China Alert: Island Casino Corruption, U.S. Infiltration, Suspicious Death

Quick — what part of the United States was created under United Nations authority? If you’ve never heard of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), you’re certainly not alone; most Americans are blissfully unaware that, north of the remote western Pacific U.S. territory of Guam, there’s an even remoter archipelago, the Northern Mariana Islands, that began their political existence as a UN trusteeship after World War II before voting to become a territorial commonwealth of the United States in the 1970s. The two largest islands in the CNMI, Saipan and Tinian, were both sites of major battles during World War II. The Japanese, who had controlled the islands since World War I, used them to launch attacks against U.S. forces in nearby Guam.

In the 21st century, these remote islands are again a focus of international conflict, but this time, the antagonist is Communist China. And, unlike during World War II, this time hardly anyone is paying attention as a hostile power takes control of U.S. territory. Only last week, the lone voice in the CNMI warning of the danger, Saipan’s governor Arnold Palacios, literally dropped dead of unknown causes.

The recent history of CNMI, and of Saipan in particular, has been a pageant of corruption, with the source of most of it being Communist China. Until 2014, gambling was not legal in CNMI, but that year, local lawmakers, bedazzled by a fact-finding trip to Macau, China’s gambling Mecca, relented and fast-tracked legislation to legalize casinos. The two people who facilitated the trip, Cui Lijie and her son Ji Xiaobo, who operated one of Macau’s major casinos (which also do brisk business laundering money for China’s oligarchs), were rewarded with an exclusive franchise to build a huge casino, for which they were required to construct a 2,000-room hotel and pay tens of millions in fees and taxes. The following year, in 2015, while construction on the main casino was just beginning, Cui and Ji’s company, Imperial Palace International, launched a “temporary” casino the size of a family restaurant at a duty-free mall in Saipan. And, mirabile dictu, this tiny operation on a remote island with 43,000 inhabitants, a three hours’ flight from any real city, began turning a fantastic profit right away. With fewer than 20 VIP tables, the tiny casino somehow reported $5.3 billion in VIP bets during the three months of operation. Before long, it was averaging more than $2 billion in VIP bets per month, and within two years, it was turning over, table for table, more than six times the amount of money of Macau’s mammoth casinos. (Those casinos dwarf the ones in Las Vegas, and are all prolific money launderers, by the way.) Small wonder that Bloomberg, in an article on Imperial Palace’s mind-numbing cash flow, reported the response of one industry executive as follows:

Asked if there could be a benign explanation for such instantaneous success at a casino more than three hours’ flight from any major city, on a drowsy island where the best hotel is a 1970’s-era Hyatt, one of the executives burst out laughing.

And there’s more. Serving on Imperial Palace’s advisory board were no less than three former U.S. state governors (David Paterson of New York, Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, and Hayley Barbour of Mississippi) and one former FBI director (Louis Freeh). Meanwhile, former CIA director James Woolsey sat on its board of directors. Given such stellar connections, it’s not too surprising that, in 2016, Cui Lijie and several Imperial Palace executives traveled to Washington, D.C., where Cui met with President Obama.

In the meantime, the construction of the casino and hotel proceeded apace, aided by hundreds of Chinese nationals living illegally in Saipan. How did they get there? CNMI, incredibly, has a visa waiver arrangement with China, ostensibly to stimulate tourism. Chinese citizens are allowed to fly there directly from China and stay for up to 14 days without a visa — the only U.S. jurisdiction that Chinese nationals can visit without a visa. As a condition of their visa, they are supposed to remain on CNMI.

But not surprisingly, they have been exploiting this glaring weakness in U.S. border control policy in all sorts of creative ways. A birth tourism cottage industry has sprung up, whereby pregnant Chinese women fly to Saipan and give birth to “anchor babies.” Drug smuggling by Chinese gangsters has become a thing. Obtaining a CNMI driver’s license for the purpose of getting other U.S. papers and getting to the continental United States was a massive corrupt enterprise, until 2023, when former CNMI Bureau of Motor Vehicles Chief Juana Cabrera Leon Guerrero was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiracy to produce driver’s licenses for Chinese nationals. She was charging a tidy $1,700 for new licenses and $300 for renewals.

And of course, many Chinese were arriving in Saipan and then overstaying their visa, much as Chinese nationals have been doing in other parts of the world, such as Ecuador. Hundreds of them went to Saipan and then stayed to work on the Imperial Palace casino, a fact that an FBI investigation finally brought to light late in the last decade.

Imperial Palace also seems to have been engaged in a massive quid pro quo with former territorial governor Ralph Torres (who was impeached on corruption charges, but eventually acquitted). It was Torres’ successor, Arnold Palacios, who dared to sound a warning. In April of this year, Palacios sent a letter to CNMI’s delegate to Congress, Kimberlyn King-Hinds, requesting that she convey to FBI Director Kash Patel his desire for a thorough FBI investigation of his own government. “We have considerable evidence to provide to the Bureau,” he wrote, “as soon as they resume a permanent presence in the Commonwealth.” In a later interview on the subject of Chinese-fueled corruption, Palacios confessed that he felt like a voice in the wilderness, like John the Baptist. King-Hinds, after all, is an enthusiastic China booster, advocating for more tourism and more direct flights from the PRC — and fiercely opposing any end to the visa waiver program.

And then, on July 23, while working in his office, the 69-year-old Palacios dropped dead. The cause of death was reported only as a “medical incident,” and officials have said nothing more. His lieutenant governor, David M. Apatang, was promptly sworn into office.

The Imperial Palace Casino, meanwhile, was completed several years ago, only to be crippled by Covid travel restrictions. It filed for bankruptcy last year, but the top bidder to take over its operations is another China-based entity tied to the same people already running the casino.

What has been happening in Saipan is part of a larger CCP modus operandi across the Pacific, from the Philippines to the Solomon Islands to Tonga: Suborn, Subvert, and Subjugate. Money-laundering operations such as casinos and construction projects are used as slush funds to ingratiate themselves with local political leaders, who then open their doors to Chinese immigrants determined to seize control of the wealth and, eventually, the government itself. This formula has worked to perfection in many Pacific island republics, including the Philippines.

And now, it is being carried out, with brazen determination, in a U.S. territory. Not only that, most of official Washington has so far turned a blind eye to the problem, with the FBI ending an investigation into Imperial Palace several months ago. Then again, with a former CIA director on its board and a former FBI director as one of its advisors, how can it not have the heft to influence the FBI?

One congressman who is aware of the situation is Representative Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), who recently wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to request that the anomalous CNMI visa waiver program with China be rescinded. Given Trump’s recent tendency to kowtow to the Chinese communists — as with his blocking a visit by Taiwan’s president — it’s hard to know if he can be persuaded to take the issue seriously. — Steve Bonta

ICJ Climate Ruling Threatens U.S. Sovereignty

On July 23, 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an advisory opinion asserting that countries are legally obligated to “protect the environment” and “curb greenhouse gas emissions” under the Paris Climate Agreement.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres praised the ICJ ruling, stating, “I welcome the International Court of Justice has issued its historic advisory opinion, they made clear that all states are obligated under international law to protect the global climate system.”

The ICJ, the UN’s principal judicial organ, called for reparations against states failing to meet UN emissions standards, requiring “restitution, compensation, and satisfaction”:

(c) full reparation to injured States in the form of restitution, compensation and satisfaction, provided that the general conditions of the law of State responsibility are met, including that a sufficiently direct and certain causal nexus can be shown between the wrongful act and injury.

This ruling undermines U.S. sovereignty by prioritizing globalist agendas over national interests. By leveraging climate-change narratives, the ICJ advances its agenda driven goals in conflict with objective science.

The 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reserves all powers not delegated to the federal government to the states or the people, not to international courts or the federal government acting under UN direction. Additionally, compliance with globalist mandates will raise energy costs and impose burdensome regulations on American businesses.

Although the ICJ cannot directly enforce this ruling, its influence pressures U.S. politicians and bureaucrats to align with UN expectations, at odds with their obligation to adhere to the Constitution. Americans must defend the U.S. Constitution, prioritize self-governance, and reject UN mandates. — David DeRidder

Pentagon-Aspen Rift: Globalists Still Raging at Hegseth’s Snub

How dare he! The globalist establishment is still seething over U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s severing of Pentagon ties to the Aspen Institute and its annual Aspen Security Forum (ASF). On July 14, the Department of Defense cancelled participation of top generals, admirals, and defense officials in the conference. According to Defense News, the cancelled participants included Navy Secretary John Phelan, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command head Admiral Samuel Paparo, U.S. Special Operations Command head Army General Bryan Fenton, U.S. Space Command head General Stephen Whiting, and U.S. Transportation Command head Air Force General Randall Reed.

Why the split? The DOD/Aspen severance is another historic marker in the Trump “America First” agenda. The Aspen Institute is a key cog in the New World Order machine, the elite network of globalist organizations and think tanks pushing for world government and an end to national sovereignty, to wit: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), World Economic Forum (WEF), Trilateral Commission (TC), Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Stimson Center, Wilson Center, and Center for Strategic and International Studies, to name a few. As we have illustrated in our foldout chart of the “Rising CFR Influence: From 1929 to Present,” considering the CFR alone, the globalist Deep State’s penetration and dominance of the executive branch of our federal government by CFR members, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, has been utterly disastrous for our country. This is especially true with regard to the CFR corruption and subversion of our military. The DOD’s disengagement from Aspen, essentially an adjunct of the CFR, is long overdue.

“The Department of Defense has no interest in legitimizing an organization that has invited former officials who have been the architects of chaos abroad and failure at home,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told Just the News. “They are antithetical to the America First values of this administration. Senior representatives of the Department of Defense will no longer be participating in an event that promotes the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the President of the United States,” Wilson also said.

In response to the Trump DOD withdrawal, the ASF issued the following press release:

For more than a decade, the Aspen Security Forum has welcomed senior officials — Republican and Democrat, civilian and military — as well as senior foreign officials and experts, who bring experience and diverse perspectives on matters of national security.

This year, we extended invitations to senior Trump administration officials, including several cabinet-level leaders. Today the Department of Defense gave their speakers guidance that they “will no longer be participating.”   

We will miss the participation of the Pentagon, but our invitations remain open. 

The ASF website tells us: “The Aspen Security Forum (ASF) is the premier national security and foreign policy conference in the United States. Presented by the Aspen Strategy Group, ASF has provided a nonpartisan public venue for domestic and global leaders to discuss the key national security and foreign policy issues of the day since 2010.”

The website further states that its mission is to “promote peace by convening decision-makers in resolutely non-partisan public and private forums.” The entire family of Aspen projects are indeed “nonpartisan” inasmuch as all Republicans, Democrats, and Independents are welcome — as long as they fully endorse, or are reasonably pliable toward, the Aspen/CFR internationalist agenda. Need proof? Take a look at the ASF agenda for the conference and the bios of its speakers.

Aspen’s rhetorical subterfuge is to be expected, especially considering that Aspen is the brainchild of uber-Deep Stater Joseph Nye. In her welcoming remarks to this year’s Forum, ASG/ASF Executive Director Anja Manuel said:

Our founder Joe Nye — who sadly passed away this year — reminded us to retreat to nature to renew and reinvigorate our thinking. And so, we gather here once again, on this beautiful mountain, not only to assess risks, but to explore bold new approaches — clear-eyed, open-minded, and ready for the future.

If you are truly interested in Mr. Nye’s legacy, see our article in the Insider Report for May 9, 2025, “Joseph Nye, Globalist Insider, Dead at 88.”

No surprise then that the globalist-aligned media echo chamber has been fulminating over the Trump-Hegseth DOD maneuver. The Atlantic, one of the principal organs of that chamber, came out with a July 29, 2025, article titled, “The Pentagon Against the Think Tanks,” subtiled, “Pete Hegseth finds a new enemy.” This is (of course) a ridiculous resurgence of paranoid “McCarthyism,” the (supposedly) august Atlantic insists:

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has scanned the horizon for threats, and sure enough, he has found a new group of dangerous adversaries: thinktanks, the organizations in the United States and allied nations that do policy research and advocate for various ideas. They must be stopped, according to a Defense Department announcement, because they promote “the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the president of the United States.”

This particular bit of McCarthyist harrumphing was the rationalization the Pentagon gave more than a week ago for pulling out of the Aspen Security Forum, a long-running annual conference routinely attended by business leaders, military officers, academics, policy analysts, foreign officials, and top government leaders from both parties, including many past secretaries of defense.

But, as you’ll see below, the DOD/Aspen divorce was just the first step in a larger, long overdue disengagement from globalist think tanks. — William F. Jasper

Think Tanks, Stink Tanks: Globalist Confabs Losing Cachet

As a follow-up to its “controversial” July 14 pullout of the Aspen Security Forum (see article above), the Pentagon 10 days later announced additional bans on engagement with globalist-oriented think tanks. Politico reported on July 24 that the DOD “has suspended participation in all think tank and research events until further notice, according to an email sent Thursday to staff and obtained by POLITICO, a major shift in engagement from the country’s largest federal agency.”

The decision comes a week after the Defense Department pulled out of the high-profile Aspen Security Forum citing “the evil of globalism” and indicating the event did not align with the Trump administration’s defense policies.

The Pentagon’s public affairs office is also reviewing the agency’s participation in other top security conferences, according to the email. It specifically banned attendance at the Halifax International Security Forum, which takes place in Nova Scotia each winter and where the Pentagon chief is usually a top guest. It was not immediately clear why that forum had been singled out.

“In order to ensure the Department of Defense is not lending its name and credibility to organizations, forums, and events that run counter to the values of this administration, the Department’s Office of Public Affairs will be conducting a thorough vetting of every event where Defense officials are invited to participate,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in an emailed response to Politico. — William F. Jasper

DOD/Aspen Divorce Ruffles Media “Mockingbirds’” Feathers

It is no mystery why the heads of the chattering classes exploded over the Hegseth/Aspen dustup; a whole flock of “Ruling Class Journalists” and CFR/CIA “Mockingbirds” are regulars at these Aspen affairs.

This year, for instance, among the Aspen Security Forum speakers and moderators, we find:

Peter Baker (The New York Times);

Steve Clemons (The National Interest);

Kaitlan Collins (CNN);

Susan Glasser (The New Yorker);

David Ignatius (The Washington Post);

Shashank Joshi (The Economist);

Mary Louise Kelly (NPR);

Courtney Kube (NBC);

Dafna Linzer (U.S. News & World Report);

Gordon Lubold (NBC);

Edward Luce (Financial Times);

Jonathan Martin (Politico);

Zanny Minton-Beddoes (The Economist);

Andrea Mitchell (NBC);

David Sanger (The New York Times);

Nick Shifrin (PBS);

Jim Sciutto (CNN);

Dmitri Sevastopulo (Financial Times); and

Lingling Wei (The Wall Street Journal)

These are the media spin-meisters and lie-masters who have sold their souls for fame, fortune, and a chance to rub shoulders with the financial and political power brokers. They enjoy the jet-setting champagne and caviar lifestyles hobnobbing with the power elites at Aspen, Davos, Bellagio, Pocantico, Sun Valley, and other lairs of the one-world megalomaniacs. They are the hate-America, hate-Trump, hate-MAGA media legions who see their privileged, pampered, sanctimonious positions being exposed and shredded. — William F. Jasper

[END]