Podcasts about chinese ministry

  Last time we spoke about the February 26th incident. Within the turbulent “ government of assassination” period of 1936 Japan, a faction of discontented junior officers, known as the Kodoha, believed that their emperor, Hirohito, was being manipulated by corrupt politicians. In a desperate bid for what they termed a "Showa Restoration," they meticulously plotted a coup d'état. On February 26, they launched a rebellion in Tokyo, attempting to assassinate key figures they deemed responsible for undermining the emperor's authority. The young officers executed coordinated attacks on prominent leaders, resulting in several deaths, while hoping to seize control of the Imperial Palace. However, their plan unraveled when their actions met with unexpected resistance, and they failed to secure strategic locations. Dark snow blanketed the city as Hirohito, outraged by the violence, quickly moved to suppress the uprising, which ultimately led to the downfall of the Kodoha faction and solidified the military's grip on power, ushering in a new era marked by militarism and radicalism.   #151 The Suiyuan Operation Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. So we last left off with the February 26th incident breaking out in Japan, but now I would like to return to China. Now we spoke a little bit about some influential Japanese politicians in the previous episode. Prime Minister Satio Makoto oversaw Japan from May 1932 to July 1934, succeeded by Prime Minister Keisuke Okada from July 1934 to March 1936. The foreign policy of Japan towards China during the Saitō and Okada administrations exhibited a notable paradox, characterized by two conflicting elements. On one hand, Foreign Minister Hirota championed a diplomatic approach that emphasized friendship, cooperation, and accommodation with China. On the other hand, the military actively undermined the authority of the Nationalist government in northern China, creating a significant rift between diplomatic rhetoric and military action.    The Okada cabinet then endorsed the Army Ministry's "Outline of Policy to Deal with North China" on January 13, 1936. This policy document explicitly proposed the eventual detachment of five provinces, Hubei, Chahar, Shanxi, Suiyuan, and Shandong from the Nationalist government in Nanking. The approval of this outline marked a pivotal moment, as it represented the first official government endorsement of the military's longstanding agenda and underscored the army's evolution from a mere rogue entity operating in the region to the de facto authority dictating the course of Japan's policy towards China. Despite this, on January 22, during the 68th Diet session, Hirota reaffirmed his dedication to fostering better ties with China, to which a representative from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded positively. The Nationalist government in Nanjing also expressed interest in engaging in formal negotiations. However, this diplomatic initiative quickly faltered, and the expected discussions in Nanjing never took place. Shortly thereafter, a mutiny by young army officers on February 26, 1936, led to the fall of the Okada cabinet. Following Prince Konoe Fumimaro's refusal of the imperial mandate to form a new government, Hirota stepped in to establish a cabinet on March 9. General Terauchi Hisaichi was appointed as the Minister of the Army, Admiral Nagano Osami took charge of the Navy Ministry, and Baba Eiichi became the finance minister. Hirota briefly served as foreign minister until Arita Hachirö, who had just submitted his credentials as ambassador to China on March 6, returned to Japan. The Hirota Koki cabinet, established immediately following the February 26 incident further entrenched military influence in politics while allowing interservice rivalries to impede national objectives. In May 1936, Hirota, influenced by army and navy ministers, reinstated the practice of appointing military ministers solely from the ranks of high-ranking active-duty officers. He believed this would prevent associations with the discredited Imperial Way faction from regaining power. By narrowing the candidate pool and enhancing the army's power relative to the prime minister, Hirota's decision set the stage for army leaders to leverage this advantage to overthrow Admiral Yonai's cabinet in July 1940. Arita began his new job by meeting with Foreign Minister Chang Chen while hearing views from the Kwantung Army chief of staff General, Itagaki Seishiro. Yes, our old friend received a lot of promotions. Itagaki had this to say about the Kwantung Army's policy in China "The primary aim of Japan's foreign policy, is the sound development of Manchukuo based upon the principle of the indivisibility of Japan and Manchukuo. If, as is probable, the existing situation continues, Japan is destined sooner or later to clash with the Soviet Union, and the attitude of China at that time will gravely influence operations [against the Soviet Union]." The Kwantung Army's was growing more and more nervous about the USSR following its 7th comintern congress held in July and August of 1935. There it publicly designated Japan, Germany and Poland as its main targets of comintern actions. Japanese intelligence in the Red Army also knew the Soviets were gradually planning to expand the military strength so they could face a simultaneous west and east front war. This was further emboldened by the latest USSR 5 year plan. Alongside the growing Red northern menace, the CCP issued on August 1st a declaration calling upon the Nationalist Government to end their civil war so they could oppose Japan. By this time the CCP was reaching the end of its Long March and organizing a new base of operations in Yenan in northern Shanxi. The developments by the USSR and CCP had a profound effect on Japan's foreign policy in China. The Kwantung Army believed a war with the USSR was imminent and began to concentrate its main force along the border of Manchukuo. The Kwantung Army's plan in the case of war was to seize Vladivostok while advancing motorized units towards Ulan Bator in Outer Mongolia, hoping to threaten the Trans-Siberian Railway near Lake Baikal. Their intelligence indicated the USSR could muster a maximum of 250,000 troops in eastern Siberia and that Japan could deal with them with a force two-thirds of that number. The IJA at that point had inferior air forces and armaments, thus urgent funding was needed. The Kwantung Army proposed that forces in the home islands should be reduced greatly so all could be concentrated in Manchuria. To increase funding so Kwantung leadership proposed doing away with special allowances for Japanese officials in Manchuria and reorganizing the Japanese economic structure. The Kwantung leaders also knew the submarine base at Vladivostok posed a threat to Japanese shipping so the IJN would have to participate, especially against ports and airfields. All said and done, the Kwantung Army planned for a war set in 1941 and advised immediate preparations. On July 23, 1936, Kanji Ishiwara presented the army's document titled “Request Concerning the Development of Industries in Preparation for War” to the Army Ministry. He asserted that in order to prepare for potential conflict with the Soviet Union, Japan, Manchukuo, and North China must have the industries critical for war fully developed by 1941. Ishiwara emphasized the urgent need for rapid industrial growth, particularly in Manchukuo. He followed this request on July 29 with a draft of a “Policy on Preparations for War” regarding the Soviet Union, advocating for immediate reforms to Japan's political and economic systems to facilitate economic expansion and lay the groundwork for future fundamental changes. However, he cautioned that if significant turmoil erupted in economic sectors, Japan must be ready to execute a comprehensive overhaul without delay. At the same time, the Hirota cabinet initiated a review of its policy towards China. In the spring of 1936, a secret committee focused on the Current Situation was formed, consisting of officials from the Army, Navy, and Foreign ministries. Their discussions led to the adoption of the "Measures to Implement Policy toward China" by the Four Ministers Conference on August 11, along with the "Second Outline of Policy to Address North China," which the cabinet approved as part of the "Fundamentals of National Policy" on the same day. The first of these documents outlined the following actionable steps: “1. Conclusion of an anti-Communist military pact. a) To prepare for the conclusion of such a pact, a special secret committee of military experts from both countries should be organized. b) Their discussions should cover the scope and substance of the pact and ways and means of realizing the objectives of the pact.  2. Conclusion of a Sino-Japanese military alliance. A special secret committee, composed of an equal number of delegates from each nation, should be organized to prepare for the conclusion of an offensive and defensive alliance against attack by a third country.  3. Acceleration of solutions of pending questions between China and Japan. a) Engagement of a senior political adviser: The Nationalist government should engage a senior Japanese political adviser to assist in the conduct of the domestic and foreign affairs of the Nationalist government. b) Engagement of military advisers: The Nationalist government should engage military advisers, along with military instructors. c) Opening of airline services between China and Japan: Airline services between China and Japan should be opened immediately. To realize such a service, various means should be used to induce the Nanking authorities to establish an airline corporation in North China, to begin flights between Formosa and Fukien province, and to start test flights between Shanghai and Fukuoka. d) Conclusion of a reciprocal tariff treaty: A reciprocal tariff treaty should be concluded promptly between China and Japan, on the basis of the policy approved by the ministries concerned, with regard to the abolition of the special trade in eastern Hopei province and the lowering of the prohibitively high tariffs. For this purpose Japan should, if necessary, propose the creation of a special committee composed of Japanese and Chinese representatives.  4. Promotion of economic cooperation between China and Japan. Japan should promote cooperation with the common people of China to establish realistic and inseparable economic relations between China and Japan that will promote coexistence and co-prosperity and will be unaffected by changes in the Chinese political situation. “ The document also included suggestions for Japan's economic expansion into South China. This included tapping into the natural resources of the provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi, building a railway between Guangzhou and Swatow, and establishing air routes between Fuchoz and Taipei, which would connect to services in Japan and Thailand. It also called for survey teams to be dispatched to explore the resources of Sichuan, Gansu, Xinjiang, and Qinghai provinces, and for support to be provided to the independence movement in Inner Mongolia. However, these initiatives presented significant challenges. The preface to the "Second Outline of Policy to Deal with North China" cautioned, "In implementing this policy, we must carefully consider the Nanking government's prestige and avoid actions that could prompt it to adopt an anti-Japanese stance in response to the desires of the Chinese people."  On September 19th, six fundamental points for a settlement in North China were dictated to China to “establish a common defense against communism, promoting economic cooperation, lowering tariffs, initiating an airline service between the two nations, employing Japanese advisers, and controlling subversive Koreans." September 22 was set as the deadline for a response from China. While agreeing to some Japanese requests, the Chinese included several counter-demands that the Japanese found completely unacceptable. These demands required Japan to “(a) refrain from using armed intervention or arbitrary actions in its dealings with China, (b) recognize China as an equal and sovereign state, (c) avoid leveraging antigovernment groups or communist elements, and (d) remove any derogatory references to China from Japanese textbooks. The Chinese also insisted that any agreement regarding North China “must precede the annulment of the Tanggu and Shanghai cease-fire agreements, the disbanding of the East Hopei regime, a prohibition on unauthorized Japanese flights over North China, a ban on smuggling activities by Japanese, the restoration of China's right to control smuggling, and the disbandment of the illegal East Hopei government along with the armies of Wang Ying and Prince De in Suiyuan”. Now that mention of a Prince De in Suiyuan brings us to a whole new incident. This podcast series should almost be called “the history of Japanese related incidents in China”. Now we've spoken at great lengths about Japan's obsession with Manchuria. She wanted it for resources, growing space and as a buffer state. Japan also had her eyes set on Inner Mongolia to be used as a buffer state between Manchukuo, the USSR and China proper. Not to mention after the invasion of North China, Inner Mongolia could be instrumental as a wedge to be used to control Northern China. Thus the Kwantung Army began fostering a Mongolian independence movement back in August of 1933. They did so through a special organ led by chief of the general staff Koiso Kuniaki. He began work with the Silingol League led by Prince Sonormurabdan or “Prince So” and another influential Mongol, Prince Demchukdongrob or “Prince De”. Prince De was the West Sunid Banner in Northern Chahar. Likewise the Kwantung Army was grooming Li Xuxin, a Mongol commoner born in southern Manchuria. He had been a bandit turned soldier absorbed into Zhang Xueliangs army. Li had distinguished himself in a campaign against a group of Mongols trying to restore the Qing dynasty to further establish an independent Mongolia. During Operation Nekka Li had served in a cavalry brigade under Zu Xingwu, reputed to be the best unit in Zhang Xueliangs Northeastern border defense army. He led the army's advance unit into western Shandong. Afterwards Li suddenly became friends with Major Tanaka Hisashi, the head of the Special Service Agency at Dungliao where he defected to the Kwantung Army. He soon was leading a force too strong to be incorporated into the Manchukuo Army, thus it was disbanded, but his Kwantung Army buddies encouraged him to move to Tolun in Rehe province. At one point during the Nekka campaign, Li's army was threatened by a strong Chinese counterattack, but they had Manchukuo air support allowing them to capture Tolun. This victory launched what became the East Chahar Special Autonomous District with Li becoming a garrison commander and chief administrator.  Back in time, upon the founding of the Chinese Republic, the affairs of Inner Mongolia fell upon the Bureau of Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs. This was reorganized in 1930 into the Commission on Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs when the provinces of Chahar, Suiyuan and Ningxia were organized. Prince De had been a member of a nationalist group known as the Young Mongols, although his aim was self-determination for Inner Mongolia within China, not independence. The Nationalist government's support for Chinese settlement in Mongol territories and its disregard for Mongol perspectives quickly triggered a rise in Mongol nationalism and anti-Chinese feelings. This was exacerbated by the government's introduction of a law on October 12, 1931, requiring local Mongolian administrative units to consult with hsien officials on matters concerning their administration. The nationalist sentiment was further fueled by the presence of the neighboring Mongolian People's Republic in Outer Mongolia and the establishment of Xingan province in western Manchuria by Manchukuo authorities in March 1932. This new province included the tribes of eastern Inner Mongolia and granted them greater autonomy than other Manchukuo provinces while banning Chinese immigration into it. When Nanjing did not react to these developments, Prince De and his supporters took steps toward gaining autonomy. On July 15th, 1933, Mongol leaders from western Inner Mongolia gathered at Pailingmiao for two weeks to deliberate on a declaration for regional independence. Although many princes were initially hesitant to take this step, they reconvened on August 14 and sent a cable to Nanjing announcing their decision to create an autonomous Mongolian government. The cable was signed by Prince So and Prince De. Over the following two months, additional conferences at Pailingmiao were held to organize the new government, which would operate under Nanking's guidance but without involvement from provincial chairmen. On October 22, Prince Yun, head of the Ulanchap League and a close ally of Prince De, was elected to lead the new regime, with Prince De assuming the role of chief of its political affairs bureau. After receiving a cable from the Mongolian leaders in August, Nanjing quickly sent Minister of the Interior Huang Shao-hung and Xu Qingyang, head of the Commission on Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs, to halt the movement. However, the Mongols declined to travel to Kalgan or Kueisui to meet Huang. In November, as the leader of a special commission appointed by Nanjing, Huang reached an agreement with Yun De and other Mongolian leaders concerning a proposal that abandoned the Mongols' demand for an autonomous government. This agreement was later altered by Nanjing, and its essential points were excluded from a measure approved by the Central Political Council of the Kuomintang on January 17, 1934. The dispute reignited, fueled by the Nationalist government's rising concerns over the anticipated enthronement of Pu Yi in Manchukuo. On February 28, the Central Political Council enacted a measure that outlined "eight principles of Inner Mongolian autonomy" and created the Mongolian Local Autonomous Political Council. Since these principles did not grant authority over foreign and military affairs, powers explicitly reserved for the central government in the January measure, they were seen as a concession to the Mongols and were accepted. On March 7, the central government issued regulations to establish a semi autonomous regime for Inner Mongolia, which was officially launched at Pailingmiao on April 23. Although the council was led by three moderate princes, Prince Yun, supported by Princes So and Sha, the real administrative authority was held by Prince De, who served as the secretary-general. Most of the twenty-five council members were of Mongolian royalty, through whom Prince De aimed to fulfill his objectives. Nevertheless, the Nationalist government seemed to consider the council merely a token gesture to placate De, as Nanking never provided the promised administrative funds outlined in the "eight principle declaration." Was not much of a shock Prince De sought support from the Kwantung Army, which had established contact with him as early as June 1934. Japanese pressures in North China were starting to alter the power dynamics, and after the first Western incident in Jehol in February 1935, it compelled the relocation of Sung Queyuan's army from Chahar to Hopei, providing encouragement to Prince De. In May, he met with Kwantung Army Vice Chief of Staff Itagaki Seishirö, Intelligence Section Chief Kawabe Torashirö, and staff officer Tanaka Ryükichi, where he was officially informed for the first time about the Kwantung Army's intention to assist him. On July 25, the Kwantung Army drafted its "Essentials of Policy toward Inner Mongolia," which regarded Japanese support for cooperation between De and Li Xuxin as part of their strategic preparations for a potential conflict with the Soviet Union. Shortly after this policy was adopted, a conflict arose over who had the authority to appoint the head of the Mongol Xukung banner, situated north of the Yellow River and Paot'ou. Following the death of the previous administrator, Prince Xu declared that he had taken control of the position. In response to a request from the local abbot, Prince Yun, acting in his capacity as chairman of the Mongolian Political Council, dismissed Xu. Xu then turned to Nanking through Suiyuan Provincial Chairman Fu Zuoyi, arguing that the central government held the authority to appoint heads of administrative units. In retaliation, Prince De dispatched troops to Xukung. On November 10, Fu presented a mediation proposal, which was rejected since it not only failed to acknowledge Shih's dismissal but also demanded the withdrawal of De's forces. De refused to pull back, further intensifying his hostility toward the Nanking government. In December, the Kwantung Army attempted to move Li's forces from eastern Chahar into the six Xun to the north of Kalgan, which serves as Chahar's granary. Following the Qin-Doihara agreement, Matsui Gennosuke from the Kalgan Special Service Agency secured a deal to separate these six districts from the southern region predominantly populated by Chinese; a Mongolian peace preservation corps was tasked with maintaining order in the northern area, while a Chinese corps was responsible for the south. During the discussions for an autonomous regime centered around Song Queyuan in North China in November 1935, Kwantung Army troops were concentrated around Gubeikou. To exert pressure on Song's rear, the Kwantung Army proposed replacing the Chinese peace preservation unit in the area north of Kalgan with Li Xuxin's army, which would establish this territory as its base.   The operation commenced on December 8. In a surprise attack just before dawn, Li captured Paochang. By December 12, despite facing strong Chinese resistance and the heaviest snowfall in sixty years, Li, aided by Kwantung Army planes disguised as those of the Manchukuo Airline Corporation, had taken control of Kuyuan. Further advances were halted by an order from Kwantung Army headquarters, and on December 13, it was reported that, had the operation not been stopped, Tokyo would have issued an imperial command. The operation had faced opposition from the Tientsin army, which feared it would weaken Song Queyuan's position just as they were informing Tokyo that the autonomy movement was going smoothly. Additionally, both Britain and the United States publicly expressed strong opposition to the Kwantung Army's involvement in the autonomy movement. However, the directive was ultimately prompted by the emperor's anger upon discovering that a unit of the Kwantung Army led by Colonel Matsui Takurö had advanced to Tolun to support Li's progress. Although Li's advance was halted, the operation undeniably contributed to the formation of the Hopei-Chahar Political Council.   Although the operation was halted, the Kwantung Army remained committed to its objectives. They contended that Li's army's advance into the six districts north of Kalgan was merely a peace preservation unit moving into territory within the truce line established by the Tanggu Agreement. Consequently, on December 29, they ordered Li to advance southward. Li peacefully occupied Changpei the following day and entered Shangtu on December 31. Manchukuo civil officials were appointed to oversee the six districts, and the currency of Manchukuo was introduced, although the existing tax system initially remained unchanged. The Kwantung Army allocated silver worth 6 million yuan to support administrative expenses. This outcome, known as the Eastern Chahar incident, marked a complete success for the Kwantung Army, which then redirected its focus toward Suiyuan Province. Each year, the Kwantung Army developed a secret plan for covert operations for the following year. The 1936 plan included strategies to secure air bases for routes connecting Europe and Asia, targeting Tsinghai and Sinkiang provinces, Outer Mongolia, Western Mongolia, and even remote areas of Ningxia province. In January 1936, staff officer Tanaka Ryūkichi formulated a document titled "Essentials of Policy Toward (Northwestern) Inner Mongolia." This document advocated for the establishment of a Mongolian military government to facilitate Japanese operations in northwestern Mongolia and suggested pushing Fu Tso-yi out of Suiyuan into Shansi province. Tanaka's proposals were incorporated into the final plan of the Kwantung Army, ultimately leading to the Suiyuan incident of November 1936. In February 1936, a meeting at Pailingmiao, where Prince De proposed the independence of Inner Mongolia, resulted in the departure of Prince So and several other Mongolian leaders from the coalition. They sought to establish a rival political council at Kueisui under the protection of Fu Zuoyi. By April, De and his supporters decided to form a military government at Tehua in Chahar, which was officially inaugurated in June as the Inner Mongolian government, headed by De with Li Shou-hsin as his deputy. This new government quickly signed a mutual assistance treaty with Manchukuo, and the emperor granted De the title of prince.   In July, at a conference in Tehua, Tanaka was appointed as the head of the Special Service Agency for Inner Mongolia with the mission of implementing the army's Intelligence Section plans. He traveled to Pingtiqüan alongside Chief of Staff Itagaki and Intelligence Chief Mutō Akira to propose a local anti-Communist agreement to Fu. After failing to convince Fu, he attempted to persuade Sun Tien-ying to form a puppet army but managed to recruit only a bandit from Suiyuan, Wang Ying. The February 26 mutiny in Tokyo heightened anti-Japanese sentiments in China, resulting in increased violence. By August, the construction of an airplane hangar in Paot'ou was halted due to riots by local Chinese residents. On August 13, a group of fifteen Japanese, led by Nakajima Manzo, was ambushed while delivering ammunition to a pro-Japanese leader who was shortly thereafter assassinated. Chinese soldiers from Wang Qingkuo's 70th Division carried out the attack, and tensions escalated as the arrival of ammunition and Japanese laborers in Kalgan prompted border villages to strengthen their defenses.   By late September, Tanaka's "Guidelines for the Execution of the Suiyuan Operation" received approval, with operations set to commence in early November. The plan evolved from a covert mission into a personal initiative by Tanaka, financed largely through funds from the Kwantung Army's secret services and profits from special trading in eastern Hopei. Tanaka claimed to have transported 600,000 yen to Tehua in October and later sent 200,000 yuan into Inner Mongolia, estimating total expenses at approximately 6 million yen. He acquired new weaponry from the disbanded Northeast Army and established three clandestine forces: Wang Ying led 500 men, including artillery; Qin Xiashan commanded 3,000 from Sun Tienying's army; and Chang Futang also led 3,000 specialized units. During strategic meetings, Tanaka dismissed proposals for unified command and refusing to integrate secret units into the Mongolian army. He advocated for the slogan "Overthrow Chiang Kai-shek," while Matsui managed to include "Independence for Inner Mongolia."   The Japanese had developed the entire battle strategy. The 1st Army, commanded by Li Xuxin, would serve as the left flank, while the 2nd Army, led by Demchugdongrub, would be positioned on the right. Wang Ying's forces were designated as the central force. Their initial targets would be Hongort, Xinghe, Tuchengzi, and Guisui city, followed by a division to seize Jinging, Baotou, and Hetao. On November 13, Prince Demchugdongrub's and Wang Ying's forces left Shandu in two columns to assault Xinghe and Hongort. By the 15th, 1,500 troops reached Hongort, where they engaged the 1st Cavalry Division led by Peng Yubin. The next day, Ryukichi Tanaka, Demchugdongrub's chief advisor, sent two cavalry brigades and one infantry brigade to capture the town, effectively overrunning its defenders. Meanwhile, Wang Ying dispatched a smaller group to secure Tuchengzi.   Fu Zuoyi established his headquarters in Jining that same day. After assessing the situation, he concluded that if the enemy secured Hongort, it would diminish his defenders' morale. Consequently, he launched a counterattack. Peng Yubin led a joint force of the 1st Cavalry Division and Dong Qiwu's 218th Brigade to confront around 400 of Wang Ying's men defending Hongort and Tuchengzi. By 7 AM on the 18th, Tuchengzi was reclaimed, and at 8:30 AM, the 1st Cavalry Division entered Hongort, charging through 500 of Wang Ying's soldiers. The struggle for Hongort persisted for over three days, resulting in nearly 1,000 casualties before Fu Zuoyi regained control.   As the tide shifted against the invaders, Fu Zuoyi initiated an offensive toward the Bailing Temple, the rear base of the enemy, well-stocked and defended by 3,000 men under Prince Demchugdongrub. Fu Zuoyi ordered the 2nd Cavalry Division, along with the 211th and 315th Brigades, the 21st Artillery Regiment, and a convoy of 20 trucks and 24 armored vehicles to assault the Bailing Temple as quickly as possible. Taking advantage of the Mongolian chaos, Fu Zuoyi's 35th Brigade executed a flanking maneuver west of the Bailing Temple amid a severe snowstorm.   At 1 AM on the 24th, the battle for the Bailing Temple commenced as the Chinese engaged the Mongolians for the fortified positions around the temple. From 2 to 4 AM, the Chinese advanced closer to the temple walls, facing artillery and machine-gun fire. They launched desperate frontal assaults against the city gates, suffering heavy losses. A fierce stalemate ensued, with Japanese aerial bombardments causing significant casualties to the Chinese forces. Fu Zuoyi subsequently ordered all armored vehicles to converge at the main city gate. Despite intense fire, the armored cars managed to breach the gate, allowing Chinese infantry to flood into the temple area. The resulting carnage within the temple walls led to 900 Mongol deaths, with 300 captured as the rest fled. The Chinese suffered 300 casualties but secured the strategically vital rear base, along with a substantial stockpile of provisions, including 500 barrels of petrol, 600 rifles, 10 machine guns, vehicles, and field guns. Following the devastating defeat at Bailing Temple, the invaders regrouped at Xilamuleng Temple. On the 28th, the Japanese sent 100 vehicles to transport 3,000 troops to prepare for a significant counteroffensive to recapture Bailing Temple. On the 29th, Wang Ying personally led 2,000 cavalry north of Shangdu to Taolin in an attempt to contain the enemy. However, after he left the bulk of his forces at Xilamuleng Temple, officers from the Grand Han Righteous Army secretly began negotiating to defect to the Chinese side, undermining the forces needed for the counterattack against Bailing Temple.   The counteroffensive commenced on December 2nd, with 10 armored vehicles and 1,000 Mongol troops leading the charge at 6 AM. They were pushed back by the heavily fortified 211th Brigade, which was well-supplied with machine guns and artillery. The following day, at 3 AM, the Mongols attempted a surprise attack but faced an ambush as they crept toward the temple. They incurred hundreds of casualties, with 230 men either captured or having defected. After this, the counterattack stalled, as the Mongol forces couldn't approach within 3 miles of the temple. Subsequently, the Chinese 2nd Cavalry Division launched a pincer maneuver, causing significant casualties among the invaders. By 9 AM, the enemy had suffered 500 casualties and was in retreat. At 7 PM, Fu Zuoyi ordered another counteroffensive. By the next morning, hundreds more had been lost, and several hundred soldiers were captured. With such heavy losses, the defense of Xilamuleng Temple weakened significantly, prompting more officers to defect to the Chinese. Late on the 4th, Fu Zuoyi assembled a force comprising two cavalry regiments, one infantry regiment, one artillery battalion, four armored vehicles, and a squadron of cars to launch a nighttime assault on Xilamuleng Temple.   Meanwhile, the 2nd Cavalry Division clashed with Wang Ying's cavalry 30 miles northeast of Wulanhua. Wang Ying's 2,000 cavalry had been raiding nearby villages to create diversions, drawing enemy forces away from the Bailing-Xilamuleng theater. By the 9th, Wang Ying's cavalry were encircled in Xiaobei, where they were nearly annihilated, with Wang escaping with around a hundred guards toward Changpei. On the 7th, some Grand Han Righteous Army officers set in motion plans to defect to the Chinese side. Early on the 9th, these officers led their men to invade the residence of Japanese advisors, killing all 27 Japanese officers under Colonel Obama. Simultaneously, Fu Zuoyi's forces executed a flanking maneuver against the Xilamuleng Temple amidst the chaos. With mass defections, the Chinese forces surged into the temple area, resulting in the invader army disintegrating in confusion and surrender. After seizing the temple, the invaders were routed, their lines of communication severed, and only isolated pockets continued to resist. Taking advantage of the confusion, Fu Zuoyi launched simultaneous attacks, attempting to capture Shangdu. However, Yan Xishan sent him a telegram, ordering him to halt, stating that Shangdu fell under the jurisdiction of Shanxi and not Suiyuan.   In response to the loss, Tanaka planned a counteroffensive with Qin's troops, but Chiang kai-shek commanded a strong defense of Pailingmiao, successfully outmaneuvering Tanaka's strategies. The resurgence of Chinese forces led to the disintegration of Qin's troops, who revolted and eventually joined the Nationalist army. The Kwantung Army aimed to redeploy its forces for recovery but faced opposition from Tokyo, which criticized the situation. After Chiang kai-shek was kidnapped by Zhang Xueliang on December 12, Tanaka and Prince De seized the opportunity to reassess their strategy. Ultimately, the Kwantung Army decided to abandon efforts to reclaim Pailingmiao, marking the official end of hostilities on December 21. The Suiyuan incident ultimately strengthened Chinese resolve against Japan and increased international distrust.   The defeat of Japan's proxy forces inspired many Chinese to advocate for a more vigorous resistance against the Japanese. The triumph in Suiyuan was celebrated throughout China and surprised the international media, marking the first occasion where the Chinese army successfully halted a Japanese unit. Delegations traveled from as distant as southern Chinese provinces to encourage the defenders to continue their fight. Captured Japanese weapons and equipment served as proof of Japan's involvement in the conflict, despite Japan's Foreign Minister Hachirō Arita claiming that "Japan was not involved in this conflict in Suiyuan at all." After his defeat, Prince Demchugdongrub and his Inner Mongolian troops retreated to northern Chahar, where he had to reconstruct his army due to significant losses. The Japanese implemented new regulations for the Mongolian Army to enhance its effectiveness, and efforts to recruit new soldiers commenced.   I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. More incidents and more battles to seize territory raged in North China. However things did not go according to plan for the Japanese and their puppets. The tides had turned, and now a more angry and invigorating China would begin lashing out against the encroachment. It was only a matter of time before a full blown war was declared. 

Beijing confirmed on Wednesday that its top trade negotiator will meet with his US counterpart during a visit to Switzerland this week but issued a pointed warning: dialogue must be genuine, not a cover for continued pressure and unilateral demands.中国周三确认其高级贸易谈判代表将在本周访问瑞士期间与美方对等官员会晤，但发出明确警告：对话必须真诚务实，不能成为持续施压和单方面要求的遮羞布。In Washington, US Treasury Department Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer announced that they will meet with their Chinese counterparts for talks.华盛顿方面，美国财政部部长斯科特·贝森特和美国贸易代表杰米森·格里尔宣布将与中方对应官员举行会谈。The conversations mark the first official public engagement between the world's two largest economies after Trump administration's decision of imposing hefty tariffs on China imports plunged the two into a trade war.这是自特朗普政府决定对中国进口商品加征高额关税使两国陷入贸易战后，全球两大经济体首次正式公开接触。In a statement issued early on Wednesday, China's Ministry of Commerce said that senior US officials have repeatedly signaled adjustments to its tariff measures and conveyed messages through multiple channels, expressing a desire to engage with China on tariffs and related issues.中国商务部周三凌晨发布的声明指出，美方高级官员已多次释放调整关税措施的讯号，并通过多种渠道传递信息，表达就关税及相关问题与中国进行磋商的意愿。"After careful evaluation of these US overtures and on the basis of fully considering global expectations, China's interests, and the appeals of US industry and consumers, China has decided to re-engage the US," a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in the statement.“在慎重评估美方这些示好姿态，并充分考虑全球期待、中国利益以及美国业界和消费者诉求的基础上，中方决定重启与美国的接触。”中国商务部发言人在声明中表示。The statement said that Vice-Premier He Lifeng, China's lead representative on economic and trade issues, will hold talks with Bessent during his May 9-12 trip.声明指出，中国经贸问题首席代表、国务院副总理何立峰将在5月9日至12日访美期间与贝森特举行会谈。In Washington, Bessent confirmed in an interview that they would meet on Saturday and Sunday.在华盛顿，贝森特接受采访时证实双方将于周六和周日会面。But Beijing made clear that it is entering the talks with caution. "If the US wants to talk, our door is always open," a ministry spokesperson said. "But if you say one thing and do another, or even to attempt to use talks as a cover to continue coercion and extortion, China will never agree, let alone sacrifice its principled position and international fairness and justice to seek any agreement."但中方明确表示将以审慎态度开启对话。“如果美方想谈，中方的大门始终敞开，” 中国商务部发言人表示，“但如果美方说一套做一套，甚至企图以谈判为掩护继续实施胁迫勒索，中方绝不会接受，更不可能以牺牲原则立场和国际公平正义为代价来换取任何协议。”The spokesperson noted that negotiations must be grounded in "mutual respect, equal consultation and mutual benefit".发言人强调，谈判必须建立在“相互尊重、平等协商、互利共赢”的基础之上。The ministry's statement cited an old Chinese saying: "We must not only listen to what they say but also watch what they do," warning that any future agreement would depend on Washington's sincerity and actions—not just its words.声明援引中国古训“听其言，观其行”，警告未来任何协议都将取决于美方的诚意与实际行动——而非空口承诺。The statement also carries a message to other economies that are engaging with Washington. "Appeasement does not bring peace, and compromise does not earn respect," it said, adding that only by adhering to principles, fairness, and justice can one truly safeguard interests.该声明同时向其他与美方接触的经济体传递信息：“绥靖无法换取和平，妥协不能赢得尊重”，声明还说，唯有坚持原则、恪守公平正义，才能真正维护自身利益。Ahead of the planned meeting in Switzerland, Bessent said he looked forward to "productive talks".在瑞士计划举行的会晤前夕，贝森特表示期待进行“富有成效的对话”。He said the US and China had to de-escalate before they can move forward with trade negotiations.他指出，美中两国必须首先实现局势降级，才能推动贸易谈判取得进展。"My sense is that this will be about de-escalation, not about the big trade deal, but we've got to de-escalate before we can move forward," Bessent said in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday.贝森特周二接受福克斯新闻采访时强调：“我认为本次会晤重点在于缓和紧张局势而非达成重大贸易协议，但在推进谈判前我们必须要实现降级。”He also said "the current tariffs and trade barriers are unsustainable, but we don't want to decouple".他同时表示“现行关税和贸易壁垒不可持续，但我们不希望走向脱钩”。In his first 100 days in office since Jan 20, US President Donald Trump has announced sweeping tariffs, starting with a 10 percent blanket duty on all foreign-made imports.美国总统特朗普自1月20日就职以来的首个100天内，已宣布实施全面关税措施：首先对所有外国进口商品征收10%的统一关税。Dozens of countries received a 90-day pause until July, but tariffs were raised to 145 percent on products from China, which has retaliated by imposing 125 percent levies on US goods.尽管数十个国家获得了截至7月的90天暂缓期，但对华商品关税已提升至145%。作为反制，中国已对美国商品实施125%的报复性关税。Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said the Switzerland meeting is very important, and that "the news would be warmly welcomed by the financial markets and trading firms".华盛顿彼得森国际经济研究所高级研究员加里·赫夫鲍尔认为，此次瑞士会晤至关重要，“这一消息将受到金融市场和贸易公司的热烈欢迎”。unilateral/ˌjuːnɪˈlætrəl/adj. 单方面的;单方的hefty tariffs高额关税coercion/kəʊˈɜːʃn/n.胁迫extortion/ɪkˈstɔːʃn/勒索;敲诈de-escalation/diː ˌeskəˈleɪʃn/n.降级; 减低战争的范围或强度

President Trump went on Meet The Press to set the record straight. He did not let Welker get away with any fake news or dishonest reporting. The tariffs of Chinese imports are working as a negotiation tool. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce is compiling a list of goods that are exempt from their 125% tariff as a way to ease tension and open up an avenue of negotiation. A series of recent polls have come out that seem to show that President Trump's approval is quite low. Legacy outlets have polling samples with about 25% Republicans while Trump received 50% of the vote, along with the 92% negative media coverage of President Trump, it's hard to take seriously anything these legacy outlets print or broadcast. Jim McLaughlin of McLaughlin & Associates is here to share what the real polling data says about President Trump and his approval rating. The Trump tariff, tax cut and deregulation agenda will get the economy booming and set up Republicans for success in the 2026 midterms. Featuring: Jim McLaughlin President & Chief Pollster | McLaughlin & Associates https://mclaughlinonline.com/ Today's show is brought to you by these great sponsors: Delta Rescue Delta Rescue is one the largest no-kill animal sanctuaries. Leo Grillo is on a mission to help all abandoned, malnourished, hurt or suffering animals. He relies solely on contributions from people like you and me. If you want to help Leo to continue his mission of running one of the best care-for-life animal sanctuaries in the country please visit Delta Rescue at: https://deltarescue.org/ Beam For a limited time got 40% of Beam's Dream Powder. Dream Powder with Reishi, Magnesium, L-Theanine, Apigenin and Melatonin to help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed. Just head to https://shopbeam.com/SPICER for 40% off. Wired 2 Fish Coffee Do you want to drink coffee from the finest coffee beans in the world? Wired 2 Fish sources directly from Mexico and Guatemala to bring you the freshest arabica coffee beans in the world. Wired 2 Fish cares so much about the earth that they give back 25% of their net profits to faith-based organizations and clean water initiatives. If you're a coffee lover and want to support a great company doing great work head to https://www.wired2fishcoffee.com/ use code: WECARE for 15% off your first order.  ------------------------------------------------------------- 1️⃣ Subscribe and ring the bell for new videos: https://youtube.com/seanmspicer?sub_confirmation=1 2️⃣ Become a part of The Sean Spicer Show community: https://www.seanspicer.com/ 3️⃣ Listen to the full audio show on all platforms: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sean-spicer-show/id1701280578 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/32od2cKHBAjhMBd9XntcUd iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-sean-spicer-show-120471641/ 4️⃣ Stay in touch with Sean on social media: Facebook: https://facebook.com/seanmspicer Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanspicer Instagram: https://instagram.com/seanmspicer/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First, Ralph welcomes Washington Post tech journalist Faiz Siddiqui to discuss his new book "Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk." Then, our resident legal expert Bruce Fein stops by to explain how Elon Musk and DOGE are breaking the law. Finally, David picks up our interview with Ralph about Ralph's new book "Civic Self-Respect."Faiz Siddiqui is a technology journalist who writes for the Washington Post and has covered companies such as Tesla, Uber, and Twitter (now X) for the Business Desk. His reporting has focused on transportation, social media and government transformation, among other issues. He is the author of Hubris Maximus: The Shattering of Elon Musk (excerpted here).Over and over throughout this book, there's this recurring theme of victimhood, or at least Elon feeling like his back is against the wall. And why? For what? He and his fans felt they were doing the right things, and yet they were being scrutinized and punished for it.Faiz SiddiquiIn the wake of many Facebook scandals, many Uber scandals, Tesla was the company to work for. Elon was the person to work for. There was no figure as magnetic, who inspired people in the way that Elon did. So recruiting was a strong suit of that company. And the pitch was: come here and change the world.Faiz SiddiquiI think what this book brings is a healthy dose of reality and skepticism… that so far has been lacking from the overall conversation around Musk. And what I you'll find is (I hope you'll find) that you can identify with some of the folks in the book who were lured in by the promises (or just enamored by the guy and what he might be able to bring to society if his goals were ultimately realized) but then ended up feeling disappointed or feeling like—hey, this guy was not all he was cracked up to be. Even if the goals were noble, even if the ambitions were the right ones, the ends might not have justified the means. And so I want people to find, ideally, that their understanding of one of the most powerful people in society today is enriched.Faiz SiddiquiBruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.[Elon Musk is] just a walking violation of the federal code.Bruce FeinThere's nowhere to go but up in terms of being a smart consumer. Unfortunately, our Elementary and high schools don't teach consumer skills (they prefer to teach computer skills) and consumer skills result in what is, in effect, a pay raise.Ralph NaderAdam Smith once said many centuries ago that the purpose of production is consumption. And if consumption is informed and feeds back, it can lead to a high-quality economy. It can lead to more integrity to your consumer dollar and to your health and safety. It can lead to less environmental damage. It could lead to stronger regulation of product defects and services that are harmful. It's sort of a bottom-up economic democracy.Ralph NaderComplexity is a tool of power. Complex tax regulations are often blamed on the federal bureaucracy. No, it's the corporate tax lawyers.Ralph NaderNews 4/25/251. On Monday, April 21st, Vatican News announced the death of Pope Francis. This came just one day after Easter Sunday, when Francis met with Vice-President JD Vance. The day prior, Francis had snubbed the VP, sending in his place Cardinal Pietro Parolintoto to “deliver a lecture on compassion,” per the Daily Beast. Pope Francis led the Catholic Church since 2013 and during his tenure sought to move the church in a vastly more progressive direction – preaching against capitalism's destruction of the environment, advocating for abolition of the death penalty and greater acceptance for LGBTQ Catholics within the church, and expanding the reach of the church into non-traditional areas such as Mongolia among many other initiatives. This won him the admiration of many around the world, but also drew the ire of the conservative clergy, particularly in the United States. Francis was the first Jesuit Pope and the first Pope to hail from the New World. Senior churchmen will now assemble to elect a new pope. This conclave is expected to be contentious, with progressives seeking to consolidate Francis' reforms, while the conservatives see an opening to take back the formal organs of the church.2. Instead of death, our next story concerns birth. Noor Abdalla – wife of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia University student currently being held by ICE in Louisiana – gave birth to their son on Monday. According to a statement by Abdalla, reported by Arya Sundaram of WNYC, ICE denied a request for Khalil to be temporarily released to meet their son, a “purposeful decision by ICE to make [her], Mahmoud, and our son suffer.” Later in this statement, Abdalla writes, “I will continue to fight every day for Mahmoud to come home to us. I know when Mahmoud is freed, he will show our son how to be brave, thoughtful, and compassionate just like his dad.” Khalil's case continues to wind its way through the courts; the result of this case will have significant ramifications for the Trump administration's ability to remove individuals with legal status on the basis of political speech.3. In an encouraging sign, more and more congressional Democrats are getting personally involved in cases of Trump administration overreach on immigration. In addition to Senator Chris Van Hollen's highly-publicized visit to El Salvador, TruthOut reports that Senator Peter Welch met with Mohsen Mahdawi, the Columbia University student entrapped with a false citizenship test, in Vermont. Meanwhile Cape Cod Times reports that on April 22nd, Senator Ed Markey and Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts – along with Democratic members of the House Troy Carter and Bennie Thompson – traveled to a Louisiana detention facility to demand the release of Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University grad student who was abducted off the street last month by masked ICE agents. This delegation met with Öztürk herself, as well as Mahmoud Khalil. And CBS reports Representatives Robert Garcia, Maxwell Frost, Yassamin Ansari and Maxine Dexter traveled to El Salvador as well, keeping pressure up regarding the Kilmar Garcia case. Still, hundreds of immigrants of varying status have been deported to the ominous and shadowy CECOT prison camp in El Salvador without due process since Trump began this mass deportation campaign.4. In more troubling Congressional news, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel on April 16th calling for investigations into the progressive activist group CodePink as well as the New York City cultural center known as the People's Forum. This letter is almost textbook McCarthyite red-baiting, claiming CodePink and the People's Forum are nothing more than mouthpieces for the Chinese Communist Party, thereby violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Beyond the fact that these groups are engaging in nothing more than constitutionally protected political speech, it is clear from the citations within the letter that they are targeting these groups because of their pro-Palestine positions. This is just another escalation in the Orwellian suppression of free-speech critical of the Israel's illegal occupation. Unfortunately, just as with McCarthyism itself, we cannot count on congressional Democrats to go to bat for the free speech rights of the Left.5. In a win for consumers, Bloomberg reports Airbnb announced it will now display the total price of stays – including all fees – to comply with a Federal Trade Commission rule set to go into effect next month. Many worried that the FTC would rescind this rule with the changing of the administration, but for now at least, the Trump FTC seems poised to keep it. This new rule is expected to “nudge hosts to lower their cleaning fees to make rentals more affordable, as the sometimes-exorbitant fees have become a key reason why some customers preferred hotels over Airbnb.”6. Another positive move is that the Trump Department of Justice has proceeded with an anti-trust case against Google's advertising technology, or “adtech.” On April 17th, a judge found Google liable for “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power,” in two markets for online advertising technology, per Reuters. This follows a similar judgment against Google regarding a monopoly on search, which is only amplified by its adoption of AI. Another trial will determine the remedy for this monopoly, which could include Google being forced to sell off aspects of its business. According to this report, “Google has previously explored selling its ad exchange to appease European antitrust regulators.” Senator Amy Klobuchar, former chair of the antitrust subcommittee, called the ruling “a big win for consumers, small businesses, and content creators that will open digital markets to more innovation and lower prices.”7. On the other hand, Public Citizen's Rick Claypool reports, “58 corporations facing federal investigations & enforcement lawsuits collectively gave $50 million to Trump's inaugural fund. Cases against 11 of these corporations have already been dismissed or withdrawn, and 6 have been halted.” More granular information about each of these enforcement actions is available through Public Citizen's Corporate Enforcement Tracker database, but the big picture is clear: If a corporation wants the government off its back, all they have to do is make a handsome contribution. The Trump administration is pay-to-play and open for business.8. In another instance of the administration tying the hands of key federal regulators, the Food and Drug Administration will “End its Routine Food Safety Inspections,” according to the National Public Health Information Coalition. The FDA plans to “shift most…food safety inspections to state and local agencies.” While some food inspections are conducted at the state and local level, public health advocates are raising concerns about “oversight and consistency.” According to CBS, these plans have not been finalized.9. Turning to the very worst part of this administration, NOTUS reports “The DOGE website, the only public accounting of Elon Musk and President Donald Trump's attempts to reduce federal government spending…[has posted]…revisions that suggest DOGE was previously overstating its savings by hundreds of millions of dollars.” These stunning, if not altogether surprising, overestimations are staggering in scale. “On Tuesday [April 15th] alone, DOGE removed around $962 million in previously claimed cuts and altered hundreds of others to boost individual items' purported ‘savings' values.” The incompetence of DOGE has led Musk to reduce the target goal of spending cuts, down from $1 trillion to just $150 billion – a drop in the bucket when it comes to federal spending and certainly not worth the evisceration of Social Security and other programs these cuts have entailed.10. Finally, in more bad news for Elon Musk, Reuters reports the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is tightening electric vehicle battery safety standards, specifically to “ensure…batteries won't catch fire or explode.” This is quite a humble regulatory goal. However, this new regulation could spell disaster for Tesla. According to Tesla-fire.com, there have been 232 confirmed cases of Tesla fires and “83 Fatalities Involving a Tesla Car Fire.” If I were a Chinese EV regulator, I would be wary of allowing Tesla vehicles on the roads. But that's just me.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

Beijing says the door for trade talks with the US is wide open, though it's also criticised President Trump's negotiating tactics. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Washington couldn't say it wanted to reach a trade agreement with China while simultaneously exerting extreme pressure. Shares in Tesla are up nearly five per cent following remarks by its billionaire boss, Elon Musk, that he is likely to scale back his work for the Trump administration next month. Around the world, wine production is in decline due to global warming that is causing extreme weather conditions, which affect harvests, and fewer of us are drinking wine.

President Donald Trump imposed the steepest American tariffs in a century, stepping up his campaign to reshape the global economy and unnerving investors who see a trade war as a risk to US growth. Trump announced Wednesday he will apply at least a 10% tariff on all exporters to the US, with even higher duties on some 60 nations to counter large trade imbalances with the US. That includes some of the country’s biggest trading partners, such as China — which now faces a tariff of well above 50% on many goods — as well as the European Union, Japan and Vietnam. We get reaction from Bloomberg's Shawn Donnan, Senior Economics Writer for Bloomberg News in Washington. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is urging US trading partners against taking retaliatory steps against Trump’s new set of tariffs. He spoke with Bloomberg's Annmarie Hordern following the tariff announcement. Plus - China vowed to retaliate after being hit with Donald Trump’s biggest tariffs yet, which threaten to decimate trade between the world’s largest economies. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce condemned the US levies and pledged to hit back with unspecified measures in a statement Thursday, adding that the sweeping tariffs threatened the stability of global supply chains. We speak with Jenni Marsh, China EcoGov Team Leader for Bloomberg News.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

//The Wire//2300Z April 1, 2025////ROUTINE////BLUF: CHINA UNDERTAKES LARGE SCALE MILITARY EXERCISES IVO TAIWAN. BURMA EARTHQUAKE RECOVERY CONTINUES. TESLA ATTACKS REMAIN CONSTANT.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE------International Events-Far East: China has begun another series of military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, and in the waters surrounding Taiwan. Per the Chinese Ministry of Defense, this latest large-scale drill is largely serving as a "severe warning and forceful containment against Taiwan independence".Southeast Asia: Recovery efforts from the Burmese earthquake continue, as the widespread damage throughout the region becomes more apparent. So far the death toll has surpassed 2,719 victims, according to Myanmar's ruling military government. Humanitarian aid has been slow to flow into the region, and most areas hardest hit by the earthquake remain out of communication with the outside world. AC: Much of the region remains without electricity, which along with the communications outages, has complicated assessments of how bad this crisis truly is.-HomeFront-USA: The attacks on Tesla vehicles have continued to simmer, with limited increases in vandalism incidents in major cities. Following the uptick in these types of attacks, various supporter-protest movements (in support of Tesla and Elon Musk) have taken root as well. Many of these supportive-protests have also been met with counter-protests in most cases, sometimes resulting in clashes between groups. Over the weekend, a pro-Musk protester was intentionally struck by a vehicle of a counter-protester at a protest event in Idaho. The Meridian Police Department arrested the 70-year-old anti-Musk protester at the scene, and charged him with aggravated battery.New Mexico: The GOP Headquarters was firebombed over the weekend in Albuquerque. One of the entrances to the facility was destroyed by an improvised incendiary/explosive device early Sunday morning. Anti-ICE graffiti was spray painted at the scene by the assailants, who have not been identified.Indiana: Yesterday evening, a prominent cybersecurity and cryptography professor at Indiana University was fired after the FBI raided two of his residences under mysterious circumstances. XiaoFeng Wang, a well known crypto and cyber expert, remains missing following the searches.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments:While very few details of the Indiana incident have been released or even acknowledged, over the past few months, both the United States and China have been on a spy-hunting spree. 6x Chinese nationals were arrested in the Philippines a week ago for allegedly spying on US warships in Subic Bay. Two weeks ago, China sentenced one of their researchers (at an undisclosed educational institution) to death for spying.As such, it's possible that this is related to Wang's disappearance after the raids. Usually, rooting out spies is a tit-for-tat affair; the Chinese bag one of ours, and we get one of theirs (or at least try to). Of note, China has sentenced all of the spies they have caught to death, while the United States obviously does not.Outside the realm of espionage, more overt actions are being undertaken to beat the drums of war in the Pacific. Though the Chinese drills in the Taiwan Strait were not announced with much notice, the maneuvers so far are largely a continuation of the same posturing and training seen before. Over the past few years, China has been engaging in increasingly complex drills as their proficiency improves. In short, the training is working, and Chinese forces are learning and gaining significant experience in combined arms warfare. Of course, the unspoken factor of war remains extremely relevant regarding any potential military campaign in Taiwan...no plan survives first contact with the enemy. In other words, China can train all they want, b

救援队伍和物资紧急驰援缅甸地震灾区 China has ramped up efforts to assist Myanmar in its rescue and relief operations, sending supplies and rescue teams to disaster-affected areas, after a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the Southeast Asian country on Friday, followed by multiple aftershocks.在上周五7.9级强震和多次余震袭击缅甸后，中国加大对缅甸救灾援助力度，向灾区派出物资和救援队。 President Xi Jinping extended condolences on Saturday to Myanmar's leader Min Aung Hlaing. In his message, Xi said he was shocked to learn of the strong earthquake, which resulted in heavy casualties and extensive loss of property in Myanmar.习近平主席周六向缅甸领导人敏昂莱致慰问电。他表示，惊悉缅甸发生强烈地震，造成重大人员伤亡和大量财产损失。 On behalf of the Chinese government and people, Xi mourned the deceased, extended sincere condolences to their bereaved families, and offered sincere sympathies to the injured and others affected by the disaster.习近平代表中国政府和人民，对遇难者表示沉痛哀悼，向遇难者家属致以诚挚慰问，向伤者和其他受灾群众致以诚挚慰问。 China and Myanmar are a community of shared future, sharing weal and woe, and the two peoples have a profound fraternal friendship, Xi said, adding that China is ready to provide more assistance and continue to support efforts to help Myanmar overcome the disaster and rebuild homes at an early date.习近平表示，中缅是休戚与共的命运共同体，两国人民情谊深厚。中方愿继续提供更多援助，继续支持缅方战胜灾情、早日重建家园。 Premier Li Qiang also extended his condolences on Saturday to Min Aung Hlaing over the earthquake.国务院总理李强同日也向敏昂莱表示慰问。 As of noon on Sunday, the death toll in Myanmar had climbed to about 1,700, with another 3,400 people injured and 300 missing, according to the country's State Administration Council.据缅甸国家管理委员会称，截至周日中午，缅甸死亡人数已升至约 1700 人，另有 3400 人受伤，300 人失踪。 The areas most severely hit by the earthquake and its aftershocks, including Myanmar's second-largest city, Mandalay, and the country's capital, Nay Pyi Daw, have seen widespread damage to infrastructure, with hundreds of buildings reduced to rubble, according to reports.据报道，地震和余震最严重的地区，包括缅甸第二大城市曼德勒和首都内比都，基础设施遭到大面积破坏，数百栋建筑被夷为平地。 At 7:38 pm on Sunday, a China International Search and Rescue team, comprising 118 personnel and six rescue dogs, departed from Beijing for Nay Pyi Daw to assist in disaster relief efforts, according to the Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management.据中国应急管理部称，中国国际救援队于周日19时38分从北京出发前往内比都协助救灾工作。该支救援队由 118 名人员和 6 只搜救犬组成。 The team, equipped with two rescue vehicles and 634 pieces of rescue equipment, as well as medical supplies, is scheduled to head to other areas struck by the earthquake from Nay Pyi Daw.该救援队携带两辆救援车、634 件救援设备以及医疗用品，计划从内比都出发前往其他地震灾区。 On Saturday morning, a 37-member rescue and medical team from China's Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar and was also hit by the earthquake, arrived in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, with emergency relief equipment. It was the first international team to reach Myanmar.周六上午，一支由 37 名成员组成的中国云南省救援和医疗队携带紧急救援设备抵达缅甸最大城市仰光。云南省与缅甸接壤，也遭受了地震袭击。这是首支抵达缅甸的国际救援队。 The team proceeded to Nay Pyi Daw, where it joined rescue operations alongside local emergency responders at 6:30 pm on Saturday. After overnight efforts, at 5 am on Sunday, the team rescued an elderly man who was trapped under the rubble of a local hospital for nearly 40 hours.救援队随后前往内比都，并于于周六18时30分与当地紧急救援人员共同参与救援行动。经过一夜的努力，周日凌晨 5 点，救援队救出了一名被困在当地一家医院废墟下近 40 小时的老人。 Several other groups from China, including an 82-member national team, three civil teams and a team from the Red Cross Society of China, joined the search and rescue operations in Myanmar over the weekend.上周末，中国其他几支救援队也陆续加入了缅甸的搜救行动，包括一支 82 人的国家救援队、三支民间救援队和一支中国红十字会救援队。 On Sunday afternoon, Yunnan sent approximately 7.3 metric tons of daily necessities and rescue supplies, including instant noodles, clothes, medicines and tents, which were transported by air from the provincial capital of Kunming to Yangon.周日下午，云南省向缅甸提供了约7.3吨的生活必需品和救援物资，包括方便面、衣物、药品和帐篷，这些物资已从省会昆明空运至仰光。 Li Ming, spokesman for the China International Development Cooperation Agency, said on Saturday that the Chinese government has pledged 100 million yuan ($13.77 million) in emergency humanitarian aid to support earthquake relief efforts at the request of Myanmar's government.中国国际发展合作署发言人李明周六表示，应缅甸政府请求，中国政府已承诺提供1亿元人民币（1377万美元）的紧急人道主义援助，以支持缅甸抗震救灾工作。 China will provide urgently needed supplies including tents, blankets, first-aid kits, food and drinking water, which were scheduled for delivery on Monday. Further assistance will be provided based on Myanmar's needs, Li added.中国将提供急需的物资，包括帐篷、毛毯、急救包、食物和饮用水，这些物资计划于周一送达。李明补充说，未来中方将根据缅甸需求提供进一步的援助。 Meanwhile, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck Tonga, an island nation in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, at 1:18 am on Monday local time, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.与此同时，据中国地震台网中心称，北京时间周一凌晨1时18分，西南太平洋岛国汤加发生7.3级地震。 disaster-affected areas灾区aftershock余震condolencen. 慰问bereavedadj. 丧失亲人的share weal and woe休戚与共，福祸相依fraternalAdj. 兄弟般的rubblen. 碎石，瓦砾

On today's podcast: 1) China warned it would hit back at Donald Trump’s trade threats after the US president unveiled additional tariffs on Chinese imports, raising the risk of tensions spiraling between the world’s largest economies.“If the US insists on having its own way, China will counter with all necessary measures to defend its legitimate rights and interests,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said Friday. In response to the last round of tariffs, the department previously vowed to take “corresponding” steps. 2) President Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrives at the White House on Friday with a personal appeal to persuade Donald Trump not to sell out his country in the rush to make a peace deal with Russia. The worst fears seemed to fade a bit on the eve of the trip, as the American president blithely walked back his denunciation of his Ukrainian counterpart as a “dictator” just last week. 3) A reading of US inflation due later today comes into sharper focus now that tariffs could be implemented sooner than anticipated, with any surprising increases likely to shake up the market. The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric is expected to cool to the slowest pace since June. The core personal consumption expenditures price index — which excludes often-volatile food and energy costs — probably rose 2.6% in the year through January. Overall PCE inflation likely eased on an annual basis as well, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

China will work together with the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to combat online gambling and telecom fraud, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Thursday, during a meeting in Beijing with diplomatic envoys from the 10 ASEAN countries.A series of severe cases of online gambling and telecom fraud at the Myanmar-Thailand border have posed threats to and harmed the interests of citizens from China and other countries, which requires high attention, Wang said.He called on relevant countries to shoulder responsibility and adopt effective measures to ensure the safety of people's lives and property, and never allow criminals to go unpunished.China is willing to strengthen bilateral and multilateral law enforcement and security cooperation with ASEAN nations to provide a safe environment for people-to-people exchanges and maintain the sound order of regional interactions and cooperation, he added.Earlier, in a statement issued on Wednesday night, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security said it is making all-out efforts to rescue Chinese citizens who went missing or were trapped after being deceived into traveling abroad.It pledged to strengthen international law enforcement cooperation to dismantle telecom fraud networks, particularly in Myawaddy, Myanmar.The ministry said it attaches great importance to the frequent occurrence of such cases recently and to the calls for help posted on social media and other channels by family members of the victims.The statement said the ministry has asked police across the country to comprehensively analyze and investigate the cases, and it is working to rescue the victims with the assistance of foreign affairs departments and Chinese embassies and consulates overseas.In July 2023, the ministry launched a special campaign during which the Chinese police and Myanmar's law enforcement departments worked together to crack down on telecom fraud dens in northern Myanmar that target Chinese nationals.The campaign led to the capture of more than 53,000 Chinese citizens suspected of being involved in various scams and wiped out all major telecom fraud dens located near China's border with northern Myanmar. It also forced a large number of criminals to relocate to other regions in Myanmar such as Myawaddy, Wan Hai and Tangyan.Some fraud dens are facing a "shortage of labor" due to the stringent crackdowns and mass awareness efforts, the ministry said, adding that these dens have started luring Chinese citizens with the promise of "free travel abroad" and "high-paying jobs".Those who fall for these false promises are abducted or held captive and forced to participate in illegal activities, it said.The ministry warned Chinese citizens of such fraudulent schemes and advised them to remain extra vigilant when receiving offers for high-paying jobs or business exchanges overseas and free visits for tourism.It also advised the public to immediately call the police and contact China's diplomatic missions if a family member goes missing overseas, saying the police will act without delay upon receiving such a report.The ministry's statement came amid public discussions on a recent human trafficking incident involving Chinese actor Wang Xing. He was rescued by Thai police on Jan 7 and returned to China on Jan 11, according to reports.

For review:1. Israel to send Team to Qatar for Hostage Negotiations.The Prime Minister's Office said that “Netanyahu authorized a working-level delegation from the Mossad, Shin Bet and IDF to continue negotiations in Doha.”2. IDF Releases Details from September 2024 Commando Raid in Syria. The raid — dubbed internally by the Israel Defense Forces “Operation Many Ways” —  was aimed at destroying an underground facility used by Iranian forces to manufacture precision missiles for Hezbollah in Lebanon and for the Assad regime in Syria.3. Senegal to Remove Foreign Military Presence in 2025.Senegal's President (Bassirou Dioumaye Faye): “I have instructed the minister for the armed forces to propose a new doctrine for cooperation in defence and security, involving, among other consequences, the end of all foreign military presences in Senegal from 2025.”4.  Russian Navy Accepts 5th Yasen-class Nuclear Attack Sub.The Attack boat Arkhangelsk was turned over to the Russian Navy on Dec. 27 in a ceremony at the Sevmash shipyard on the White Sea just south of the Arctic Circle. The 13,800-ton Yasen-Ms can field the 1,000-mile range 3M-54 Kalibir NK land attack cruise missile, the P-800 Oniks anti-ship missile, and the 3M-22 Zircon hypersonic anti-ship cruise missiles.5. China sanctions US Defense companies over arms sales to Taiwan. They will be prohibited from import and export activities or making new investments in China, while their senior managers will be banned from entering the country, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday.

In a strongly worded statement, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce excoriated the United States for engaging in unilateral bullying behavior, saying that it "talks a good game while doing the opposite".中国商务部在一份措辞强硬的声明中严厉斥责了美国的单边霸凌行径，称美方“说一套做一套”。Lambasting the US for constantly expanding the concept of national security and abusing export control measures that seriously affect companies from all over the world, including the US, the ministry pilloried the US for its abuse of regulatory measures that impede normal economic and trade exchanges among countries, seriously undermine market rules and the international economic and trade order, and threaten the stability of the global industry and supply chains.中国商务部抨击美国不断泛化国家安全概念，滥用出口管制措施，包括美国企业在内的全球半导体业界都受到严重影响。此外，中方谴责称，美方滥用管制措施严重阻碍各国正常经贸往来，严重破坏市场规则和国际经贸秩序，严重威胁全球产业链供应链稳定。The statement came in response to the US Department of Commerce announcing on Monday new export restrictions targeting China. The package of measures includes restrictions on China-bound shipments of high bandwidth memory chips that are critical for high-end applications such as artificial intelligence training; new curbs on 24 additional chip-making tools and three software tools; and new export curbs on chip-making equipment made in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia.这一声明是对美国商务部12月2日发布新的对华出口限制措施的回应。美国最新的管控措施包括限制对华出口对人工智能训练等高端应用至关重要的高带宽内存芯片；限制另外24种芯片生产工具及3种软件工具；对新加坡、马来西亚等国出产的芯片制造设备实施新的出口管制。The Chinese Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday it would restrict exports to the US of some key components used in making semiconductors after the US Department of Commerce announced the new curbs targeting shipments of advanced memory chips and chip-making tools to Chinese companies.在美国商务部宣布针对中国公司先进存储芯片和芯片制造工具的新限制措施后，中国商务部3日表示，中方将限制向美国出口用于芯片生产的部分关键零部件。US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, in a statement, described the latest crackdown the US has launched on China's high-tech sector as "significant steps to protect our technology from being used by our adversaries in ways that threaten our national security", adding that Washington will keep working with its allies "to proactively and aggressively safeguard our world-leading technologies and know-how so they aren't used to undermine our national security".美国总统国家安全事务助理杰克·沙利文在一份声明中称，美国针对中国高科技行业最新发起的遏制措施，是“保护我国技术不被对手利用以威胁我国国家安全的重要举措”。他还补充道，美国政府将继续与盟友一起，“更加积极主动地守护我国持有的世界尖端科技，避免这些技术被用来破坏我国国家安全”。Yet national security is only a pretext for the US to undermine China's tech sector. Its tech salvos are actually aimed at crippling China's overall tech development and its economic growth.然而，国家安全只是美国遏制中国科技产业的借口。美方对华实施技术打压，实际上是为了全面遏制中国科技进步和经济发展。China will therefore take all necessary measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.对此，中国将采取一切必要措施捍卫自身合法权益。Given that the semiconductor industry is highly globalized, other countries, including some of the US' allies, should stand with China in opposing the US repeatedly abusing regulatory measures to weaponize trade. Dutch and ROK companies are among those whose businesses will be harmed by the latest US restrictions.鉴于半导体产业高度全球化，包括美国盟友在内的其他国家应与中国一起反对美方一再滥用出口管制措施，将贸易武器化。荷兰和韩国等企业也将受到美国最新管制措施的影响。Dutch lithography equipment maker ASML said the latest US restrictions, if enforced by the Dutch government, would affect the company's exports of deep ultraviolet lithography systems to chip-making plants in China. The company already predicts its sales will be at 30-35 billion euros ($31.5-36.7 billion) in 2025, with only about 20 percent of sales in China — down from around 50 percent this year.荷兰光刻机制造企业阿斯麦表示，如果荷兰政府实施美国的最新管制措施，该公司的深紫外光刻系统出口及在华芯片工厂将受到影响。阿斯麦预计，该公司2025年销售额将达到300-350亿欧元（约315-367亿美元），其中在中国市场的销售额占比仅约为20%，低于今年的近50%。The US' attacks on Chinese tech, which are aimed at maintaining its own leadership position, are so indiscriminate that it tries to box them and tie them up in the bows of a response to national security threats when trying to sell them to its collateral-damaged partners.美国遏制中国科技旨在维护其自身领导地位，但当盟友利益因此受损时，美国就会将其行径美化成是为了应对国家安全威胁，从而让其盟友买账。Yet in spite of all their efforts, the China hawks in Washington are destined to be disillusioned if they think imposing technology sanctions on China will prevent the country from advancing its domestic semiconductor manufacturing system as it pursues modernization. Such efforts are only spurring China to intensify its quest to innovate and achieve self-reliance in high technologies.付出种种努力后，美国对华鹰派如果认为实施技术制裁将阻止中国在现代化进程中推进国内半导体制造体系发展，那么他们将注定失望。打压行径只会激发中国强化自主科技创新的决心。A survey done by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute suggests that China is leading in 37 of 44 cutting-edge technologies, including nanoscale materials and synthetic biology. China is also employing industrial robots at 12 times the rate of the US. Therefore, China, with its science and innovation making rapid progress, will not easily succumb to the US attacks.澳大利亚战略政策研究所的一项调查显示，在44项先进技术中，中国有37项处于领先地位，包括纳米材料、合成生物学等。此外，中国工业机器人使用率是美国的12倍。由此可见，科技创新快速发展的中国，不会轻易被美国打败。History proves that global cooperation drives development of science to benefit all humanity. The "small yard, high fence" policy that focuses on safeguarding the world-leading technologies and know-how for the exclusive benefit of an increasingly mono-fixated hubristic hegemon is a threat to global stability and progress.历史证明，全球合作推动科学发展，造福全人类，而“小院高墙”则是为了利用世界领先技术和专有知识给傲慢的霸权国家谋利，威胁着全球稳定和进步。The US should focus more on the benefits new technology can bring to humanity and less on trying to choke China's development.美方关注的焦点，应该是新技术如何造福全人类，而不是遏制中国发展。weaponizev. 使武器化lambastev. 严厉斥责succumbv. 屈服，屈从

For review:1. US General to Beirut for Ceasefire Implementation.US CENTCOM announced that Major General Jasper Jeffers, Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT), would oversee the implementation and monitoring mechanism of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, alongside his co-chair, US Mideast envoy Amos Hochstein.2. IDF Continues to Strike Hezbollah Targets in Syria.Israeli Air Force fighter jets struck military infrastructure in Syria near border crossings with Lebanon on Saturday, which the IDF said were being “actively” used by Hezbollah to transfer weapons.3.  Hamas Ready for Negotiations with Israel.Hamas is displaying increased flexibility in long-stalled talks for an elusive ceasefire and hostage deal in the Gaza Strip, and may agree to the IDF temporarily remaining on the Philadelphi Corridor.4. Hezbollah will cooperate with Lebanese Armed Forces during Ceasefire Agreement with Israel.'5. Russia strikes anti-government forces in Syria in response to attack on Aleppo.“The Russian air force is carrying out rocket-bomb attacks on the equipment and manpower of illegal armed groups, control points, warehouses and artillery positions of terrorists,” news agencies reported a spokesperson for the defense ministry's Reconciliation Centre for Syria as saying.6. Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss military cooperation.7. Russia & China Conduct Joint Bomber Flights Over Sea of Japan.Statement from the Chinese Ministry of National Defense:“According to the annual cooperation plan between the Chinese and Russian militaries, on Nov. 29, the two sides organized and implemented the ninth joint air strategic cruise in the relevant airspace of the Sea of ​​Japan.”

China and Taiwan have a long history of geopolitical tension that has evolved from land and sea to cyberspace. Relations between the two recently took an interesting turn when the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) claimed hacktivist entity Anonymous 64 targeted China and its territories with attempted disinformation and public communication disruption. The Chinese government further alleged the activity was directed by the Taiwanese government, whose officials are investigating the activity and expressed the claims are false. These allegations mark an interesting shift in the relations between China and Taiwan. In this episode, Adam and Cristian start with a 50,000-foot view of their nuanced, tense history. They define and discuss the organizations involved in these events and the details of their claims, and they share what we know about Anonymous 64. Why is this news significant? What are the geopolitical implications? And where have we seen similar activity in other regions? It is important to note that CrowdStrike has not independently verified the Chinese government's accusations. Tune in to hear more about a story that blends politics, military strategy and digital warfare.

The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association. During this episode, Sharon Russell lends her 20+ years of emergency response experience to the forum. Our discussion includes Sharon's experience as the Deputy Incident Commander for the response to the Key Bridge incident, which happened in March 2024. Recording Date: 4 Sept 2024 Research Question: Sharon Russell suggests an interested student examine ways of developing responses to public information questions faster; go back 20-30 years of lessons learned data to identify communications strategies that worked and did not work. Resources: ‘Remarkably complex' cleanup effort ramps up at site of Baltimore bridge collapse FEMA website FEMA Incident Command System Link to full show notes and resources Guest Bio:  Ms. Sharon Russell is the Engagement Branch Chief and Deputy Division Chief of the Allies and Partners Force Development (APFD) Division, which is part of the Joint Staff Directorate for Force Development in Suffolk, Virginia.  This division uses coordinated engagements to develop collaborative force development capabilities between the Joint Force and its Allies and Partners. Ms. Russell also has 22 years of service in the United States Coast Guard Reserve. She is a commissioned officer currently assigned as the Reserve Chief of Staff for the Coast Guard's 13th District.  Her military experience includes assignments focused on Marine Safety and Port Security, as well as emergency responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (2005), Irma (2017), and Florence and Matthew (2018).  Other response operations include Deepwater Horizon (2010), the capsized vessel GOLDEN RAY (2019) and the Key Bridge Response (2024).  She served as the lead planner for Maritime Security for the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida in 2012 coordinating 27 interagency organizations and provided security for 50,000 delegates, protectees and media.  In 2021, she served as the Coast Guard's Incident Commander for COVID-19 vaccine operations, successfully leading the effort to vaccinate over 95% of the Coast Guard. Prior to her current assignment, CAPT Russell was assigned to the APFD Division as a Reservist, where she was hand-selected by the Division Chief to lead the highest priority effort, conducting a thorough analysis of the Joint Warfighting Concept and providing recommendations for release to Allies and partners.  Prior to joining the Coast Guard, Ms. Russell served at the US Department of State as the Office of Foreign Missions designated senior international environmental policy expert and advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary.  Her work focused on customs and shipping regulations for the import/export of hazardous materials and relevant diplomatic immunities for the Conditions of Construction Agreement (COCA) negotiations between the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Department.  With her experience in crisis management and long-range strategic planning from both a military and civilian perspective, Ms. Russell provides key leadership to inform current and future strategic issues affecting Allies and partners. Ms. Russell is a native of St. Petersburg, Florida.  She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from Emory University with a concentration in Spanish and Russian language.  She also earned a Master of Arts degree in Environmental Policy from American University and a Master of Arts degree in Emergency Management from Tulane University.  She now resides in Suffolk, Virginia with her husband Marty.  About: The Information Professionals Association (IPA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the role of information activities, such as influence and cognitive security, within the national security sector and helping to bridge the divide between operations and research. Its goal is to increase interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and practitioners and policymakers with an interest in this domain. For more information, please contact us at communications@information-professionals.org. Or, connect directly with The Cognitive Crucible podcast host, John Bicknell, on LinkedIn. Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, 1) IPA earns from qualifying purchases, 2) IPA gets commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Daniel talks about the key takeaways from the Chinese Ministry of Finance meeting, the implications on the markets and how investors may position their portfolio.Speaker:- Daniel Lam, Head of Equity Strategy, Standard Chartered BankFor more of our latest market insights, visit Market views on-the-go or subscribe to Standard Chartered Wealth Insights on YouTube.

①The Chinese Ministry of Commerce says China is strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposes U.S. abuse of Section 301 to hike tariffs on some Chinese goods. (00:46) ②The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a sweeping package of bills with the aim to counter China's influence. What's the possible impact? (13:26) ③China's economy continued its steady growth trend in August. What are the details? (26:30) ④Our exclusive interview with Christopher Raciti, the Country Head for ANZ China. (38:30) ⑤British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and U.S. President Joe Biden have failed to reach consensus to let Ukraine fire long-range Western-supplied missiles into Russia.(48:00)

In this edition of Between Three Nerds Tom Uren and The Grugq talk to Alex Joske, author of a book about how the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) has shaped Western perceptions of China. They discuss the MSS's position in the Chinese bureaucracy, its increasing role in cyber espionage, its use of contractors and the PRC's vulnerability disclosure laws. Show notes Spies and Lies (Joske book)

A report from the Chinese Ministry of Natural Resources says the coral reef ecosystem at Xianbin Jiao, a reef in China's Nansha Islands, is generally healthy. The report refutes the Philippines' false accusation of coral bleaching and death in the region.

From August 12th to 14th, former Japanese defense minister Shigeru Ishiba led a cross-party parliamentarian delegation to China's Taiwan region. The visit sparked serious protests from China. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned Japanese politicians "not to forget the lessons of history" and to stop sending the wrong signals to separatists. The visit came against a rising tide of high-level interactions between Japan and the Taiwan region in recent months, reneging on Japan's repeated commitments not to have official relations with the region. What are they up to? Why such timing? Is this the shape of things to come?

Topic thoughts? Guest ideas? Comments? Just text us. (pls include reply details if needed)The phase-out of coal-fired power plants in Asia Pacific presents a significant challenge, requiring a delicate balance between environmental sustainability and economic feasibility. In this discussion, we are joined by Dr Christoph Nedopil Wang of the Griffith Asia Institute, who delves into case studies from Pakistan and Vietnam, offering valuable insights applicable to other Asian electricity markets. Notably, the conversation will explore innovative financial mechanisms that could facilitate the early retirement of coal plants while mitigating potential financial burdens.Resources: China coal exit: Opportunities for China-led financing of early phase down of coal-fired power plants in Pakistan and Vietnam.ABOUT CHRISTOPH. Professor Christoph Nedopil is the Director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. He is also a Visiting Professor at FISF Fudan University, Shanghai, Acting Director of the Green Finance & Development Center at FISF Fudan University, and a Visiting Faculty at Singapore Management University (SMU). Christoph regularly provides advisory to governments, financial institutions, enterprises, and civil society on sustainable development issues. He is the lead author of the UNDP SDG Finance Taxonomy, the Innovative Climate Finance Solutions report for the G20 in Indonesia, and the Green Development Guidance of the BRI Green Development Coalition under the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment. He has authored four books and published articles in Science and other leading journals. Christoph serves as board director in scaling sustainability in businesses and finance. Christoph is quoted regularly in Financial Times, The Economist, Reuters, Bloomberg, and other major outlets. Before joining Griffith University, he served as Founding Director of the Green Finance & Development Center and Associate Professor at the Fanhai International School of Finance (FISF), Fudan University and previously as Founding Director for the Green BRI Center at the Central University of Economics in Beijing. He worked with the World Bank in over 15 countries and was a Director in the German development agency GIZ. Christoph holds a Master of Engineering and a PhD in Economics from the Technical University Berlin, as well as a Master of Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School.HOST, PRODUCTION, ARTWORK: Joseph Jacobelli | MUSIC: Ep0-29 The Open Goldberg Variations, Kimiko Ishizaka Ep30- Orchestra Gli Armonici – Tomaso Albinoni, Op.07, Concerto 04 per archi in Sol - III. Allegro. | FEEDBACK: theasiaclimatecapitalpodcast@gmail.com.

The Chinese Ministry of Finance says China and the U.S. have agreed to promote the healthy and stable development of economic relations during U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's visit.

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce has taken steps to remove sanctions on Australian wine for the regrowth of trade relations that were broken during the previous liberal government. Listen to SBS Sinhala explainer for more information. - Covid 19 වසංගතය පවතී කාලයේ චීනය විසින් ඕස්ට්‍රේලියාවේ wine සඳහා අමතර බදු පැනවීමට කටයුතු කර තිබුනා. 2020 වසරේ දෙරට අතර පැවති උණුසුම් දේශපාලනික මතවාදාත්මක තත්වය හේතුවෙන් මේ ආකාරයට අමතර බදු පැනවීමට චීන රජය කටයුතු කළා. කලින් පැවති ලිබරල් රජය සමයේ බිඳ වැටුණු වෙළඳ සබඳතා නැවත වර්ධනය සඳහා චීන වාණිජ කටයුතු අමාත්‍යංශය මෙම සම්භාදක ඉවත්කරගැනීමට කටයුතු කර තිබෙනවා. මේ පිළිබඳව වැඩිදුර තොරතුරු දැන ගන්න සවන් දෙන්න අප්‍රේල් 01 දින SBS සිංහල ගුවන් විදුලියේ දවසේ කාලීන තොරතුරු විග්‍රහයට.

The UK and US have called out China over what they say have been state sponsored cyber-attacks. The United Kingdom has accused China of hacking its electoral commission, and targeting some of its MPs. And the United States has charged seven Chinese nationals with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The US has also imposed sanctions on a company it says was a front for the Chinese Ministry of State Security. The U.S. Treasury Department says APT31 is a collection of Chinese intelligence officers who carry out cyberespionage campaigns on behalf of the state. Politico's Senior Legal Affairs reporter Josh Gerstein spoke to Corin Dann.

The United Kingdom and the United States have called out China over what they say have been state sponsored cyber-attacks. The United Kingdom has accused China of hacking its electoral commission, and targeting some of its MPs. In New Zealand, the then-minister for the Government Communications Security Bureau, Andrew Little, revealed in July 2021 that malicious cyber activity had been linked to the Chinese Ministry of State Security. New Zealand's SIS, and GCSB, will both appear before the Intelligence and Security Committee on Tuesday. The Minister for the SIS and GCSB, Judith Collins, has declined to comment on the allegations. China has rejected the accusations. RNZ's political editor Jo Moir spoke to Corin Dann.

In this episode of The Cybersecurity Defenders Podcast, we discuss some cutting-edge intel coming out of LimaCharlie's community Slack channel.Law enforcement from 10 countries - in a joint operation called ‘Operation Cronos' - have disrupted the criminal operation of the LockBit ransomware group.FortiGuard has identified a grouping of malware droppers used to deliver various final-stage payloads through 2023 they are calling the TicTacToe dropper.Cisco Talos researchers have observed a significant increase in the volume of malicious emails leveraging the Google Cloud Run service to infect potential victims with banking trojans. A massive leak from a Chinese Ministry of Public Security contractor called I-Soon shows that Bejing's intelligence and military groups are attempting large-scale, systemic cyber intrusions against foreign governments, companies, and infrastructure.

27th Feb : Crypto & Coffee at 8

Operation Cronos leaves LockBit operations on borrowed time. An alleged leak reveals internal operations from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. An Israeli airline thwarts communications hijacking attempts. The alleged Raccoon Infostealer operator has been extradited to the US. ConnectWise patches critical vulnerabilities. Schneider Electric confirms a Cactus ransomware attack. Alleged Maryland money launderers face indictments. Russian hackers target media outlets in Ukraine. Our guest is Tomislav Pericin, Chief Software Architect at Reversing Labs , on the rise of software supply chain attacks. and Tinder hopes to reel in the catfish. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Guest is Tomislav Pericin, ReversingLabs Chief Software Architect, talking about the rise of software supply chain attacks. Learn more in their 2024 State of Software Supply Chain Security Report.  Selected Reading Police arrests LockBit ransomware members, release decryptor in global crackdown (BleepingComputer) U.S. and U.K. Disrupt LockBit Ransomware Variant (US Justice Department) Chinese Ministry Of Public Security Breach: Data On GitHub (The Cyber Express) Massive “i-Soon” leak reveals Chinese firm's hacking tools, targets, including NATO (The Stack) I-S00N Leaked Chinese foreign government infiltration intel on Github : r/cybersecurity (Reddit) Israeli Aircraft Survive “Cyber-Hijacking” Attempts (Infosecurity Magazine) Raccoon Infostealer operator extradited to the United States (Malwarebytes) Critical ConnectWise ScreenConnect vulnerabilities fixed, patch ASAP! (Help Net Security) Schneider Electric confirms data was stolen in Cactus ransomware attack (IT Pro) Maryland Busts $9.5 Million #BEC Money Laundering Ring (CyberCrime & Doing Time) Several Ukrainian media outlets attacked by Russian hackers (The Record) Tinder Expands ID Checks Amid Rise in AI Scams, Dating Crimes (Bloomberg) Share your feedback. We want to ensure that you are getting the most out of the podcast. Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing our brief listener survey as we continually work to improve the show.  Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at cyberwire@n2k.com to request more info. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © 2023 N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pakistan concluding fiercely contested elections amidst turmoil and mass claims of irregularities is only the latest development in an eventful 2024. The year has been similarly eventful for Afghanistan's foreign relations. On 29th January, the Taliban-led Afghan government organised an unprecedented conference in Kabul attended by the representatives of neighbouring and regional countries. These included India, Russia, Kazakhstan and China. Meanwhile, an interview of Pakistani interim Prime Minister Anwar ul-Haq Kakar seemed to indicate a shifting attitude toward Afghanistan from trouble South-Asian country, whilst the Afghan embassy in Uzbekistan was handed over to diplomats of the Taliban-led government in Kabul.Those developments, however, were shadowed by the events of 30th January. At a ceremony in Beijing attended by the diplomats of over 40 countries, Afghan ambassador-designate Bilal Karimi was formally received and accepted by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Karimi had previously been received by officials at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, (covered in S.2 E.4) but his reception by the Chinese President was unparalleled as far as Kabul's quest for diplomatic recognition is concerned. International media quickly reported the meeting's significance, whilst the US State Department publicly called on China for 'clarity' on whether the reception constituted its formal recognition of the Taliban's government.Speaking amongst themselves as well as to experts, Ahmed-Waleed and Sangar discuss whether the events mark the beginning of greater overseas legitimacy of the post-2021 Taliban-led government, the effects of these developments, and what they reveal about Kabul's diplomatic priorities.Support the show♦ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Afgeye ♦ PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/afghaneye ♦ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afghaneyeinsta/ ♦ X: https://X.com/AfgEye♦ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afgeyeFB/ ♦ Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yb4sz7bh ♦ Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/ycjlytsz ♦ Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/y5qsvqq2 ♦ Shop: https://teespring.com/stores/the-afghan-eye-podcast

On 1st December 2023, the Taliban's ambassador was greeted by an official at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bilal Karimi formally presented his credentials to and was received by Hong Lei: the Director General of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Protocol Department.The picture was shared triumphantly by the Taliban on X (formerly known as Twitter) and thereafter quickly circulated across social media as it was reported by various global outlets. Analysts and commentators quickly jumped onto the discussion, debating whether the meeting and reception of the Taliban's ambassador constituted Beijing's official recognition, by extension, of the Taliban's government. If so, it would make China the first country to recognise the Taliban, and would mark a huge victory for the group in their hitherto unsuccessful quest for international acceptance.In this episode, Ahmed-Waleed Kakar examines the meeting and the underlying context behind the widely perceived official recognition of the Taliban by China. Did this meeting really mean the official recognition of the Taliban and if so, what did it mean for Afghanistan and the region? What was the larger context of the Taliban's control over foreign embassies staffed by the previous regime's diplomats? What is the nature of the bilateral relationship between the Taliban and Beijing, and the various factors and common interests influencing these?Links/references:China formally receives Afghan (Taliban) ambassador: https://www.voanews.com/a/taliban-say-afghan-embassy-in-india-set-to-resume-operations-soon/7377115.htmlTaliban 'handed keys' to embassy in India: https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/afghan-embassy-delhi-taliban-zakia-wardak-b2456762.htmlTrilateral summit statement: https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/zxxx_662805/202305/t20230509_11073522.htmlTaliban open to joining the Belt and Road Initiative: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-says-plans-formally-join-chinas-belt-road-initiative-2023-10-19/Taliban sign mining contracts: https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-mining-contract-dfd109247a44e46a9d41d8e1db76e541Mullah Hassan welcomes newly appointed Chinese ambassador: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/13/taliban-gives-a-warm-welcome-to-chinas-new-ambassador-to-afghanistanSupport the show♦ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Afgeye ♦ PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/afghaneye ♦ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afghaneyeinsta/ ♦ X: https://X.com/AfgEye♦ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/afgeyeFB/ ♦ Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yb4sz7bh ♦ Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/ycjlytsz ♦ Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/y5qsvqq2 ♦ Shop: https://teespring.com/stores/the-afghan-eye-podcast

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Huping Ling on her two latest books, Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community and Asian American History, both published by Rutgers University Press in 2022 and 2023, respectively. We begin our conversation with Asian American History, a comprehensive survey text that places Asian immigration to America in international and domestic contexts. In this text, Ling uses the histories of ethnic groups spanning from East, Southeast, South, and West Asia to explore the significant elements that define Asian America, such as imperialism, global capitalist expansion, transnationalism, labor, immigration, exclusion, family, community, and gender roles. The second part of the conversation is dedicated to Chinese Americans in the Heartland. The book draws upon rich evidence from various government records, personal stories, interviews, and media reports to shed light on the commonalities and uniqueness of the region, as compared to the Asian American communities on the East and West Coast, as well as Hawaii. An internationally renowned historian and award-winning writer, Huping Ling is a Professor of History, the founder of the Asian/Asian American Studies Program, and the past department chair at Truman State University. She is a Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and is also affiliated with many programs studying overseas Chinese including serving as the Changjiang (Yangtze River) Scholar Chair Professor of the Chinese Ministry of Education. She is the founding and inaugural book series editor for Asian American Studies Today with Rutgers University Press and former editor-in-chief for the Journal of Asian American Studies. She has authored or edited 34 books and published over 200 articles in Asian American studies. Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Huping Ling on her two latest books, Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community and Asian American History, both published by Rutgers University Press in 2022 and 2023, respectively. We begin our conversation with Asian American History, a comprehensive survey text that places Asian immigration to America in international and domestic contexts. In this text, Ling uses the histories of ethnic groups spanning from East, Southeast, South, and West Asia to explore the significant elements that define Asian America, such as imperialism, global capitalist expansion, transnationalism, labor, immigration, exclusion, family, community, and gender roles. The second part of the conversation is dedicated to Chinese Americans in the Heartland. The book draws upon rich evidence from various government records, personal stories, interviews, and media reports to shed light on the commonalities and uniqueness of the region, as compared to the Asian American communities on the East and West Coast, as well as Hawaii. An internationally renowned historian and award-winning writer, Huping Ling is a Professor of History, the founder of the Asian/Asian American Studies Program, and the past department chair at Truman State University. She is a Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and is also affiliated with many programs studying overseas Chinese including serving as the Changjiang (Yangtze River) Scholar Chair Professor of the Chinese Ministry of Education. She is the founding and inaugural book series editor for Asian American Studies Today with Rutgers University Press and former editor-in-chief for the Journal of Asian American Studies. She has authored or edited 34 books and published over 200 articles in Asian American studies. Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Huping Ling on her two latest books, Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community and Asian American History, both published by Rutgers University Press in 2022 and 2023, respectively. We begin our conversation with Asian American History, a comprehensive survey text that places Asian immigration to America in international and domestic contexts. In this text, Ling uses the histories of ethnic groups spanning from East, Southeast, South, and West Asia to explore the significant elements that define Asian America, such as imperialism, global capitalist expansion, transnationalism, labor, immigration, exclusion, family, community, and gender roles. The second part of the conversation is dedicated to Chinese Americans in the Heartland. The book draws upon rich evidence from various government records, personal stories, interviews, and media reports to shed light on the commonalities and uniqueness of the region, as compared to the Asian American communities on the East and West Coast, as well as Hawaii. An internationally renowned historian and award-winning writer, Huping Ling is a Professor of History, the founder of the Asian/Asian American Studies Program, and the past department chair at Truman State University. She is a Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and is also affiliated with many programs studying overseas Chinese including serving as the Changjiang (Yangtze River) Scholar Chair Professor of the Chinese Ministry of Education. She is the founding and inaugural book series editor for Asian American Studies Today with Rutgers University Press and former editor-in-chief for the Journal of Asian American Studies. She has authored or edited 34 books and published over 200 articles in Asian American studies. Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Huping Ling on her two latest books, Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community and Asian American History, both published by Rutgers University Press in 2022 and 2023, respectively. We begin our conversation with Asian American History, a comprehensive survey text that places Asian immigration to America in international and domestic contexts. In this text, Ling uses the histories of ethnic groups spanning from East, Southeast, South, and West Asia to explore the significant elements that define Asian America, such as imperialism, global capitalist expansion, transnationalism, labor, immigration, exclusion, family, community, and gender roles. The second part of the conversation is dedicated to Chinese Americans in the Heartland. The book draws upon rich evidence from various government records, personal stories, interviews, and media reports to shed light on the commonalities and uniqueness of the region, as compared to the Asian American communities on the East and West Coast, as well as Hawaii. An internationally renowned historian and award-winning writer, Huping Ling is a Professor of History, the founder of the Asian/Asian American Studies Program, and the past department chair at Truman State University. She is a Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and is also affiliated with many programs studying overseas Chinese including serving as the Changjiang (Yangtze River) Scholar Chair Professor of the Chinese Ministry of Education. She is the founding and inaugural book series editor for Asian American Studies Today with Rutgers University Press and former editor-in-chief for the Journal of Asian American Studies. She has authored or edited 34 books and published over 200 articles in Asian American studies. Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Huping Ling on her two latest books, Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community and Asian American History, both published by Rutgers University Press in 2022 and 2023, respectively. We begin our conversation with Asian American History, a comprehensive survey text that places Asian immigration to America in international and domestic contexts. In this text, Ling uses the histories of ethnic groups spanning from East, Southeast, South, and West Asia to explore the significant elements that define Asian America, such as imperialism, global capitalist expansion, transnationalism, labor, immigration, exclusion, family, community, and gender roles. The second part of the conversation is dedicated to Chinese Americans in the Heartland. The book draws upon rich evidence from various government records, personal stories, interviews, and media reports to shed light on the commonalities and uniqueness of the region, as compared to the Asian American communities on the East and West Coast, as well as Hawaii. An internationally renowned historian and award-winning writer, Huping Ling is a Professor of History, the founder of the Asian/Asian American Studies Program, and the past department chair at Truman State University. She is a Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and is also affiliated with many programs studying overseas Chinese including serving as the Changjiang (Yangtze River) Scholar Chair Professor of the Chinese Ministry of Education. She is the founding and inaugural book series editor for Asian American Studies Today with Rutgers University Press and former editor-in-chief for the Journal of Asian American Studies. She has authored or edited 34 books and published over 200 articles in Asian American studies. Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

  Rob Watson  is an international leader in market transformation, circular economy, sustainable materials management, and green buildings. Watson is known as the “Founding Father of LEED.” Under Rob's direction, LEED became the largest and fastest-growing international green building standard. Author Thomas Friedman called Rob "one of the best environmental minds in America." In 2019, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine recognized Mr. Watson as one of the "25 Most Influential Alumni" in the College's 250 year history.   Watson is a Principal with Upland Road, LLC, which develops eco-industrial campuses around a disruptive technology and business model that will revolutionize the global materials management industry by separating, diverting, and recycling up to 95% of municipal mixed waste that is collected in one bin.   Rob is also the Founder and Co-Chair of the SWEEP (Solid Waste Environmental Excellence Performance) Standard, a system of market transformation standards geared to move the waste industry toward sustainability.   Previously, Watson launched ECON Group and EcoTech International to implement cutting edge lifecycle optimized LEED projects in the US and China.   Watson was a Senior Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) for 21 years and received the 2013 International Conservation Award from the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. In 2011, he was an international Zayed Energy Future Award semi-finalist & was profiled on CNN International. Watson was the first foreigner honored for Green Building Innovation by the Chinese Ministry of Construction in 2005 and received the first lifetime achievement award from the U.S. Green Building Council in 2002.   Mr. Watson is an Adjunct Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and has an MBA from Columbia University and a MS from UC Berkeley. He is married to Green Schools Alliance Founder Margaret Howard Watson and has a 23-year-old son, Max.   Show Highlights Rob Watson, the Founding Father of LEED shares his stories and expertise on making a difference in the industry.  The ability to grasp complex systems, understand how they're put together and how to change them.  The curve balls thrown from the industry and how to adjust your swing to support and create systems that work.  Rob breaks down the SWEEP standard as “LEED for solid waste.” Creating a structure where value is captured by providing: buildings as a service.  The problem of the industry that the USGBC needs to be focusing on to transform and deliver sustainability that has true value.  The development of eco-industrial campuses that recycle 90-95% of everything. Smart centers sustainable materials and advanced recovery technology. Be part of “Humanity Inc. and a subsidiary of Planet Co.” by being systems thinking, but with a futurist mindset. AI could possibly be the seed of our salvation. Beyond tweaking LEED. We need to figure out how to deliver the Living Building Challenge and LEED Zero in a cost effective way. The need for radical confidence and a Star Trek moment before 2200. "Radical confidence. The Dalai Lama was asked by a colleague of mine, what's it going take to solve our environmental crisis? And he said, ‘Radical confidence.' And that's basically, the old person who plants a tree. It's just doing something that you're never going to receive the benefit of because you have a positive vision of the future. I'm going to do it because it's the right thing to do and whether I benefit from it or not is not super relevant. Obviously, you've got to keep the roof over your head and food on the table. But at the end of the day, you have to have a life that's worth living. And that means, doing things outside of yourself to make it, you just make the world a better place." -Rob Watson   Show Resource and Information Linkedin   Connect with Charlie Cichetti and GBES   GBES is excited our membership community is growing. Consider joining our membership community as members are given access to some of the guests on the podcasts that you can ask project questions. If you are preparing for an exam, there will be more assurance that you will pass your next exam, you will be given cliff notes if you are a member, and so much more. Go to to learn more about the 4 different levels of access to this one-of-a-kind career-advancing green building community!   If you truly enjoyed the show, don't forget to leave a positive rating and review on .  We have prepared more episodes for the upcoming weeks, so come by again next week! Thank you for tuning in to the !   Copyright © 2023 GBES

"Any country that intervenes in Taiwan will face serious consequences, including cyber attacks."This statement in January by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made clear that the United States must be ready to defend itself in what many assume to be an inevitable conflict over Taiwan's independence. It begs the question, how will we defend ourselves from such a powerful adversary with one of the best cyber armies in the world?At the heart of the answer is the United States infrastructure: an interconnected web of both government and for profit companies that provide core services to the citizens. This public / private partnership is most evident where it matters most: energy and communications. Mary Haynes, Group Vice President of Charter Communications and industry cybersecurity veteran, has worked with presidential administrations across her multi-decade career to serve the twin goals of protecting her customers and making the country more resilient to attacks. Our 72 minute conversation with Mary starts with how our communications industry is responding to the threat and the Biden administration's somewhat unique approach. We explore two critical areas to mounting a credible defense: 1) Ensuring the security of consumer managed connectivity hardware and 2) Addressing traffic hijacking and route misadvertisements by shoring up BGP with RPKI. Throughout the conversation, we get a clear view into the combination of big picture thinking, technical acumen and diplomacy that have taken Mary to one of the top roles in defending the U.S. communications backbone.While the first part of the conversation discusses her and the communications industry's readiness to defend against nation state adversaries, the remainder of our interview serves as a brief career retrospective for Mary as she plans to start her transition into retirement later this year. On the topic of dealing with seismic technology shifts, she reflects on our response to the public cloud and how that should inform the cybersecurity industry's response to the current advancements in artificial intelligence. As we wrap up, Mary explains where we've made progress with regards to diversity and her advice for women considering a career in cybersecurity. Mary's optimism and clarity of vision leave a strong impression throughout the dialogue; we wish her the very best as she moves from leader and practitioner to advisor and board member later this year.

Energy is not something we have covered before and so it is an honour to have Dave Walsh join us to unpack this huge topic. Dave is known as the 'Energy Guru', with a lifetime in the industry and his status as Steve Bannon's go to man on 'War Room: Pandemic' for energy makes him so well positioned to explain how this will negatively impact our lives. We have seen a three fold increase in the cost of energy which has had a knock on effect on food items, manufacturing and household bills. Dave gives us a better understanding to what lies behind these increases and why we are seeing a geopolitical change in energy control from West to East. We also unpack the dangerous rise of the green push to renewables which simply does not work and will lead to a dystopian collapse in our societies as energy becomes the preserves of the rich and powerful. Dave Walsh was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas, Inc. (MHPSA) in April 2014, with responsibility for the Western Hemisphere electric power generation business of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Hitachi Ltd. of Japan. Mr. Walsh was the first non-Japanese corporate officer of MHPSA's parent company, Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, Ltd., in Japan. He was also the first American Board member of the America's company, MHPSA. Mr. Walsh retired from Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems in 2016, now serving as an advisor to various clients in the energy industry. Prior to his appointment as President & CEO at MHPSA, Dave had been Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Projects and Services. He joined the company in 2001, and initially established the service and manufacturing business for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in the Western Hemisphere. Previously, Dave had been a senior executive at Westinghouse Electric Corporation in both power generation and industrial service roles as General Manager and Chairman of the Westinghouse global industrial and power generation service subsidiaries, with primary operations located in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Poland, Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand and Australia. He later became the senior executive and Vice Chairman responsible for the Westinghouse Electric power joint ventures in China, in partnership with the Shanghai Municipal Government and with the Chinese Ministry of Electric Power. Dave received his BS Commerce degree from The University of Virginia, and did Graduate Study in Finance at The University of Pittsburgh and at Northwestern University. He was an Enterprise Florida Board Member, and has previously been a Board Member of the Seminole County Foundation for Public Education, and served on the Seminole State College of Florida Foundation Board. Dave has also been appointed Honorary Consul Japan, Orlando, by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2016, Governor Scott appointed Mr. Walsh to the University of Central Florida Board of Trustees with a term ending January 2021. Dave and his wife Terri reside in the Central Florida area. Follow Dave on social media.... GETTR https://gettr.com/user/davewalshenergy TRUTH https://truthsocial.com/@davewalshenergy Interview recorded 17.4.23 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin and Twitter https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20  To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Please subscribe, like and share!   Transcript (Peter) Hello, Hearts of Oak, and welcome to another interview coming up with Dave Walsh, who, of course, you will know from The War Room, anyone who is Steve Bannon's go-to man on an issue is well worth having. And we delve into energy. He's an energy consultant, former president of Mitsubishi Power Systems, along with many other accolades, and he has lived and breathed energy all his life. And we delve into this, a topic that we haven't actually touched on before, I was quite surprised, but we start by looking at actually the cost of energy. It's now 30% of GDP up from 4% traditionally, originally over the last 100 years. So massive changes in the cost of energy, why that is happening. Look at some of the anomalies in the States of energy costs, and then we go into looking at renewable energy, green energy, net zero, and the push towards having electric vehicles and the impact that will have on the US. I think the call was to raise it from 5% to 67% in 10 years. Is the world able to charge all these new electric vehicles? So Dave goes into that and talks about the impact on infrastructure, on costs, and whether the world. Can cope with that. We also discussed the change in the geopolitical change, I guess, from the West, from the US, from Europe, over to China, India, Turkey, Japan, and they're the ones now buying Russian oil and gas. The West have embargoed and we so freeze Europe just so other countries can buy oil and gas at a lower price. So we talk about that change in, I guess, power and whether that leaves the US and Europe actually toothless in regards to energy productivity and energy policies. So Dave Walsh is the person who can go into this and unpack this and I'm sure you'll enjoy his analysis of all of these areas in terms of energy. Dave Walsh, thank you so much for joining us today on Hearts of Oak.   (Dave Walsh) Good to be with you, Peter. Good, it was good to bump into you at CPAC. Obviously, the viewers will know you from your many times on War Room as someone who unpacks energy issues and something that we've never gone into before so I'm looking forward to having your wisdom with us unpacking that. Obviously, people can find you @DaveWalshEnergy is your handle. That's on GETTR. Anywhere else you're on? Dave Walsh Energy. Truth Social on the same handle. Same handle on Truth Social. Dave Walsh Energy on Truth Social as well. Okay, so people can find you on GETTR or on Truth. And obviously, Dave, you're an energy consultant and former president of Mitsubishi Power Systems, along with many other accolades to your name. But if we can jump in and look at, as I said, energy is not something we've touched on before, but I've always enjoyed your many pieces on War Room. And I think I remember reading a headline middle of last year that said global energy spending set to hit 13 trillion in 2022. I think that was 13% of global GDP. I remember reading another thing talking about traditionally energy has been like over the last 100 years, maybe 4% of GDP, which seems to be it's increased in cost and I guess how important it is. But do you want to just let us know why should those figures are probably out of the ballpark for most people. Do you just want to set the scene on why I guess we should be interested and see energy as an important aspect. Well, over a hundred year period, the concentrated use of energy, fossil fuels, nuclear power in the main has been endemic to just monstrous reduction in human labour necessary to get through life. I've got maybe four or five data points in that. You go back already by 1870, the coal burn in Britain replaced caloric intake of nearly nearly 850 million laborers. And also already by then, the use of coal for steam powered engines displaced 6 million horses. So it was up to 1870. But if you look at the global population from the birth of 1750 to 2009. Global population grew by a factor of eight from 1000 AD to 1750, 750 years, by a factor of only three. And that largely related to the lack of fossil fuels, nuclear power, and modern means of doing work, human activity. And in the US, for example, in 1860, half of the population was involved in agricultural endeavours. Today, it's only 3%. Western Europe is the same. Actually, Holland leads the world, and well, led the world until we're in this present crisis. Farming productivity per person, Holland leads the way until we're gonna take farms away from families that were hard at there, unfortunately. But if you go back like here in 1875, 74% of disposable income was spent on food, shelter and clothing, now it's like 13%. So the, and if you want less energy concentration value in 1900, per capita income globally was about $1,500. By 2010, about $8,000 had expanded by 5.3 times. Across the whole time from the birth of Christ to 1900, per capita income grew around the world by a factor of three times. And that was an entire period with basically wood burning and the beginning of the use of coal for energy. So the use of fossil fuels, which has emerged really largely since about 1860, has really, really escalated the global population, global wealth, and global food production extensively. And in another area, if you look at places like Ethiopia, the concentration of labour per acre is still like 30 times more than Holland, the UK, or here, because of the lack of fossil fuels in farming machinery and the lack of advanced fertilizers, ammonia-based and nitrogen fertilizers that come from natural gas. So no, energy utilization has propelled mankind massively, in the last 100 years. Now, there are some unusual things happening with cost in the last 10 or 15 years that we should discuss that really aren't good for productivity, human productivity. And do you want to, because we've seen, I mean, we'll touch on that. And what are my thoughts looking at the US is, having been the US quite a bit in the last year and being on the East Coast and West Coast, and you look at the poor people on the West Coast, California paying probably double what the East Coast are paying over in Florida or Texas. That's an anomaly and that probably feeds into that kind of conversation about maybe some of the issues which are increasing the cost of energy, I guess, more or less exponentially. Well, yeah, the US a little bit curious. Energy policy here is really a mixed thing. It's more dominated by the states and state policies, state governments, state policies. It's physically a huge place. These states tend to be, most of them, very large physically. So the concentration of electricity generation tends to be a state by state thing, given the size, but given the way the government works, the state public service commission, usually appointed by the governor, maybe approved by the state Senate, mainly directs the energy policy and costs in various states. So, you've pointed out California in extreme, they're typically the fourth or fifth highest, energy cost state in the country when it comes to electricity. Florida's actually about in the middle. But just give you an idea of the disparity that the top 10 cost states in the US have electricity costs of about $0.27 per kilowatt hour. The top 10 cost states, the lowest 10 cost states about 10.5 cents a kilowatt hour. So the top 10 states are 2.6 times more costly, on electricity. And if you look, the two major characteristics of the best 10 or lowest cost are the fact that they tend to be 27% net exporters of electricity to other states. The states with the highest cost tend to be 16% net importers of electricity because over the years, again, places like California, now increasingly New York, Hawaii, and the high cost states have really become high cost because of abandonment of initially nuclear power, and then coal power, and now even in California, increasingly combined cycle natural gas power, which environmentally is very clean and very efficient. They've begun to abandon that as well. So they get, what they wind up doing is there really is no near-term displacement for those sources. So they wind up becoming, Steve Bannon would say, beggars of their neighbours or importers of electricity from neighbouring states. And the state public service commission in a given state doesn't control the cost of what happens in other states. So they become victimized by whatever, specifically California, whatever Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, utilities decide to charge them per year is what they pay. Because that state, for example, a hideous example, 37% of their electricity is imported. As over time, they've stopped building nuclear plants, they've closed down coal plants, now they've stopped building advanced combined cycle plants. California imports 37% of its electricity. So really the state government has virtually no control over the cost of that, nor what it consists of. So that becomes a huge factor in why the costs are so high. New York is headed the same way. They just announced a decree there that within 10 years they're going to be 70% renewable. That's going to cause, by my calculations, they're now about 23% renewable because in the West there, Niagara Falls does produce a fair amount of their electricity. But all this delta from 23% to 70 is going to be wind and solar. That's going to mean a 27% electricity shortage in New York. Because wind and solar only operate respectively, wind about 38% of the time onshore, offshore about 42% of the time that it runs. Solar up there is about a four-hour-a-day thing. It's getting pretty far north, not quite as far north as you are, but up where New York is, solar is about a four-hour-a-day effective resource, 20 hours a day. You have no value from Therefore, if New York makes that shift in 10 years, it's going to have a 27% shortage of electricity. They're already an importer of 13% of their electricity already because of these types of policies. Costs there are already the third highest, fourth highest in the country. They're going to escalate radically with these kinds of policies. So it's very unique. It is kind of unique to each state and the politics of each state and whether they're, run by a more conservative government or run by blue democratic governments. And if I look at the 10 highest cost states, eight of them are consistently run by democratic governments. So-   We obviously have the same issue in Europe, where fuel is taxed horrendously high. And at the fuel pump in the UK, it's probably around 75% tax, probably, with VAT and then fuel duty. And I guess that Democrat-controlled states are probably going the same way as Europe. Well, yeah, I mean the Democrat-controlled ones, the first bizarre set of decisions, many of them made, like California, more lately New York, the states of New England, the abandonment of allowing fossil fuel plants in those states to be there at all. California went down this road in the late 80s. Nuclear before that, they abandoned. Now gas-fired plants. New England, New York has been the same. Fracking in this country is basically illegal, New York and North. So while there are tremendous natural gas resources up there, they've elected not to harvest them. And you wind up with massive importation of electricity from Canada, a lot of hydro, and now growingly from Pennsylvania and Ohio that do have heavy, heavy natural gas resources. Well, those states in New England, New York, for example, have elected to not have power plants any longer, excepting for solar and wind, which are very, very low, very low density energy resources. Again, I'll go to the reciprocal. Solar in those markets is not there for you 86% of the time. It doesn't produce electricity. Wind if offshore, 58% of the time, doesn't produce electricity. And also, by the way, the costs of installing that stuff, far from free, are massively expensive. Offshore wind, for example, New York's on a big binge for offshore wind, is 11 times more costly than the capex of building a combined cycle plant. 11 times more costly. The cost of the transmission from 20 miles out in the sea to inland, plus the towers, plus the huge wind turbines that are on them now, you're talking 11x the capital cost. Stuff is far from free, it's actually far more expensive. And the life cycle cost of offshore wind is about three and a half times more costly than, the whole life cycle cost with fuel of advanced combined cycle natural gas power plants. So there's a myth that this stuff is free because it's nature based as far from it is far more expensive when you factor in the long time periods that it's not usable it doesn't produce anything. Let me, I want to get in more on the renewable side but for the us as an entity I think you put a recent post saying that all natural gas related products are fifteen percent of all us exports and then of course you have what the country uses itself. So energy is a massive industry, the US is sitting on so much reserves and yet the US energy plan seems to be a mess. I mean, tell us about that because the US should be the, I guess, one of the big producers and suppliers and yet, well of course, I guess with the Democrats, they're trying to punish themselves and stop that. But yeah, explain some of that. Well, the mess is to the extent the federal government controls energy supply, they do it here. The Democrats have attempted to do it through the Environmental Protection Agency, has been their main weapon to weaponize against fossil fuels and before now against nuclear power. But now aided and abetted by the Securities and Exchange Commission on all this ESG mantra of, investing in renewables is a great thing, investing in carbon fuel sources should be penalized, and by incentive policies that have only the last 15 years incented investments in renewables and not incented any investment or new investment in nuclear power or in fossil fuels. So you've had this tremendous skewing of investment to the extent the federal government can be influential. That's how they've done it, through the EPA, with punitive measures to make emissions of anything fossil fuel enormously punitive, driving the cost way, way up of operating a coal plant or a gas turbine-fired plant. And then the incentive structure they put in place on taxes to make renewables, you, And I give them a huge advantage financially with massive incentives. So that's driven policies. And this administration, all of its executive cabinet-level leadership, from the SEC to the Securities Exchange Commission, the Fed, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, all on the same, the Department of Energy head, Jen Granholm, we're going to eliminate the use of fossil fuels in this country, every single one of them. It's in their mantra consistently given, consistently articulated. So this great energy resource here is, and this, unfortunately, I've got a story about the UK as our model. We're going to follow the same. If you listen to these guys, we're going to follow the same model. We're going to abolish the use and production of fossil fuels. It's a complete disaster. The US has a huge balance of trade negative. We're a net importer of about a trillion of goods and services. China leads the way as the exporter here in the balance trade deficit we have. But it's been helped heavily the last 15 years with the emerged massive growth of natural gas and oil exports from the US. We're now like $315 billion. We're a net exporter of oil and gas at 15% of our exports. To the extent we export about $2 trillion a year of goods and services, 15% of it plus is now gas and oil. So that's a huge, huge thing with respect to the currency being stable and the budget being, it's not being balanced here, but any effort to balance the federal taxation budget. It's largely dependent on the tax receipts coming from oil and gas, and these folks on the left running the government want to abandon that as rapidly as possible. And there's no replacement for it, not even on the near term nor intermediate term. You know, displacing fossil fuels with the nature-based part-time renewables is just, mathematically doesn't work. And solar, even here in Florida, solar does not work 82% of the time. If you take a given 8,700 hour power generation year, the sunshine is effective here. I mean, right now it's noon, it's nearly dark here. From this time of the year through September, very common thing by about 11 o'clock through four, you've got thunderstorms, you've got dark clouds, you've got no solar resource, not to mention the night. Night, really it's effective between about nine and four on a good day. So even here, it's about an 18% of the time thing. In much of the Northeast and up in the Midwest, it's a four-hour a day thing. So it can't be the solution. When you're talking about that kind of energy deficit, wind, even offshore where it's most productive is not there for you to produce electricity 58% of the time. So I know in the North Sea and UK, talking about the massive offshore wind, well, I'm going to say in the vernacular here, good luck the other 58% of the time, especially when you factor in the cost of installing that against the minimal energy supply. You're talking about driving the cost of energy up to human beings by factors of five and six times. I mean, it sounds great, but it's not free. It's far from it, far more costly. Well, I'll touch on that. Well, actually, when even driving through parts of the English countryside, you see whole fields covered with solar panels now. The UK isn't really the brightest or sunniest or warmest country. And that seems madness, because again, that takes away agricultural land, which is more and more for premium and bigger demand as a population grows. But that's, it's not something which we discuss back and forth, but it's another part of it, you mentioned in Holland, that I guess clash between energy and agriculture, between feeding people and actually turning on the lights. And it's a curious clash that we're having, not only with fields being covered over, but also with farmers being told they need to farm less and feed people less because it's bad for the environment. Well, I'll go back to the UK just quickly. My wife and I were there a couple times the last year or so, and we're up by the Stonehenge. Within eight miles of there, eight kilometres, there's a solar farm. It's, the day we were there, it's the winds howling 30 miles per hour, and it's probably, maybe it was 10 C, but there was no sunshine. And I have to know, having been there many, many times, that this must be a three and a half hour day. And I think that is the typical Germany, UK, the same. Solar is about a three and a half hour a day thing, on average, across the year. It's just, I mean, it's utterly, horrendously misspent money. Now, the Holland thing, this is again, the untold story of fossil fuels. Ammonia fertilizers, nitrogen-based fertilizers in the world have promoted farming productivity across most products, wheat, corn, soybeans, potatoes, by a factor of three to four times per acre over the last 50 to 60 years in the world. And a couple of things have really pushed that productivity forward, and they are nitrogen and ammonia-based fertilizers, which are now deemed to be sinful because their origin is natural gas. So that's being used by the left to consciously diminish food supply and make it far more a challenge. I mean, the other factor has been mechanized farming machinery, which is all diesel and gas powered, has been the second thing, but behind ammonia and nitrogen-based fertilizers. I mean, just to give an example, the farming productivity, again, I think I might have mentioned, this country, Holland, UK, very high on wheat production per acre, is 30 times more productive in human terms than Ethiopia. For example, Ethiopia still has 74% of its population involved in farming. In the UK, in the US, it's about 3%. To give you an idea of the benefit of fossil fuels delivered in fertilizers and in the production equipment, heavy machinery, tractors, et cetera, harvesters to make farming cost-effective for allow massive food supply for billions of people. And now we're resisting this through wanting to diminish and end ammonia and nitrogen-based fertilizers. It's, and the use of gas-powered and diesel-powered farming machinery. This is insanity. When you're talking about sustaining 7.2 billion people, This is just not, it is not a sustainable thing, to borrow one of their phrases. It's the opposite, the polar opposite of that. And of course when we talk about those solar panels, actually we're talking about wind farms, the UK building all those wind farms and none of it actually built in the UK, so there's no manufacturing benefit, but then the solar panels, that seems to all be Chinese built and it seems as though the world, I guess on the left, the Democrats over there, many parts of Europe are rushing to award their control of their energy system over to China. And that's not a conversation I don't think the public has really had. I guess the same for the states. Well, our, I'll say collectively, our Western G7 leadership just convened over the weekend in Sapporo, yours and ours, abandoning our shores to have meetings about our sovereign countries in Japan about CO2. And what they've concluded, they collectively have signed up with each other, again, outside of the realm of where our voters are over in Japan. They've reached one of these agreements to develop collectively across the G7 a million thousand gigawatts of additional solar by 2030. This would be $670 billion investment by the G7 nations in added solar resources, of which, based on the current fact that 85% of thin film PV panels come from China, would be about a $580 billion spend in China between now and 2030 by our new G7 government, putting it that way. Having their meetings in, not here at home, nor in the UK, but in other places where these guys fly to convene and make these brilliant decisions. And then another half a million or 500 gigawatts of offshore wind, which is, again, offshore wind is 11 times more costly in capex than building a conventional combined cycle plant of the type my company built in my day at Damhead, Salt End, in I think Raglan Road in Dublin. In Spain, we built seven or eight combined cycle plants. The cost of those is one-eleventh of an offshore wind farm when you factor the 58% of the time that that offshore wind farm isn't going to produce anything for you. And then compounded with the construction cost, which is huge. That even then, the all-in life cycle cost, that the present cost of natural gas, which has now fallen quite a bit, is still four times more than a combined cycle plan, even accounting for the gas use. So we're talking about stuff that is way, way not cheaper, but is far more expensive and creates a lack of access of our citizenry in the UK and here to energy, which is way in the interest of the Chinese. Most of the supply of utility scale batteries, and as I mentioned, the solar panels, comes from there. So we're taking a dependence. We had a marvellous self-dependence in the UK on North Sea oil, which has declined by 70%, not because it's not there, but because of political pressure to go and get it. You know Norway has not participated in ceding to that pressure, doing great financially, a heavy importer to the UK. The oil's still out there, but on our side of that pond, we've decided let's not pursue it. 70% down. The US, since the election of Biden has now been about a million two barrels a day deficit of oil production, because of all the restrictions on federal land. So we've shifted over to this ideation of displacing that with dependence on China, solar panels and batteries. I mean, this is lunacy. I mean energy strategy is at the core of national defence, whether it's Western Europe or here, at the core of a sustainable lifestyle for our people. And we're handing self-sufficiency that we enjoyed over to, programmatically over to China, who are an enemy. They're aligned with Russia on this Ukraine activity that they've been from day one. There's no secret about that, but our media very reluctant to actually acknowledge that, but they are. And then this, the boycott that we've got in Western Europe on buying their oil within six weeks was almost entirely displaced with procurement from Turkey, India, and China, from Russia. So that hasn't worked out well for us. We've actually forced China and Russia together, which strategically is just a horrendous set of decisions pushed by more by this government than the Western European government, but collectively. We've created an energy disaster in the outcomes of this in a very short time. Well, that's really interesting watching that and the shift with the West, actually Europe wanting to freeze after building a Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 into Russia and then wanting to turn that off and wondering why people are angry that the cost of electricity has soared. And yet, as you said, the other side is China, India, especially and then into Turkey and elsewhere. And Japan, I think as well, actually they're happy to buy Russian oil and gas, and they've filled that gap. So it's strange because that's a power shift, I guess, away from Europe and the US. And it really leaves them toothless in terms of energy control. No, it does. The West's conscious decision to abdicate self-sufficiency and self-reliance, I would complain about the UK. We're on exactly the same page here now by the constant outcries of this government to abandon fossil fuels as rapidly as possible, going down the same path, creates a massive dependence now on China. Years before was the Middle East, before North Sea oil was discovered in abundance and harvested, before the fracking boom here, we were unfortunately heavily dependent on OPEC, which was a disaster. And now we're making them relevant once again in their alliance, first with Russia, when the kingdom sought out Russia right about the moment of the Biden inauguration, January of 21, we had the alliance begin building of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with Russia, on collective decisions on production to drive prices up, very successfully done all through 2021 and early 2022 before the invasion that we've suffered from. Now we've forced China together with Russia based on the boycott and our handling of that situation and to our horrendous detriment, energy costs here are going through the roof, as we attempt to displace, do something that's not, it's mathematically not doable. You can't displace fossil fuel use with four hour a day solar. And if on land, nine hour a day, if on sea, 10 hour a day wind. You mathematically can't do it because also those resources are regionalized in the large area. it's the same time of day that you have them. I mean, like, for example, Florida, you could put, you know, everyone thinks it's so sunny here, you could populate every square inch of Florida with solar panels, and you'd still be at 19.6 hours a day, have nothing, because it's the same moments. It's only the same, night is the same. It's not very big, east to west, night is the same time. So up till nine in the morning, you've got nothing. And after 4.30 in the afternoon, you've got nothing, which is the California issue because their peak in addition to this 38 percent uh importation of energy electricity a lot of what they use is solar even from Arizona, New Mexico, Southern Cal, I think about 35 percent of their power supply imported and made in state is renewable, and it kind of comes to an end at 4.30. Their peak power need begins at 4.30 when everyone gets home, gets off the freeways in LA, San Diego, and turn up the air conditioning, begin to use the appliances, cook, whatever, until 10 at night. That's the peak demand. Well, that's when the solar ends. That's like 30% of their electricity, at least what they have, which they're in shortage of to begin with. So you've got an intractable mathematical issue. And now we're talking about mandating EVs out there by 2035, well, now across the country, which would elevate here national electricity supply by 25%. If you got to 75% EV adoption by 2035, which this government claimed to be the new target just last week, would be about 250,000 megawatt power plants would need to be built to be running all the time from right now, start building them now, because you'll have them in four to five years. There's no plan to do that. The energy supply scenario of squashing base load, continuous duty fossil power is not connected to this, let's electrify everything. The two things aren't even connected together by this government. It's going to need a huge amount more electricity should these things happen. That push, because you reposted a story in New York Times and talked about an increase of, I think the current 5% of vehicles sold being electric up to within 10 years, 67%. The figure was mind-blowing. That's not just a case of whenever everyone plugs their car in that the energy goes up. That's a case of there is no energy. That's right, because all of the electricity production measures, these states that are blue, and this government have taken through its rhetoric for two years now, are all about adopting more and more, excuse my plain speaking, of stuff that doesn't work most of the time, solar and wind. So net, net, you've got no increase of energy resources. And I'm looking at one of the dominant business forecast that I would, in the power generation business, would use here between now and ... This is like the commonly accepted forecast. Between now and 2030, we'll have 341 more gigawatts of wind installed and 383 more gigawatts of solar installed in this country by 2030. And also take away another 828 gigawatts of coal, basically make it go away. That's the consensus business forecast, which is a collection of what utilities are telling OEMs that make power generation equipment, T&D equipment. This is the forecast. Well, if this be the case, when you take the deficiency, the time that wind and solar don't work, the net net increase in generation assets, it's about 1% across that time. When you factor down, you take out the fact that coal operates 24 hours a day, and you're displacing it with massive quantities of a five-hour-a-day thing and a nine-hour-a-day thing, the reciprocal, you've got nothing. When you take all that into account, the energy electricity plan for the US is to grow electricity production by about 1% across the next 10 years. And we're going to electrify everything in the meantime. The mathematics don't even work on this. So a frightening thing happened late last week in California, often a sign of what's to come here, the rest of the country. For some reason, the three major utilities who were regulated by the state approached the state, and I'm believing they were gigged by the state to do this, with a new billing practice of using a percentage of income, to pay for electricity instead of a per-use basis. I mean, right now, in most of the, all of the developed world, in the West for sure, your electricity bill is a use-based thing. You use X kilowatts, you pay a certain rate, that's what you pay based on use, which promotes efficient use of it and penalizes those who use the most. It's not a penalty, it's use the most, you pay for the most. California now wants to embrace converting this to an income percentage tax. That if you make X, you pay X dollars a month. If you make Y, you pay Y plus 10%. A scale based on income only, delinking utilization of electricity from the cost of it. They're putting this before the public service commission to get this approved, creating displacing use fees for electricity, which are completely common and make logical common sense with an income tax kind of percentage of income. So independent of what you use, you pay a percentage of your income for electricity. Now, what this will do for them is we'll de-link the massive fact of their shortages, and the massive fact of their very, very high cost electricity, it'll hide that. Because now you can make these comparisons of one state to another, that'll go away. Because now that they'll have, if this gets passed, they'll have an income tax, that the utilities are able to charge, which that's a whole nother, how do they get to look at your income? That's not legal here, but according to what California wants to do, that's what the utilities will begin to charge you a fixed fee based on your income, independent of it. So then you'll have demand go through the roof because efficiency won't matter anymore, but it'll hide the real cost of the electricity. and the fact that once it becomes, incrementally, it becomes free in that sense. The complaining about the lack of it would tend to diminish. You get to then the Russian food model of years ago with the bread lines. Hey, that which is free from the government, don't complain about it when it's not there. That's where they're headed. Acknowledging they have no plan whatsoever to displace the huge shortage of electricity that that state has. They're talking about a way of obfuscating cost to make it seem like incremental use of it is free, Therefore, when the big brownouts and blackouts really kick in, which are going to increase and increase, well, since you're not paying anything for this anyhow, no complaints necessary. This is frightening. This was announced late last week, Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern Cal Edison, looking at an income percentage fee collection instead of a per use for electricity consumption. How does this, how does it play out as people go and spend their crazy amount of money on EVs, electric vehicles, and then with not being able to power them? Is that just a movement towards, I mean, we've seen a movement towards red states simply because of the higher crime rates, higher tax rates, higher cost of living in the Democrat areas. Will that just continue? Is that just a bigger divide in the US? I mean, how does it play out?   It plays out as a massively increased divide between the haves and the have-nots. Because the typical EV over here is still $65,000 to $70,000 to buy one. The typical medium to lower end gas powered vehicles are about $25,000 to $28,000. The business model is in the EV, about 40% of the cost structure of that thing is the battery. Essentially, you're prepaying in that high price, 65 to 70 grand, you're prepaying the, 30 grand or so for the fuel equivalent being the battery, you're prepaying for about 150,000 miles of the fuel, if you will, in the model. Then at 150,000 plus miles, you're also exposed to the liability to replace that again for another prepaid 30, $35,000 for a new battery that can go another 150,000 miles. Paid up front, we're presently liquid fuel, you're paying on a pre-use basis, and it's domestic. So now you're prepaying for Tesla's cars. The cost structure is 40% China. That's where his batteries come from. His lithium ion comes from there. So you're transferring an obligation that was in the days gone by, the Middle East became domestic, a great thing. We want to get off domestic oil and gas production, now let's transfer that to a lithium-ion battery supply from China. But the chasm that this develops between the average citizen making $65,000, $68,000, $70,000, the chasm between that person even being able to afford a vehicle and those who can actually afford them, which is maybe then your 15% of the population can actually afford a vehicle, it grows massively. It just grows massively. It's exactly as you pointed out, it grows the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, as do all of these renewable energy sources when electricity bills go through the roof because of them. And of course, one of the other factors in it, which isn't discussed whenever the Green Lobby are pushing for this. They're not mentioning the finite resources that go into the batteries. No one mentions cobalt mining in Africa where children are used as slave labour. But that's not a part of the conversation. And that really confused me where a group claim to be environmentally conscious and also concerned of the impact of the individuals in the work market. And yet they're happy to have children going down mines for them for their latest battery car. It takes us right back to, okay, we are what we criticize others of being colonialists. This was the critique of the UK, the Dutch, our own behaviour here with forced labour. Well, guess what? Total dependence on the developing world for any resources extraction of any kind, be it oil, lithium, cobalt, is another form of colonialism. Or there's another one, yellow cake for uranium supply. This country was 100% self-sufficient on uranium supply as recent as 1992. And now we're 52% dependent on Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan for uranium, which has continued unabated throughout this entire war. We haven't changed that policy one iota, where we are in Wyoming and Utah still full of uranium, easily mineable, but no, we hate resource extraction. We don't want to be around that any longer. We'll throw certain indigenous Native Americans in front of that, who actually like the fact of it happening, but you pay certain groups, they'll step out in front and prevent that, plus various treaties that the Clinton administration made with Russia to arguably stop their conversion of uranium to nuclear weapons. We could do that by buying it from them. Unenforceable, unverifiable. So to this moment, we still do that. But this hatred of resource extraction is thrown out there as a rationale to outsource the Biden administration on oil, as opposed to ramping up domestic production. When this OPEC Plus was formed, began crushing cost here, where did they go? First stop was Iran. The second stop was Iraq. And the third stop was Venezuela, Arabia was in between. We go to OPEC to get oil instead of producing our own. When we, hit a Trump administration peak in November of 2019, 13.6 million barrels a day. We're the top producer in the world. And we abdicated that position within months of this administration taking place. And then all of its rhetoric, communicating to OPEC, oh, we're really on board with your production reductions. We're going to have our own here of a million two barrels, reduction. Basically, going along with their, the way they manage prices is not through raising the price. It's through toggling up and down the production level. We joined that. We basically joined that. We cut our production under the blanket of CO2 reasons rationale by 1.2 million barrels a day. And then who do we go to looking for the excess? We go to them. This is, It's a set of insane policies geared at making the country, as Western Europe has become, totally dependent on others for energy.   Well, let me just finish on a piece that just came out in the UK, I think it was The Telegraph, for UK connection with what's happening in the States and it was the UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt who oversees the Treasury here in the UK has just said that Joe Biden's flagship green energy policy risks plunging the world into the economic dark age. Now that was quite phenomenal because normally Western governments have been falling over themselves to say how wonderful they think Biden is and it was actually the first criticism I've seen of Biden. And this was, I guess, to do with subsidies. That's the concern, I guess, from Europe. But that just intrigued me, that, I guess, change in tone, change in rhetoric from Europe towards America, that Biden is no longer the great one. Actually, there's criticism. And I guess that's on subsidies. But I don't know if that's the beginning of maybe a wedge between how Europe look at energy and how the States does. Well, I mean the trouble I mean what he said is really, the net result is plunging the West into economic decline. Because I'm gonna suggest about a hundred and sixty countries aren't on board with this. And I'll mention a few that would surprise you Japan, Japan after Fukushima between 2015 and 2019 commissioned 13 count them 13, large coal plants, 10,000 megawatt supercriticals and 300, 400 megawatt coal plants. Why? They need to industrially compete with China. It's in their interest to do that. They did the right thing for the Japanese people. Here we're celebrating this meeting the G7 had in Sapporo. Well, the Japanese talk about, you know, renewables and all this decarbonization. Look at what they're doing. Doing what's necessary to promote their economy. And then their commitment to the renew the Sakhalin Island LNG deal at only 13 bucks a dekatherm that Russians committed prior pricing in this day and time, they had to continue that. That's about 9% of their gas supply. Half of that comes from here, half quantity, double the amount from Russia. They continue that. It's in their interest to do that. So, you're looking at this very weak alliance on this war thing. The entirety of Western Europe and Japan have not really been aligned with the US on that. India has doubled down on its, the Indian Oil Corporation has now doubled its consumption of Russian oil in the last three months. There is no unanimity of actions on this, either one, the CO2 front, which I'm going to suggest 160 countries are not on side with moving in this direction, led by the Chinese, who have double the CO2 emissions of all of the OECD countries combined. They don't believe in this, by their actions. Now, what they're selling, lithium ion cobalt batteries and PV cells, yeah, they're promoting a Macron visit so Xi Jinping takes, oh, yes, Macron, we're working together on sub-Sahara CO2 abatement. That's complete nonsense. That's nonsense to pander to the West. Oh, here, well, yeah, we're going to tell you we agree with you. Look at what they're doing. 60% of their power generation is coal-based. He has no plans of changing that. He has a plan to keep his country competitive industrially and have a strong military. That's what his plan is. Such as we had in prior days in this part of the world, but we've abandoned. Dave, I really appreciate you coming on. It's an honour to have anyone that Bannon goes to as his go-to person. And I've thoroughly enjoyed your many times of War Room over the last two years. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your thoughts on energy. Well, Peter, thanks for having me. And one of these days I'll come back and we can go further into it, but deeply appreciate, it.

The FBI on Monday morning arrested two New York City residents “in connection with opening and operating an illegal overseas police station," according to a Justice Department press release. Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping were "charged with conspiring to act as agents of the [People's Republic of China] government, as well as obstructing justice by destroying evidence of their communications with [a Chinese Ministry of Public Security] official,” the Justice Department said.Michael Cunningham, a research fellow in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, joins today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss his thoughts on the arrests, China's dismissal of the allegations, and the leaked Pentagon documents relating to Taiwan. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The National Security Hour with Dr. Michael Scheuer & Colonel Mike – U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) says that the inflow of Chinese men has increased every month since February 2021. CBP estimates that 90 military-age Chinese men are caught each day. These military-age Chinese men are then released into the...

This week we talked about Trump's proposed "Freedom Cities," and read through the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' document on US Hegemony and Its Perils. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/03/trump-policy-futuristic-cities-00085383 https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/202302/t20230220_11027664.html Cars & Comrades Podcast https://media.rss.com/carsandcomrades/feed.xml https://instagram.com/cars_and_comrades_podcast/ https://twitter.com/CarsAndComrades https://facebook.com/Cars-Comrades-Po…-101908671824034 Collective Action Comics Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coll…cs/id1573028630 https://podbay.fm/p/collective-action-comics https://www.patreon.com/collectiveactioncomics The Intervention Podcast: https://theinterventionpod.buzzsprout.com/ https://instagram.com/intervention_pod Comrade Levi https://twitter.com/Levi0Levi Turn Leftist Podcast https://linktr.ee/turnleftist https://instagram.com/turnleftist https://twitter.com/turnleftistpod

As the war in Ukraine hits one year, Biden visits Zelensky in Kiev, Putin gives an uncompromising state of the nation speech, and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs makes a fiery statement against the US Empire, the likes of which haven't been seen in decades. Brian is joined by Walter Smolarek, editor of Liberation News and producer of this show, to sort through the tea leaves on where the war in Ukraine may be headed. Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.

It's Thursday, February 23rd, and China has just created a blockchain research center in Beijing. Gotta be kidding me. Yeah. This is the country that in 2021 banned Bitcoin. Now China has established the National Blockchain Technology Innovation Center created by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology. -----Links from today's show:Chinese Government Launching National Blockchain Innovation CenterJean Edelman on TwitterJean Edelman on InstagramJean Edelman on YouTubeBrought to you by:Global X ETFsInvesco QQQSchwab-----Subscribe to podcast updatesThe Truth About Your Future websiteThe Truth About CryptoHave a question for Ric?Follow Ric on social media:FacebookTwitterYouTubeInstagramDisclosure page-----

The infamous Chinese spy balloon was shot down on Saturday off the coast of South Carolina. China says it was "an accidental incident caused by force majeure." CNBC reports:   Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning urged both sides to remain calm after the U.S. said it shot down what it called a Chinese spy balloon.  “What I want to emphasize regarding this unexpected accident is that both sides, especially the U.S., should remain calm,” Mao said in Mandarin, according to a CNBC translation.  She was speaking at the first of the ministry's daily press conferences after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken indefinitely postponed his trip to Beijing following news that a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was flying over the United States.  Blinken was originally expected to visit Beijing on Sunday and Monday, although the U.S. had offered few official details and the Chinese side never confirmed the trip. The U.S. military shot down the balloon over the weekend.  China has called the balloon a “civilian unmanned airship” and said it was primarily conducting weather research before it was blown off course.  Plus, a majority of Democrats do not want Joe Biden to run for President in 2024. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs says China had "no intention" of violating other countries' airspace after the Pentagon reported a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted flying over sensitive military sites. Also on the programme : the latest from Kyiv where EU ministers are meeting with the Ukrainian government to discuss membership to the bloc and Pope Francis is in South Sudan with the other leaders of the Christian denominations on a peace mission. ( Picture : A balloon flies in the sky over Billings, Montana, U.S. Credit : Chase Doak)

The unlikely Georgia Chinese Ministry come about as a surprise to the missionaries who are in charge. The unexpected ministry fell into the lap of Health and his family.

Kenya's got a new president who has vowed to get tough on the Chinese, particularly when it comes to publishing contracts and cracking down on illegal immigration. Plus, Chinese mining giant CMOC is encountering new difficulties at its massive cobalt mine in the southern DRC.Eric & Cobus break down some of the week's top China-Africa stories and discuss where in the world is Xi Jinping going.SHOW NOTES:Wang Cheng, Chinese Ministry of Commerce: twitter.com/SadiqChengWangJOIN THE DISCUSSION:Twitter: @ChinaGSProject| @stadenesque | @eric_olanderFacebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProjectFOLLOW CAP IN FRENCH AND ARABIC:Français: www.projetafriquechine.com | @AfrikChineعربي: www.akhbaralsin-africia.com | @AkhbarAlSinAfrJOIN US ON PATREON!Become a CAP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff, including our Week in Review report, an invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CAP Podcast mug!www.patreon.com/chinaafricaprojectSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Happy Thursday everyone, this is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Thursday, July 28th, 2022. Whoopi Goldberg has made another whoopsie, and is back in the news, after comments she made about Turning Point USA, on this show called The View. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WhXg3GTn5OM - Play Video Well, when she said those things… Turning Point USA wasn’t exactly pleased with those comments, and as a result, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk said the group was considering legal action against the show. https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-the-view-apologizes-for-wrongly-linking-neo-nazi-protestors-to-turning-point-usa?utm_campaign=64487 The View apologizes for wrongly linking neo-Nazi protestors to Turning Point USA That prompted this response from the view: https://rumble.com/v1dt5k9-july-27-2022.html - Play Video After TPUSA called out "The View" on Twitter for making openly and provably false statements, conservative politicians, commentators, and supporters defended the organization and got the hashtag #SUETHEVIEW trending. Human Events Daily host and Turning Point USA contributor Jack Posobiec called "The View's" actions "textbook" defamation. "I was standing outside when this incident happened," he added. "TPUSA attendees confronted the agitators." Tim Pool talked about this on his show: https://twitter.com/i/status/1552105148180217858 - Play Video https://thepostmillennial.com/biological-male-swimmer-lia-thomas-loses-bid-for-woman-of-the-year-to-female-fencer?utm_campaign=64487 Biological male swimmer Lia Thomas loses bid for 'Woman of the Year' to female fencer The NCAA has announced a biological woman as their choice to represent the Ivy League to compete for the "Woman of the Year" title over Lia Thomas, the transgender athlete who made headlines after leaving men's swimming to compete against women. Columbia University fencer, Sylvie Binder, will be the Ivy League's pick. The award is meant to honor women student-athletes who have "distinguished themselves in their community, in athletics and in academics throughout their college career." Binder, a senior from Armonk, New York, won the NCAA Fencing Championship in 2019. Binder was selected over Thomas, whose eligibility was hotly contested as Thomas is biological male who identifies as a woman and began transition in 2019. Thomas swam for the men’s swim team representing the University of Pennsylvania for three seasons before transitioning to compete against female swimmers, breaking records and winning championships in the women's division. Riley Gaines, an SEC champion swimmer who competed against Thomas at the NCAA Championships, said the male nomination as "Woman of the Year" was "another slap in the face to women," adding that the NCAA has now "made this award worthless." The University of Pennsylvania nominated both Thomas and tennis player Iuliia Bryzgalova for NCAA Woman of the Year in July. The NCAA website states that a school may nominate two individuals for the award if one of the two nominees is a "student-athlete of color or international student-athlete." The announcement on Monday narrowed down the 577 students nominated to 151 female athletes. The Woman of the Year Selection Committee is set to select 10 nominees from each division and the top 30 will be announced in October, with the winner announced in January at the NCAA Convention in San Antonio. Moving on… Hey California! That’s a place that exists… California Democrats Move to Make State a 'Sanctuary' for Child Sex Change Surgery https://neonnettle.com/news/19709-california-democrats-move-to-make-state-a-sanctuary-for-child-sex-change-surgery "Woke" lawmakers have introduced a bill to create a safe haven for doctors to perform operations on kids to remove or alter their genitals.The bill was introduced by Democratic California State Sen. Scott Wiener.As Neon Nettle has previously reported, Wiener successfully campaigned to legalize "gay sex" with minors in the state. Weiner's latest bill would block courts from enforcing out-of-state court orders revoking custody for parents who allowed their children to get illegal sex changes.The measure would also weaken parental rights of those who aren’t supportive of sex changes for their kids, giving "woke" teachers and other officials more powers to put children through life-changing transgender treatments without the need for family approval or knowledge. The proposal comes as several states move to restrict “gender-affirming care,” for children, which includes socially transitioning, puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries. Texas is treating these procedures as a form of child abuse under existing state laws, Alabama has banned the procedures for minors and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is making an administration-wide push to ban child sex-change procedures.Wiener characterized the bill as an effort to grant legal protections to transgender minors and their parents, noting that the bill blocks California courts from enforcing out-of-state subpoenas for parents who break state laws banning child sex-change treatments. The legislation also makes the enforcement of out-of-state arrest warrants for violations of child sex-change bans the lowest law enforcement priority. A spokeswoman for parental rights group Family Watch International told the Daily Caller News Foundation how the law might work in practice. If a mother in Texas believes her daughter is actually a boy and seeks a double mastectomy for her, her doctor may alert the authorities that the child is at risk for permanently disfiguring surgery, she explained.If the mother flees to California with the child to get the surgery, California would currently be required to comply with court orders from Texas to have the child returned to the state, according to the spokeswoman. Wiener’s bill would block California courts from complying with Texas’s child custody orders when it comes to parents giving their children sex changes, she explained. My goodness that is wicked… California is just going to be heaping judgement on itself and our nation by these disgusting practices. Folks, especially those in California, come join us in Knoxville this Fall! FLF Conference Plug: Folks, our upcoming Fight Laugh Feast Conference is 70 days away from happening in Knoxville TN, October 6-8! Don't miss beer & psalms, our amazing lineup of speakers which includes George Gilder, Jared Longshore, Pastor Wilson, Dr. Ben Merkle, Pastor Toby, and we can’t say yet…also dont miss our awesome vendors, meeting new friends, and stuff for the kids too…like jumpy castles and accidental infant baptisms! Also, did you know, you can save money, by signing up for a Club Membership. So, go to FightLaughFeast.com and sign up for a club membership and then register for the conference with that club discount. We can’t wait to fellowship, sing Psalms, and celebrate God’s goodness in Knoxville October 6-8. Let’s shift our eyes over seas now… https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/27/us-military-prep-war-pelosi-taiwan/ US Military To Prep For War If Pelosi Goes To Taiwan: REPORT The U.S. military is readying for possible conflict in the Pacific ahead of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible trip to Taiwan in August, according to The Associated Press. The Pentagon will escalate troop movements and security measures in the Pacific if Pelosi follows through with her planned Taiwan visit. China likely would not attack Pelosi’s plane directly, officials familiar with the matter told the AP, but senior officials worry that her presence could inflame existing tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan. Officials declined to provide specifics but said measures could include fighter jets, ships and surveillance equipment to create redundant shields around Pelosi. China threatened to impose a no-fly zone over Taiwan if Pelosi visits and has dispatched warplanes into Taiwan’s claimed air defense identification zone, CNN reported, as a possible countermeasure. Pelosi would be the highest-ranking elected official to visit Taiwan in a quarter century, according to the AP. While enhanced security is typical of any high-level official visit to a foreign country, the precautions would go beyond those taken for trips to less risky destinations. Tensions between the U.S. and China have escalated in recent months over conflict related to Taiwan, an independently-governed country that China perceives as part of the mainland. Milley said Sunday that the number of dangerous interceptions between U.S. and Chinese forces in the South Pacific has escalated in 2022, and China has used unusually strong language opposing the U.S. ahead of Pelosi’s possible visit, Financial Times reported Saturday, citing six people with direct knowledge of the warnings. China confirmed prior threats of possible military action should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi follow through on Monday. “If the US side insists on making the visit, the Chinese side will take firm and strong measures to safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian said. Boniface Woodworking LLC: Boniface Woodworking exists for those who enjoy shopping with integrity; who want to buy handmade wooden furniture, gifts, and heirloom items that will last for generations. From dining tables and church pulpits to cigar humidors and everything in between; quality pieces that you can give your children’s children, tie them to their roots, and transcend the basic function of whatever they are! So, start voting with your dollars, and stop buying cheap crap from people who hate you! Visit www.bonifacewoodworking.com to see our gallery, learn our story, and submit your order for heirloom quality wood items. Nba Draft Sound Effect- Play Video Ladies and gentleman, we have a trade to announce! https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/wnba/2022/07/27/brittney-griner-u-s-offer-russia-prisoner-swap-paul-whelan/10166157002/ The United States will send Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer nicknamed "The Merchant of Death," for the prisoner swap. In exchange, Russia will send over Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan… Their deal sounds cooler. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the United States made a "substantial" proposal to Russia to bring home wrongfully detained WNBA star Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, who is also serving a prison sentence in Russia. CNN reported that the U.S. offered Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer nicknamed "The Merchant of Death," for the prisoner swap. A prisoner swap freed former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed from a Russian penal colony in April. Blinken added he would engage with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. It was the first public acknowledgement of a deal that could involve a prisoner swap or addressing the sanctions placed on the country after it invaded Ukraine. “My hope would be that in speaking to Foreign Minister Lavrov, I can advance the efforts to bring them home,” Blinken said. Blinken said President Joe Biden has been directly involved in the negotiations and he signed off on the offer to Moscow. This has been your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. If you liked the show, there’s a share button on your screen. Do it! Do it now! If you want to sign up as a club member, register for our conference, or sign up as a magazine subscriber, you can do all of that at fightlaughfeast.com. And as always, if you want to become a corporate partner for CrossPolitic, let’s talk. Email me at garrison@fightlaughfeast.com. For CrossPolitic News, I’m Garrison Hardie. Have a great day, and Lord bless.

Happy Thursday everyone, this is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Thursday, July 28th, 2022. Whoopi Goldberg has made another whoopsie, and is back in the news, after comments she made about Turning Point USA, on this show called The View. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WhXg3GTn5OM - Play Video Well, when she said those things… Turning Point USA wasn’t exactly pleased with those comments, and as a result, TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk said the group was considering legal action against the show. https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-the-view-apologizes-for-wrongly-linking-neo-nazi-protestors-to-turning-point-usa?utm_campaign=64487 The View apologizes for wrongly linking neo-Nazi protestors to Turning Point USA That prompted this response from the view: https://rumble.com/v1dt5k9-july-27-2022.html - Play Video After TPUSA called out "The View" on Twitter for making openly and provably false statements, conservative politicians, commentators, and supporters defended the organization and got the hashtag #SUETHEVIEW trending. Human Events Daily host and Turning Point USA contributor Jack Posobiec called "The View's" actions "textbook" defamation. "I was standing outside when this incident happened," he added. "TPUSA attendees confronted the agitators." Tim Pool talked about this on his show: https://twitter.com/i/status/1552105148180217858 - Play Video https://thepostmillennial.com/biological-male-swimmer-lia-thomas-loses-bid-for-woman-of-the-year-to-female-fencer?utm_campaign=64487 Biological male swimmer Lia Thomas loses bid for 'Woman of the Year' to female fencer The NCAA has announced a biological woman as their choice to represent the Ivy League to compete for the "Woman of the Year" title over Lia Thomas, the transgender athlete who made headlines after leaving men's swimming to compete against women. Columbia University fencer, Sylvie Binder, will be the Ivy League's pick. The award is meant to honor women student-athletes who have "distinguished themselves in their community, in athletics and in academics throughout their college career." Binder, a senior from Armonk, New York, won the NCAA Fencing Championship in 2019. Binder was selected over Thomas, whose eligibility was hotly contested as Thomas is biological male who identifies as a woman and began transition in 2019. Thomas swam for the men’s swim team representing the University of Pennsylvania for three seasons before transitioning to compete against female swimmers, breaking records and winning championships in the women's division. Riley Gaines, an SEC champion swimmer who competed against Thomas at the NCAA Championships, said the male nomination as "Woman of the Year" was "another slap in the face to women," adding that the NCAA has now "made this award worthless." The University of Pennsylvania nominated both Thomas and tennis player Iuliia Bryzgalova for NCAA Woman of the Year in July. The NCAA website states that a school may nominate two individuals for the award if one of the two nominees is a "student-athlete of color or international student-athlete." The announcement on Monday narrowed down the 577 students nominated to 151 female athletes. The Woman of the Year Selection Committee is set to select 10 nominees from each division and the top 30 will be announced in October, with the winner announced in January at the NCAA Convention in San Antonio. Moving on… Hey California! That’s a place that exists… California Democrats Move to Make State a 'Sanctuary' for Child Sex Change Surgery https://neonnettle.com/news/19709-california-democrats-move-to-make-state-a-sanctuary-for-child-sex-change-surgery "Woke" lawmakers have introduced a bill to create a safe haven for doctors to perform operations on kids to remove or alter their genitals.The bill was introduced by Democratic California State Sen. Scott Wiener.As Neon Nettle has previously reported, Wiener successfully campaigned to legalize "gay sex" with minors in the state. Weiner's latest bill would block courts from enforcing out-of-state court orders revoking custody for parents who allowed their children to get illegal sex changes.The measure would also weaken parental rights of those who aren’t supportive of sex changes for their kids, giving "woke" teachers and other officials more powers to put children through life-changing transgender treatments without the need for family approval or knowledge. The proposal comes as several states move to restrict “gender-affirming care,” for children, which includes socially transitioning, puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries. Texas is treating these procedures as a form of child abuse under existing state laws, Alabama has banned the procedures for minors and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is making an administration-wide push to ban child sex-change procedures.Wiener characterized the bill as an effort to grant legal protections to transgender minors and their parents, noting that the bill blocks California courts from enforcing out-of-state subpoenas for parents who break state laws banning child sex-change treatments. The legislation also makes the enforcement of out-of-state arrest warrants for violations of child sex-change bans the lowest law enforcement priority. A spokeswoman for parental rights group Family Watch International told the Daily Caller News Foundation how the law might work in practice. If a mother in Texas believes her daughter is actually a boy and seeks a double mastectomy for her, her doctor may alert the authorities that the child is at risk for permanently disfiguring surgery, she explained.If the mother flees to California with the child to get the surgery, California would currently be required to comply with court orders from Texas to have the child returned to the state, according to the spokeswoman. Wiener’s bill would block California courts from complying with Texas’s child custody orders when it comes to parents giving their children sex changes, she explained. My goodness that is wicked… California is just going to be heaping judgement on itself and our nation by these disgusting practices. Folks, especially those in California, come join us in Knoxville this Fall! FLF Conference Plug: Folks, our upcoming Fight Laugh Feast Conference is 70 days away from happening in Knoxville TN, October 6-8! Don't miss beer & psalms, our amazing lineup of speakers which includes George Gilder, Jared Longshore, Pastor Wilson, Dr. Ben Merkle, Pastor Toby, and we can’t say yet…also dont miss our awesome vendors, meeting new friends, and stuff for the kids too…like jumpy castles and accidental infant baptisms! Also, did you know, you can save money, by signing up for a Club Membership. So, go to FightLaughFeast.com and sign up for a club membership and then register for the conference with that club discount. We can’t wait to fellowship, sing Psalms, and celebrate God’s goodness in Knoxville October 6-8. Let’s shift our eyes over seas now… https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/27/us-military-prep-war-pelosi-taiwan/ US Military To Prep For War If Pelosi Goes To Taiwan: REPORT The U.S. military is readying for possible conflict in the Pacific ahead of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s possible trip to Taiwan in August, according to The Associated Press. The Pentagon will escalate troop movements and security measures in the Pacific if Pelosi follows through with her planned Taiwan visit. China likely would not attack Pelosi’s plane directly, officials familiar with the matter told the AP, but senior officials worry that her presence could inflame existing tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan. Officials declined to provide specifics but said measures could include fighter jets, ships and surveillance equipment to create redundant shields around Pelosi. China threatened to impose a no-fly zone over Taiwan if Pelosi visits and has dispatched warplanes into Taiwan’s claimed air defense identification zone, CNN reported, as a possible countermeasure. Pelosi would be the highest-ranking elected official to visit Taiwan in a quarter century, according to the AP. While enhanced security is typical of any high-level official visit to a foreign country, the precautions would go beyond those taken for trips to less risky destinations. Tensions between the U.S. and China have escalated in recent months over conflict related to Taiwan, an independently-governed country that China perceives as part of the mainland. Milley said Sunday that the number of dangerous interceptions between U.S. and Chinese forces in the South Pacific has escalated in 2022, and China has used unusually strong language opposing the U.S. ahead of Pelosi’s possible visit, Financial Times reported Saturday, citing six people with direct knowledge of the warnings. China confirmed prior threats of possible military action should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi follow through on Monday. “If the US side insists on making the visit, the Chinese side will take firm and strong measures to safeguard our sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian said. Boniface Woodworking LLC: Boniface Woodworking exists for those who enjoy shopping with integrity; who want to buy handmade wooden furniture, gifts, and heirloom items that will last for generations. From dining tables and church pulpits to cigar humidors and everything in between; quality pieces that you can give your children’s children, tie them to their roots, and transcend the basic function of whatever they are! So, start voting with your dollars, and stop buying cheap crap from people who hate you! Visit www.bonifacewoodworking.com to see our gallery, learn our story, and submit your order for heirloom quality wood items. Nba Draft Sound Effect- Play Video Ladies and gentleman, we have a trade to announce! https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/wnba/2022/07/27/brittney-griner-u-s-offer-russia-prisoner-swap-paul-whelan/10166157002/ The United States will send Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer nicknamed "The Merchant of Death," for the prisoner swap. In exchange, Russia will send over Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan… Their deal sounds cooler. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the United States made a "substantial" proposal to Russia to bring home wrongfully detained WNBA star Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan, who is also serving a prison sentence in Russia. CNN reported that the U.S. offered Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer nicknamed "The Merchant of Death," for the prisoner swap. A prisoner swap freed former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed from a Russian penal colony in April. Blinken added he would engage with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. It was the first public acknowledgement of a deal that could involve a prisoner swap or addressing the sanctions placed on the country after it invaded Ukraine. “My hope would be that in speaking to Foreign Minister Lavrov, I can advance the efforts to bring them home,” Blinken said. Blinken said President Joe Biden has been directly involved in the negotiations and he signed off on the offer to Moscow. This has been your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief. If you liked the show, there’s a share button on your screen. Do it! Do it now! If you want to sign up as a club member, register for our conference, or sign up as a magazine subscriber, you can do all of that at fightlaughfeast.com. And as always, if you want to become a corporate partner for CrossPolitic, let’s talk. Email me at garrison@fightlaughfeast.com. For CrossPolitic News, I’m Garrison Hardie. Have a great day, and Lord bless.