Category: international affairs

Dictators on Parade

The day following Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s “successful” visit to China, wherein the Chinese rulers agreed to start talking to U.S. officials again — well, except on trivial military-to-military stuff like the PLA playing chicken with our fighter jets and naval ships in international waters — President Joe Biden made a whopping foreign policy faux pas: he told the truth.

To a camera-less roomful of big Democratic Party donors out in California, the leader of the Free World called Xi Jinping, the un-term-limited totalitarian atop the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a “dictator.”

Xi is reportedly upset.

“This threatens to reverse the recent efforts to improve U.S. ties with China,” CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil lamented. The Communist capo “might fit the textbook definition,” he added, “but you don’t often hear an American president use the term.”

Joe is not wrong. CCP-run China is a genocidal regime with zero respect for individual rights, human life, its word, the truth … need I go on? … threatening military invasion against its neighbors.

Yet, rather than the dictator label, what probably angered China’s Chief Butcher most was President Biden’s claim that Xi had been clueless about their spy balloon traveling across the United States — until the U.S. military shot it down.

Nobody told him? Biden dubbed it “the great embarrassment for dictators.”

How does Biden know — from personal (wannabe) experience? Or from many corrupt dealings with Xi’s regime?

Let’s put our priority on military preparedness, rather than name-calling, but the first order of business in dealing with the Chinazis is not the relentless pursuit of “good relations.”

It is remembering with whom we are dealing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Patients Zero (1, 2, 3)

Three-and-a-half years late, the U.S. Government is admitting and publicizing the first victims of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China — who just so happen to be scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In a Substack article by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag, we get something close to actual evidence strengthening “the case that the SARS-CoV‑2 virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).”

The “patient zero” is not one but three, namely:

Ben Hu
Yu Ping
Yan Zhu

The Substack authors quote Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and coauthor with Matt Ridley of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid19, who identifies Ben Hu as the “star pupil” of “the bat woman of China,” who, with Yu Ping, co-authored a paper on the coronavirus strain in question with said “bat woman.”

David Asher, who led a State Department inquiry on the virus’s origin during the Trump Administration, told The Daily Mail: “I’m very doubtful that three people in highly protected circumstances in a level three laboratory working on coronaviruses would all get sick with influenza that put them in the hospital or in severe conditions all in the same week, and it didn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus.”

Much of the talk from officials in the U.S. and in China has stretched our credulity — but they were obviously trying to cover their foolhardy and borderline illegal gain-of-function research program.

Unfortunately, a great deal remains unclear, like “who in the U.S. government had access to the intelligence about the sick WIV workers, how long they had it, and why it was not shared with the public.”

But on that latter point, we have a good idea.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs privacy

The Cuban Missive Crisis

Very soon, maybe, the Chinese government will be able to peruse secret military and other electronic missives being transmitted “throughout the southeastern U.S., where many military bases are located, and monitor U.S. ship traffic,” according to a Wall Street Journal story.

Under an until-now secret agreement between China and Cuba, Cuba will charge China a mere several billion dollars for Cuba’s permission to build the eavesdropping station on Cuban territory.

If cited intelligence is accurate, the planned station would enable China to spy on emails, phone calls, satellite transmissions, and other communications. The data thus scooped up would probably facilitate China-sponsored cyberwarfare and other sabotage, as well as its pursuit of overseas Chinese nationals that the Chinese government wants to keep trapped in China.

Craig Singleton, an analyst for the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says that moving to establish the spy facility “signals a new, escalatory phase in China’s broader defense strategy. The selection of Cuba is also intentionally provocative.”

Perhaps the publicity about the spy station will help to stop it from happening.

John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, told the Journal that its story is “inaccurate” without spelling out the inaccuracies. He also said that the U.S. is taking steps to counter Chinese development of such spy infrastructure. “We remain confident that we are able to meet all our security commitments at home and in the region.”

I guess we’ll see. Before it’s too late, I hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags China, Cuba, surveillance

general freedom international affairs

Look Around

Yesterday marked the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Not in China, where the Communist Party (CCP) has always clubbed down any public remembrance of the thousands murdered on that day by the bullets from the so-called People’s Liberation Army.

While Hong Kong long witnessed massive June 4 vigils — even under COVID restrictions — that changed after the draconian National Security Law in 2020. Still, this year public silence required the Chinazis to arrest more than 30 Hong Kongers, some for “suspicion of carrying out acts with seditious intent.”

Seems our “leaders” quite quickly forgot about the Butchers of Beijing … and only now are waking up to the threat the CCP poses via their embrace of totalitarianism, their military build-up, the biggest since World War II, and their claims to Taiwan as well as the entire South China Sea.

“China has been bullying its neighbors for years,” explains Chris Chappell, host of China Uncensored on Rumble, before adding: “Now its bullying is coming back to bite it.”

Chappell notes that “[e]ven countries that kinda hate each other, like Japan and South Korea, have been teaming up because of the China threat.”

Mr. Chappell offers:

“Thanks to China, last year Japan announced a plan to double its military budget.”
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol recently called Taiwan “a global issue” and joined President Biden in “[opposing] any unilateral attempts to change the status quo.”
“Australia is beefing up its military — specifically in response to China.”
“The Philippines … has moved back to closer ties with the United States, allowing the U.S. to expand its military presence there.”
“India is also increasing its defense budget.”

This allied response has been spurred not by U.S. arm-twisting, but good old-fashioned fear.

Chappell also applauded open collaboration with the U.S. and NATO by South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. But he dubbed NATO’s declaration of China as “a security challenge” “the understatement of the year.”

Attested by the weekend’s near collision of Chinese and U.S. naval vessels in the Taiwan Strait.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: China Uncensored also plays on YouTube, but, as Chappell complains, “YouTube frequently demonetizes, suppresses, and secretly unsubscribes people from this channel.”

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June 4, 1989

Remember Tiananmen Square

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international affairs

Here-at-Home Problem

China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, censorship, propaganda

The China problem is “not just a distant ‘over there’ problem,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R‑Wisc.) recently argued. “As the spy balloon incident as well as the illegal CCP police stations on American soil illustrate, it’s a ‘right here at home’ problem.”

It’s also a just-north-of-us problem. Canada is currently expelling a Chinese diplomat and dealing with the fallout over China’s interventions in Canadian politics, along with big financial gifts to a foundation for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father.

An article in The Globe and Mail nonchalantly explained the reasons China is engaged in trying to control the speech of every one of the planet’s inhabitants. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has many international goals:

“build acceptance abroad for its claims on Taiwan, a self-ruled island that it … reserves the right to annex by force.”
“play down its conduct in Xinjiang, where the office of former UN Human Rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet last year said China has committed ‘serious human-rights violations.’”
“generate support for a draconian 2020 national-security law to silence opposition and dissent in Hong Kong.”
“quell foreign support for Tibet, a region China invaded and annexed more than 70 years ago, and to discourage opposition to Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea and sweeping maritime claims in the region.”

Having committed a long list of crimes against humanity, the CCP understandably demands that everyone keep their mouths shut.

Rep. Gallagher believes the U.S. should improve “our deterrent posture across the Taiwan Strait” and communicate “in clear terms that we will not stand idly by while the CCP continues to increase its aggression internationally” — while President Biden has repeatedly pledged U.S. military support for Taiwan.

But for some reason, Biden has never discussed the prospect with the American public.

As if it weren’t our concern, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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