Recently in International Affairs Category

Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott at the London Times provide the most comprehensive collection of evidence to-date describing how COVID-19 was intentionally created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as part of a bioweapon program run by the Chinese military and funded by American taxpayers.

Scientists in Wuhan working alongside the Chinese military were combining the world's most deadly coronaviruses to create a new mutant virus just as the pandemic began.

Investigators who scrutinised top-secret intercepted communications and scientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak.

The US investigators say one of the reasons there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military, which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuing bioweapons.

With millions of dollars in funding from American taxpayers.

Its work protecting pets and endangered species did not attract substantial funding. But after the September 11 terror attacks and the Sars outbreak, the US began to see the importance of funding work combatting bioterrorism and pandemics. The trust began to focus on how viruses might cross from animals to people and spark a pandemic.

Shi's team provided the fieldwork for the trust's campaign and the laboratories to test and experiment on the viruses. In 2009, the trust was given $18 million over five years from a new programme, called Predict, to identify pandemic viruses. Shortly afterwards, the trust was rebranded as the EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak assumed the role of president. The Chinese collaborators who helped put him on the map were also rewarded: $1 million of the Predict grant was redirected to the Wuhan institute.

The article has a lot more information that is all very compelling. At this point I think it's virtually certain that the lab-leak hypothesis is true, and that it's very likely that COVID-19 was developed as part of a bioweapon program.

(HT: Powerline Blog and Instapundit.)

On Wednesday Trump visited East Palestine, Ohio, to support the people affected by the train derailment while Biden visited Kyiv to support Ukraine's fight against Russia.

Trump:

Trump visited East Palestine to show support for a community afflicted by the toxic train derailment as President Joe Biden, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and other administration officials have come under scrutiny for the federal response to the disaster.

"Get over here," was Trump's terse, three-word response to a reporter's question about what he would tell Biden.

The Buckeye State blitz wasn't perfect, with a strange self-promotional reference to Trump water.

But it was otherwise a vintage Trump performance the 2024 candidate should like to bottle.

Biden:

President Biden paid an unannounced visit Monday to Ukraine's capital, offering a huge show of support for the country the U.S. and its allies have helped to hold out during Russia's nearly-year-long, unprovoked invasion. Mr. Biden spent about six hours in Kyiv, much of it with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he promised unwavering backing and another tranche of American weapons.

"You know, one year later, Kyiv stands. Ukraine stands," Mr. Biden said while there. "Democracy stands. America stands with you and the world stands with you. Kyiv has captured a part of my heart."

At the most basic political level, which trip wins more votes? In my opinion, Trump's visit to Ohio is better politics. But on the other hand, only the sitting President can demonstrate American commitment with a foreign visit like Biden's, which highlights his stature.

Italy's new prime minister Giorgia Meloni explains why so many people are afraid of her victory. American newspapers categorize her as "far-right", but Italian newspapers call her "center-right". Let's see what she does.

The new Prime Minister of Italy.

Wow. pic.twitter.com/fkKTM8I9Fs

— Aaron Ginn (@aginnt) September 26, 2022

Bank runs are bad. They're bad enough to bring down governments. There's been a slow-motion bank run in rural China for several months, and people are starting to get concerned that the "contagion" could spread.

In the anatomy of an economic crisis, a bank run is the point of no return.

Bank runs occur when people scramble to withdraw cash from banks in fear of collapse. In the worst cases, banks' liquid cash reserves are exhausted, not everyone gets their money and the bank defaults. ...

In recent years it has become clear the Chinese people are losing faith in their financial institutions. There's been anger over harsh COVID lockdowns in Shanghai recently, while the collapse of China Evergrande saw rare public demonstrations as residents faced the prospect of losing their life savings used as deposits for housing. ...

Multiple sources contacted by Asia Markets, have confirmed deposits at the following six banks have been frozen since mid-April.

• Yuzhou Xinminsheng Village Bank (located in Xuchang City, Henan Province)
• Zhecheng Huanghuai Bank (City of Shangqui, Henan Province)
• Shangcai Huimin Rural Bank (Zhumadian City, Henan Province)
• New Oriental Village Bank (City of Kaifeng, Henan Province)
• Huaihe River Village Bank (Bengbu City, Anhui Province)
• Yixian County Village Bank (Huangshan City, Anhui Province)

It's understood the banks with branches across the Henan and Anhui Provinces successively issued announcements in April, stating they would suspend online banking and mobile banking services due to a system upgrade.

At the same time, clients reported their electronic deposits in online accounts, mobile apps and third-party platforms could not be withdrawn.

This led to depositors rushing to local bank branches, only to be told they were unable to withdraw funds.

It looks like the bank failures are due to fraud and corruption -- bank managers simply stole the money. Hopefully this corruption isn't widespread and the problem can be contained.

What else needs to be said? Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia gets straight to the point. When there is no fear of God, everything is permitted.

The Intercept reports that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, led by Anthony Fauci, funded gain-of-function research carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, the likely source of COVID-19.

The bat coronavirus grant provided EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans. Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments. The grant proposal acknowledges some of those dangers: "Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled."

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said the documents show that EcoHealth Alliance has reason to take the lab-leak theory seriously. "In this proposal, they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten -- and they kept records of everyone who got bitten," Chan said. "Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?"

In July Senator Rand Paul asked Fauci about US-funded gain-of-function research and Fauci denied that the research in question qualifies as "gain-of-function".

FAUCI: "Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you're referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function. What was -- "

PAUL: "So you -- "

FAUCI: "Let me finish!"

PAUL: "So you take an animal virus and you increase the transmissibility to humans, you're saying that's not gain of function?"

FAUCI: "Yeah, that is correct. And Senator Paul, you do not know what you're talking about, quite frankly. And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about. Okay, you get one person -- "

PAUL: "The NIH -- "

FAUCI: "Can I answer?"

PAUL: "This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that scientific research that increases the transmissibility among mammals is gain of function. They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increase their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain of function -- "

FAUCI: "It is not."

PAUL: "It's a dance and you're dancing around this, because you're trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic."

So Fauci thinks he can parse the terminology in a way that excludes the work he funded from being "gain-of-function", regardless of the plainest, most obvious reading of the definition. Fauci says that Paul isn't qualified to interpret what he has read and heard.

But experienced researchers say that the work described in these newly released grant applications is definitely "gain-of-function", even by the most hair-splitting definition. Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright writes:

The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present.

(This had been evident previously from published research papers that credited the 2014 grant and from the publicly available summary of the 2019 grant. But this now can be stated definitively from progress reports of the 2014 grant and the full proposal of the 2017 grant.)

The materials confirm the grants supported the construction--in Wuhan--of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.

It's not surprising that few people seem very interested in positively identifying the source of COVID-19. Our experts seem to have a conflict-of-interest.

How can this possibly be true?

"We're dealing with Kabul. There's 7 buses of female American citizens. The CG refused to open the gate. We have a congressman with us and he had the state department reach out. MG Donahue refused. 10 minutes ago the females were taken by the Taliban. They are likely dead now."

— Emily Miller (@emilymiller) August 30, 2021

The American Chargé d'Affaires Ross Wilson (formerly Ambassador, but hey, we don't have an embassy in Afghanistan anymore) says that Americans are not being denied entry to HKIA.

This is a high-risk operation. Claims that American citizens have been turned away or denied access to HKIA by Embassy staff or US Forces are false.

— Chargé d'Affaires Ross Wilson (@USAmbKabul) August 30, 2021

We pray for peace and safety in Afghanistan, and that everyone who wants to leave is able to.

NEW - Toddler pulled over wall by U.S. soldiers as desperate crowds gather outside #Kabul airport.pic.twitter.com/NUDYAViOcb

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) August 19, 2021

America's incompetent abandonment of Afghanistan and the instant collapse of the government we built, supported, and funded for 20 years is a humiliating failure for our ruling class. The disaster that unfolded over the past month belongs to President Biden, but the foundation was laid by our "smart" political, military, and intelligence leaders over the past two decades.

Every four years, a Democratic presidential candidate pops up and reminds us that he -- or, one cycle, she -- represents the smart party when it comes to foreign policy. These Democrats boast that they're not isolationist, like Donald Trump, and they're not unilateralist cowboys, like George W. Bush. They, and their top advisers, assure us that they are right, tough, smart, nuanced, and sophisticated. And every four years, the U.S. foreign-policy establishment -- think-tank wonks, retired diplomats, columnists and authors, certain retired generals -- almost uniformly swoons at these Democratic presidential candidates' keen grasp of a complicated and dangerous world.

And these top Democrats are not shy about telling us how they understand the world better than anyone else does. ...

In the worldview of the Democratic foreign-policy cognoscenti, Americans should expect foreign-policy crises during Republican presidencies, because GOP presidents and their foreign-policy teams are either crazed warmongers or ignorant, selfish isolationists, or some combination of the two. They just don't understand the world as well as the self-identified "smart" Democratic foreign-policy thinkers.

But something odd happens whenever the self-identified "smart" Democratic foreign-policy thinkers come to power. Somehow, randomly -- through no fault of their own, they insist -- disaster strikes.

Jim Geraghty lists numerous examples for your edification.

Mark Steyn takes a wider-angle view that highlights the utter incompetence of American leadership.

To modify Hillary Clinton, what difference at this point would it make if the US government simply laid off its entire "intelligence community"?

Indeed, what difference would it make if it closed down its military? Obviously, it would present a few mid-life challenges for its corrupt Pentagon bureaucracy, since that many generals on the market for defense lobbyist gigs and board directorships all at once would likely depress the going rate. But, other than that, a military that accounts for 40 per cent of the planet's military spending can't perform either of the functions for which one has an army: it can't defeat overseas enemies, and it's not permitted to defend the country, as we see on the Rio Grande.

So what's the point? ...

One of the depressing aspects of the Swamp is that everything becomes a racket - including even your armed forces. Look at that buffoon at top right, the guy who heads the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Thoroughly Modern Milley: that's an awful lot of chest ribbonry for a nation that hasn't won a war in three-quarters of a century. During his recent wokier-than-thou Congressional testimony on "white rage", I wish someone would have asked Thoroughly Modern what they were all for[.] ...

I'm in favor of razing the Pentagon and salting the earth - or, at the very least, firing Milley and the massed ranks of "parade generals" (a useful Commonwealth term) and moving the few guys left to a new HQ in a strip-mall on the edge of Cleveland. The bigger your armed forces get, the more they become a racket - as the US-created "Afghan National Army" "300,000-strong" (and now down to, oh, twenty-seven maybe) has just conveniently demonstrated. As for where all the money wound up, the Taliban's tour of American "ally" and former Afghan vice-president "Marshal" Dostum's palatial spread provides a clue.

Yeah, those golden thrones were bought with American blood and taxes. Needless to say, Dostum and his forces surrendered to the Taliban without a shot fired.

President Biden argued there was no point in America spending more time in Afghanistan. Biden is correct about many things, but was incompetent in his execution. He said:

So what's happened? Afghanistan political leaders gave up and fled the country. The Afghan military collapsed, sometimes without trying to fight.

If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision.

American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. We spent over a trillion dollars. We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong -- incredibly well equipped -- a force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies.

We gave them every tool they could need. We paid their salaries, provided for the maintenance of their air force -- something the Taliban doesn't have. Taliban does not have an air force. We provided close air support.

We gave them every chance to determine their own future. What we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future.

There's some very brave and capable Afghan special forces units and soldiers, but if Afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance to the Taliban now, there is no chance that 1 year -- 1 more year, 5 more years, or 20 more years of U.S. military boots on the ground would've made any difference.

The problem here is that none of these events was inevitable. Afghanistan could have turned out differently if our political, military, and intelligence leaders had been competent over the past two decades. What's more, the withdrawal itself could have gone differently if President Biden had been competent over the past seven months. We didn't have to close Bagram Air Base and make ourselves dependent on Kabul's commercial airport. We didn't have to delude ourselves that the Afghans would fight when they wouldn't. We could have projected the Taliban taking Kabul in 90 hours rather than 90 days. These were all bad decisions that weren't inevitable; they were the result of incompetence.

We pray for peace, safety, and security in Afghanistan. We pray that Afghan women and girls will be protected. We pray that refugees will be provided for. We pray that Americans and our allies who are trapped in the country will be evacuated safely. We pray that evil will be restrained. We pray that American and global leaders will have wisdom and courage to protect the powerless.

A proposed law would allow American victims of Wuhan coronavirus to sue the Chinese Communist Party for damages.

Americans will be able to take the Chinese Communist Party to court for its lies and omissions about the Chinese Wuhan coronavirus from the Middle Kingdom under a new bill proposed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas). The bill would strike down immunity for foreign countries like China in the specific case of the coronavirus, enabling Americans to sue for damages in U.S. courts.

"By silencing doctors and journalists who tried to warn the world about the coronavirus, the Chinese Communist Party allowed the virus to spread quickly around the globe," Cotton said in a statement on the legislation. "Their decision to cover up the virus led to thousands of needless deaths and untold economic harm. It's only appropriate that we hold the Chinese government accountable for the damage it has caused."

The immediate question then is: if plaintiffs win, how could they collect payment from the CCP? The CCP has plenty of assets in America that could be seized -- particularly real estate, which could be harvested at a premium (low) valuation thanks to the coronavirus -- but here's another idea: China owns about $1.1 trillion in American debt that could be transferred and repatriated to victorious plaintiffs.

If the United States moves forward with any kind of legal liability for the CCP it's likely to provoke retaliatory seizures of America assets in China.

There are a lot of numbers we don't know yet about the China coronavirus that's plaguing the world right now, but there's at least one number we should know that I haven't seen reported: the excess death rate:

I have no doubt the number of deaths there now is higher than usual and that there are excess deaths, perhaps a huge number, particularly in certain regions of the north where the virus has been concentrated. But how much higher? Italy ordinarily has a particularly high rate of death from the flu, for example, which might make the "excess death" figure especially important to know. Are significant numbers of the deaths we're seeing in Italy deaths that would be taking place anyway from the flu or other illnesses we're accustomed to and which sometimes cause the death of elderly people who are already ill? And if so, how many?

One of the huge problems with COVID-19 is that so far it seems to have caused localized outbreaks that burden a health system and in particular hospital ICU resources. That in turn results in some people dying who might otherwise be saved but for the sudden influx. That is particularly frightening, and many of the strategies being brought to bear in the US are a result of trying to prevent such a calamity. But in order to know how much we need to do and what we can expect in the worst-case scenario, wouldn't figures for excess deaths in Italy be helpful?

But so far I haven't found anything written for the public discussing that issue. I realize that, since the disease only began a few months ago, we don't have figures for total excess deaths. But shouldn't we have some preliminary figures to compare to average figures per day or per week or per month during a bad flu season and during a good flu season in the localities involved?

Basically, how many people are dying now than we'd expect to be dying in a "normal" year? We can attribute the difference to the China coronavirus.

Congratulations to our brothers and sisters in the UK.

"We love Europe, we just hate the European Union."

After 25 years of fighting for independence, this is my final contribution in the European Parliament.

We were told to leave with our British flags, and that's exactly what we did. pic.twitter.com/cBfycWfsN7

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) January 29, 2020

Despite claims that the money the Obama Administration gave to Iran already belonged to Iran, this isn't true. The Iranian money previously seized by the Unites States had already been paid out as compensation to the victims of Iranian terror.

The most infamous payoff was the $1.7 billion in cash the administration shipped off to the IRGC on wooden pallets in exchange for U.S. citizens held hostage by the regime. The White House said that there was no "quid pro quo," that it was Iran's money to begin with--$400 million the pre-revolutionary government had deposited in 1979 to buy U.S. arms, plus interest. But the U.S. had already used the $400 million to compensate terror victims of the Islamic Republic. That was Iran's money. The $400 million the Obama administration used to "pay back" the Iranians belonged to the U.S. taxpayer.

The administration argued that the U.S. had to pay the ransom in cash because Tehran had been cut off from the financial system and there was no other way to transfer the funds. That was not true. The Obama administration had wired payments to Iran before and after the wooden pallets episode. The Iranians wanted cash so it would be harder to track their terror financing.

Hong Kong protests are spreading to Guangdong in mainland China:

Slogans of Hong Kong's democratic movement have been reportedly heard at protests in a Chinese city 60 miles to the west.

According to Hong Kong-based Apple Daily--a vocal supporter of the democracy campaign in Hong Kong--chants of "Liberate Maoming! Revolution of our times!" were heard during several days of protest in Maoming.

The chant is a take on the "Liberate Hong Kong" slogan commonly used during protests across the border, where anti-government demonstrations have raged since June.

Protestors also reportedly told Apple Daily reporters that their movement was "just like you [in] Hong Kong." Both cities share a common Cantonese language.

In confrontations that began last week, Maoming protesters pelted police with bricks and set off fireworks, forcing authorities to announce Sunday that they would not be building a crematorium on plot of unused land in the area. The long-running plan had infuriated residents, who had been promised an ecological park on the same site.

And Iran is in flames:

The Iranian regime faces the most serious popular challenge to its tyranny in 40 years. Sparked by a 50 percent hike in fuel prices last month, the uprising has spread to the whole country. Security forces have killed hundreds of protesters, and at one point they were even forced to shut down the internet -- a sign that the ayatollahs feared for the survival of their regime.

So it's worth asking: Did our ­experts see this coming?

Nope: Most were too busy blasting President Trump. The prestige press and Twitterati spent the last few years railing against the president for trashing the nuclear deal and ratcheting up sanctions -- actions that had supposedly sent the Iranian people rallying around the flag.

President Trump's approaches to China and Iran have been controversial, but they appear to be bearing fruit. Hopefully the United States will continue support the right of these protesters to express themselves freely and peacefully.

The whole Trump-Ukraine "outrage" is absurd. All the foreign aid we give comes with strings attached, and all presidents use those strings to help their political standing in America. Is this bad? It's probably not ideal, but what can we do about it? The only real solution I can think of is to just cancel all foreign aid to everyone.

On the campaign trail right now, both Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are promising to suspend foreign aid to Israel if the Jewish nation doesn't change their policies toward Gaza.

Sanders, in a speech said, "I would use the leverage, $3.8 billion is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government or for that matter to any government at all."

You can disagree with Bernie Sanders' approach to the specific policy on trying to force Israel to soften up on Gaza - many, many do. But the idea that an American President can use foreign aid to spur policy changes or specific actions in the receiving nation is not new or illegal.

Do Warren and Sanders have a political calculation here? Obviously. But I imagine that they also think their "strings" would be good for America's interests. I assume Trump feels similarly with regards to Ukraine and the Bidens.

United States taxpayers provided almost $50 billion in economic and military foreign aid in 2018 alone. That's enough to give every retired worker in America about a $1,200 per year increase in their social security.

How can we not expect that our foreign aid will come with expectations, even demands, for some things to get done? ...

So if we are going to criminalize a President attaching strings to foreign aid, just cancel all foreign aid tomorrow and give America's social security recipients a nice monthly increase - they deserve it more than those third-world dictators anyway.

We send a lot of money to foreign countries, and the feigned belief that it's an impeachable offense to expect something in return is completely absurd. Hopefully the President's political intersts align with America's interests, but there's no objective method for ensuring that. If we aren't satisfied with how politics affects foreign aid, then let's just cancel it all -- at least until we get a balanced budget and aren't borrowing money to give away.

Two weeks ago I linked to an opinion that went against the conventional wisdom on Trump's withdrawal of American forces from Syria -- it argued that our partnership with the Kurds wasn't in America's interest anymore, and that we had gotten too emotionally involved with the Kurds at the expense of our long-time allies. Suffice to say, that opinion was not widely shared among Middle East experts.

Now Trump is claiming that the successful elimination of ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi is a vindication of his strategy. Just last year the Washington Post taunted Trump with his till-then failure to get Al-Baghdadi. Now that the vicious terrorist leader is dead, Trump's single-minded domestic enemies are quick rob him of any credit.

Al-Baghdadi Raid Was a Victory Built on Factors Trump Derides

The president cast the death of the ISIS leader as validation of his disengagement strategy. But it required intelligence agencies and allies he has spurned.

I think you have to be pretty blind not to connect the dots between Trump's strategic shake-up and the death of Al-Baghdadi two weeks later.

This blindness seems to be pretty common for Trump's enemies: every time he has a success they think it's in spite of his actions. Yet Trump keeps acting the same way, and he keeps racking up successes as he defines them. His enemies would probably more effective at achieving their goals if they weren't constantly underestimating Trump.

The headline seems bizarre, but it's true -- Mexico is facing a serious insurgency and the central government no longer maintains a monopoly on the use of force.

Last Thursday in the city of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa state, a battle erupted between government forces and drug cartel gunmen after the Mexican military captured two sons of jailed drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. The elder son, Ivan, was quickly freed by his men, who overpowered government forces and secured his release. Ivan then launched an all-out siege of the entire city in an effort to free his younger brother, Ovidio.

The ensuing scene could have been mistaken for Syria or Yemen. Footage posted on social media Thursday showed burning vehicles spewing black smoke, heavily armed gunmen blocking roads, dead bodies strewn in the streets, and residents fleeing for cover amid high-caliber gunfire.

Armed with military-grade weapons and driving custom-built armored vehicles, cartel henchmen targeted security forces throughout Culiacan, launching more than one dozen separate attacks on Mexican security forces. They captured and held hostage eight soldiers, then kidnapped their families. Amid the fighting, an unknown number of inmates escaped from a nearby prison. At least eight people were killed and more than a dozen were injured.

The eight-hour battle ended when government forces, outgunned and surrounded, without reinforcements or a way to retreat, received an order directly from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to release their prisoner and surrender. Lopez Obrador later defended this decision, insisting that his security strategy is working and saying, "Many people were at risk and it was decided to protect people's lives. I agreed with that, because we don't do massacres, that's over."

If the government isn't willing to fight and win decisive battles against the drug cartels -- and the people aren't willing to support and contribute to victory -- then the Mexican state has already collapsed for all intents and purposes. This will get worse before it gets better.

Everyone is up-in-arms over President Trump's decision to stop supporting the Kurds on the border between Turkey and Syria. On the face, it seems both morally wrong and a geopolitical mistake. However, John Robinson points out that the Kurds are our partners, not allies, and we've been playing fast and loose in the region for a long time.

We partnered with the enemy-of-my-enemy in Syria to fight the son-of-a-son and we made some friends. We confused that partnership with an alliance and that partnership grew to be as strong as an alliance.

But the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs reminded everyone on Thursday that our actual ally, Turkey, had been a NATO ally for the past 70 years. On Sunday, the new secretary of defense gently corrected his Sunday news show host, when she casually referred to our YPG partners as allies. "The Kurds have been very good partners," the secretary affirmed. There's a difference between a 70-year ally and a regional partner, no matter how distasteful you find your ally's actions to be or how loyal you believe your partner to be.

In 2001, the commander in chief declared, "You are either with us, or with the terrorists." NATO invoked Article 5, which states that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all of its members, for the first time, in response to the 9/11 attacks. NATO allies, including Turkey, aided the coalition effort in Afghanistan.

What if Turkey should invoke Article 5 now, in response to what it sees as a terrorist threat? US forces are withdrawing from areas of combat in northeastern Syria now, but can we see ourselves obligated to a fight on the sides of the allied Turks, against partner Kurds?

Rather than threatening sanctions, Congress should update an AUMF they've been dithering on for 16 years. Better still, let Congress declare war on Turkey, on behalf of the Kurds, as Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution authorizes them to do.

I'm not expert enough in these matters to offer my own opinion, but I think Robinson's is worth sharing because it goes against the conventional wisdom.

Disney and the NBA sacrifice liberty for profit after employees voice support for Hong Kong protesters.

"Now to trouble brewing for the NBA this morning. The general manager of the Houston Rockets upsetting China with his tweet supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Now Chinese businesses are pulling support for the team," announced GMA co-anchor Robin Roberts Monday morning. ...

After sharing Morey's ridiculous apology to the repressive Chinese government, she shared NBA's public apology. "And the NBA putting out a statement this morning saying, 'Morey's comments have deeply offended our fans in China which is regrettable,'" she read. ...

It's easy to understand why ABC would side with China. With the arrival of Disney+ in November, they're likely unwilling to anger the government which controls internet access for billions. As The Hollywood Reporter published back in April, "[Disney CEO] Bob Iger has been building relationships in the Middle Kingdom for years (...) but cracking the world's second-largest VOD market could require big concessions."

Meanwhile Democrat and Republican politicians seem united behind free speech in this instance.

Meanwhile, CBS and NBC noted the groundswell of bipartisan, American condemnation of the NBA for cowering to the Chinese dictatorship. On the CBS Evening News, correspondent Jim Axelrod quipped that the situation made "strange bed fellows" out of Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) and former Congressman Beto O'Rourke (D). "Normally you can't even get those two to agree on what color the sky is," he joked.

"It's un-American to gag people when they're speaking out on behalf of freedom," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a soundbite on NBC Nightly News.

Blizzard has eliminated a competitor named Blitzchung for supporting Hong Kong and fired two sportscasters who let him speak.

[BREAKING] Hong Kong Hearthstone player @blitzchungHS calls for liberation of his country in post-game interview:https://t.co/3AgQAaPioj

@Matthieist #Hearthstone pic.twitter.com/DnaMSEaM4g

— 🎃 Inven Global 🎃 (@InvenGlobal) October 6, 2019

This video has been floating around the blogosphere for months, but apparently the mainstream media wasn't aware that Vice President Joe Biden bragged about using American leverage to force Ukraine to fire the prosecutor who was investigating his son.

Joe Biden brags about how he threatened to pull $1 billion in loan guarantees from Ukraine if it didn't immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

The prosecutor, who was fired, was leading a corruption investigation into a company that employed Biden's son, Hunter pic.twitter.com/xZd3vIMbuL

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 20, 2019

From Hot Air:

Note well that Biden leaves out the context of what the prosecutor was investigating at the time of Biden's insistence on getting him fired. He was quarterbacking a corruption probe targeting Burisma, which was paying Hunter Biden a fortune ($50,000 a month at the time). In fact, it seems a little weird without that context as to why foreign aid to Ukraine depended on the person filling a state prosecutor's office at all. What foreign-policy interest would the identity of a state prosecutor -- an internal affair -- have involved that would derail a billion-dollar aid package to an ally in desperate need of the cash?

And yet, here was Biden bragging last year that "son of a bitch, he got fired" -- after Biden explicitly used the authority of his office and the president's to get rid of the man looking into his son's employer. Even if one assumes Donald Trump attempted to pressure Volodymyr Zelenskiy into reopening the Burisma probe, it can't be any worse that the explicit quid pro quo demanded by Biden ... in his own words.

I don't know what Trump said on the phone to Ukraine's leadership, but I'm pretty confident that Joe Biden used his authority as Vice President to protect his son Hunter Biden.