Xi at China’s Military Parade: “Chinese nation is unstoppable”

With Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un among those joining Xi, it was quite the display of authoritarian adversaries of the U.S. Financial Times: Xi Jinping has capped a week of frenetic diplomacy by presiding over one of China’s biggest military parades, projecting his nation’s growing power in a show of solidarity with fellow strongmen Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. A procession of China’s newest tanks, drones and missiles rolled past Tiananmen Square on Wednesday to mark the 80th anniversary of the second world war victory over Japan. The People’s Liberation Army showed off its latest weapons, including hypersonic missiles, with Xi hailing troops as a “heroic force” that should develop into a “world-class military” — implying a full equal to the US’s armed forces. The Chinese president said the PLA would “resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity” — code for Beijing’s goal of gaining control over Taiwan. “The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is unstoppable,” Xi added (Financial Times). The Foundation for Defense of Democracies saw a display of defiance: Chinese President Xi Jinping stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un at a military parade in Beijing as they attempted to project a united and defiant front against a U.S.-led world order. The trio were joined by leaders of more than 20 other mostly authoritarian nations at the parade in Tiananmen Square commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory over Imperial Japan. “Today humanity is again faced with the choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, win-win or zero sum,” declared Xi, adding China is a “great nation that is never intimidated by any bullies” (FDD).

A Closer Look at the Growth of Chinese Military

China has invested in all aspects of their military, but especially their ability to project power on the seas: Nowhere has the PLA’s progress been more visible than its navy, which is evolving from a coastal force into a “blue-water navy” capable of projecting power globally. The PLA Navy surpassed the U.S. Navy in number of battle force ships around 2014 and is projected to continue growing over the next decade. China still trails the United States in key metrics, like overall ship tonnage, on-ship missile launchers, and experience operating in far seas. Yet China is catching up in these areas. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) assesses that China’s ability to perform missions outside of the Indo-Pacific’s first island chain is “modest but growing as it gains more experience” (CSIS). The New York Times pointed to the Chinese investment in drone warfare: If one theme stood out, analysts said, it was that the People’s Liberation Army is betting on unmanned systems to gain a potential edge in battle (New York Times).

US Announces Largest-Ever Seizure of Methamphetamine Precursor Chemicals

In two separate actions, DHS and Customs and Border Patrol together captured 1,300 barrels of benzyl alcohol—enough to make 420,000 pounds of meth. Houston Chronicle: Federal officials called the capture of 1,300 barrels of substances coming from China to Mexico the largest seizure of precursor chemicals in the history of U.S. law enforcement during a Wednesday briefing in Pasadena. The two shipments – intercepted by Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol within the last week – were from two different vessels from the same vendor in China and bound for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, said U.S. Attorney General Jeanine Pirro. “This cartel, as all of you know, is one of the largest producers and traffickers of fentanyl and they use murder, kidnapping, torture and violence as a way of doing business,” Pirro said (Houston Chronicle). More from Fox News: ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said the operation’s approach is to target the supply line for illicit drug manufacturers, such as chemical precursors, rather than the finished product. “Had these precursors made it to the destination, they would have made hundreds of thousands of pounds of methamphetamine, with profits of over half a billion dollars, which would lead to more American deaths here, not only in Houston, but all across the country,” Lyons said (Fox News).

Comedy Writer Arrested in UK Over X Posts on Transgender Issue

2News: The co-creator of British TV sitcoms “Father Ted” and the “IT Crowd” said he was arrested over a series of posts about transgender people. Graham Linehan, 57, said he was arrested Monday at Heathrow Airport after arriving from Arizona. (2News). John Sexton at Hot Air: At first Linehan himself laughed at the idea that trans activists had sent the police after him, but that’s effectively what had happened: “When I first saw the cops, I actually laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t tell me! You’ve been sent by trans activists,” I said. The officers didn’t react. This was the theme throughout most of the day. Among the rank and file of the police, there was a sort of polite bafflement. They were entirely professional and even kind, but most had absolutely no idea what any of this was about….  Once the officers began reading me my rights, and I realized what was happening, the red mist descended. The officers saw how upset I was and treated me gently after that. They even arranged for a van to meet me on the tarmac so I didn’t have to be perp-walked through the airport like a terrorist. Small mercies….” J.K. Rowling had the best response: “What Sir Mark Rowley calls a ‘toxic culture war,’ I call a mass campaign of intimidation against women for standing up for their rights, and police turning a blind eye to the men publicly calling for women to be beaten, raped, hanged and decapitated” (Hot Air).

Nigel Farage Gives Warning to US Congress on Free Speech Eroding in UK: “At what point did we become North Korea?”

The warning signs on how quickly free speech can erode are abundant from the UK. Farage—now a member of Parliament and head of Reform UK—appeared before the House Judiciary Committee: So I’ve come today as well to be a claxon, to say to you, “don’t allow—piece by piece—this to happen here in America.” And you would be doing us and yourselves and all freedom loving people a favor if your politicians and your businesses said to the British government: “You’ve simply got this wrong.” At what point did we become North Korea? Well, I think the Irish comedy writer found that out two days ago at Heathrow Airport. This is a genuinely worrying, concerning and shocking situation, and I thank you for the opportunity to come here today (X).

Senator Tuberville: “President Trump is moving US Space Command back to its rightful home at Redstone Arsenal and Huntsville, Alabama”

The Alabama Senator and “Coach” Tuberville explains: This was never supposed to be about politics. After a thorough selection process, Huntsville was chosen as the best home for SpaceCom. In fact, three different Air Force secretaries, including Joe Biden’s Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, have acknowledged that Redstone Arsenal is the best home for US Space Command. But unfortunately, Joe Biden made this political when he overrode the Air Force, the GAO and the Department of Defenses Inspector General, who all confirmed Huntsville is the best location and announced he was moving it to Colorado instead…. Thankfully, president Trump, secretary ETH and Air Force Secretary Mink are restoring merit and integrity to the process and returning Space Command back to his rifle home In Huntsville, this will save taxpayers more than $420 million, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome the United States Space Command back to its rifle place at Redstone Arsenal in Sweet Home, Alabama (Tuberville). Katie Britt, our other Senator from Alabama: While this process has shown Washington at its worst, I am confident Huntsville, Ala., will show our country at its best…. The same world-class program that sent a man to the moon in Saturn V rockets in the 1950s and 1960s is now powering man’s return to the moon through NASA’s Space Launch System rocket (Wall Street Journal).

Senator Tim Kaine: Our Rights Come From Government

As in: Not from God. The comments came from a confirmation hearing of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. Kaine: “The notion that rights don’t come from laws, and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator… That’s what the Iranian government believes. So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.” Senator Ted Cruz aimed to set the record straight: “So, Senator Kaine said in this hearing, that he found it a radical and dangerous notion that you would say our rights came from God and not from government. I just walked into the hearing as he was saying that and I almost fell out of my chair. Because that radical and dangerous notion in his words, is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created. And if you do not believe me, and you made reference to this Mr. Barnes, then you can believe, perhaps the most prominent Virginian to ever serve, Thomas Jefferson who wrote in the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator’ not by the government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God…” Dmitri Bolt at Townhall: Senator Kaine didn’t misspeak; he simply revealed the chasm between today’s Democratic Party and the very principles that founded this great nation. If believing rights come from a higher power is “troubling,” then Kaine’s quarrel isn’t with Ted Cruz. It’s with Jefferson, Madison, the Declaration, and America herself (Townhall).

French Government on Brink of Collapse

At the center of it all: The government’s debt load. Economist reports: “Our country is in danger because we are on the brink of over-indebtedness,” declared François Bayrou, France’s prime minister. To start tackling a debt pile that stands at 114% of GDP he wants to make savings in next year’s budget worth €44bn ($51bn, or 2.6% of spending). But he runs a minority government faced with a bolshie opposition—egged on by populists on left and right—which will hear nothing of it. To try to break the impasse, Mr Bayrou stunned all parties this week by putting his government’s survival on the line, recalling parliament for a vote of confidence on September 8th. If he is defeated, as seems likely, France will lose its third prime minister in little over a year—and Europe will gain a fiscal hazard (Economist). Politico: French politics are so paralyzed that the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron — an idea once only whispered in the corridors of power — is now being openly debated. But while Macron’s departure would be an earthquake on the European diplomatic stage, there’s increasing doubt it would fix the gridlock stalling the Fifth Republic. France’s problems appear to be deeper….“I haven’t seen this much uncertainty since I was a student in 1968,” said Eric Chaney, former chief economist of the AXA insurance firm, referring to May 1968 protests that brought France to a standstill and led to deep social and political changes (Politico).

Class at The New School in Manhattan: “How to Steal”

If a university class could succinctly embody all that is wrong with both the left and higher education today, this would be it: LSOC 3109 How to Steal, offered this fall at the New School in Manhattan. David Strom: If you ever wondered why all our cultural institutions lurched radical left in the past 30 years, it is a result of a conscious plan to take them over. That is not a conspiracy theory–there is an entire literature devoted to this strategy. The most assigned work in education schools these days–the places that train our teachers–is The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, written by Brazilian Communist Paolo Freire. All you need to do is look at the curricula in our K-12 and higher ed institutions to see that Marxist activism is core to their mission. You don’t have to trust me–go see for yourself. DEI is Marxism. Critical Theory is Marxism. The Alphabet movement is basically Marxist, as is the pro-Palestinian movement. Antifa is the Marxist brownshirts.  That’s how you get classes like this at The New School in Manhattan: “LSOC 3109 How to Steal: This field-based seminar explores the politics, ethics, and aesthetics of theft in a world where accumulation is sacred, dispossession is routine, and the line between private property and public good is drawn in blood. Students will critically examine what it means to steal—from whom, for whom, and why—through site visits and fieldwork in places where capital is hoarded and value is contested: corporate storefronts, grocery chains, museums, libraries, banks, and cultural institutions. We will ask: Is it possible to steal back what was already stolen? What does theft look like under capitalism, colonialism, and in everyday life? When is theft survival, protest, or care—and when is it violence, appropriation, or harm? Readings will span critical theory, political economy, abolitionist thought, and radical histories of expropriation and redistribution. Students will produce field journals, collective mappings, and speculative strategies for redistributing wealth, knowledge, and beauty. This is not a course in petty crime—it is a study in moral ambiguity, radical ethics, and imaginative justice.” The problem with the ordinary Democrat is that they cannot believe what seems obvious to us: their leaders hate America and want it gone. All the evidence is there–the land acknowledgements, the decarceral agenda, opening the borders, and the “decolonization” rhetoric (New School, Hot Air).

“No one reads anymore”

That’s the opening line from Spencer Klavan, son of Andrew Klavan and associate editor of Claremont Review of Books. He continues: This is something that teachers of literature like me are always saying. “Every generation, at some point, discovers that students cannot read as well as they would like or as well as professors expect,” wrote the scholar of literacy Martha Maxwell in 1979. But more and more, educators are finding that the last few years have been meaningfully different. Students are showing up at even high-end schools having never read a novel cover to cover…. Last month, as students returned to school, a new study made headlines because it found that the number of Americans who read for pleasure has dropped an astonishing 40 percent since the start of the century…. It will be up to the new generation to decide which tasks they want to delegate to the machines. But if they choose reading, they will have cheated themselves terribly…. The kind of reading that retains its worth in the age of AI is the kind that has no measurable ROI, no scalable metrics, no immediate market value of any kind. It is like life in that the point of it is the story itself, and the only way to “get” it is to dwell in it and let it change you. It has nothing to offer, in other words, besides the communion of soul with soul. But if we can’t value that, what is anything else worth? (Free Press).