Month: August 2022

Microchip wars heating up over Taiwan

A reporter from the Taiwanese state media TVBS reported that, according to her sources, speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi will be arriving in Taipei on August 2. However, Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan will have “serious consequences” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said.

Speaker Pelosi may arrive in Taiwan to meet with the island’s chief of staff the day after, the China Times reported, citing sources. According to the publication, the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry has not yet confirmed these plans. The UN rates Taiwan as a province of China. In 1979, the United States also switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

For this reason, China has insisted that Pelosi approach Beijing for an official visit.

This war of words that may soon escalate, goes back almost ten years and is rooted in a race for global supremacy in microchip production: Taiwan is a key country in this regard.

Because Taiwan controls most of the world’s chip manufacturing capacity, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned in July that the US would go into a “deep and immediate recession” if it lost access to the island nation’s chips.

“If you allow yourself to think about a scenario where the United States no longer had access to the chips currently being made in Taiwan, it’s a scary scenario,” Raimondo told CNBC. “It’s a deep and immediate recession. It’s an inability to protect ourselves by making military equipment.”

But US diplomacy has nevertheless been less than efficient in dealing with this critical issue: In 2013, when former US President Barack Obama received Chinese President Xi Jinping in California, it was perceived as an affront in China. For a nation like China, of course, a reception in Washington would have been more appropriate.

Putin-Xi Pact

At the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, according to informed circles, the Chinese, still angry after the Obama snub, made a pact with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Even if the date of a pact between the two countries is disputed, the existence of a deal remains undisputed.

The content of the rumored pact is that China and Russia would go on the offensive together if attacked. China would defend Taiwan, an island strategically occupied by the United States. After the US defeat in Afghanistan and Vladimir Zelensky’s demand that nuclear weapons be delivered to his country, the two allied powers Russia and China saw the writing on the wall.

The situation around Taiwan is currently coming to a head and China has been moving its troops there. Especially after Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi announced a visit to Taiwan in order to tie the country even more closely to the United States. This signaled to China that action had to be taken. Moscow has already confirmed its support for Beijing.

Losing chip supremacy

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the third most important semiconductor manufacturer in the world. The company has even taken the lead in order-to-order manufacturing – the US and its largest chip manufacturer, Intel, are among the largest customers. These are crucial for both US technology and Chinese production in the struggle for economic growth. Losing access to chips, means no longer being able to assert oneself technologically.

This is particularly important for the US and the West since they do not have the same access as China and Russia to raw materials. If the United States loses access to Taiwanese computer chips, the West will lose its supremacy which it can only maintain because of its technological lead.

Even if new factories expand US chip manufacturing capacity, research firm TrendForce pointed out that they would not make a dent in Taiwan’s industry dominance in the short term.

Meanwhile Russian-made Su-30MK2 fighters, which are in service with the aviation brigade of the Eastern Fleet of the PLA Navy (operational zone – Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait) performed night flights during exercises of the People’s Liberation Army of China with US Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) approaching the waters east of Taiwan.

The Pentagon has begun deploying additional forces to Taiwan, including a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and refueling aircraft, Nikkei Asia confirmed.

EU stands with US

“In the event of a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan, we have made it very clear that the EU, together with the US and its allies, will take similar or even greater measures than we have now taken against the Russian Federation,” said Jorge Toledo, new EU ambassador to China.

In China, the Global Times reported that the plane carrying US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could still take the “risk” by attempting to land at a Taiwan airport under the pretense of an emergency such as a technical problem or “refueling”.

In this regard, “Chinese military patrols, radars, as well as forces participating in the exercises should be on high alert in the coming days”.

The publication noted that “if Pelosi’s plane does have problems during her flight near China, then the People’s Liberation Army of China will provide protection and allow her to land at the airport in Sansha, Hainan Province in the South China Sea or in other air harbors in mainland China that can provide professional service and assistance as long as the speaker’s plane stays away from Chinese Taiwan.”

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/08/01/microchip-wars-heating-up-over-taiwan/

A veteran in England is taken away in handcuffs for ‘causing anxiety’

By Andrea Widburg

To the extent the Founders believed free speech to be a necessity—so much so that it got first place in the Bill of Rights—it was because they claimed that right as Englishmen. Because the Bill of Rights of 1689 enshrined freedom of speech and debate in Parliament as well as the right to petition the king, 90 years later, America-based Englishmen considered that speech to be their birthright. That makes it unutterably tragic that, on Friday in England, Darren Brady, an army veteran, was arrested and cuffed for “causing anxiety” to an anonymous complainant because he retweeted a Pride flag shaped into a swastika.

You’ve probably seen this Pride flag swastika, which actor turned activist Laurence Fox tweeted out during “Pride” month:

This reworking of the now omnipresent Pride flag is not a threat that Nazis will round up the LGBTQ++ crowd and stick them into concentration camps. Instead, the point of the reworked flag is to show that the LGBTQ++ crowd has become so ascendent and powerful in Western society that it has Nazi-like control over others in society. As all who live in totalitarian societies know, criticizing those in power is dangerous.

As if to prove precisely that point, on Friday, in England’s Hampshire, police arrested Darren Brady, 51, because “someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post. That is why you have been arrested.”

The larger history was that the police had been trying to force Brady to pay to attend a class that would train him to feel the love for the LGBTQ++ crowd. In exchange, he would not be in trouble for daring to cause anxiety to unnamed LGBTQ++ snowflakes through his tweets.

The matter caused enough of a fuss, in part thanks to Laurence Fox, that the Hampshire Police Chief, a woman named Donna Jones, issued a sort of apology. There was no embarrassment on her part about the fact that free speech is dead in England, of course. However, she did promise that she would school her force to be less aggressive about such public interactions. Britain’s conservatives are so beaten down, and so lost to the concept of true free speech, they think that’s a win:

In the second half of the 18th century, the British lost all of their ancient rights because England was anxious to trample the colonists’ efforts to assert those same liberties. Thus, when the colonists demanded their rights as Englishmen, Parliament announced that all of England’s ancient rights—some going back to the Angles and Saxons, some to the Magna Carta, some to the English Bill of Rights, and some to other long-standing traditions—applied only as between citizens and the king.

With this, Parliament declared itself unconstrained by any rights inherent in British citizens. For about 240 years after the fact, England chugged along pretending those rights still existed, but they’re gone now, seemingly for good.

Here in America, our Founders had the wit to set out our rights explicitly in the Bill of Rights. However, as the past 20-odd years have shown us, even rights put down on paper matter only if we defend them in the flesh. Otherwise, we do will find ourselves under arrest for hurting someone’s feelings…kind of like the January 6 prisoners who languish in cells without bail and without trials for having “paraded” and “protested,” all because it’s convenient to the Democrats to keep them that way.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/a_veteran_in_england_is_taken_away_in_handcuffs_for_causing_anxiety.html

Lack of Interest in Monkeypox Testing Is Making It Really Difficult to Manufacture Crisis

What happens if you build the monkeypox industrial testing complex, but no one comes?

Mayo Clinic Laboratories, for example, has the capacity to process 1,000 monkeypox samples a week but has received only 45 specimens from doctors since starting monkeypox testing July 11. Another of the labs, Aegis Sciences Corp., can do 5,000 tests per week but has received zero samples over the past two weeks. At Labcorp, one of the largest commercial labs in the US, uptake has been higher but still “extremely low,” according to Dr. Brian Caveney, the lab’s president of diagnostics.

Two possible conclusions.

1. Monkeypox isn’t a significant problem outside the orgy community.

2. People are suffering from monkeypox PTSD and need to be yelled at about getting tested.

Those numbers are “shocking,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a member of the California Department of Public Health’s Monkeypox Virus Scientific Advisory Committee.

“This is really, really concerning. It’s like Covid PTSD,” he said, referring to the early phase of the pandemic when coronavirus testing was extremely limited. While the anxiety is the same, the reasons are different because for Covid-19, the testing capacity was low, and for monkeypox, the capacity is plentiful but the demand is low.

Which should indicate that there’s no crisis. But there’s investment in creating the crisis nonetheless.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, described testing as a “pillar” of the government’s monkeypox response Tuesday on CNN. He and other health officials have repeatedly assured Americans that there’s high capacity to handle testing, with labs capable of processing 80,000 specimens per week. Most of that capacity – 70,000 specimens – is in the private labs.

Except that there’s still no interest in getting tested. So it’s time for more alarmism. 

Testing is a major part of the monkeypox containment effort for two reasons: It’s the first step to identifying and isolating patients, and it gives public health officials an idea of the scope of the outbreak and which geographic areas need the most resources.

“Without testing, you’re flying blind,” said Dr. William Morice, chair of the board of directors of the American Clinical Laboratory Association and president of Mayo’s lab. “The biggest concern is that you’re not going to identify cases and [monkeypox] could become an endemic illness in this country. That’s something we really have to worry about.”

We know where resources are needed. We know where the outbreaks are centered. But Fauci and the same public health experts who shut down schools, churches and synagogues refuse to shut down the orgy scene. Instead, they’re back with threats about monkeypox becoming “endemic”.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/08/lack-interest-monkeypox-testing-making-it-really-daniel-greenfield/

UN official denounces Jewish lobby’s grip on social networks

A UN human rights expert slammed the Jewish lobby’s “control” of social media and questioned Israel’s UN membership in an extensive interview with Mondoweiss, published recently.

“We are discouraged by social media that is largely controlled by the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs,” said Indian human rights expert Miloon Kothari.

He is one of three members of the controversial commission, mandated last year by the Human Rights Council to investigate “alleged human rights violations committed in the Palestinian Territories and Israel”.

The commission, accused of bias by Israel, announced its intention to investigate the Jewish state for the “crime of apartheid”.

Miloon Kothari accused Israel of disregarding human rights laws and UN resolutions, and of snubbing the commission of inquiry, refusing to cooperate with it and banning it from visiting the country.

“I will go so far as to raise the question of why they [Israel] are members of the UN,” the expert said. “The Israeli government is not respecting its own obligations as a UN member state,” he added. “It is constantly trying, directly or through the United States, to undermine the mechanisms of the UN.”

Miloon Kothari said the commission wants to continue to “denounce” the actions of the Jewish state. “Israel has no intention of ending the occupation, and persistent discrimination against Palestinians is at the heart of the systematic recurrence of violations,” he said.

Anne Herzberg, legal adviser to the NGO Monitor, said Mondoweiss’ interview of Miloon Kothari revealed the extent of the inquiry committee’s anti-Israel bias.

“Kothari’s outrageous statements add to the extreme prejudice against Israel expressed by the members of the commission before their appointment, and it is clear that they were selected precisely because of these prejudices,” said Herzberg.

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/08/01/un-official-denounces-jewish-lobby-on-social-networks/