Month: August 2022

Don’t throw the past away
You might need it some rainy day
Dreams can come true again
When everything old is new again

Lyrics by Peter Allen, 1974 

Some readers may be old enough to remember the so-called “witch hunt” of Communist party members and sympathizers during the 1950s.  In particular, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) is best remembered for claiming in 1950 that he had “a list of known Communists still working in the Department of State…(w)hen McCarthy became chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953, he launched a series of investigations into alleged subversion and espionage.”

“A special subcommittee investigated McCarthy’s charges and rejected them as ‘a fraud and a hoax.'” Further, “(i)n 1954 a confrontation with the army led to the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings, which tarnished McCarthy’s public image, undermined his charges, and prompted his censure by the U.S. Senate.”  

It has been dogma for many years that “McCarthyism” and the “Red Scare” of the 1950s led to the blacklisting of many innocent government workers, screenwriters and other citizens. “liberals and leftists held the high ground in the dispute over whether a communist conspiracy actually existed in the United States or was simply a by-product of ‘the paranoid style in American politics’…(t)here were rancorous divisions on the liberal-left in the 1950s over who was a spy and who was an accused innocent, who was a secret communist political operative and who was a straightforward fighter for social justice…In the upmarket universities and other places where the dominant form of polite liberalism thrived, the accusers, who had named names and had pointed out the communist spies, were scorned as despicable vermin. Among more mainstream scholars…the forces of domestic anti-communism were described largely as manifestations of social underdevelopment and popular irrationality, not legitimate concern.”  

In more recent years, it has been discovered that even a “paranoid” like Senator McCarthy had real enemies.  “In the 1940s, the (National Security Agency) NSA had a top-secret program called Venona which intercepted (and much later decoded) messages between Moscow and its American agents. The recent publication of a batch of Venona transcripts gives evidence that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were rife with communist spies and political operatives who reported, directly or indirectly, to the Soviet government, much as their anti-communist opponents charged. The Age of McCarthyism, it turns out, was not the simple witch hunt of the innocent by the malevolent as two generations of high school and college students have been taught.” 

Communist influence and subversion must have been a concern for the Truman Administration even before Senator McCarthy and his sensational allegations.  In 1947, President Truman signed Executive Order 9835, which required “a loyalty investigation of every person entering the…employment of any department or agency of the executive branch of the Federal Government,” and that “each department or agency shall appoint one or more loyalty boards…for the purpose of hearing loyalty cases arising within such department or agency and making recommendations with respect to the removal of any officer or employee of such department or agency on grounds relating to loyalty.”  

While Executive Order 9835 did not specifically require the signing of a “loyalty oath,” “In 1950, the California State Legislature enacted the Levering Act, requiring oaths of loyalty from all its employees.  The loyalty oath was suggested by Assemblyman Harold Levering.  It required all state employees to swear that they did not belong to or support any organization which wished to overthrow the state or federal government through the use of force or violence…it was aimed specifically at members of the Communist Party.”    Not to be undone, in 1949 the University of California instituted its own “Loyalty Oath,” an employment requirement that continues to the present time. 

“The Oath was met with resistance by some faculty members, with non-signers at Berkeley organising under the leadership of Professors Edward Tolman and Frank Newman in the first half of 1950…(f)ollowing a series of standoffs, deadline deferrals, and an ultimatum…(o)n June 23rd, 1950, the Board of Regents voted to fire 157 employees, both academic and non-academic, for their refusal to sign the Oath.  This number was soon reduced to 31, as many decided to sign the Oath after the Regents made their tenacity clear…” 

In 1949, the idea that academics should be forced to sign an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, and vow not to support the overthrown of the government, was met with general outrage and derision.  The President of Yale University, Charles Seymour, said that “(a)ny suggestion that we should employ here a procedure comparable to that required by the necessities of secret government work, and investigate the loyalty of our staff is utterly repugnant to my concept of a university.”  Likewise, the President of Smith College, Herbert Davis, said “Smith College has always welcomed diversity of opinion and has never been frightened by independent thinking on the part of its faculty or students. . . . I do not fear the influence of any extreme opinions in the academic world as much as I fear the attempt to stifle them and limit freedom of debate. .”

At that time, a Senior Member of Harvard, Grenville Clark, was quoted as saying “(Harvard) believes that the members of the faculties, in their capacity as citizens, have the same rights to express themselves as other citizens, and that those rights should not be restricted by the University by trying to keep `watch’ on professors or otherwise. . .”  Then there was the Chancellor of the University of Chicago, Robert M. Hutchins, who said “(i)f we apply any other test than competence in determining the qualifications of teachers, we shall find that pressures and prejudice will determine them, and today in many places, and if not today it may happen tomorrow, anti-Catholic or anti-Jewish campaigns may mean that teachers who belong to those churches will not be able to practice their professions. . .”  

Let us fast forward 73 years to the present day.  Are the leaders of the academic community still opposed to the concept of loyalty oaths?

The University of California has become “increasingly obsessed with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), they have used diversity statement requirements in increasingly invasive ways. Diversity statements at some UC schools are the first thing a search committee reviews. These diversity statements must be evaluated by top-down rigid rubrics. And if a candidate does not achieve a sufficiently high score, then that candidate is automatically eliminated from consideration. Diversity statements for many applicants are not just an additional factor — they are the only factor. At UC Berkeley, for instance, 76 percent of applicants were eliminated without considering the rest of their application… a written assessment of a prospective hire’s contributions to diversity will become a requirement. And within the next two years, these statements will be required not just of future hires but of all current faculty when they are evaluated for potential promotion, tenure, or pay increase.” 

UC is also “the first college system to become a charter member of an American Association for the Advancement of Science initiative aimed at systemically improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sciences…(u)nder the STEMM Equity Achievement (SEA) Change, participants will conduct in-depth data collection and self-assessments to identify DEI barrier for students, faculty, and staff members…(p)articipants must create a plan to address any equity issues discovered after conducting a self-assessment.” 

California is not the only state with a University dedicated to enforcing diversity.  At Indiana University, “(a) primary tool is to require all new faculty to fill out a ‘diversity statement.’ Candidates for faculty positions are required to describe exactly what they have done in their careers to support the goal of ‘equity’ especially combined with the undefined words ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion.’ Administrators now carefully comb through these statements to determine if a candidate supports the goals of diversity, inclusion and equity. If they are not sufficiently supportive of, or heaven forbid, are opposed to, these goals they will not be interviewed.” 

But not all College Professors are onboard with this new emphasis on diversity.  “Abigail Thompson, chair of University of California Davis’s math department, opposes diversity statements in California because they are inevitably political. She observes that politics reflects how you believe society should be organized. Her view…is that Americans should aspire to treat every person as a unique individual, not as a representative of their gender or their ethnic group. In contrast, a diversity statement is a loyalty oath to a political view that celebrates identity politics.”  

But Professor Thompson’s view is decidedly in the minority.  In fact, “(a) new report from the American Enterprise Institute found that nearly 20 percent of university faculty job listings require a pledge of support for diversity. ‘Across all 999 jobs [reviewed by the think tank], we find that 19 percent require diversity statements, while 68 percent include the terms ‘diversity’ or ‘diverse’ in some fashion, often as a way of describing the university environment,’ the report said.”  

As described by George Leef in Forbes, “instead of having to pledge support for America in its battle against communism, the new pledge is support to the ‘diversity’ agenda in its battle against a color-blind nation where people are evaluated on their own merits rather than group membership… (t)he diversity statement has a purpose. That purpose, writes…Professor Bruce Gilley of Portland State University, is to weed out non-leftist scholars.  At many universities, he explains, there is an unspoken ideology that ’emphasizes group identity, an assumption of group victimization, and a claim for group based entitlements.’ On the other hand, ‘Classical liberal approaches that emphasize the pluralism of a free society, the universalism of human experience, and the importance of equality before the law have been regarded as invalid.'” 

Just like President Truman, President Biden has issued his own Executive Order to insure loyalty – to diversity.  On his first day in office, Joe Biden stated that “(i)t is…the policy of my Administration that the Federal Government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.  Affirmatively advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our Government.  Because advancing equity requires a systematic approach to embedding fairness in decision-making processes, executive departments and agencies (agencies) must recognize and work to redress inequities in their policies and programs that serve as barriers to equal opportunity.”  Further, much like Truman’s “loyalty boards,” Biden’s Executive Order requires “(t)he head of each agency, or designee, shall…select certain of the agency’s programs and policies for a review that will assess whether underserved communities and their members face systemic barriers in accessing benefits and opportunities available pursuant to those policies and programs.”  

In keeping with the spirit of Biden’s Executive Order, the “Task Force One Navy” “recently made diversity-related recommendations that include de-emphasizing standardized academic tests when evaluating Navy recruits and renaming ships and other assets with ‘problematic’ names.”  The Task Force also “included a pledge for its own members ‘to advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every Sailor in the Navy.'” The Task Force took pains to explain this was a pledge the members of the Task Force took themselves, not something they were recommending for service members.  

Nevertheless, there would appear to be very little difference in intent between the use of loyalty pledges in the 1940s and 1950s, and the Diversity “statements” employed today.  But while the “classical liberals” of more than 70 years ago were vehemently opposed to the use of loyalty oaths to fight communist infiltration of our government and universities, the “woke leftist” of today is more than happy to pledge allegiance to diversity – except, of course, for diversity of thought.

What can a University Professor or government employee do to avoid making a “Diversity Statement?”  George Leef, writing in Forbes has one potential answer:

“Perhaps diversity statements can be challenged on First Amendment grounds. In a famous rebuke to ideology intruding on education, the Supreme Court held in the 1943 case West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnettethat the state could not penalize Jehovah’s Witness students for failure to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Justice Jackson’s majority opinion speaks to the same issues as are raised by mandatory diversity statements.

He wrote, “Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good, as well as evil men…. It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings…. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.“

Judge Wilson served on the bench in NYC.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) ruling Chinese Communist Party, which operates concentration camps on a scale not seen since the Nazi regime, is seeking to manipulate international media to hide its crimes against humanity.

The victims are predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The news should not be startling. For some time, China has sought to influence what people around the world see, read and hear about the totalitarian tactics of its rulers. In addition to the methods outlined in a recent American government report, it has sought to use its financial muscle to portray a false image of itself.  A Heritage report quotes Mike Gonzalez’s warning that “American audiences are being submitted to censorship, not our own censorship, but a foreign power’s censorship, and a Communist Party censorship. But, we get shown a very benign view of China, in which China is a normal country, no different from Paris, or Britain, or Germany. That is not the case obviously. If you speak against the government in Germany, nothing happens to you. If you speak against the government in China, they’ll throw you in jail.”

According to the newly released U.S. State Department study, PRC-directed and -affiliated actors lead a coordinated effort to amplify Beijing’s preferred narratives on Xinjiang, to drown out and marginalize narratives that are critical of the People’s Republic of China PRC’s repression of Uyghurs, and to harass those critical of the PRC.

In addition to spreading false information, the tactics include flooding the international information environment to limit access to content that contradicts Beijing’s official line, and by creating an artificial appearance of support for PRC policies. Messengers use sophisticated A.I. -generated images to create the appearance of authenticity of fake user profiles.  The PRC works to silence dissent by engaging in digital transnational repression, trolling, and cyberbullying. It floods conversations to drown out messages it perceives as unfavorable to its interests on search engines  and social media feeds, and to amplify Beijing’s preferred narratives on its treatment of Uyghurs.  Pro-PRC stakeholders flood information ecosystems with counternarratives, conspiracy theories, and unrelated news items to suppress narratives detailing PRC authorities’ atrocities in Xinjiang. Government social media accounts, PRC-affiliated media, private accounts, and bot clusters, likely all directed by PRC authorities, assist in this effort.

The PRC engages in a tactic decribed as “astroturfing ,” which is a coordinated campaign of inauthentic posts to create the illusion of widespread grassroots support for a policy, individual, or viewpoint, when no such widespread support exists.  Similar to flooding, the PRC uses astroturfing to inundate the information space with “positive stories ” about Xinjiang and the Uyghur population, including manufactured depictions of Uyghurs living “simple happy lives,” as well as posts emphasizing the purported economic gains that the PRC’s policies have brought to Xinjiang.  In mid-2021, more than 300 pro-PRC inauthentic accounts posted thousands of videos of Uyghurs seeming to deny abuse in the region and claiming they were “very free.” These videos claimed to show widespread disagreement throughout Xinjiang with claims in international media that Uyghurs were oppressed.  However, according to the New York Times  and ProPublica , propaganda officials in Xinjiang created most of these videos, which first appeared on PRC-based platforms and then spread to YouTube and Twitter, in order to manipulate public opinion.

The Chinese Communist Party is also engaging in false and misleading tactics against its own population. Radio Free Asia reports that Beijing is stepping up propaganda and censorship efforts ahead of its 20th national congress, “tightening control of domestic internet users and spreading its official narrative overseas. The country’s powerful Cyberspace Administration said it had recently shut down 1.34 billion social media accounts and deleted 22 million posts. Officials told a news conference they had also investigated more than five million accounts delivering paid comments, banning some 450,000 chat groups and forums.”

The US space agency has spent a long time designing, developing, building, and testing the Space Launch System rocket. When NASA created the rocket program in 2010, US legislators said the SLS booster should be ready to launch in 2016.

Of course, that launch target and many others have come and gone, in part due to budget cuts during the Obama Administration/ But now, after more than a decade and more than $20 billion in funding, NASA and its litany of contractors are very close to declaring the 111-meter tall rocket ready for its debut launch.

On June 20, NASA successfully counted the rocket down to T-29 seconds during a pre-launch fueling test. Although they did not reach T-9 seconds, as was the original goal, the agency’s engineers collected enough data to satisfy the requisite information to proceed toward a launch.

Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians continue to prepare the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for Artemis I.  

During work to repair the source of a hydrogen leak, engineers identified a loose fitting on the inside wall of the rocket’s engine section, where the quick disconnect for the liquid hydrogen umbilical attaches. The component, called a “collet,” is a fist-sized ring that guides the quick disconnect during assembly operations. Teams will repair the collet by entering the engine section in parallel with other planned work for launch preparations. Technicians have replaced the seals on the quick disconnect of the tail service mast umbilical and will reattach the umbilical plate once the loose collet is addressed.  

AS THIS ARTICLE WENT TO PRESS THIS MORNING, NASA WAS PREPARING TO LAUNCH ARTEMIS.

Technicians continue work associated with battery activations, and plan to turn on the core stage batteries this weekend, before they are installed on the rocket. Next up, teams will start the flight termination systems operations, which include removing the core stage and booster safe and arm devices for calibration and removing and replacing the command receiver decoders with the flight units. The safe and arm devices are a manual mechanism that put the flight termination system in either a “safe” or “arm” configuration while the command receiver decoders receive and decode the command on the rocket if the system is activated. 

Meanwhile on the Orion spacecraft, teams installed a technology demonstration that will test digital assistance and video collaboration in deep space. Engineers are also conducting powered testing on the crew module and European service module heaters and sensors.  

Teams have identified placeholder dates for potential launch opportunities. They include: 

• Aug. 29 at 8:33 a.m. EDT (Two-hour launch window); Landing Oct. 10 
  • Sept. 2 at 12:48 p.m. (Two-hour launch window); Landing Oct. 11 
  • Sept. 5 at 5:12 p.m. (90-minute launch window); Landing Oct. 17 

Technicians now are testing the newly replaced seals on the quick disconnect of the tail service mast umbilical to ensure there are no additional leaks. The seals were replaced to address a hydrogen leak during the final wet dress rehearsal in June. Following testing, teams will complete closeouts to ready that section for flight.  

Engineers are also finishing installation of the flight batteries. Teams installed the batteries for the solid rocket boosters and interim cryogenic propulsion stage this week and will install the core stage batteries next week.  

On Orion, technicians installed Commander Moonikin Campos, who is one of three “passengers” flying aboard Orion to test the spacecraft’s systems.  Commander Campos’s crew mates, Helga and Zohar, will be installed in the coming weeks.  

In what is being viewed as a blatant effort to court voters ahead of the midterm elections, President Joe Biden has finally announced his long-anticipated plan to cancel student debt. 

Described in a tweet as “a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023…Pell Grant recipients can (now) qualify for up to $20,000 in debt forgiveness as part of Wednesday’s broader announcement on student loan forgiveness. Other student loan borrowers who don’t have Pell Grants will still have loans forgiven up to $10,000, as has been previously reported. Both forgiveness options are for people who earn less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 as a household.” 

Naturally, many people (including this writer) paid off the loans we used to pay for our education by devoting a portion of our salary and other financial resources to the repayment of those loans.  For us, the words of Michael MacDowell in the News-Press resonate strongly; “Those who sacrificed to pay off their student loans are not happy with President Biden’s plan to forgive remaining student loans…all  American taxpayers will cover the cost of loan forgiveness through higher taxes. Americans will pay for this misguided policy in another way as well because loan forgiveness dollars will stimulate the economy causing further inflation…(f)orgiving student loans will only exacerbate income inequality because those college graduates are having their debts paid with the tax dollars from those who did not attend college. Senator Tom Cotton summed it up best when he asked, ‘Why should a trucker who didn’t go to college have to pay off a lawyer’s student loan debt?’” 

Beyond these practical objections is another, more basic legal question – Is Biden empowered to do this?  Does he have the authority to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in private debt to the public with the use of his pen?

According to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), “People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not.  He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.”  But according to law professor John Brooks of Fordham University, “The president has some pretty broad authority under the Higher Education Act…the president through the secretary of education does have the power to adjust the amount of loan principle that any borrower has.”

This would not be the first time the Biden Administration exceeded its Constitutional authority and acted unlawfully.  We have detailed several instances where the US Supreme Court reversed various Presidential initiatives on the grounds that Congress did not delegate power to the President’s Secretaries to act.  For instance, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, “the Court found that the Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) did not have the authority to mandate that private employers with more than 100 employees must require their employees to receive the Covid-19 vaccine.” 

Then, in May of this year, a Federal District Court Judge in Florida found that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) did not have the authority to mandate masks for travelers on public transportation, including airplanes. 

Here however, the question of the authority of the Secretary of Education may be more open to interpretation.

Under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA), first signed into law in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” “nine parts (of Title IV) authorize a broad array of programs and provisions to assist students and their families in gaining access to and financing a postsecondary education. The programs authorized under this title are the primary sources of federal aid to support postsecondary education.”  These programs include “the Federal Pell Grant program, which is the single largest source of grant aid for postsecondary education attendance funded by the federal government,” and the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL), which consists of “several types of federal student loans to assist individuals in financing the costs of a postsecondary education; those loans included Subsidized Stafford Loans and Unsubsidized Stafford Loans for undergraduate and graduate and professional students, PLUS Loans for graduate and professional students and the parents of dependent undergraduate students, and Consolidation Loans.”

“Under the FFEL program, loans were originated by private sector and state-based lenders and were funded with nonfederal capital. The federal government guaranteed lenders against loss due to borrower default, permanent disability, or, in limited circumstances, bankruptcy,” however, the FFEL loans program was terminated in 2010.  Instead, “Title IV (now) authorizes the Direct Loan program, which is the primary source of federal student loans…(u)nder the program, the federal government lends directly to students using federal capital. While the government owns the loans, loan origination and servicing is performed by federal contractors.” 

What happened in 2010?

“President Obama…signed into law the final piece of the health care puzzle, which mandates sweeping changes in the way the nation provides health care and makes the federal government the primary distributor of student loans… the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010…ends the current program that subsidizes banks and other financial institutions for issuing loans, instead allowing students to borrow directly from the federal government.”

The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 was an attempt to make changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (more popularly known as “Obamacare“) through the use of a “reconciliation” bill – that is,  “a special legislative process…to quickly advance high-priority fiscal legislation. Created by the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, reconciliation allows for expedited consideration of certain tax, spending, and debt limit legislation. In the Senate, reconciliation bills aren’t subject to filibuster and the scope of amendments is limited, giving this process real advantages for enacting controversial budget and tax measures.” 

It is important to note that the 2010 bill had some provisions for forgiveness of loans; “As part of the expanded income-based repayment plan, new borrowers who assume loans after July 1, 2014, will be able to cap their student loan repayments at 10 percent of their discretionary income and, if they keep up with their payments over time, will have the balance forgiven after 20 years. Public service workers such as teachers, nurses, and those in military service will see any remaining debt forgiven after just 10 years.”

The law also gives the Secretary of Education very broad authority to “cover” a student borrower’s default at taxpayer expense – for instance, at 20 USC 1078, “The Secretary may enter into a guaranty agreement with any guaranty agency, whereby the Secretary shall undertake to reimburse it, under such terms and conditions as the Secretary may establish, with respect to losses (resulting from the default of the student borrower) on the unpaid balance of the principal and accrued interest of any insured loan. The guaranty agency shall be deemed to have a contractual right against the United States, during the life of such loan, to receive reimbursement according to the provisions of this subsection.” 

With this history, one would think the Biden Administration would argue that that over the course of 50 years, Congress has granted the Secretary of Education increased power over student loans, including control over loan extensions and forgiveness, and that this latest initiative is nothing new in the increasing burden the Department of Education has placed on the American taxpayer.

Instead, what argument does the Biden Administration use to justify their actions?

“The Justice Department issued a…legal opinion contending the Education Secretary had power under the 2003 HEROES Act ‘to reduce or eliminate the obligation to repay the principal balance of federal student loan debt, including on a class-wide basis in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, provided all other requirements of the statute are satisfied.’” 

The 2003 Heroes Act?

According to the memorandum, “The Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003…vests the Secretary of Education…with expansive authority to alleviate the hardship that federal student loan recipients may suffer as a result of national emergencies…(i)n 2020, the Secretary invoked this authority in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to suspend the repayment obligation and to waive interest payments on student loans for every borrower in the United States with a loan held by the federal government…(y)ou have asked whether the HEROES Act authorizes the Secretary to address the financial hardship arising out of the COVID -19 pandemic by reducing or canceling the principal balances of student loans for a broad class of borrowers. We conclude that the Act grants that authority.” 

To be fair, the memorandum does discuss the Secretary’s powers under Title IV of the Higher Education Act.  But is pretty clear that the Biden Administration intends to invoke its authority to act in an emergency as the basis for its sweeping student loan forgiveness plan.

Will this broad exercise of power be upheld by the Courts?  Let us give the final word on the issue to Jonathan Turley, Law Professor at George Washington University; “While the Biden Administration might have some early success with a lower court judge, it will face a chilly reception on the Supreme Court…President Biden has been a constitutional recidivist in executive overreach in a series of major court losses.  The authority cited is highly challengeable. To assume such a massive power to excuse as much as $500 billion, that authority should be both express and clear. It is not.”

Judge John Wilson (ret.) served on the bench in NYC.

While kinetic warfare is raging in Ukraine, China is conducting a different type of warfare from inside corridors of nondescript government office buildings in cities around the country. Beijing uses sophisticated messaging tactics to “drown out critical narratives by both flooding the international information environment to limit access to content that contradicts Beijing’s official line, and by creating an artificial appearance of support for PRC policies,” according to a State Department report released on Thursday. China is actively manipulating and attempting to dominate global discourse on sensitive issues that include the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, Taiwan independence, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the United States, in general. One of its most egregious campaigns involves discrediting independent sources reporting on the Uyghur genocide and China’s other crimes against humanity. Beijing seeks to amplify its preferred narrative on Xinjiang by employing sophisticated AI-generated images to create the appearance of authenticity of fake user profiles. The reports notes that Beijing works to silence dissent by “engaging in digital transnational repression, trolling, and cyberbullying.” 

It floods conversations to drown out messages it perceives as unfavorable to its interests on search engines and in social media feeds. By flooding information ecosystems with counternarratives, conspiracy theories, and unrelated news items Beijing can effectively  suppress narratives detailing its atrocities in Xinjiang. It is so successful that many people don’t question Beijing’s “astroturfing,” or “inauthentic posts,” to create the false illusion of widespread grassroots support.  The State Department points to positive stories manufactured by the government about Xinjiang and the Uyghur population, claiming the people there live “simple happy lives” and have experienced economic gains due to CCP policies. It says that in mid-2021, more than 300 pro-PRC inauthentic accounts posted thousands of videos of Uyghurs appearing to deny abuse in the region and claiming they were “very free.” The NY Times says that officials in Xinjiang created pro-Beijing videos, which first appeared on PRC-based platforms and then spread to YouTube and Twitter, in order to manipulate public opinion.

Increasingly sophisticated tools create composite images that cannot be traced using a reverse image search, making it harder to determine whether the account is inauthentic, according to the report.  It adds that some of the accounts consistently denied China’s atrocities in Xinjiang and falsely asserted that the body of overwhelming and objective independent evidence of the atrocities is simply a fabrication of the United States and its allies.

Trolling campaigns aimed at the Chinese diaspora communities harass them into silence and self-censorship. Beijing poisons the information highway with bad-faith arguments. “Trolling campaigns frequently evolve into threats of death, rape, or assault; malicious cyber-attacks,” according to the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. The most aggressive PRC “messengers,” according to the report, often go on the offensive, creating “false equivalencies” with the actions of other countries to distract from international criticism of PRC behavior. China denies claims made by independent media outlets and internationally renowned think tanks. When accused of subjecting the Uyghurs to forced labor, it inundates its diplomatic accounts and CCP-affiliated media with suspected bot networks about the mechanized cotton harvesting process in Xinjiang, suggesting that the Xinjiang cotton industry has no need for forced labor.  This type of messaging allows Beijing to avoid responding to reports regarding the authorities’ transfer of an estimated 100,000 Uyghurs out of Xinjiang in what the State Department calls “coercive labor placements,” or factories, elsewhere in the PRC. Stories coming out of the government falsely refer to a multicultural society living in harmony. They  stand in contrast to the reality of Beijing’s extensive surveillance of the Uyghurs, which includes Chinese CCP officials living in Uyghur homes for at least six weeks a year despite Uyghur objections.

“Despite these efforts to distract from the situation in Xinjiang, independent media outlets, academics, and human rights activists have published multiple eyewitness accounts and verifiable data that the PRC has imprisoned  an estimated one million people and that credible evidence exists of torture, forced   sterilization, and other abuses,” the report says. China’s is waging a major AI information war. Analytics firm Miburo Solutions identified more than “200 third-country influencers  affiliated with PRC state media creating social media content in at least 38 languages, including English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Russian with an average reach of 309,000 followers.”  It found that the Chinese government uses influencers to advance its narratives regarding Xinjiang by obscuring state media employees’ affiliations and by orchestrating pro-PRC Western influencers’ tours of Xinjiang. It also uses false fact sheets to claim that the Uyghur internment camps are vocational education and training centers that “fully guaranteed the trainees’ personal freedom and dignity.” Amnesty International has published first-hand accounts calling China’s allegation false, saying that the minority population is subject to regular interrogation, torture, and other mistreatment. 

In 2022 China is reaching out to influencers around the western world to get help in reaching young international audiences who can be more easily inculcated into China’s insidious misinformation and propaganda campaigns. The State Department report is a long-overdue step in outing the CCP’s methods of operation.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Illustration: Pixabay

Independence Day in Ukraine falls on August 24^th each year. Today marks the 31^st anniversary of when Ukraine voted to break with the former Soviet Union. It also falls exactly six months into a lethal war with Russia. The day was marred by explosions, death, and more destruction inside Ukraine as Russian forces bombed a train station killing at least 22 individuals and the day is not yet over in Ukraine. In an emotional speech deliver by President Volodymyr Zelensky, he called for Ukrainians to fight for their freedom rather than simply voting for it at the ballot box. “A new nation emerged on February 24 at 4 am. Not born, but reborn. A nation that didn’t cry, didn’t scream, didn’t get scared. Didn’t run away. Didn’t give up. Didn’t forget,” he said.

Although Putin is fighting a protracted war on the Russia’s western border area in Ukraine, all is not quiet on Russia’s eastern front. Just one day prior to Ukraine’s Independence Day Russia sailed 14 of its Navy ships through the La Perouse Strait from the Western Pacific Ocean into the Sea of Japan, according to Dzirhan Mahadzir of USNI News. The move was designed to unnerve Japan. The La Perouse Strait is an international waterway dividing Russia’s Sakhalin island from Japan’s Hokkaido island. The ships included a destroyer, fast attack craft, missile range instrumentation and  hospital ships, among others. According to Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, Japan asked Russia late last month not to traverse the waterway in anticipation of the Vostok-2022 strategic military exercise that runs from August 30 to September 5. Russia didn’t listen.

Back home in Moscow, Putin’s disinformation forces are hard at work creating a monkeypox narrative, in a reprise of the previous campaign to link the Covid virus to alleged US biolab operations. Foreign Policy magazine’s Ivana Stradner reports that “Russian Duma Deputy Chair Irina Yarovaya echoed the Kremlin’s latest conspiracy theory earlier this month when she called on the World Health Organization to lead an investigation into “the secrets of the US military biolaboratories.” Stradner calls it a “textbook Kremlin information operation.”

East, west, or inside the Russian Federation, Putin is not letting up or bypassing any opportunity to destabilize the global environment. What concerns several military analysts in Washington more than Russia’s flotilla off Japan or its recent disinformation campaigns is the possibility that Putin could decide to damage the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant located only four miles from the city of Nikopol in southern Ukraine. On March 4 Russian military forces captured the plant and have held it since that time. UN Secretary-General António Guterres earlier this month said: “Any attack to nuclear plants is … suicidal,” and called for the plant to be demilitarized. Of the 11,000 regularly employed at the facility, 1,100 have been taken hostage by Russian forces. Ukrainian engineers are being tortured and forced to work at gunpoint to keep the operation running according to Petro Kotin, president of Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power utility. It appears that Putin intends to remove the power plant from Ukraine’s electric grid in an attempt to further destroy the country. It delivers 50% of Ukraine’s power requirements and is the largest plant in Europe. 

Secretary of State Tony Blinken says that Putin is using the plant strategically as a form of protection — shielding troops, weapons and ammunition. And, in doing this, Russia has stopped Ukraine from damaging its stock and soldiers on the assumption that an attack would cause a meltdown or nuclear disaster. “Of course the Ukrainians cannot fire back lest there be a terrible accident involving the nuclear plant,”, adding that Russia isn’t creating a “human shield,” but rather a “nuclear shield.” Earlier this week, Rafael Grossi, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is under the UN, urged Ukraine and Russia to allow experts to visit the site in an effort to prevent a nuclear accident. The IAEA reports it was told it could visit the plant “within the next few days” if the talks succeed. If the political-military situation is not stabilized and an errant shell hits the plant, it could result in a major leak of radioactive material. Once released into the atmosphere it could contaminate a wide swath of Europe, including Poland, with a population of over 38 million. In May the BBC posed the question, what does Vladimir Putin want? Today the question has morphed into what is he going to do next?

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Unlike the legitimate complaints about some European nations, notably Germany, not contributing a fair share to defending against mutual enemies, America’s Pacific partners Australia and Japan have been risen to the occasion.

Tokyo has announced that it will continue to increase its defense spending. It has what some consider the world’s fifth most powerful military.

Canberra’s 2020 Defense Strategic Update supports a robust U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific, the provision of U.S. extended deterrence, as well as plans to make the Australian Defence Force more capable of independent operations.  Australia is on track to meet its commitment to growing its defense budget to two percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product in 2020-21, providing $42.2 billion of funding to defense in 2020-21.  This defense budget will grow over the next ten years to $73.7 billion in 2029-30 with total funding of $575 billion over the decade. This total includes around $270 billion in defense capability investment, compared to $195 billion for the decade 2016-2026 when the 2016 Defense White Paper was released.

Canberra’s defense partnership with Washington was emphasized in a recent meeting in the U.S. capital between Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who is also defense minister, and American counterparts Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. According to the Pentagon, participants came away from meetings “with a sense that the two countries shared a mission.”

“What has really struck me in the meetings that we’ve had over the course of the last few days … is a real sense of shared mission in this moment, between Australia and the United States,” Marles said. “There is a sense of the moment that the global rules-based order that has been built by the United States, by Australia, by many other countries is under pressure now in a significant way.” 

 Marles said that system is under the greatest pressure it has seen since the end of World War II. That order is the reason there has not been a great power war since 1945. “Obviously, what’s going on in Eastern Europe with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an example of that pressure,” he said. “And, in this moment, the need to have a sense of shared mission, to be projecting forward with a sense of team is really important.” 

The U.S. State Department notes that  Australia is one of America’s largest defense customers, supporting thousands of jobs in the United States. America is Australia’s defense goods and services partner of choice and with Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update increasing its 10-year defense budget by 40% to $186 billion. The U.S. has over $27 billion in active government-to-government sales cases with it.

Canberra-U.S. cooperation became even stronger as a result of the recent nuclear-powered submarine pact.

A similar encouraging role is occurring with Japan.

The Council on Foreign Relations notes that the 21st century has been a period of increased defense cooperation between Tokyo and Washington. In November 2001, the government of Junichiro Koizumi dispatched the Maritime Self-Defense Force to the Indian Ocean to provide logistical support for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, marking Japan’s first overseas military action during a combat operation. In 2003, it sent forces to aid in Iraq’s postwar reconstruction efforts.

In 2015, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan reinterpreted its constitution in a historic move that allowed its military to defend allies for the first time, under limited circumstances. The change helped pave the way for the United States and Japan to revise their defense guidelines once again, expanding the scope of their military cooperation and focusing the alliance on current threats—including from China and North Korea—and new technologies.

Since then, the countries have continued to deepen their defense cooperation.

Illustration: Pixabay

All Presidents fail in one area or another. The complexities of the challenges facing the nation render it almost inevitable that mistakes will be made. However, the total failure of the Biden Administration is unprecedented. It is an extraordinary reality the mainstream media, which was largely responsible for the President’s electoral victory in 2020, desperately seeks to downplay. 

An economy that dropped into recession last quarter, a loss of border control, the surrender of billions of dollars in military equipment to the world’s foremost terrorist organization, the loss of energy independence, rampant inflation, a failure to take steps to discourage and deter Moscow’s Ukrainian invasion, are all crises which an even moderately competent White House could have lessened or avoided altogether. Add to the list the unnecessary and inappropriate dilemma of parents seeking to cease the leftist indoctrination of their children in public schools being labelled as “domestic terrorists” and the growing attack on free speech, recently made worse by Biden’s appointment of a “Disinformation Governance Board” led by Nina Jankowicz, a figure who was part of the effort to coverup the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.  

These existential problems facing the nation are to a significant extent the direct creation of Joe Biden and the progressives who clearly dominate him. They could have been avoided had there been competent leadership not wedded to an extremist philosophy.

The Pew Center found that migrant apprehensions at U.S.-Mexico border fell sharply in fiscal 2020.  They have skyrocketed since Biden took office, and deportations are at a 20 year low. The extent of the danger is manifest.  In testimony before Congress, Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas couldn’t even provide information on key terrorists entering into the U.S. through the southern border.

 The open border policy has been a gift to Mexico’s infamous crime cartels, who have reaped record profits and have expanded their activities within the U.S., a significant aspect in soaring crime statistics throughout the nation.

Up until Biden’s inauguration, America was energy independent and inflation was under control.  The U.S. Energy Information Administration notes that average price of gasoline was $2.17 a gallon.  Biden chose to close the Keystone Pipeline, end exploitation of the ANWAR, impede or stop drilling on federal lands, and more.  The result? As of this writing, the average price of gas is $4.15.  Despite all the ravings of environmental extremists, there is currently no alternative energy that can replace more than 20% of what fossil fuels provide. Once the cost of energy rises, it is inevitable that all other prices skyrocket, because everything requires energy to make or transport.

As the COVID pandemic reduced in severity, thanks in large part due to the vaccine successfully developed during the Trump Administration, it was to be expected that the economy would roar back uninterrupted for numerous fiscal quarters. It is shocking that Americas’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell at a 1.4% rate last quarter.  That stunning drop is a clear result of Biden’s reckless tax and spending actions and proposals, his mishandling of COVID’s remnants, and more.  

Vladimir Putin carefully observed Biden’s bungling of the Afghanistan withdrawal.  He noted that the American president submitted a defense budget that, accounting for inflation, actually cut the Pentagon’s spending power.  He observed Biden’s ignoring America’s deteriorating nuclear arsenal. And, as the Kremlin deployed its invasion forces near Ukraine, he was cognizant that Biden did nothing in response. Indeed, the befuddled President even mentioned that he wouldn’t respond to a “limited” invasion.  With all that, the attack was on.

The challenges facing Biden are of his own making, the result of his own policies. His errors are unprecedented in the harm they cause, and the ease with which they could have been avoided.

Illustration: Pixabay

It can no longer be denied that America’s educational system is largely dominated by those that do not have the interests of the nation’s children at heart. The evidence is abundant and clear: substantial portions of the vast dollars that have been committed to our schools have been, essentially, misappropriated by those who have replaced learning with propaganda.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, In 2018, the United States spent $14,400 per full-time student on elementary and secondary education, an astounding 34 percent higher than the average of similar nations countries at $10,800 (in constant 2020 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, America spent $35,100 per full time student, double the average $17,600 of other nations.

What did all those dollars achieve?

According to a Scientific American study, “On vital measures that predict later success in school and life, small children in the U.S. do worse than kids in comparable countries.”

Older groups fared poorly, as well. An analysis in The Balance revealed that “The Program for International Student Assessment tests 15-year-old students around the world and is administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2018, when the test was last administered, the U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science. It did much worse in math, ranking 30th.The U.S. scored 478 in math, below the OECD average of 489. That’s well below the scores of the top five, all of which were in Asia: Singapore at 569, Macao at 555, Hong Kong at 551, Taiwan at 531, and Japan at 527. “

Since academic achievement is lacking, what are those abundant funds being spent on?

Just a very few examples:

A Manhattan Institute  study reports that “Something peculiar is spreading throughout America’s schools. A public school system just outside the nation’s capital spent $20,000 to be lectured about making their schools less racist. At a tony New York City prep school, a teacher was publicly denounced by the administration for questioning the idea that students should identify themselves in terms of their racial identity. Educators in California are locked in pitched combat over a statewide model curriculum overflowing with terms like “hxrstories” and “cisheteropatriarchy.”

The Daily Mail found that a School board director in Washington state is planning to hold workshop to teach children as young as nine about “sexual anatomy for pleasure” The publication also noted that a Woke California school board member called for people to “boycott the Fourth of July because there is no reason to celebrate.”

The New York Post found that elite NYC private schools “are teaching kids that American society must be destroyed.”

A Heritage examination disclosed that “New Jersey’s Department of Education will be teaching young children in 2nd grade to ponder their ‘gender identity.’”

The Federalist notes that “public schools routinely use left-leaning or ‘woke’ materials while quietly doing away with older materials that encourage American patriotism, Western civilization, and Judeo-Christian values. In English class, this means replacing “Hamlet” and “The Scarlet Letter” with ‘The Hate U Give,’ a novel based on themes from the Black Lives Matter movement, and ‘Symptoms of Being Human,’ a novel about a gender-fluid punk rocker who blogs about his insecurities.”

The Hill reveals that “A radical progressive political agenda has replaced the pursuit of truth and objectivity in our nation’s classrooms…At New Trier High School, a public school in Winnetka, Illinois, students were subjected in 2017 to an ‘All-School Seminar Day’… chock-full of race-baiting discussion topics, left-wing speakers, and one-sided, indoctrinating ideologies.”

It would be an error to view this issue as political, the anger of moderates and conservatives at the extremist Progressive dogma being foisted on students, or as a reflection of parental anger at the usurpation of their rights to address highly personal issues such as sexuality to their children.

It is, in fact, something far simpler.  It is the outright theft of taxpayer and parental tuition funds for partisan purposes. Legally, it can be described as the embezzlement of education dollars to push partisan leftist ideas.

Illustration: Pixabay

Violence and censorship are two sides of the same coin, a political currency that has become all too common.  Both illicit approaches have become frequent tactics utilized mostly by the left, and their key leaders in the Democrat Party.

Throughout the summer of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, cities burned, stores were looted, federal court houses and police stations were attacked, people were assaulted. Democrat leaders were notoriously reluctant to criticize the perpetrators, and indeed some raised funds for them. That tactic is in danger of being repeated following the unethical release of a Supreme Court draft on an abortion related case. Demonstrators have inexcusably formed at the homes of Supreme Court justices.

It follows four years of verbal violence resulting from false charges levied against the Trump Administration, used as an excuse for individuals such as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Ca.) to openly and loudly urge attacks on Trump personnel.

The alteration in the national mood and the acceptance of inappropriate tactics may have its antecedents in a statement made by Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democrat primary.  In response to a softball question asking who the former Secretary of State considers “the enemy,” Clinton replied “Republicans.” Not Russia, not China, not disease, not poverty, but Republicans. Violence against “enemies,” as opposed to mere political rivals, became acceptable.

Contrast the lack of response to Democrat condoned violence with the massive condemnation and federal investigations into the January 6 riot at the Capitol.  The message is clear: political violence is only a problem when it comes from non-leftist portions of the spectrum.

While physical violence grabs headlines, verbal violence, and the threat of harassing action by government entities, can be equally harmful. This concept precedes Clinton’s enemy statement. While it has occurred in various forms over the years, the Obama Administration’s use of the IRS to harass the Tea Party, and the Department of Justice to attack conservative think tanks who merely disagreed with the White House’s views on climate change was far beyond any previous example.

The unwarranted investigatory and administrative violence launched against Donald Trump by federal agencies and Democrat members of Congress was without precedent. Now thoroughly disproven, knowingly false assertions by the Clinton campaign were used as a basis by partisan officials in the Department of Justice and Democratic Congressional leadership in an attempt to destroy Trump’s candidacy and his presidency.

Organizations closely allied with leftist politics have sought to suppress contrary views through threats of administrative violence.  The National School Board Association, closely allied with leftist politics sent a letter  to the White House, first reported by the New York Post, requesting “the Biden administration to deploy the Army National Guard and military police to school districts beset by parent protests over policies including mandatory masking and the teaching of critical race theory.”

These tactics of physical and verbal violence have largely failed, leading to a growing move by their progressive practitioners to rely on the related practice of censorship. Again, the most salient example arose during the Obama presidency. The former president attempted to install federal “monitors” in media newsrooms. Following in those footsteps, the Biden Administration sought to deploy censorship through its now-withdrawn establishment of a “Disinformation” agency, led by an extreme party partisan.

While Democrat attempts to use the power of the federal government to censor contrary views have largely failed, media attempts have proven more successful. Social media sites, network and cable television newsrooms have managed to keep major stories out of the public eye.

The most blatant example is the Hunter Biden laptop story.  The explosive scandal would clearly have had a major impact on the 2020 election, and the progressive media barons knew it. They didn’t merely fail to report the scandal in their own outlets; they moved heavily to eliminate any reference to it by their readers. Social media sites blocked users who merely mentioned the topic.

Violence and censorship have become standard  leftwing tactics, much to the detriment of our nation.

Illustration: Pixabay