With Mao's Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), it became increasingly clear China was a totalitarian police state willing to do almost anything to advance its aims.

That attempt to forcefully move from an agrarian to a socialist industrial society cost tens of millions of Chinese lives. One historian's estimate runs to a staggering 56 million deaths for that period alone, making Mao easily the greatest mass murderer of all time.

These days, however, the Chinese communists have become more subtle in the control of their populace. They are in the process of instituting a social credit system that allows the state to monitor technologically virtually every aspect of a person's life and reward or punish him or her accordingly.

And where did this ability to control such a giant country come from in the first place? As Pogo would say, I have seen the enemy and he is us! Namely, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Oracle, Intel, Cisco, and all those other American high-tech companies eager to get a piece of the fat Chinese pie.

China’s economy is reeling from President Trump’s strategic tariffs, and Beijing is getting desperate.

In a futile effort to compensate for China’s losses by developing economic ties with new global partners, Chinese leader Xi Jinping last Friday (6/07) met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both leaders touted the meeting in typically hyperbolic terms, presumably in the hope of deceiving American policymakers into believing that they had accomplished something significant.

Putin and Xi negotiated numerous economic partnerships, such as agreeing to boost energy and technology cooperation in the coming years. Those agreements, however, are only papering over the cracks.

[Note by JW: TTP views China’s seizure of Russia’s Eastern Siberia as an inevitability – the only question is how many years in will take.  See Chinese Siberia from November 2006.  Here, my old friend Paul Goble describes the latest moves of Beijing to accomplish this. 

Note the hilarity of Russian obliviousness, such as the Russian “expert” claiming the US is the threat to Russia’s Arctic sovereignty and not China.  If anything, the US is more on Russia’s side than China’s, as Paul points out.]

Three developments in early June 2019 call attention to China’s unrelenting efforts to become the dominant player on the Northern Sea Route (NSR)—the increasingly ice-free Arctic waterway along Russia’s northern coast, and the main segment of the longer Northeastern Passage, linking Asia and Europe.

(As you can see in the map above how much shorter (over 50%) the Northern route Yokohama to Rotterdam is versus the Suez Canal route.)

First…

Before the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the idea that the Russians or anyone else could warp or tamper with our elections in any serious manner was laughed off by President Obama.

Obama was anxious that the sure-to-be-sore-loser Trump would not blame his defeat on voting impropriety in a fashion that might call into question Clinton’s victory.

How ironic that Russian “collusion” was used as a preemptive charge after Trump’s victory from those who actually had colluded with Russians for all sorts for financial and careerist advantages.

“Obstruction” is now supposedly the key to destroying the Trump Administration after collusion imploded. But what exactly would real obstruction of justice look like?

On a Sunday afternoon last month (5/19), Etta Nugent found Marco Cobos, an illegal alien from Mexico, at her doorstep in Houston after his truck had broken down nearby.  Cobos forced his way into the elderly lady’s home and stabbed her in the chest.

Nugent’s horrific fate has become all too common in an America that has bought into the lie that it is “a nation of immigrants,” rather than simply a nation. Increasingly, however, immigrants show little appreciation, often outright hostility, for this nation and its people.

Consider the “Dreamers” of North Carolina, thousands of illegal aliens who were brought, illegally, into the country by their parents. The fact that they have not been deported despite their unlawful presence is, in itself, a benefit undeservingly conferred upon them.

We have tens of millions of the entitled uninvited in our country.  What are we going to do about it?

Twelve years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The decision in effect gave the Environmental Protection Agency massive additional regulatory authority.

This year, another landmark climate case appears headed for the high court: Juliana v. United States. This time, the stakes are even higher.

The “endangerment finding” in Massachusetts v. EPA was a missed opportunity for climate skeptics to have an honest debate on the entire scientific basis of climate activism. The failure of climate skeptics to successfully argue their position in Massachusetts has created a powerful precedent that favors the plaintiffs in Juliana.

Nonetheless, Juliana is an opportunity to challenge every scientific premise of the climate activist lobby.  For example:

Donald Trump’s opponents at home and abroad would love to see him get the U.S. into a messy intervention right before the election.

A big China trade deal, an agreement to denuclearize North Korea and Iran, flipping Putin to become a neutral rather than an adversary, or a Middle East halfway accord could change global realities and empower the U.S.

And so the gambler Trump wagers that he can do overseas what he did at home and pull off land-breaking agreements — all at once.

Can he?  The Democrats and Chinese Communists want him to fail instead, and are actively conspiring to see that he does.

Most Americans are unaware of the long history of comradeship and chicanery between Special Counsel Robert Mueller and former FBI Director James Comey.

For nearly two decades, the pair have held the same jobs, earned the same foes, and swaggered in the same rarified sphere of political prestige and privilege.

This week, the country has been treated to another reminder of how often the twosome operates in tandem.  Now thanks to another grudge-seeking joint stunt by Mueller and Comey, the Democrats and the media are recharged and ready to chase the folly of impeachment in time for the 2020 election.