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Senate Adopts Amendment That Slashes Tariffs on Hundreds of Chinese Imports to US301 Share Now 2403TelegramFacebookTweetEmailTellMeWeRedditCopy Link

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 27, 2021. (Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times) Executive Branch

By Mark Tapscott June 3, 2021 Updated: June 4, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed to The Epoch Times on June 3 that his efforts to get to the bottom of how the CCP virus—also known as the novel coronavirus—spread from China to the United States met with sustained opposition within the U.S. government.

Asked about revelations in a June 3 Vanity Fair report that key officials deep within the State Department sought to keep the public from knowing that U.S. funds had supported gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Pompeo described a “contentious battle.”

That research, which focused on techniques for reconfiguring naturally occurring viruses to make them more virulent and transmissible to humans, was partially funded as far back as 2012 with U.S. tax dollars through the National Institutes of Health and a nonprofit foundation known as the EcoHealth Alliance.

The Vanity Fair analysis “found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step.”

“In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it,” the article reads.

China has insisted since the virus first appeared in late 2019 that it had spread from bats to humans via an open-air meat market in Wuhan. Some government and public health officials, private sector scientists, and investigative journalists, however, have said since early in 2020 that there’s substantial evidence that the virus spread somehow from the WIV.

Then-President Donald Trump and Pompeo, as well as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), publicly noted the existence of such evidence in April 2020 and called on Chinese officials to allow independent investigators to access the WIV and its records. China refused to do so.

After the November 2020 election, Pompeo pushed within the State Department and the Trump administration for public release of as much evidence as possible.

He issued a Jan. 15 statement that includes a significant disclosure, that WIV researchers appeared to have suffered virus symptoms months before the disease spread throughout China and to other countries, including the United States.

The statement also notes the gain-of-function research taking place at WIV and asks whether U.S. funding may have been diverted to secret Chinese military projects at the WIV.

But even getting that statement out was a struggle, Pompeo told The Epoch Times on June 3.

“I became aware at the end of 2020 that we now had an increased level of confidence in the datapoints that supported what we put out in the middle of January. The clock was clearly running, and I was fighting very hard inside the State Department and even more broadly,” he said.

A major roadblock was the fact that significant portions of the evidence were held by intelligence agencies that opposed their public release.

“There were places outside of the State Department that owned the dataset inside the intelligence community, so we were banging away to get them to give us as much space to write as much as we possibly could,” Pompeo said.

“We were drafting language that protected classified things that needed to be protected but we wanted to make sure that we got this information out in the public space.”

The former secretary of state said he viewed it as important at the time, and continues today to say that the American people should know all the facts, and the Chinese government should be held accountable if the virus did escape from the WIV.

“There were two reasons for that. One, it was a matter of transparency and, two, we wanted the Chinese Communist Party to have to explain what we knew as well, so we had a very high degree of certainty around what we did,” Pompeo said. “The statement was very carefully crafted, but it is unambiguous about what it said.”

A former senior State Department official with direct knowledge of these matters, who spoke on background, told The Epoch Times that Pompeo made clear to everybody involved in the State Department’s investigation of the source of the virus that they were to pursue facts wherever they led.

When told of internal opposition to the effort, the former senior official said that Pompeo responded with a salty aphorism reflective of his Army career.

“He said, ‘Screw them and tell them the secretary of state said do it.’ And he also said something that’s very, very important. He said: ‘I don’t care what conclusion you guys dig out. It may be something we like to hear, politically, or something we don’t like to hear, but I want the truth.’ That was exactly the attitude throughout the whole investigation this group was doing.”

Congressional correspondent Mark Tapscott may be reached at mark.tapscott@epochtimes.nyc.

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ABC Reporter Told Fauci She Wouldn’t ‘Jeopardize’ Him, Emails Show84 Share Now 1705TelegramFacebookTweetEmailTellMeWeRedditCopy Link

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 11, 2021. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP) Pandemic Ties to CCP

By Zachary Stieber June 5, 2021 Updated: June 5, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The United States gave over $800,000 to the top-level laboratory in China from which some believe the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus escaped, according to newly released documents.

Internal emails from officials with the National Institutes of Health and an office inside the agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), show they discussed in 2020 a question from Republican members of Congress regarding how much the agencies sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The total amount sent between Fiscal Years 2014 and 2019 was $826,777, according to the officials.

The funding went to EcoHealth Alliance, which channeled money to the lab for the purpose of “understanding the risk of bat coronavirus emergence.”

The total amount is different from the amount that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, told members of Congress the Wuhan lab received from the U.S. government.

“We had a modest collaboration with respectable Chinese scientists who are world experts on coronavirus and we did that through a subgrant from a larger grant to EcoHealth. The subgrant was about $600,000 over a period of five years,” Fauci told members of the House Appropriations Committee during a hearing last month.

NIAID did not respond to a request for information. The agency has not returned repeated requests for comment.

The newly released emails show one chain involving Fauci in April 2020. In it, a top NIAID official, Dr. Emily Erbelding, informed Fauci and others that a new grant to EcoHealth was for $3.6 million. Of that, about $750,000 would go to the Wuhan lab. About $75,000 had already been sent to the lab during year 1 of the grant, she said.

“This is higher but not extraordinarily higher than I originally indicated which was for some earlier work,” Hugh Auchincloss, another agency official, wrote to Fauci, who responded, “Thanks.”

In another message around the same time, Fauci and National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins were informed by health officials that the White House “has strongly embraced concerns” raised by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) regarding the U.S. funding for the bat coronavirus research in China.

“HEADS UP: Wuhan lab research,” Lawrence Tabak wrote, labeling the email as “high” importance.

Fauci and Collins were told that the multi-country study in question, which included sites in China, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Burma, was given $3.7 million over six years and that the Wuhan lab received approximately $826,300 and would get about $80,000 more per year for the following four years.

“More by phone,” Tabak said.

The emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch.

“These new documents show that funding for the Wuhan Institute was greater than the public has been told,” Tom Fitton, president of the watchdog, said in a statement. “That it has taken a year and a federal lawsuit to get this first disclosure on COVID and Wuhan is evidence of cover-up by Fauci’s agency.”

Previously released emails obtained through a separate request showed Fauci and his team scrambled to respond to people wondering whether the CCP virus, which causes COVID-19, escaped from the Wuhan lab.

Fauci has insisted the grant funding went for appropriate research that could only be done properly in China.

“Clearly the bats that have the coronaviruses are in China. They are not in Fairfax County, Virginia, or in New York. That’s where the bats are,” Fauci told Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last month.

Some experts say the funding went to “gain of function” research, or efforts of making coronaviruses more transmissible, but Fauci has said the money did not go towards that work.

Kennedy asked how Fauci was sure that Chinese scientists, often working under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, did not shield their true work.

“We have seen the results of the research that were done and that were published. And the studies are public, and on public databases now. None of that was gain of function,” Fauci said. Follow Zachary on Twitter: @zackstieber

Anyone still believing the USA (and other FREEDOM LOVING/PRACTICING COUNTRIES) can still “play ball with the CCP”, is (are) only asking for a bat to be shoved up their collective ass. (And not the squeaky furry cave dwelling and flying type bat that the CCP attempts to hang responsibility on for their own (CCP’s) unleashing and active concealment of yet another deadly virus upon the world. It’s happened before and may very well happen again.)

As bad as it has been…. please don’t be distracted or lured into some false sense of security that the worst is over. Always watch what the other hand is doing in multiple arenas – from the South China Sea all the way to an orbiting space station or CCP moon outpost. We have been in a war for our country’s very survival for a long time without truly being cognizant as to the depths of betrayal by our own treacherous politicians – but thankfully everyday is a classroom packed full of factual information for those paying attention. Like the bumper sticker says “If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention”.

Speaking of paying attention, and if not doing so already, PLEASE watch OANN (One America News Network) and spread the word to family and friends who also care about the survival of OUR COUNTRY because make no frigg’n mistake…..this IS OUR “RED DAWN”.

God Bless America and all her FREEDOM LOVING PATRIOTS!

My best to you and yours, Lew

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Germany’s University of Trier to Suspend Its Confucius Institute43 Share Now 63TelegramFacebookTweetEmailTellMeWeRedditCopy Link

A human rights group urges Tufts University to close its Confucius Institute in Somerville, Massachusetts on March 13, 2021. (Learner Liu/The Epoch Times) China-US News

By Hannah Cai June 3, 2021 Updated: June 3, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

An exclusive report by Campus Reform, America’s leading college news website, detailed a recent investigation into the Chinese regime’s operation in American classrooms.

Through public records requests in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, Campus Reform obtained 32 universities’ contracts with the Confucius Institute Headquarters.

In several documents, Beijing dictated control over the curriculum taught within the Confucius Institute.

For instance, the contract between the University of Toledo and Hanban, the Confucius Institute Headquarters in China, states that “The Institute must accept the assessment of [Hanban] on the teaching quality.”

Hanban is an agency under the Chinese regime’s education ministry, which is known to severely censor language course material and distort history to mislead students in China.

Baruch College in New York said it more clearly in its agreement with Hanban. “Baruch College acknowledges that the Headquarters has the final right to determine the programs to which it provides funding,” and Baruch College has the obligation to “accept the project assessments conducted by the Headquarters,” according to the contract.

Similarly, Central Connecticut State University agreed that “The University Institute shall review evaluations and recommendations made by the Confucius Institute Headquarters on the quality of the programs and make any necessary modifications.”

Communist Propaganda

James Giordano, a professor of neurology at Georgetown University and a senior researcher in biosecurity, technology, and ethics at the U.S. Naval War College, told Campus Reform that the language in the agreements explicitly revealed that “what is taught, and what is promulgated at the Confucius Institute only occurs under the auspices of the central political system [of China].”

He believes that Confucius Institutes are not an independent entity, but a direct outreach program of the CCP, which controls American classrooms in an attempt to reshape people’s view about China.

“Any and all information that is promulgated through the Confucius institutes about China, the country, its history, its culture, its prior or current political status situation, posturing and or near term and intermediate to far term intent, in terms of engaging the global relationships is all done wholly under the auspices and examination of the [Chinese Communist Party],” he said.

Campus Reform quoted Seth Cropsey, the Director of the Center for American Seapower at the Hudson Institute, who said that surrendering academic freedom to a foreign nation hostile to the United States should raise serious red flags.

The existence of the Confucius Institute is “silly and pernicious on its face,” Cropsey remarked. “There are plenty of Americans who study Chinese political thought going back thousands of years… so it’s not necessary to go to an organ of the Chinese government in order to find… teachers who can teach.”

Resisting Confucius Institute

Although the Confucius Institute is advertised as a language and cultural exchange, Pompeo-led U.S. State Department designated it as a “foreign mission” of the People’s Republic of China, pointing out that the program operates “under guidance from the CCP’s United Front Work Department” and pushes out “skewed Chinese language and cultural training for U.S. students as part of Beijing’s multifaceted propaganda efforts.”

As early as 2014, the American Association of University Professors warned that Confucius Institutes further the political goals of Beijing’s leadership and threaten “the independence and integrity of academic institutions.”

Previously, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri pushed for legislation to close all Confucius Institutes in the United States or increase oversight. The Transparency for Confucius Institutes Act sponsored by Senator Blackburn passed unanimously in the Senate last year, but failed in the House of Representatives. She is continuing her effort this year. On March 29, she declared in a Twitter post: “Tennessee is determined to lead the way as the first state to ban the Chinese government-funded Confucius Institute from public universities.”

According to data from the National Association of Scholars, as of May 18, there are still 47 Confucius Institutes operating in the United States, including 41 inside universities and colleges, one at a private educational organization, the China Institute, and five at K-12 public school districts. Fifteen of these 47 Confucius Institutes are set to be closed before the end of this year.

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Texas Sheriffs Overwhelmed by Spillover Crime From Border Surge240 Share Now 1721TelegramFacebookTweetEmailTellMeWeRedditCopy Link

Cole Hill on his ranch in Kinney County, Texas, on May 25, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Immigration & Border Security

‘They’re banging on the walls, everything,’ one rancher’s wife said in a frantic phone call earlier this year By Charlotte Cuthbertson May 25, 2021 Updated: May 30, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

KINNEY COUNTY, Texas—Living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere is the epitome of the American dream for many Texans. They keep to themselves, help their neighbors, and work hard.

But in the past few months, ranchers have been getting unwelcome visitors who destroy their property, steal their vehicles, and scare their families.

They’re the illegal immigrants, usually adult males who have evaded Border Patrol and are heading to a large city where it’s easier to disappear.

Cole Hill, his wife, and their three children, ages 9, 7, and 5, live on a ranch in Kinney County, about 35 miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border. The property also flanks a Border Patrol highway checkpoint, and those who want to evade capture tend to walk a wide berth around it.

Hill said he’s dealt with illegal aliens traversing his land for years, but only around 25 people a year, on average;  sometimes, months would go by with no activity.

“I’m going on about six weeks straight now with illegal [aliens] on my property on a daily basis, or multiple groups a day,” he said during a local meeting on May 22.

His house is set “way back in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “We could have a full-blown gunfight on our front porch, and nobody would know about it.”

Hill’s first encounter with illegal aliens this year took place on Jan. 20, when his dog alerted him to a man on the front porch dressed head-to-toe in camouflage clothing.

“It obviously alarmed me. I’ve had plenty of encounters with illegal aliens over the past 10 or more years, but I’ve never had one that close to the house,” Hill said. “I stopped him. I told him to backtrack and get away.”

He also called Border Patrol but doesn’t know whether they caught the intruder.

“That was just kind of the beginning of this giant snowball that’s occurring,” he said.

“I keep getting told that this isn’t a new problem that we’re dealing with. Obviously, we all know illegal immigration has been going on forever. But to me, in my setting, at my house, at our ranch, this is certainly a new problem.”

The next encounter happened about three weeks later, when Hill and his oldest son were working out on the ranch and his wife called to tell him that a group of illegal immigrants had surrounded the house.

“They’re looking into windows, they’re at the back door, they’re at the front door, they’re banging on the walls, everything,” Hill’s wife told him.

He raced home and found one man on the front porch, while the rest had hidden as his truck approached.

“I made it pretty quickly to the individual on our front porch, I got him off the porch, and I promptly escorted him out of the yard,” Hill said. He eventually cleared the rest of the group out of his garage and sent them away.

Again, he called Border Patrol, but it took agents more than an hour to get there.

“I live about 12 miles from the checkpoint. On a good day, they can be at my house in about 15 minutes,” Hill said.

“I hate to think of what five men could do if they wanted to do harm to my family and they could get into my house as quick as they possibly could have.”

After that encounter, the Hills kept their normally free-range kids closer to home, unless they were outside with them.

“After that happened, we don’t even want our kids playing outside in the yard anymore,” Hill said. He kept the kids mostly in the house for a few weeks, but let them run loose as he tackled some yard work one Saturday.

“I didn’t get halfway done mowing my front yard and the kids are all playing in the backyard … and sure enough, here comes five more dudes … slipping out of the brush, and they’re hitting a jog on the way to my house, coming straight to my house.

“I shut the mower down, I holler for the kids to get inside, I start yelling at these guys to stay back, I run inside and grab a firearm, and as soon as I came back out, they stopped, they changed their course and they took off.”

Hill again called Border Patrol, but it was more than an hour before they responded.

“Yesterday morning was the fifth group that I’ve had at my house since January 20 this year—and this was at 3:30 in the morning,” he said at a local meeting on May 22.

Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Austin L. Skero II said Border Patrol is stretched thin.

“We are currently apprehending an average of over 900 migrants during this seven-day period in the Del Rio Sector,” Skero told The Epoch Times via email.

“Due to this 433 percent increase in apprehensions over last fiscal year to date, agents are frequently occupied with transport, processing, and detention duties.

“This has absolutely impacted our ability to respond quickly to illegal activity on private property. We are doing the best we can and will respond to every call prioritizing emergency situations.”

Record Numbers

Kinney County, with a population of 3,400, shares just 16 miles of the international border with Mexico, but it’s on a direct smuggling route from the Del Rio area to San Antonio. On April 21, it was the first of 28 Texas counties to declare a local disaster over the border crisis.

The county sits within the Del Rio Border Patrol sector, which is experiencing record levels of illegal alien apprehensions.

Over four days starting on May 20, Del Rio Border Patrol apprehended more illegal border-crossers than the population of Kinney County. On May 20, May 21, and May 23, agents apprehended more than 1,000 illegal aliens each day in the sector, according to Customs and Border Protection.

Law enforcement officials told The Epoch Times that people are currently paying Mexican smuggling groups $2,200 per person to cross the river into the United States. That’s $2.2 million per 1,000 that cross.

The number of those who evade Border Patrol is also increasing. More than 42,000 illegal aliens evaded capture along the whole southern border in April.

“We don’t know who they are, where they’re from, or what their intentions are,” National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said.

On top of those that Border Patrol knows have evaded arrest, “it’s very fair to say that there’s a large number of people that are able to get away that we don’t even detect,” Judd said.

Hill said he’s had plenty more encounters with illegal aliens while he’s out on the ranch working alone.

“I do everything that I can to try to subdue them or hold them down for Border Patrol,” he said, but it’s getting more difficult.

“Sure, there’s probably some good apples in there as well. But I don’t think the good apples are 35 miles off the river trying to evade every law enforcement they can as aggressively as they are.”

The damage to his property is also increasing. In the past few months, he’s had his perimeter fence cut seven times, most of the time from top to bottom, and in three cases, an entire section was pulled out.

Hill’s water troughs and pipes are also getting damaged.

“Next thing you know, I got 100 head of cows that are out of water just like that. And that can turn into a pretty terrible crisis in itself,” Hill said.

He blames the Biden administration for the border surge and the spillover impact it’s having on Texans. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

“I feel like there’s only two ways that this problem is going to get solved. And it’s either going to be ‘We the People’ or the people up top. I sure don’t like to think about ‘We the People’ taking care of it, but, who knows,” he said.

“I do know that we need to do everything that we can and contact our elected officials and try and do this the right way.”

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Lab Leaks Happen ‘All the Time,’ Virus Origins Need Investigation, Former FDA Commissioner Says203 Share Now 837TelegramFacebookTweetEmailTellMeWeRedditCopy Link

A man walks past The Washington Post in Washington on Aug. 5, 2013. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images) Media & Big Tech

By Zachary Stieber June 2, 2021 Updated: June 2, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

The Washington Post quietly walked back its claims regarding the theory that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.

The paper in February 2020 published an article claiming the idea was a “conspiracy theory” that had been “debunked.” The article attacked Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who called for an investigation into the origins of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

“We don’t know where it originated, and we have to get to the bottom of that,” Cotton said during an appearance on Fox News. “We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only biosafety level four super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.”

But The Post alleged the theory the lab was involved was debunked, quoting a political science professor and a professor of chemical biology to support the claim.

“There’s absolutely nothing in the genome sequence of this virus that indicates the virus was engineered,” Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, was quoted as saying. “The possibility this was a deliberately released bioweapon can be firmly excluded.”

The headline for the article was changed in recent days, from “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked” to “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed.”

In addition, The Post added a correction.

“Earlier versions of this story and its headline inaccurately characterized comments by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) regarding the origins of the coronavirus. The term ‘debunked’ and The Post’s use of ‘conspiracy theory’ have been removed because, then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus,” the paper said.

The Post did not respond to requests for comment. Neither the paper nor reporter Paulina Milla Firozi have appeared to alert readers to the update. The original tweet promoting the article is still up, without a notice that it has been dramatically altered.

Ebright told journalist Michael Tracey that when he spoke to The Post, he discussed the lab leak theory, but those comments were not included in the paper’s article.

“I again discussed both the genome sequence and the lab-accident hypothesis—this time, both on the record—with WaPo. I was surprised that the February 17, 2020 article in WaPo quoted only my comments on the genome sequence and not my comments on the lab-accident hypothesis,” he said.

Cotton did not return multiple inquiries. The senator on Fox News last week addressed the wave of corrections and updates to stories about the lab leak theory, saying: “The media last year was singing a very different tune. That’s because I was pointing out that common sense says this virus probably came from those labs; I mean, it originated just a few blocks down the road from them in a city larger than New York not exactly known for its large bat population.

“But because the media doesn’t like my politics, and because [former] President [Donald] Trump said the same thing, the media lied and they spun and they covered up for the Chinese Communist Party, in effect,” he added. “There needs to be an accounting for all of the reporting from last spring that denied this reality now that almost every mainstream outlet is acknowledging that it is not only possible, it is probably the case that this came from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Some reporters have said that they disregarded the lab leak theory because Republicans were largely the ones promoting the idea.

Other outlets have also corrected or quietly updated stories, including Vox and Politifact, while Facebook stopped banning posts suggesting the virus was man-made.

U.S. intelligence officials are not sure where, how, or when the CCP virus originated.

Actor John Cena attends an event in Miami, Fla., on Jan. 31, 2020. (Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images) China-US News

By Tom Ozimek June 1, 2021 Updated: June 1, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Hollywood executive Chris Fenton said John Cena’s controversial apology to China after he called Taiwan a country during a promotional interview for “Fast & Furious 9” alienated both his fans in the West and in China, inadvertently providing the star with an opportunity to lead the charge against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censorship in the U.S. film industry.

Fenton told NTD’s “Focus Talk” that Cena’s apology ended up missing the mark on both fronts, alienating his fans in the United States while failing to satisfy Chinese netizens.

“Boy, did he step into it,” Fenton said of Cena’s video apology, in which the Hollywood star spoke in Mandarin. “I felt badly for him, and I was quite shocked.”

Following the apology, conservative news outlet the Daily Wire ran a sharply-worded op-ed headlined “John Cena Begging China For Forgiveness Proves That Money Beats Morality Every Time.” The platform’s co-founder, Ben Shapiro, said in a Twitter post: “Taiwan is a country. Hong Kong should be free. If you are unwilling to say these things because it might hurt your bottom line, you are a pathetic coward.”

Republican lawmakers took to Twitter to lambaste Cena’s remarks.

“Pathetic,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in a one-word tweet, while Rep. Andy Briggs (R-Ariz.) alleged Cena “is owned by the Chinese Communist Party,” while reposting a message from House Republicans stating, “Taiwan is a country.”

While Taiwan is a de facto independent country with its own military, democratically-elected government, and constitution, the Chinese regime considers it a breakaway province and claims the island as its own, repeatedly threatening to unify it by force.

Fenton said Cena’s apology failed to satisfy his fans in China and the West.

“He has a very large constituency of fans on the athletic side because of his wrestling, which sometimes is more on the conservative side of the aisle, and then he has a huge fan base in Hollywood, which is more on the left side of the aisle. So, in a way he’s alienated two sides of the United States of America and, quite frankly, the Western world,” Fenton said, before referring to calls from Chinese netizens that Cena explicitly declare that Taiwan is part of China, which he didn’t do in his apology.

“And he also didn’t really do the job that he needed to do with the netizens and the fans in China.”

In a 68-second clip posted to Chinese social media platform Weibo, Cena struck a particularly contrite tone.

“I made a mistake,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry for my mistake. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m very sorry. You have to understand I love and respect China and Chinese people. I’m sorry.”

Cena’s apology elicited mixed responses from his more than 600,000 followers on Weibo, with some giving him credit for apologizing, while others said he needs to explicitly say Taiwan is part of China or his apology is meaningless.

Fenton argued that the multi-pronged backlash is an opportunity for Cena to change course and lead the way in pushing back against the broader trend of Hollywood kowtowing to the CCP.

“What he might want to do is rethink this and say, ‘Well, how much is China worth to me versus the rest of the world?’ And I would argue that there’s a real opportunity for him to take on this Muhammad Ali effect, where he actually leads—because he’s in this situation—this effort to stop pandering to the CCP and to actually say enough is enough, and to see if he can get other filmmakers, other actors, other celebrities, other basketball players and athletes, and other companies to follow him into this new path forward when it comes to the engagement with China,” he said.

Fenton, a former executive at DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group, authored the book “Feeding the Dragon,” a behind-the-scenes look at how Chinese censors shape American films. In the book, he argues that Hollywood’s business relationship with China strengthens the CCP’s authoritarian outreach.

Asked whether he believes the situation with Cena could be a watershed moment that reverses Hollywood’s appeasement of the CCP, Fenton struck a hopeful tone.

“I think this situation with John Cena … it’s happening on the left, it’s happening on the right, it’s happening in between. People are starting to get very aware of this situation, and I think what’s great about that is now there’s going to be pressure, both on the pocketbooks of the consumers to do what’s right … but it will also put pressure on politicians and journalists to stay on this subject, to not get distracted.

“It will also cause a push for people like John Cena to maybe say: ‘Hey, I’m going to take a stand. I want to lead by example. I’m going to get some of my peers and colleagues to join me and some of the companies that we work for, and we’re going to push back.’”

Any movie that wants to be released in China must abide by strict censorship rules, including that the movie’s story, footage, music, actors, and directors not oppose the communist regime. Fenton said he sees growing opposition in the West to such censorship.

“We’re getting to that tipping point where enough is enough and this John Cena example is something that really is an eye opener and something that hopefully catalyzes a change,” he said.

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China Announces New UK COVID-19 Variant Cases, While Superspreaders Appear in Multiple Cities205 Share Now 78TelegramFacebookTweetEmailTellMeWeRedditCopy Link

A woman (R) receives a nucleic acid test for the COVID-19 in Guangzhou, China, on May 30, 2021. (AFP via Getty Images) China Society

By Rita Li June 1, 2021 Updated: June 1, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

COVID-19 variant cases are spreading across Guangdong, a coastal province in South China. Municipal authorities have reported that all local transmissions have been related to the Indian and UK variants, and are spreading rapidly due to their increased transmissibility.

After recording zero confirmed local cases a day before, China’s National Health Commission on May 31 confirmed 20 new locally acquired COVID-19 across the country in the past 24 hours, all from Guangdong Province except for seven imported cases in Guangdong, Shanghai, Fujian, and Henan. Three new asymptomatic cases of locally acquired COVID-19 were also reported in the southern province, which China doesn’t classify as confirmed cases.

A confirmed case in Guangdong came from a baby girl surnamed Liang, aged only one year and a month old.

Chen Bin, deputy director at the municipal health commission of Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong, said at a press conference on May 30 that recent cases were of the new, fast-spreading Indian variant of the virus.

This is the first public confirmation from Chinese officials that the Indian variant has been transmitting locally in mainland China.

Recent transmission chains have been traced back through five individuals mostly located in central Guangdong Province, China’s state media reported.

Officials also announced the launch of broader universal testing and tougher traffic controls to curb the outbreak of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus—the virus which causes the disease COVID-19.

According to the latest notice issued by Guangzhou’s Epidemic Prevention and Control Office, from 10 p.m. on May 31, passengers leaving Guangzhou will have to present their green Health Code and a negative COVID-19 test from within the past 72 hours.

The scope of testing has also been further expanded to Guangdong’s districts of Yuexiu, Haizhu, Tianhe, Baiyun, and Panyu, in addition to Liwan district where the first local case was reported and traced to a 75-year-old female patent surnamed Guo who dined in a local dim sum restaurant on May 21.

A member of the wait staff was asymptomatically infected and not wearing a mask while delivering food to Guo.

Local authorities announced lockdowns for certain communities in Liwan District said to be at high-risk and suspended unessential daily activities. One person per household per day is allowed to go out to buy daily necessities.

A security guard at Pui Chun Primary School in Liwan district told the Chinese-language Epoch Times that the school and its neighborhood has been shut down. They said that police were everywhere and people could not move around. Authorities did not offer any official announcement of the lockdown, he said.

Meanwhile, the UK virus variant has been officially reported in Shenzhen—China’s tech megacity in Guangdong Province. The total number of local cases have climbed to 13 since the new surge was detected in Shenzhen on May 21.

Sequencing results from patients were highly homologous to the UK mutated strain, said Chang Juping, deputy director of the municipal health commission.

The so-called B.117 variant, which peaked in the UK at beginning of this year, is up to twice as deadly as the regular variant, research shows.

On the World Stage, America Is Being Tested32 Share Now 476TelegramFacebookTweetEmailTellMeWeRedditCopy Link

Former President Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference held in the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 28, 2021. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Viewpoints

Conrad Black May 24, 2021 Updated: May 25, 2021 biggersmallerPrint

Commentary

With the latest job creation numbers 75 percent below forecast, and illegal entry into the U.S. across the southern border up 944 percent from April of last year, and the president having difficulty reconciling his support of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with the vocal anti-Semitism of elements of his own congressional party, and inflation on gasoline, lumber, bread, and a number of other vital products running between 50 and 150 percent, the contemporary Democratic Party is reverting to the only arrow left in its quiver and the only song remaining in its song book: Trump-hate.

The administration’s demiurgic effort to continue public panic over the Covid virus has failed. Texas, whose opposition to the complete shut-down President Biden denounced as “Neanderthal,” and other anti-shut down states such as Florida and South Dakota, have so completely outperformed the principal Democratic compulsory lockdown states, as to make it very difficult to sustain public pandemic hysteria at its former stratospheric levels. Likewise, the progress of the vaccines for which no Democrat is physically capable of giving any credit to former President Trump, have made hysteria even more difficult to support.

The administration has acquiesced in the Colonial Pipeline paying a $4.45 million bribe to the Russian cyber-hackers who shut it down as “a corporate matter.” The president has expressed his confidence that the Russian leader Vladimir Putin knows nothing about this illegal computer hacking activity conducted from within his own country.

It would be an offensive use of the generally shabby device of the rhetorical question to ask if any reader could imagine President Eisenhower or President Kennedy or President Reagan or President Clinton being both so blasé about such a development, and so little bothered by the docile media about it being impossible to fill the tank of your car at the gas stations of the nation’s capital because cyber thugs have shut down the pipeline, and it is only being reopened because of the bribe paid by the company, and the president says it’s a corporate matter and believes that the head of the Russian government knew nothing about it.

The polls so far show President Biden’s approval rating in the low to mid ’50s, a very comfortable position about 10 percent ahead of his disapproval rating though not miraculous for someone so early in his administration. The approval ratings for the former president are about the same in reverse so the effect of the proverbial honeymoon has been to freeze things.

The following insight makes no pretense to being scientific, professional, or in the slightest degree researched. But my impression is that the relief at the less hectic and antagonistic and backbiting atmosphere of the Trump era, chiefly the result of his enemies’ endless attacks upon him, but still the remembered ambiance of Trump’s America, approximately balances the increasing concern over the practical shortcomings of this administration’s performance in almost every field.

None of these problem areas, including the sharply increased crime rates, and all the complicated and almost wholly negative consequences of the country, especially the schools, being shut down for a year, are likely to abate quickly or continue to be assimilated with such Job-like patience as they have been up to now.

It must be said that Mr. Biden does a very good job of appearing to be moderate and likable and while his inarticulation is acoustically irksome and worrisome as an indication of his mental acuity, his understated and good-natured treatment of almost every issue is amiable and in many ways a welcome change.

It now appears that the Democratic senators and congressional representatives, having had the opportunity to consult with their own districts and states, are now substantially disabused of the temptation to try to enact much more of the Sanders socialist program that Biden signed on to, to maintain party unity.

It isn’t working—it is in fact a disaster in every field: open borders, pouring borrowed money out of the treasury to the point that it disincentives people from working and inflames inflation in a way that has not been seen in the United States in more than 40 years. In these circumstances, with failing policies and rising controversy over unspeakable irritations such as the official promotion of racist versions of American history and current sociology even in the Armed Forces, it is logical that the Democrats return to the one card they’ve successfully played these last five years: the confected and orchestrated hatred of the former president.

This appears to be the explanation for the rabidly partisan attorney general of New York, Letitia James’ elevation of the decades-old investigation of the Trump organization, whether by the IRS or the department of justice, to be a criminal investigation.

It is in this context that the personification of the Trump Russian collusion fraud when she was at Lawfare, Susan Hennessey, has joined the Justice Department, and that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pressing ahead with her insatiable ambition to pretend that the Jan. 6 violation of the Capitol really was a Trump-inspired attempt at insurrection.

The FBI, tarnished though it is, has established that it was just hooliganism unconnected to Trump or his political organization. It has also come to light that none of the damage would have been done if the speaker and the egregious mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, had paid any attention when the head of the Capitol Police asked for reinforcements in the receding days.

The Democrats had naturally bought into the Never Trump Republicans’ view that having ousted him from the White House, Trump would vanish into the aberrant past and the Republican party would resume its former post-Reagan status as alternating occupation of the White House and control of the Congress while the machinery of government was entirely operated by Democrats and the country drifted slowly to the left.

It is now clear the Trump retains the support of the great majority of Republicans and that in early polling for the 2024 presidential nomination, he leads the second place finisher former vice president Mike Pence by 43 percent to 13 percent, and other candidates are in single digits. Ironically, the attempt to cancel Trump on the social media platforms has enabled him to be as much present to the public as the public wishes without being oppressively in the face of the public all the time as he was as president.

The prosecutorial system in the United States is so generally corrupt, and grand juries are so hopelessly incapable of providing any comfort at all against capricious prosecution, that Attorney General James could certainly indict Trump but, since he has been under continuous tax audit for 40 years, it is unlikely that she would have a real case.

In New York City and given the terrible abuse of the plea bargain system, juries would convict any Republican of any charge, but such charges as might be mounted against the former president would almost certainly be blown to pieces on appeal and that would not help achieve the Democrats Holy Grail of destroying the Trump political phenomenon.

They are now in the uncomfortable position through there ineptitude and their dalliance with the far left of being unable to pass any legislation that will satisfy the cutting edge of the Democrats, and unable to make any of the policies that they have advocated since the election campaign even passably successful.

At this point the administration looks like a melting iceberg, turning in the desperation of their failure at governing, back to the only tactic that has worked for them: the malicious character assassination of the former president. It is unlikely that will work again.

Conrad Black has been one of Canada’s most prominent financiers for 40 years, and was one of the leading newspaper publishers in the world. He’s the author of authoritative biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and, most recently, “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other,” which has been republished in updated form. You can hear more of Conrad’s thoughts on his podcast “Scholars & Sense” alongside his co-hosts Bill Bennett and Victor Davis Hanson at ScholarsAndSense.buzzsprout.com

By B.J. Hansen Published May 31, 2021 08:00 am

Pinecrest Lake View Photo

Sonora, CA — Fire risk is high, and California Public Health officials are warning people to stay hydrated.

We reported earlier that there is currently an Excessive Heat Warning issued for the Mother Lode, per the National Weather Service. Over nine million people in northern and central California are under either a heat advisory or excessive heat warning.

Temperatures are expected to push near triple digits in the lower Sierra foothills today and continuing through Wednesday. Make sure to find some shade and take breaks to avoid heat exhaustion. Higher elevation areas like Pinecrest are expecting temps in the mid to upper eighties, and Arnold is expected to hit 90.

California’s independent power grid operator states it does not anticipate any energy supply outages related to the heat-wave. However, officials say they will monitor the grid closely