Category Archives: Military

Monuments are Silent Teachers

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The Left shames everyone by stating they ‘celebrate’ the monuments of those that supported slavery and committed treason. Then the only faction that gets to vote for removal are the misguided politicians, Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA. No one else is allowed to be part of the discussion. So, President Trump announced a solution in an Executive Order that few even know about or that the media even bothered to read much less report.

National Park Service | U.S. Department of the Interior

No nation has a perfect history and yet who was assigned then and now to pass judgment on the good and evil of history? There should be no judgement, there should only be lessons.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) gets it right.

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You have a chance for some real input on this debate thanks to President Trump.

Executive Order on Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1.  Purpose.  America owes its present greatness to its past sacrifices.  Because the past is always at risk of being forgotten, monuments will always be needed to honor those who came before.  Since the time of our founding, Americans have raised monuments to our greatest citizens.  In 1784, the legislature of Virginia commissioned the earliest statue of George Washington, a “monument of affection and gratitude” to a man who “unit[ed] to the endowment[s] of the Hero the virtues of the Patriot” and gave to the world “an Immortal Example of true Glory.”  I Res. H. Del. (June 24, 1784).  In our public parks and plazas, we have erected statues of great Americans who, through acts of wisdom and daring, built and preserved for us a republic of ordered liberty.

These statues are silent teachers in solid form of stone and metal.  They preserve the memory of our American story and stir in us a spirit of responsibility for the chapters yet unwritten.  These works of art call forth gratitude for the accomplishments and sacrifices of our exceptional fellow citizens who, despite their flaws, placed their virtues, their talents, and their lives in the service of our Nation.  These monuments express our noblest ideals:  respect for our ancestors, love of freedom, and striving for a more perfect union.  They are works of beauty, created as enduring tributes.  In preserving them, we show reverence for our past, we dignify our present, and we inspire those who are to come.  To build a monument is to ratify our shared national project.

To destroy a monument is to desecrate our common inheritance.  In recent weeks, in the midst of protests across America, many monuments have been vandalized or destroyed.  Some local governments have responded by taking their monuments down.  Among others, monuments to Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Francis Scott Key, Ulysses S. Grant, leaders of the abolitionist movement, the first all-volunteer African-American regiment of the Union Army in the Civil War, and American soldiers killed in the First and Second World Wars have been vandalized, destroyed, or removed.

These statues are not ours alone, to be discarded at the whim of those inflamed by fashionable political passions; they belong to generations that have come before us and to generations yet unborn.  My Administration will not abide an assault on our collective national memory.  In the face of such acts of destruction, it is our responsibility as Americans to stand strong against this violence, and to peacefully transmit our great national story to future generations through newly commissioned monuments to American heroes.

Sec. 2.  Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes.  (a)  There is hereby established the Interagency Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes (Task Force).  The Task Force shall be chaired by the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary), and shall include the following additional members:

(i)    the Administrator of General Services (Administrator);

(ii)   the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA);

(iii)  the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH);

(iv)   the Chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP); and

(v)    any officers or employees of any executive department or agency (agency) designated by the President or the Secretary.

(b)  The Department of the Interior shall provide funding and administrative support as may be necessary for the performance and functions of the Task Force.  The Secretary shall designate an official of the Department of the Interior to serve as the Executive Director of the Task Force, responsible for coordinating its day-to-day activities.

(c)  The Chairpersons of the NEA and NEH and the Chairman of the ACHP shall establish cross-department initiatives within the NEA, NEH, and ACHP, respectively, to advance the purposes of the Task Force and this order and to coordinate relevant agency operations with the Task Force.

Sec. 3.  National Garden of American Heroes.  (a)  It shall be the policy of the United States to establish a statuary park named the National Garden of American Heroes (National Garden).

(b)  Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Task Force shall submit a report to the President through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy that proposes options for the creation of the National Garden, including potential locations for the site.  In identifying options, the Task Force shall:

(i)    strive to open the National Garden expeditiously;

(ii)   evaluate the feasibility of creating the National Garden through a variety of potential avenues, including existing agency authorities and appropriations; and

(iii)  consider the availability of authority to encourage and accept the donation or loan of statues by States, localities, civic organizations, businesses, religious organizations, and individuals, for display at the National Garden.

(c)  In addition to the requirements of subsection 3(b) of this order, the proposed options for the National Garden should adhere to the criteria described in subsections (c)(i) through (c)(vi) of this section.

(i)    The National Garden should be composed of statues, including statues of John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Billy Graham, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Douglas MacArthur, Dolley Madison, James Madison, Christa McAuliffe, Audie Murphy, George S. Patton, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Betsy Ross, Antonin Scalia, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington, and Orville and Wilbur Wright.

(ii)   The National Garden should be opened for public access prior to the 250th anniversary of the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 2026.

(iii)  Statues should depict historically significant Americans, as that term is defined in section 7 of this order, who have contributed positively to America throughout our history.  Examples include:  the Founding Fathers, those who fought for the abolition of slavery or participated in the underground railroad, heroes of the United States Armed Forces, recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor or Presidential Medal of Freedom, scientists and inventors, entrepreneurs, civil rights leaders, missionaries and religious leaders, pioneers and explorers, police officers and firefighters killed or injured in the line of duty, labor leaders, advocates for the poor and disadvantaged, opponents of national socialism or international socialism, former Presidents of the United States and other elected officials, judges and justices, astronauts, authors, intellectuals, artists, and teachers.  None will have lived perfect lives, but all will be worth honoring, remembering, and studying.

(iv)   All statues in the National Garden should be lifelike or realistic representations of the persons they depict, not abstract or modernist representations.

(v)    The National Garden should be located on a site of natural beauty that enables visitors to enjoy nature, walk among the statues, and be inspired to learn about great figures of America’s history.  The site should be proximate to at least one major population center, and the site should not cause significant disruption to the local community.

(vi)   As part of its civic education mission, the National Garden should also separately maintain a collection of statues for temporary display at appropriate sites around the United States that are accessible to the general public.

Sec. 4.  Commissioning of New Statues and Works of Art.  (a)  The Task Force shall examine the appropriations authority of the agencies represented on it in light of the purpose and policy of this order.  Based on its examination of relevant authorities, the Task Force shall make recommendations for the use of these agencies’ appropriations.

(b)  To the extent appropriate and consistent with applicable law and the other provisions of this order, Task Force agencies that are authorized to provide for the commissioning of statues or monuments shall, in expending funds, give priority to projects involving the commissioning of publicly accessible statues of persons meeting the criteria described in section 3(b)(iii) of this order, with particular preference for statues of the Founding Fathers, former Presidents of the United States, leading abolitionists, and individuals involved in the discovery of America.

(c)  To the extent appropriate and consistent with applicable law, these agencies shall prioritize projects that will result in the installation of a statue as described in subsection (b) of this section in a community where a statue depicting a historically significant American was removed or destroyed in conjunction with the events described in section 1 of this order.

(d)  After consulting with the Task Force, the Administrator of General Services shall promptly revise and thereafter operate the General Service Administration’s (GSA’s) Art in Architecture (AIA) Policies and Procedures, GSA Acquisition Letter V-10-01, and Part 102-77 of title 41, Code of Federal Regulations, to prioritize the commission of works of art that portray historically significant Americans or events of American historical significance or illustrate the ideals upon which our Nation was founded.  Priority should be given to public-facing monuments to former Presidents of the United States and to individuals and events relating to the discovery of America, the founding of the United States, and the abolition of slavery.  Such works of art should be designed to be appreciated by the general public and by those who use and interact with Federal buildings.  Priority should be given to this policy above other policies contained in part 102-77 of title 41, Code of Federal Regulations, and revisions made pursuant to this subsection shall be made to supersede any regulatory provisions of AIA that may conflict with or otherwise impede advancing the purposes of this subsection.

(e)  When a statue or work of art commissioned pursuant to this section is meant to depict a historically significant American, the statue or work of art shall be a lifelike or realistic representation of that person, not an abstract or modernist representation.

Sec. 5.  Educational Programming.  The Chairperson of the NEH shall prioritize the allocation of funding to programs and projects that educate Americans about the founding documents and founding ideals of the United States, as appropriate and to the extent consistent with applicable law, including section 956 of title 20, United States Code.  The founding documents include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers.  The founding ideals include equality under the law, respect for inalienable individual rights, and representative self-government.  Within 90 days of the conclusion of each Fiscal Year from 2021 through 2026, the Chairperson shall submit a report to the President through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy that identifies funding allocated to programs and projects pursuant to this section.

Sec. 6.  Protection of National Garden and Statues Commissioned Pursuant to this Order.  The Attorney General shall apply section 3 of Executive Order 13933 of June 26, 2020 (Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence), with respect to violations of Federal law regarding the National Garden and all statues commissioned pursuant to this order.

Sec. 7.  Definition.  The term “historically significant American” means an individual who was, or became, an American citizen and was a public figure who made substantive contributions to America’s public life or otherwise had a substantive effect on America’s history.  The phrase also includes public figures such as Christopher Columbus, Junipero Serra, and the Marquis de La Fayette, who lived prior to or during the American Revolution and were not American citizens, but who made substantive historical contributions to the discovery, development, or independence of the future United States.

Sec. 8.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

DONALD J. TRUMP

THE WHITE HOUSE,
July 3, 2020.

Italian Police Seize $1 Billion of ISIS Amphetamines

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The Guardia di Finanza said that markings on the drugs were consistent with those used by Islamic State (IS). Though the amphetamine has been linked to IS in the past, some experts doubted that IS had the capacity to produce drugs in such quantities, and stated that Syrian pro-regime entities were more likely responsible.

Police just made history's biggest drug seizure: 15 tons ...

IN: Police in Italy have announced the seizure of the largest shipment of amphetamines in counter-narcotics history, containing drugs believed to have been manufactured by the Islamic State in Syria. The drugs shipment was intercepted at the port of Salerno, located south of Naples in southwestern Italy.

 

Italian police announced on Wednesday that it had made “the largest seizure of amphetamines in the world”, both in terms of quantity and street value. The latter is estimated at approximately $1 billion. Drug traffickers are rarely known to transport such large volumes of drugs in a single shipment, due to the risk of capture by the authorities. However, the lack of supply in Europe due to the coronavirus pandemic has prompted suppliers to take unusual risks, according to experts.

The amphetamines —approximately 84 million tablets— were found hidden inside three containers filled with paper cylinders. More pills had been placed inside the hollow parts of agricultural machinery products, according to police. The confiscated tablets are marked with the logo for the drug Captagon, which is better known by its genetic name, Fenethylline. Captagon was a popular drug in the Middle East in the 1990s, and today amphetamines produced by the Islamic State bear its logo, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

The drug is regularly given to Islamic State volunteers prior to battles and terrorist attacks, in order to help reduce their inhibitions, including susceptibility to fear, and to prevent them from feeling physical pain. Security agencies in the Middle East refer to the substance as “the jihad drug”. It is particularly prevalent in Syria, which has become the global leader in the production of illicit amphetamines in the past decade.

Italian police said the shipment was most likely intended for distribution by “a consortium of criminal groups”, who would then traffic the substance to illicit markets across Europe. It would be unthinkable for a single distributor to be able to afford a $1 billion single purchase, according to officials. The largest buyer among these distributors was probably the Camorra —the organized crime syndicate based in the region of Naples. The Camorra has international links through which it can channel the illicit drugs in much larger volumes than other crime syndicates, according to experts.

Asked about the clues that led to the seizure of the amphetamines, a spokesman for the Italian police said the force knew the when the shipment was coming in, due to “ongoing investigations we have with the Camorra”. He added, “we intercepted phone calls and members, so we knew what to expect”.

NYT’s Report on Russian Bounties is False

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Let us begin with Catherine Herridge and her Tweets shall we?

President Trump’s response to the NYT’s article was that he was never told of such a thing. Now we have Speaker Pelosi saying this is as bad as it gets.

Have we forgotten about the op-ed published by the New York Times this past February?

The deputy leader of the Taliban and one of the world’s most wanted militants has written an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he says the Afghan insurgents are “fully committed” to a deal with Washington.

The article, headlined “What the Taliban Want”, represents the highest-level statement from the group on months of negotiations with the United States, and comes as they are believed to be days away from signing an agreement that would see America begin to withdraw troops from its longest war.

It is also believed to the first time that Sirajuddin Haqqani — who doubles as head of the Haqqani network, a US-designated terror group that is one of the most dangerous factions fighting Afghan and US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan — has given such a lengthy statement in English.

Previously, he has communicated mainly through rare audio messages, usually in Pashto. The most recent one on a Taliban website was dated June 2017.

In the Times article, Haqqani repeated many Taliban talking points from the negotiations, including how women would have rights “granted by Islam” — the problem being, as many observers have pointed out, the group’s repressive and brutal interpretation of the faith.

The leader of a group known for the frequent use of suicide bombers targeting civilians also said he is “convinced the killing and the maiming must stop”.

The Taliban have been conducting direct talks with the US since 2018 on a deal which would see Washington begin pulling troops out in return for security guarantees from the militants and a promise to begin peace talks with the government in Kabul. More here.

Are we to assume the New York Times has sided with the Taliban and manifesting more Russian disinformation? Yup for sure. Perhaps too, the NYT’s and Russia have officially collaborated in Infektion. What is that?

Forgeries

The Internet Research Agency is infamous for flooding mainstream social media platforms with compelling disinformation campaigns. The GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, deploys strategic data leaks and destabilizing cyberattacks. But in the recent history of Russia’s online meddling, a third, distinct entity may have been at work on many of the same objectives—indicating that Russia’s disinformation operations went deeper than was publicly known until now.
Dubbed Secondary Infektion, the campaign came on the radar of researchers last year. Today, the social media analysis firm Graphika is publishing the first comprehensive review of the group’s activity, which seems to have begun all the way back in January 2014. The analysis reveals an entity that prioritizes covering its tracks; virtually all Secondary Infektion campaigns incorporate robust operational security, including a hallmark use of burner accounts that only stay live long enough to publish one post or comment. That’s a sharp contrast to the IRA and GRU disinformation operations, which often rely on cultivating online personas or digital accounts over time and building influence by broadening their reach.
Secondary Infektion also ran disinformation campaigns on a notably large array of digital platforms. While the IRA in particular achieved virality by focusing its energy on major mainstream social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Secondary Infektion took more than 300 platforms in all, including regional forums and smaller blogging sites. The combination of widespread and endless burner accounts has helped the group hide its campaigns—and its motives—for years. But the approach also made the actor less influential and seemingly less effective than the IRA or GRU. Without being able to build a following, it’s difficult to get posts to take off. And many Secondary Infektion campaigns were either flagged by platform anti-abuse mechanisms or simply pilloried by regular users.
“The main thing is that this really adds a large-scale, persistent threat actor into the mental map we have of Russian information operations,” says Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at Graphika. “All the while you have the IRA running its operations, all the while you have GRU running its operations, you had Secondary Infektion running its own brand of operations, which had a very different style, had a very different approach. This was all running at the same time, and quite often they were all homing in on the same targets.”
Secondary Infektion has a familiar hit list. The group has been active in running disinformation campaigns related to world elections, has attempted to sow division between European countries, and has highlighted US and NATO dominance and aggression. Domestically, the actor has run campaigns in defense of Russia and its government, targeted activists and groups critical of the regime—like the reporting group Bellingcat and anti-corruption advocate Alexei Navalny—and tried to discredit the World Anti-Doping Agency. Secondary Infektion has also painted Turkey as a villainous rogue state and sown division over issues of global migration, particularly Muslim displacement. It has run relatively few campaigns related to Syria and its civil war but is devoted to a common priority for Russia-backed digital actors: undermining and destabilizing Ukraine.
Though Secondary Infektion’s activities are difficult to track, Graphika researchers were able to piece the its activity together by looking at rare occasions where the group reused an account a few times, and identifying patterns in sets of blogs and forums the group would post to. Secondary Infektion also has a particular tendency to build its campaigns around “leaked” documents that are really just fabricated by the group but claim to reveal, say, corruption among the Kremlin’s critics or an anti-Russian plot from the US. Graphika did not see evidence that Secondary Infektion used ads to promote its content, but after months of investigation the researchers did find a sort of digital fingerprint they could use to track Secondary Infektion campaigns at a much larger scale and link many more digital posts to the actor. Graphika would not comment on the nature of this tell, though.
Facebook was the first to discover a group of Secondary Infektion accounts in May 2019, and provided the data to disinformation researchers along with the initial attribution to Russia. Since then other social networks and researchers have gathered more examples of the actor’s activity and reinforced the attribution. The group seemingly reduced its operations or went further underground after being publicly named in 2019. But it was still operating as of at least March 2020. Graphika is clear, though, that Secondary Infektion has not been tied to a specific organization or apparatus within Russia. Based on the available evidence and the group’s distinctive techniques and behaviors, the researchers don’t believe that Secondary Infektion operates under the purview of the IRA or GRU. But that remains possible. More here.
GRU is the Russian military mentioned in the NYT’s piece highly debated and contested in Washington DC right now.

 

Dear General Mattis and the other Flag Officers

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General Mattis, your op-ed in the Atlantic was repugnant. Let’s review what you purposely overlooked, shall we?

photo

 

Know your Terrain

It’s the leader’s job to interpret and translate the terrain and operating environment. Know whether you are the bear or the alligator. Leaders must understand their organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and ideal operating terrain before stepping into the fight. There is no “unfair” when dealing with an uncontrollable variable like terrain. Read more here from Sun Tzu on terrain.

You see during the Covid-19 lockdown, America was in fear. The fear doubled and confidence has been shattered with rioting, death, arson and looting. General, you did not offer a solution. But we are learning all the dynamics of the changing terrain in America and it is ugly.

All Enemies Foreign and Domestic

Our rights as citizens are to be protected and the elite members of our Praetorian Guard are designated as politicians at all levels, law enforcement and the branches of the military. So to you Generals and Admirals, to the politicians and law enforcement, who is protecting selected voices from censorship? What about illegal searches and surveillance where we are to be secure in our person, papers and effects? What about our ability to fully protect ourselves from home invasions or burning a building or business where the upper floors are actually apartments? We have gangs operating all over the nation, we have subversive groups doing the same. We have an insurgency upon the country and they are domestic enemies to the general welfare of America. What is your solution if not law and order?

Ungoverned Spaces

You are well aware of places like Idlib, Syria, the Sahel, Libya, Donbass, Ukraine, even the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. General, in America there are thousands of points of ungoverned spaces including public schools, streets in San Francisco, the courthouse steps in Portland, Oregon or the college campus at Berkeley. In recent days, ungoverned spaces included cities and streets across the nation where police are told to take a light touch all while mayors have released violent criminals from prison and what would be felony arrests are considered misdemeanors, letting go the criminal within hours with a mere $120 ticket. General, have you considered this chaos? Are you applying strategic thinking to frontier justice where decent Americans will be forced into vigilante justice? Syrians were forced into that just as Libyans are. We have to fend for ourselves, you omitted that part. So, to you Flag officers, have you a solution war plan to solve this in America?

Domestic Tranquility

While the intent of the Framers intended to quell uprisings and rebellions between states, domestic tranquility is fleeting. When civil society is challenged and criminal behavior goes unpunished, established justice is broken. Peaceful demonstrations are events where the demonstrators put forth their grievances. That is a wonderful and endorsed right. When riots, theft, looting, arson, shootings or otherwise physical harm comes to person or property, law and order is fractured. Placing the National Guard at designated locations is to augment law enforcement. If that fails, a higher more assertive remedy is called for including the consideration of the Insurrection Act. There is not a respectable American that wants conditions to reach that point and that includes President Trump. But just like military personnel in the realm of war-gaming operations, all consideration must be on the desk and they are. In the case of the civilian population, leaders and law enforcement too must consider all options for the protection of public safety.

So General Mattis, you are quoted as saying ‘ If you cannot create harmony, even vicious harmony on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across service lines, across coalition and national lines and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete‘.

That harmony you speak of is lost in America, we are divided. So, General sir…just go home, take the other Flag officers with you.

We are gonna be ‘polite and professional’ in spite of it all, but we are gonna be the guards of our own terrain, personally and professionally and politely.

 

Sanction China by Stopping World Bank Loans to CCP

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Decoupling the United States from China is a convoluted and complicated process. Some lawmakers make it sound easy by just terminating manufacturing agreements by U.S. companies and bring it stateside. Ah but hold on…it is important to know some other details that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are not telling you.

Consider the items below:

1.  Commerce Department official warned Congress recently that China is raising billions of dollars in U.S. capital markets and the activity could undermine American security.

Nazak Nikakhtar, assistant secretary for international trade at the Commerce Department, testified last month that Chinese companies raised $48 billion from American capital markets from 2013 through the end of last year.

Ms. Nikakhtar told the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission that 172 Chinese companies in September were listed on the three largest U.S. exchanges — Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange and the NYSE American — with a total market capitalization of more than $1 trillion. More here.

Confucius Institutes and U.S. Exchange Programs: Public ...

2. Charles Lieber, the chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and two Chinese nationals who were researchers at Boston University and a Boston hospital were charged by the U.S. Justice Department with lying about their purported links to the Chinese government. But hold on, it is much worse. China has a real impact on all levels of the U.S. education system. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a 96 page report describing the Confucius Institute and how those agreements work with domestic universities. Further, major universities failed to report the other monies they receive from China among other countries. It is shocking how foreign money has infiltrated the U.S. education system and to learn which country does what and how much, click here.

China moon landing: Spacecraft makes first landing on moon ...

3. China launched its Long March 5B rocket into space. This is an effort by China to build a modular space station. It did however fall out of orbit falling for the most part into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa near the Ivory Coast. Additionally, as China continues to launch at least 12 more space operations it already has landed on the dark side of the moon. China and Russia are in fact collaborating on lunar operations including for shared bases. Russia’s operations coordinating with China are centered and funded by Roscosmos for Space Activities and the Skulkovo Foundation. This is the foundation where Hillary Clinton created U.S. technology (Silicon Valley) and Skulkovo via the Clinton Foundation via a major donor known as Viktor Vekselberg. This is the other scandal of technology transfer(s) to rogue nations.

4. We are already somewhat versed in Chinese complicity in the pandemic and the World Health Organization but lets go to the World Bank shall we? As of early 2019, China was sitting on cash reserves of some $3 trillion. It is the world’s second-largest economy, behind the U.S. It directly lends more money to other nations each year than the $2 billion or so it borrows from the World Bank annually. The World Bank, based in Washington, D.C., was established after World War II to help European countries rebuild. Its mission has evolved over the years and is now to finance development in low- and middle-income countries with the goal of eliminating extreme poverty.

“From a pure economic vantage point, there is no good reason for the World Bank to continue making loans to China,” says Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University.

“The Chinese don’t need the money,” Prasad says. “There is a glaring optics problem.” He adds that the argument could be made that the money lent to China could be put to better use elsewhere.

And it’s not as if the World Bank has an infinite amount of money to parcel out. Its lending budget, drawn from reserves, donations and the interest it earns on capital, is limited. So a dollar lent to China is a dollar that is not available for a project somewhere else in the world. The Trump administration, which regularly beats up on China, accusing it of manipulating global trade rules for its own benefit, has blasted the World Bank for lending too much to China.

Prasad says the World Bank’s lending to China is becoming “untenable” and will have to stop fairly soon.

Bert Hofman, the World Bank’s country director for China, says the amount of money China is borrowing each year from the global bank is just a small fraction of what the country is investing each year in domestic programs. And he believes that a motivation for China’s borrowing goes beyond money.

“The reason they still borrow is because they feel that the expertise of the World Bank is valuable to them,” Hofman says.

World Bank loans come with advisers and auditors who help implement (and monitor) bank-funded projects.

China gets access to international experts. The World Bank remains engaged with China and is able to see how new projects play out in this booming middle-income country. Hofman sees it as a win-win.

Prasad agrees that there are still some good reasons for the World Bank to remain engaged with China. Many of the bank’s loans to China are for projects addressing climate change and mitigating pollution from the country’s booming factories.

“The risk the World Bank faces is that if it only lends to very poor countries, it might end up not having much of a role to play in the large, fast-growing emerging-market economies,” Prasad says. “So the World Bank, in a bid to remain relevant and push its agenda on issues such as climate change and social development, has continued to lend to China.” More here.

***

The World Bank said its board adopted a new plan to aid China with $1 billion to $1.5 billion in low-interest loans annually through June 2025, despite the objections of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and several U.S. lawmakers.

World Bank approves $300mn for agriculture reforms in ...

Mnuchin told a House Financial Services Committee hearing that the Treasury’s representative on the board had objected on to the plan on Wednesday, adding he wants the World Bank to “graduate” China from its concessional loan programs for low- and middle-income countries.

The five-year lending strategy plan was published on Thursday afternoon after the World Bank’s board “expressed broad support” for the multilateral development lender’s engagement in China’s structural and environmental reforms.

The World Bank said its lending would decline over the “country partnership framework” plan, in line with reformsagreed under a $13 billion capital increase agreed in 2018.

The World Bank loaned China $1.3 billion in the fiscal 2019 year ended June 30, down from about $2.4 billion during fiscal 2017. The new plan calls for lending to “gradually decline” from the previous five-year average of $1.8 billion.

“Lending levels may fluctuate up and down from year to year due to normal pipeline management based on project readiness,” the World Bank said in its plan.

*** So we have a collection of reparation options due to the pandemic when it comes to China, we have a building space battlefield, we have corruption within China and now we have the U.S. at major odds with the Chinese Communist Party’s in violation of the One Country, Two Systems Act of 1997 with regard to Hong Kong. Secretary of State Pompeo declared to Congress that Hong Kong was no longer autonomous with The CCP which is correct but this will spark continued hostilities between the two nations even as naval conflicts continue in the South China Sea.

None of this will be easy but the reader should know more details to assess what may be ahead in global relations.