The hard edges of China’s global soft power projection have been put under the microscope in a June 19 White House document entitled How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World.

The 35-page statement, attributed to White House economic adviser Peter Navarro, accuses the Chinese party-and-state apparatus of using spies, hackers, state-owned enterprises, front companies, as well as ethnic Chinese scholars and students resident in the US to “threaten the technologies and intellectual property of the United States and the world.”

Along with numerous reports in the Western media about PRC efforts to buy cultural and political influence in the US, the EU, and Australia, the White House document speaks to increasing awareness of the hard edges of Chinese soft power projection: namely, gathering intelligence and pilfering IPR (intellectual property rights) so as to speed up China’s transition to a full-fledged superpower.

Espionage, illegal IPR acquisition, and influence peddling have become part and parcel of China’s soft power push. The result has been an unprecedented pushback from Western nations.

Last week I thought the Democrats were having a nervous breakdown. I was wrong.  It's worse.  They actually have a death wish or what Freud called a "death drive" (Todestrieb).

They literally want to extinguish themselves and/or their party, or many of them do. At least they're acting that way.

That was the first thing that crossed my mind watching the explosion of demonstrations by liberals and progressives to abolish ICE and US border control.  It’s their greatest cause célèbre since, well, whatever was their greatest cause célèbre three days before.

The polls show the vast majority of Americans think they're cracked and want, as do citizens of almost all countries, secure borders and legal immigration.

So why are they doing this?  Do they secretly want open borders?  Are they actually wannabe socialist revolutionaries out to change American society at its core?  Or is it……

When Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the green light to Russian aerial bombing of rebel-held positions in southwestern Syria two weeks ago, he knew he was asking for trouble.

And he appears to be getting plenty of it.

Since the Russia-led operation against Deraa began, Israeli commentators have assessed that Putin wished to wrap up the offensive ahead of his July 16 summit with President Donald Trump in Helsinki so that he could present Trump with a fait accompli.

A Russian triumph would convince Trump that U.S. operations in Syria are futile, and he would have accept Russia’s predominance, with Iran in the war-torn country.

Yet, just within the past few days Trump has turned the tables on Putin.  Here’s what’s happening.

[This Forum post by Joe Katzman responding to The Brittleness of the Left needs to be read by all TTPers. You are encouraged to share your thoughts]

The impulses of the Left you will always have with you. But that doesn’t mean we can’t raze the treasonous infrastructure and personalities that make up its modern variants, and makes them effective:

• Arrest and jail the leftists who have abused their position with rampant illegality. Time for Justice.

• RICO against the Antifa/ BLM/ Occupy types, their funders, and those that provided material aid.

• Break the pedophile and human trafficking networks that stretch from Hollywood and beyond, and publicly hang them around the Left’s neck.

How delicious is it that the face of the Democrat Party is that lovely duo, Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi?  They are the gift that keeps on giving.

So deluded as to why Trump won, they seem to think their particular brand of madness that includes the public shaming of anyone and everyone in the Trump administration is going to win back the House and Senate for their party.

It is by now undeniable that the Hate-Trump Left has gone stark-raving mad.  Its members have lost all semblance of sanity, decorum, and class.

It can be lost on no one that the Democrats care not one bit for American citizens.  Thousands of them have been murdered by criminal illegals, who are most often given a pass by the courts for numerous DUIs, drug crimes, and gun crimes for which Americans would be imprisoned.

The crimes of members of MS13 are not at all different from those of ISIS – vicious beyond imagination.  And yet the Democrats defend them, seeks to embrace their arrival here.  How is it possible for them to think this is a winning electoral strategy?