J.D. Vance in Munich: Harsh Truth to Eurocrats
In case you missed it, Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a long-overdue, blistering wake-up call to European leaders at the annual Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Germany. He warned that their greatest dangers are coming from “the threat from within,” from the increasingly tyrannical censorship by their thought police and their open-borders policies that have flooded Europe with migrants. His 19-minute speech on February 14, the opening day of the conference, clearly riled many of our European “allies” and made many more shift uncomfortably in their seats.
The conference opened less than 24 hours after an Afghan asylum seeker rammed his car into a group of people in Munich, injuring 39, at least two of whom have subsequently died from their injuries. The 24-year-old attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) before being subdued by police. He had been in Germany since 2016 even though his asylum application had been rejected, and he reportedly had been arrested on theft and drug charges. Germany’s progressive migrant policy had granted him a “tolerance” permit, and his deportation decision had been suspended. This was but the latest in a long stream of terrorist attacks by Muslim migrants who have poured into Germany thanks to the migration policies of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her European Union and United Nations allies. Readers may recall the horrendous Christmas market attack of December 20, 2024, in Magdeburg, in which a Saudi national rammed his vehicle into a crowd, killing six and injuring 300. Then on January 22, in Aschaffenburg, Germany, an Afghan asylum seeker attacked a group of kindergarten children with a knife in a city park, killing a two-year-old child and an adult bystander who tried to stop him. Another child and two adults were wounded.
Similar attacks have become maddeningly commonplace throughout Europe, which is a major factor in the Continent-wide rise of conservative parties that the regime media insist on labeling as “far-right,” “extremist,” “neo-Nazi,” and “fascist,” even when they are merely calling for a return to the commonsense border controls and immigration policies that were in place only a relatively short time ago. As a result, the surging Alternative für Deutschland Party (Alternative for Germany, AfD), which has made immigration its primary concern, may score a major victory in the February 23 Bundestag (parliament) elections. This has all of Europe’s globalists in a panic. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has belatedly issued tough rhetoric on migration and terrorism, but, like the Biden/Harris last-minute vows about stopping the migration flood, nobody believes the empty electioneering hype. Nevertheless, the EU/NATO leaders at the MSC clearly were still not ready to hear the hard truths dished out by Donald Trump’s VP.
You can view the entire J.D. Vance MSC speech here. After acknowledging the terror attack of the previous day and expressing condolences to the victims, he got down to the real business of the moment. Here are some of the high points:
We gather at this conference, of course, to discuss security. And normally we mean threats to our external security…. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine — and we also believe that it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense — the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor.
What I worry about is the threat from within: The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election.
He warned that if things don’t go according to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.
Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values.
Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves, because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.
On the same team? Vance was stretching. The EU/NATO crowd he was addressing has been committed to a globalist/socialist program completely opposite to the “America First” program of Team MAGA. He continued, detailing a few of the Orwellian developments now stalking Euroland:
I look to Brussels, where EU Commission commissars warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest, the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be “hateful content”; or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of “combating misogyny” on the internet….
I look to Sweden, where two weeks ago the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant — and I’m quoting — a “free pass” to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.
And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs.
A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of his unborn son.
He and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved.
Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
Yes, as in Democrat-run jurisdictions here in America, Europe’s ruling class turns violent criminals loose to prey on the law-abiding while they persecute “thought criminals” — especially the troublesome Christian variety — who dare to question state dogma. Vance unleashed a salvo on Scotland’s jihad against Christians:
This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.
Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.
Free speech, I fear, is in retreat and in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation.
Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.
A Vance zinger that appears to have really scorched a few MSC feathers was his reference to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and the EU’s hysteria over Elon Musk’s posts on X that tweaked Euro political correctness and sided with Germany’s AfD.
“Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference,” Vance said, “even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential. And trust me, I say this with all humor, if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”
Bravo, Vance. Now, if we can get you, President Trump, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the MAGA choir to stop confusing our constitutional republic with a democracy, we can make a giant step forward toward restoring our REPUBLIC. You used “democracy” and “democratic values” 18 times in your 19-minute address. Our Founding Fathers went to great pains to explain the night-and-day difference between a republic and a democracy and to warn us to stay clear of the inherent dangers of democracy. — WFJ
“Treason”: EU/NATO Chiefs Rage Against Vance
Vance’s Munich speech has caused an uproar that continues, as politicos and pundits aver that it threatens to upend “world order.”
“High Treason!” That’s what Belgian socialist Willy Claes, a former secretary-general of NATO, calls the current Trump administration position toward Europe and NATO, as enunciated by Vice President Vance at the Munich Security Conference. “Regarding the current stance under US President Donald Trump, the 86-year-old Socialist politician stormed, ‘This amounts to high treason by the Americans,’” Brussels Signal reported.
“I try to remain calm, but it is difficult because the chaos is unprecedented and complete,” he said.
“For years — perhaps since 1917, when they declared war on Germany — Americans have shown solidarity with Europe. This was especially true during the Second World War. They not only helped liberate us from the Nazis but also provided immense support in rebuilding,” Claes said.
“But after those many years of perfect solidarity over the ocean, everything changed since the presidency of Trump. This amounts to high treason. It is the low point of low points of a country that found itself thinking it could lecture Europe about its core values at the Munich Security Summit. What kind of imbecilic speech, pardon my language, did Vice President JD Vance give?”
Poor Willy Claes is hardly one to lecture about “core values” — unless it’s rotten-to-the-core values. He was forced to resign in disgrace as secretary-general of NATO after being convicted of bribery and funneling funds from military contractors to two Belgian socialist parties.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier accused Trump and Musk of being willing to destroy democracy. He said, “It is clear that the new American administration holds a worldview that is very different from our own, one that shows no regard for established rules, for partnerships or for the trust that has been built over time. But I am convinced that it is not in the interest of the international community for this worldview to become the dominant paradigm.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz posted on social network X to “emphatically reject” Vance’s comments.
“Out of the experiences of Nazism, the democratic parties in Germany have a joint consensus — that is the firewall against extreme right-wing parties,” Scholz wrote.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, speaking a couple of hours later, said he couldn’t let the speech go without comment.
“If I understood [Vance] correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes,” Pistorius said. “That is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and am currently campaigning.” — WFJ
NYT: Vance “Disgraceful”
Not surprisingly, The New York Times’ token “conservative” columnist Bret Stephens felt obliged to unbosom himself of the outrage boiling within over Vance’s Munich statements. Stephens, a dyed-in-the-wool never-Trumper, is the type of neocon RINO whom the Fake News media present as the face of supposedly rational, reasonable Republicans. You know, the GOP pols and journos who put an “R” next to their names and spout a few of the required “conservative” platitudes while supporting liberal-left Democrats and their destructive policies.
But, really! How many times do the witless, clueless scribblers of the “prestige” press have to go traipsing to the same “Nazi-Hitler” poisoned well to smear the opposition before they realize that the well has run dry? They’ve used it so many times (maliciously and falsely) that it has lost its impact.
But Stephens and his ilk just don’t get it. Or they just don’t care; ad hominem is their default setting. They never seem to tire of bludgeoning their opponents with the same old slander. Here’s how his Times column for February 18, entitled “Vance’s Munich Disgrace,” begins:
In April 1928, Joseph Goebbels, later the Third Reich’s chief propagandist, wrote a newspaper essay addressing the question of why the National Socialists, despite being an “anti-parliamentarian party,” would nonetheless compete in that May’s parliamentary elections.
“We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons,” Goebbels explained. “If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem. It does not concern us. Any way of bringing about the revolution is fine by us.”
According to Stephens, “The vice president’s speech last week at the Munich Security Conference — in which the man who refuses to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election lectured his audience about Europe’s retreat from democratic values — combined with his meeting with the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party, has caused a scandal because it is a scandal, a monument of arrogance based on a foundation of hypocrisy.”
It is Stephens and his coterie of fellow scribblers, of course, who reek arrogance and hypocrisy — and a pathetic lack of imagination. — WFJ
MSC-NATO-KGB
Worthy of note though little mentioned in reportage on Munich is that the MSC’s new chairman (assuming office at the just-concluded conference) is Jens Stoltenberg, former prime minister of Norway and former secretary-general of NATO. Stoltenberg is a committed globalist, being an agenda contributor to the World Economic Forum and an attendee of the highly secretive Bilderberg Group. To his globalist pedigree we can also add a troubling communist record. His sister Camilla was a member of Norway’s communist Red Youth, and Jens was the leader of the country’s largest youth organization, the communist Workers’ Youth League. And this was not a brief youthful flirtation with the far-far-left. Since at least 2011, reliable information from Norwegian investigative journalist Alf R. Jacobsen and Soviet defectors Oleg Gordievsky and Vasili Mitrokhin has exposed an alarming penetration of Norway’s political leadership by the Soviet KGB (and, presumably, its successor, the FSB). Details can be found here and here. — WFJ
BIS and the Basel III “Endgame”
During last week’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was asked by two different senators about Basel III’s “Endgame.” For the uninitiated, Basel III refers to the third iteration of the so-called Basel Accords, a framework of banking regulations imposed on central banks and their national banking systems by the Basel Committee of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). “Endgame” is a nickname for the final version of these requirements, developed after years of negotiations and planning following the Great Recession of 2007-2008. One of the most contentious provisions of Endgame is its very high requirements for bank capitalization — meaning the amount of bank assets in the form of shares (not reserves). Senator Mike Rounds broached the issue of Basel III and Endgame, asking Powell whether he supported the measure. Powell’s typically bland response, read between the lines, is instructive. He told Rounds:
We remain committed to completing Basel III Endgame. We think it’s good for U.S. banks. It’s good for our economy that there be a global standard beneath which foreign banks can’t fall. And that was one of the big ideas behind the whole Basel Committee approach. So, where it sits now is, we await leadership arriving at the [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and at the FDIC, and that seems to be happening. And when that happens, we’re going to sit down with them and work our way through to a Basel III Endgame proposal. I think we can do this reasonably quickly. One that is compliant — consistent — with the Basel requirements and also consistent with what other large jurisdictions are doing. I’m optimistic that we can do that fairly quickly, and we’re committed to doing that.
Notice Powell’s slip of the tongue with his imprudent use of the word “compliant,” before quickly correcting himself. But compliance is the name of the game with the Basel Accords, and has been since the first version was issued back in the 1970s. These accords are all about establishing the precedent that banks worldwide, including central banks, must be subordinate to a global authority — in this case, the protean monstrosity known as the Bank for International Settlements. Unbeknownst to most Americans, this “central bankers’ central bank” has been quietly consolidating power over international banking and finance since the 1930s. In 2003 it adopted the Special Drawing Right (SDR) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as its unit of accountancy, and it is leading the move toward “tokenization” of central bank assets (as we mentioned in last week’s report) and the adoption of a global currency.
The main objection against Endgame and Basel III by Establishment critics is not monetary sovereignty, though that should be the main criticism. It is instead the more mundane concern that capitalization standards are too high, and might prove a serious impediment to the ability of banks to expand the money supply. In other words, it is the potential hindering of ersatz fiat currency-driven prosperity that keeps Beltway grandees awake at night — and not the surrender of American monetary and financial sovereignty to a secretive, utterly unaccountable global body. Indeed, Senator Rounds (R-S.D.), instead of bringing up such concerns, used his time to compliment Powell on his success at bringing about a “soft landing” for the U.S. economy following the Covid shock.
Regardless, it is clear that Powell and his many enablers within the Swamp intend to push forward with Endgame. As usual, perceived short-term, nebulous “economic interests” will be the priority, while long-term bagatelles such as sovereignty and the U.S. Constitution get short shrift.
Canada, meanwhile, has temporarily called a halt to the implementation of Endgame — this, despite the fact that former Canadian and British central banker Mark Carney appears poised to get the nod as Canada’s new liberal prime minister next month. Canada is worried about the impact of Trump’s new tariffs on the Canadian economy, and doesn’t want to run the risk that Endgame’s new capital standards may, indeed, further suppress the country’s already anemic economic growth. — SB
Will the IMF Survive?
According to globalists at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) very existence is threatened by the Trump administration. Writing for the school’s European Politics and Policy blog, Robert H. Wade, professor of global political economy, sounded a tocsin not only for the IMF but also for the entire “global liberal order.” Invoking the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” call for the United States to exit both the IMF and the World Bank, Wade argues that the fund, while in political jeopardy, is likely to survive if it can reinvent itself and continue to meet a “strong collective need in the world economy.” Wade spares no vitriol in his contempt for Trump:
[Trump] has long expressed disdain for multilateral cooperation and a preference for bilateral deals, where the US mostly has the upper hand. He has also been dismissive of Europe and the whole western alliance, while his chief advisor, Elon Musk, seems obsessed with gunning for regime change in allied democracies.
Trump and those he has appointed to top positions agree that globalisation and free trade have harmed the US economy by shifting critical industries abroad and making the US run huge trade deficits. They say it is critical that the US raises tariffs to cut imports, even from close allies.
This win-lose, confrontational worldview is inconsistent with the pro-globalisation, pro-free trade, anti-industrial policy agenda that the IMF and the World Bank have promoted.
In order to counter malign MAGA influence, Wade argues, the IMF must be reformed to focus less on politically combustible issues, to shore up its ties with more powerful global entities such as the BIS, and to give regimes such as China and India more ascendancy over its policies and governance, while getting rid of the U.S. veto over IMF actions:
There are steps that can be taken to improve the IMF’s chances of survival. First, it should narrow its agenda and expertise around cross-border spillovers and macroeconomic stability, leaving other urgent global challenges like climate change, pandemics, food security, trade wars and migration to other bodies….
Second, the IMF must have well-defended operational independence, like central banks and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). It can then assure member states, including the big three, that it will not dispense politicised conditionality or allocate funds unfairly to the allies of one or other of its most powerful members.
Third, there is a need for governance reform to raise the share of quotas and votes going to many emerging market and developing countries, notably China and India…. This should be accompanied by qualified majority voting on the Board of Executive Directors, with the US veto either given up or limited to narrow constitutional issues.
Should the United States actually withdraw, Wade indicates that the IMF is prepared to relocate its Washington, D.C., headquarters to a European capital or even to Japan. But Wade is confident that, one way or the other, “the IMF will probably survive, because it meets a widely agreed collective need of the world economy and alternatives are hard to create.” — SB
China Realignment: Xi vs. Trump
Xi Jinping is trying to restore confidence in China’s tech sector after years of cracking down. According to a Reuters report, Xi has chaired a symposium at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing with an array of China’s tech giants, including Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Tencent CEO Pony Ma, DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, and others. China’s ultra-paranoid dictator has been purging the tech sector for years now, and even slapped down Jack Ma himself after a speech Ma gave in 2020 in which he stressed the need for regulatory reforms in China. A much-ballyhooed initial public offering for Ma’s fintech company Ant, which had generated considerable speculative excitement, was quashed by Xi. After disappearing for months, a humbled Ma re-emerged and stepped down from most leadership positions. Similar tactics have been employed against many other Chinese tech entrepreneurs. A rehabilitated Ma was in attendance at the Beijing conference, with Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and BYD leader Wang Chuanfu occupying the two seats of honor in front of Xi.
After a five-year crackdown on the tech sector, which has contributed to China’s ongoing economic swoon, Xi appears to be concerned that China will lose its competitive edge. It is likely that he is facing growing pressure from within party leadership to loosen his grip, particularly after the release of DeepSeek provoked consternation in the West a few weeks ago. Xi encouraged those in attendance at the tightly choreographed meeting to “show their talent,” adding that “now is the perfect time for private enterprises and entrepreneurs to thrive.” This, after an anti-private sector campaign that has wiped out at least a trillion dollars of wealth from the tech sector brought about the end of for-profit education (including several major chains of schools for adult learners), unleashed severe attacks on food delivery giant Meituan and ride service Didi, and sowed confusion and fear in China’s entire business sector for fear of what might come next.
On the other hand, the symposium may simply be a time-honored communist ruse by the paranoid Xi to draw out disloyalty among tech leaders. Let a thousand AI flowers bloom!
Unbeknownst to most Americans, all Chinese CEOs are required to give allegiance and priority to the Chinese Communist Party, and most are CCP members. Even if reports of CCP malware and surveillance capabilities lurking among the likes of TikTok and DeepSeek are somewhat overdrawn, all of the profits garnered by such concerns will be diverted to serve the goals of the CCP. Like the Soviet Union of yore, the raw tech capabilities of the CCP are often exaggerated. But the vast amounts of money the CCP now controls, thanks to Western largesse, are not. And that real wealth is not only used to build ships, bombers, and missiles — it is also deployed to suborn venal American politicians, infiltrate American media and universities, and finance subversive activities such as drug smuggling and civil unrest. Keeping China’s tech sector in line is a key piece of Xi’s and the CCP’s strategy. We hope Americans will recognize the looming danger before it’s too late.
In international news related to China, Xi Jinping is rumored to be livid at Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who failed to anticipate the way in which Trump’s second administration has roiled world affairs. Trump has imposed heavy tariffs on China without expressing any interest in negotiation, and has effectively cut China out of the peace process between Russia and Ukraine. To make matters worse (from China’s perspective), the Trump State Department, led by China hawk Marco Rubio, has already updated its statement on the Taiwan issue, removing a statement to the effect that the United States recognizes Taiwan to be a part of China. The move has provoked predictable fury in Beijing, especially as it was followed up a few days later by two U.S. warships transiting the Taiwan Strait. These moves, taken together, are sending a clear message to China: Trump intends to clear up the Russia-Ukraine War mess and leave Europe more in charge of matters on the Continent, so that it can concentrate its resources on bringing Communist China to heel. This, of course, is the exact reverse of what the globalists want, their policy, mirrored in Biden administration actions, being to continue building up and appeasing China while trying to exploit the war in Europe to build a more robust international order. — SB
CCP’s Helpful GoogYou Censors
Lastly on the China front, blatant censorship of anti-CCP voices on YouTube continues unabated. While Facebook and X have more or less gotten out of the censorship and Communist China-boosterism business, YouTube is more censorious and pro-China than ever. Prominent anti-CCP channels on YouTube such as China Uncensored, Laowhy86, and SerpentZA are routinely blocked, shadow-banned, and the like, even as the platform has seen a surge in pro-China propaganda channels masquerading as travel shows recently. But don’t take our word for it; here’s China hand Laowhy86 explaining how his enormously popular YouTube channel has all but vanished in recent months. This young man lived in China for 10 years (six years longer than yours truly), and traveled all over the country making travel videos. He speaks fluent Chinese and is married to a Chinese national. But he and his family had to flee the country after authorities targeted him for making innocuous videos in sketchy areas such as Inner Mongolia, and today he is one of the CCP’s most prominent detractors. Since the TikTok controversy blew up, he has suddenly found his channel shadow-banned, along with that of his close friend, South African native-turned grateful American resident SerpentZA. Responding to queries, YouTube officials assured them that they simply had lost popularity, and that they were not being targeted. So the two of them tried an experiment: They deliberately produced videos with misleading titles to make it appear that they were critical of the United States — and right away, they got dramatic boosts on YouTube.
Let that sink in. One of America’s largest and most influential social-media platforms is not only routinely censoring and de-platforming voices on the Right (including The New American’s channel, which has been banned for views on Covid that violate the canon of acceptable discourse), it is also actively suppressing opponents and critics of the CCP while massively promoting CCP propaganda assuring us, among other things, that China is the new pace-setter in tech; that the Uyghurs in Xinjiang lead perfectly normal, happy lives; and that Taiwan is an inviolable part of communist China. This is happening because of one or both of two possible reasons: 1) the Chinese themselves are successfully manipulating YouTube’s algorithms and taking advantage of its communist-style reporting and denouncing system; or 2) someone at YouTube is deliberately aiding and abetting the CCP — a regime that completely censors YouTube in China, incidentally. In either case, were YouTube other than a treasonous den of leftist tech bro viperids, this state of affairs would have long since been energetically corrected, instead of YouTube doubling down and issuing denials. We hope that a serious federal investigation of this company — and its equally serpentine parent company, Google — is in the offing. Trump’s tariffs targeting China will be to little avail if we continue to permit our leftist, pro-China tech establishment to sell America down the river to our most consequential foreign foe.
And no, this isn’t just about free speech. If it were, anti-China voices would have a level playing field with China supporters. But that isn’t the case, and has not been for years. The Chinese narrative — including all the lies about the pandemic and its origins — has been favored on YouTube for years, to the detriment of countless channels, including our own. — SB
Argentina: Leftist Jihad Against Milei
The Argentine radical Left has begun its counterattack against President Javier Milei, with a crescendo of calls for his impeachment after the brash libertarian promoted a new memecoin called LIBRA on his X account. Milei told his X followers that LIBRA was “dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy by funding small Argentine businesses and startups.” Unfortunately, after an initial surge, LIBRA lost 90 percent of its value only a few hours after launch. As it turned out, most of the LIBRA tokens were held by only a tiny pool of investors, indicating that the launch was what is known in the industry as a “rug pull,” i.e., a ballyhooed launch designed to raise revenue for a project, in which developers cash out quickly but hold on to investor funds. A Milei advisor, Hayden Davis, CEO of Kelsier Ventures, admitted in an interview on YouTube that he is in control of roughly $100 million of LIBRA funds, but that he is safeguarding the funds while awaiting word from Milei and the Argentine government on what to do with it. Thus, it appears that the launch was an innovative attempt to raise money by Milei’s government — but Milei claims he knew nothing about the “rug pull” and has ordered an investigation.
Not surprisingly, Milei’s enemies have opened an investigation of their own and are calling for his impeachment. The radical-left sharks in South America, dismayed at Milei’s rise and early successes, now smell blood in the water and are circling for the kill. Will Milei suffer the same fate as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro? — SB
DEFUND Them!: CPB, PBS, NPR
Few things are more maddening than hearing NPR’s left-wing moralists while driving, or seeing statist propaganda dispensed as documentaries or entertainment on PBS. Now, for the first time in more than half a century — since the founding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio, and the Public Broadcasting Service in 1970 — we have an opportunity to completely cut the taxpayer funding of this subversive, socialist propaganda. The resignation of NPR’s top editor, Uri Berliner, last April and his exposing of the ultra-left wokeism of its management (see here and here) merely confirmed what all sentient beings had known to be true for decades: The CPB-PBS-NPR cabal is irredeemably dishonest, corrupt, and ideologically driven. They are not merely “biased” in the sense of “leaning” toward the extreme left of the Democratic Party; they are as reliably “state media” as Pravda, Izvestia, or China Daily.
Pick any issue — LGBTQ+++, Drag Queen Story Hour, transgender surgery for children, abortion, “climate change,” wind turbines, Green New Deal, BLM, “toxic masculinity,” “white privilege,” etc., etc., ad nauseam — and you know where the CPB-PBS-NPR cabal will come down, spewing their narrative across the public airwaves, with our tax dollars. They are simply following the Bolshevik directive that their victims must pay for the bullet that kills them.
Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) has introduced the “Defund Government-Sponsored Propaganda Act” (which, at this writing, has not yet been given a number). “Americans have hundreds of sources of news and commentary, and they don’t need politically biased, taxpayer-funded media choosing what they should see and hear,” said Lee in a February 11 press release. “PBS and NPR are free to compete in the marketplace of ideas using donations, but their public subsidy should end.”
The same legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives by Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.). “As a former newspaper owner and publisher, I understand the vital role of balanced, non-partisan media,” said Tenney. “Unfortunately, these taxpayer-funded outlets have chosen advocacy over accuracy, using public dollars to promote a political agenda rather than report the facts. Under the influence of radical left-wing ideologues like Katherine Maher, PBS and NPR no longer uphold the American principles of free thought and open discourse. Taxpayer dollars should not fund political propaganda disguised as journalism. The Defund Government Sponsored Propaganda Act ensures that federal funding is no longer used to perpetuate the blatant media bias that has overtaken these platforms.”
For an excellent review of the CPB-PBS-NPR record, see Tim Graham’s article at Newsbusters, “FIVE Reasons to Defund ‘Public’ Broadcasting.” — WFJ
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