The 'let's try it again' leftist balloon PR blitz
Suddenly, U.S. president Joe Biden and Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, are decisively shooting down new "UFOs" that purportedly wandered into their national airspace. They are doing so with personal verve and command, displaying their sudden prowess as defenders of their nation's respective airspace borders. Don't believe it.
The manner in which the press releases were written indicates that the writers went out of their way to make the story about the president and prime minister, and about their newfound leadership, as well as positioning NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) as suddenly now on top of its game.
NBC declared, in its headline story, "Trudeau ordered takedown of unidentified object in Canadian airspace," that "Canada's leader" had bravely ordered fighters to intercept a UFO. American and Canadian military aircraft were "scrambled" and "successfully shot the object down." NBC then reports: "'I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,' Trudeau tweeted" (evidently with a commanding pair of thumbs on his iPhone).
The Biden report by the New York Times was even more determined to get the P.R. message right: "The Friday shootdown showed Mr. Biden taking direct and forceful action far more quickly."
In public relations, these are traditional ways of engaging in "bridge and spin" topic management, by overwhelming their prior failures as commanders in chief with sudden, and convenient, opportunities to replay their previous responses, with rewritten and crafted acts and statements. Modern electoral government is a highly scripted activity; it is not an institutional culture that is inherently poised for spontaneous action.
This is the great risk that the public faces with elected leaders who are otherwise merely legacy political ideologues like Trudeau or proxies like Biden: when actual national security requires actual civilian leadership, they are unprepared or unqualified, or both. They are not trained in leadership or military operations or strategy. They are completely dependent, especially in Biden's case, given his obvious mental dysfunction, on an unorganized cabal of various advisers and handlers. And those political appointees are not directing their attention to national leadership or national security or national defense, but to private interests that can be affected through government institutional manipulation. For them, national security is merely national theater.
I'm not saying that various objects may not have been intercepted in national airspace. What I am saying is that it is possible, and meaningfully probable, that these are crafted or embellished stories designed to assuage the critics of two obviously compromised civilian commanders. Moreover, a "UFO" in this context may be "unidentified," but it is not unidentifiable. All flying objects can be identified. They may be, or may remain, "unidentified" to the public, but to the military, and to military commercial contractors, they all fit in one of several traditional categories of operations.
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung wrote clinically on the UFO phenomenon back in the early 1960s, not in flattering language, concerning their representation as psychic phenomena beyond what physical properties they may possess. In the case of North America's political leadership, the "unidentified object" is indeed the symbol of their vacancy in command and capacity.
Matthew G. Andersson is a former executive adviser in the Aerospace and Defense practice of Booz Allen Hamilton and is a jet-rated airline transport pilot. He has testified to the U.S. Senate on aircraft in the National Airspace System.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
'They Could Literally Starve Us': Republicans Push To Ban China From Purchasing US Farmland
Effort gains steam as lawmakers look to retaliate against Beijing over spy balloon
House Republicans are pushing to bar any person or business associated with the Chinese Communist Party from purchasing agricultural land in the United States, an effort gaining traction on the Hill as lawmakers look to retaliate against China over its spy-balloon incursion.
Reps. Dan Newhouse (R., Wash.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), alongside more than 40 cosponsors, last week proposed legislation that would prohibit any purchase of public or private agricultural real estate in the United States and its territories by "nonresident aliens, foreign businesses, or any agent, trustee, or fiduciary associated with the Government of the People's Republic of China."
The legislation, known as the Prohibition of Agricultural Land for the People's Republic of China Act, would also bar those entities from involvement in Department of Agriculture programs.
Ownership of U.S. farmland by CCP-connected individuals and companies has risen more than 20-fold since 2010, Fox Business reported, accounting for at least 383,000 acres worth billions of dollars. Newhouse warned that China's investments in other countries' food supplies have enabled Beijing to exert control over those countries—a strategy China is likely pursuing in the United States.
"Imagine if the Chinese Communist Party had just one of the links of our food supply chain under their control, how quickly they could literally starve us," Newhouse told the Washington Free Beacon. "In other countries they make investments, build infrastructure, control sources of agricultural products. … We don't want to see that happen in the United States of America."
The legislation comes as House members on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Chinese government's deployment of a spy balloon over America, calling it a "brazen violation of United States sovereignty." The high-profile instance of Chinese interference has prompted lawmakers in states such as Montana and North Dakota to consider resolutions to outlaw land purchases by foreign entities. In Washington, D.C., alarm over the spy balloon could put necessary steam behind the land purchase legislation, which Newhouse first proposed in May but which died in the last Congress.
The Senate is considering a similar bill, introduced last week by Sens. Mike Rounds (R., S.D.) and Jon Tester (D., Mont.), that would ban China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran from owning U.S. farmland.
While China owns just a fraction of all U.S. farmland, Republicans warn that Beijing can still wreak havoc by controlling key segments of the U.S. food supply chain. For example, Virginia-based pork giant Smithfield Foods, which employs tens of thousands of Americans, is wholly owned by a Chinese conglomerate that is the largest meat producer in China.
China's purchase of U.S. farmland has also raised alarms among military leadership. The Chinese company Fufeng Group bought 370 acres of land 12 miles from an Air Force base in eastern North Dakota, a purchase that "presents a significant threat to national security," the Air Force last month told Sen. John Hoeven (R., N.D.). The Grand Fork City Council, citing the national security risk, on Monday voted unanimously to block the Chinese company from opening a corn mill on the property.
"To allow China, governed by the Chinese Communist Party, to acquire farmland near and around key military and otherwise strategic areas of the United States, is as dumb as it gets," said Rep. David Rouzer (R., N.C.), who cosponsored the Republican legislation.
In 2020, China Privately Told Biden Ally They Wanted Joe To Win
The Chinese Communist Party was pulling for Joe Biden to win the 2020 presidential election, according to former president Barack Obama's ambassador to China.
Max Baucus, who is on the payroll of several CCP-connected firms, said in an interview with Politico published Friday that CCP officials were optimistic about Biden softening relations between the United States and China.
"I had some very good Chinese friends—high up in the government—and I talked to them before the [2020] election, and they said they hoped Biden would win the election and not [Donald] Trump," Baucus said. "Why? Because they said, 'We could deal with Biden.' They thought because he's steeped in foreign policy and he was chairman of that Foreign Relations Committee, he's reasonable, whereas … you never know where Trump is going to go."
Few former senior government officials have closer ties to the CCP than Baucus, who runs a consulting firm for Chinese companies and serves on the board of Alibaba, a Chinese tech company. Baucus was a vocal critic of Trump's policies toward China, even appearing on Chinese state television to bash the administration's policies. While vice president, Biden advocated for Baucus's appointment as ambassador to China, likely prompting Baucus to endorse Biden's 2020 presidential bid.
Baucus told Politico that although Chinese government officials favored Biden during the 2020 campaign, they've now "changed their mind." Following Biden's win, Baucus said, the CCP concluded that "Biden's rhetoric isn't as anti-China as Trump's, but his policies are more anti-China than Trump's."
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