Sunday, May 24, 2020

HOLLYWOOD LOST AND FOUND UP CHINA'S ASS

Ted Cruz Wants to Cut All Federal Assistance to Hollywood Studios that Censor Movies to Appease China

Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
3:25

Sen. Ted Cruz is laying out a zero-tolerance policy for Hollywood studios that willingly censor their movies to please Chinese Communist officials, proposing new legislation that will block all federal assistance to the studios behind those film productions.
The senator called China “the single most dangerous geopolitical threat” in the world in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday.
Chinese officials want “to shape what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think,” Cruz said. Because Hollywood studios voluntarily change characters and plot points in order to gain access to the Chinese market, Chinese officials “control not just what audiences see in China but also what Americans see.”
In a bill he introduced Thursday, Sen. Cruz (R-Texas) is calling for  Congress to cut off Hollywood studios from the federal assistance they receive if those studios censor their films for screening in China.
The senator had previously called for the elimination of Pentagon assistance to studios that cooperate with Chinese censors. But the version of the SCRIPT Act that he unveiled Thursday goes even further by suspending all federal assistance. Movie productions often request access to federal property and military equipment for filming purposes.
The SCRIPT Act — Stopping Censorship, Restoring Integrity, Protecting Talkies Act — will almost certainly face opposition from the major Hollywood studios, whose blockbuster movies often depend on the Chinese market to make money.

Red Dawn (FilmDistrict, Contrafilm, FilmNation Entertainment, 2012)
Sen. Cruz noted a few recent examples of Hollywood’s voluntary self-censorship, including Paramount’s upcoming Top Gun: Maverick, which eliminated the Taiwanese and Japanese flags from  Tom Cruise’s iconic flight jacket . The sequel is a co-production with China’s Tencent Pictures.
“What message does it send that Maverick, an American icon, is apparently afraid of the Chinese communists? That’s ridiculous,” Cruz said.
The Disney-owned 20th Century removed all references to Freddie Mercury’s sexuality in Bohemian Rhapsody in order to gain access to Chinese cinemas.  Disney also cast Scottish actress Tilda Swinton in a role that was originally meant to be a Tibetan monk in Marvel’s Doctor Strange.

Sandra Bullock in Gravity (Warner Bros. Picture, 2013)
Sen. Cruz said that he wants the SCRIPT Act to serve as a “wake up call for Hollywood.”
“Studios would be forced to choose between the assistance from the federal government or the money that they want from China,” he said.
Sen. Cruz introduced two other bills on Thursday that are intended to curb Chinese influence in the U.S.
The Blocking Evasive Attempts to Manipulate Signals Act — or BEAMS Act — would prevent China from exploiting FCC loopholes to broadcast Communist party propaganda to Americans from radio stations in Mexico or Canada.
The law would also apply to partially state-owned stations, such as Phoenix Television.
The Ending Chinese Medical Censorship and Cover Ups Act would sanction Chinese officials involved in the ongoing suppression of medical experts, journalists, and political dissidents.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com


Biden Sold Out America to China While Working for Hollywood

Biden: "There is no question that you've got the right guy with the right influence."
May 8, 2020 
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Outside the JW Marriot in Los Angeles, Rev. Eddie Perez Romero was being handcuffed by the LAPD.
Rev. Romero was holding up a “Free China” sign outside a Chinese Ministry of Commerce conference. Inside was the LAPD's boss Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, along with Governor Jerry Brown, and Vice President Joe Biden, who were palling around with China’s future dictator, Xi Jinping.
“My hope is that Vice President Joseph Biden, Governor Jerry Brown and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will rise above any pandering spirit, but as true statesmen, intentionally blur the artificial line between the economy and human rights,” Rev. Romero said.
Biden though had a very different agenda on his mind.
It was 2012 and Joe was thinking about his future. A year earlier his best friend, Senator Chris Dodd, had left the Senate to run the MPAA. The MPAA was Hollywood's trade association and the movie industry, reading its own writing on the wall, wanted into China, and was willing to sell its soul to make a deal.
Biden wanted Hollywood cash for a future presidential campaign.
Dodd had been one of the sleaziest figures in the Senate, even by the low standards of the era, eager to do favors for any well-heeled industry from finance to entertainment. His friendship with Biden gave him a direct pipeline into the Obama administration. And Dodd gave Biden a pipeline into Hollywood.
“Joe was our champion inside the White House,” Dodd later said.
Two years later, in 2014, Biden began an address to the MPAA by joking, "there have been the rumors all those years when Chris and I served in the Senate that although I was chairman, he controlled me."
"We've just given new life to those rumors," he continued, describing how he had left a meeting with Obama and Chancellor Merkel, telling Obama that he had to address the MPAA.
"There is no question that you've got the right guy with the right influence," Biden concluded.
And that’s exactly what Biden had been proving in Los Angeles as he surrounded Xi with Hollywood tycoons, especially Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major donor to his 2020 campaign, and cut a deal with the Chinese thug to increase the quota of Hollywood movies allowed in by the Chinese Communist regime.
"Some of you were there. Literally when by end of that lunch we had a handshake," Biden boasted to the MPAA. “The next year the number of blockbuster foreign films showing in China has increased by over half and our share of the box office revenue has doubled -- or your share of the box office revenue has doubled.”
“Keep me in mind for Chris' assistant later,” he joked.
Biden understandably lost track of the difference between “your share” and “our share” because Hollywood has been a reliable fundraising machine for Biden. What was good for Hollywood was also good for Biden. Katzenberg got Oriental Dream Works, a $330-million joint venture with the PRC, and eventually hosted Biden's first Southern California fundraiser which brought in $700K.
2012 was a big year for the adulterous nuptials of Hollywood and the Chinese Communist Party.
A few months after the meeting between Biden and Xi, China’s Wanda Group bought AMC Theaters for $2.6 billion. The Wanda Group, run by a billionaire Communist oligarch with close ties to regime officials, is working on a Communist theme park, and its investors allegedly include Xi’s sister. Beyond just owning the theaters, Wanda owns the Legendary Group which has a hand in a long list of movies from Spike Lee's BlacKKKlansman, to Pokemon, along with the King Kong and Jurassic Park sequels.
The only reason Hollywood movies can play in China is because the Communist leadership directly profits from them and controls what goes into them, either directly through ownership, or by forcing the industry to submit scripts for the approval of its Communist censors. HUAC would be superfluous today. The big studios who make up the MPAA are all working for the Communists. And they’re proud of it.
That’s why a Tibetan character vanished from Doctor Strange (Disney has been the worst offender when it comes to appeasing the Communist leadership), why Taiwanese and Japanese flag patches vanished from Tom Cruise’s jacket in the Top Gun sequel (the movie was backed by Tencent, the PRC social media monopoly whose social media controls allow the regime to censor dissent and which has its paws on Wonder Woman, Venom and many other blockbusters), and why World War Z erased references to China covering up the origin of the zombie outbreak. That act of censorship now appears prophetic.
Biden’s brokering of the relationship between Hollywood and the Communist elite was more than financial, it was also cultural. Hollywood traded access for control, not just over what Chinese people saw, but what Americans were likely to see. Biden’s donors got richer and American movies were reduced to a bunch of CG cartoons with limited dialogue that had to win Communist approval.
And it wasn’t just Hollywood.
In 2013, a year after the Xi event at the Marriot, Joe and Hunter Biden flew on Air Force Two to China. BHR Partners was founded that year and included Hunter Biden as a board member. Underneath all the rhetoric about the ennobling virtues of globalism was some very parochial and familial profiteering.
The big Chinese partner in the BHR arrangement was Harvest Fund Management which, coincidentally enough, in 2012 was targeting Hollywood with an $800 million investment fund. That same year, you could find Bruno Wu, who had been working with Harvest, and Chris Dodd, along with Harvey Weinstein, playing roles at the Asian Film Summit in Toronto. And the money didn’t just go one way.
The Delaware Board of Trade was incorporated in 2013. Despite its name, the DBOT was not a government agency, but a penny stock startup which received a $3 million loan from New Castle County.
New Castle County had approved the issue of $15 million in revenue bonds to fund the DBOT "stock exchange" by touting the "globally recognized leaders in the financial services industry" running it. DBOT’s founders included people with experience in stock exchanges and financial services, and Dennis Toner, who was described as a "top aide to Vice President Joe Biden."
Toner, Biden's deputy chief of staff, is in the news for denying that Tara Reade ever told him anything.
Reade’s decision to tell Toner and Ted Kaufman was a pretty poor one. Both are longtime Biden men and considered as close to the boss as family. And they’ve reaped the benefits of that closeness.
Emperor Caligula appointed his horse to the Roman Senate. After Obama won, Ted Kaufman was temporarily appointed to the Senate. If there was anything odd about appointing a Biden advisor to sit in the Senate, it became odder when Senator Kaufman delivered the opening statement in favor of Toner’s appointment as Post Office Governor, by vouching for his “loyalty” working for Joe Biden.
Reade might as well have taken her complaint to Biden, as to Toner and Kaufman.
The current New Castle County exec has since called DBOT’s founders criminals and threatened to sue after the company was disposed of as a "distressed asset" in exchange for shares of Ideanomics. Ideanomics is a Chinese crypto company trading as a penny stock and the software that served as collateral for the loan has been described as worthless. The chairman of Ideanomics is Wu.
The manager of DBOT-I LLC was listed as John Hynansky. The car dealer is a Biden pal with extensive Ukrainian ties who had lent Biden’s shady brother half a million dollars and had received $20 million in government loans to start a Porsche luxury car dealership in the Ukraine.
Biden’s vaunted foreign policy expertise has consisted of brokering deals between family members, donors, and foreign interests. These deals haven’t been good for America, but they’ve worked out very well for members of his crooked family, as well as assorted donors, camp followers, and local boys.
But his biggest deal was helping broker the Chinese takeover of the American entertainment industry.
Xi’s visit to Los Angeles hit on all the right cultural notes. He schmoozed Hollywood bigwigs and their errand boys, like Dodd and Biden, he watched a Lakers game, and cheered Obama’s 100,000 Strong China initiative to have a hundred thousand American students study in the Communist dictatorship.
"I can say with confidence my visit has been a full success," Xi declared.
In China, culture serves the agenda of the Communist government. Unlike the Russians, who struggled vainly to stem the impact of American culture, their Chinese counterparts decided to control it at the source. Biden was a key figure in negotiating the terms on which the PRC would control Hollywood.
In 1962, the Manchurian Candidate depicted an effort by Communists in China, Russia, and elsewhere to kidnap and brainwash American soldiers. The modern remake replaced the Communists with a corporation and the Chinese doctor with a South African geneticist. China could not be offended.
While Biden, Katzenberg, and Xi were partying at the Marriot, human rights protesters were calling for freedom, and being arrested by the henchmen of a one-party Democrat city and state for their trouble.
Even while Biden was falsely claiming that the Hollywood sellout would improve human rights in China, the rise of China was already violating human rights in America. Now, as Chinese drones fly over American cities, police stalk empty streets, social media monopolies monitor every single phone, and Democrat officials dismiss the Bill of Rights while locking up millions of people, our rights are gone.

And Joe Biden is the Manchurian Candidate who long ago sold out the country he now seeks to rule.

JUST FOLLOW THE DIRTY RED CHINA MONEY RIGHT INTO THEIR GREEDY TRAITORS’ POCKETS.

"The Chinese Communist Party's vision for the future is global domination," Cruz said. "Unfortunately, Joe Biden isn't even aware that a battle is waging. After decades in Washington, he has dismissed China over and over again and has allowed his family to make money off their tyranny and deception. The United States can prevail in this contest of nations so long as we have a president — like President Trump  — who is willing to stand up to China and hold them accountable."

After Feinstein was elected to the Senate in 1992, Blum continued profiting off their ties to China. A the same time, the freshman lawmaker was pitching herself as a “China hand” to colleagues, even once claiming “that in my last life maybe I was Chinese.” HARIS ALIC



Ted Cruz Describes Joe Biden's 'Sophisticated Corruption'
 Cortney O'Brien
"Remember simpler times when corruption was just $10,000 in a paper bag handed secretly under a table in a smoky bar in Washington?" Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reminisced on Sunday.
"Corruption sadly has gotten much more sophisticated in Washington," Cruz continued in his conversation with Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. "With Joe Biden there is just a lot of questions about his family enriching themselves in order to get policy decisions from Joe Biden."
A lot of this year's impeachment trial focused on Hunter Biden and his conduct in Ukraine, where he sat on the board of a corrupt gas company. They paid him $1 million a year.
"I don't know about you but I've never had a Ukrainian gas company call me up and say, 'Hey come serve on our board of directors,'" Cruz said. "That's kind of out there."
Which is strange, Cruz noted, because Hunter didn't speak Ukrainian and the only thing he probably knows about gas is that he routinely filled up the gas tank in his car. They only cared who his daddy was.
Cruz then repeated President Trump's claim that Hunter got greedy and asked for $1.5 billion from China when he accompanied his dad on a trip to Beijing in 2013. According to Trump and others, Hunter negotiated a deal to create a joint-investment fund between his company, Rosemont Seneca, and a Chinese state-run bank. Wanting influence with the vice president, they reportedly gave him the money.
President Trump: "China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine. So, I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens."
"They've gotten sophisticated in this shakedown," Cruz said of the Bidens.
The senator alleged that Biden's weak position on China has tainted his foreign policy agenda. Murtaugh asked Cruz to expand on Biden's history of siding with China and dismissing the CCP as a threat on the 2020 campaign trail, all of which has earned him the nickname, "Beijing Biden."
"The Chinese Communist Party's vision for the future is global domination," Cruz said. "Unfortunately, Joe Biden isn't even aware that a battle is waging. After decades in Washington, he has dismissed China over and over again and has allowed his family to make money off their tyranny and deception. The United States can prevail in this contest of nations so long as we have a president — like President Trump  — who is willing to stand up to China and hold them accountable."
Biden also accused President Trump of being "racist" and "xenophobic" when he banned travel to and from China in January when we first learned of the coronavirus. The former VP would backtrack on those remarks and eventually come to find that Trump was right. It was one of Biden's signature flip flops.

"In what universe is Joe Biden going to be able to do stand up with strength, with fortitude, and combat China?" Cruz wondered.

Hong Kong Police Fire Tear Gas, Water Cannon at Protesters


Protesters gesture with five fingers, signifying the "Five demands - not one less" as they march along a downtown street during a pro-democracy protest against Beijing's national security legislation in Hong Kong, Sunday, May 24, 2020. Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp has sharply criticised China's move to enact national security legislation …
HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong police fired tear gas and a water cannon at protesters in a popular shopping district Sunday, as thousands took to the streets to march against China’s move to impose national security legislation on the city.
Pro-democracy supporters have sharply criticized a proposal, set to be approved by China’s rubber-stamp parliament this week, that would ban secessionist and subversive activity, as well as foreign interference, in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
The pro-democracy camp says the proposal goes against the “one country, two systems” framework that promises Hong Kong freedoms not found in mainland China.
Crowds of demonstrators dressed in black gathered in the Causeway Bay district on Sunday, chanting slogans such as “Stand with Hong Kong,” “Liberate Hong Kong” and “Revolution of our times.”
The protest was a continuation of a monthslong pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong that began last year and has at times descended into violence between police and protesters.
Police raised blue flags, warning protesters to disperse, before firing multiple rounds of tear gas. They later fired a water cannon at the demonstrators.
At least 180 people were arrested, mostly on charges of unlawful assembly, police said.
They also said that some of the protesters threw bricks and splashed unidentified liquid at officers, injuring at least four members of the police media liaison team. They warned that such behavior is against the law and that police would pursue the matter.
Earlier in the afternoon, prominent activist Tam Tak-chi was arrested during the protest for what police said was unauthorized assembly. Tam said he was giving a “health talk” and was exempt from social-distancing measures that prohibit gatherings of more than eight people.
The bill that triggered Sunday’s rally was submitted at the opening of China’s national legislative session on Friday. It would bypass Hong Kong’s legislature and could allow mainland agencies to be set up in the city, sparking concern that Chinese agents could arbitrarily arrest people for activities deemed to be pro-democracy.
Speaking at an annual news conference during the legislative session, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Sunday that Hong Kong affairs were an internal matter for China, and that “no external interference will be tolerated.”
“Excessive unlawful foreign meddling in Hong Kong affairs has placed China’s national security in serious jeopardy,” Wang said, adding that the proposed legislation “does not affect the high degree of autonomy in Hong Kong.”
“It does not affect the rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents. And it does not affect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors in Hong Kong,” he said.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called the proposal “a death knell for the high degree of autonomy” that Beijing promised the former British colony when it was returned to China in 1997.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong prior to its handover to China, lamented what he called “a new Chinese dictatorship.”
“I think the Hong Kong people have been betrayed by China, which has proved once again that you can’t trust it further than you can throw it,” Patten said in an interview with The Times of London.
Patten is leading a coalition of at least 204 international lawmakers and policymakers who are decrying the proposed legislation. In a statement, the coalition called it a “flagrant breach” of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, a 1984 treaty that promised Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy even after the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said it appeared that China was violating the 1984 treaty.
“And I can’t see how Hong Kong remains the Asian financial center if the Chinese Communist Party goes through and implements this national security law and takes over Hong Kong,” O’Brien said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“That would be a tragedy for the people of Hong Kong, but it will also be very bad for China,” he said.
Bernard Chan, a top-level Hong Kong politician and delegate to the National People’s Congress in Beijing, defended the national security legislation pushed by China, saying it was written into Hong Kong’s Basic Law — the city’s mini-constitution — but never enacted.
Chan expressed concern that Hong Kong would inevitably face economic hardship given trade frictions between the U.S. and China.
“I think we are definitely the collateral damage being dragged into this thing. But then, I don’t think there’s any alternatives,” he said.
“But with or without this law, honestly, the U.S. and China are always going to be continuing this loggerhead for quite some time to come,” Chan said. “China will remain as a threat to the U.S. in terms of the … world economic dominance.”
___
Associated Press journalist Dake Kang in Beijing contributed to this report.
DO YOU EVER GET SICK AND TIRED OF HOLLYWEIRDERS LIKE CHER AND BARBRA STREISAND GIVING US THE MORAL LOWDOWN? 
THEY'RE ALL STEP-CHILDREN OF HARVEY PERV WEINSTEIN AND SHOULD KEEP THEIR FAT MOUTHS SHUT EVEN WITH THEIR PROMOTING THEIR ALBUMS OR FILMS!

Ousted Hollywood exec is charged with looting $1.7M from coronavirus small business loan program and diverting $25M from BlackRock hedge fund to pay for his Beverly Hills mansion and Tesla

  • William Sadleir, 66, was arrested by federal agents on Friday in Los Angeles
  • He was ousted as CEO of small movie studio Aviron Pictures last fall
  • Feds say he pilfered $1.7 million in PPP loans with phony applications
  • Sadleir allegedly used the money to pay off credit cards and car loan
  • He is also accused of using BlackRock investment to buy Beverly Hills mansion 
  • Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
William Sadleir, 66, was arrested on Friday in Los Angeles on federal charges
U.S. prosecutors have charged the recently ousted owner of a Hollywood movie distributor with defrauding a federal coronavirus emergency relief program and a BlackRock investment fund, including to pay for a Beverly Hills mansion and other luxuries.
William Sadleir, 66, was arrested on Friday in Los Angeles after federal prosecutors said he diverted much of the $1.7 million of loans he received on May 1 from the Paycheck Protection Program for personal expenses.
Prosecutors say he filed a phony loan application with JPMorgan Chase & Co and the Small Business Administration saying the emergency funds were needed for his former company Aviron Group, which had terminated him in December and where he has no current role.
Aviron's films have included Halle Berry's Kidnap, Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway's Serenity, and A Private War starring Rosamund Pike. 
The PPP was meant 'to help small businesses stay afloat during the financial crisis, and we will act swiftly against those who abuse the program for their own personal gain,' U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna in Los Angeles said in a statement.
Sadleir was ousted late last year as CEO of Aviron Pictures, whose credits include Halle Berry's Kidnap and Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway's Serenity
Prosecutors say that Sadleir used the PPP funds to pay off his and his wife's American Express cards and make a $40,000 payment on a car loan. 
Sadleir was also accused of having previously induced the closed-end BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust Fund to invest $75 million in Aviron to support its films.
Prosecutors said he then created a sham company to divert at least $25 million of the money, and assumed the fake identity 'Amanda Stevens' to communicate by email with the BlackRock fund about its investment.
In a related civil case, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Sadleir's 'lavish lifestyle' also included a $127,000 Tesla.
In February, the BlackRock executive who approved the $75 million investment in Aviron was fired for conflict of interest after it emerged that the studio had cast his aspiring actress daughter in a movie.
BlackRock exec Randy Robertson (standing left with Sadleir) was fired after approving at $75 million loan to Aviron Studios, which later cast his daughter Rebecca Lee Robertson (right)
Randy Robertson was let go by BlackRock in light of the claims, leaving the fund scrambling to take 'vigorous steps to recover value for shareholders' and 'enhance the level of oversight and due diligence related to these type of transactions'.  
According to The Wall Street Journal, Robertson loaned the $75 million sum to Aviron Pictures in 2017. Two years later, the film studio released the romantic drama, After, starring the fund manager's actress daughter, Rebecca Lee Robertson.  
At the time of the loan, BlackRock Multi-Sector Income Trust had $750 million in assets, so it appeared 'an unusually aggressive bet' to funnel 10 percent of that sum into Aviron, a 'small, privately held movie company'.
Sadleir told the Journal that Robertson agreed to release $10 million in financing for the romantic drama, After, when he learned that Aviron had finally cast his daughter in a film. 
'I can't tell you that he made the decision purely because his daughter was in the movie, but I can tell you BlackRock approved that financing after turning down the opportunity to finance several earlier movies,' Sadleir said. 
After, released last year, has a 17 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and was panned by Variety as 'an innocuous teen pulp soap opera'. 
Sadleir is a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and a deputy secretary of state who later moved into the indie movie business.
A lawyer for Sadleir could not immediately be identified. A BlackRock spokesman declined to comment.
The BlackRock fund had $574 million of assets as of May 21, and normally invests most assets in debt and loans. It sued Sadleir for fraud in a New York state court in December.
Sadleir is charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, making false statements to a financial institution, and making false statements to the Small Business Administration. 
Sadleir faces up to 82 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
Anyone with information about fraud related to COVID-19 can report it by calling the Justice Department’s Disaster Fraud Hotline at 866-720-5721. 

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