Thursday, May 27, 2021

JOE BIDEN'S PAYMASTERS IN CHINA - Kennedy Introduces Bill To Cut Off Dictators’ Funds

 IMAGES OF JOE BIDEN’S MANSIONS:

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/real-estate/a33809100/joe-biden-real-estate-homes/

 

RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs

Schweizer: ‘It’s Going to Be Business as Usual’ for Hunter’s Dealings

 Video:

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/01/20/schweizer-its-going-to-be-business-as-usual-for-hunters-dealings/

 

IAN HANCHETT

 

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer said he reads President Biden’s statements about his son Hunter’s deals as a declaration that “it’s going to be business as usual in the Biden administration as far as these deals are concerned.”

Schweizer said, “Joe Biden has said there are going to be no sketchy overseas deals during his second term. Here’s the problem: He does not believe that the early deals that Hunter was involved in, the China deal, Burisma, he’s never described those as sketchy. So, I read that as saying, it’s going to be business as usual in the Biden administration as far as these deals are concerned.”

The national media don't view the Kennedys, Clintons, or Bidens as corrupt, and electronic media may be systematically covering it up its evidence.  If one Googles "most corrupt Democrats," the result will be pages of results on "Trump corruption."  It appears that Google and other high-tech players are suppressing information about the corruption of the liberal elite


Kennedy Introduces Bill To Cut Off Dictators’ Funds

Legislation presses Senate Dems on 'no-brainer' chance to cut taxpayer funding to China

Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) / Getty Images
 • May 26, 2021 2:00 pm

Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) will introduce a bill Wednesday afternoon that aims to cut off dictators' finances through the Treasury department.

The legislation, which will be filed as an amendment to the Endless Frontier Act, a massive China package pushed by Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), would restrict cash that rogue regimes withdraw through the International Monetary Fund. Through reserve assets known as "special drawing rights," dictators have been able to draw billions from the international financial organization to alleviate financial pressures often created by U.S. sanctions.

Kennedy's amendment would prohibit special drawing rights for countries found to have committed genocide or sponsored terrorism without authorization from Congress. Both China and Iran qualify as regimes that fall under the bill's jurisdiction.

Kennedy, a member of the Senate banking committee, told the Washington Free Beacon that the vote will measure how seriously his colleagues take the challenge posed by China.

"Stopping taxpayer money from flowing to dictators and genocidal leaders like Xi Jinping is a no-brainer," Kennedy said. "It's one of the simplest, most honorable votes we'll take this year. I can't see any reason that anyone with America's best interests at heart would have a problem voting to require Congress to sign off before the Treasury sends U.S. dollars to dictators."

In April, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen confirmed that her department plans to allocate $650 billion in special drawing rights to the IMF, leaving the money accessible to such dictators as China's Xi Jinping and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro.

The Treasury did not respond to a request for comment.

Senate Democrats have framed the Endless Frontier Act as a massive anti-China package that will spend billions to boost scientific research and technological programs in competition with China. Critics, however, say the bill betrays its purpose by playing too loosely with taxpayer dollars. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will cost $244 billion, a massive jump from its original figure because of emergency authorizations.

"The last thing the Senate should want is a collection of deals made with individual senators that is then attached to what becomes a massive spending bill, clearly more about industrial policy and pork-barrel spending than geopolitics," Heritage Foundation China expert Walter Lohman wrote in March.

Kennedy's amendment will be heard for roll-call vote this afternoon.


China Ships Off Catholic Priests and Students for Reeducation

Worshippers receive communion as they attend a Christmas eve mass at the Xishiku Cathedral in Beijing on December 24, 2019. / Getty Images
 • May 26, 2021 2:00 pm

China arrested several Catholic priests and students and sent them to "political sessions" for reprogramming as part of the Communist leadership's crackdown on religious activity.

Approximately 100 policemen surrounded a factory that served as a seminary and arrested 7 priests and 10 students, according to Asia News. The arrests occurred on May 20 in the city of Xinxiang in the Henan province. The arrests took place just days before a week of prayer was scheduled to begin on May 23.

One day after the arrests, Chinese authorities took the bishop of Xinxiang, 63-year-old Joseph Zhang Weizhu, into custody. The government made the arrests under new regulations that require any Catholic leaders to register with the government before conducting services. The bishop and other arrestees were operating illegally without registering with the Communist Party's database of Catholic priests in the country.

The Chinese government does not recognize the Apostolic Prefecture of Xinxiang, of which the Catholic priests and students are members. The Apostolic Prefecture has been in operation for decades. Several "underground" bishops, appointed by the Vatican but not approved by the Chinese government, including Zhang Weizhu, operate under the threat of arrest. Zhang Weizhu has been arrested on a number of occasions for his defiance of the government.

In 2020, Vatican leadership and the Chinese government renewed a two-year agreement on the ordainment of bishops who would be allowed to operate under the eye of the Chinese government. The Vatican touted the two-year agreement as normalizing relations with Beijing, which insisted on approving Catholic leadership in the country. After the initial agreement in 2018, the Vatican approved of state-ordained bishops and the Chinese government approved of Vatican-appointed bishops.

The arrests come as the Vatican issued a call for Catholics around the world to participate with their fellow Chinese believers in "fervent prayer" during the week of prayer.

Catholics are not the only religious minority being targeted by the Chinese government. China has committed state-sponsored genocide against its Muslim Uyghur minority, subjecting the religious group to forced laborsterilization, and reeducation camps.


CNN: Biden Shut Down Trump Admin Probe into Origins of COVID-19 in China

BEIJING, CHINA - DECEMBER 04: Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shake hands with U.S Vice President Joe Biden (L) inside the Great Hall of the People on December 4, 2013 in Beijing, China. U.S Vice President Joe Biden will pay an official visit to China from December 4 to 5. …
Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
3:26

President Joe Biden shut down a State Department probe this spring into the origins of COVID-19 in China that was launched by the Trump administration under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last fall, according to a CNN report Tuesday.

Last year, concerns voiced by President Donald Trump that COVID-19 might have escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, were dismissed by media fact-checkers as conspiracy theories. Now, however, those concerns are gaining traction.

The Biden administration has said that it wants China to be more transparent, and wants the World Health Organization (WHO) to conduct an independent inquiry. But the WHO is widely seen as having helped China cover up the pandemic

 CNN reported:

President Joe Biden‘s team shut down a closely-held State Department effort launched late in the Trump administration to prove the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab over concerns about the quality of its work, according to three sources familiar with the decision.

The existence of the State Department inquiry and its termination this spring by the Biden administration — neither of which has been previously reported — comes to light amid renewed interest in whether the virus could have leaked out of a Wuhan lab with links to the Chinese military. The Biden administration is also facing scrutiny of its own efforts to determine if the Chinese government was responsible for the virus.

Those involved in the previously undisclosed inquiry, which was launched last fall by allies of then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, say it was an honest effort to probe what many initially dismissed: that China’s biological weapons program could have had a greater role in the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, according to two additional sources.

But the inquiry quickly became mired in internal discord amid concerns that it was part of a broader politicized effort by the Trump administration to blame China and cherry-pick facts to prove a theory.

Ironically, then-candidate Joe Biden and others criticized President Trump during the 2020 campaign for allegedly having “dissolved” the White House pandemic unit (in fact, it was reorganized in ways that advocates said made it more effective).

Biden also claimed, falsely, that Trump had “rolled over for the Chinese” and that he did not ask China to allow the U.S. to investigate the coronavirus. Biden promised he would “insist, insist, insist” that China had to let the U.S. in to investigate.

Now, Biden has reportedly dissolved an effort to investigate the origins of the pandemic, and has “rolled over for the Chinese” rather than insisting that the U.S. be allowed to conduct its own investigation of how the COVID-19 virus emerged.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it). His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Hollywood Panic: ‘F9’ Star John Cena Could Have Cost NBCUniversal, WWE Billions Without Apology to China

Michael N. Todaro; Anthony Wallace; Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images/BNN Edit
Michael N. Todaro; Anthony Wallace; Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images/BNN Edit
5:14

Hollywood star and WWE champion John Cena has apologized to China for correctly calling Taiwan a “country” during the recent press tour for the movie Fast & Furious 9. His groveling mea culpa highlights the degree to which Cena’s career has become intertwined with Communist China — and how his employers at NBCUniversal and the WWE could have lost billions of dollars if they angered Beijing.

In a video posted to China’s Weibo, John Cena acknowledged that he recently made a “mistake.” Though he didn’t elaborate, Cena appeared to be referring to a recent interview with a Taiwanese TV network during which he reportedly said Taiwan is “the first country to watch the movie.”

His remark set off a wave of social media criticism in China, with some fans demanding the actor acknowledge that Taiwan belongs to China.

Cena delivered his apology in Mandarin, which he has learned as part of the WWE’s efforts to expand into China.

“I made one mistake. I have to say something very, very, very important now,” Cena said in the Weibo video, “I love and respect China and Chinese people. I’m very, very sorry about my mistake. I apologize, I apologize, I’m very sorry. You must understand that I really love, really respect China and the Chinese people. My apologies.”

Watch below:

Universal had a vested interest in Cena’s apology. His act of contrition appears like a necessary PR move to protect one of the studio’s most valuable movie franchises. Fast & Furious movies have consistently grossed more money in China than any other country, including the U.S.

Watch below: 

The last F&F movie — Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, released in 2019 — derived more than 26 percent of its worldwide box office gross from China, compared to 22 percent from the U.S. The Fate of the Furious (2017) garnered 32 percent of its worldwide gross of more than $1 billion from China, versus just 18 percent from the U.S.

China recently surpassed the U.S. to become the largest movie market in the world — an accomplishment made possible in part by the coronavirus pandemic, which forced the closure of U.S. cinemas for several months.

Since China limits the number of foreign movies that play domestically, Hollywood studios have gone to great lengths to stay in Beijing’s good graces. Paramount removed a reference to Taiwan in its upcoming Top Gun sequel, while Disney changed a Tibetan character to a white woman in Doctor Strange.

Disney has also refused to comment on China’s human rights violations in the western province of Xinjiang, where the studio partnered with local authorities to shoot parts of its live-action Mulan.

FILE -In a Sunday, April 7, 2013 file photo, wrestler John Cena, top, chokes Dwayne Douglas Johnson, known as The Rock as they wrestle during Wrestlemania, in East Rutherford, N.J. WWE bills WrestleMania as its Super Bowl, and is headed to a stadium worthy of a Super Bowl on Sunday, April 3, 2016. The WWE has lofty expectations of stuffing 100,000 fans inside AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)

F9 is Cena’s first Fast & Furious movie, and in many ways, he has come to embody the corporate synergy between NBCUniversal and the WWE. NBC’s Peacock is the exclusive streaming home of the WWE Network in the U.S., offering new and archived content as well as pay-per-view matches.

And like Universal, the WWE is betting big on China, where Cena is better known for his wrestling career than acting. In 2017, the WWE launched the WWE Network in China in partnership with the PPTV streaming service. The service showcases WWE’s major live events, original series, and classic matches. The company has also partnered with Chinese broadcaster PP Sports.

Last year, the WWE expanded its footprint in China by teaming up with iQIYI Sports to air the WWE’s RAW and SmackDown events each week. In addition to live broadcasts, the deal includes a video on-demand service  featuring monthly WWE pay-per-view events.

The WWE has only to look to the NBA to recognize the fickle nature of doing business in China. The NBA reportedly lost eleven of its local partners in 2019 after Houston Rockets general manger Daryl Morey expressed support for pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver stated at the time that the NBA could lose up to $400 million as a result of the controversy.

The WWE has experience standing up to autocratic countries.

In 2018, some of the WWE’s biggest names were quick to register their disapproval to Saudi Arabia following the death of Jamal Khashoggi. Wrestlers who were set to appear in the WWE Crown Jewel in Riyadh that year withdrew from the event as media pressure built to punish the kingdom over Khashoggi’s death.

One of the wrestlers who quit the show was John Cena.

Universal and the WWE didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Breitbart News. John Cena couldn’t be reached for comment.

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com

U.S. Miners React to Joe Biden’s Move to Ditch U.S. Development of Critical Minerals: China Wins

SYCAMORE, PA - APRIL 13: Coal miner Dale Travis, 53, of Wheeling, West Virginia, waits for the arrival of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt to visit with miners at the Harvey Mine on April 13, 2017 in Sycamore, Pennsylvania. The Harvey Mine, owned by CNX Coal Resources, is …
Justin Merriman/Getty Images
5:00

Miners in the United States who hoped President Joe Biden would support domestic production of critical minerals are reacting to his plan to ditch them and rely on other countries, including China.

The New York Post reported:

The plan under consideration would entail buying the materials from overseas markets and allow US manufacturers to assemble them into batteries or electric vehicles in an effort to create American jobs but still remain in the good graces of environmental groups, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The Post report continued:

According to figures from the World Bank, the U.S. imports of minerals in 2018 relied mainly on Canada, China, Mexico, Brazil and South America. But labor leaders, many of whom support Democratic candidates, said they don’t want their workers left out of a lucrative job market.

“Let’s let Americans extract these minerals from the earth,” Aaron Butler of United Association Local 469 union, which does work for Rio Tinto Ltd.’s proposed copper mine project in Arizona and endorsed Biden in the election, told Reuters.

Pini Althaus, CEO Of USA Rare Earth, said in a statement:

The U.S. Government cannot make assumptions that non-U.S. rare earth and critical minerals producers will sell their materials into the U.S. supply chain and not to China. China is actively and aggressively pursuing acquisitions of rare earth projects or offtake agreements all over the world, and non-U.S. project owners will make the best commercial decisions for their own shareholders, not the idealistic and regulated approach that U.S. miners will take — prioritizing materials for the U.S. supply chain.

“And whilst this development does not directly affect our Round Top deposit as we are on State of Texas land, the United States needs several projects to come into production, and in the near term, if we are to achieve our goals around electrification of vehicles,” Althaus said. “Given our ability to process third-party materials, USA Rare Earth would be available to take in materials from non-U.S. projects, but as a whole this policy is devastating for the sector and a setback towards the goal of establishing a secure domestic supply chain.”

“The reason the U.S. is in its current precarious position – lacking a domestic critical minerals supply chain – was due to poor decision making 30 years ago, when the same argument was made to let someone else, China, do the mining and processing,” Althaus said. “The naive thought process at that time was that those materials would come back into the U.S. supply chain, even as China made no secret back then as to its ambitions in controlling the rare earth supply chain.”

“The winner of such policy is China, again,” Althaus said in the statement.

“The U.S. took a positive step in this direction when the U.S. Dept. of Energy recently launched the Division of Minerals Sustainability,” Rich Nolan, president of the National Mining Association, said in a statement in March. “But if we want to seriously compete in the global EV market, the U.S. must give mining and the mineral supply chain the attention they deserve. We have the tools to win this race, but only if we make smart policy decisions.”

The Detroit Bureau website also reported on the reactions to the Biden administration’s move:

During his campaign last year, Biden expressed the need to source the raw material for batteries within the U.S., giving a boost to the American mining industry. A policy that does not invest in American mines would almost certainly turn into a political football.

“These ‘not-in-my-backyard’ extremists have made clear they want to lock up our land and prevent the mining of minerals,” U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, said during a House Natural Resources Committee forum last week.

Some Democratic leaders are seeking to have the White House reverse course, worrying that the proposed mining strategy could hurt the party’s chances in advance of the critical 2022 mid-term elections.

This is another reversal of former President Donald Trump’s policies, this time on critical minerals.

“The ‘federal strategy lays out a blueprint for America to once again be a leader in the critical minerals sector,’ then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt said in a statement in June 2019,” the Post reported.

“As with our energy security, the Trump Administration is dedicated to ensuring that we are never held hostage to foreign powers for the natural resources critical to our national security and economic growth,” Bernhardt said at the time. “The Department will work expeditiously to implement the President’s strategy from streamlining the permitting process to locating domestic supplies of minerals.”

Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com.

Exclusive — Rep. Scott Franklin Bill Would Keep China Out of RIMPAC over Uyghur Genocide

The HMCS Algonquin sits pier side along with the the HMAS Darwin at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, with the Koolau mountain range as a backdrop, for the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2012 exercise on Friday, June 29, 2012 in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Twenty-two nations, 42 ships, six submarines, more …
Kent Nishimura/AFP/GettyImages
5:07

Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) is announcing legislation this week to ban China from participating in the world’s largest naval exercise, hosted by the United States Navy, until it stops committing genocide against its Uyghur minority, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.

China has already been banned since 2019 from participating in the biennial exercise, known as Rim of the Pacific or RIMPAC, over other concerns, but Franklin’s bill would add the Uyghur genocide to the list of practices China must end before it can participate again.

“China’s genocidal actions against the Uighurs requires us to apply pressure against the Chinese Communist Party wherever and whenever we can,” Franklin said in a statement to Breitbart News. “Holding China to account for these abuses as a condition to participate in RIMPAC gives us an opportunity to shine a light on what is happening while also preventing its military from being featured on the world stage.”
Franklin said his bill is just one of the many ways Congress could pressure China:

My bill is just one of 11 total bills the Republican Study Committee has developed in order to do just that. There are many others, but it would appear that President [Joe] Biden and my Democratic colleagues are more interested in emboldening our adversaries rather than pushing back against them with the full force of the U.S. government. The Biden Administration has already lifted sanctions on the construction of Russia’s Nordstream II pipeline and continues to allow Iran to fund terrorism across the Middle East. With this track record, there is no reason to expect Democrats to push back against China.

RIMPAC originated in 1971 and includes more than two dozen nations, but the U.S. Navy first invited China to participate in 2014, in hopes it would stop China from militarizing the South China Sea. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy sent four ships, but also one uninvited spy vessel.
During the Trump administration in 2018, the U.S. Navy disinvited China from participating, as Bejing’s involvement not only failed to prevent China from continuing to militarize the South China Sea, by putting more weapons systems on its claimed territories in the contested body of water, but seemed to encourage China to improve its naval capabilities.

Franklin’s bill would add the cessation of the Uyghur genocide to the existing list of criteria for China to meet in order to participate in RIMPAC again, which includes: Ending all land reclamation activities in the South China Sea; removing all weapons from its land reclamation sites; and establishing a consistent four-year track record of taking actions towards stabilizing the region.

In addition to ceasing Uyghur genocide, China would have to recognize and apologize for committing such genocide, and engage in credible justice and accountability process for all genocide victims.

“What Americans need to understand about the Uyghur genocide is that totalitarian regimes who are allowed to engage in these kind of human rights abuses without any pushback from the international community will also attack the rights and freedoms of people outside their borders,” Franklin said in his statement to Breitbart News.

“We have already seen countless examples of China engaging in censorship, unfair trade practices, and other instances of bad behavior against the United States. China’s behavior will only get worse until the U.S. takes a principled stance against horrible abuses perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

Co-sponsors of the bill RSC Chairman Jim Banks (R-IN), a Navy reservist, Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL), and Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) issued statements in support of the bill.

“Members of the Republican Study Committee are leading the way in introducing legislation to counter Communist China. The Obama administration mistakenly allowed China, our greatest adversary, to participate in RIMPAC military exercises, a decision that was later reversed by the Trump administration and Congress,” said Banks.

“This important piece of legislation would add a new common-sense condition to current law that would prohibit countries like China which are participating in genocide from participating in RIMPAC. I thank Congressman Franklin for his leadership,” he said.

“It should be common sense that we shouldn’t be engaging in military exercises with China while they actively commit genocide against the Uighur people,” said Steube. “I am honored to join Rep. Franklin and the Republican Study Committee in supporting legislation that
will hold our adversaries in China accountable for these egregious, ongoing human rights abuses.”

Wilson added, “As Chairman of the Republican Study Committee National Security and Foreign Affairs Task Force, I am grateful to support this effort to counter the Chinese Communist Party.”

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