INSIGHT 32 (2022) by The Epoch Times

NO. 32AUGUST 12–18, 2022 | $6.95 FBI’S TRUMP RAID Agency’s raid on former president’s home improperly intrusive, circumstances indicate: lawyers BY PETR SVAB

“The disregard for traditional norms and apparent lack of concern with the appearance of impropriety is indicative of an abandonment of even independence and objectivity,” Former federal prosecutor went as far as describing it as republic-level.”

Questions remain as to the reason behind the high-profile raid—was there criminal wrongdoing on behalf of the former president, or was the Justice Department driven by politics? Several lawyers interviewed by Insight say there is reason to believe the raid was unnecessarily intrusive. An attorney for the former president says she was present at Mar-a-Lago during the 10-hour FBI search and seizure, but wasn’t allowed to oversee it. “They wouldn’t let anybody see what they were doing,” attorney Christina Bobb said. Meanwhile, a 27-year veteran of the FBI and former federal prosecutor Marc Ruskin says that he is “stunned and dismayed” by the raid.

2 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 Editor’s Note the fbi’s raid of former president Donald Trump’s residence in Palm Beach sent shock waves through the country.

FBI TrumpRaidsResidence THE COVER The FBI’s raid of former President Donald Trump’s home has sent shock waves across the country and raised questions about whether the former politicallyorcommittedpresidentacrimetheraidwasmotivated.

Lawyers BY PETR SVAB GIORGIO VIERA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES JASPER FAKKERT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CHANNALY PHILIPP LIFE & TRADITION, TRAVEL EDITOR CHRISY TRUDEAU MIND & BODY EDITOR CRYSTAL SHI HOME, FOOD EDITOR SHARON KILARSKI ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR BILL LINDSEY LUXURY EDITOR FEI MENG ILLUSTRATOR SHANSHAN HU PRODUCTIONCONTACTUS THE EPOCH TIMES ASSOCIATION INC. 229 W.28TH ST., FL.7 NEW YORK, NY 10001 ADVERTISING ADVERTISENOW@EPOCHTIMES.COM SUBSCRIPTIONS, GENERAL INQUIRIES, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (USPS21-800)ISHELP.THEEPOCHTIMES.COMPUBLISHEDWEEKLY BY THE EPOCH MEDIA GROUP, 9550 FLAIR DR. SUITE 411, EL MONTE, CA 91731-2922. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT EL MONTE, CA, AND ADDITIONAL MAILING OFFICES. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO THE EPOCH TIMES, 229 W. 28TH STREET, FLOOR 5, NEW YORK, NY 10001.

FBI’S TRUMP RAID FBI’s raid on Trump’s home improperly intrusive, circumstances indicate:

One thing is certain, writes Svab: The raid has further divided polarized political playing field. Jasper Fakkert Editor-in-chief

U.S. companies should not place savings above security. |

teach essential boating etiquette, so we will. Features 16

The

67 | Be CourteousCaptain

TAMI CHAPPELL/REUTERS vol. 2 | no. 32 | august 12–18, 2022 THE

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has admitted that it gave false information about COVID-19 vaccine surveillance, including inaccurately saying it conducted a certain type of analysis over one year before it actually did. false information was conveyed after the agency claimed COVID-19 vaccines were being monitored “by the most intense safety monitoring efforts in U.S. history.” LEAD

RelationsUS–China Pelosi talked the talk, and should now walk the walk, on Taiwan. | Cybertheft Biden lifts not a finger to stop China from stealing U.S. technology. | Tax Incentives Greenfield foreign investment in the United States continues to collapse. | Chinese Economy China’s housing market slump could become a serious global problem. | Forgive Yourself Rather than dwell on past misdeeds, focus on the here and now. Lockdowns were 30 to 35 times more cost ly than beneficial, an economist says. 56 | Côte Lovelinessd’Azur A charming villa in one of the most picturesque spots on Earth. | Marvelous Maui The second-largest Hawaiian island is a beach-lover’s dream. | YourPamperSkin

and

Lawyers

52 | OverreachPandemic

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 3 28 | Courting Africa East-West diplomatic charm offensive takes a new twist in Africa. 12 | Resisting Beijing The man standing between Beijing and one of the world’s largest copper mines. 24 | BansTwitterAuthor James Lindsay accuses Twitter of using CCP tactics. 44 | GlobalHuawei’sInfluence

Life on

but for

Rats and

Some suggestions on helping your skin to keep you healthy. | Take a Swing If you want to improve your golf game, consider this gear. | Sip and Savor Settle in and sample some of the world’s best aged rums. Emily Post didn’t | Skid Row poverty, some also flat-screen air conditioning, a well-stocked fridge. | FBI’s Trump Raid say the circumstances indicate that the FBI’s raid on the former president’s home was improperly intrusive. | New Trucker Law California truckers affected by new law warn “prices are going to go through the roof.” | Dems Spend Big on GOP a tactical move, Democrats boost Republican candidates they think will be the easiest to beat in November.

TVs,

BLACK SMOKE RISES FROM BURNING OIL tanks, near the Matanzas bay, Cuba, on Aug. 7. Two firefighters had died and 14 people were missing as of Aug. 11, in what officials described as the worst fire in Cuba’s history. The fire destroyed 40 percent of the island’s main fuel storage facility. PHOTO BY YAMIL LAGE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Raging Fire SPOTLIGHT

SHEN YUN SHOP Great Culture Revived. Fine Jewelry | Italian Scarves | Home Decor ShenYunShop.com Tel: 1.800.208.2384

IMAGES Trucks

in this file photo.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 7 New Trucker Law 38 INSIDE Democrats Spend Big in GOP Primaries The tactical move boosts Republican candidates they think will be easiest to beat in November. 30 Life on Skid Row Rats and poverty are the norm, but for some, so are flat-screen TVs, air conditioning, and a stocked fridge. 16 ‘Incorruptible’ The man who is standing between Beijing and one of the world’s largest copper mines. 12 NATION • WORLD • WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK No.32 The Week

PHOTO BY DAVID MCNEW/GETTY near the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the busiest port complex in the United States,

8 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 37% of theirproblemmostinflationownerssmall-businesscitedasthesingleimportantinoperatingbusinesses, according to the National Federation of Independent Business. “We have a corruptmedical systemin this country.” “The threatgreatestwehaveisalackofleadershipatseniorlevelsrightnow.” 11 Emergency Hotels — New York City has opened 11 emergency hotels providing temporary housing for an influx of illegal immigrants—with more than 4,000 having arrived since May—officials say. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) GETTYVIALOEB/AFPAULIMAGES,GETTYVIANASH/POOL/AFPGREGTOP:FROMPAGETHISVIAREYNOLDS/AFPSTEFANIIMAGES,GETTYVIAJONES/AFPEDTOP:FROMPAGERIGHTIMAGES;IMAGESMONEYMAKER/GETTYANNAIMAGES,GETTY The Week in Short US Nearly 3 in 10 children who received COVID-19Pfizer’svaccine experienced heart effectsaccordingafterward,toanewstudy. Elon Musk sold an additional $6.9 billion of his shares in Tesla Inc. between Aug. 5 and 9, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. have urged President Joe Biden to lift the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for international travelers, noting that dozens of countries around the world have rescinded such requirements in recent months. $6.9 Billion 17 Governors According to a survey by Rasmussen Reports, 89 percent of respondents said they’re paying more for groceries now than they were a year ago, an increase from 87 percent in an April survey. 89%29%

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 9

The Reston, Virginia-based StarK ist, which is owned by South Korea’s Dongwon Industries, produces pack aged tuna fish for the mass market. It’s being sued by several individuals as well as grocery chains, restaurants, and caterers for allegedly fixing the price of tuna sold between 2011 and 2013 in the United States. StarKist, Bumble Bee, and three tuna industry executives entered guilty pleas to criminal conspiracy to fix prices. The case is known as StarKist Co. v. Ole an Wholesale Grocery Cooperative Inc.

FORTY-SIX SENATE DEMOCRATS recently rejected a Republican legis lative amendment to block the Biden administration from selling crude oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the Chinese regime. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) offered the amendment during a nearly 16-hour “vote-a-rama” process, in which sena tors voted on many amendments and motions for a Democrat-led bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

LAWSUIT

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says, in part, that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” The deposition came after months of delay following a judge’s order in February.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN and other White House officials say a report shows the economy had “zero percent” inflation in July, although the consumer price index (CPI) showed it remained near historic highs of 8.5 percent year-over-year. It isn’t clear whether Biden actually meant a “zero percent increase,” as the CPI dropped from June to July. The CPI showed that inflation remained at 8.5 percent in July, dropping from 9.1 percent in June, and dropping 0.2 percentage points from May.

StarKist

ActiontoSupremeAsksCourtReverseClass-RulingSenateDemocratsBlockAmendmenttoMassiveSpendingBill CONGRESS

The Week in Short US

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP says he declined to answer questions during a deposition in a New York investigation into his business. “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question,” Trump said on Truth Social after meeting with New York Attorney General Letitia James. “When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by law yers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice.”

INVESTIGATION

INFLATION Biden Says Economy Had ‘Zero Percent Inflation’ Trump Pleads the 5th During Deposition in NY Probe Into His Business Practices

A vehicle carrying former President Donald Trump leaves the office of the New York attorney general in New York on Aug. 10. The U.S. Capitol in Washington on Aug. 6.

TUNA SELLER STARKIST has asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling certifying a price-fixing lawsuit filed against it as a class action.

President Joe Biden speaks in Washington on Dec. 1, 2021.

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Germany’s Federal Statistical Office, also known as Destatis, said that food prices jumped by 14.8 percent in the year through July, the fastest pace of inflation since the agency started tracking the statistic several decades ago. July was the fifth month in a row that saw the cost of food go up in Germany, with prices increasing in all food groups, Destatis said.

NATURE

CHINA HAS WITHDRAWN A promise not to send troops or com munist administrators to Taiwan should it take control of the island, according to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) white paper released on Aug. 10. The move appears to signal a decision by CCP leader Xi Jinping to grant Taiwan less autonomy than previously promised should the regime succeed in forcibly uniting Taiwan with the mainland. The paper, published by stateowned media outlet China Daily, was similar to two other documents, which were published in 1993 and 2000. In the newest version, however, the CCP removed a vow that it would “not send troops or administrative personnel to be based in Taiwan.”

GERMANY NORTH AMERICA

The 139 new species discovered by researchers and partners of the Com monwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization also include 131 insects and other invertebrates, four fish, and three plants, and one frog.

PAGERIGHTIMAGES;CHIH/GETTYANNABELLECSIRO,IMAGES,GALLUP/GETTYSEANTOP:FROMPAGETHISWALLACE/ANTHONYIMAGES,GETTYVIARICHARD/AFPJEREMIEIMAGES,NEAL/GETTYLEONTOP:FROM

China ‘Will Not Renounce the Use of Force’ Against Taiwan: CCP White Paper

THE NORTH AMERICAN Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) says it re cently detected a Russian surveillance aircraft in the Alaskan air defense identification zone. “On two separate occasions, over the past two days, the Alaskan NORAD Region detected, tracked and identified Russian surveillance aircraft entering and operating within the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone,” the agency said in a statement on Aug. 9. “The Rus sian aircraft remained in international airspace and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace.”

AUSTRALIAN SCIENTISTS have named and described more than 100 new Australian species in the past year, including an ant that protects butterfly larvae, a millipede with more than 1,000 legs, and a fish that lives 100 meters (328 feet) below the surface.

AustraliaAircraftSurveillanceRussianDetectedinAlaskaDefenseZone:NORADNames139NewSpecies

The Week in Short World

While aircraft from any country can legally fly through the airspace, such moves by foreign aircraft could be seen as an act of aggression, as it suggests the aircraft could enter sovereign airspace.

A shopper prepares to load groceries into his car outside a discount supermarket in Berlin on June 15.

10 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022

CHINA–TAIWAN Food Price Inflation Soars to Record High in Germany

“We will not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures,” the paper reads.

A Taiwanese Navy warship anchored in the harbor in Keelung, Taiwan, on Aug. 7. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization headquarters in Canberra, Australia.

FOOD PRICE INFLATION in Germany soared to its highest level on record in July, though the overall pace of price growth eased slightly, according to the country’s statistical agency.

4. Rohingya children make their way during monsoon rains in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh, on Aug. 10.

World in Photos 2.1. 3.4.

8. The original vessel sank near Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1745.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 11

1. A ship, a replica of the 18th-century Swedish sailing vessel Götheborg I, passes under Tower Bridge in London on Aug.

2. Lava flows from a volcano in Fagradalsfjall, Iceland, on Aug. 7. The eruption began on Aug. 3.

3. A man walks past a damaged road in Seoul, South Korea, on Aug. 9. Record-breaking rains caused severe flooding, with at least seven people killed and seven more missing, officials said.

The man standing between Beijing and one of the world’s largest copper mines By Daniel Y. Teng

President Ishmael Toroama knows he has a limited window to revive the mine and, along with it, the hopes of the soon-to-be world’s youngest nation. Yet precarious waters lie ahead.

Ishmael Toroama, president of Bougainville. Toroama is the “Texas ranger” of Bougainville, an autonomous collection of islands in Papua New Guinea, an investor says.

I N THE HEART OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC region of Bougainville lies Panguna, home to one of the world’s largest copper mines.

‘INCORRUPTIBLE’

Millions of dollars of investment are needed, corruption remains a constant in the fledg ling democracy, and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) interest in the strategically im portant region is no secret.

CHINESE INFLUENCE

BRINGING STABILITY TO A TROUBLED REGION

REVIVING PANGUNA FROM ITS BLOOD-STAINED PAST Tribal leaders know bringing Panguna back on line will be the key to Bougainville’s future, which aims to be independent by 2027. Behind the push is its president, Toroama, formally the defense chief of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. “Bougainville has been blessed by a miracle,” said John D. Kuhns, an American investor in Pan guna who spends much of his time in the region

PRESIDENT/FACEBOOK,FORTOROAMAISHMAELL:FROM KUHNSD.JOHNOFCOURTESYWINKLER,OWENROBERT (Left) A copper ore mine 1971.Boungainville,inconstructionunderPanguna,in (Above) Locals view the site of the Panguna mine in Bougainville.

Kuhns himself has struck a close friendship with Toroama and is working with the president to build the Bougainville economy via Numa Numa Resources. Numa Numa has already carried out major in frastructure works including construction of a major road and hydroelectric dam, assembling a limestone plant to create exports, and reviving the gold panning industry.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 13

meeting with tribal leaders and the president. “Toroama is not only highly intelligent, but he’s absolutely incorruptible,” Kuhns told Insight. “He is the son of Christian missionary parents and very well-read, despite having to sacrifice his university education to go to war to protect Bougainville.”

Kuhns has developed a tight trust with John D. investorKuhns, “ISHMAEL IS THE THETEXASREALRANGER,REALCOPWHODEALTWITHSERIOUSPROBLEMS.”

The Bougainville Revolutionary Army fought the Papua New Guinean government after dissat isfaction with how Panguna was being operated and how profits were shared. Tens of thousands of lives were lost during the bloody war, which waged from 1988 to 2001. It ended with the signing of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, which gave the region autonomy and the right for its citizens to vote for its leaders.

WHAT MAKES BOUGAINVILLE SO SPECIAL?

Panguna mine has sat dormant for more than three decades after a bloody civil war erupted in 1988 forcing Rio Tinto to shut down the once-mas sive operation that powered the economy of Pap ua New Guinea—just north of Australia. So valuable was Panguna that at its peak it ac counted for 12 percent of Papua New Guinea’s national gross domestic product and nearly half of its exports. The mine is estimated to contain around 1 billion tons of copper and 12 million tons of gold, with a worth of around $100 billion—rivalling some of the largest copper mines in operation today. Yet it’s not only Bougainville’s resources that are so valuable. The town of Arawa just north of the mine is home to a major deep-water port built by Mitubi shi and Bechtel during the mining heyday. It was used for shipping ore overseas and could conceiv ably serve as a home for naval vessels. Further, Bougainville’s location is critical. Wedged between Papua New Guinea to the west and the Solomon Islands to the east, the island region forms a chain with fellow Pacific Islands across the north of Australia and New Zealand.

Kuhns said Toroama soon became the “Texas ranger” of the region. “In the Bougainville Peace Agreement, Papua New Guinea retained control of the police force,” he said. “The police force is worthless, they’re in it to get bribed. Ishmael is the real Texas ranger, the real cop who dealt with serious problems.”

While some have derided Toroama as a “street gang” leader, others have panned these claims as nothing more than mischaracterisations.

World South Pacific

“The Chinese have tried for years to figure out how to get control of Bougainville, specifically the Panguna mine, and they’re not going to go away. They’ll keep trying as long as they can,” Kuhns said. He said at one point, Chinese actors “bought and paid for” 10 mining licenses—sans a formal appli cation—to build a 50-man camp in Panguna. How ever, this sparked a fierce response from the locals.

World South Pacific

SPECTER OF BEIJING HANGS OVER BOUGAINVILLE In 2013, then-President John Momis launched a stinging rebuke of the Panguna Mine Affected Landowners Association after it attempted to circumvent several stakeholders and lock in a deal with Beijing Aerospace Great Wall Mineral Investment Ltd. The signed memorandum of understanding was for the Chinese firm to be involved in rede velopment of the mine. “It has no legal effect. It is null and void as far

“That was later burned down by the customary land owners,” Kuhns said, “because the Chinese did not pursue any relationship with the people.” Yet under the tenure of Momis, Beijing re mained a preferred partner, with the leader sign ing several memoranda of understanding and backing the establishment of a Special Economic Zone with China in 2011.

$ BILLION100 Panguna mine is estimated to contain around 1 billion metric tons of copper and 12 million metric tons of gold, worth around $100 billion.

14 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 as we are concerned. We will certainly throw it out,” Momis told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Aug. 14, 2013. He was Papua New Guinea’s ambassador to China from 2007 to 2010.

P A P U A N E W G U I N E A AUSTRALIA Panguna

Momis, along with Fidelis Semoso, the former minister for economic development, also signed a deal wherein the government purchased 500,000 shares in Bougainville Import and Export Gen eral Corporation Limited—a joint venture with a Chinese corporation. Both ran in the 2020 presidential election, along The bustling waterway in the capital city of Buka, Bougainville, which is wedged between Papua New Guinea to the west and the Solomon Islands to the east, on Nov. 21, 2019.

OFCOURTESYIMAGES,GETTYVIAKERTON/AFPNESSL:TOPFROMCLOCKWISETIMESEPOCHTHEIMAGES,GETTYVIAZHAO/AFPWANGKUHNS,D.JOHNBOUGAINVILLE ISLAND SOLOMON ISLANDS

Toroama and tribal leaders, and set up residence in the region after locals grew frustrated with flyby-night parties who tried to muscle their way in.

“This is a template that is particularly easy to see in the smaller countries in the Pacific because the mechanisms of governance are thinner, the bureaucracies are smaller, and the parliaments are smaller,” she said, adding that Bougainville was no exception.

“I see China is now an emerging country; it’s going to become powerful in the near future, not Taiwan—Taiwan is going to go down,” he told “60 Minutes” in 2019. “I see China has culture; they are cultured people. Bougainville are cul tured people; our culture is something we can connect with.”

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare forged ahead with a secret security deal with the CCP in April—a moved that stunned democratic leaders. The deal enshrined deeper ties between Beijing and the Solomon Islands, paving the way for Chi nese authorities to station troops, weapons, and even naval ships in the region—which could ush Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare (L) and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 9, 2019.

“If you are from a democratic background, you think that’s a bad thing. But if you accept this premise of ‘entropic warfare’ being the desired outcome from Beijing, you actually do want to create disruption within the society.”

John D. investorKuhns, “THE

AN UNCLEAR FUTURE Bougainville leaders are allowed to serve two fiveyear presidential terms, which means Toroama will need to get Panguna up and running by 2030 and also solidify the democratic institutions before and after the independence referendum in 2027. “If you were to ask me, ‘Who’s Ishmael’s No. 2? Is there a very reliable No. 2 if something should happen to him?’ And the answer is, unfortunately, no,” Kuhns said. “Everybody knows this, the people that I’ve talk ed to in Australia, but also in the United States and the higher reaches of government. What happens when Ishmael isn’t president anymore? What’s go ing to happen then? And honestly, it’s anybody’s guess. The same kind of thing that happened in the Solomons could happen here.”

er in militarization akin to the South China Sea.

THESPECIFICALLYCONTROLHOWFIGUREFORHAVECHINESETRIEDYEARSTOOUTTOGETOFBOUGAINVILLE,PANGUNAMINE.”

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 15 World South Pacific with Sam Kauona, former general of the Bougain ville Revolutionary Army, who openly stated he would align the country with Beijing over Taiwan.

However, it’s not just deeper ties that have con cerned South Pacific experts. Some have warned that Beijing’s involvement has allowed corrupt leaders to ignore rule of law and allow democratic institutions to erode. In fact, Sogavare faces im mense pressure domestically from the opposition, provincial leaders, and even the population—ex emplified by riots in November 2021 that saw the Chinatown district razed in the capital Honiara. Yet the prime minister has managed to hold onto power and convince U.S., Australian, and New Zealand leaders that Beijing will not militarize the region—even grabbing an opportunity at a recent Pacific Islands Forum meeting to embrace Aus tralian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, which South Pacific expert Cleo Paskal says will be used to show the Solomons who was really in charge.

Paskal said the South Pacific was a “petri dish” for Beijing’s ongoing use of entropic warfare—to erode a nation’s institutions to the point where it can’t react or deal with foreign interference.

Ishmael Toroama, president of Bougainville (L), with Panguna mine investor John D. Kuhns, director of Numa Numa Resources.

“You start to get this distortion in the society that creates an enormous amount of social anger,” Paskal, the senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Insight.

A homeless man stands outside of tents on Skid Row in Los Angeles on Nov. 25, 2020. PHOTO BY ROBYN BECK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

LOS ANGELES BY ALLAN STEIN SKIDLIFEONROWRats and poverty, but for some also flat-screen TVs, air conditioning, and a stocked fridge

18 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022

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os angeles—the homeless tent city known as Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles is where people end up when the bottom drops out of their lives. Sometimes, it’s where they die—one final insult added to injury. For Cuban-born Fernando Sanchez, Skid Row has been his home for a de cade and a half. He didn’t plan it that way. Life’s upper cuts just came after losing his job in the Great Recession. When his family gave up on him, he realized he’d lost everything except his will to live. “To be honest, I’ve been homeless for the last 15 years,” Sanchez told Insight. “I lost my job, [had] problems with my family. You know how a family is some times. When you have no job, they think you [are lazy]. No support. I used to have a good job. I used to be a truck driver.” At 64, Sanchez is close to retirement age. He admits life on Skid Row could be much worse if it weren’t for the kindness of strangers. Each day he sees them bring ing food, clothing, and other essentials. Even luxuries. “How do I survive? They donate food— breakfast in the morning. Over here, they give a lot of food,” Sanchez said, pointing at the sidewalk area where the supplies get dropped off. “I don’t get anything from the govern ment. I’ve never been in the military— nothing like that,” he said. Through networking and charity, San chez has been lucky to accumulate the things he needs to make life in this urban wasteland bearable—even comfortable. His moveable tent dwelling seems pa latial by homeless standards. Pitched against a concrete wall is the main tent where he sleeps. It has a large flat-screen television, an air conditioner to stay cool in the summer, and a gas generator to power both. He has a full-size bed made with fresh linen and a pink throw rug he keeps clean with an electric vacuum. In an adjoining tent, he has a small re frigerator, a deep freezer stocked with beef and chicken, and a wine rack with bottles of merlot and other vintages. He recently acquired a kitten and a puppy to keep him company. He has a BMX-style bicycle to get around and trusted friends to watch over his prop erty when he’s out and about. Yes, life could be worse but for a bit of ingenuity and the goodness of strangers. On this sunny morning, a young wom an stopped in front of Sanchez’s tent, pulling a cart filled with brand-new shoes and T-shirts. She asked Sanchez which ones he wanted. Sanchez wasn’t too fussy. He picked the best red T-shirt that fit him. Over the years, religious and other charitable groups have formed missions to help the homeless of Skid Row, like Sanchez, who now number more than 11,000.

Drive-By Do-Gooders, for example, is a volunteer organization serving 240 poor adults each week, mainly those on Skid Row who have difficulty reaching services. Charitable donations take place from a car window, “much like an ice-cream truck,” according to the organization’s website. “We offer basic human needs with no agenda, just pure giving,” it states. Among the most vital necessities they provide is drinking water, handing out nearly 1,000 bottles every month, as well as sanitary wipes, socks, tarps, clothing, and “portable protein” foods such as cold string cheese. Food lines and pop-up buffets are in the heart of Skid Row. Drive-By Do-Good ers travel to the outskirts of the area, where hundreds of the disabled, elderly, and mentally challenged reside. The city has launched programs, such as Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, to

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Skid Row company.keepaacquiredrecentlySanchezFernandoresidentpuppytohim

Nation Homelessness

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 19 mitigate the suffering of the poor and disadvantaged living on Skid Row. Evans Clark is the project manager of the ReFresh Spot on Towne Avenue, located directly across from Sanchez’s tent enclosure. The facility offers amenities most peo ple might take for granted: toilets, show ers, a safe, clean, shady place to hang out, and a laundry facility. “They’re doing pretty good. I don’t hear any complaints,” Clark told Insight. “We treat everyone with respect and dignity, let them know they can come back any time and get the services we provide.” At the corner of Town Avenue and Fifth Street, a station wagon pulled up next to the curb cut where a man who goes by the name Soul Brother sat in a chair. The driver then held out a shopping bag filled with groceries. Soul Brother walked over to the driv er, receiving the donation of perishable food with a heartfelt thank you. You could say Soul Brother is the gate keeper of this dilapidated stretch of Skid Row, wary of newcomers who might wish to steal or exploit the homeless in some way—as they have. There have been murders on Skid Row over the years, as its history is as long as it is tragic. Between 1900 and 1920, it was known as Hobo Corner, hosting thousands of migrant workers and men left homeless after the Civil War. In time, the police grew tired of the violence, mental illness, and alcoholism that plagued the location. Some men didn’t want to leave, so the police forced them out with periodic “hobo sweeps” to reduce their numbers. “Don’t help this class,” the local press reported. “It’s a crime against the com munity to do it.”

Nation Homelessness

A man sits beside a Skid Row painting on a sidewalk in downtown Los Angeles on May 30, 2019.

Today, Skid Row spans nearly five square miles—50 city blocks. It contin ues to grow in a worsening California economy with new arrivals each day, in cluding people with myriad problems and people priced out of the market.

BLOCKS50 TODAY, SKID ROW spans nearly five square miles, or 50 city blocks.

“I know many people who have signed up [for assistance] and got help. In my case, I’ve been locked up for too long.” “COVID also hit a lot of people” on Skid Row, he said. The Los Angeles County health depart ment reported more than 3.4 million COVID-19 cases throughout the county as of August. In January 2021, Rev. Andy Bales, pres ident and CEO of the Union Rescue Mis sion on Skid Row, told Fox 11 there had been a 66 percent surge in cases among the homeless. As California’s COVID-19 economy un raveled, people kept showing up on Skid Row, D said. “I knew a couple of people—one in par ticular,” he said. “Her van was so packed full of stuff she couldn’t drive around. “Yeah, she was out here. She was a good person. She was funny. Last I heard, she (Above) A man walks past tents housing the homeless on the streets in the Skid Row community of Los Angeles on April 26, 2021. (Right) A man who goes by the name “Soul Brother” holds one of his important possessions—an American flag—on July 26.

SKID ROW IS NOW HOME to more than 11,000 homeless people.

Nation Homelessness

11,000PEOPLE

20 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022

Operation Healthy Streets, another city pro gram, hasn’t done nearly enough to keep Skid Row clean, he said. While good samaritans have pitched in with dona tions of trash cans, those only get hauled away when filled, Soul Brother said. “You’re telling me that the richest coun try with the richest city in the world has this type of problem? [Sanitation] should be on the top of the list. We need more trash cans. How will one trash can take care of all these people right here?” he said. Sanchez said that al though a cleaning com pany makes regular visits to Skid Row, “everywhere they got a lot of rats.” “Rats, roaches—every thing. I can prove it to you. Wanna see?” Sanchez points to deep holes in the sidewalk. “Everywhere, you see? They come from these holes over here—day and night. Oh man, they’re big. Don’t let them fool you. We have rats all over.” A man who calls him self “D,” who lives in a tent at the corner of Fifth and Towne, said he’s been homeless on Skid Row for the past seven years after being released from prison. It’s been an uphill battle on the streets for him ever since.

“You have to deal with society,” D told Insight. “People down here are more than happy to understand you than, I guess, anywhere else. But you can’t get a job because you don’t have a work his tory. You can’t get an apartment because you don’t have a rent history.”

Despite the daily misery and squalor, Soul Brother does his part to keep his tent enclosure clean and free of garbage that might attract rats. Rated one of the most rat-infested cit ies in the United States, Los Angeles now faces periodic outbreaks of flea-borne typhus, ac cording to the Los Ange les County Department of Public Health. As of November 2021, the county reported 83 cases of typhus, the Los Angeles Medical Associ ation said. “One of the first things they should have tackled was the rat situation,” Soul Brother said. “If you don’t clean the streets right, the rats will come back.”

Ben Burgey counts himself fortunate on Skid Row, having lined up a small apartment. “After being on Skid Row for seven years, I’ve had some rats in my apart ment—rats all the time,” he said. “Do you see those tent rods? When you use them like a club—it’s like—‘smack!’ It’s very humane. I got good at it for a reason. I’ve had lots of rats for practice.” Burgey said he’s somewhat concerned about typhus, given the recent outbreaks. “I mean, the fleas from rats pass bubonic plague—25 million people [dead],” he said. “We’ve had this edu cation before. “Is it getting out of control? It’s been out of control. If these rats move slowly, they’d be furniture, but [they] move quickly.”

“It’s worse on 7th and Main. How are you going to get rid of the rats? You can’t get rid of the rats.”

D said he also met a woman with three young girls who visited the ReFresh Spot every day. “I’m not exactly sure what her story was, but she was divorced or something like that. There are a lot of people out here for a lot of different reasons. Some have mental health issues—some more severe than others. “Some are having a harder time ad justing or reintegrating [into society]. I find out about some, and when I check up on them, it’s too late.”

Then there are those on Skid Row who choose to stay homeless, fearing being “pigeon-holed or, put in a way, restrict ed,” D said. “They’ll give you a room, and it sounds great, but you can’t have visitors. So for a single guy that’s kind of like—you know what I mean.” “With me, I’ve got anxiety. I’ve got PTSD. I can’t get into a subway without freezing up. I’ll have like standing blackouts.”

Nation Homelessness ALLANIMAGES,GETTYVIABROWN/AFPJ.FREDERICL:FROM TIMESEPOCHSTEIN/THE

Mario Fase, 54, also known as “Guitar Man,” said he joined the ranks of the homeless on Skid Row when he became divorced. That was 10 years ago. He’s been on a waiting list for subsidized housing for months. Like Sanchez, Fase lived in Florida before moving to California, hoping to create a better life for himself. “I liked California because I was in the Navy for three years—San Diego. [But] they use you, and they forget about you. I feel resentment. They don’t care. It’s not right. [But] that’s another story,” he said. Fase said he’s used to many unpleas ant things on Skid Row—the deafening fire alarms blaring nonstop and the rats coming out all day. “All sizes. The bigger they are, the faster Mario Fase, who goes by the nickname “Guitar Man,” has been homeless on Skid Row since he got divorced 10 years ago. “You’re telling me that the richest country with the richest city in the world has this type of [sanitation] problem?”

Soul Brother, homeless man they are,” he said. “They’re not aggres sive. OK—enough, get out of here. They’re everywhere, man. “As long as you don’t leave food around, they don’t come around. As soon as I see one, I say, ‘Get out! Get out!’

Soul Brother said the problem could improve with a few more trash cans. But for the kindness of strangers.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 21 went out to Santa Monica or was on her way there.”

BiodiversityPreserving SPOTLIGHT

MEN FROM THE SLOVAK GROUP SHARPEN their scythes for the fourth annual manual scythe mowing of the Kopanecke meadows in Slovak Paradise National Park, in Vernar, Slovakia, on Aug. 5. The park’s administration organizes enthusiasts coming from Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic to participate in the hand-scythe mowing, which was the traditional method used by residents of the village of Vernar to collect hay from the meadows, so as to protect the area’s rich biodiversity. The meadows were hand-scythed until 1975.

PHOTO BY ZUZANA GOGOVA/GETTY IMAGES

Twitter Bans Author James Lindsay Lindsay accuses Twitter of using CCP tactics to coerce people into confessing to fake crimes

He was previously twice locked out of his @conceptualjames Twitter account, once on July 21 for respond ing “ok groomer” to Ari Drennen, an LGBTQ program director at Media Matters, and again on July 26 for using the word “groomer” in old Twitter posts that trans activists publicized. Drennen, who took credit for getting Lindsay locked out of his account on July 21, wrote an article published online on July 22 suggesting Twitter suspend users “slandering LGBTQ peo ple as ‘groomers’” and calling Lindsay a “right-wing CRT alarmist.”

Ironically, Lindsay said that he felt like he was “let out of prison” after the ban. “I don’t know why I want to go back. It’s so strange how immediate it is that I just feel relief that I’m not on there anymore,” Lindsay said. “The only reason I want it back is a matter of practicality, because it drives some thing like 80-something percent of my traffic to my website.” He accused Twitter of using tactics similar to those of the Chinese Com munist Party (CCP) to coerce people into confessing to fake crimes. “That is a tactic of Maoism—a communist tactic—to force people to confess to crimes to be able to get leniency. That’s literally how Mao ran his prisons in CCP-controlled China in the ’50s,” he said. The term “groomer” has several mean “That is a tactic of totocommunistMaoism—atactic—forcepeopletoconfesstocrimesbeabletogetleniency.”

To get back into his Twitter account in that case, Lindsay said he was “forced to confess” that the “ok groom er” comment violated Twitter rules because “it’s the only way to get your account back unless you want to get locked into appeal limbo.” Lindsay has since appealed the permanent ban. When prompted to “describe the problem” to Twitter, he wrote: “The problem is that you arbitrarily changed the rules and suspended my account after repeat edly forcing me to lie to admissions of guilt for ‘violations’ that aren’t real. You should un-suspend my account and correct your biased and arbitrary policy enforcement.”

James Lindsay, author

24 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 Beijing residents walk past a huge poster showing Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong in downtown Beijing in February 1967, during the Great Cultural Revolution.

By Brad Jones T witter has perma nently banned author James Lindsay for calling a transgender attorney a “child sexualization spe cialist” on the social media platform. Lindsay said he made the comment after Alejandro Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cy berlaw Clinic who previously worked as a staff attorney for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, accused him of being racist and sexist. Caraballo celebrated and took credit for Lindsay’s suspension, writing, “Tell James, I want him to know it was me” in a post on Twitter. In recent weeks, Lindsay said, trans activists banded together, targeted him, and claimed responsibility for a “mass reporting” campaign—which is against Twitter rules. “They not only launched a mas sive reporting [campaign], but they bragged that they did it,” he told Insight on Aug. 5, the day he was banned. “Twitter has a terms of service agreement that you can’t mass report or induce mass reporting. It’s con sidered targeted harassment, and it’s against the terms of service to do it, but nobody ever enforces it—ever.”

SOCIAL MEDIA

As the author of several books, including “Race Marxism” and “Social (In)Justice,” that delve deep into today’s culture wars, Lindsay is no stranger to controversy, but he has never been banned from Twitter for his opinions on critical race theory, for example.

Tiffany Justice, co-founder of nation al parental rights organization Moms for Liberty, was recently locked out of the group’s Twitter account for a week over a post condemning controversial proposed legislation that would make California a transgender sanctuary state, and for also challenging gender ideology. She wrote on Twitter on July 25: “Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predato ry adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?”

VINCENT/JEANTIMES,EPOCHTHETOP:FROM IMAGESGETTYVIAAFP

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 25 Nation Censorship ings, and although it can refer to pedo philia, it can also mean a recruiter who “grooms” someone into a cult, club, or organization, or a person who “grooms” another for a job or position, he said. Lindsay contends he used the term “groomer” to describe someone involved in what he views the “cult indoctrina tion” of others into the trans activism or and gender ideology movement and wasn’t accusing anyone of pedophilia. “I would not accuse anybody of that without substantive evidence. It’s a horrific accusation,” he said. He has admitted publicly that he openly criticizes those involved “de fending and engaging in cult groom ing into a gender ideology rooted in queer Marxist theory.” “It’s weird because the cult indoctri nation is sex, gender, and sexuality, and so they’re indoctrinating people with concepts of sexuality which sexu

“It’s not the broader constellation of things I’m calling out; it is specifically that they want to protect the transsex ual ideological grooming of children, and it is huge and it is coordinated,” he said. “There is a vested interest in pro tecting this specific thing, and I don’t know why that is.”

After Justice deleted the post, the Moms for Liberty Twitter account was unlocked. Media Matters has also accused Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok, Gays Against Groomers founder Jaimee Mi chell, and others of slandering people with the term groomer. Last week, Twitter also locked the Gays Against Groomers account. The group had posted: “Damaged people damage people. The internet is a dangerous place for kids, especially when you have radical alphabet activists openly groom ing them. Protect your children from these people at all costs.” alizes children, but that’s not the same thing specifically as pedophilia, which is also the sexualization of children. There is this weird double meaning, or two meanings to the word,” he said.

Lindsay has produced a series of podcasts called “Groomer Schools” for his website, New Discourses, which has been very popular, he said. “So, I’ve been calling these people ‘groomers’ for months. I started doing it back in October,” he said. “[It wasn’t] ambiguous in terms of what it means until 10 minutes ago.”

Twitter didn’t respond to an inquiry about Lindsay’s allegations that activ ists had launched a mass reporting campaign against him, but told Insight in an emailed statement on Aug. 5 that his account was “permanently sus pended” for “hateful conduct” accord ing to Twitter policies. While Lindsay opposes “cancel

James Lindsay, founder of New Discourses. culture” on social media, especially for expressing an opinion on an issue, he said people who abuse their positions or power to impose an ideology on school children “should be fired.”

FBI’S TRUMP RAID DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

A police car outside former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 8. Agency’s raid on former president’s home improperly intrusive, circumstances indicate: lawyers PHOTO BY GIORGIO VIERA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES BY PETR SVABRAID

“They don’t want to disclose what they’re doing, because what they’re do ing is wrong. And so they want to hide it behind the premise of ‘Oh, it’s a mat ter of national security and classified documents, so we can’t disclose to you what we’re doing or why we’re doing it. But just trust us. We’re not lying to you,’” she said. “Well, no, the American people aren’t going to stand for that anymore.”

28 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 IMAGESGETTYVIAVIERA/AFPGIORGIOBYPHOTOSALL

About two dozen FBI agents entered Trump’s Palm Beach resort of Mar-a-La go at about 9 a.m. on Aug. 8 and left about 10 hours later with “a handful of boxes of documents,” one of Trump’s attorneys on the scene, Christina Bobb, told Insight. “I didn’t actually get to oversee the search, they wouldn’t let anybody see what they were doing,” she said. It isn’t clear what legal basis the FBI had for the raid. The agents had a search warrant signed by a judge. However, the affidavit explaining the basis—its probable cause—was filed under seal, and Trump’s lawyers weren’t allowed to examine it, Bobb said. In general, the agents were looking for “what they deemed to be presidential records,” she said. “I don’t think there was anything of substance.”

Former FBI Director James Comey took his handwritten notes when he was fired by Trump in 2017. His home wasn’t raid ed. He handed the notes to FBI agents who came to interview him. The Obama administration didn’t just fail to hand over documents; tens of thousands of its documents went missing or were destroyed. No homes were raided. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clin ton failed to hand over tens of thousands of emails and documents from her serv er, claiming that they were of a person al nature. The FBI was able to retrieve some of the documents, revealing that many were work-related. Moreover, the “I didn’t actually get to oversee the search. They wouldn’t let anybody see what they were doing.”

History of Missing Documents If Trump had documents that should go to the archives, it would add him to a lineup of former government officials.

THE LEAD | FBI T here’s reason to suspect that the FBI search of the Flori da residence of former President Donald Trump was improperly intrusive, according to several lawyers. The raid prompted a re buke from Trump and Republi cans more broadly and further escalated political tensions in the nation.

Christina Bobb, attorney to Trump

Even if the DOJ tried to charge Trump with withholding documents, it wouldn’t hold up because the statute in question requires a “willful” violation, and Trump would have had to have “some malicious intent” to take specific documents, ac cording to Bobb. “They would have to lay the founda tion that Donald Trump actually packed up his own office” or ordered somebody what specifically to take, she said.

Trump’s legal team will take steps to obtain the affidavit, according to Bobb. There has been a dispute between the National Archives and Trump about whether he has documents that should be stored at the archives under the U.S. Presidential Records Act. Trump has been cooperative on that front and had previously invited the FBI to Mar-a-Lago to examine the White House records he had in storage at the time, Bobb said. “Nothing had been hidden, and noth ing had been kept secret from them, which makes this all the more ridicu lous,” she said. Potentially Illegal “I’m stunned and dismayed,” Marc Ruskin, a 27-year FBI veteran and for mer federal prosecutor, told Insight. “The disregard for traditional norms and apparent lack of concern with the appearance of impropriety is indicative of an abandonment of even a veneer of independence and objectivity.” Former federal prosecutor Mike Davis went even further, saying the raid may have been illegally invasive. “Under the case law, you can’t do a home raid if you can secure the docu ments through less intrusive means,” he told “Bannon’s War Room” on Aug. 9. The FBI had to first determine that re quests for the documents or even sub poenas wouldn’t be sufficient, said Davis, who formerly advised Sen. Chuck Grass ley (R-Iowa) on judicial nominations and now heads The Article III Project. “There’s zero evidence” that Trump wouldn’t have cooperated, Davis said. “There was no allegation or evidence that he [Trump] was destroying any of this ev idence or putting it into the wrong hands. This is banana republic-level tactics from the Biden Justice Department,” he said. Even if Trump took classified docu ments, he took possession of them when he was still chief executive and had the authority to declassify them, according to Davis. Bobb suggested that the invocation of classified documents was a disingenuous attempt of “shrouding this in a national security blanket.”

Immediate Skepticism

The Trump raid increased the already polarized political playing field, as Re publicans can now argue that home raids of former presidents are acceptable. “They’re setting a very dangerous prec edent where you can do a home raid of a former president of the United States,” Da vis said, noting that such a thing has never happened “in our 250 years as a republic.”

Secret Service and local law enforcement officers stand in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Judge’s Epstein Connection

About two dozen FBI agents entered Trump’s Palm Beach resort on Aug. 8 and left about 10 hours later with “a handful of boxes of documents,” one of Trump’s attorneys said.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 29 THE LEAD | FBI documents were under congressional subpoena at the time when a Clinton aide deleted them.

The raid prompted an immediate wave of skepticism, particularly because the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have a history of misrepresenting, break ing protocol, and even forging evidence in their case against Trump and mem bers of his campaign. “After six years of unfounded, absurd investigations of President Trump, the presumption is that any investigation of President Trump is politically motivated, and the burden of proof is on FBI/DOJ to prove otherwise,” Will Chamberlain, se nior counsel at the Internet Accountability Project, wrote in an Aug. 9 Twitter post. In 2017, the FBI and DOJ obtained two extensions of a spying warrant on for mer Trump campaign aide Carter Page even though the warrant was based on false or unsubstantiated allegations. The FBI later acknowledged that spying based on the extensions was illegal. The FBI also has a history of harsh treat ment of people associated with Trump. His aides have been arrested at gunpoint, handcuffed, and “perp-walked,” and their homes and offices have been raided in pursuit of trivial or nonviolent offenses, even when the targets were cooperating with the government. Shoe on the Other Foot

Already, Republican lawmakers are promising to subject the DOJ and the FBI to intense scrutiny, with the expectation of reclaiming the majority in the House after the November midterms.

“When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate over sight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned,” House Mi nority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an Aug. 8 statement. “Attorney General Garland: preserve your docu ments and clear your calendar.”

The search warrant was issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in the Southern District of Florida. Reinhart was a senior prosecutor in the U.S. At torney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida when the office reached a nonprosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein, who was later indicted for sex trafficking children and died by appar ent suicide in a New York jail. Upon leaving office, Reinhart went into private practice and represented multiple Epstein associates and employees in civil cases against Epstein by his alleged victims.

Reinhart was appointed a magistrate judge in 2018 by the district judges in the Southern District of Florida. The warrant was issued on Aug. 5, the day after FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee and was questioned about multiple whistleblower reports alleging the politicization of the bureau. Wray cut the questioning short because he said he had to urgently travel. Flight records indicate he flew in the FBI private jet to his vacation retreat in the Adirondacks, according to New York Post columnist Miranda Devine.

People cast votes for midterm primary elections on in West Columbia, S.C., on June 14. The tactical move boosts Republican candidates they think will be easiest to beat in November PHOTO BY SEAN RAYFORD/ GETTY IMAGES BY CARA DING

2022 MIDTERMS DEMOCRATSSPENDBIG IN GOP PRIMARIES

BUFFALOOFUNIVERSITYOFCOURTESYIMAGES,CURTIS/GETTY Nation Elections

D emocrats are pouring mil lions of dollars to meddle in Repub lican primaries in a tough election year. Experts say they’re doing so to prop up Republican candidates who they think will be easiest to beat in the general election. In some races, their wishes have come true.

Dan Cox won the Maryland 5hadonbybackedagainstgubernatorialRepublicanprimaryincumbent-KellySchulza10-pointmarginJuly19.SchulzoutraisedCoxbyto1. and favor the kind of candidates promoted by Democrats anyway, he said. “It is certainly possible that the DGA money tipped the scales. It is also possible that a candi date like Cox is someone who has the support of Republican primary voters.”

In California, two GOP candidates favored by the Democrats lost. According to campaign finance disclosures filed with the above states, the DGA is the top finan cier of the Democratic money flowing into these Republican primaries.

In the weeks leading up to the primary, the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) spent $2.14 million—almost 11 times the total amount Cox raised this year—on TV and online ads broad casting Cox’s platform, according to the campaign finance disclosures filed with the state. Democrats played the same game in Republican gubernatorial primaries in Illinois, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, where the candidates who received funding from Democratic sources won. The tactic was also used in Colorado but to no avail.

In the July 19 Maryland Republican gubernato rial primary, Trump endorsee Dan Cox captured the nomination, defeating incumbent-backed Kelly Schulz by a 10-point margin. Schulz had outraised Cox by a 5–1 margin.

“A Stronger NV PAC” was formed in April as an independent expenditure political committee to help reelect incumbent Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak and defeat Republican gubernatorial candidates, according to its registration form.

According to University of Buffalo associate professor of political science Jacob Neiheisel, Democrats are doing all they can to stem a po tential red wave, including boosting Republican candidates who they think will be easiest to beat in the fall.

Republican primary voters are also typically more ideological than general election voters

The PAC launched a statewide TV campaign broadcasting Lombardo’s platform ahead of the primary. According to a financial disclosure form filed with the state. The PAC’s top funder is the DGA, contributing $4.6 million. Lombardo prevailed in the competitive 16-way Republican primary with an 11-point margin. According to University of Virginia common wealth professor of politics Jennifer Lawless, this tactic is a natural extension of strategic voting at the individual voter level. “Strategic voting among voters has been around for a while, especially in states with open primaries, where a Democrat would vote in the Republican primary to elect the weakest candidate in the general election. But only a very small percentage of voters do it,” Lawless told Insight. “What we are seeing here is that political elites and Democratic associations are getting involved. “It is better funded, and it has the potential to have a little bit more of an effect because you are not depending on individual voters to come up with that calculus on their own.”

32 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022

In Nevada, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombar do already led in polls before DGA-backed “A Stronger NV PAC” spent $4.78 million in the gu bernatorial race.

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‘Tipped the Scales’ Neiheisel said it was hard to gauge how effective the tactic was in a particular race without good polling data throughout the campaign and good data on ad buys, such as gross rating points and targeted media markets.

DGA is a Washington-based nonprofit organiza tion with a singular mission to elect and reelect Democratic governors across the nation. Representatives for the DGA didn’t respond to a request for comments by press time.

“By pushing somebody ideologically far right across the line, Democrats can make the stakes so high for their side and increase their turnout while turning off independents in the general election. At least, that’s the theory,” he told In sight. “If the shoe was on the other foot, I have to think the Republicans would be doing very similar things.”

Jacob Neiheisel, associate professor, University of Buffalo

The Playbook: Operation Dog Whistle

She paid $40,000 to take a poll of Missouri Re publican voters. The poll first asked voters to rank the three Re publican candidates in the Senate primary. The result showed U.S. Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) came in a distant second at 17 percent.

However, the result shifted drastically after voters were given details of candidates’ platforms and messages: Akin, a Tea Party Caucus founding member who branded himself as one of the most conservative members of Congress, became the front runner, with 38 percent of the votes.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 33 Nation Elections

In the swing state of Pennsylvania, one recent poll suggests that Republican gubernatorial nomi nee Doug Mastriano seems to be in an unexpected potential tight race with Democratic nominee Josh Shapiro. Other polls showed a wider gap.

The poll suggested to McCaskill that if she could help Akin, the weakest fundraiser in the Republi can primary, spread his platform and messages among Republican voters, she could very well propel him to victory. That would, in turn, help her reelection, she figured. McCaskill deemed Akin the weakest Re publican candidate among general election voters and the easiest candidate to beat in the fall.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and her family members during an election night party in St. Louis on Nov. 6, 2012. election.beatwouldwhoRepublicantacticsuccessfullyMcCaskillusedatopropupacandidateshethoughtbeeasiesttointhegeneral

This tactic of boosting the other party’s perceived weakest candidate goes back at least to the 2012 Missouri primary. That year, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) successfully used it in her reelection bid. She later painstakingly laid out her playbook in a Politico Magazine article. One month before the primary, McCaskill made an unprecedented move in her political career: “It is DGApossiblecertainlythatthemoneytippedthescales.”

So her campaign produced what they called a “dog whistle” ad, using “reverse psychology” to tell primary Republican voters to not vote for Akin because he was too conservative for Missouri. “This presentation made it look as though I was trying to disqualify him, though as we know, when you call someone ‘too conservative’ in a Republican primary, that’s giving him or her a badge of honor,” McCaskill wrote in the article. During the weeks leading up to the primary, McCaskill spent a total of $1.7 million for Akin, more than Akin spent for himself. As the ad was broadcasted to targeted Republi can voters, Akin was inching up in McCaskill’s in ternal polls, tightening the gap between himself and the front runner. Akin eventually captured the Republican nomination. But it can also be a risky strategy, according to Lawless. “What we’ve learned in the past several elec tion cycles is that strange things can happen,” she said. “Although Democrats are being careful about where they are doing this, there is still a little bit of risk. You never know exactly who is going to turn out or what can happen in the general election.”

Shapiro, the state’s attorney general who faced no serious challenger in the Democratic pri mary, spent an unclear amount of money on a communication campaign broadcasting Mas triano’s platform. A strong fundraiser, Shapiro had raised $12 million by early June, outraising Mastriano by nearly 17 times, according to campaign finance disclosures filed with the state. Shapiro defended his spending in the Repub lican primary in interviews with media outlets, saying that Mastriano was the primary frontrun ner and that he was only doing an early general election campaign.

In 2022, Democrats overwhelmingly used this type of “reverse psychology” ad to meddle in the Republican primaries, too. The ad often introduced the target Republican candidates as Trump endorsees, 100 percent pro-life, and pro-Second Amendment. It then ended with a tagline such as “Greg Lopez, too conservative for Colorado.”

Democracy and Voter Responsibility “I don’t think parties should play in the other party’s primaries. I think it is a poor practice that I urge both parties to stop,” private equity fund Stagwell Group President Mark Penn told

The committee got the lion’s share of funding, $1.525 million, from Strong Colorado for All. The latter got the bulk of its money, $1.575 million, from the DGA, according to campaign finance disclosures filed with the state. Ganahl won against Lopez, 54 percent to 46 percent.

Greg Lopez was a Republican gubernatorial candidate running against Heidi Ganahl in a two-way primary race. Ganahl outraised Lopez (Lopez raised $154,931 this year) by an 8–1 mar gin, according to campaign finance disclosures filed with the state. In the month leading up to the primary, Colo rado Information Network IE Committee spent $1.2 million on TV ads and $300,000 on digital ads to broadcast Lopez’s platform.

Democrats are doing all they can to stem a potential red wave, including boosting Republican candidates they think will be easiest to beat in the fall, an expert says.

candidateThen-SenateRep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) (C) during the 2012 Missouri primary in Wildwood, Mo., on Nov. 6, 2012. McCaskill went on to beat Akin by a nearly 15-point margin in the general election. She summed up her “dog whistle operation” by saying that she “had successfully manipulated the Republican primary.”

Nation Elections

34 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022

FORMER SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D-MO.) spent a total of $1.7 million for former Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), more than Akin spent for himself, in a strategypsychology”“reversetowintheelectionduringthe2012Missouriprimary.

Daron Shaw, professor and chair of state politics at the University of Texas–Austin, thinks the tac tic departs from traditional negative or strategic campaigning and is unconstructive.

“It is a naked effort to brand a candidate, but it is being promoted by a group that doesn’t really want the candidate to win. I don’t think we have a term for it. You might call it sort of second-lev el strategic campaigning,” he told Insight. “A lot of us might have some objections to it. But hey, this is an inevitability of history.”

MILLIONMILLION

Four years ago, the DGA used the same tactic to boost Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Jeanne Ives, too. However, the DGA isn’t obligated to report its spending with the state because the ads don’t specifically implore voters to vote for any candi date, according to Illinois State Board of Elections Public Information Officer Matt Dietrich. “Any voter can file a complaint with our board alleging that the DGA ads are in fact independent expenditures and should be reported as such. No such complaint was filed in 2018, nor has one been filed thus far in this election cycle,” Dietrich wrote in a July 11 email to Insight. Although unreported, the DGA’s spending was still uncovered by several media outlets with the help of ad tracking service providers such as AdImpact. Costas Panagopoulos, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at Northeastern University in Pennsylvania, told Insight: “My sense is that this type of strategic activity has been going on for a long time. It just might be more transparent now, given the resources that we have to track spending. “At the end of the day, it is the voters’ obliga tion to consider carefully the candidates they choose. And in that sense, promoting any specif ic candidacy should not dictate how individual voters vote.”

$4.6$1.7

Penn served as a former White House pollster to then-President Bill Clinton and as an adviser in Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign. He also was the chief strategist to Hillary Clinton in her Senate campaigns and failed 2008 presidential campaign.

WAS CONTRIBUTED by A Stronger NV PAC’s top funder, DGA, according to a disclosurefinancialform.

Another factor is that over the past decades, as U.S. voters pivoted to apply the notion of democ racy to the party systems, the parties gradually lost control over the nomination processes, ac cording to Shaw. “We’ve all heard stories of smoke-filled rooms and state party conventions in which the Repub lican party tried to set up a ticket that’s going to be competitive across multiple races statewide; the Democrats would do the same. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the parties began to surrender that control,” he said. “When you open your selection process to a more general system that facilitates input by all members, it opens the door to the kind of tactic we are seeing today.” Shaw suggested that voters take more care to find out the source of a candidate’s positions and history. In terms of campaign finance disclosures, every Republican gubernatorial candidate state Sen. Darren Bailey (2nd L) celebrates at an election night party in Effingham, Ill., on June 28.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 35 Insight. “It’s happening now with greater fre quency, and it undermines democracy to spend money to promote candidates you don’t really want to win.”

state has its own rules. Almost all the Democratic spending mentioned in this article was disclosed to various degrees to the respective state board of elections, except for Illinois. In Illinois, the DGA reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars in targeted TV ads to boost Republican candidate Darren Bailey, who eventu ally captured the nomination by a wide margin.

IMAGESVONDRUSKA/GETTYJIMIMAGES,CURTIS/GETTYWHITNEYL:FROM

Shaw said two historic developments set the conditions for candidates and groups to play the tactic. One is the proliferation of money in political campaigns following the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 and the explosion of internet fundraising. The former opened the door for big interest group money, while the latter led to booming small-donor fundraising. “Twenty or 25 years ago, money wasn’t this easy, and you wouldn’t have the resources to mess with the other side,” he said.

Nation Elections

Shaw has years of campaign experience un der his belt, having worked as a survey research analyst in several political campaigns and as a strategist in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elec tion campaigns.

CONTAINERS BLOCK THE TIENDITAS International Bridge at the border between Colombia and Venzuela in Cúcuta, Colombia, on Aug. 8. In 2015, socialist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro shut down border crossings with Colombia after years of deterioriating relations with conservative Colombian administrations. PHOTO BY EDINSON ESTUPINAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Hostile Neighbors SPOTLIGHT

TRANSPORT TRUCKERNEWLAW California truckers affected by new law warn ‘prices are going to go through the roof’ By Allan Stein

Trucks hauling shipping containers leave the EverPort terminal at the Port of Oakland in California on Oct. 14, 2021. PHOTO BY JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Law Sparks Protests Owner-operators protesting AB 5 at the Port of Oakland managed to shut down operations for a week in July, prompting the city to file a suit against the truckers. In a July 21 letter regarding the pro test, the port’s executive director, Dan ny Wan, said his office would continue working to address the concerns of the truckers to end the blockade. “I understand the frustration over AB 5,” Wan said. “We hear you. We have heard you since day one of your protest action. “We support your first amendment right for a peaceful demonstration. How ever, as we discussed, even before your demonstration began, the supply chain locally to globally was already congested. “We do not want to see the loss of busi ness and jobs here.”

“The owner-operators run on a tight profit margin. Everybody thinks they make a lot of money, but they don’t,” Clifford said, while standing in line at a transportation logistics company near the Port of Long Beach on July 26. The way the new law is written, he said, AB 5 likely will do more harm than good to the state’s trucking industry. For starters, it will create “all kinds of problems in the supply chain, the food supply chain,” amidst a nationwide short age of truck drivers, Clifford told Insight. “What we do here will affect the food supply in another country. It’s very con nected,” he said. On June 30, the Supreme Court de clined to hear a challenge on whether AB 5 violates the Federal Aviation Ad ministration Authorization Act of 1994 regarding truck owner-operators. The court’s refusal to review the case removed a legal hurdle allowing the law to move forward in California, sparking protests across the state. The California Trucking Association likened the situa tion to pouring gasoline on a fire. “In addition to the direct impact on California’s 70,000 owner-operators— who have seven days to cease long-stand ing businesses—the impact of taking tens of thousands of truck drivers off the road will have devastating repercussions on an already fragile supply chain, in creasing costs, and worsening runaway inflation,” the association said. Jason Rabinowitz, president of Team sters Joint Council 7 in Northern Califor nia, told CBS that the new labor law is about unionizing independent truckers and correcting worker classification. “Every worker, every driver deserves the right to have a union and all the ben efits that come with that,” he said.

40 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022

ALLANBARRIA/REUTERS,CARLOSL:FROMCLOCKWISE L ong beach, calif.— Michael Clifford works for a trucking company in Utah but spends much of his time making deliv eries in California.

As a nonresident company employee, Clifford said he isn’t happy with Califor nia’s new labor law—Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5)—that was approved and signed into law in 2019 and took effect last month after a failed legal challenge.

The new law requires independent truck owner-operators—some 70,000 strong throughout the Golden State— to be classified as employees, with few exemptions.

Northern California’s Port of Oakland is a major economic engine for global trade, “and we want to keep our jobs here,” Wan added. Truckers Sound Off “More taxes, more revenues for the state, huh?” Jose Guzman, a company truck driver, told Insight while waiting to re ceive his papers at Three Rivers Trucking in Long Beach, California, on July 26. “I have a couple of family members who are owner-operators,” he said. “I know they work here out of port. It seems crazy.”

Independent truck drivers gather to delay the entry of trucks at a container terminal at the Port of Oakland, during a protest against California’s law AB 5, in Oakland, Calif., on July 18.

TIMESEPOCHSTEIN/THE Nation California

Another truck driver who wished to remain anonymous said the labor law

Francisco Gonzalez, truck driver “When the tohirecompaniesbigyouback,they’regoingpayyouless.”

Alex Velasco, company trucker “They’re going to have to pay W-2, and that’s going to cost more money for owner-operators.”the

According to California’s Employment Development Department (EDD), an “ABC” employment status test, which went into effect in January 2020, defines if a worker is an employee or an indepen dent contractor in California. “A worker is considered an employ ee and not an independent contractor unless the hiring entity meets all three conditions of the ABC test,” according to the EDD website. These conditions include that a worker proves he or she works independently, performs the work outside the hiring company’s regular business, and rou tinely works in an independently estab lished trade. At the Long Beach Travel Center truck stop, Efraim Lara, owner of Lara’s Transportation in Carson, California, said he isn’t happy about the prospect of losing his business and the freedom to set his schedule. “I don’t feel good because it’s going to be hard for us. I’m the boss. I don’t want to [go] back to [reporting] to a boss. I don’t want that,” Lara told Insight.

Francisco Gonzalez, owner of F.J. Truck ing Services in Palmdale, California, said what concerns him is the potential loss of flexibility as an independent own er-operator. “I’m not going to have the same free dom,” he told Insight.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 41 Nation California would devastate California truck own er-operators. “Every individual who has just pur chased, or is paying off their truck, pret ty much can’t work anymore,” he told Insight. “As an owner-operator, you’re kind of on your own. If it continues, what I’m thinking is people are going to start leav ing California. “You know what’s hard about that? They’re affecting an industry that’s for the state—for everyone. The thing is I don’t think anyone is financially ready to stop working to set the [new] standards.”

and it’s wrong. It’s totally wrong. It’s stu pid for them to do that. This is Ameri ca—c’mon, people. Common sense.

Michael Clifford , truck driver “What we do here will affect the food supply in country.anotherIt’sveryconnected.”

Another company truck driver waiting for an oil change in Long Beach feared a surge in price inflation if the law were to remain in effect. “It’s going to increase everything if they shut the truckers down,” the trucker told Insight on condition of anonymity. “Prices are going to go through the roof,

“Who do you help by doing this? What’s the purpose? We need goods moved around. There’s no way around it. If you create a law, make it for the people, not against the people. Why would you try to destroy families?”

“They’re trying to make us get rid of our trucks at a certain point—as they did before when they changed for the air quality. I had to give up my good truck and get a new truck—this one I paid off last month for $95,000. “ Gonzalez said he logs between 1,000 and 3,000 miles on his 2015 semi each week based on the job. An owner-opera tor can earn anywhere from $120,000 to $150,000 annually, “depending on how hard you work,” he said. “Right now, I can do my own time. I work when I have a chance. If I want to work more, I work more; if I [want to]

Caetano said the PRO Act includes a similar ABC test provision that could re classify thousands of owner-operators in the United States. “Now, you’re talking hundreds of thousands of trucks instead of [tens of thousands of trucks] in the state of Cal ifornia,” he said. The legislation was approved by the U.S. House in March 2021 and is currently pending in the U.S. Senate. “Technically, 1099 is cash under the table—even though they’re reporting it,” Caetano said. “You’ve got to be able to look at it from both sides. You’ve got to be fair to the honest employers.”

Efraim Lara, owner, Lara’s Transportation “I’m the boss. I don’t want to back [reporting]totoaboss.”

TIMESEPOCHSTEIN/THEALLANBYPHOTOSALLPAGE:THIS

Titus Jones, owner of D&W Trucking in Inglewood, California, took the opposing view, saying he supports AB 5, given the amount of cheating that goes on among truckers operating under the legal “um brella” of owner-operators.

Though AB 5 “levels the playing field for all carriers,” Caetano said, “you’re still going to have some who are going to try to cheat the system.”

THERE ARE AROUND 70,000 independent truck owneroperators across California. law went into effect either. Caetano said this has more to do with the lessening of port congestion, as cargo ships redirect to ports along the Gulf of Mexico and East Coast, taking away business from California. “There’s no work for the trucks on the spot market. It’s just not there,” Caetano said. “None of that freight has hit the spot market in California. We’re not see ing the inflation of what they’re predict ing. Rates are still down—way down.”

familyproblemseriousbecausewhenyouseelegitimatecompanies—businessesthathavebeeninbusinessforyears—youhavetruckssittingontheside.”

The trucker’s cooperative helps mem bers pass the ABC test to continue work ing as owner-operators, Caetano said. “All they’ve got to do is give us a call, and we get them running,” he said.

Clifford said AB 5 is a “huge deal” and isn’t good for free enterprise.

However, all that could change if a mirror law known as the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act passes at the federal level. The PRO Act would restore the right of workers to “freely and fairly form a union and bargain together for changes in the workplace,” according to the AFL-CIO.

“I wish we could take the time to talk about what is true capitalism, because it’s not what’s [happening] in this coun try at this time,” Clifford said.

“It’s a serious problem because when you see legitimate companies—family businesses that have been in business for years—you have trucks sitting on the side,” Jones told Insight. “The American dream is generating your income. When you purchase a truck, you’re going after the American dream. When you’re chasing the Amer ican dream, and you’ve got a lot of cheat ers interfering with that, then you feel this isn’t right. How is this working?”

70,000BUSINESSES

“I’ve seen a massive change in the in dustry—for the worse. There are carriers out here just ripping off owner-opera tors [under cover of 1099]. What we did was decide [to] start a co-op. Technically, we’re just a bunch of owner-operators in one big organization.”

42 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 work less, I can work less. It’s going to be my schedule.” His Own Boss Under AB 5, Gonzalez said he could lose all that. “We just got to keep fighting,” he said. “We have the right to be independent. I will have to sell the truck, and [a company] will have to hire me. I won’t be making the same money [that I am making] as an in dependent. When the big companies hire you back, they’re going to pay you less.”

Unfair Advantage Ron Caetano, a consultant for the Own er Operators Co-Op in California, said that “on the surface” AB 5 has shown that companies have tried to pay their em ployees 1099 self-employment wages to avoid paying normal wages and benefits. “That’s unfair,” he told Insight. “The law says if I have an employee, I have to pay them W-2. The employers have been skating the law and brought [AB 5] upon themselves.” However, Caetano said, the price in flation that many fear will result from fewer independent truckers on the road to transport products hasn’t shown up in the spot markets yet. He said there also hasn’t been a result ing increase in shipping rates since the Nation California

Titus Jones, owner, D&W Trucking “It is a

Company trucker Alex Velasco said that while the new labor law doesn’t af fect him, he thinks it will “cause more harm to owner-operators.” “They’re going to have to pay W-2, and that’s going to cost more money for the owner-operators,” he said.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 43 Huawei’s tentacles extend to the heartland of America. 44 She can respond with $4.5 billion in security assistance to Taiwan. 45 Greenfield FDI flows to the United States have dropped more than 90 percent since the 1990s. 47 POLITICS • ECONOMY • OPINION THAT MATTERS No.32 Perspectives CHINA THREATENS PELOSI FOREIGN INVESTMENTGREENFIELDCOLLAPSESMAYBERRY RED INSIDE U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen pose for a photo after Pelosi received the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon, Taiwan’s highest civilian honor, at the president’s office in Taipei,onTaiwan,Aug.3. PHOTO BY CHIEN CHIH-HUNG/OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT VIA GETTY IMAGES

Huawei’s artificially low pricing was irresist ible for many smaller U.S. telecom firms like Union.

44 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 THOMAS MCARDLE was a White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush and writes for IssuesInsights.com.

Mayberry RED Huawei’s tentacles extend to the heartland of America

During the ‘60s and ‘70s, U.S. anti-commu nists were subjected to much scoffing and gig gling about their dread of “reds under the bed,” culminating in President Jimmy Carter bemoaning Americans’ “inordinate fear of com munism” and declaring that “through failure” in fighting communist expan sionism, “we have now found our way back to our own principles and values.” Then, came the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979. Within a year, Carter was defeated in his bid for reelection by Ronald Reagan, who would call Russia an “Evil Empire” destined for “the ash heap of history.” All these years later, it turns out that small-town America’s telecom busi nesses found themselves riddled with a kind of 21st-century, high-tech stealthy threat not too far removed from Gen. Jack D. Ripper’s warning about the dan gers of fluoridated water in the film “Dr. Strangelove.” Andy Griffith’s innocent “Mayberry R.F.D.” has found reds not under the bed but, rather, over their heads in the cellphone towers. Rather than our precious bodily fluids, the Chinese Communist Party is making use of the electromagnetic radio waves traveling through the air above and around us. The Biden administration is now investigating Chinese global telecom giant Huawei’s use of hardware in U.S. cell towers in rural areas that could intercept trans missions used by military bases and in tercontinental ballistic nuclear missile silos, which Huawei might place into Beijing’s hands.

Huawei was founded in 1987 by a former engineer for communist China’s People’s Liberation Army, Ren Zheng fei—officially deputy chairman, but that’s a misleading title since he runs the firm. Disgracefully, it was the United States that enabled Huawei, with IBM lending its expertise in product devel opment and financial management as it sought market expansion into China. Now claiming a third of the world’s population as customers in 170 coun tries, Huawei’s tentacles extend to small telecom providers in the U.S. heartland.

Huawei’s artificially low pricing was irresistible for many smaller U.S. tele com firms, such as Union, but today, in the wake of the Trump administration finding Huawei to be a security threat and effectively banning U.S. businesses from dealing with it, Union and many other smaller rural firms who engaged with Huawei are disentangling them selves. Last year, Union Wireless settled on Finland’s Nokia to replace its Huawei equipment with Nokia’s AirScale 4G-5G portfolio, an expensive proposition that’s being assisted by federal subsidies. Sad to say, the red flags regarding Hua wei were known long before Union and the other U.S. regional providers invited this fox into the hen house. In 2003, Cisco Systems sued Huawei for its bythen infamous practice of reverse-en gineering its competitors’ products, in this case electronically copying and in serting Cisco’s router code into Huawei’s so it could easily steal Cisco customers seeking lower costs. The case was settled out of court. But even Cisco, which has been doing business in mainland China since 1994, carefully refrained from criticizing Beijing. For instance, it stated a decade ago as it criticized Huawei, “We respect the efforts the Chinese government is making to increase intellectual proper ty protection” and stressed that rather than there being any governmental strategy of economic aggression, “this dispute involved a very simple claim that one company used the other’s trade secrets and copyrighted materials without permission.”

In 2012, a congressional report found that Huawei’s equipment could be used by the regime in Beijing to spy on and even disrupt or cripple U.S. telecommu nications infrastructure. Too many U.S. businesses seem more worried about being ridiculed for having an “inordinate fear of commu nism” than about China’s unhidden global designs. Last year, mainland Chinese buyers purchased roughly $6.1 billion in U.S. real estate, more than any other foreign buyer—much of it, as well as similar purchases in recent years, on farm and ranch land near U.S. military bases. Whether Mayberry or Gotham, whether their wares are high tech or to be found in the soil and earth, U.S. companies can’t place savings before security when it comes to dealing with entities enthralled by our most threat ening strategic adversary.

Thomas McArdle

China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires that “an organization or citizen shall support, assist in, and cooperate in national intelligence work in accordance with the law and keep confidential the national intelligence work that it or he knows.” Cellphone towers near Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana are one of the concerns.

Wyoming-based Union Wireless, found ed in 1914, touts its Western rural values; its founder is typically pictured sport ing a cowboy hat and bolo tie. Union heard about Huawei’s low-cost and swift work from another small carrier. It turned to the Chinese company when a vendor dragged its feet in implementing an equipment upgrade. Huawei “worries about getting the problem fixed first and then worries about getting paid,” according to Union customer relations chief Brian Woody.

Dimon Liu, a U.S.-based China ex pert and human rights activist, wrote in an email that Xi lost face “big time in this round.”

The legislation would provide $4.5 billion in security assistance and pro motes Taiwan to the status of a major non-NATO ally. This is in U.S. interests, as Taiwan upholds the global economy as the “foundry of the world” for advanced computer chips, according to Menendez.

There’s a “window of opportunity” to act, the senator wrote, before China invades. Re versing an invasion would be somewhere between catastrophic and impossible. Therefore Congress must act—and act now.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chair man of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, supported Pelosi’s trip and Taiwan more broadly. He introduced a bipartisan measure in June with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022. It would re place strategic ambiguity over whether the United States would defend the is land, with a clear, “robust and credible deterrence to preserve peace ... across the Taiwan Strait.”

Pelosi certainly has game. “America’s determination to preserve democracy, here in Taiwan and around the world, remains ironclad,” the speak er said on Aug. 3. During the visit, and as third in line to the U.S. presidency, she referred to Tai wan as a country, saying that the United States could learn “how you address the COVID crisis, how we advance respect for all of the people in our countries as we go forward.”

This is because Beijing would have proved that the United States could be bullied, she said.

Pelosi has previously displayed such heroism. Just two years after the Tian anmen massacre in Beijing, she visited the square and unfurled a pro-democ racy banner, only to be questioned by Chinese police. Pelosi has, for years, challenged the quicksand of illusions upon which the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rests. For example, the “One China” policy doesn’t, as CCP leader Xi Jinping seems to think, mean that Beijing can “reunify” with Taiwan through inva sion. That would be one more nail in freedom’s coffin. Pelosi therefore just helped a slumber ing United States, especially on the left, wake up from what could have been its last sleep. She dramatically challenged the idea of CCP omniscience. In particu lar, she refused to comply with Beijing’s threats against her Taiwan visit, which included, remarkably, a backhanded one to down her U.S. Air Force plane. In response to such defiance, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, “Those who play with fire will come to no good end, and those who offend China must be penalized.”

Foreign ministers of all G-7 countries issued a statement affirming the right of G-7 politicians to visit Taiwan, saying that there was no change in the status quo and urging calm.

ancy pelosi is the woman of the hour. She visited Taiwan, met with Taiwanese Presi dent Tsai Ing-wen, and said a simple truth before the flashing lights: We stand with Taiwan. The proof will be in the pudding if, as U.S. speaker of the House, she pushes through the necessary legis lation, including increased security assistance and official recognition of Taiwan as an ally.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 45 ANDERS CORR is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk. He is an expert in political science and government. Anders Corr China Threatened Pelosi

She can respond with $4.5 billion in security assistance to Taiwan

To prove the point, Beijing mobilized a four-day “series of joint military operations around the Taiwan Island,” according to its state media outlets, along with live-fire drills that impeded shipping and flights. The drills included the People’s Libera tion Army (PLA), as well as the PLA Navy and Air Force and conventional and strategic missiles. On the day of Pelosi’s visit, 22 Chi nese military planes flew across the median line in the Taiwan Strait, a rare provocation. The map of the six PLA maritime exclusion zones that surrounded Taiwan between Aug. 3 and Aug. 4, including infringement of Taiwan’s territorial waters, make the “military operations” into a “blockade,” according to Taiwan authorities. Xi Jinping has threatened in the past to “reunify” the island through inva sion, but China’s ambassador to France threatened not only “reunification” with Taiwan, but “reeducation.” In China, “reeducation” is synonymous with con centration camps. Beijing also restricted the import of Taiwanese citrus, seafood, construction material, and cookies. These sanctions all impose economic penalties on areas and industries that support Tsai. Approximately 44 percent of Taiwan’s exports go to the mainland, making Tai pei particularly vulnerable to Beijing’s economic pressure tactics. But the world is waking up and came out in support of Pelosi.

Pelosi’s visit provided space for “Xi’s opponents within the CCP elite to push back against Xi,” Liu wrote. “If Pelosi were to abort the trip, as insisted by the Biden [National Security Council] and the majority of the China watchers, an invasion of Taiwan would have been far more likely.”

Taiwan is tactics.economicvulnerableparticularlytoBeijing’spressure

“There is no justification to use a visit as pretext for aggressive military activ ity in the Taiwan Strait,” the ministers said in the statement.

P resident joe biden seems unwilling to help U.S. trade and investment interests, at least as far as China is concerned.

According to FBI Director Christo pher Wray, some 80 percent of all eco nomic espionage prosecutions involve China. He has stated that his bureau has more than 2,000 open cases of Chinese espionage, and it opens a new case every 12 hours. “There is,” Wray said, “just no coun try that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security than China.”

The Department of Justice recently decided to close its special “China initiative,” which focused on Chinese espionage and cyberthreats. The White House has also floated the idea of lifting tariffs on Chinese goods. The government wants to do this not to help China, but rather to ease infla tionary pressures. Nonetheless, such a step would remove any pressure from Beijing to live up to its promises.

China Continues Stealing US Tech

When a Chinese court recently declared that no Chinese firm could be sued for the theft of technology any where in the world, the White House didn’t even comment on this clear defiance of international norms and clear threat to U.S. business interests. After so much failure on this matter, it was never realistic to expect much from any new administration. But it isn’t unreasonable to expect the White House to at least try to remedy what’s clearly a burden on U.S. business that amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

MILTON EZRATI is chief economist for Vested, a contributing editor at The National Interest, and author of “Thirty Tomorrows” and “Bite-Sized Investing.”

The DOJ recently decided to close its special ‘China initiative,’ which focused on Chinese espionage and cyberthreats. The White House has also floated the idea of lifting tariffs on Chinese goods.

Biden White House hardly even trying to stop the practice

46 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022

Obama’s failure to stop Chinese patent violations and, in general, the theft of intellectual property led Donald Trump to impose a broad array of tariffs on Chinese imports. That more extreme action seemed to make progress. Beijing, in January 2020, promised among other things to streamline procedures for Americans to protect their patent rights from Chinese infringements. Soon after Biden took office, howev er, it became clear that Trump’s efforts, too, had failed. Wray’s remarks make that clear. But, unlike his predecessors, Biden seems unwilling to even try to remedy the situation. No new initiatives have emerged. On the contrary, Biden seems determined to ease pressure on Beijing.

Beijing’s Thousand Talents Plan uses cash incentives to induce people to turn over pieces of intellectual proper ty belonging to their employers, some times even when these people are working on U.S. government grants, as in the famous case in which Harvard professor Charles Lieber was convicted of just such theft.

Beijing’s primary way to grab the fruits of American innovation comes through its insistence that any U.S. firm operating in China will have a Chinese partner to which it must transfer its trade secrets and technolo gy. Though not strictly illegal, Beijing’s insistence does fly in the face of inter national norms. But this isn’t China’s only way to ac quire technologies and business secrets. Frequently, Chinese firms buy high-tech U.S. equipment and, despite patent protections, reproduce it for use in China and elsewhere. U.S. firms con tinually complain about seeing their designs under Chinese labels, even in U.S. markets. Cybertheft is also common. News emerges regularly about cyberattacks organized and conducted from Beijing. The list of firms hit by such menacing behavior is a long one and includes Goo gle, Northrop Grumman, Dow Chem ical, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and the AFL-CIO, among others, and through them and their associates and clients, including the federal bureaucracy.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai has demanded that Beijing live up to the promises it made in the Phase 1 trade agreement with the Trump administration. But at the same time, she has promised not to “escalate,” signaling that little would happen if Beijing failed to keep those promises. Especially on the issue of China’s decades-long drive to acquire U.S. technology and intellectual property, there’s little reason to look for relief.

Putting a figure on the damage to which Wray alludes, Michael Orlando, acting director of the National Counter intelligence and Security Center, esti mates that China’s theft of technology and other intellectual property costs U.S. businesses a minimum of $200 billion a year. That’s just the market value of what is stolen. When including the sales losses involved, the center’s estimate rises to $600 billion a year. Every president for almost 40 years has tried to get Beijing to change its ways, all to no avail. The failure of each has forced his successor to try in a different way. Ronald Reagan began the process in 1986. Reagan’s efforts did such little good that Bill Clinton had to revisit the matter some years later. Clinton’s lack of success working through the World Trade Organization forced George W. Bush to look at the matter in 2006. Because Bush got nowhere, Barack Obama had to press the issue in 2015.

Milton Ezrati

The sluggish investment in new infrastructure disproves the notion that the United States is a magnet for foreign investment, in Clay’s opinion. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has reported that FDI flows to the United States recovered in 2021 after see ing a sharp decline since 2018. Foreign investment increased to $333.6 billion, up from $141.4 billion in 2020. However, acquisitions—the purchases of established U.S. businesses—were largely responsible for this rebound. The industries that benefited the most from foreign acquisitions last year were phar maceuticals; real estate; and profession al, scientific, and technical services. The BEA divides FDI into three groups: acquisition, establishment, and expan sion. Establishment and expansion are considered greenfield expenditures, which are more desirable.

Congress recently passed legislation dubbed the Chips and Science Act, which provides incentives to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. According to Clay, the 25 percent investment tax credit for invest ments in chip manufacturing included in the measure will incentivize reshor ing to the United States. Such incentives will become more common in the future to promote U.S. competitiveness, he said.

A capital allowance is the amount of capital investment expenses that a company can deduct from its income through depreciation. Governments throughout the world are increasingly relying on these incen tives to promote greenfield investments and encourage innovation.

Some observers say the U.S. government isn’t do ing enough to encourage greenfield investment.

Greenfield FDI flows to the US have dropped more than 90 percent since the 1990s

Akan

The value of greenfield foreign direct investments (FDI) relative to the size of the U.S. economy has dropped by 96 percent since the 1990s, according to a recent analysis from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a technology think tank. Green field FDIs are foreign investments in newly constructed or expanded facilities. While foreign investment in the United States rebounded in 2021, the situation isn’t as bright as it appears, ac cording to Ian Clay, a research assistant at the ITIF. “The share of FDI going to new or expanded facilities in the United States continues to shrink,” he wrote in a recent report. “Foreign companies appear willing to purchase existing U.S. company assets but not very willing to build new facilities or expand existing ones in the United States.” In 2021, the overall value of greenfield expenditures was just $3.4 billion, or 0.01 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.

The ITIF stated that greenfield invest ments are direct investments in the productive capacities of the receiving economy. Acquisition, on the other hand, only involves transferring owner ship to a foreign entity. Hence, green field investments are the most crucial and attractive ones for countries. In 2021, greenfield expenditures ac counted for only 1 percent of the FDI flows to the United States, while acquisitions accounted for the remaining 99 percent. Some observers say the U.S. govern ment isn’t doing enough to encourage greenfield investment at a time when many global corporations are consider ing leaving China. According to the ITIF, greenfield FDI flows to the United States aren’t recovering since they’re heavily reliant on research and development (R&D) incentives and other generous policies for capital expenditures. “R&D incentives relative to other countries have really taken a hit in recent decades,” Clay told Insight. He noted that the United States was lower than the Organization for Eco nomic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average in the government tax relief for business R&D. “On top of that, our capital allowances are much less generous compared to other countries competing for the FDI than they were in previous decades,” Clay said.

Emel

Foreign Greenfield Investment Collapses

A recent Tax Foundation study shows that the United States ranks 21st in terms of the average of capital allowance among the OECD’s 38 members. The U.S. tax code permits businesses to recov er 67.7 percent of capital investment costs on average, compared to the OECD average of 70.7 percent. More specifical ly, the United States ranks 32nd in capital allowances for buildings and 34th in intangible assets. It ranks third in capital allowances for machinery, because of the full expensing provision of the 2017 tax reform. However, the provision will begin phasing out this year and will be eliminated by 2026. According to the ITIF, Congress should acknowledge this shortcoming and fo cus on boosting greenfield investment.

T he united states has a poor track record of at tracting global investors, with foreign investments in new facilities having fallen sharply over the past few decades.

IMAGESGETTYVIASLIM/AFPDANIEL EMEL AKAN is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times in Washington. Previously, she worked in the financial sector as an investment banker at JPMorgan.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 47

A Serious Problem Facing China

JPMorgan’s equity research team estimates that these requests repre sent a total value of 330 billion yuan, or $49 billion (or a mortgage value of 132 billion yuan, or $20 billion, assuming a 40 percent loan to value). Local governments have seen their fiscal revenue decline by 7.9 percent in the first half of 2022, and land sales dropped by 31.4 percent. There are relevant implications for many sectors and for families. Real estate developers were the largest issuers of commercial paper in China, and millions of savers invest ed in bonds and debt instruments of property developers to generate stable and safe returns. Many of those are defaulting. According to ANZ Bank, China bond defaults have reached $20 billion in 2022, more than double last year’s total. Out of 19 defaults record ed, 18 came from property developers. Real estate is also a relevant driver of economic activity in the service sector and other manufacturing sectors. The collapse of many developers is generating ripple effects throughout the sectors that thrive from construc tion and the activity that real estate incentivizes. For investors globally, this is largely a domestic issue, and many expect the government to contain it through a series of bailouts and liquidity injections to the financial sector to prevent a credit crunch. From a finan cial perspective, this may be correct, but there’s no way for the Chinese regime to prevent the macroeconomic implications coming from the burst of a bubble of such enormous magnitude. Many international analysts ex pected China to be the first economy to prove that it could navigate a real estate bubble by deflating it through central planification. There was too much hope placed on central planning and too little attention paid to the extent of the problem.

“Since June 30, mortgage suspen sion requests due to delayed home delivery have expanded to more than 300 projects in different parts of China,” the report reads.

The real estate sector accounts for 29 percent of China’s GDP

“Sales at China’s largest housing developers fell 43 percent in June from a year earlier, according to China Real Estate Information Corp.,” Bloomberg reported. This has created an alarming funding gap for local governments, where finances are heavily dependent on land sale revenues, and a signifi cant problem for the financial sector and the government. China’s central bank has promised to mobilize a $148 billion bailout to complete unfinished real estate projects as anger rises among property buyers that haven’t received their homes after advancing significant payments. The size of the real estate sector in the economy is enormous, and the im pact of a slump in sales on GDP may be impossible to offset with other sec tors. According to S&P Global, China’s property sales will probably drop by about 30 percent this year because of the increasing number of homebuy ers’ mortgage payment suspensions. This could be worse than in 2008, when sales fell by roughly 20 percent, Esther Liu at S&P Global Ratings told CNBC. There’s no sector in China that can mitigate the impact of such a drop in tax revenues and output.

IMAGESGETTYVIAGAO/AFPJADE

Daniel Lacalle

There’s no way for the Chinese regime to prevent the macroeconom ic implications coming from the burst of a bub ble of such magnitude.enormous few months ago, I wrote that the Chi nese slowdown was much more than COVID-19-related and pointed to the challenges coming from the excessive weight of the coun try’s real estate sector in its economy. A research paper by Kenneth Ro goff and Yuanchen Yang states that the real estate sector makes up an estimated 29 percent of China’s gross domestic product (GDP). The problems coming from the slow-motion dete rioration of the property sector have extended to the financial challenges of China’s local governments and may create a relevant fiscal problem for the nation’s public accounts.

48 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 DANIEL LACALLE is chief economist at hedge fund Tressis and author of “Freedom or Equality,” “Escape from the Central Bank Trap,” and “Life in the Financial Markets.”

JPMorgan explained the extent of the problem in a recent report, “China’s housing market alarm bell rings again.”

Now it’s evident that there’s no sector that can dilute the effect of a real estate bubble burst. Even if the financial challenge is addressed through bailouts and liquidity injec tions, the impact will have to mani fest itself in the currency, inflation, unemployment, or growth—or all at the same time. If we can learn anything from this property slump, it’s that inflating growth with a central-planned hous ing bubble never leads to an easy and manageable solution.

I’m not arguing that this is a great set of circumstances, but private eq uity fund managers are certainly not putting a substantial amount of their own capital at risk. By this argument, carried interest should be taxed at the ordinary income tax rate.

In essence, carried interest is similar to an at-the-money call option. The payoff can be enormous. There’s a cost to failure, but it’s relatively small. And to tax the gains at the capital gains rate is too generous.

fter weeks of suspense, the Democratic spending deal formulated by the Senate ditched a provi sion that would have increased taxes on so-called carried interest income unique to private equity and hedge fund managers. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) ulti mately scuttled the carried interest provision, attracting the ire of certain left-wing politicians.

What’s all the hand-wringing over carried interest about? It’s a capital gains tax applied to an arcane concept—irrelevant to 99 per cent of taxpayers—that has been de bated in the halls of Congress for more than a decade. Taxing carried interest at the lower capital gains rate has few backers in Washington, yet it has prov en to be hard to kill. Presidents Obama and Trump both promised to increase carried interest tax, but neither presi dent was able to meet that goal. What is carried interest? It’s the profits that private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund investment managers earn from their invest ments after certain performance thresholds have been reached (such as a preferred return). Most carried interest is structured as 20 percent after a certain hurdle has been reached by investors (usually 8 per cent to 10 percent return). In other words, carried interest is the share of profits the investment manager partakes in for good performance. The term came from Renaissance Venice ship captains, who were paid an “interest” in a portion of the ship’s valuable cargo for safe passage—car rying the cargo. That’s a bit of arcane financial knowledge that most people could care less about. But what makes carried interest a national political talking point is the tax rate applied to such gains. Fund managers pay a reduced (usually 20 percent) capital gains tax on such profits, not the usual (and much higher) ordinary income tax rates. The tax law changes made by the Trump administration in 2017 made it slightly more difficult for private fund managers to enjoy the lower capital gains rate by mandating that funds must hold their investment from one year to three years to enjoy the lower tax rate. But this has had little practical impact because most private equity funds hold their investments for longer than three years. Mainstream media outlets call it a carried interest “loophole,” as though it were a tax-avoidance plan akin to illegal tax shelters. But there’s no loophole: The capital rates rate is actually written in the tax code. Others say it’s akin to a “subsidy” to rich Wall Street tycoons. But it’s not a “subsidy,” as any tax—even at 1 per cent—is still a tax; the government isn’t giving money to private equity managers to encourage investments, in which case “subsidy” would be the right term. The reason we care about this is be cause the U.S. government is in need of cash. Politicians believe that the tax rate applied to carried interest income is too low. Increasing the rate applied to this income stream—which only hurts already-wealthy Wall Street in vestment managers—is a “low-hang ing fruit” type of solution to raise this much-needed cash. After all, everyone hates Wall Street ers, right? Capital gains on carried interest derived from innocuous origins. It was to reward entrepreneurs and fi nanciers who risked their own money to build businesses that might not pan out. So when there are profits at the end, the tax code rewards these usually long-term profits by applying a lower tax rate. The American Investment Council, a lobbying group for private equity, attempted to make this argument. It stated that increasing taxes on carried interest could negatively impact pri vate equity investments into small- to medium-sized businesses, which are the biggest drivers of job growth in the United States. Contrary to what the private equity industry says, its firms actually put up very little of their own capital. If investments turn sour, the third-party investors usually suffer.

FAN YU is an expert in finance and economics and has contributed analyses on China’s economy since 2015.

Presidents Obama and Trump both promised to increase carried interest tax, but neither was able to meet that goal.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 49

The Commotion About Carried Interest Tax Fan Yu Why has carried interest tax recently become a national talking point?

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Rather than reject that sobbing daugh ter who tells us she’s pregnant, we can embrace her. We can console a friend whose marriage is in trouble. We can take our regrets and the pain we’ve caused and build a vehicle for compassion. Regret, as Pink rightly says, doesn’t just make us human. Properly handled, it can make us better people. But then comes that ‘maybe,’ that third way to consider and handle regret.

Jeff Minick

50 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022

N on, rien de rien Non, je ne regrette rien” Those lines to Edith Piaf’s 1960 hit song—“No, nothing at all/No, I re gret nothing”—became her trademark. Many other musicians later offered their own renditions of “Non, Je Ne Re grette Rien,” and the song has appeared in many movies and commercials. But here’s the quandary: Can anyone beyond the age of 12 truly claim to have no regrets? The answers to that question are yes, no, and maybe. Some embrace that first affirmative when they adopt “No regrets” as their philosophy of life— “Chuck the past and live in the now!” Yet, the rest of us wonder: Don’t these folks ever wake at 3 in the morning to find their past transgressions parading like ghosts in their mind’s eye? Most of us, I suspect, would go with door No. 2. We carry regrets that may stretch back decades but are as familiar to us as the morning’s headlines. Some of these incidents may seem inconsequential, such as the time in 5th grade when I joined a group of boys chanting “Vicki has cooties!” as she passed us by on the playground. Later, I apologized, but the pain inflicted by our words remained in her eyes and has likewise remained with me to this day. Other words and actions cause far more damage, terribly wounding those we love, friends we treasure, and our selves. Whether by stupidity or deliber ation, we mangle our reputations and harm others in the bargain. The guilt of these misdeeds haunts us as remorse less whispers in our heads. But then there’s that third answer available to us, that tentative maybe. In “The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward,” Daniel Pink says of the no-regret crowd: “This worldview makes intuitive sense. It seems right. It feels convincing. But it has one not insignificant flaw. “It is dead wrong. “What the anti-regret brigades are proposing is not a blueprint for a life well lived.”

Embrace regret instead of letting it cripple you

JEFF MINICK lives and writes in Front Royal, Va. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.”

To conquer our regrets, Pink tells us, we must first objectively study our failures. We should then extend to our selves that same compassion we might show to a friend who had similarly wronged another. If possible, we should make amends for what we’ve done, indirectly if necessary. That man who wishes he’d shown more affection to his deceased wife, like one subject Pink mentions, may rue those missed moments with his spouse, but he can offset that by offer ing greater affection to his children, grandchildren, and friends.

Pink then devotes some time to those who daily drag with them the injuries of regret and shame—sorrows ranging from marital infidelity to shoplifting a candy bar as a child. Like many of us, these are people hamstrung by the past, the walking wounded limping through the day. But then comes that “maybe,” that third way to consider and handle regret. Pink devotes most of his book to this alternative, explaining how to use regret as a tool for self-improvement. “Its very purpose is to make us feel worse,” he writes, “because by making us feel worse today, regret helps us do better tomorrow.”

Forgive Your Misdeeds

Pink also tells us that it helps to con fess our failings to another—a priest or minister, a therapist, or a friend. Dealing with our regrets, as Pink makes clear, can expand our hearts and so deepen our powers of empathy.

SCAN TO WATCH NOW

“How many people would you be willing to kill in order to save one from COVID?”

Lockdowns were 30 to 35 times more costly than beneficial, Gigi Foster, a professor at the University of New South Wales School of Economicsauthor.and H ow tobewouldpeoplemanyyouwillingkillin order to save one from COVID?” asks Gigi Foster. “That is essentially the trade-off. That’s the kind of question we should have been asking.” In a recent episode of “American Thought Lead ers,” host Jan Jekielek and Gigi Foster discuss pandem ic policies that now appear to have been more deadly and harmful than the virus itself. Foster is a professor at the University of New South Wales’ School of Economics and co-author of “The Great Covid Panic: What Hap pened, Why, and What to Do Next.”

JAN JEKIELEK: Lockdown policies and various mea sures are being considered for World Health Organi zation policy and interna tional health regulations. Do you have any thoughts on this? GIGI FOSTER: This would override decades of epi demiological knowledge and public health wisdom, and would presumably affect countries all over the world. It isn’t scientific, and we don’t have proof

The Costs of COVID Overreach

Nation Profile

THOUGHT LEADERS

TIMES,EPOCHQIU/THEBAOL:FROMIMAGESRAMOS/GETTYDAVID

MR. JEKIELEK: In large parts of the United States, and in places such as Cana da and Australia, there’s still some level of lockdown, and the population thinks this is a good idea. MS. FOSTER: Yes. In Australia, we had some extreme political measures that were supported by the majority of the people. They wanted a solution to what they feared and were basically being played. A lot of Australians, as well as a lot of people from other countries, were sold a lie by politicians under the cloak of public health protection and science. The politicians recognized the opportu nity to depict themselves as the savior of the people from this perceived threat: COVID-19. The fear grew to the point where people forgot about other things that matter. They pressured the poli ticians to save them, and then we’ve just had savior story after savior story being sold in the name of public health. And if you don’t follow along, watch out because you’ll be labeled “antisocial.” And in Australia, with the border closings and lockdowns, we had a huge amount of fiscal outlay to support people kicked out of their jobs. These actions have costs. Nowhere was that factored into policy making. And how many people have we killed with our policy response? That is the question: How many people would you be willing to kill in order to save one from COVID? That is essentially the trade-off. That’s the kind of question we should have been asking. You have people who should have gone to hospital to get care for their strokes or their heart attacks, or who missed cancer screenings. That means you’re killing some people supposedly to save others. And do they not count, because they aren’t COVID deaths? We should have taken an optimal policy response where we protected the people who were actually vulnerable to this virus: the older people, people with comorbidities. That was clearly the right thing to do. But it’s disproportion ate to focus solely on how many people we saved from COVID, without acknowl edgment of the human costs of lockdowns, which are gargantuan relative to any benefit.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 53 Nation Profile that lockdowns worked, because there’s no evidence that keeping people away from each other slowed the spread of viral transmis sion. That simply isn’t true, epidemiologically speaking. What is required is for good epidemiologists and caring doctors and other knowledgeable people to send petitions—and that’s happening all over the world now—to the World Health Assembly saying, “This is nonsense.” Essen tially, it’s a political move put into the clothing of public health.

An elderly woman looks on from her window in Barcelona, Spain, on April 26, 2020, during a pandemic lockdown.

MR. JEKIELEK: You’ve been in the business of calculating these costs. How does this come out? MS. FOSTER: For Australia, I’ve done a cost-benefit anal ysis of the lockdowns with the help of Sanjeev Sabhlok, who [is a former] Treasury economist for the state [government] of Victoria. He left his position, because they wouldn’t let him speak freely about this. We have completed the analysis, and we have a 145-page summary on the web. After tabulating, cal culating, and quantifying all the various dimensions of the lockdown policy costs, we found lockdowns [to be] 30 to 35 times more costly than what they delivered in benefits.

MR. JEKIELEK: As in terms of human life? MS. FOSTER: In terms of human life. At the moment, the number is actually 36 in the paper. But I say over 30, because, of course, estimates change. We do the best we can, as economists do in bureaucracies around the world, to evaluate a policy. Cost-benefit analysis is the standard way policies im plemented by governments get evaluated and then defended, but we’ve never seen it done for lockdowns. I still haven’t seen it, not in the U.S. and not in Austra lia. The reason is because anyone with an ounce of economics training who starts a cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns realizes very quickly, as I did in August 2020, that there’s no way lockdowns can pass the cost-benefit test. They were just too costly. If you want to protect yourself from COVID, it’s better to consider taking care of your health. What are you eating? Are you going out in the sun? Exercising? Sleeping well? Drinking a lot of water? Are you feeling positive about your friends and family and invested in your relation ships? These things promote our immunity. That’s what we should do instead of roping ourselves off. Every day, I have a mo ment where I either want

MR. JEKIELEK: I can’t help but think that a lot of the policy was based on models, on things complete ly separate from reality. It turns out that a lot of the variables introduced into the models were orders of magnitude wrong. MS. FOSTER: Part of the draw of the model, the seduction of the model, is that it seems a way to sim plify what’s an incredibly complex reality, particular ly now when we have this constant bombardment of information through the internet and social media. If someone says, “OK, here I have reduced all of this complexity into this simple model,” it’s very seductive. This is one reason why pol iticians and even scientists get sucked into the idea that these narrow, stylized versions of reality, heavily laden with assumptions, are just as good as actually coming to terms with all of reality. There’s so much we don’t know that it’s a fool’s errand to expect a simulated model to give you something supe rior to what’s happening in the world, particularly after you’ve had a few months to look at what’s happening and update your data. But by that point, in the spring of 2020, politicians already had this line, “We’ve got to go to the lockdowns to control transmission.” Undoing that would have been very politically difficult for them. Once again, it’s politics, not public health.

54 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 to punch the wall or break down in tears, because I recognize the pain we’ve created, and we’re going to be dealing with this for years. These kids who had their schooling disrupted, for example, are going to be behind forever. The babies and toddlers whose care takers wore masks missed out on language acquisition opportunities. There’s mass social complicity here, as well as personal complicity. Fear was driving us. And that fear also led into this sort of herd mentality.

Nation Profile

MR. JEKIELEK: “Mass for mation,” as Mattias Desmet calls it. MS. FOSTER: “Men go mad in crowds and then they wake up slowly, one by one,” said one sociologist. That’s what we’ve seen. You can’t see it when you’re inside the group, but once you’re out side, you say, “Oh my gosh, those people literally can’t think.” They’ve outsourced their notion of what is true and moral to the group. They aren’t thinking independently. That’s the scary part. Because in this period, it hasn’t been IQ or education that determined whether people were sucked into the crowd. It’s whether you were thinking and able to separate yourself from this mass movement. This is a common theme amongst those I have spoken to in the resistance. They have a per sonal sense of what’s true, and they’re accustomed to using their minds, to actual ly think. I am putting the alterna tive viewpoint out there in public so that we can discuss the most draconian, liberty-destroying policies that have been implement ed in our generation. A healthy society invites and encourages discussion on all the big issues.

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This interview has been edit ed for clarity and brevity.

A shopper walks past an NHS sign promoting “Stay Home, Save Lives” on a bus shelter in London’s Chinatown on Jan. 8, 2021, during a pandemic lockdown.

MR. JEKIELEK: I believe we’re going to get through this, but someday all sorts of people will have to come to terms with the fact that they participated in something terrible, that really hurt society and their children. How do we help people go through that?

MS. FOSTER: Try to think about the things we share, not about the divisive messages shoved down our throats—the vaxxed, the unvaxxed, the masked, the unmasked, the good, the bad. No. The things we share are much bigger. Help them to focus on that, love them, and help them to love you back. It’s the only way we’ll get through this.

“A lot of people from other countries were sold a lie by politicians under the cloak of public health protection.”

OUR SKIN IS VERY FORGIVING, which is great considering we can’t survive without it, so here are a few suggestions of easy ways to take better care of it. 60

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INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 55 Essential Golf Gear, Part 2 63 TRAVEL • FOOD • LUXURY LIVING No.32 Unwind

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Phil Butler is a publisher, editor, author, and analyst who is a widely cited expert on subjects ranging from digital and social media to travel technology. Real Estate (Above) The villa’s lounging and entertaining spaces all exude a welcoming, luxurious feel. It’s clear that considerable effort and the finest materials were utilized throughout. (Top Right) The villa’s terraces and other outdoor spaces offer multiple alfresco dining opportunities as well as ideal settings for more intimate moments. (Right) The exquisite double living room serves as the relaxation and entertainment heart of the villa.

Lifestyle

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 57 INTERNATIONALOWNERS/CARLTONVILLATHE

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HonoluluHAWAIIKahului

58 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 Travel Hawaii

A view of Lanai, featuring Hulopo’e Bay, Sweetheart Rock (Pu’u Pehe), Shark’s Bay, and the mountains of Maui.

Natural Wonders

Soil, sea, and sky in Maui

Pineapples grow in the broad valley that sep arates Haleakala from the West Maui Moun tains, and both coffee and cacao, near the picturesque town of Lahaina (once the royal capital of Hawaii). The latter, called Ku’ia Estate Chocolate, is brand new here and welcomes visitors to experience their delicious crop. As we rumbled through brown scrubland below the West Maui Mountains, a guide ex plained that this is one of the driest places on the island, where maybe 10 inches of rainfall in a year. Minutes later, we entered a whole different world, a lush, planted forest of almost 1,000 cacao trees, the starting point of this unique “farm-to-factory” operation. While only 25 percent of the beans that go into their chocolate are actually grown here, it’s a place where you can stride out on the soil,

F or some, a trip to a subtrop ical island is purely about two things: sun and sand. A chance to decompress, drink in hand. And while it’s definitely the perfect place to park yourself on the beach, Maui is a place that offers far more. As I’ve navigated around this second-largest of the Hawaiian islands—home to about 165,000 people—I have learned to expect the unexpected. For example: farms. Ascend the flanks of Haleakala, Maui’s dor mant volcano, to the dreamy, above-the-clouds area known as Upcountry. This is the island’s primary agricultural region. Your first stop should be Surfing Goat, a dairy farm where goats take turns climbing up and looking out from surfboards raised on platforms. (“They just like it,” a guide told me. “The altitude, the view.”) Nearby are a lavender farm, a ranch, a cowboy town, and a few places growing fresh fruit and vegetables for hotels and restaurants in loamy volcanic soil.

By Tim Johnson

Direct flights from the U.S. land at Kahului Airport (OGG).

MAUIGo welcomes about 3 million tourists in a typical year.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 59 Travel Hawaii get your hands dirty, and experience the prod uct in its infancy. The guide extracted a bean right from the cacao pod, which looks a bit like a shriveled melon, encouraging me to give it a taste. It was weird, gooey, tangy, and fresh. Not unpleasant, but the finished product was much better. After some time among the plants, we climbed into a little treehouse and found my designated station set up with little squares of chocolate, both dark and light. All the chocolate is made on-site, and the best were those created in combination with fruit (guava, mango, and orange) harvested here on the island and on Molokai, visible just across a stretch of blue. The citrus offset the sweet perfectly. And during any trip here, the sea will beckon. All beaches on Maui are public, and the Pacific thrives with abundant sea life. Roughly 20 per cent of the fish that swim here are found only in Hawaii, and you’ll find all sorts of other cu rious creatures: spinner dolphins, that play in the wakes of passing boats; massive manta rays, with a wingspan that can reach 20 feet; monk seals, sharks, big turtles, and huge whales.

Moments later, an ancient-looking green sea turtle swam past. And near the end of the daylong cruise, a humpback whale breached, leaping from the ocean and crashing back into the Pacific, a sight as majestic as it was sudden, surprising, and unforgettable. On one of my last nights on the island, I saw the sky in new ways. I was led up to the roof of a five-star hotel by Ed Mahoney, the director of astronomy for the Hyatt Regency Maui, and a solar system ambassador for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He told me he’s had his eyes on the skies since he was 7 years old, when the Russians launched Sputnik. “That’s when my treehouse became an observatory,” he laughed. We approached a series of telescopes, including the “biggest and best” recreational telescope in Maui. Why here, for stargazing? Mahoney noted that the weather is good for it, about 90 percent of the time, with very few cloudy nights. We saw Sirius, the North Star, bright and strong, as well as planets, and a far-off star sys tem, literally ages in the distance. As we rotated between the three scopes, each look in the eye pieces sparked the imagination. But it wasn’t just the sky—it was the night, too. Palm fronds gently blew in a warm breeze down below. The moon reflected off the rolling sea. Even here, on a hotel rooftop, all of Maui’s majesty and the pleasure of being outside among its natural wonders made this evening, and the trip, com plete. Sky, sea, and soil all delivered joy in one of the world’s top tourist destinations.

Take Note: If you’re looking for a change in the weather, just take a drive on the Road to Hana, to the far side of the island, for a little moody precipitation, or Kaanapali or Kihei for perpetualalmost-sun.

(Above) Workers with cacao beans on Ku’ia Estate. (Right) Sunset view from Kaanapali Beach. (Far Right) Kaanapali Beach.

If You

After an educational trip to the Maui Ocean Center, an aquarium, I got out on the water. Hopping on a catamaran right off the beach in Kaanapali, a resort community just north of Lahaina, we skimmed across the waves of the Pacific. “People here aren’t looking for things you can do anywhere,” a deckhand told me. The natural world remains a primary attraction, he said. “There’s a peace in it.”

Stay: The Royal Lahaina Resort is a classic property. Set on the quiet side of the beach at timepartslobby,pool,transformedrenovationsKaanapali,havetherestaurant,andotherofthislong-favorite.

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Getting Around: Unless carinplanningyou’reonstayingoneplace,arentalisessential.

ASSOCIATIONRESORTBEACHKAANAPALICHOCOLATE,ESTATEKU’IAOF Tim Johnson is based in Toronto. He has visited 140 countries across all seven continents.

Skin-friendly foods include chocolate.insweettomatoes,broccoli,nuts,seeds,potatoes,and,moderation,dark Salmon and other fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids are an important part of a healthy skin diet, keeping it supple and moisturized from within.

In addition to being delicious, avocados are rich in vitamin E and “good” fats, which are essential for keeping skin nourished for optimal health.

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Supplements such as vitamins D and E are essential to skin health, especially if fish or other suggested foods aren’t readily available.

SO HOW DO WE PROTECT OUR SKIN?

T his section focuses on luxury, and what could be more luxurious than beautiful skin? Spas offer treatments, but, eventually, you have to go home, which is when the focus on skin may begin to wane. To make sure that doesn’t happen, we’ll review some very approachable ways to keep your skin healthy. In order to have healthy skin, you first need to understand what it is and how it works. Our skin does a remarkable job of protecting us from exposure to wind, rain, cold, heat, and viruses, as well as providing a protec tive covering for our blood vessels, muscles, and delicate organs. Speaking of organs, the skin is the largest human organ, with a typical adult body covered in 22 square feet of it. It’s thickest on feet and at its thinnest on eyelids.

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The World

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 61 Lifestyle Skin Care Essentials

Vitamin D is said to enhance the overall health of skin, promoting the growth and repair of cells, which in turn helps to minimize the effects of aging. According to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, more than 40 percent of Americans have a vitamin D defi ciency. Happily, this can be rectified fairly easily. There are three sources of vitamin D: vitamin D supplements, food sources such as tuna, swordfish, salmon, and beef liver, and sunlight, in the form of UVB exposure.

A TYPICAL PERSON has 300 million skin cells, and it’s imperative to protect every one of them. Under optimal conditions, a typical human sheds 30,000 dead skin cells every minute, which are quickly replaced. On average, assuming good health, our skin replaces itself every 28 days. Of the three layers of skin, the outer epidermal layer is the one we can most readily protect, although proper nutrition is a must for the two inner layers as well. The epidermis is made of keratinocyte cells—proteins that are also present in hair and nails. These cells grow outward, arriving at the surface in a process requiring about five weeks. Outer layer skin damage can be caused by scrapes, cuts, burns, and overexposure to ultraviolet (UV) rays (sunburn). Of these, sunburns are, subject to your lifestyle, the most avoidable. But unless you’re a vam pire, total avoidance of UV rays isn’t a great idea. Without sunlight, there’d be no life as we know it here on Earth.

The answer is a combination of straight forward actions, starting with a diet that ensures proper skin nutrition. Omega-3 fatty acids found in salm on and mackerel help to keep the skin moisturized and supple. Fish rich in fatty oils are often also a source of vitamin E, a powerful antioxidant, as well as zinc, which is essential for the production of new skin cells, plus proteins that keep skin strong. Avocados are another good source of “good fats” and vitamin E—who knew guacamole had medicinal benefits? Other skin-friendly foods include nuts, seeds, sweet potatoes, broccoli (Mom was right to make us eat it), purslane, tomatoes, red grapes, berries, and dark chocolate (which is a tasty source of antioxidants).

timesexposureminutessuggestsOrganizationHealth5to15ofUV2to3perweek.

Cover Up The most common skin damage is caused by too much UV exposure, so limit time in the sun, and when you are out, use sunblock, wear protective clothing, a hat, and sunglasses. Machine-Made A number of systems can be used to rejuvenate damaged skin, such as an infrared skin tightening device, which causes the body to produce more elastin and collagen. Eat Smart Good skin requires a diet rich in vitamin D, omega-3 acids, and antioxidants. Fatty fish, seeds, avocadoes, and even dark chocolate keep skin nourished.

321 SKIN HEALTH 101

An easy way to keep skin in peak condition is to add nuts and seeds to your diet, such as in the form of salad toppings or snacks.

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Lifelong skin health requires a serious commitment to diet, avoiding excessive UV exposure, and healthy lifestyle choices such as using moisturizers, not smoking, and using alcohol responsibly.

How to have movie star skin LIFESTYLE

62 INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 Lifestyle Skin Care Essentials

Supplements are a good choice for those whose diets are lacking in the foods listed; always consult your phy sician before considering a vitamin regimen. SUNLIGHT IS ANOTHER source, but it must be used in moderation; UV over exposure can lead to wrinkles and sunburn. Limit overexposure and take protective measures such as wearing sun-protective clothing, a hat, and sun glasses while outdoors. Even George Hamilton, an actor per haps best known for his quest to attain and maintain the perfect tan, now relies largely on bronzers to maintain his golden hue. UV avoidance is the best skin dam age preventative, but there are several systems that are said to help to repair damaged skin. One method is using intense pulsed light, a system utilizing light energy to heat the skin in order to remove specific, targeted skin cells based on color. It evens out skin tone, and is used to remove acne scars, freckles, wrinkles, and more, but it can’t be used around the eyes. Another system uses a radio fre quency machine to apply specific radio frequency waves to heat targeted areas of the skin. The body reacts as if it had been injured, sending rejuvenating collagen to the treated area. As a result, the skin is tightened, reducing sags and wrinkles. In infrared skin tightening, infrared exposure is applied to cause controlled damage. This causes the body to in crease elastin and collagen production, resulting in tighter skin; it’s often used on the face and neck. Your dermatologist can help you to choose a system that’s right for you.

How you hold and use the club, from a wood to a putter, determines the effectiveness of each stroke. This is even better than having a coach with you 24/7 because it’s just facts, not opinions. Attaching a sensor to each club allows you to “see” how well you’re hitting; the hands-free system, said to help provide a five-stroke handicap improvement in the first year, automatically collects shot data. Perfect Your Swing

In a few months, early morning or late afternoon tee times will turn a bit chilly, so consider this heater that tucks into a cup holder to keep you comfortable as temperatures drop. It also blows cooling breezes in warm weather, making it a year-round upgrade that can be used in rental carts or permanently installed onto your own cart. You’ll also enjoy it during evening neighborhood cart cruises.

INSIGHT August 12–18, 2022 63

The key to being a great golfer is having an awesome swing. Instead of guessing how well you launched the ball, this device uses 3D Doppler radar to meas ure eight parameters, including club speed, flight time, spin rate, ball speed, and more. By review ing each swing, it’s easier to make adjustments while you’re at the tee. Between games, use it indoors with a net, and to se lect the best shaft length or club head for new clubs.

Better Than a Yardstick GOLFBUDDY VOICE 2 SE $129.99 Unless you always have a course-savvy caddy suggesting the right club for each shot based on the distance to the pin, this is the next best thing. Loaded with details of 40,000 golf courses, it uses GPS technology to provide the exact distance from wherever you may be on the course to the hole; press the button to hear a clear voice tell you the distance.

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FLIGHTSCOPE MEVO $499

Don’t Feed the Water Hazards CALLAWAY 15-FOOT GOLF BALL RETRIEVER $49.99

Luxury Living Golf Essentials

It’s frustrating to see the ball in the water hazard, just a bit too far to reach it with a club, which all too often ends up with you getting wet trying to retrieve it. Before you go swimming, consider this handy device; extending to 15 feet, it pays for itself quickly. It’s a must for Florida courses where you have to wonder how many gators are lurking next to the ball.

HIGH-TECH

Your Clubs Are the Coach ARCCOS GOLF CADDIE $469.98

Climate-Control Your Cart CLIMATE CADDY ELECTRIC GOLFHEATERCART $219.95

We still have plenty of golfing weather before it starts to get cold, so here’s some equipment to help you shave some strokes from your handicap GOLF TOOLS By Bill Lindsey

How Stan ComicsTransformedLee Comic books began as kid stuff. By the time the 20th century had ended, they had become a major cultural influence. No one was more responsible for that transformation than mythmaker Stan Lee. This biography explores Lee’s life, revealing the man and his influence. Leibovitz shows how Lee drifted into comics and created superheroes— icons such as SpiderMan and Iron Man— which struck a chord with American youth that continues to this day. UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2020, 192 PAGES ‘Stan Lee ’ By Liel Leibovitz

AVON, 2005, 694 PAGES owner of the historic Diamond Cross Ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He’s a master “horse whisperer” and leadership coach. He applies ahavesuccessfultolessonstohard-wonexperienced,horsesensecreateinvaluableforanyonelivearicher,morelife.Allyoutodoisthinklikehorse.

BETHLEHEM BOOKS, 2000, 87 PAGES ‘The Small War of Sergeant Donkey’ By Maureen Daly

moreSouththroughShade.couldofdetective,famousPinkerton,DetectiveVictorian-eratrans-Atlanticthriller,WilliamsonoftheAmericanisinsearchthemanhisfatherneverfind:EdwardHissearchLondonandintoAfricarevealsthanheexpected. FARRAR,

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Grant Golliher is a businessman. He’s the ‘Think Like a Horse ’ By Grant Golliher PERSONAL GROWTH CLASSICS MEDICINE go through training and into combat. Written less than a decade after the war, this enthralling novel also captures the patriotism, the culture, and even the slang of that day. This is a great read for military buffs and devotees of realistic fiction.

WhispererFromWisdomaHorse

G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS, 2022, 272 PAGES FOR KIDS

YALE

Epoch Booklist Are there books you’d recommend? We’d love to hear from you. Let us know at features@epochtimes.com A Tale andAdventureofRescue Set in Italy near the end of World War II, this finely spun story fea tures a boy, Chico; an American soldier, Sgt. Missouri; a wounded donkey; and the friend ship that forms between them during this tumul tuous time. This book is for those aged 10 to 12.

This week, we look at an engaging history of battlefield medicine and a must-read by a “horse whisperer” who uses horse sense to train leaders.

History as It Was Happening Edited by eminent his torian C. Vann Wood ward, this Civil War jour nal brings to life men and women of all strata of Southern society, including Chestnut her self. She was surely one of the most remarka ble and talented dia rists in U.S. history. Here we learn everything from the manners of the day to the cost of flan nel for soldiers’ shirts, all punctuated by the dialogue, wit, and keen powers of discernment of this strong-minded and politically astute observer. This edition includes passages miss ing from earlier versions. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1981, 886 PAGES

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Articles inside

Be Captain Courteous

Sip and Savor

Pamper Your Skin

Marvelous Maui

Tax Incentives

Pandemic Overreach

US–China Relations

Courting Africa

Resisting Beijing

Huawei’s Global Influence

Chinese Economy

Cybertheft