World

Twenty years ago, the Catholics of a city in Alaska gathered enough money to build a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart. They presented the architectural drawings to the city council, whose non-Catholic members winced a bit. Were Gothic arches really meant to be painted the color of pale strawberries? Why were the bell towers capped with domes in cotton-candy stripes? But, what the hell, Catholics have their own funny ideas about what churches should look like. OK, they said, we’re fine with this so long as you don’t shove it in our faces. Here’s a bit of land on the outskirts of town where you can build the thing and we won’t have to look at it every time we walk down Main Street.

The World Health Organization now says the virus ‘most likely came from animals.' But everybody knows that the WHO is heavily influenced by China, and China is not a reliable source. Everybody, that is, except large and important sections of the US media. Before the WHO’s latest report, Feng Zijian, the deputy director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, claimed the virus spread after a bat infected a human — or the virus initially went from bat to another animal or mammal species, which then jumped to humans or that shipments of frozen food from Europe or even the United States spread the virus throughout the province of Wuhan. It’s always the West’s fault, the way Beijing tells it.

There was a shooting spree at several massage parlors outside of Atlanta last week. The killer confessed in custody that his motivation was a combination of religious guilt and sex addiction. But the American media used the occasion to push a race-based explanation for the killings — an explanation that no investigators, including the FBI, have been able to prove thus far. By any and all factual indications, this was not a crime based on the victims’ race, but their occupation. American reporters ignore all that. Instead they sensationalize for a social-media audience of woke identitarians — and now the Chinese Communist party is getting in on the act. The CCP is employing the same talking points via their state media outlets as we see in our ‘free’ ones.

It goes without saying that when conducting high-level diplomacy, you don’t insult the other party at a joint press conference before the negotiations begin. And if you choose to do something so foolish, you must be ready when the other party retaliates in its response. It is incredible that secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan did not understand this when they began talks with their Chinese counterparts in Alaska yesterday. At what was supposed to be perfunctory two-minute statements by the US and Chinese delegations to the press before the talks began, Blinken and Sullivan criticized Chinese activities against the Uighurs, in Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as for cyber attacks on the US and economic coercion of US allies.

In 2022, the Winter Games will descend on Beijing, China’s polluted capital, giving everyone that weren’t we just here? feeling. The world can once more expect to be equally horrified and dazzled by the sheer level of control China exerts over its population. Only one force on the planet stirred a sort of trembling adoration in China, but he’s sadly no longer president. Now, western liberalism is pathetically left trying to nag China into submission, with China mostly not even noticing. A soon-to-be failed, Republican-led attempt to boycott the Beijing Winter Games is under way that has the party split along seemingly surprising lines. It's the NeverTrump wing calling for a boycott, or, rather, those Republicans who the Trump base offers a chilly reception.

It has been more than two years since Ziba Murat has heard the voice of her ailing mother, Gulshan Abbas, a retired physician who was abruptly ‘disappeared’ in September 2018 in Xinjiang province, China. While exact facts and figures are hard to come by, it is widely reported that at least three million Uighurs in China have been forced into concentration camps, which Beijing calls ‘reeducation’ facilities for stamping out ‘Islamic extremism’. The scale of the ongoing atrocities is bone-chilling: from forced sterilizations and sexual violence to beatings and indoctrination. The Chinese government’s assault extends to Uighurs abroad.

Joe Biden is a Chinese asset. His family’s business dealings with Beijing have compromised his leadership of America and the free world. Look at his recent statement in which he suggested that ‘cultural differences’ might explain why the Chinese thought it was OK to brutally oppress Uighurs. An unnamed source within the intelligence community has revealed that Biden could not unequivocally condemn China’s human rights abuses because Xi Jinping has ‘has something’ on him. The 46th President therefore cannot be trusted to stand up to Xi on the world stage. ‘The Russians deploy kompromat as leverage over foreign assets,’ says my source. ‘Chinese agencies use something called “black materials” to extort western authority figures into doing what they want.