U.S. Presidents Refuse to Protect the U.S. from North Korea's Nukes

In this mailing: - Gordon G. Chang: U.S. Presidents Refuse to Protect the U.S. from North Korea's Nukes - Lawrence Kadish: $370 Billion in Taxpayer Dollars for WHAT? - Amir Taheri: China: The Immovable Supreme Leader [] [U.S. Presidents Refuse to Protect the U.S. from North Korea's Nukes]( by Gordon G. Chang • October 9, 2022 at 5:30 am [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [WhatsApp]( [Telegram]( [Send]( [Print]( - The U.S. has the power to stop North Korean missile tests but has chosen not to do so. This is true not only of the Biden administration but also its predecessors. The U.S. has continually decided to adopt feeble options. - Chinese banks have been laundering the North's proceeds of criminal and prohibited activity for decades. The Trump administration in June 2017 designated, pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, China's Bank of Dandong to be of "primary money laundering concern." The designation meant the bank could no longer clear dollar transactions through the U.S. banking system. - If the designation was meant as a signal, Beijing ignored it. And the Chinese assessed the situation correctly. The Trump administration in 2018 decided not to enforce money-laundering laws against two of the "Big Four" Chinese banks, Agricultural Bank of China and China Construction Bank, which were handling suspicious transactions involving North Korea. Such a designation would have put these banks out of business everywhere outside China, and Beijing, as a practical matter, would have had to stop money-laundering for North Korea. - As a result of inaction, President Donald Trump gave Chinese institutions free passes to violate American statutes. The administration's decision, an abrogation of its responsibility to uphold the law, was deeply prejudicial to its efforts to disarm the Kim regime. - The Biden administration has continued Trump's lax posture. - The administration has the goods on the North Koreans and the Chinese but has continually failed to act. "This failure is a choice. The money Kim Jong Un obtains by fraud, computer hacking, and ransomware and which he uses to build bombs to threaten us is being laundered through our banks. We're giving Xi Jinping and Kim de facto immunity to keep right on doing it." — Joshua Stanton, sanctions expert, to Gatestone Institute, October 2022. - North Korea's accelerated testing of missiles is a reminder that Kim Jong Un is quickly developing the power to destroy American cities. Perhaps the only things his technicians cannot do is miniaturize a nuclear device and shield it from heat upon reentry to the atmosphere. These are, however, capabilities his military, perhaps with China's help, will develop soon. - Americans might wonder how one of the most destitute regimes on earth can build weapons capable of killing most every American. They may also wonder why Washington has done almost nothing to stop the North Koreans from selling their weapons to Iran, among others. The U.S. has the power to stop North Korean missile tests but has chosen not to do so. This is true not only of the Biden administration but also its predecessors. The U.S. has continually decided to adopt feeble options. Pictured: A launch of the Hwasong-12 ballistic missile from an undisclosed location in North Korea, on August 29, 2017. (Photo by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency/STR/AFP via Getty Images) North Korea launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile on October 4 over Japan. The Hwasong-12 traveled farther downrange than any other of Pyongyang's missiles. Setting a record pace, the test was the North's 23rd of the year. Two days later, it fired off two short-range missiles. The Biden administration has done little to stop the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), so that regime is likely to engage in even more provocative behavior soon. The U.S., in response to the launch, asked for an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting, which was held on October 5th. As expected, nothing came of the session. China and Russia, blaming the United States for the North Korean launches, blocked any tightening of sanctions. [Continue Reading Article]( [] [$370 Billion in Taxpayer Dollars for WHAT?]( The Matching Funds Fairness Doctrine by Lawrence Kadish • October 9, 2022 at 4:30 am [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [WhatsApp]( [Telegram]( [Send]( [Print]( (Image source: iStock) The recent Schumer-Manchin so-called Anti-Inflation Climate Bill and the actions of US President Joe Biden have seemingly resulted in a $370 billion slush fund in the hands of not a climate change expert, but a power broker, John Podesta, and will likely find its way into the 2022 and 2024 elections for Democrat candidates. Accordingly, members of Congress must make a correction with a FAIRNESS DOCTRINE, allowing $370 billion in matching funds to be put into the hands of the Republican primary winners in order to level the playing field. After all, if, in the run-up to the 2020 election, $419 million could swing votes to that extent, what will a thousand times that funding be able to buy? Although private funding by Zuckbucks has been "banned or restricted" in quite a few counties or states, public funding has not been banned. And what do you know, thanks to Congress, here it is! How it works, as Mollie Hemingway notes, is: [Continue Reading Article]( [] [China: The Immovable Supreme Leader]( by Amir Taheri • October 9, 2022 at 4:00 am [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [WhatsApp]( [Telegram]( [Send]( [Print]( - Having changed the party's constitution, he is no longer required to retire at age 68 and, heading to be 70 next year, he may hang on to power for another 10 years. Nevertheless, things may not be as easy as Xi hopes. - The Chinese Communist Party, with a membership of 98 million, is full of young and ambitious men and women who regard Xi and others in his generation of party chiefs as "Red Princes", sons of first-generation Communists who owe their ascendancy to nepotism. - Then there is China's huge and rapidly growing military machine, which consumes over $200 billion each year and contains tens of thousands of young, highly educated and ambitious officers who may not see Xi, a man with no military background, as the sole arbiter of the nation's fate. - Xi faces two other problems. - First, the Chinese economy is clearly slowing down, with hundreds of businesses going bust and tens of thousands of projects abandoned, while stagflation looms on the horizon. - The second is what some see as systemic corruption. Xi has launched a massive anti-corruption campaign, even issuing death sentences for some senior party figures. But many in China suspect that he is using the campaign as a cover for purging opponents in the party. China's President Xi Jinping has tried to forestall any threat to his authority by purging over 170,000 of the party cadres at all levels, the biggest night of the long knives in Chinese Communist history since Mao was the Great Helmsman. He has also imposed his "thoughts" as part of the CCP's constitution and, in the coming party conference, he hopes to be named The People's Leader (Pinyin), equaling Mao. Pictured: Xi appears on a large screen as performers dance during a mass gala marking the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party on June 28, 2021, in Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) When he took over as China's leader 10 years ago, President Xi Jinping was hailed by Western experts and media as a man who would open the path for major political reforms to reflect the rising tiger's economic transformation. Some even saw him as a wiser version of Mikhail Gorbachev and speculated that he might adopt the end-of-history narrative by accepting democratization as the only option for a modern industrial power. A decade later, however, we know how wrong those assessments of Xi were. As he prepares for the coming National Conference of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) starting 16 October, Xi may be the subject of another misunderstanding. This time he is presented as an ambitious autocrat whose dream of world domination threatens the fragile world order in place since the end of the Cold War. [Continue Reading Article]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [RSS]( [Donate]( Copyright © Gatestone Institute, All rights reserved. You are subscribed to this list as {EMAIL} You can change how you receive these emails: [Update your subscription preferences]( or [Unsubscribe from this list]( [Gatestone Institute]( 14 East 60 St., Suite 705, New York, NY 10022