Source: Fox News
by Chad Wolf
“The tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are creeping into an increasing number of U.S. industries in China’s coordinated campaign to infiltrate critical industries to the U.S. economy. The evidence is clear. The CCP views theft of U.S. intellectual property as ‘a strategic resource,’ and China remains the largest source of counterfeit and pirated goods in the world. Chinese companies are building electric vehicle (EV) battery plants near key U.S. military installations, and China still controls the global chips market despite investments in U.S. production. China is also flexing its dominance of the rare earth sector in retaliation for U.S. trade policy, and China is in talks to create a new military facility just miles from the American homeland. This is the reality we are in.” (08/31/23)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/next-front-china-economic-war-out-this-world
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Embattled Chinese developer Country Garden reported a 48.9bn yuan ($6.7bn) loss for the first half of the year in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday, adding to worries of a potentially catastrophic default. Its tenuous state has sparked fears of a collapse that could have far-reaching consequences for the Chinese financial system two years after the fall of Evergrande. Country Garden, which was China’s largest real estate firm last year, has four times as many building projects underway as Evergrande. When the latter halted construction projects in recent times it infuriated home buyers, who held demonstrations and stopped making mortgage payments in protest. Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property firm with liabilities of $328bn, has lost more than 99% of its share market value over the past three years.” (08/31/23)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/31/country-garden-chinese-property-developer-reports-half-year-finanical-loss-fears-default-risk
Source: Quillette
“Has the Australian Press Council Been Captured?” (08/31/23)
https://quillette.com/blog/2023/08/31/episode-16-what-happens-when-you-go-against-trans-ideology/
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Andrew Napolitano
“Benjamin Franklin’s famous one-liner about the relationship between liberty and safety has intrigued me since I first read it in high school. Why would anyone sacrifice personal liberty? And how does that sacrifice equate to temporary safety? When Franklin uttered these lines, folks in the colonies were contemplating a war of secession from England. At the time of that contemplation, according to the late Harvard Professor Bernard Bailyn, about one-third of the adult white males preferred secession, about one-third preferred staying subjugated to the king and Parliament, and about one-third were undecided. From our advantage of hindsight, it is almost inconceivable that any rational person could have been undecided. But that was then, and this is now.” (08/31/23)
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2023/08/31/neither-liberty-nor-safety/
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jon Miltimore
“Edward Snowden pointed out the FBI has a long history of keeping files on famous people, particularly those seen as ‘agitators’ or purveyors of ‘subversive’ ideas.” (08/31/23)
https://fee.org/articles/does-the-fbi-already-have-a-file-on-oliver-anthony-probably/
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“Blood clots in the brain or the lungs might explain some common symptoms of ‘long Covid’, including brain fog and fatigue, a UK study suggests. In the study, of 1,837 people admitted to hospital because of Covid, researchers say two blood proteins point to clots being one cause. It is thought 16% of such patients have trouble thinking, concentrating or remembering for at least six months. Long Covid can also develop after milder infections. But the research team, from the universities of Oxford and Leicester, stress: * Their findings are relevant only to patients admitted to hospital; * They are ‘the first piece of the jigsaw” but further research is needed before they can propose or test any potential treatments; * They tracked cognitive problems at six and 12 months only and through tests and questionnaires, which may ‘lack sensitivity.'” (08/31/23)
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66658257
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
“Securing the Vote.” (08/30/23)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/podcast-episode-rerelease-securing-vote
Source: Independent Institute
by Craig Eyermann
“The Base Closure and Realignment Commission is perhaps the only example of a successful budget policy reform enacted in the past 50 years. That may be because it is limited in scope, so it’s an open question of whether a similar condition with greater sway over more spending could succeed. There’s also no guarantee that the politicians who benefit from the current broken system would go for it.” (08/31/23)
https://blog.independent.org/2023/08/31/broken-government-budget-process
Source: Common Dreams
by Thom Hartmann
“As we learned from last week’s Republican debates, the leading candidates for the GOP nomination all appear to agree on a broad plan to gut American government and replace it with a strongman president and corporate rule. The modern administrative state, sometimes called the ‘welfare state’ by Republicans, was largely created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the Republican Great Depression of the early 1930s. And every day since FDR was sworn into office on March 4, 1933, the GOP has worked feverishly to dismantle his legacy. Outside of Russia, China, and Hungary, this isn’t true at all for the rest of the developed world. Nations across the rest of Europe, South America, and Asia imitated FDR’s and LBJ’s America, most going beyond our simple development of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the legalization of unions to further expand opportunity and social mobility for their citizens.” (08/31/23)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/project-2025-alarm-for-republic
Source: National Review
“Two Businessmen Jump on a Zoom.” (08/31/23)
https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/capital-record/two-businessmen-jump-on-a-zoom/