” along with a name tag that included the pronouns “she/her/hers” beneath the name “Gemma.”
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. are backing a “Trans Bill of Rights“ resolution.
Disney has inserted an apparently transgender character into a segment related to menstrual products on an animated show.
Examples of biological males defeating females in women’s sports also continue to occur. For example, a 29-year-old biologically male skateboarder who identifies as a woman recently won a competition in which a 13-year-old girl placed second.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formally invited Sweden and Finland to join the alliance on Wednesday after Turkey dropped its opposition to the move. World leaders, including President Joe Biden, gathered in Madrid earlier in the week for the NATO Summit. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Finland President Sauli Niinistö and Sweden Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Tuesday to hash out details of the two countries’ push to join NATO – a move that came after Russia invaded Ukraine and which Turkey originally said it would not support.
“In that meeting, the leaders agreed a trilateral memorandum to address Turkey’s legitimate security concerns, paving the way for Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership,” a NATO statement posted late Tuesday read.
“I strongly welcome the signing of this trilateral memorandum, and I strongly welcome the constructive approach all three countries have shown during the negotiations. Finnish and Swedish membership of NATO is good for Finland and Sweden, it is good for NATO, and it is good for European security,” Stoltenberg said.
NATO has now formally invited Sweden & Finland to join the military alliance, which would expand the membership from 30 to 32. "Today, we have decided to invite Finland & Sweden to become members." Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expects ratification process to move quickly.
The official invitation paves the way for the alliance to bolster up to 32 member nations.
The trilateral agreement between Turkey, Finland and Sweden includes an extradition request for 33 terror suspects in the two Nordic countries, according to CNN. The agreement also addresses concerns from Turkey “around arms exports, and the fight against terrorism,” according to Stoltenberg.
“We [Turkey] will ask them to fulfill the requirements of our applications after this memorandum of understanding,” Turkish Justice Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag told reporters shortly after the news, according to CNN. “We have already applied for extradition. The files of six PKK and six FETO terrorists in Finland and 10 FETO and 11 PKK terrorists in Sweden.”
“Our ministry will write about their return and remind them again … Once again, we ask them to fulfill their promises,” Bozdag added.
Support in Finland and Sweden for joining NATO skyrocketed after Russia’s invasion in February, according to Business Insider. Should the deal officially go through, Russia’s border with NATO countries would more than double. Turkey’s reversal is a major loss to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has vehemently opposed increasing NATO and vowed to retaliate in May after Finland announced its intention to seek membership.
“Russia will be forced to take retaliatory steps, both of a military-technical and other nature, in order to stop threats to its national security arising,” Russia’s foreign ministry said at the time.
In a move of staggering stupidity and hubris, Lithuanian banned the transit of Russian goods to Kaliningrad effective today, June 18, 2022. Kaliningrad, which is wedged between Poland on the west and Lithuania on the east, is home to almost a half-million Russians and the headquarters for the Russian Navy’s Baltic Sea force.
Lithuania claims it is simply abiding by the sanctions imposed by the European Union. After all, Lithuania is a member of the European Union and NATO. But that is the point. This is a deliberate provocation. It is laying economic siege to a vital interest of Russia. While there is no immediate danger to the Russian population of Kaliningrad, this is a flash point that could lead to an actual war as opposed to a special military operation.
What is the difference between a special military operation and war? In the SMO you leave communications, electrical infrastructure, transportation infrastructure and fuel depots largely intact. In the SMO you try to minimize civilian and military casualties.
War on the other hand is terrifying. If Russia opts for a war footing, the restraint that characterized its activities in Ukraine will be replaced by a full-on attack on key military installations and assets in the region as well as the destruction of the communications, electrical, transportation and fuel resources of the adversary. This probably includes taking out critical satellite communications and intelligence collection systems of the United States and Europe.
Kaliningrad, formerly known as Königsberg, was put under Soviet control in 1945 according to the terms of the Potsdam Agreement, which was backed by the United States and Great Britain. The Russian people paid blood for this land in 1945 and are not going to relinquish it in the face of bullying or threats from the west. If you are going to poke an angry bear with a stick, you better be damn sure that bear is locked up and can’t get you. Russia sure as hell is not secure in a cage.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador expressed he would be willing to influence the rhetoric surrounding the U.S. midterm elections if any candidate were to speak poorly about Mexicans, while speaking on his desire about the U.S. reforming its immigration system.
“We are not going to allow Mexican migrants to be questioned in campaigns to supposedly win votes, we do not accept xenophobia, we do not accept racism,” he said at a May 20 press conference, referencing the U.S. November elections. He noted that his policy is “non-intervention and self-determination.”
“And if a party, candidates, thinking that if they speak ill of the Mexican, they are going to get votes, well, from here we are going to denounce those facts so that our countrymen over there know who is who,” he added, warning that there are over 40 million Mexicans in the U.S.
He compared the number of Mexicans to the 4 million Cubans in the U.S., saying Cubans “have great influence in guiding U.S. policies in relation to the rest of the world.”
In April, the Mexican president told Americans of Mexican and Latino descent to not vote for parties or candidates that “mistreat” Mexico or other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to Reuters.
“When someone goes too far and causes offence, we’ll call them out so that our countrymen help us. Because there are 40 million of us,” he added in April. “Don’t forget your origins.”
Obama announced his decision to stop deporting some young illegal immigrants in 2012, and was applauded by then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, according to CNN. He also campaigned on a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who spoke English, had not committed a crime and were willing to pay a fine, according to Politifact.
López Obrador announced Monday he would not be attending the Summit of the Americas, an event hosted by Biden and focusing on the migration crisis, later this week. He cited Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua’s exclusion from the event as his reason for boycotting the event, according to The Associated Press.
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