THE DOCTRINE OF THE N.A.F.T.A. GLOBALIST DEMOCRATS IS TO SERVE THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WITH ENDLESS WAVES OF INVADING 'CHEAP' LABOR SUBSIDIZED WITH WELFARE FUNDED BY TAXES ON MIDDLE AMERICA.
In many speeches, Mayorkas says he is building a mass migration system to deliver workers to wealthy employers and investors and “equity” to poor foreigners. The nation’s border laws are subordinate to elites’ opinion about “the values of our country,” Mayorkas claims.
When Harry Reid passed away, we heard glowing reports from most of the media and politicians about how great he was.
Obama said some very nice things. He forgot to say that he wouldn't have been President without Reid's despicable act of spreading an intentional lie that Romney had not paid taxes for ten years. The lie was like the fictional Russian dossier used to destroy Trump.
Reid was not ashamed of the lie. He said, “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
No one should celebrate a despicable liar who was willing to destroy someone with a lie in order to win.
Former President Barack Obama said following the death of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday that he wouldn't be president were it not for the Nevada senator's "encouragement and support."
President Joe Biden praised former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who died on Tuesday at age 82, for being one of the "all-time great Senate Majority Leaders."
What he's saying: Biden noted in a statement that "for Harry, it wasn't about power for power’s sake. It was about the power to do right for the people."
The media, Obama and Biden also had great things to say about KKK leader Robert Byrd when he died.
They forgot to mention that he was a KKK leader who filibustered the Civil Rights Act.
I did not hear anyone talk about systemic racism, white privilege, or white supremacists when the former KKK leader died.
President Obama on the Loss of Senator Robert Byrd: "A Voice of Principle and Reason"
I was saddened to hear this morning that the people of West Virginia have lost a true champion, the United States Senate has lost a venerable institution, and America has lost a voice of principle and reason with the passing of Robert C. Byrd.
Senator Byrd’s story was uniquely American. He was born into wrenching poverty, but educated himself to become an authoritative scholar, respected leader, and unparalleled champion of our Constitution. He scaled the summit of power, but his mind never strayed from the people of his beloved West Virginia. He had the courage to stand firm in his principles, but also the courage to change over time.
We saw stories about how Reid rose from rags to riches yet somehow, they forgot to mention that the way he enriched himself and his family was through abusing his power as a Senator and pure corruption. He did not get rich producing anything, leading a company, or through astute investing. He gave political favors for kickbacks
Reid was much worse and more dangerous than a common thief, yet the Justice Department and most Democrats obviously didn't care. He was above the law.
You’d never know it from the mainstream media puff pieces of Harry Reid’s sudden retirement, but it was a long string of corruption scandals—including a recent one involving his attorney son—that drove the veteran Nevada senator to abruptly leave public office.
For nearly a decade Judicial Watch has investigated and exposed Reid’s involvement in a multitude of transgressions and JW even warned the Senate Ethics Committee, but not surprisingly, no action was ever taken. On multiple occasions the Senate minority leader appeared on JW’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” list for his role in a number of political scandals that got more serious as his seniority and clout in Congress increased.
As far back as 2006 Reid was in hot water for violating Senate rules by concealing a seven-figure payoff on a suspicious land deal orchestrated by a longtime friend known for political bribery and mob ties. The influential senator secretly collected a $1.1 million profit on land he hadn’t personally owned for years. To hide the deal, Reid transferred ownership, legal liability and tax consequences to a company owned by a former casino lawyer who has been investigated by federal authorities.
It is no wonder that there is so much corruption by powerful politicians throughout the country when most of the media doesn't care, as long as they support their policies. They have never cared about the pure corruption of the Clintons and Bidens. They buried the stories of how they and their families went from rags to riches because of corruption as they supported them for higher office.
We should celebrate people like Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, or Dolly Parton as they rose from poverty. We should not respect any politician who rose out of poverty through corruption
These politicians pretend they care about the poor, middle class, and minorities while they focus a huge amount of effort on enriching themselves.
One of the most corrupt of all has been Obama.
Google effectively had an office in the White House and they, along with Netflix, Facebook, and Twitter, were rewarded handsomely with Net Neutrality which saved those powerful companies huge amounts of money.
Those wealthy companies then use their power to destroy others, stifle speech, campaign for the leftist agenda, and bury stories such as the Biden corruption. They are extremely dangerous for our democracy, freedom, and prosperity.
Google and its affiliates have had at least 427 meetings at the White House during President Obama’s tenure, according data from the Campaign for Accountability and The Intercept.
The data, gleaned from White House meeting logs, showed that in all, 169 Google employees have met in the White House with 182 government officials. Not surprisingly, Google’s head of public policy, Johanna Shelton, had the most White House meetings of any Google employee, with 128.
After Obama left office, he was rewarded by Netflix with tens of millions of dollars despite having no experience or content. The media not only didn’t care about this pure greed and questionable contract, but they also cheered.
The media and other Democrats are always complaining about too much money in elections and like campaign donation limits. But somehow, they don't care when Soros, unions, Planned Parenthood, environmentalists, and Facebook's Zuckerburg spend massive amount of money to influence people to vote for Democrats.
Michelle Obama was promoted to vice president for external affairs [at the University of Chicago Hospital] in March 2005, two months after her husband took office in the Senate. According to a tax return released by the senator this week, the promotion nearly tripled her income from the hospitals from $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005.
Once, Michelle got her huge raise, the Obamas could afford the mansion and land they coveted. They achieved their goal with the help of a crooked land deal involving criminal political operative Tony Rezko.
In 2008, the media didn’t care about Obama, or Biden’s history or corruption as they campaigned for them. They spent their time trying to destroy McCain and Palin.
In 2005, at a time Rezko was under federal investigation of influence peddling in former Illinois Gov. Blagojevich's administration, then-Sen. Obama and Rezko's wife Rita bought adjacent pieces of property from a Chicago doctor. Rezko would later be convicted of 16 of 24 counts of influence peddling.
The doctor sold one parcel to Obama for $1.65 million, $300,000 below the asking price, while Rezko's wife paid full price, $625.000, for the adjacent vacant lot.
Six months later, the Obamas paid Rezko's wife $104,500 for a 10-foot wide strip of her land to create a bigger yard and ensure a greater measure of privacy.
For the next three years, as most of the media has a lovefest with the Obamas about how great they are, people should remember how corrupt they truly are.
They should also remember that:
It was Obama’s corrupt IRS that violated the constitutional rights of his political opponents.
It was Obama’s corrupt NSA that illegally spied on thousands.
It was Obama’s corrupt EPA, CFPB, and Justice Department that shook down corporations and established slush funds to give kickbacks to leftist groups.
Then those groups promoted Democrat policies, campaigned for, and donated to Democrats. That is pure corruption.
It was the corrupt Obama who dictatorially ordered the corrupt Justice Department to stop investigating drug running terrorists to appease Iran. Where were the whistleblowers complaining about interference into the “independent” justice department.
It was the corrupt Obama who shipped $1.8 billion in unmarked bills (taxpayer money) as kickbacks to Iranian tyrants who pledge death to America.
It was the corrupt Obama who utilized the corrupt Justice Department and other federal agencies to illegally target Trump with lies while protecting the corrupt, criminal Hillary from prosecution. This criminal activity dwarfed Watergate, yet most of the media not only didn’t care, but they also participated in spreading the lies. These actions were the greatest threat to our democracy in my lifetime of 68 years.
If we had an honest Justice Department, they would put away corrupt politicians and other criminals instead of going after political opponents based on fictitious information.
If we had an honest media, they would seek to dispose of corrupt politicians instead of campaigning for many of them while intentionally burying stories of the corruption to hide it from the public.
The interference by domestic media outlets in our elections is much more dangerous than anything Russia, China, or Iran have done.
According to analysis published by the Miami Herald, Trump flew with Epstein six more times between Palm Beach and New York City than had been previously known. The records show that Bill Clinton flew with Epstein 26 times, 15 more than instances had been previously known. These facts have been barely reported or referred to in media coverage of the trial.
HILLARY & BILLARY: GLOBAL LOOTERS OF THE POOR!
Clinton Foundation Exposed | Over 14 Billion Confiscated!
After five days of deliberation, a jury in a New York City federal court found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty late Wednesday on five of six counts connected with the child sex-trafficking operations of the deceased billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell, the 60-year-old daughter of British media mogul Robert Maxwell, was sitting at the corner of the defense table when the jurors entered the courtroom shortly after 5 p.m. and presented their decision to Judge Alison Nathan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The judge read the verdict aloud: guilty of conspiracy to entice a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, transporting a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors and sex trafficking of minors.
The defendant was acquitted of the charge two of enticing a minor to travel across state lines to engage in an illegal sexual act. Counts one, three and five carry maximum sentences of five years each, count four a maximum of 10 years and count six—sex trafficking of minors—a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison. Judge Nathan has not yet determined a sentencing date.
Maxwell pleaded not guilty to all charges after she was arrested and jailed in July 2020, 11 months after her former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell under suspicious circumstances on August 10, 2019. Epstein—who had pleaded guilty to procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18 in 2008—had been arrested and charged a month before his death with sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors.
It was widely known within ruling-class circles for more than 20 years that the wealthy investment advisor Jeffrey Epstein was hosting social gatherings at his residences in New York City; Palm Beach, Florida; Paris; New Mexico and his private island in the Caribbean that included sex with underage girls. These events included all-expenses paid travel on Epstein’s private jet and attracted the participation of dozens of high-profile bourgeois figures such as former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., US Senator George Mitchell and Prince Andrew, all of whom have denied participating in the sexual abuse of minors.
While the four-week trial and conviction of Maxwell is being reported as a reckoning by the criminal justice system with the monstrous abuse of underage girls by Jeffrey Epstein and his elite social circle, it has not revealed the full extent of the participation of others within the US and around the world in his sex ring.
Clearly, the jury accepted as truthful the testimony of the prosecution witnesses—some of whom testified under assumed names to avoid being publicly identified—who were as young as 14 years old when that they were befriended and groomed for sexual liaisons with Jeffrey Epstein and others by Maxwell in the early- to mid-1990s. As was articulated by prosecutor Alison Moe during closing arguments: “Ms. Maxwell was a sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing. She manipulated her victims and groomed them for sexual abuse.”
The verdict was also a repudiation of Maxwell’s claims that she was being unfairly blamed for Epstein’s crimes and that the testimony of the abuse victims was inconsistent and unreliable. The jury did not accept the defense claim that accusers were motivated by the opportunity to collect money from Maxwell and Epstein’s estate. Maxwell’s personal wealth is estimated at $20 million, and the Jeffrey Epstein Victim Fund has paid out more than $120 million to more than 135 individuals to date.
It is also clear that the corporate media has deliberately muted its coverage and shown little to no interest in exploring important new facts that have emerged from the trial. For example, the 118 pages of flight logs between 1991 and 2006 that were entered into evidence during the trial show far more about who was traveling and how often they traveled with Epstein than has been previously revealed.
Although prosecutors had attempted to redact some of the information contained on these handwritten records, Judge Nathan insisted a less redacted version be published. According to analysis published by the Miami Herald, Trump flew with Epstein six more times between Palm Beach and New York City than had been previously known. The records show that Bill Clinton flew with Epstein 26 times, 15 more than instances had been previously known. These facts have been barely reported or referred to in media coverage of the trial.
To some extent, the wealthy and powerful associates of the couple are heaving, at least temporarily, a sigh of relief that the trial of Maxwell has ended with a conviction. From their standpoint, the less new information that is published and discussed about the activities of Epstein and his cohort of elites the better.
The fact remains that Epstein and Maxwell were the leaders of a worldwide sex ring that had many participants who believe they can avoid prosecution and that the full extent of their collaboration in criminal abuse of young girls will never be known publicly.
It is a widely held view that Epstein did not commit suicide in his jail cell in 2019, as determined by the New York medical examiner, but was murdered to ensure that he could never reveal details of the participation of his friends in high places in the sex trafficking operation. While the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell has pushed the door open ever so slightly on the depraved activities of the rich and famous within capitalist society, much more remains to be revealed and many more are yet to be exposed and held accountable.
Maxwell verdict bodes ill for Prince Andrew’s civil case
Prince Andrew wasn’t on trial in the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking case but her conviction is bad news for the man who is ninth in line to the British throne
Maxwell verdict bodes ill for Prince Andrew’s civil caseBy DANICA KIRKAAssociated PressThe Associated PressLONDON
LONDON (AP) — Prince Andrew wasn’t on trial in the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking case, but her conviction is bad news for the man who is ninth in line to the British throne.
With the conclusion of the Maxwell case, attention will now turn to a U.S. civil suit in which the plaintiff alleges Maxwell and long-time boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein took her to London, New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands to have sex with Andrew when she was underage.
Andrew denies the allegations, but Wednesday’s verdict shows that at least one American jury was willing to believe the young women trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell in a criminal case, where the standard of proof is higher than in civil cases.
“To the extent there’s overlap of evidence with respect to Prince Andrew’s case, it certainly doesn’t bode well,’’ said Bradley Simon, a former U.S. federal prosecutor who now works as a defense attorney in complex civil cases. “But, as I said, every case hinges on its own specific facts and the judges will always instruct the jury on that.”
Maxwell was convicted Wednesday of sex trafficking and conspiracy charges after a monthlong trial in New York.
While U.S. criminal cases must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, civil defendants can be ordered to pay financial damages if they are found responsible based on a preponderance of the evidence.
The verdict is problematic for Andrew because he has long been friends with Maxwell, daughter of the late rags-to-riches media tycoon Robert Maxwell. Even after Epstein was charged with sex crimes, Andrew failed to distance himself from her.
Those links have already diminished the prince’s standing.
Andrew was forced to give up his duties as a working member of the royal family after a disastrous 2019 interview with the BBC that only increased public concern about his ties to Epstein and Maxwell. The prince was widely criticized for his explanation of why he maintained contact with Epstein after the financier was accused of sexual misconduct and for failing to show empathy for Epstein’s victims.
Although the Maxwell trial didn’t offer any sensational new allegations about Andrew, it once again reminds people about the sordid allegations and weakens his standing with the public, said Chris Scott of Slateford, a London law firm that specializes in reputational issues.
“It just adds credibility to the accounts of people,’’ Scott told The Associated Press. “You have a criminal court finding now in the U.S. supporting that there was the trafficking going on. In a sense, it becomes much harder for people to run the angle that this is all made up when you do have that credibility building up. So I think that that will be very problematic for him.”
The civil suit against Andrew was filed last August by Virginia Giuffre, who says she was 17 when she was flown to London to have sex with Andrew at Maxwell’s house in Belgravia, an upscale neighborhood that is home to many foreign embassies and wealthy expatriates. Other encounters with Andrew occurred at Epstein’s homes in Manhattan and the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to her lawsuit.
Giuffre, who wasn’t part of the criminal case, has described Maxwell as a “Mary Poppins” figure who made young girls feel comfortable as they were lured into Epstein’s web.
It was at Maxwell’s home in London that a photo of Andrew with his arm around Giuffre’s waist is alleged to have been taken — an image that has long been central to Giuffre’s allegations. In the BBC interview, Andrew suggested the image had been faked.
“I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady,’’ he said. “None whatsoever.’’
Given the high stakes for Andrew, one question surrounding the civil suit is whether it will ever get to trial. Gloria Allred, who represents a number of Epstein’s victims, told the BBC she expects the prince’s attorneys to file a series of procedural challenges to try to derail the case.
This strategy has already been on display.
Andrew initially denied that he had been legally served with court papers notifying him of the lawsuit. Then in October, his lawyers asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to throw out the suit, saying the prince never sexually abused Giuffre and that they believed she sued Andrew “to achieve another payday at his expense and at the expense of those closest to him.” Last week, they mounted another challenge, arguing that Giuffre’s lawsuit should be thrown out because she no longer lives in the U.S.
Andrew met Maxwell while she was studying history at the University of Oxford in the early 1980s.
Like her formidable and well-connected father, Ghislaine Maxwell became a master networker, building a long list of contacts in the world of wealth and power in which she grew up.
After graduating, she worked for the family publishing empire in a variety of roles. In 1991, at the age of 29, she became her father’s U.S. emissary after he bought the New York Daily News amid efforts to compete with fellow media tycoon — and New York Post owner — Rupert Murdoch.
Robert Maxwell died later that year when he fell off his yacht — the Lady Ghislaine — in the Canary Islands, an event some saw as an accident and others a suicide. Investors soon discovered that his wealth was an illusion: Maxwell had diverted hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies’ pension funds to prop up his publishing empire.
Soon after her father’s death, Ghislaine Maxwell was photographed sitting next to Epstein during a memorial event at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
Maxwell brought star power to her relationship with Epstein, and the two were soon attending parties with the likes of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Andrew would later invite Maxwell and Epstein to Windsor Castle and Sandringham, Queen Elizabeth II’s country estate.
“We are very disappointed with the verdict,’’ the family said in a statement on Wednesday. “We have already started the appeal tonight, and we believe that she will ultimately be vindicated.”
Andrew has in recent years sought to distance himself from Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Andrew told the BBC that he saw Epstein a maximum three times a year and sometimes stayed at one of his homes when he was in the U.S.
The prince said he stopped meeting with Epstein in 2006 after he became aware of a sexual abuse investigation that eventually led to the financier serving 13 months in jail. Andrew said he had one last meeting with Epstein in December 2010 to tell him they couldn’t remain in contact.
“It would be a considerable stretch to say that he was a very, very close friend,’’ Andrew said.
Joe Biden, the corrupt, unaccomplished 47-year career politician, with a reputation of having been a proud segregationist, an unabashed plagiarist and liar, a resolute tale-teller, and a serial flip-flopper, is pretending to head up a radical social-democratic ticket for President of the United States that includes as his running mate the ambitious, disagreeable junior senator fromCalifornia: Kamala Harris.
2021 was the year Communist China smashed the dream of freedom and democracy in Hong Kong, with only modest opposition from the civilized world.
The flicker of hope kindled by the 2019 protest movement was ruthlessly extinguished as decades-old newspapers and activist organizations were systematically dismantled by Beijing’s puppet government.
The massive 2019 protest movement was sparked by Hong Kong’s fear that a law making criminal extradition to China easier would damage the island’s autonomy, as laid out by the Basic Law established when the U.K. gave Hong Kong to China in 1997.
Pro-democracy protesters march on a street as they take part in a demonstration on December 8, 2019 in Hong Kong, China. (Photo by Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
The guiding principle of the Basic Law was “one country, two systems” – Hong Kong would have its own legislature, and its people would have freedoms unknown to the subjects of the regime in Beijing.
At the height of the protest movement in 2019, pro-democracy activists dreamed of increasing their autonomy and loosening Beijing’s grip on the Hong Kong government. The fifth of their famous “Five Demands” was universal suffrage, which would have allowed the people to vote for all legislators and the chief executive, instead of only half the seats in the legislature or LegCo.
In this Wednesday, July. 1, 2020 file photo, protesters against the new national security law gesture with five fingers, signifying the “Five demands – not one less” on the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China from Britain in Hong Kong. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
After failing to shut down the protest movement with police brutality, the puppet government in Hong Kong stepped aside and let Beijing impose a brutally totalitarian “national security law” on the island, bypassing its legislature and smashing the core tenet of Basic Law.
The law, which went into effect in June 2020, set the stage for 2021’s crackdown by criminalizing all opposition to the government as sedition and treason. Even the most reasonable criticism of human rights violations was suddenly deemed a threat to China’s national security. Critics of the regime were presumed to be “collaborating” with foreign powers and treated like enemy spies.
The national security law quickly strangled the protest movement, as demonstrators realized the gloves had come off and they would be punished as traitors and subversives for assembling in public. The law was viciously effective at shutting down student activist groups, the lifeblood of the protest movement. University administrations installed political officers and monitored the student body for any sign of dissent.
By the middle of 2021, hundreds of students had pulled out of Hong Kong universities as their parents made plans to flee overseas to escape the witch hunt. In September, the university system announced plans to forcibly “educate” students in the glories of the national security law at every level, from primary schools to college. This is tantamount to forcing the children of Hong Kong to listen to threats from the Chinese Communist Party for an hour a day during their entire academic careers.
The national security law was used as a cudgel to smash Hong Kong’s formerly vibrant pro-democracy media. Venerable anti-communist publication Apple Daily was forced to shut down in June. Incredibly heavy demand for its final issue was a final gesture of defiance from freedom-loving Hong Kongers, but the passing of Apple Daily also felt like a funeral for a friend.
A woman tries to take a picture of last issue of Apple Daily in front of a newspaper booth where people queue up to buy the newspaper at a downtown street in Hong Kong, Thursday, June 24, 2021. ( AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, 74, will probably spend the rest of his life in jail, along with some of his top executives. The government spent 2021 slapping them with one “sedition” charge after another, all the way through the last week in December. The Communists kept beating the corpse of Apple Daily until its parent company, Next Digital, was forced to liquidate. The message to other Hong Kongers who might dare to speak up for freedom and democracy was clear.
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai is one of Beijing’s fiercest critics (AFP Anthony WALLACE)
A similar playbook was followed in December to shut down Stand News, the last of Hong Kong’s major pro-democracy websites. One of the “charges” filed against Stand News under the national security law was that it committed an act of sedition by reporting on the abuse of protesters accused of sedition.
As with Next Digital, the Communist-controlled Hong Kong government stormed the offices of Stand News with hundreds of police officers and seized both its physical and financial assets, salting the earth and ensuring the site could never rise again.
The national security law was also used as a flamethrower to burn every trace of pro-democracy sentiment from the Hong Kong legislature.
The entire opposition quit LegCo en masse in November 2020, as new laws were passed enabling the puppet government to expel them without much in the way of due process. These outrages were justified on the grounds that pro-democracy legislators were committing treason and “sabotaging” the government by preventing legislation desired by Beijing from passing.
An obscene farce of an “election” was held in December 2021, with only loyal pro-Communist “patriots” permitted to run for office. Hongkongers stayed home in droves, protesting in the only way left to them. They should probably brace themselves for another mutation of the national security law that makes it illegal to refrain from voting in the next sham election. There are bills pending in LegCo that would force all Hongkongers to swear public vows of loyalty to Beijing.
The purge of pro-democracy voices from LegCo was accompanied by an assault on unions, culminating in the October breakup of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), the city’s largest independent trade union. HKCTU was threatened with prosecution under the national security law because its ties to an international trade union supposedly made it a “foreign agent” that was colluding with “foreign forces.”
Hong Kong’s largest teachers’ union also disbanded in 2021 after the Chinese Communist Party labeled it subversive for colluding with student protesters in 2019. A few hours after a Communist Party newspaper in China called the 50-year-old Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union (HKPTU) a “poisonous tumor” that should be cut out of city life, the Hong Kong Education Bureau withdrew its accreditation.
The Chinese Communist Party rounded out its year of horrors in Hong Kong by eliminating every trace of remembrance for the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, an atrocity the regime in Beijing is trying to erase from history.
Chinese citizens have long been forbidden to commemorate or discuss the brutal slaughter of student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square, but in autonomous Hong Kong, huge candlelight vigils were held every year and striking artworks were created to ensure the memory of the fallen would endure.
The vigils were decisively crushed in 2021, first by using the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to cancel them in the name of public health, and then by using the national security law to persecute the organizers as subversives. The Tiananmen Massacre Museum was stormed by police in September.
In late December, government thugs working under cover of darkness tore down the Pillar of Shame, a 26-foot-tall statue of Tiananmen Square victims that has been on display in Hong Kong for over 20 years. Disregarding its Danish creator’s claim of ownership, the statue was unceremoniously tossed into a storage container at the University of Hong Kong.
Other Hong Kong universities quickly followed suit and purged their own Tiananmen Square sculptures. International observers mourned the fall of the Pillar of Shame as not only the memory-holing of the massacre but also the death knell for academic freedom in Hong Kong – a chilling warning to students that nowhere on the island was safe for thinking unauthorized thoughts.
The Chinese Communist Party paid little price for its scorched-earth campaign against freedom and autonomy in Hong Kong. The British government complained about China’s violations of the 1997 handover agreement, declaring in December that “the erosion of liberty in Hong Kong is an affront to freedom and democracy,” but few concrete steps were taken against the oppressive Chinese government.
“Just over a year since the introduction of the national security law, the mainland Chinese and Hong Kong authorities have used the law and related institutions against all opposition, free press and civil society in Hong Kong,” said British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss when rolling out the latest grim six-month report on the oppression of Hong Kong.
Chinese officials offhandedly dismissed the report as a hypocritical effort to “create trouble in Hong Kong” and “contain China.” This is the language used by the Chinese Communist Party to deflect every human rights complaint, all the way up to genocide.
As long as foreign money keeps flowing through Hong Kong, as long as Beijing still gets the prestige of hosting the Olympics, Communist oppression will continue. Words can be ignored, just as memories can be erased and statues can be torn down.