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Service Quality and Reputation
Although some believe that buying online is buying a pig in the poke, it is not. Canadian online pharmacies are excellent sources of information and are open for discussions. There one can read tons of users' feedback, where they share their experience of using a particular pharmacy, say what they like or do not like about the drugs and/or service. Reputable online pharmacy canadianrxon.com take this feedback into consideration and rely on it as a kind of expert advice, which helps them constantly improve they service and ensure that their clients buy safe and effective drugs. Last, but not least is their striving to attract professional doctors. As a result, users can directly contact a qualified doctor and ask whatever questions they have about a particular drug. Most likely, a doctor will ask several questions about the condition, for which the drug is going to be used. Based on this information, he or she will advise to use or not to use this medication.
Well it seems, the former boyfriend of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has written an official statement about the fear of flying…rather NO fear of flying.
Meanwhile, as Dr. Ford’s two lawyer are trying to tell the FBI how to conduct this supplement investigation, it appears the FBI’s work is adhering to the scope as defined by the White House. If there are other indicators that more interviews need to be completed, they authority comes from the White House. We are now hearing that the FBI report will have ONE copy only and it will be kept in a safe for Senate access. This is as the democrats don’t want the report released at all to the public as it seems Dr. Ford’s whole story and testimony is collapsing.
So, here comes Senator Booker. He among the others know the whole Dr. Ford plot to derail the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh, is calling for another nominee, whether Judge Kavanaugh is innocent or guilty. You see, the sexual allegations are proving false so the new mission to declare that Kavanaugh does not have the emotional control or intellectual acuity to be on the Supreme Court.
It should be noted that one of the pro-bono lawyers for Dr. Ford is Michael Bromwich. He also represents Andrew McCabe. Another interesting item is that letter the American Bar Association wrote endorsing Brett Kavanuagh. Well hold on. It seems there was an additional letter authored by the President of the ABA, Bob Carlson, calling for a more thorough investigation of Kavanaugh. As a result of that second letter, Ted Olson resigned his membership in the American Bar Association. He was once asked to join the Trump White House and declined. Olson is a Republican and is a founding partner of the law firm Gibson Dunn. As an aside, Ted is a registered foreign agent of Saudi Arabia.
It is quite the circle of lawyers in DC and furthermore, the wake of consequence of the Kavanaugh confirmation is spreading.
Now, once this FBI report is delivered to the Senate and kept in the ‘safe’, wonder how many Democrat senators will read the final report. Wonder how many on the left will offer a public apology to the entire Kavanaugh family and perhaps even to Dr. Ford for using her as a willing accomplice?
One big question, will this FBI report include the leak or scheme on the actions of Senator Feinstein with this whole scandal or is that a separate investigation>
Meanwhile, in an effort to mobilize and consolidate cyber operations for the United States, there is no consensus within Congress. Should every government agency has a cyber division? Should the United States be able to perform counter cyber attacks? What kind of a cyber attack on the United States constitutes an act of war?
Just last month, Politico published a piece stating in part:
Recent reports that Russia has been attempting to install malware in our electrical grid and that its hackers have infiltrated utility-control rooms across America should constitute a significant wakeup call. Our most critical infrastructure systems are vulnerable to malicious foreign cyberactivity and, despite considerable effort, the collective response has been inadequate. As Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats ominously warned, “The warning lights are blinking red.”
A successful attack on our critical infrastructure — power grids, water supplies, communications systems, transportation and financial networks — could be devastating. Each of these is vital to our economy, health and security. One recent study found that a single coordinated attack on the East Coast power grid could leave parts of the region without power for months, cause thousands of deaths due to the failure of health and safety systems, and cost the U.S. economy almost $250 billion. Cyberattacks could also undermine our elections, either by altering our voter registration rolls or by tampering with the voting systems or results themselves.
The op-ed was written by retired General and former CIA Director David Petraeus who is arguing: “Our grab-bag approach isn’t working. Gen. David Petraeus says it’s time to go big.”
Actually, I agree with General Petraeus on his position. Last month also, John Bolton on the White House National Security Council declared that the U.S. is going on the offensive. Yet in an interesting article, Forbes offers a point and counter-point to that argument.
Last week, President Trump spoke to world leaders about how China is interfering in U.S. elections via the cyber realm. While no evidence has been offered, that is not to say there is no evidence, it is a common tactic of China. Additionally, the United States is offering robust assistance to NATO allies.
Acting to counter Russia’s aggressive use of cyberattacks across Europe and around the world, the U.S. is expected to announce that, if asked, it will use its formidable cyberwarfare capabilities on NATO’s behalf, according to a senior U.S. official.
The announcement is expected in the coming days as U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis attends a meeting of NATO defense ministers on Wednesday and Thursday.
Katie Wheelbarger, the principal deputy assistant defense secretary for international security affairs, said the U.S. is committing to use offensive and defensive cyber operations for NATO allies, but America will maintain control over its own personnel and capabilities.
The decision comes on the heels of the NATO summit in July, when members agreed to allow the alliance to use cyber capabilities that are provided voluntarily by allies to protect networks and respond to cyberattacks. It reflects growing concerns by the U.S. and its allies over Moscow’s use of cyber operations to influence elections in America and elsewhere.
“Russia is constantly pushing its cyber and information operations,” said Wheelbarger, adding that this is a way for the U.S. to show its continued commitment to NATO.
Wheelbarger told reporters traveling to NATO with Mattis that the move is a signal to other nations that NATO is prepared to counter cyberattacks waged against the alliance or its members.
Much like America’s nuclear capabilities, the formal declaration of cyber support can help serve as a military deterrent to other nations and adversaries.
The U.S. has, for some time, considered cyber as a warfighting domain, much like air, sea, space and ground operations. In recent weeks the Pentagon released a new cybersecurity strategy that maps out a more aggressive use of military cyber capabilities. And it specifically calls out Russia and China for their use of cyberattacks.
China, it said, has been “persistently” stealing data from the public and private sector to gain an economic advantage. And it said Russia has use cyber information operations to “influence our population and challenge our diplomatic processes.” U.S. officials have repeatedly accused Moscow of interfering in the 2016 elections, including through online social media.
“We will conduct cyberspace operations to collect intelligence and prepare military cyber capabilities to be used in the event of a crisis or conflict,” the new strategy states, adding that the U.S. is prepared to use cyberwarfare along with other military weapons against its enemies when needed, including to counter malicious cyber activities targeting the country. Read more here.
Not to be left out is North Korea.
The Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Treasury, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have identified malware and other indicators of compromise used by the North Korean government in an ATM cash-out scheme—referred to by the U.S. Government as “FASTCash.” The U.S. Government refers to malicious cyber activity by the North Korean government as HIDDEN COBRA.
From Boston, where the city council is debating the move, to San Francisco, where noncitizens gained the right earlier this month in school-board elections, jurisdictions are looking to expand the boundaries of the electorate beyond its citizens.
***
Primer: This was compiled by Yale and MIT. Have you considered how many U.S. House Representatives exist from districts where illegals and foreign nationals are the majority? 20? 10? 40?
Context: The Democrats on the Dreamer thing were and are willing to sacrifice the interests of 325 million Americans in order to gain unconditional amnesty for 3.4 million illegal aliens.
In part: Our analysis has two main outputs. First, we generate what we call our conservative estimate, using parameter values that intentionally underestimate population inflows and overestimate population outflows, leading to estimates that will tend to underestimate the number of undocumented immigrants. Our conservative estimate for 2016 is 16.7 million, well above the estimate that is most widely accepted at present, which is for 2015 but should be comparable. Our model as well as most work in the literature indicates that the population size has been relatively stable since 2008; thus 2015 and 2016 are quite comparable. For our second step, recognizing that there is significant uncertainty about population flows, we simulate our model over a wide range of values for key parameters. These parameter values range from very conservative estimates to standard values in the literature. We sample values for each key parameter from uniform distributions over the ranges we establish. In our simulations, we also include Poisson population uncertainty conditional on parameter values, thus addressing the inherent variability in population flows. Our simulation results produce probability distributions over the number of undocumented immigrants for each year from 1990 to 2016. The results demonstrate that our conservative estimate falls towards the bottom of the probability distribution, at approximately the 2.5th percentile. The mean of the 2016 distribution is 22.1 million, which we take as the best overall estimate of the number of undocumented immigrants based on our modeling approach and current data. We also show the variability in our model based on the simulations for each year from 1990 through 2016.
***
Population inflows
Population inflows are decomposed into two streams: (I) undocumented immigrants who initially entered the country legally but have overstayed their visas; and (II) immigrants who have illegally crossed the border without being apprehended. We describe our approach for each source, explain the basis for our assumptions and why they are conservative, and list parameter ranges for the simulation.
(I) Visa overstays are estimated using Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data for 2016, the first year for which visa overstays were comprehensively measured [5]. To apply this data in our context we also gather data for non-immigrant visas issued for all years from 1990 [6]. For our conservative estimate we assume that for each year the rate of overstays was equal to the 2016 rate. Calibration of our model shows that this assumption is in fact quite conservative. In particular, approximately 41% of undocumented immigrants based on the current survey data approach are visa overstayers [7], which translates to a visa overstay population of 4.6 million in 2015. Our model however predicts the number of overstayers to be less than this (even though our overall estimate of the number of undocumented immigrants is higher). That is, in our model most undocumented immigrants are not overstayers, and the model produces an estimate of the number of overstayers below the estimate produced in the conventional approach based on survey data. We compute that we would need to set the visa overstay rate above the DHS 2016 rate, specifically 1.1 times that rate, for our conservative estimate to generate as many overstayers as the 4.6 million in the 11.3 million estimate. Since many overstayers leave or adjust their status within a few months of their visa expiration date, we make a further conservative adjustment and count as overstayers only those individuals who have overstayed more than 1 year. For the simulation, we set the visa overstay rate equal to the 2016 rate multiplied by a uniform draw from the range [0.5,1.5]; consistent with the discussion above, this is a relatively conservative range.
(II) Illegal Border Crossers: We estimate illegal border crossers through application of the standard repeated trials (capture-recapture) model [8–10]. The model requires as inputs statistics on the total number of border apprehensions, the number of individuals apprehended more than once in a year (recidivist apprehensions), and estimates of the deterrence rate—the fraction of individuals who give up after being apprehended and do not attempt another crossing. Given these inputs, the repeated trials model generates estimates of: (i) the apprehension rate—the probability an individual is caught trying to cross the border; and (ii) the total number of individuals who are not apprehended (they may be caught one or more times but cross successfully on a later attempt) and enter the interior of the country illegally—the number of illegal border crossers in a year. We discuss data sources and potential weaknesses of this approach here; more information and mathematical details are provided in the Supporting Information.
DHS [10, 11] provide figures for the total number of border apprehensions for every year in our timespan. They also provide information on the number of recidivist apprehensions and estimates of the deterrence rate for every year from 2005. Based on these figures and estimates they provide an estimate of the apprehension rate for each year from 2005 to 2015. Their estimate is 35% for 2005 and increases steadily, to above 50% by the end of the sample period. From their estimates we are able to derive directly estimates of the number of illegal border crossers for each of these years. For earlier years (1990 to 2004) we must make further assumptions. Our assumptions are about the apprehension and deterrence rates, since these have been addressed in the literature; in turn we are able to generate estimates of the number of illegal border crossers in earlier years based on these assumptions (see the Supporting Information for analytic details).
Most experts agree that the apprehension rate was significantly lower in earlier years [12, 13]. A recent study [12] using data from the Mexican Migration Project estimates this rate for every year from 1990 to 2010; estimates in the 1990’s begin from the low twenties and range upwards to approximately 30%. A second study estimates the rate for 2003 at around 20% [13]. Given these estimates, and the general view that apprehension rates have risen, for our conservative estimate we assume that the apprehension rate in years 1990-2004 was equal to the average rate in years 2005-10 or 39%; this is well above the rates discussed in the literature for earlier years and thus tends to reduce our estimate of the number of undocumented immigrants since it implies a larger fraction are apprehended at the border. For our simulation we assume a uniform distribution over the range [0.25,0.40] for the earlier years, still above the average rates in the literature for these years.
Additional facts support the view that the apprehension rate has increased in recent years. The number of border agents has increased dramatically over the timespan of our analysis [14], and the number of hours spent by border agents patrolling the immediate border area has increased by more than 300% between 1992- 2004 [15]. Further, new infrastructure (e.g., fences) and technologies (e.g., night vision equipment, sensors, and video imaging systems) were also introduced during this period [15]. Thus the apprehension rate we use for earlier years almost certainly overstates the actual apprehension rate and therefore underestimates the number of successful crossings. However, we note that these additional border resources may have been concentrated in certain locations and it remains a possibility that apprehension rates were higher in earlier years. We note finally that in using data only on Southern Border crossings we again are conservative in our approach, not accounting for illegal crossings along other borders.
Notwithstanding our view that we make conservative choices in setting up our model and parameter values, we acknowledge that border apprehension rates for the 1990’s are not based on as well-developed data sources as estimates for more recent years. Thus it remains a possibility that these rates are higher than we believe. One aspect of this uncertainty concerns deterrence. When deterrence is higher border crossings will fall. Most researchers believe deterrence has increased in recent years [8, 12]. We note that reference [12] estimates that the probability of eventual entry after multiple attempts on a single trip in the 1990s is close to one, indicating almost no deterrence in the earlier period. One piece of evidence in support of this is data on the voluntary return rate, which refers to the percentage of individuals apprehended at the border who are released back to their home country without going through formal removal proceedings and not being subjected to further penalties. Voluntary returns are thus not “punished” and thus are less likely to be deterred from trying to cross the border in the future, compared with individuals who are subjected to stronger penalties. The voluntary return rate has fallen in recent years, from 98% between 2000 and 2004 to 84% between 2005 and 2010. Thus, at least based on this measure deterrence efforts have increased. However, this does not conclusively demonstrate that deterrence was lower in earlier years and it remains a possibility that it was higher, which would tend to reduce our estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants. In conclusion we note that although there is much uncertainty about the border apprehension rate, it would have to be very high, above 60% for earlier years, in order to generate estimates of the 2015 population of undocumented immigrants in the range of the current widely accepted estimate of just over 11 million (this is based on analyzing our model using the conservative estimate values for all other parameters). This seems implausible based on our reading of the literature.
Population outflows
Population outflows are broken into four categories: (I) voluntary emigration; (II) mortality; (III) deportation; and (IV) change of status from unauthorized to lawful.
(I) Voluntary emigration rates are the largest source of outflow and the most uncertain based on limited data availability. It is well accepted that voluntary emigration rates decline sharply with time spent in the country [16]; thus we employ separate emigration rates for those who have spent one year or less in the U.S., 2-10 years, or longer. We use the following values for our conservative estimate. First, for those who have spent one year or less we assume a voluntary emigration rate of 40%. This estimate is based on data for the first-year visa overstay exit rate (the fraction of overstayers who left the country within one year from the day their visa expired) for 2016 [17], which is in the lower thirty percent range (the rate for 2015 is similar). We note that the rate for visa overstayers is very likely a substantial overestimate for illegal border crossers, who are widely viewed as having a lower likelihood of exiting in the first year, especially in more recent years [12]. The 40% first-year emigration rate that we assume is well above the standard values in the literature [4, 12, 16, 18], which range from 1% to 25%. Hence this assumption contributes to making our estimate of the number of undocumented immigrants in the country a conservative one. For years 2-10 we assume a rate of 4% per year. This is the upper bound among estimates in the literature, which lie between 0.01 to 0.04 [4, 16, 18]. Lastly, for years 10 and above, published estimates of the emigration rate typically fall around 1%; we set this rate to 1% per year in line with these estimates. Note that given the extremely high 40% emigration rate that we assume for those who have only been in the country for one year or less, overall annual emigration rates in our model simulation are significantly higher than those found in the literature or government sources. To further enhance the conservatism of our model, we assume that all undocumented immigrants present at the beginning of 1990 have been here for only one year. Read the whole report here.
(New York, NY) – Prominent Hezbollah financier Assad Ahmad Barakat, designated as a global terrorist by the U.S., was arrested Saturday in the border region between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay.
Barakat is wanted by Paraguayan authorities for identity theft and by Argentine authorities for money laundering on behalf of Hezbollah. He operated Hezbollah’s financial network in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of South America, and owned several businesses that conducted money laundering activities to generate funds for the terrorist group. Barakat, who has close ties with Hezbollah’s leadership, was the group’s chief of military operations and fundraising in the TBA in the 1990s.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated “Assad Ahmad Barakat” as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224 on June 10, 2004.
Assad Ahmad Barakat is a U.S.-designated key Hezbollah financier who has operated in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of South America––the region that straddles the borders of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina.* Barakat, who has close ties with Hezbollah’s leadership, was the group’s chief of military operations and fundraising in the TBA in the 1990s.* He operated Hezbollah’s financial network in the region, and owned several businesses of his own that conducted money laundering activities to generate funds for the group.* Barakat was indicted by Paraguay in 2001, and served a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence in the country after he was arrested in Brazil in 2002.* He was released from Paraguayan custody in 2009.* He is wanted by Paraguayan authorities for identity theft and by Argentine authorities for money laundering on behalf of Hezbollah in an Argentine casino. In September 2018, Brazilian police arrested Barakat near the Paraguayan and Argentine borders.*
In the mid-1980s, Barakat immigrated from Lebanon to Paraguay to escape the Lebanese Civil War.* He soon began operating several businesses based in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, including Apollo Import Export and Mondial Engineering and Construction, through which he conducted money laundering schemes to generate funds for Hezbollah.* Barakat also operated additional businesses based in Lebanon, Chile, and the United States, at times with the assistance of his brothers Hatem and Hamzi.* He also collected funds for Hezbollah by pressuring Lebanese shopkeepers in the TBA to pay a quota to the group under threat of putting their family members on a “Hezbollah blacklist.”* Barakat regularly sent large sums of money to the group in Lebanon and Iran and even personally carried funds to Lebanon, traveling with a Paraguayan passport as of 2000.*
In addition to his direct fundraising roles, Barakat reportedly served as the deputy financial director of a mosque in Brazil, as the deputy for another Hezbollah financial official, Ali Muhammad Kazan, and eventually as the primary liaison in the TBA for Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah.* He was also reportedly one of two individuals in charge of distributing counterfeit U.S. currency in the TBA.* As of 2001, Barakat reportedly traveled to Lebanon and Iran annually to meet with Hezbollah’s leadership.*
*** Born in Lebanon, his Place of residence is Foz do Iguacú, Brazil; Iquique, Chile; Ciudad del Este, Paraguay (as of 2006) currently in Brazilian custody.
Barakat was also involved in planning Hezbollah’s military operations. He was an organizer and key financier of Hezbollah’s 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured over 300.* Barakat relayed information to Hezbollah’s leadership about Arabs in the TBA who traveled to the United States or Israel. He regularly hosted and attended meetings with other senior Hezbollah leaders in the TBA, such as one meeting in Brazil in the fall of 2000 at which they discussed potential assassination plots. Authorities later discovered videos on Barakat’s personal computer of violent Hezbollah military operations in Lebanon.*
In 2001, Paraguay indicted Barakat on charges of association, abetment of crime, and tax evasion, and an international warrant was issued for his arrest. In response, Barakat fled the TBA that October.* However, he was arrested by Brazilian authorities in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, on June 22, 2002, and extradited to Paraguay that December, where he served a six and a half-year prison sentence.*
Barakat was designated as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Department of the Treasury on June 10, 2004. Two of his businesses, Casa Apollo and Barakat Import Export Ltda., were also designated at the time for their involvement in generating support for Hezbollah.*
Barakat was released from Paraguayan custody in 2009, though Paraguay reportedly lost track of his whereabouts since.* According to the Brazilian Federal Police, Barakat continued to operate on behalf of Hezbollah in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Argentine police accused him of money laundering at a casino in the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazu. In August 2018, Brazil’s supreme court authorized Barakat’s arrest after Paraguay issued an arrest warrant. On September 21, 2018, Brazilian police announced they had arrested Barakat in Foz do Iguaco, Brazil, near the border with Paraguay and Argentina. It remains unclear whether or to where he may be extradited.
Now, this is the woman that concocted the while Dr. Ford v. Brett Kavanaugh chaos event in Washington DC and refused to hand that pesky letter over to Chairman Grassley…
Personally, she should be brought up before the Senate Ethics Committee, it would be a gesture for sure but then we could have a Senate vote of no confidence in Di-Fi…another gesture, but tactics nonetheless.
Meanwhile:
Senator Cruz is not well liked by many Democrats in the Senate because he exposes them, that is if anyone is listening. It was not too long ago that Ben Shapiro published in his DailyWire that Senator Cruz proposed some legislation to rename a road and Feinstein earnestly objected. Hah, it is an interesting story found here.
Now, just before that, a scandal that went away real fast was that lil miss Dianne had an American aide working for the Chinese (read spy) on her payroll for years. BUT, that was not the first time the FBI came knocking on her door for much the same reason. Really you say? Yes….
Only back in 1997 as explained by the LATimes: federal investigators have detected that the Chinese government might attempt to seek favor with Feinstein. Last year, she was one of six members of Congress who received warnings from the FBI that China might try to improperly influence them through illegal campaign contributions.
The article has another interesting paragraph: At the same time, far from the spotlight, Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, has expanded his private business interests in China–to the point that his firm is now a prominent investor inside the communist nation.
For years, Feinstein and Blum have insisted that they maintained a solid “firewall” between her role as an influential foreign policy player and his career as a private investor overseas.
But such closely coinciding interests are highly unusual for major figures in public life in Washington. And now, as controversy heats up over improper foreign influence in the U.S. political process, the effectiveness of the firewall between those interests could be called into question.
Well there is this other thing in California called the ‘California Asia Business Council’. See Di-Fi’s husband in the photo?
back row in the middle
Recipients of Cal-Asia’s prestigious New Silk Road Award include: Ms. Weili Dai, President and Co-founder of Marvell Technology Group; Dr. Chong Moon Lee, Founder, Diamond Multimedia; The Asia Foundation (presented to Dr. David Arnold, President); Alexander D. Calhoun, Senior Counsel, Squire Sanders & Dempsey; Daniel K. H. Chao, Chairman of Bechtel Greater China (retired); John S. Chen, Chairman, CEO, and President of Sybase; Hon. Dianne Feinstein, US Senator; Dr. Ta-Lin Hsu founder and chairman of H&Q Asia Pacific; C. Richard Kramlich, chairman and co-founder of New Enterprise Associates; G. Paul Matthews, Founder, Matthews International Capital Management; Dr. William F. Miller, SRI International, Stanford, and Silicon Valley visionary; Hon. George P. Shultz, Former Secretary of State; Washington SyCip, Founder of SGV & Co. and “Asia’s Wise Business Owl”; Amb. Linda Tsao Yang, former US Director, Asian Development Bank.
(Senator Feinstein got an award….firewall?)
Cal-Asia’s Mission …is to promote commerce between the U.S. and Asia. We are proud to have received two awards for our efforts from the US Department of Commerce.
Other Cal-Asia News
–Foreign Direct Investment in ASEAN
–APEC Meetings for 2015 started in January in Hanoi and will culminate with the Manila summit. Meeting locations and dates: APEC Events Calendar. General info on APEC outcomes, plans: http://www.apec.org/
SAN FRANCISCO, May 4, 2017 — Richard C. Blum, founder and chairman of Blum Capital Partners, delivers remarks at Asia Society Northern California’s Fourteenth Annual Dinner.
Going back to 2009 and swell company here at this event:
April 23, 2009 – Blum Center Groundbreaking with Vice President Al Gore. (Peg Skorpinski)The groundbreaking ceremony for the new home of the Blum Center will take place on Thursday, April 23 at 1:30 pm PST – with Center Founder and UC Regents Chair Richard C. Blum joined by Former Vice President Al Gore, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, College of Engineering Dean S. Shankar Sastry, and University of California President Mark Yudof. The ceremony will be followed by a reception where faculty and students will present a wide range of innovations aimed at making lasting change for the nearly three billion people that live on less than two dollars a day.
That Center is for developing countries like China….really? Yup…interesting, there are more friends…
Four years ago, Mr. Blum founded the Global Economy and Development Center at The Brookings Institution and the Brookings Blum Roundtable Conference, to develop policy research and new strategies to alleviate poverty. He is also a trustee and a member of the executive committee of The Carter Center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter, and serves on the boards of William J. Clinton Foundation and The Wilderness Society.
More?
Feinstein and Shanghai Mayor Jiang Zemin reportedly visited each other regularly in the 1980s, with Jiang once spending Thanksgiving in San Francisco with Feinstein and her husband. Jiang supposedly danced with Feinstein during one such visit, which surely must have been a propaganda coup for the CCP a la Ted Kennedy and the Soviets.
The Federalist has an interesting summary, yet this stuck out:
In a June 2010 interview with the Wall Street Journal covering a trip to China in which she met with old pals Jiang and former premier Zhu Rongji, Feinstein seemed to further downplay and even alibi the Tiananmen Square massacre:
I think that was a great setback for China in the view of the world. And I think China has also – as we would – learned lessons from it.
It just so happens I was here after that and talked to Jiang Zemin and learned that at the time China had no local police. It was just the PLA [People’s Liberation Army]. And no local police that had crowd control. So, hence the tanks.
Clearly none of that made good sense. But that’s the past. One learns from the past. You don’t repeat it. I think China has learned a lesson.
back row in the middle