A &#8220;small band of anti-government protesters,&#8221; holed up in Hong Kong Polytechnic University, are still refusing to give into police demands, even as Hong Kong authorities&#8217; siege of the demonstrators&#8217; stronghold enters its eleventh day and the number of remaining protesters is dwindling rapidly.
Hong Kong&#8217;s pro-democracy movement also says that it fears an imminent crackdown from authorities at the behest of Chinese government, which wants a swift and decisive end to the five-month-long movement.
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/19/hong-kong-protests-hundreds-surrender-to-police-after-university-standoff">The Guardian reports</a> that there are still about 100 individuals holed up in Hong Kong Polytechnic, the final stronghold of a university movement that began last week following an uptick in violence between pro-democracy protesters and Hong Kong&#8217;s police. Thousands of students, determined to move the pro-democracy movement forward, wrote a manifesto demanding that the Chinese loosen their grip on Hong Kong&#8217;s government and abandon efforts to stifle the freedoms residents of the city-state enjoy, and gathered in universities last week and prepared to either negotiate with Hong Kong&#8217;s chief executive or do battle with law enforcement.
&#8220;On five campuses in the Chinese-ruled territory, students armed with medieval-type weaponry turned their universities into rebel fortresses, amid a growing sense by many that sustained peaceful protests were futile. On the other side of the barricades and beyond the flames of burning debris were lines of riot police, armed with batons, tear gas and rubber bullets,&#8221; <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-campus-insight/fire-magicians-and-medieval-weaponry-a-hong-kong-university-under-siege-idUSKBN1XT1SL">according to Reuters</a>.
They were able to hunker down in safety for three days before police closed in. Now, after a weekend marked with violence, only the group at Hong Kong Polytechnic is left, now facing arrest and an unknown future as Hong Kong&#8217;s government has refused to give in to their demands.
&#8220;Running battles between police and protesters on Monday featured raging fires, tear gas and flaming vehicles,&#8221; <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-18/hundreds-trapped-in-hong-kong-siege-raising-fears-of-crackdown">Bloomberg said from the scene</a>. &#8220;By the evening tens of thousands of demonstrators marched toward the university to aid those stuck in the campus, leading to more clashes throughout the night. Some managed to leave from the university in Kowloon by climbing over walls, while police arrested dozens of others on Monday &#8212; sometimes tackling them to the ground or pounding them with batons.&#8221;
&#8220;Several groups have tried to escape, including one that slid down hoses from a footbridge to waiting motorcycles, but police said they intercepted 37, including the drivers, who were arrested for &#8216;assisting offenders,'&#8221; Reuters reported Tuesday.
&#8220;Late on Monday, dozens were seen abseiling down a footbridge as police fired teargas, and were driven away on motorbikes,&#8221; the Guardian added. Several others were intercepted trying to escape through underground drainage tunnels.
Chinese state-run media says that around a thousand people have been arrested over the course of the confrontation, including perhaps 300 minors (though China&#8217;s media would not acknowledge the age of many of the protesters). Overnight, around 600 people either surrendered or were &#8220;evacuated&#8221; from Hong Kong Polytechnic alone.
Hong Kong&#8217;s chief executive, Carrie Lam, was unsympathetic in a speech Tuesday morning.
“We will use whatever means to continue to persuade and arrange for these remaining protesters to leave the campus as soon as possible so that this whole operation could end in a peaceful manner,” she told reporters, later adding that she believed that protesters had turned their universities into &#8220;weapons factories,&#8221; thus necessitating the police response.
Pro-democracy protests, triggered by a bill in the city-state&#8217;s legislature that would have allowed Chinese authorities to seek out and apprehend political dissidents hiding out in Hong Kong, have been going on for more than five months. In recent weeks, though, the protests have escalated, as demonstrators use increasingly violent means to get attention, and Hong Kong officials, prompted by the Chinese government, crack down in increasingly violent ways.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong University Under Siege By Police, Protesters Fear Violent Chinese Crackdown

China

Students returning home from college to China’s Xinjiang region earlier this year were shocked to discover their families had been detained in one of the country’s internment camps.
Worse yet, authorities in Xinjiang had prepared scripts to handle the student’s questions and threaten them from acting out for fear their families could be detained longer. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html">obtained 403 pages</a> of Chinese documents detailing how the communist country has been interning Muslim-minorities in the country and how they managed to keep the detentions secret for so long. Until this year, China denied the existence of the camps, but then changed their tune and claimed they were educational facilities to better the lives of Muslims.
One document obtained by the Times showed a script for Xinjiang authorities to use to answer student questions.
“They’re in a training school set up by the government,” was to be the answer to students asking what had happened to their families. If the student continued to ask questions, authorities were to tell them that while their relatives were not criminals, they couldn’t leave the “schools.”
Authorities would then threaten the students by saying their relatives could be detained longer or shorter depending on the student’s actions.
“I’m sure that you will support them, because this is for their own good and also for your own good,” authorities would say.
The Times also reported the documents suggested Chinese authorities “were directed to tell people who complained to be grateful for the Communist Party’s help and stay quiet” even as students questioned how their tuition would be paid and who would plant crops. The Times included a list of key disclosures from the documents:
<ul>
<li>
<blockquote>President Xi Jinping, the party chief, laid the groundwork for the crackdown in a series of speeches delivered in private to officials during and after a visit to Xinjiang in April 2014, just weeks after Uighur militants <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/world/asia/china-executes-3-over-deadly-knife-attack-at-train-station-in-2014.html">stabbed more than 150 people at a train station</a>, killing 31. Mr. Xi called for an all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” using the “organs of dictatorship,” and showing “absolutely no mercy.”</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>Terrorist attacks abroad and the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan heightened the leadership’s fears and helped shape the crackdown. Officials argued that attacks in Britain resulted from policies that put “human rights above security,” and Mr. Xi urged the party to emulate aspects of America’s “war on terror” after the Sept. 11 attacks.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>The internment camps in Xinjiang expanded rapidly after the appointment in August 2016 of Chen Quanguo, a zealous new party boss for the region. He distributed Mr. Xi’s speeches to justify the campaign and exhorted officials to “round up everyone who should be rounded up.”</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>The crackdown encountered doubts and resistance from local officials who feared it would exacerbate ethnic tensions and stifle economic growth. Mr. Chen responded by purging officials suspected of standing in his way, including one county leader who was jailed after quietly releasing thousands of inmates from the camps.</blockquote>
</li>
</ul>
As The Daily Wire has previously reported, news of the camps is beginning to trickle out of China. Last month, a former prisoner <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-prisoner-in-one-of-chinas-re-education-camps-speaks-out-torture-and-rape-were-common">described</a> how inmates were routinely tortured, sexually abused, and even experimented on.
As the documents obtained by the Times show, anyone who speaks out against the camps get punished. In late October, a police chief who criticized the camps <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/police-chief-in-china-expresses-concern-over-re-education-camp-gets-detained">was detained</a>, and the documents said that in the midst of the crackdown, politicians who expressed concern were removed.

President Xi

Internal Chinese Documents Reveal How The Country Implemented Its Mass Internment Of Muslims

Chinese propaganda films are being made in New Zealand, and the filmmakers are getting a tax rebate from the government.
New Zealand news outlet Stuff <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/117367305/chinese-propaganda-films-are-being-made-in-new-zealand-at-taxpayer-expense">reported</a> that a new film, Wolf Warrior 2, is “a militaristic Chinese propaganda film, partly made in New Zealand.” The tagline for the new film reads:
<blockquote>Anyone who offends China, no matter how remote, must be exterminated.</blockquote>
Further, the film qualified for New Zealand’s screen production grant, which returned $243,000 to the producers after they spent $1.2 million making the New Zealand part of the film. Park Road Post, a post-production facility, received the money from the propaganda film. The facility is owned by Peter Jackson’s production company, WingNut Films.
Stuff reported that the film team received a “taxpayer-funded rebate,” but this is inaccurate. The money did not come from taxpayers. The money was given back to the film team after they overpaid taxes.
More from Stuff:
<blockquote>The film was not made directly by the Chinese Government, but by a slew of Chinese state-owned enterprises, including the China Film Group Corporation, China&#8217;s largest film producer, and Bona Films.
Bona Films is a subsidiary of China Poly Group, another state-owned enterprise. China Poly Group is an unusual conglomerate housing the world&#8217;s third largest art auction house and a real estate business, and has &#8220;longstanding ties to the military and the family of the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping,&#8221; according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/arts/design/chinese-arts-company-goes-public-in-bid-to-grow.html">The New York Times</a>. </blockquote>
The first Wolf Warrior was made with the help of China’s military, which supplied real aircraft for the film and 32 active tanks.
Stuff also reported that researcher and China expert, Professor Anne-Marie Brady, has a report coming out that will explain how the cooperation between New Zealand and China may be a financial boon to the smaller country at the expense of its culture.
“It will have a chilling effect on our cultural scene,&#8221; she told Stuff.
The reason is that New Zealand’s films will have to follow Chinese censorship rules in order to tap into the massive cinematic market in the communist country.
The demand to bow to China’s censorship has affected numerous films, not just in New Zealand, but also the U.S. Most recently, American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bravo-quentin-tarantino-refuses-to-censor-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-for-china">refused to recut</a> his most recent film, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” to appease Chinese censors. His stand against China came after the NBA apologized for a general manager’s tweet in support of Hong Kong protesters.
Stuff reported on another New Zealand film caught in the controversy:
<blockquote>New Zealand-made Mulan, directed by Whale Rider director Niki Caro, has copped criticism for its overly militaristic pro-China tone ahead of its release.
People have threatened to boycott the film, after it&#8217;s star, Liu Yifei, posted a meme from the Communist Party&#8217;s People&#8217;s Daily saying &#8220;I support the Hong Kong police&#8221; on social media, alongside a heart emoji.
The post went up a day after the UN Humans rights office said the Hong Kong police were &#8220;employing less-lethal weapons in ways that are prohibited by international norms and standards.”</blockquote>

Chinese propaganda

New Zealand Is Making Chinese Propaganda Films

New Zealand

Two individuals, a married couple in China, have been diagnosed with &#8220;pneumonic plague,&#8221; according to <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/world/two-counts-of-pneumonic-plague-diagnosed-in-china-authorities-attempting-to-prevent-outbreak">international reports</a> &#8212; a strain of the plague &#8220;more infectious than the strain that ravaged Europe in the Dark Ages.&#8221;
According to Chinese state-run media, per Canada&#8217;s National Post, &#8220;doctors in Beijing confirmed that the patients, from China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, were infected with pneumonic plague.&#8221; The two individuals who contracted the disease are receiving treatment at Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing.
The pair contracted the disease near their home in Inner Mongolia, making them the second such couple to have contracted the plague in that general region since May, when a Mongolian couple died from eating raw organ meat from an infected marmot, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/13/health/china-plague-intl-hnk-scn-scli/index.html">CNN reports</a>. The husband contracted the disease first and was nursed by the wife until she also fell ill.
&#8220;Plague, caused by bacteria and transmitted through flea bites and infected animals, can develop in three different forms. Bubonic plague causes swollen lymph nodes, while septicemic plague infects the blood and pneumonic plague infects the lungs,&#8221; CNN continues. &#8220;Pneumonic &#8212; the kind the Chinese patients have &#8212; is more virulent and damaging. Left untreated, it is always fatal, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).&#8221;
Most victims of the bubonic plague catch the disease from infected parasites, typically fleas or body lice. The &#8220;pneumonic plague,&#8221; which can be an advanced form of the bubonic plague, is transmitted from person to person, according to the WHO, and has a 24 hour incubation period, during which it targets a person&#8217;s lungs and respiratory system.
There are typically several incidents of the plague each year in China &#8212; and even a couple in the United States &#8212; and most do not result in outbreaks like the one that killed an estimated 50 million people in Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The disease, the WHO says, lives on in low levels in rodent populations, and circulates among animals that live alongside humans, including cats and dogs, so its difficult to eradicate completely.
&#8220;From 2010 to 2015, more than 3,248 cases were reported worldwide, including 584 deaths, according to the WHO. The three most endemic countries are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, and Peru,&#8221; CNN reports.
While researchers are developing a vaccine, there is currently no blanket preventative measure for the disease, aside from using DEET-based insect repellents.
In this case, though, such numbers do little to quash concerns that China could be dealing with an actual outbreak, particularly given that Chinese state-run media wouldn&#8217;t acknowledge an out-of-hand situation. The mere fact that the Chinese government is acknowledging two incidents of the pneumonic plague seemed to set off alarm bells on social media, particularly among watchdogs of Chinese current events.
UPI notes that &#8220;Chinese authorities have previously reported cases of the bubonic plague. In 2009, there were 12 confirmed cases of the plague; three people died. The following year, China claimed seven confirmed cases of the plague and two deaths. In 2014, there were three confirmed cases of the plague, and three people dead from the fatal disease, according to Chinese government statistics.&#8221;
&nbsp;

New clinic centre opened

Two People In China Have The Plague

Science

Police in Hong Kong, now armed with live rounds after a decision by authorities to crack down on pro-democracy protests taking place weekly in the city-state, shot two demonstrators over the weekend, including one during a Facebook livestream.
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/10/asia/hong-kong-protester-shot-intl-hnk/index.html">CNN reports</a> that an additional protester was set on fire.
The protests in Hong Kong, sparked by a China-sponsored legislative measure designed to allow Chinese authorities to investigate and arrest dissidents hiding out in Hong Kong, have grown increasingy more dramatic as the pro-democracy demonstrations push into their fifth month. Although the measure is no longer on the table, Hong Kong residents say they are concerned that China&#8217;s government won&#8217;t give up on trying to bring Hong Kong under deeper control.
At least one protester was shot Monday morning during a demonstration in downtown Hong Kong, as he crossed through a crosswalk in front of police officers. The incident was captured on a Facebook livestream.
&#8220;The video shows two masked protesters in the Sai Wan Ho neighborhood of Hong Kong confronting a police officer during an early morning protest designed to disrupt rush hour traffic,&#8221; <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hong-kong-protester-shot-video-shows-hong-kong-police-officer-shooting-protester/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&amp;linkId=76823680">CBS News reported</a>. &#8220;It&#8217;s unclear what exactly prompted the scuffle, but the officer quickly drew his gun and shoved it into the chest of one of the protesters while grabbing him with his free arm.&#8221;
A second protester then &#8220;approached the two struggling men and the officer appears to shoot him somewhere in the torso,&#8221; the outlet continued. Their reported said that &#8220;three shots  were fired in total, and the 21-year-old protester fell to the ground with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.&#8221;
The officer involved claimed that the protester was trying to grab his service weapon when he was shot.
The protester is reportedly in critical condition, though police &#8212; the only communicating authority on the matter &#8212; say he is expected to survive. In a press conference with Chinese state run media, a police spokesperson added that the officer &#8220;attempted to fire warning shots but inadvertently hit one of the protesters,&#8221; <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/hong-kong-protester-shooting-police-facebook-video-live-officer-a9197776.html">according to the UK&#8217;s Independent</a>.
The video, available at the Independent, seems to tell a very different story. After shooting the protester, officers pin down the wounded man and a second demonstrator.
&#8220;In a separate incident, a man who confronted a group of pro-democracy protesters was doused in a flammable liquid and set alight,&#8221; according to CNN. The man shouted that the protesters were &#8220;all not Chinese&#8221; before being beaten and then set on fire. He is also reportedly in critical condition and expected to survive, but his injuries are quite severe.
Violence between Hong Kong law enforcement authorities and protesters has been ramping up in recent weeks, and this past weekend appears to have been the most dramatic. Saturday&#8217;s and Sunday&#8217;s demonstrations saw &#8220;protesters hurl petrol bombs, set fires, build barricades and disrupt transit in several locations, including the crucial cross-harbor tunnel that connects Hong Kong Island with Kowloon.&#8221; Protesters, who are now banned from gathering in a single area, spread out to 120 separate locations to evade capture.
Hong Kong&#8217;s chief executive, Carrie Lam, was ordered to Beijing last week to receive instructions on how to quell protests &#8212; and, presumably, to be told that pro-democracy demonstrations must be shut down at all costs. In a press conference Monday morning, Lam called the protesters &#8220;enemies of the people,&#8221; and promised that they &#8220;will never win.&#8221;
&#8220;If there&#8217;s still any wishful thinking that by escalating violence the Hong Kong government will yield to pressure to satisfy the so-called political demands, I&#8217;m making this statement clear and loud here: that will not happen,&#8221; Lam said. &#8220;Violence is not going to give us any solution to the problems that Hong Kong is facing. Our joint priority now, as a city, is to end the violence and to return Hong Kong to normal as soon as possible.&#8221;

Anti-Government Protests Continue in Hong Kong

Police In Hong Kong Fire Live Rounds, Shoot Two Protesters During Facebook Livestream

LeBron James got caught cozying up to China in the most embarrassing of ways a few weeks back. Turns out he’s got some competition on the “cozying up” front from two of the biggest companies in Hollywood.
The Los Angeles Lakers superstar scolded Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey for supporting Hong Kong protesters, dubbing Morey “misinformed” and “not educated.” A massive public backlash ensued.
The derisive chant “Shut Up and Dribble” made a sudden comeback.
Much less has been made of two similar comments tied to authoritarian regimes.
Netflix, the world’s biggest streaming company (for now), got in trouble with one of its politically charged originals. The company’s far-left talker “Patriot Act” starring Hasan Minhaj aired a segment critical of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his ties to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi earlier this year.
The streaming giant yanked the episode in question from its Saudi feed at the country’s urging. Recently, CEO Reed <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/netflix-ceo-defends-censoring-anti-government-video-in-saudi-arabia/">Hastings defended the decision</a>.
<blockquote>&#8220;We&#8217;re not in the news business,&#8221; he said during an event sponsored by The New York Times. &#8220;We&#8217;re not trying to do &#8216;truth to power.&#8217; We&#8217;re trying to entertain.&#8221;
&#8220;We can accomplish a lot more by being entertainment and influence the conversation about the way people live, rather than being another news channel,&#8221; he added.</blockquote>
Netflix seemed less interested in “entertaining” when it got into <a href="https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/flashback-obamas-netflix-not-political/">bed with the Obamas</a> on a multi-million dollar production deal. Or when Hastings added former Obama official Susan Rice to the company’s Board of Directors.
And what about Netflix threatening to pull productions out of Georgia after the state passed strict new legislation <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hypocrites-netflix-films-middle-eastern-countries-paul-bois">targeting abortion procedures</a>?
That doesn’t mention the streamer’s hard-left content catalog, featuring uber-woke talent like Chelsea Handler, the aforementioned Minaj, David Letterman and, briefly, Michelle Wolf.
Standing up to authoritarian regimes isn’t of particular interest to Team Disney, either. The House that Mickey Built gains plenty from showing its product in Chinese movie theaters. That allows gargantuan hits like “Avengers: Endgame” to be gargantuan-er.
So it’s not shocking to hear Disney echo similar talking points.
The Hollywood Reporter recently <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/hollywood-reporter-executive-roundtable-7-major-studio-chiefs-1250718">invited seven major studio chiefs</a> to weigh in on a number of critical issues, from the changing digital landscape to our current superhero fixation.
Alan Horn, chief creative officer and co-chairman of Disney, joined in the conversation which eventually steered toward … China. THR brought up the imbroglio revolving around the studio’s live-action version of “Mulan.” That film’s star, Yifei Liu, shared her support for the Hong Kong protests, causing a LeBron-sized outcry.
How did Horn react?
<blockquote>“My feeling is free speech is an important component of our society, and folks ought to be able to say what they want to say.”</blockquote>
So far, so good.
<blockquote>“We try to be nonpolitical. There is always an issue somewhere in the world, and China happens to be a very, very big market, but it&#8217;s not the only market where there have been issues. The only thing I have said to the folks that work with me is to keep in mind that when you speak, [the media will quote you]. And that carries with it a certain responsibility. Be sensible and think before you speak. Especially on social media.”</blockquote>
The conversation then shifted to the “Fast &amp; Furious” franchise, one of Hollywood’s hottest properties. The roundtable moderator asks if the series could have a Chinese villain at some point. Universal’s Donna Langley offers this answer:
<blockquote>“We run a business. We have to be sensitive to important markets.”</blockquote>
That would be a “no.”
These revelations don’t address the other ways studios appease Chinese censors, from adding positive Asian characters to win over foreign censors to ensuring no plot points interfere with the nation’s “flawless” image.
The international markets certainly complicate business decisions in the 21st century. Movie studios know a stateside flop can turn into a profit leader if select foreign markets rally to their side.
There are few easy answers in our increasingly global age. Still, it’s hard to process the non-stop lectures and finger-wagging from Hollywood Inc. and the aforementioned comments.

Disney Plus Netflix

TOTO: Disney, Netflix Wave White Flag On International Censorship

Disney

LeBron James

Marvel

Netflix

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heavily criticized China and Russia’s authoritarianism, comparing both countries to Germany during World War II. Pompeo said:
<blockquote>Today Russia – led by a former KGB officer once stationed in Dresden ‒ invades its neighbors and slays political opponents. It suppresses the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. In Eastern Ukraine and occupied Crimea, Russian authorities use police raids and torture against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians who oppose Russia’s aggression. In Chechnya, anyone considered “undesirable” by the authorities simply disappears.
In China, the Chinese Communist Party – the CCP – is shaping a new vision of authoritarianism. It uses tactics and methods to suppress its own people that would be familiar to former East Germans. The People’s Liberation Army encroaches on the sovereignty of China’s neighbors. The Party denies travel privileges to critics – even German lawmakers – who condemn its abysmal human rights record. The CCP harasses and surveils activists from Xinjiang and Hong Kong who have sought refuge in Germany, and elsewhere in Europe.</blockquote>
Pompeo had previously criticized China by comparing it to George Orwell’s “1984.”
“The Chinese Communist Party is detaining and abusing more than one million Uighur Muslims in internment camps in the Xinjiang. It’s the western region of China,” Pompeo said at <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pompeo-george-orwells-1984-are-coming-to-life-in-china">an event</a> in October. “The pages of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ are coming to life there. I wish the NBA would acknowledge that.”
Pompeo at that time explained some of what the Trump administration has done to punish China’s authoritarian behavior:
<blockquote>Just this week, the United States made a decision. We put visa restrictions on those responsible for the some of the human rights violations that took place in China and that continue to take place today.
And we’ve stopped American companies from exporting certain products to Chinese tech companies that are enabling these very human rights abuses. We did these things under President Trump’s direction for the simple reason that we know Americans do not want their companies building the machinery of a totalitarian surveillance state.</blockquote>
China has garnered increasing news coverage in the past few months as reports about its Uyghur and other Muslim-minority internment camps makes its way to the West. As The Daily Wire has previously reported, China has more than 1 million people in re-education camps, which it claims are educational facilities and not prisons.
But those who have escaped from the country tell a different story. One woman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-prisoner-in-one-of-chinas-re-education-camps-speaks-out-torture-and-rape-were-common">recently said</a> that prisoners are routinely tortured and sexually abused. She said other prisoners who react in any way to the abuse are punished.
Another recent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/reports-shed-light-on-chinas-organ-harvesting-practices?fbclid=IwAR0MlZH_qkRynR-k_7IHkWoR4YNSmnb6GXvUBKFsISYdNlCQPp24i44XmtQ">report</a> suggests the camps are being used to harvest organs for the communist country’s lucrative transplant industry, which performs upwards of 100,000 transplants a year, thanks to “medical tourism.” People fly to China and spend tens of thousands of dollars for an organ transplant that would be more difficult to obtain elsewhere.
China has claimed the organs are from death-row inmates who voluntarily provide them, but the number of transplants performed each year and the ease at which an organ can be obtained in the country suggest this explanation is not possible.

Mike Pompeo

Pompeo Skewers China’s Authoritarianism, Compares It To Berlin Wall Era-Germany

Federal prosecutors have accused a New York-based firm of falsely claiming security equipment sold to the U.S. military was made in the U.S. when it was actually produced in China.
The Associated Press <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/11/07/illegally-sold-chinese-surveillance-equipment-installed-at-military-installations-feds-say/">reported</a> that Aventura Technologies Inc., based in Long Island, allegedly “sold tens of millions of dollars in Chinese-made surveillance and other sensitive security equipment to customers, including the U.S. military to use on aircraft carriers, by falsely claiming the goods were manufactured in America.”
U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue is now investigating the company, and said evidence suggested “individuals in China were well aware of what was going on,” though it does not appear as though the Chinese government was directly involved with the purchases.
The equipment was “installed on dozens of Army, Navy and Air Force bases, Department of Energy facilities and, among other places, on Navy aircraft carriers,” according to the criminal complaint reviewed by the AP.
Not only did the company allegedly falsely claim its products were made in America, but prosecutors accuse it of covering up its lies by relabeling merchandise to show U.S. labels. The AP reported that the company “also circulated a photo that an Aventura executive, Jack Cabasso, showed the company’s assembly line, but was actually an image of workers in a Chinese facility.”
In 2018, Cabasso emailed an employee of the Chinese manufacturer and implored him to make sure the products couldn’t be traced back to China. He feared customers would see the Chinese company’s logo on circuit boards. Cabasso asked the company to hide the logos, the AP reported. More from the AP:
<blockquote>The scheme began to unravel after the company sold 25 body cameras to the U.S. Air Force, security analysts discovered downloaded images including a logo of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security on the devices, the complaint said. A software analysis found indications that the camera’s manufacturer in China “had been aware that the U.S. Air Force was the intended end user of the camera.”</blockquote>
Cabasso and six other current and former employees have been charged “with conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud,” the AP reported. Cabasso’s bank accounts have been frozen and his 70-foot yacht has been seized.
The International Business Times <a href="https://www.ibtimes.sg/new-york-firm-sold-chinese-surveillance-tools-us-military-claiming-theyre-made-us-34070">reported</a> that the products sold by Aventura presented a cybersecurity risk for the U.S. government. Donoghue said the company’s actions were of “grave concern” for America’s cybersecurity, since the products carried a security risk.
The outlet reported that Aventura made $88 million since 2010, $20.7 million of which came from federal government contracts.
This criminal complaint comes on the heels of another <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/05/30/dod-bought-phony-military-gear-made-in-china-including-counter-night-vision-clothing-that-didnt-actually-work/">military purchasing scandal</a>. This one, from May, also involved a New York-based company. In that case, the company sold the U.S. military counterfeit equipment produced in China, including Multicam APECS Parkas that were supposed to counter night vision goggles, but didn’t.
“The sales were in violation of the Berry Amendment and the Trade Agreements Act, which require goods sold to the military and certain government buyers to be manufactured in either the United States or select countries,” the Military Times <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/05/30/dod-bought-phony-military-gear-made-in-china-including-counter-night-vision-clothing-that-didnt-actually-work/">reported</a>.

U.S. Navy Warship

U.S. Military Has Chinese Surveillance Tools Installed Thanks To New York Company Accused Of Lying About Who Made The Products

Military

Information regarding China’s internment camps has begun leaking out of the country in recent months. From <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-prisoner-in-one-of-chinas-re-education-camps-speaks-out-torture-and-rape-were-common">rape and torture</a> to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/police-chief-in-china-expresses-concern-over-re-education-camp-gets-detained">imprisonment for criticism</a>, stories of the horrors of the communist nation’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities has made international headlines.
The latest <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-like-a-movie-in-xinjiang-new-evidence-that-china-stages-prayers/">report</a>, from The Globe And Mail, shows that the Chinese government stages towns in its Xinjiang region whenever journalists or diplomats visit for an inspection. The Mail reported the story of Zumuret Dawut, whose elderly father was approached by “eight local officials” and told he would be paid to pray in the local mosque the next day. Dawut told the Mail the men said, “We will give you 20 renminbi for each time you pray,” and asked her father to pray five times the next day, for a total of 100 renminbi or $18.50.
As the Mail reported, Dawut’s 79-year-old father “had long since stopped attending the local mosque out of fear the authorities would see his religious observance as a sign of radicalization and place him in an indoctrination centre, as the government has done with hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the region.”
But her father was told that an inspection tour was happening the next day, so they wanted the visitors to see people praying.
The outlet reported that this is a carefully crafted government production with “intricately managed scenes filled with pedestrians, street vendors and drivers played by people &#8212; police officers, teachers, retirees &#8212; who have been screened by the authorities and assigned roles.”
The officials, according to Dawut, told her father how to respond to questions from the visitors, including telling them: “We are not prohibited from praying” and “We are not prohibited from entering the mosque.”
Another Uyghur woman said these visits seem “like a movie” because of the lengths to which the government stages the towns. This woman told the Mail that she watched her friend memorize 50 questions and responses so she could “perform as a civilian walking in the street” for an upcoming inspection. The friend was taught to say she did “not know the location” of any local political indoctrination camps. She was also taught so “say there are no camps and only one school where they provide vocational skills and training,” the Uyghur woman told the Mail.
The responses the friend was forced to memorize were not accurate.
China for years denied the existence of its concentration camps, but late last year admitted there were camps, but claimed they were educational facilities designed to train people to live better lives and reduce terrorism. An October 16, 2018 report from one of China’s state run news agencies claimed the camps were “vocational education and training program[s].”
Ever since, the nation has done what it could to counter the claim that these centers were prisons. But those who have spoken out about the camps tell a different story. Last month, Sayragul Sauytbay <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-million-people-are-jailed-at-china-s-gulags-i-escaped-here-s-what-goes-on-inside-1.7994216?sfns=mo">told Haaretz</a> that prisoners were routinely tortured and sexually assaulted. She said inmates were crammed into small rooms and only given a single bucket to use as a bathroom. Further, she said they were given pills allegedly to combat disease, but said one nurse told her not to take the pills because they were dangerous. Rumors around the camp suggested the inmates were part of human medical experiments.

China Uyghur

China Stages Towns For Visiting Journalists And Diplomats, Using Stand-Ins With Prepared Answers To Questions, Report Says

Muslims

Hong Kong erupted in a spate of violence over the weekend as pro-democracy protests in the city-state entered their fifth month, and as China promised to ramp up efforts to re-unify and re-educate Hong Kong residents.
At least 200 protesters were arrested over the weekend, <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/6119887/arrests-hong-kong-violence-protests/">Reuters reports</a>, after setting fire to metro stations and vandalizing buildings, including the Hong Kong headquarters of Chinese state-run media.
&#8220;Cat-and-mouse clashes between riot police and demonstrators continued into the early hours of Sunday morning after police broke up an assembly of thousands on Saturday afternoon by firing tear gas into a park,&#8221; the news agency said.
Protesters are technically under a rally ban, but that didn&#8217;t stop thousands from showing up for the 22nd week in a row, to demonstrate against what they believe to be increased Chinese control over Hong Kong&#8217;s government, and China&#8217;s clear efforts to curb some of the freedoms Hong Kong residents enjoy.
As demonstrators took the streets on Saturday, police responded with force, deploying water cannons and, eventually, firing rounds of tear gas into the crowds, even though the protest was largely peaceful, and candidates for Hong Kong&#8217;s city council made appearances, in the hopes that law enforcement officials would consider the gathering a political question and answer session.
Protesters responded by increasing their own level of aggression, &#8220;smashing windows and the glass entrance door [at China&#8217;s Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong bureau], splashing red ink, spraying graffiti and setting a small fire in the lobby. Graffiti that was sprayed on the wall next to the entrance read &#8216;Deport the Chinese communists.'&#8221;
The pro-democracy city officials did not emerge unscathed. One, District Councilor Andrew Chiu, was seized &#8220;by the neck and shoulders&#8221; and part of his ear was bitten off by an unidentified man who had just finished a &#8220;stabbing spree&#8221; in the park where candidates for city office were holding court.
China responded to the weekend&#8217;s violence Monday by summoning Hong Kong&#8217;s chief executive, Carrie Lam, to Beijing. Both China and Lam are mum about the meeting, <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/04/china-warns-hong-kong-after-weekend-of-violence/">Foreign Policy reports</a>, but China reportedly has a plan to replace Lam, who caved to protesters and shelved a bill that would have expanded China&#8217;s ability to investigate and detain political dissidents who seek shelter from the Chinese government in Hong Kong.
Last week, China also said that it plans to ramp up efforts to &#8220;integrate&#8221; Hong Kong &#8220;by strengthening patriotic education and overhauling how the city’s leader and other top officials are appointed and removed,&#8221; according to the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-protests-turn-violent-as-politician-attacked-11572790231">Wall Street Journal</a>. Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowed, weeks ago, to &#8220;crush the bones&#8221; of anyone who foments pro-democracy leanings in Hong Kong, and China seems intent on following through on the threat, even if Hong Kong officials aren&#8217;t interested in further engaging protesters.
Those who support democracy in Hong Kong say the effort sounds more like re-indoctrination, and protesters say they aren&#8217;t giving up.
“Hong Kong seems to be trapped in a weekly cycle of unrest and repression, conflict between protesters and authorities, with no clear endgame on either side,” one observer told WSJ. “The protesters are not giving up as the government had hoped, while the government is taking no action at all to resolve the crisis.”

HONG KONG-CHINA-POLITICS-UNREST-CRIME

Hong Kong Erupts In Violence As China Ramps Up Response To Pro-Democracy Protests

The West&#8217;s problematic relationship with the communist nation of China exhibited its toxicity once again when a British baking show disqualified a Hong Kong-themed cake after it angered certain organizers.
According to <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/a35dpa/hong-kong-protesters-are-getting-tattoos-that-represent-their-struggle">Vice</a>, an international cake show for the United Kingdom&#8217;s &#8220;The Great British Bake Off&#8221; ignited controversy last week when an exhibitor featured a cake that members of the &#8220;globalist&#8221; community would consider inappropriate.
&#8220;The dessert was presented at Cake International, the &#8216;world&#8217;s greatest cake show,&#8217; and <a href="https://qz.com/1741132/censorship-of-hong-kong-protests-spreads-to-cake-contest-in-uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">featured decorations like a tiny protester with a yellow umbrella</a> and a large Guy Fawkes mask,&#8221; reported the outlet. &#8220;It also had a pretend record player and vinyl record designed with a bauhinia, the flower featured on Hong Kong’s flag. A video by its creator, Hong Kong bakeshop 3rd Space, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B4Xv1nUAtPu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">shows the record revolving</a> while the protest song &#8216;Glory to Hong Kong&#8217; plays. Liquid nitrogen also swirled from behind the umbrellas to look like tear gas.&#8221;
In a lengthy <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CakeInternational/photos/a.329284370437670/2792909484075134/?type=3&amp;theater">Facebook statement</a>, Cake International said that the cake was removed from the competition area after exhibitors complained &#8220;about its content&#8221; to the point of threatening to &#8220;damage the piece.&#8221; They, however, maintained that the disqualification stemmed from it being an &#8220;oversized exhibit.&#8221;
&#8220;In reference to the comments regarding a cake being disqualified from the cake international competition, we wish to clarify that the difficult decision to remove the piece from the competition area was due to complaints about its content with some threatening to damage the piece,&#8221; the statement read. &#8220;We have judged this entry based on the cake decorating skills and not the subject matter; unfortunately it was ‘not to schedule’ for that category (as seen below) as it states in the rules &#8216;No part of the exhibit can overhang the allowed area. Oversized exhibits will be disqualified.'&#8221;
The statement then touted Cake International as an &#8220;inclusive community&#8221; that allows a diverse range of cultures and viewpoints to express themselves.
&#8220;Cake International is an inclusive community and welcomes entries from across the world, this competition entry was not removed as a political statement but was disqualified as a direct result of it not being made in line with our competition schedule,&#8221; the statement continued. &#8220;We appreciate that this situation is sensitive and there are many passionate views across the world, our decisions are based purely on what is in the best interest for the cake decorating community and not as a statement of our beliefs or opinions.&#8221;
3rd Space organizers clarified in an Instagram post that the complaints indeed came from Chinese competitors.
&#8220;One of our teammates joined the cake international show and got disqualified due to complaints from Chinese candidates, claiming that this cake contains offensive content by promoting independence of Hong Kong,&#8221; read the post.
As noted by Vice, the baking show has featured political cakes in previous episodes.
&#8220;Cake International is not new to politically-themed cakes,&#8221; reported the outlet. &#8220;There was also a cake at the event that featured United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/food/gallery/2019/nov/01/cake-international-show-birmingham-nec-in-pictures" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">dressed as babies</a>, with a decorative bomb.&#8221;

Hong Kong Protesters Rally for 22nd Weekend

Hong Kong-Themed Cake Disqualified From British Baking Show

Communism

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) stated during a Minnesota campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders – an <a href="https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/sanders-socialist-successes">admitted</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/04/29/bernie-sanders-is-an-avowed-socialist-and-democrats-are-actually-pretty-ok-with-that/">socialist</a> who has a history of <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/bernie-sanders-praised-communist-cuba-and-the-soviet-union-in-the-1980s">sympathizing</a> with communists – that she was excited at the prospect of a Sanders&#8217; presidency because he would &#8220;fight against Western imperialism.&#8221;
Omar made the remarks toward the end of her speech, which last approximately 20 minutes. Omar stated:
<blockquote>As a refugee who escaped war and persecution as a child, I am honored to stand with the son of a Jewish refugee who survived genocide. The acknowledgement of pain and suffering is personal for both of us. The fight for human rights is undeniable and when we recognize injustices of the past and present – whether it is genocide against Jewish people, Armenians, or Rwandans, or Bosnians, or Native Americans, or more – we recognize, we realize that that recognition isn’t about punishing our political foes, but leading within a moral obligation.
I am beyond honored and excited for a president that will fight against Western imperialism and fight for a just world … I am excited for president Bernie Sanders. [emphasis added]</blockquote>
So, what is &#8220;Western imperialism?&#8221;
Generally speaking, when someone talks about &#8220;the West&#8221; they are referring to the non-communist states in Europe and North America, which have been largely formed by Judeo-Christian values and where capitalism is the dominant economic system in place.
According to the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/imperialism">Encyclopedia Britannica</a>, Imperialism is a &#8220;state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas.&#8221;
The encyclopedia adds that the term is &#8220;frequently employed in international propaganda to denounce and discredit an opponent’s foreign policy.&#8221;
So, in essence, what excites Omar about Sanders is the fact that she believes that he will essentially shrink the United States&#8217; role and influence in the world for the sake of having a &#8220;just world.&#8221;
Omar&#8217;s statement was met with thunderous applause by those who most likely have no idea what her words really mean.
Shrinking the United States&#8217; influence and power in the world will likely only breed conflict as it would allow terrorism and communism to spread, the latter of which is starting to become a serious threat because of China.
China, which is ruled by the Communist Party of China (CPC), is widely considered by U.S. officials and experts to be the greatest threat to America from an economic and military standpoint.
An advocacy group – Stand For America – founded by former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, labels China as the &#8220;Biggest Foreign Threat to America.&#8221;
&#8220;China engages in hostile trade practices, stealing America’s intellectual property, and manipulating their currency for trading advantages against us,&#8221; the group writes. &#8220;China is aggressively enlarging its military, taking over islands in Asian waters, and dangerously expanding its industrial reach into all corners of the world. And we must not forget that China is still a Communist dictatorship that is perhaps the world’s single worst human rights violator, taking surveillance and imprisonment of its citizens to truly Orwellian levels.&#8221;
Over the summer, The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/world/asia/united-states-china-conflict.html">reported</a> that many senior U.S. officials &#8220;now view China as a steely ideological rival, where the Communist Party aims not only to subjugate citizens but to spread tools of authoritarian control globally – particularly surveillance, communications and artificial intelligence technology – and establish military footholds across oceans and mountains.&#8221;
An NBC News article from earlier this year outlined the growing threat that China poses to the United States, stating that China&#8217;s &#8220;efforts to penetrate American society and gain influence are insidious – and growing.&#8221;
“The Chinese counterintelligence threat is more deep, more diverse, more vexing, more challenging, more comprehensive and more concerning than any counterintelligence threat I can think of,” FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.
The official written intelligence report that was created by the the major U.S. intelligence agencies stated that China &#8220;remains the most active strategic competitor responsible for cyber espionage against the U.S. Government, corporations, and allies. It is improving its cyber attack capabilities and altering information online, shaping Chinese views and potentially the views of U.S. citizens.&#8221;
The author of the NBC News report – David A. Andelman, executive director of The RedLines Project, formerly a correspondent for The New York Times and CBS News in Europe and Asia – further highlighted the spying threat that China poses to the United States in the academic realm.
Andelman <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/russia-monopolizes-headlines-china-s-threat-u-s-goes-way-ncna966196">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>The American intelligence community appears especially concerned by China’s patience. Chinese ambitions seems to be part of a much broader strategy – one that goes far beyond military capabilities and seeks to “significantly expand China’s penetration of the economies and political systems” of the U.S. and the West, according to the intelligence report.
Some of this expanded espionage appears focused on colleges and universities. “The use of nontraditional collectors, especially in the academic setting, whether it’s professors, scientists, students, we see in almost every field office that the FBI has around the country,” the FBI’s Wray said in 2018. “It’s not just in major cities. It’s in small ones as well. It’s across basically every discipline.”</blockquote>
China, which has aggressively expanded its military to the point where it can challenge the United States in the region, is positioning itself to become the world&#8217;s leading superpower.
As a totalitarian state, National Interest <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-happens-when-china-becomes-most-powerful-country-world-51887">reports</a> that if China becomes the world&#8217;s most powerful nation that it will aggressively attempt to spread its communist ideology around the world.
&#8221; &#8230; Under totalitarianism it is not enough for citizens to just mind their own business and refrain from political opposition to the regime,&#8221; National Interest reports. &#8220;Instead of being satisfied with their political complacency, a totalitarian regime demands strict adherence to its rules and ideas in people’s everyday lives, including in the matters that have nothing to do with politics. In effect, it seeks to control everyone’s every step.&#8221;
&#8220;This is precisely what the Chinese ruling regime is now working to achieve,&#8221; National Interest continued. &#8220;Modern digital technologies offer it a possibility to build an actual dystopia in the sense until now only described in the science fiction – something totalitarian regimes of the past could not do for practical reasons. A new Chinese system relying on total surveillance and big data to notice and assess everyday actions of the citizens is set to become fully operational in 2020.&#8221;

Ilhan Omar

Omar: Bernie Will ‘Fight Against Western Imperialism.’ Here’s What That Could Mean.

Bernie Sanders

Protesters took aim at Blizzard Games over the weekend, rallying outside the company&#8217;s annual fan convention, BlizzCon, to draw attention to the video game company&#8217;s censorship of a player who voiced his support for pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong during a livestream of Blizzard&#8217;s popular game, &#8220;Hearthstone.&#8221;
Dozens of protesters gathered outside the Anaheim Convention Center, <a href="https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/blizzcon-protest-activision-blizzard-hong-kong-blitzchung-1203387207/">according to Variety Magazine</a>, carrying signs &#8220;that read messages including &#8216;Free Hong Kong,&#8217; &#8216;Shame on Blizzard&#8217; and &#8216;Blizzard = China’s bitch,'&#8221; and wearing &#8220;Mei with Hong Kong&#8221; tee shirts, specifically referencing one of Blizzard&#8217;s main characters, Mei from the Overwatch video game series, which has become a &#8220;symbol of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.&#8221; Cosplayers at the event modified their costumes to incorporate the Hong Kong &#8220;flower&#8221; and pro-democracy messages.
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blizzcon ta top <a href="https://t.co/cwyWr19Ce8">pic.twitter.com/cwyWr19Ce8</a>
&mdash; Idol de Crocs (@lunaites) <a href="https://twitter.com/lunaites/status/1190379820749901834?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Some protesters even dressed in head-to-toe Winnie the Pooh costumes, a reference to China&#8217;s crackdown on memes featuring the lovable Disney character, banned in the Communist country after anti-Communist dissidents pointed out how similar the yellow bear looks to China&#8217;s president, Xi Jinping.
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Protest gearing up outside of Blizzcon <a href="https://t.co/xOn012JFPf">pic.twitter.com/xOn012JFPf</a>
&mdash; Jake Dekker (@jacobdekk) <a href="https://twitter.com/jacobdekk/status/1190307095540719616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Protestors at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlizzCon?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlizzCon</a> in Anaheim are upset gamr company Blizzard stripped a title, took prize money and banned gamer <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Blitzchung?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Blitzchung</a> for supporting the Hong Kong protests. Blizzard has apologized and returned the money. <a href="https://twitter.com/KFIAM640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KFIAM640</a> <a href="https://t.co/IPD9dRFihv">pic.twitter.com/IPD9dRFihv</a>
&mdash; Corbin Carson (@CorbinCarson) <a href="https://twitter.com/CorbinCarson/status/1190378790054060032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The Freedom Hong Kong protest at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/blizzcon?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#blizzcon</a> <a href="https://t.co/4dkATqSMvZ">pic.twitter.com/4dkATqSMvZ</a>
&mdash; alessandro fillari (@afillari) <a href="https://twitter.com/afillari/status/1190303200324145152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Up and early at Blizzcon <a href="https://t.co/Q8JQruUmEY">pic.twitter.com/Q8JQruUmEY</a>
&mdash; Matt Kim 🚀 Blizzcon (@LawofTD) <a href="https://twitter.com/LawofTD/status/1190288226080083968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Winnie the Pooh popped up inside the convention, too, attending seminars in full costume as a reminder of the company&#8217;s policy on offending China (and the Chinese government, the gatekeeper to Chinese consumers and a video game fortune for Blizzard).
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Blizzcon (Anaheim, 2019) <a href="https://t.co/gGo28UK3FP">pic.twitter.com/gGo28UK3FP</a>
&mdash; Aleks (@ImmortalHD) <a href="https://twitter.com/ImmortalHD/status/1190438462324822016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 2, 2019</a></blockquote>
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happy BlizzCon everyone <a href="https://t.co/rP4WULding">pic.twitter.com/rP4WULding</a>
&mdash; Rod Breslau (@Slasher) <a href="https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1190324203364519936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Blizzard Games has faced censorship allegations before, but things really got heated last month, when the company abruptly pulled international gaming pro, Chung &#8220;Blitzchung&#8221; Ng Wai, from an online Hearthstone competition, yanked his prize winnings, and banned him from competition, determining him &#8220;ineligible to participate in Hearthstone esports for 12 months.&#8221;
Blizzard claimed, at the time, that Blitzchung had &#8220;engaged&#8221; in an act that brought Blizzard &#8220;public disrepute &#8230; and offends a portion or group of the public or otherwise damages&#8221; the company, <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/blizzard-pulls-blitzchung-from-hearthstone-esports-tournament-over-support-for-hong-kong-protests/">according to CNet</a>.
His crime? In a post-match interview, Blitzchung said, &#8220;Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our age!&#8221;
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[BREAKING] Hong Kong Hearthstone player <a href="https://twitter.com/blitzchungHS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@blitzchungHS</a> calls for liberation of his country in post-game interview:<a href="https://t.co/3AgQAaPioj">https://t.co/3AgQAaPioj</a>
 <a href="https://twitter.com/Matthieist?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Matthieist</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hearthstone?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Hearthstone</a> <a href="https://t.co/DnaMSEaM4g">pic.twitter.com/DnaMSEaM4g</a>
&mdash; Inven Global (@InvenGlobal) <a href="https://twitter.com/InvenGlobal/status/1180954142396710912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Blizzard, CNet explained at the time, is partially owned by a Chinese company, and its out-of-proportion reaction to Blitzchung&#8217;s statement demonstrates exactly how much control that Tencet, the Chinese conglomerate, wields over Blizzard games.
Blizzard&#8217;s president, J. Allen Brack,<a href="https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-tournament"> issued a statement after the Blitzchung incident</a>, denying that the content of Blitzchung&#8217;s speech had anything to do with his ban &#8212; simply that he&#8217;d expressed any opinion in the context of an official post-game interview. Blizzard eventually walked back Blitzchung&#8217;s punishment, reducing his ban to six months and reinstating his winnings.
That didn&#8217;t placate protesters, though, who accused Blizzard of censorship and began a &#8220;Boycott Blizzard&#8221; campaign that saw thousands of gamers dropping their accounts on some of Blizzard&#8217;s most popular games, including Hearthstone, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft.
The organization Fight for the Future spun off a group called Gamers for Freedom that planned the Blizzcon protests.
The group&#8217;s organizer explained why they chose to take the protest so public.
“We encourage them to open up a dialogue with not only us, but the entire gaming community, because that’s one of the things that’s very upsetting about this,” he said. “They’re making rules that impact our safety, our health, our privacy, and they need to engage in a dialogue with us in order to make those decisions properly.”
“They need to talk to their customers,” Fight for the Future&#8217;s spokeman added. “They need to talk to their community. They need our input in order to make sure that they’re keeping us safe.”
Blizzard, stung by the controversy, toyed late last month with possibly cancelling or scaling back BlizzCon, but ultimately decided against it. Instead, J. Allen Brack opened the convention with a pointed apology.
&#8220;We moved too quickly in our decision and then to make matters worse; we were too slow to talk with all of you,” Brack said of the incident, “And for that I am sorry and I accept accountability.” Blizzard, he later added, is committed “to everyone’s right to express themselves.”
Winnie the Pooh showed up for that speech, too.
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Someone actually did it <a href="https://t.co/LhtwniyOYd">pic.twitter.com/LhtwniyOYd</a>
&mdash; Lt. Eddy &#8211; at BlizzCon 😎 (@LieutenantEddy) <a href="https://twitter.com/LieutenantEddy/status/1190318781924425729?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Blizzard

Protesters Rally Outside BlizzCon Over Video Game Company&#8217;s Hong Kong Censorship

Censorship

Technology

The satire wheelhouse that is &#8220;South Park&#8221; continued its attack on China this week in response to the country banning the show for criticizing the Communist Party of China&#8217;s penchant for censorship.
&#8220;The writers of &#8216;South Park&#8217; continued to tweak China in its latest edition, with Randy wearing a President Xi Jinping mask in the opening credits,&#8221; reported <a href="https://deadline.com/2019/10/south-park-continues-to-mock-china-its-president-takes-a-shot-at-harvey-weinstein-1202773287/">Deadline</a> of this week&#8217;s episode. &#8220;The zinger recalled &#8216;South Park’s&#8217; earlier poke at the lion’s cage. That, too, involved Randy, who was forced to shout out an epithet against the Chinese government.&#8221;
Later, the episode took a stab at disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein&#8217;s reemergence into the public spotlight, which occurred last week when women began heckling him while in attendance at a private actor&#8217;s event in New York. Here&#8217; what <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/south-park-harvey-weinstein/">TheWrap</a> had to say of the joke:
<blockquote>Randy Marsh starts hallucinating after he smokes tainted weed that was laced with chemicals by his daughter, Shelly, who tried to destroy his marijuana crops. The altered pot makes him see scary images, including a zombie Winnie the Pooh (a reference to an earlier episode that was critical of China). He then calls the police to tell them he is being raped by Weinstein.
At the end of the episode, Randy wakes up a few days later and realizes that none of it was real until he finds a used condom in the trash.</blockquote>
&#8220;South Park&#8221; has been on an extended anti-China crusade this whole season, blasting anyone or, more precisely, any business that will censor itself in the name of doing business with the communist country. It all began several weeks ago when the episode &#8220;Band in China&#8221; angered the government to the point that the show was banned inside the country. Rather than cater to the country&#8217;s sensibilities, show co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker doubled down in their hits by issuing the most irreverent &#8220;apology&#8221; they could muster.
&#8220;Like the NBA, we welcome the Chinese censors into our homes and into our hearts,&#8221; Parker and Stone <a href="https://twitter.com/SouthPark/status/1181273539799736320/photo/1" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>. &#8220;We too love money more than freedom and democracy. Xi doesn’t look just like Winnie the Pooh at all! Tune into our 300th episode this Wednesday at 10! Long live the Great Communist Party of China! May this autumn’s sorghum harvest be bountiful! We good now China?&#8221;
One week later, the show took the criticism one step further when the character, Randy Marsh, uttered the words &#8220;f*** the Chinese government&#8221; during an episode. That was quickly followed up with another episode that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/south-park-trolls-china-after-country-bans-the-show-f-the-chinese-government">mocked basketball star LeBron James</a> for criticizing Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey&#8217;s public support for the Hong Kong protesters, which had sparked massive tensions between the NBA and the Chinese government.
The episode centered around the school implementing healthy options on the lunch menu, prompting anger from character Eric Cartman. Later, when Cartman confronted the students protesting in favor of healthy lunches, the protestors cited free speech as their reasoning. His reply nearly echoed the words spoken by LeBron James.
&#8220;Their protesting is ruining my lunch. Yes, we do have freedom of speech, but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you are not thinking about others and only thinking about yourself,&#8221; Cartman said. &#8220;They’re trying to change peoples’ lunch. They don’t realize it harms people financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually.&#8221;

Comic-Con International 2016 &#8211;  Comedy Central &#8220;South Park 20&#8221;

‘South Park’ Trolls China Again, Mocks Harvey Weinstein’s Remergence

Harvey Weinstein

South Park

China’s influence was on full display Tuesday as 23 member nations of the United Nations signed on to a statement from the United Kingdom condemning the communist country’s human rights abuses – only to have 54 other nations praise China’s human rights.
The stunning turnout occurred after U.K. Ambassador Karen Pierce introduced a statement that condemned China for “detention; efforts to restrict cultural and religious practices; mass surveillance disproportionately targeting ethnic Uighurs; and other human rights violations and abuses.&#8221;
“We call on the Chinese government to uphold its national laws and international obligations and commitments to respect human rights, including freedom of religion or belief, in Xinjiang and across China,” the statement continued.
Radio Free Asia <a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/uyghur-un-statement-house-passes-bill-10302019173527.html">reported</a> that the U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan and others backed the statement.
But after Pierce’s statement gained support, 54 other member nations gave their support to a statement from Belarus Ambassador Valentin Rybakov that praised China’s record on human rights.
“Now safety and security have returned to Xinjiang and fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded,” Rybakov said, as <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/uighur-muslim-china-xinjiang-united-nations-human-rights-uk-religious-freedom-a9177191.html">reported</a> by The Intercept.
“We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights.”
The 54 nations that signed off on Rybakov’s statement included Egypt, Russia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Pakistan.
As RFA reported, many of the countries that supported China “have been on the receiving end of human rights criticism, including Russia, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
A few months ago, a similar situation took place at the U.N. when 22 countries on the U.N. Human Rights Council wrote a letter condemning China’s human rights abuses. At the time, ambassadors from 37 other nations wrote a follow-up letter in support of China. As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-prisoner-in-one-of-chinas-re-education-camps-speaks-out-torture-and-rape-were-common">reported</a>, China has given enough money to countries in the Middle East that even they signed onto the letter praising China, even though the communist nation’s human rights abuses largely involve Muslim minority groups.
China has more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim-minorities imprisoned in internment camps. China for years denied the camps existed, but have recently admitted they existed but claimed they were educational facilities where families could learn new skills. The camps are marketed as ways to cut down on Islamic terrorism in the country. Those who have survived the camps have said inmates are routinely sexually abused, tortured, and even experimented on.
Anyone who even dares speak out about the camps inevitably gets detained. Himit Qri, police chief of Ucha township in Kuchar County, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/police-chief-in-china-expresses-concern-over-re-education-camp-gets-detained">was detained</a> after he criticized the camps at an event. He also suggested “many people died” at one of the camps. A later report suggested at least <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-man-held-in-one-of-chinas-internment-camps-was-beaten-to-death-by-a-drunk-police-officer">150 people had been killed</a> at just one of the four detention centers in Kuchar County in past six months.
The situation at the U.N. highlights the international body’s problems. Israel, the only Democratic nation in the Middle East, has more statements of condemnation than Russia, China, or North Korea.

UN boy

23 U.N. Member States Condemn China’s Human Rights Abuses; Twice As Many Praise The Communist Country

human rights

Human Rights Council

United Nations

Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter had some harsh words for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) after the congresswoman failed to support a bill that would place sanctions on Turkey for its invasion of northern Syria.
Kanter, who is Turkish, was angered because Omar was the only Democrat to vote against the bill aimed at punishing Turkey (15 Republicans also voted against the bill).
“What an absolute disappointment and shame that the only democrat who did NOT support the Turkish bill aiming to stop the killing of innocent people is <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN">@IlhanMN</a> who seems like [sic] on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DictatorErdogan?src=hashtag_click">#DictatorErdogan&#8217;s</a> payroll working for his interests, but not for the American people and democracy!” Kanter tweeted Tuesday night.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
What an absolute disappointment and shame that the only democrat who did NOT support the Turkish bill aiming to stop the killing of innocent people is <a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@IlhanMN</a> who seems like on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DictatorErdogan?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DictatorErdogan</a> ‘s payroll working for his interests, but not for the American people and democracy!
— Enes Kanter (@EnesKanter) <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1189341327365984256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
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As The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/omar-refuses-to-recognize-armenian-genocide-gives-bizarre-statement-refuses-to-sanction-turkey-for-actions-in-syria">previously reported</a>, Omar has “<a href="https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1187082215634722816">repeatedly condemned</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Ilhan/status/1187023303283789829">using sanctions</a> against Iran, Turkey, and Venezuela because she claims that sanctions hurt innocent people, yet, Omar has repeatedly called for using sanctions against Israel.” In contrast to her sanction claims against socialist or terrorist-supporting nations, Omar is a vocal advocate of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which would intentionally harm Israel and its people.
Kanter has been critical of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the past and has even gone <a href="https://twitter.com/NewDay/status/1186635429480669184">on CNN</a> to express his concerns with the country’s government. In that appearance, Kanter, who is originally from Turkey, said Erdogan “has no respect for human rights,” adding that the country has no democracy or freedom of speech or religion. “I called him the Hitler of our century,” he said of Erdogan.
Kanter may not be far off the mark when he suggested Omar was on Erdogan’s “payroll.” On Thursday, Saavedra <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-ally-of-turkish-president-erdogan-donated-to-omars-campaign-last-month">reported</a> that one of the Turkish president’s top allies met with Omar last month and donated $1,500 to her re-election campaign.
On the same day Omar voted against the Turkey sanctions, she was also one of only three legislators to vote “present” on a resolution recognizing and condemning the Armenian Genocide. After the vote, Omar released a statement explaining why she voted “present”:
<blockquote>I also believe accountability for human rights violations—especially ethnic cleansing and genocide—is paramount. But accountability and recognition of genocide should not be used as cudgel in a political fight. It should be done based on academic consensus outside the push and pull of geopolitics. A true acknowledgement of historical crimes against humanity must include both the heinous genocides of the 20th century, along with earlier mass slaughters like the transatlantic slave trade and Native American genocide, which took the lives of hundreds of millions of indigenous people in this country. For this reason, I voted ‘present’ on final passage of H.Res. 296, the resolution Affirming the United States record on the Armenian Genocide.</blockquote>
Kanter’s rebuke of Omar stands in stark contrast to some of his NBA colleagues, who have refused to speak up against the human rights abuses in China. The NBA as an organization has chosen to stand with China’s money and condemn Houston Rockers general manager Daryl Morey, who voice support for protesters in Hong Kong who are fighting for their freedom. NBA superstar LeBron James, who has had no trouble voicing his political opinions in the past, has refused to condemn China’s human rights abuses as well.

Enes Kanter

Turkish NBA Star Says Ilhan Omar Is On Erdogan’s ‘Payroll’

Turkey

Last year, a Uyghur man imprisoned in one of China’s labor camps died. Chinese officials claimed he died from a heart attack.
But Radio Free Asia (RFA) <a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/beating-10282019164142.html">reported</a> that the man, referred to only as Ghalipjan, was actually beaten to death by a drunk police officer while in custody. Ghalipjan, 35, was detained in Pichan county in one of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s (XUAR) internment camps. RFA estimates that more than “1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities accused of harboring ‘strong religious views’ and ‘politically incorrect’ ideas since April 2017” have been detained in the labor camps.
China claims the camps are education facilities to reduce terrorism, but as The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-prisoner-in-one-of-chinas-re-education-camps-speaks-out-torture-and-rape-were-common">reported</a>, the centers are run like third-world prisons where detainees are regularly sexually assaulted, tortured, experimented on, and given little to no food &#8212; all while living in deplorable conditions.
RFA reports that it received a letter from a source that said Ghalipjan’s mother was told the day he died that it was due to a heart attack from an undiagnosed heart condition. The authorities told her that he was sent to a nearby hospital. Ghalipjan’s family went to the hospital to see his body and found he still had a defibrillator attached to his chest. Family members were not allowed to inspect his body.
“Communist Party cadres from No. 1 village in Pichan’s Lamjin (Lianmuqin) township, where Ghalipjan lived with his wife and five-year-old child, oversaw the burial of the young man on the same night that he died, and inexplicably denied family members the right to wash his body according to Muslim funerary traditions,” RFA reported from the letter.
After talking to multiple sources, RFA was told by the head of a local neighborhood committee that Ghalipjan had actually been killed by a police officer “from the Labai Square Police Station” while detained in one of the prison camps.
“He was beaten to death &#8230; [by] a police officer,” the source told RFA over the phone. “The officer came to work after drinking alcohol and beat him without any reason.”
The source then told RFA that the police officer who beat Ghalipjan to death was “in prison,” but did not know his identity.
On Tuesday, RFA <a href="https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/deaths-10292019181322.html">reported</a> that at least 150 have died in a single XUAR internment camp in the past six months. The deaths all occurred at one of four labor camps in Kuchar County. A Kuchar County police officer told RFA that around 150 people had died in the six months that he worked at the camp and could not provide details about deaths prior to his term.
Another police officer, Himit Qari, who was the chief of police in Ucha township, was detained after making remarks critical of the camps. Qari said at an event that “many people died” at one of the camps where he worked as a security guard.
Recent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/reports-shed-light-on-chinas-organ-harvesting-practices">reports</a> suggest the camps are being used to harvest organs from prisoners to fuel China’s lucrative “medical tourism” industry.

Chinese labor camp

A Man Held In One Of China’s Internment Camps Was Beaten To Death By A Drunk Police Officer

There’s a reason it’s so easy and quick to get an organ transplant in China &#8212; and it’s not because the nation has so many people. It’s because, according to multiple reports, the country uses its concentration camps as organ-harvesting farms, forcefully removing organs from prisoners, some of whom were still alive when the procedures took place.
Jennifer Zeng, a Falun Gong practitioner, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/organ-harvesting-china-survivors-victims">told Fox News</a> that she was arrested for her spirituality, and interrogated at one of China’s labor camps. While being questioned about her medical history, she told officers she had hepatitis C. She believes this is what kept the Chinese government from harvesting her organs.
Han Yu was kidnapped and detained for 37 days in one of Beijing’s detention centers, Fox reported. More than 10 years earlier, her father had been taken to a detention center for practicing Falun Gong, which is banned in China. Some believe the practice is banned because its non-violent meditation teachings <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-faith-column/2008/08/falun-gong-party-chinese">creates a sense of community</a> outside the Chinese Communist Party.
Three months after Han Yu’s father was taken, she received a call that he was dead. The family was not permitted to see his body until a month later. Even then, her family was surrounded by state officials.
“I saw obvious injuries on his face, even after the makeup, the severe bruise below his left eye stood out. There was a trace of stitches starting from the throat down to where his clothes covered,” Yu told Fox News. “I tried to unbutton the clothes, the police saw and quickly dragged me out. Later another family member went in and continued to unbutton and found stitches that went all the way to the stomach.”
Her father was quickly cremated without an autopsy. Han Yu said she believed her father was targeted for his organs.
Another woman, Jian Li, told Fox that when her family was told her father died in a labor camp, the family visited his body in the freezer room. She said her older sister touched their father’s face and realized he was still warm. They also noticed he was biting his lip.
“We pulled out my father’s body halfway. We touched his chest, and it was warm. He was wearing a down jacket. My older sister prepared to perform CPR,” Li told the outlet. “But were each forcibly dragged out of the freezer by four people. Uniformed and plainclothes officers pushed my father’s body into the freezer. They demanded that we quickly sign for cremation and pay the fees.”
These harrowing stories are backed up by reports from entities outside China. The U.S.-based China Organ Harvest Research Center (COHRC) released a report in July concluding “on-demand killing of prisoners of conscience is driven by the state, run on an industrial scale and carried out by both military and civilian institutions.”
COHRC also determined that China’s claims of 10,000 transplants a year was a significant understatement &#8212; the number is closer to 60,000 to 100,000 a year. China claims the organs are coming from death-row inmates who offer them willingly, but there are simply not enough of these inmates to provide the amount of organs China provides each year.
The communist nation’s organ-harvesting scheme is a lucrative business, with “medical tourism” bringing in millions a year. The COHRC used data from 2007 to show that people from around the world paid $150,000 for a lung or heart transplant and more than $65,000 for a kidney transplant.

Surgeon with organ donation

Reports Shed Light On China’s Organ Harvesting Practices

<a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/agencies-give-classified-briefing-on-hunter-bidens-china-dealings/">The Washington Free Beacon</a> reports that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) received a classified briefing about Hunter Biden&#8217;s ties to a Chinese investment firm whose affiliations might have compromised national security, and may be planning on launching an official Congressional investigation into the matter.
&#8220;Officials from the Treasury Department, Commerce Department, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence gave Grassley an &#8216;extensive, classified briefing,'&#8221; the WFB reports, which focused on The Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which &#8220;American national security officials and independent analysts strongly suspected&#8221; was trying to steal the plans for the U.S. military&#8217;s  F-35 fighter jet.
That company partnered with an investment firm, BHR Partners, for a merger some years ago, involving &#8220;a U.S. auto company that produces technologies with military applications.&#8221; At the time, Hunter Biden sat on BHR&#8217;s board.
Hunter Biden is due to step down from that board at the end of October, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/13/politics/hunter-biden-joe-biden-ukraine-china/index.html">according to CNN</a>, citing concerns over how his foreign financial entanglements could affect his father, Joe Biden&#8217;s, potential presidential campaign.
But while Hunter Biden&#8217;s position on the BHR Partners board may prove problematic, it&#8217;s not what initially drew Grassley to the issue. In order for The Aviation Industry Corporation of China to aquire an American auto company, they would have had to get authorization from the Obama Administration&#8217;s Treasury Department, among other government entities.
That process, it seems, moved surprisingly fast, and Grassley wants to know if that&#8217;s because Biden &#8212; and then-Secretary of State John Kerry&#8217;s stepson, Christopher Heinz &#8212; were involved with the Chinese investment firm.
&#8220;Grassley has requested detailed information about how the deal was approved, what role White House personnel played in the decision, and whether they followed proper procedure&#8221; given that close relatives of two very prominet Obama Administration officials were in the middle of the fray.
Grassley <a href="https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/grassley-raises-concerns-over-obama-admin-approval-of-us-tech-company-joint-sale-to-chinese-government-and-investment-firm-linked-to-biden-kerry-families">outlined his concerns in a letter</a> to Trump Administration Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin last month. His staff told WFB that if Grassley&#8217;s investigation turns up concerning behavior, a Senate investigation is likely to follow.
Hunter Biden&#8217;s international business dealings have come under increased scrutiny since September, when a whistleblower with some knowledge of President Donald Trump&#8217;s foreign policy dealings, came forward with accusations that Trump had used his position as president to offer Ukraine a &#8220;quid-pro-quo:&#8221; American foreign aid in return for an investigation into whether Joe Biden had used his connections as Vice President to help a Ukrainian company that employed his son avoid investigation by Ukrainian officials.
Since then, details of Hunter Biden&#8217;s other work has come to light, including his ties to BHR Partners, which not only helped facilitate potentially dangerous mergers and acquisitions of American companies, but <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/03/biden-son-china-business/">also backed a Chinese startup</a> that created facial-recognition software for the Communist state &#8212; software that the Chinese government now uses to identify ethnic Chinese Muslims for arrest and relocation to one of several concentration camps, where they are beaten, tortured, raped, and forced to do hard labor as part of an &#8220;indoctrination&#8221; program.
So far, it is important to note, it does not appear that Hunter Biden has done anything illegal, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/14/hunter-bidens-ukraine-china-deals-were-probably-legal-and-thats-the-problem.html">according to experts</a>, but Grassley&#8217;s investigation &#8212; and others &#8212; have yet to be fully completed.

Joe and Hunter Biden.

Senate May Investigate Whether Hunter Biden&#8217;s Ties To China Compromised National Security

Hunter Biden

Joe Biden

Two new reports that were published late this week raised more questions about the role that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden played in his son&#8217;s business dealings while he was vice president and while he was a U.S. Senator.
NBC News <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/hunter-biden-s-legal-work-romania-raises-new-questions-about-n1071031">reported</a> on Thursday that Biden&#8217;s son, Hunter, traveled to Romania during the final year of the Obama administration to meet with a wealthy businessman who was accused of corruption:
<blockquote>The businessman was Gabriel “Puiu” Popoviciu, a wealthy Romanian real estate tycoon. The lawyer brought in to advise him was Hunter Biden, the son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Hunter Biden’s work for Popoviciu in 2016 went unreported at the time, but Joe Biden’s involvement in Romania was very much public. The vice president was among the leading voices pushing the government to crack down on corruption.</blockquote>
Government ethics experts told NBC News that they believe that the arrangement raises questions about whether Hunter Biden was brought in to help Popoviciu avoid criminal prosecution.
Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor who specializes in government ethics, told NBC News: “We don’t know what [Hunter Biden] was paid or what he was paid for, but it does raise questions of whether this Romanian individual facing criminal charges was actually paying for a connection to the American vice president.”
The criminal case against Popoviciu started in 2005 when a criminal complaint was lodged against him and the rector of a Romanian university regarding a large purchase of land near Bucharest.
NBC News added:
<blockquote>The businessman claimed Popoviciu had purchased the land for “significantly less money than it was actually worth,” the documents say. Further, the businessman alleged the plot wasn’t the property of the University of Agronomy, but was instead owned by the Romanian government, according to the documents&#8230;
&#8230;The university rector was charged in March 2009 with abusing his position and Popoviciu was charged with “complicity in abuse of position,” the documents show. Two months later, Popoviciu was hit with a bribery charge&#8230;
&#8230;Romania was by then a familiar place to the Biden family. A close friend and former staffer of Joe Biden, Mark Gitenstein, held the position of U.S. ambassador to Romania from August 2009 to December 2012. In March 2012, Hunter’s brother, Beau, was asked to do the ribbon-cutting at the new U.S. embassy in Bucharest.</blockquote>
NBC News noted that it is not clear how much assistance Hunter Biden provided to Popoviciu as Popoviciu&#8217;s bid to overturn his conviction failed and he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
In 2014, Vice President Biden slammed corruption during a <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/05/21/remarks-vice-president-joe-biden-romanian-civil-society-groups-and-stude">speech</a> in Romania, saying in part:
<blockquote>Corruption is a cancer, a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs, and, most importantly, it denies the people their dignity. It saps the collective strength and resolve of a nation. Corruption is just another form of tyranny.
And corruption can represent a clear and present danger not only to a nation’s economy, but to its very national security. There are nations, and we’ve seen it recently, that exploit corruption to exercise malign influence and undermine the very sovereignty and independence of their neighbors.
In this way, corruption has become an instrument of foreign policy for some nations. When politicians can be bought, when courts can be manipulated, when the media becomes a tool of propaganda, there you will find a society that is susceptible to manipulation from the outside. There you’ll find a society that loses control of its own destiny – not only its political security, but its physical security and military readiness is also compromised&#8230;
&#8230;So fighting corruption is more than just good government. It’s self-defense. It’s a guarantor of your national sovereignty.</blockquote>
The second problematic news development that surfaced late this week came from the Washington Examiner, which reported that then-Senator Biden had privately contacted two government departments to discuss issues that Hunter Biden&#8217;s firm was being paid to lobby on.
The <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/biden-outreach-to-dhs-and-doj-overlapped-with-work-by-son-hunters-lobbying-firm">Washington Examiner</a> reported:
<blockquote>On Feb. 28, 2007, Biden contacted DHS to express that he was “concerned about the Department&#8217;s proposed chemical security regulations authorized by Section 550 of DHS Appropriations Act of 2007,” according to the department’s log of its contacts with members of Congress.
Section 550, which was passed in 2006 as part of the DHS appropriations bill, requires high-risk chemical plants to submit site safety plans to DHS for approval, including security credentialing and training for employees.
Eight weeks earlier, the Industrial Safety Training Council had hired Hunter Biden’s firm to lobby DHS on the issue.</blockquote>
Director of the National Legal and Policy Center Tom Anderson told the Washington Examiner: “It’s implausible Sen. Biden did not know his son’s firm was lobbying on this arcane issue. Sometimes appearances are exactly what they are. This is a recurring problem we’ve seen on the Hill, where family members are enriched because of their relationship with a member.”
The Washington Examiner then noted that in 2007, Biden &#8220;sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Jan. 31, 2007 requesting a meeting with the Department of Justice to discuss expanding the federal fingerprint background check system.&#8221;
At the same time that Biden sent the letter, Hunter Biden&#8217;s firm was lobbying for a &#8220;coalition of state-level criminal justice advocates called SEARCH,&#8221; which was &#8220;lobbying the federal government for a broader fingerprint screening system at the time.&#8221;
These latest issues to emerge for the Biden campaign come after the former vice president has been slammed for months regarding allegations of corruption over his role in getting a prosecutor fired who was investigating a company that was paying his son in Ukraine.
&#8220;In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin,&#8221; according to <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/436816-joe-bidens-2020-ukrainian-nightmare-a-closed-probe-is-revived">The Hill</a>.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled saying. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.&#8221;
Joe and Hunter Biden have also faced allegations of corruption over their work in China.
&#8220;In 2013, then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden flew aboard Air Force Two to China. Less than two weeks later, Hunter Biden’s firm inked a $1 billion private equity deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China,&#8221; investigative researcher Peter Schweizer <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/05/11/the-troubling-reason-why-biden-is-so-soft-on-china/">reported</a>. &#8220;The deal was later expanded to $1.5 billion. In short, the Chinese government funded a business that it co-owned along with the son of a sitting vice president.&#8221;
Less than a year after Biden helped open a company called &#8220;Rosemont Seneca,&#8221; he and his business partners were in China meeting with top Chinese officials.
&#8220;The timing of this meeting was also notable. It occurred just hours before Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit,&#8221; Schweizer added. &#8220;Twelve days after Hunter stepped off Air Force Two in Beijing, his company signed a historic deal with the Bank of China, the state-owned financial behemoth often used as a tool of the Chinese government. The Bank of China had created a first-of-its-kind investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). According to BHR, one of its founding partners was none other than Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC.&#8221;

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