Vision Times Newspaper VOL.1 DEC 31 ,2020 by Vision Times -Bringing you Truth, Inspiration, Hope

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Dec 31, 2020 – Jan 13, 2021 Otabius Williams/The Epoch Times

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Former Intelligence Officer: ‘Nashville Incident Unusual as Bomber Did Not Intend to Kill’

China Failing to Keep Up Its End of the Phase One Trade Deal By Neil Campbell Vision Times

the presidential race. “The greatest way to fight a war, in the Chinese way of thinking, is not to have to fight at all. That’s what they’ve done here,” Byrne said in a Dec. 28 interview with political commentator Dr. Jerome Corsi. The Mandarin-speaking entrepreneur, who also studied Chinese history at Beijing Normal University in 1983 and 1984, has stressed that he loves the Chinese people and their history, but draws a distinction between them and the totalitarian CCP.

he Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has not been fulfilling its agreements in the Sino-U.S. “phase one” trade deal signed in January 2020, according to data released by the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE). The Economic and Trade Agreement Between the United States of America and the People’s Republic Of China: Phase One went into effect in February and required China to increase its trade purchases of U.S. goods and services by a combined $200 billion across 2020 and 2021 from their 2017 levels. PIIE’s figures were calculated based on data obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau compared against the Phase One Agreement’s annual targets, prorating the figures on a permonth basis. Data shows the CCP committed to purchasing $159 billion worth of U.S. exports by the end of 2020. As of November, China was slightly over half that amount at $82 billion. Breaking the data down by sector, Beijing promised to purchase $33.4 billion in agriculture, $99.4 billion in manufactured goods, and $26.1 billion in energy. As of November, the fulfilled amounts were just $22.5 billion, $51.4 billion, and $8.1 billion respectively. The article notes that China’s customs department has scheduled release of year-end data for Dec. 25, but that the Institute will be closed for the holidays until Jan. 4, 2021.

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Vision Times Staff

teven Rogers, a former FBI official who worked in the Joint Terrorism Task Force, has stated that the Christmas day bombing that took place in Nashville was atypical and chilling. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 38 years in law enforcement, where an individual who wants to bomb an area actually notif ies potentia l v ictims to clear the area… So clearly, this individual did not want to kill people. He wanted to minimize the loss of human life,” he said in an interview with NTD. The bombing has been a scr ibed to A nt hony Q u i n n Wa r ne r w ho parked his vehicle outside an AT&T facility and then broadcasted a warning about the impending explosion, thereby allowing people to evacuate the area. As a result, even though the explosion was quite powerful, only Warner died from the incident. A few people suffered minor injuries. Rogers points out that a 911 call was made to the police to ensure that as many officers arrive in the area and help in evacuating people. The call was not made to kill the officers. Continued on A2

Patrick Byrne on Dec. 15, 2020.

Communist China Running ‘Slow Coup’ to Defeat America From Within: Patrick Byrne Overstock.com founder and Sinophile describes Beijing’s multi-stage strategy to win without fighting By Leo Timm Vision Times

atrick Byrne, the founder and former CEO of Overstock. com, has been leading efforts by a team of researchers to reverseengineer a “slow coup” by China’s communist regime to take down America’s constitutional system without having “to fight at all.” Byrne, who holds a degree in China Studies from Dartmouth College, believes that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential

election as part of a multifaceted strategy aimed at subverting and grinding down American political and social institutions. The Party has “corrupted exactly the institutions that they needed to corrupt in order to allow what’s going on now to happen,” Byrne said. Controversy over alleged large-scale fraud in the Nov. 3 race between incumbent President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden has persisted for weeks. Byrne said that tampering with election results in just six U.S. counties would be enough for Beijing to successfully rig

Political scientists can tell you, to steal the United States you don’t need to cheat in elections everywhere. You need six counties where you cheat the heck out of those counties. Patrick Byrne, Overstock. com founder

More Ballots Cast in PA Presidential Election than Total Voters: Lawmakers F McGady/CC-BY 4.0

By Neil Campbell Vision Times

ennsylvania lawmakers say they have found a major discrepancy between the number of votes counted and the number of voters who voted in the Nov. 3 presidential election. The statement was issued by State Rep. Frank Ryan (R), Rep. Russ Diamond (R) and 15 other Pennsylvania GOP Representatives. “A group of state lawmakers performing extensive analysis of election data today revealed huge discrepancies between the numbers of total votes counted and total number of voters who voted in the 2020 General Election, and as a result are questioning how the results of the presidential election could possibly have been certified by Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar and Governor Tom Wolf.” “These findings are in addition

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to prior concerns regarding actions by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the Secretary, and others impacting the conduct of the election,” read the Statement. According to their analysis, 6,962,607 total ballots were cast with 31,547 less being counted in the race, yet the number of voters who voted in the Pennsylvania Department of State’s Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) database is only 6,760,230. Discrepancies for three small rural counties were not included, as the counties had not yet posted results online and thus were counted only as reported, with no analysis. As indicated in the study, the actual numeric discrepancy may differ slightly due to this missing information. Thus far, the count appears to show 170,830 more ballots were counted than there were voters in the Pennsylvania general election. According to AP, presidential candidate Joseph Biden defeated President Donald Trump

by a slim margin in the key battleground state: 81,660 votes. Secretary Boockvar and Governor Wolf issued a Certificate of Ascertainment of Presidential Electors declaring Biden won by a margin of 80,555 votes. The lawmakers presented a summary of the situation together with their numbers, stating, “We were already concerned with the actions of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the Executive branch, and election officials in certain counties contravening and undermining the Pennsylvania Election Code by eliminating signature verification, postmarks, and due dates while allowing the proliferation of drop boxes with questionable security measures and the unauthorized curing of ballots, as well as the questionable treatment of poll watchers, all of which created wholesale opportunities for irregularities in the 2020 presidential election.”

The state capitol building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“These numbers just don’t add up, and the alleged certification of Pennsylvania’s presidential election results was absolutely premature, unconfirmed, and in error.” However, according to Pennsylvania newspaper The Sentinel, the paper was able to replicate Rep. Ryan and Rep. Diamond’s results using Pennsylvania’s “Voter Export File.” According to Pennsylvania’s Department of State, the file is regularly updated by county elections bureaus and

is primarily used by campaigns seeking voters to target. According to the article’s author Zack Hoopes, the file is available for $20 and notes its next refresh date as Jan. 4, 2021. For a time, the link he provides in his Twitter post and the Google search result redirected to an election security information page on the PA Department of State website. It appears to have become functional, again. Ordering the data requires proof of Pennsylvania residency, such as a driver’s license, photo

ID card or other form of identification. “That file lists each voter with dozens of possible information fields for counties to fill in. One of those fields is the voter’s last vote date. Diamond’s calculations are the result of counting every voter in a given precinct whose ‘last vote date’ column is filled in with the date of Nov. 3, 2020,” said The Sentinel. The Department of State claims vote reconciliations are off because many voters have the “last vote date” column left blank as many counties have not yet uploaded to the Export File their data from an election which occurred almost two months ago. According to The Sentinel, Department of State spokesperson, Wanda Murren, whose title is Director of Office of Communications and Press, has claimed that the certified results issued by Wolf and Broockvar are based on an audit of the paper ballots themselves. Continued on A2

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US Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Stop Forced Organ Harvesting in China Minghui.org

By Rory Karsten Vision Times

hree American lawmakers are introducing a bill aimed at stopping state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China. Republicans Senator Tom Cotton and Congressmen Chris Smith, along with Democrat Tom Suozzi, announced the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act on Dec. 16. In a statement, they said the bill is aimed at preventing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience. “There is growing evidence that the Chinese Communist Party has and continues to harvest organs from prisoners and members of Chinese religious groups,” said Cotton. “This bill will identify and punish CCP members involved in forced organ harvesting. It’s past time to hold Beijing accountable for these heinous acts.” The lawmakers cited an international tribunal in London held mid-last year where it was recognized that Chinese doctors harvest organs from detainees in Chinese prison camps — sometimes while patients are still alive — for sale in a market worth over a

billion dollars a year. Chaired by war crimes prosecutor Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the China Tribunal found it was proven beyond doubt that the Chinese state is killing large numbers of prisoners of conscience for their organs. Based on a year-long investigation, the judgment’s findings prompted further concerns over the outrage that first came to light in 2006 following claims that imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners were being killed for their organs in northeastern China. In its conclusion, the tribunal called on governments and international bodies to do their duty and step up to address this atrocity. Smith said their bill will help shed more light on what is occurring in China. “Organ harvesting is a barbaric, inhumane, and egregious act of global significance as transnational human trafficking gangs, terrorist organizations, profiteers, and even governments — China’s communist regime in particular — kill innocent people and sell their organs for profit,” said Smith. “A global problem requires a global response.” Smith said those involved in organ harvesting in China “will be identified and exposed by the State Department

A Falun Gong practitioner holds up a banner saying ‘Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance’ during a one-person protest in China sometime after the persecution of the practice began in 1999. Cory Doctorow via Flickr /CC BY 2.0

Falun Gong practitioners in Hong Kong raise awareness about forced organ harvesting in mainland China.

with the goal of punishing per-

petrators and promoting effec-

tive sanctions and restrictions on travel.” Suozzi said that CCP members involved in this must be held to account. “Forced organ harvesting has no place in our world,” he said. “For years, the Chinese Communist Party has continued to take advantage of prisoners and members of ethnic minority and religious groups. Today, we are still witnessing them take further advantage of these groups through organ harvesting,” said Suozzi.

pixabay / CC0 1.0

Former Intelligence Officer: ‘Nashville Incident Unusual as Bomber Did Not Intend to Kill’ Continued from FRONT Rogers believes that there is more to the story than what the press has informed the public. He makes this conclusion based on the fact that the motivation of the bomber is unknown. Even more unsettling is the fact that Warner was able to procure enough equipment to make a powerful bomb that caused large-scale damage. If an ordinary citizen can do this, then the potential damage from a professionally trained terrorist could be devastating.

The mayor of Nashville, Democrat John Cooper, has dismissed concerns of a terror attack, noting that authorities from the FBI, the U.S. Attorney, and everyone else have been extremely careful in not using the ‘T-word.’ This may have to do with the fact that the perpetrator did not leave any manifesto or political statement. Cooper noted that the explosion might have had something to do with AT&T given the facts that Warner had parked the vehicle right next to the company building and Warner’s father

had worked at a company called BellSouth which was acquired by AT&T. Douglas Korneski, an FBI special agent, says that officials have reviewed numerous hours of surveillance content and determined that Warner acted alone. David Rausch, the director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, said that Warner was not on the law enforcement radar. Authorities have collected his DNA for further analysis. Nashville police have released body cam footage recorded by officer Michael Sipos who was present

at the scene of the explosion. Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn praised the act of Nashville police officers who worked to evacuate the area before the bomb explosion. She argued that the officers should be honored for their work. Six officers had visited the homes and apartments in the area and warned people to get to safety, which is why there were no significant civilian casualties from the blast. Blackburn’s support for the police is in sharp contrast to the Democrat’s call for defunding the police, supported

Details from The Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act include: - Authorizes the U.S. government to deny or revoke passports for illegal organ purchasers. - Mandates annual reporting on forced organ harvesting in foreign countries. This State Department reporting would identify foreign officials and entities responsible for forced organ harvesting. - Mandates an annual report on U.S. institutions that train organ transplant surgeons affiliated with foreign entities involved in forced organ harvesting. -Prohibits the export of organ transplant surgery devices to entities responsible for forced organ harvesting. - Sanctions foreign officials and entities that engage in or otherwise support forced organ harvesting. A U.S. House of Representatives resolution was unanimously passed in mid-2016 that urged the Chinese regime to stop harvesting the organs of prisoners of conscience and end the persecution against Falun Gong. The European Parliament passed a similar resolution in 2013. Taiwan, Israel, and Spain have all banned organ tourism to China. Speaking at the release of the U.S. 2018 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback — the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom — singled out organ harvesting in China.

Rogers noted that the Nashville bombing was atypical .

by vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “These six officers … did a phenomenal job. They saved lives. And they really humanized the police force. So, I encourage everyone to watch it. I don’t see how anyone could

say ‘defund the police’ after listening to this press conference,” which demonstrates “what good police work is, and why we need to honor these men and women who wear that thin blue line who are our first responders,” Blackburn said to Fox News.

More Ballots Cast in PA Presidential Election than Total Voters: Lawmakers Continued from FRONT In a Twitter exchange between Hoopes and Rep. Diamond, Diamond points out that although his own county, Lebanon County, has completed their Voter Export File, it still shows irregularities between the number of votes counted and the number of voters. “It is continuously updated. People move, die, etc. So in my county, where the county has said they're ‘done,’ there is still a 500 vote discrepancy. No matter how you slice it, certifying the presidential race was not possible on 11/24,” said Diamond. Rep. Diamond posted his findings of Lebanon County on his Twitter stating, “Lest anyone think I'm targeting ‘big cities’ regarding voter deficits, here is the same data from MY OWN DISTRICT, broken down by precinct. IMHO,

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this warrants a forensic audit of physical ballots, envelopes, and pollbooks in the 32N precinct.” The GOP lawmakers, in their report, had also taken care to indicate that the results of three small rural counties had not been compiled due to their data not having been updated in the Pennsylvania Department of State’s SURE database as of the publication of the lawmakers’ analysis. To be cautious with their findings, the lawmakers had entered the data for those three more sparsely populated counties as perfectly reconciled, so the discrepancy between votes cast and voters who voted may be even greater. The totals without the updated data, as can be seen in the chart with this article, were 202,377 votes cast that could not be accounted for when measured against the number of voters

Screenshot

The statement issued by 17 Pennsylvania GOP representatives.

who were recorded to have voted. Subtracting the 31,547 votes that were not counted, the total discrepancy of votes counted over voters recorded according to published online data, was 170,830. In what is believed to be a response to Diamond’s study, in which 202,377 total votes were cast above and beyond

the total of voters recorded, President Trump tweeted a quote from a third party on Dec. 28, “‘Breaking News: In Pennsylvania there were 205,000 more votes than there were voters. This alone flips the state to President Trump.’” The president had tweeted on Nov. 3 that the Supreme Court’s decision to

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allow absentee ballots up to three days after election day would leave the Pennsylvania general election vulnerable to fraud. Reconciling the Pennsylvania Secretary of State and governor’s certification of the election total with the paper ballots, which was the method of ascertainment used according to Pennsylvania

State Department’s Wanda Murren, casts attention on the method used to prove legitimacy of vote totals. Meanwhile, the lawmakers study of a once-publicly available PA Department of State data set suggests alternate avenues of gaining insight into the process behind the Pennsylvania votes. On Nov. 3, Twitter had censored the president for airing his concerns, claiming he had no evidence; Twitter’s actions slowed the spread of the president’s warning to the extent that the social media outlet’s move was used as a ‘case study’ by The New York Times for how Twitter’s censorship curtails the sharing of ideas. In the article, which was posted mid-afternoon on Election Day, The New York Times categorized the president’s comment among “misleading tweets.”

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DEC 31, 2020-Jan 13, 2021 |

Communist China Running ‘Slow Coup’ to Defeat America From Within: Patrick Byrne Continued from FRONT “I say this as a guy who loves China,” he told Jan Jekielek of The Epoch Times on Dec. 15. “I speak Chinese, I have a great affection for China and the Chinese people—but I’m not such a big fan of the CCP.” Phased approach According to Byrne in his Dec. 28 interview, Communist China’s “slow coup” against the United States takes a fourphased approach: “It’s a revolution. The stages of such a revolution are very well mapped out. We understand this. It’s demoralization, disorientation, crisis, then normalization: those four steps,” he said. U.S. officials and China experts have called out the various ways in which the CCP infiltrates and seeks to influence American society. During remarks given in early December, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decried the Communist Chinese presence on U.S. campuses. He spoke of how Partycontrolled organizations intimate Chinese international students and visiting faculty into refraining from expressing their viewpoints on the one hand, while on the other shifting the academic environment in Beijing’s favor. Pompeo and others have given multiple other speeches and issued statements highlighting the CCP’s reach in other fields of U.S. society, from Wall Street and regional politics to Big Tech and the media. The four stages described by Bryne closely resemble the agenda that the Soviet Union

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pursued during the Cold War to knock out its American adversary, as alleged by KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov in 1984. “We are basically reverseengineering this coup,” said Byrne, referring to his dozensstrong research team. In the Soviet and Chinese calculus, the stage of “demoralization” is undertaken over a longer period, with the intent of making Americans doubt the foundational principles of the country and subscribe to Marxist-inspired ideological movements. Meanwhile, the CCP has been using its economic clout to clandestinely ally itself with or silence U.S. officials and business elites on both ends of the political spectrum. Lucas Kunce of the American Economic Liberties Project told The Hill that Beijing has “strategically captured our entire supply chain” in past years, taking advantage of the market economy’s pursuit of profit and “self-interest above everything else.” After the stage of demoralization comes disorientation, which “is this kookiness we’ve been seeing for about six months,” Byrne said, giving examples such as the violent rioting and intimidation committed by far-left groups such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter. ‘Assassin’s mace’ for the crisis stage The 2020 election and its aftermath, which is fraught with thousands of sworn witness claims of fraud, fits what Byrne and Bezmenov called the “crisis” stage — a relatively short period lasting

Smartmatic’s headquarters located in Boca Rotan, Fla., on Dec. 2, 2020.

several weeks in which the communist regime’s plan to seize power comes to fruition. In late November, Chinese professor of international relations Di Dongsheng gave an internal speech in Shanghai in which he welcomed the return of “old friends” in U.S. elite circles following Biden’s apparent victory. In the speech, which was leaked to the public but subsequently removed by YouTube following a Chinese copyright claim, Di described the Trump administration’s confrontation with the CCP as having cancelled out China’s influence over America via Wall Street. “Political scientists can tell you, to steal the United States you don’t need to cheat in elections everywhere. You need six counties where you cheat the heck out of those counties. And you can flip the six states that they are in and thereby flip the Electoral College and steal the country,” Byrne said. “Clearly an imposter president has been stood up” with Chinese help, he alleged, citing election irregularities in Georgia and

other states. Byrne’s investigations began in August, as he had anticipated that the November election would be marred by fraud. His team, which includes online security experts, believes that Chinese developers worked “under the hood” of voting software used in the U.S. election. The claim matches other allegations of connections between the CCP and the companies providing voting infrastructure in dozens of U.S. states. Byrne also described what he claims are extreme statistical outliers in the outcomes of key swing states.”Having 123,000 votes in a row going to one candidate; or in Pennsylvania, I believe it was 580,000 votes got processed that were 99.4 percent for Biden… and they came through exactly when all the Republicans had been told they had to leave.” “They’re on the order of you winning the Powerball lottery this week, and next week and the week after—and that happening in dozens of places around America at the same time,” he said in his interview

with Jekielek. Byrne identified electoral fraud as the CCP’s “assassin’s mace,” a term used in Chinese intelligence and military circles in reference to weapons that can play a decisive role in defeating the United States. “For 10 years or more, there have been references to a coming ‘assassin’s mace’ in the Chinese literature— where they take out the United States with one stroke,” Byrne said. “The national security community in the United States has been trying to figure this out: Is it their new aircraft carrier? Is that the hypersonic missile? Is it this, that, is it an EMP?” “I don’t think so,” Byrne said. “The one stroke that takes the United States out is what we’re experiencing right now.” Jan. 6 the ‘last chance’ On Jan. 6, Congress is set to count the Electoral College votes and determine the outcome of the presidential election, after which the president will be inaugurated on Jan. 20. Courts, legislatures, and other governing bodies across the country have largely

Jon Cherry / Getty Images

Hunter Biden Scandal Implicates Powerful Individuals Connected With Communist China By David Wagner Vision Times

n a recent interview with Fox News covered by Real Clear Politics, writer and president of the Government Accountability Institute Peter Schweizer claimed: “Lots of powerful people want the Biden story to go away, because it has direct implications on themselves.” Schweizer called out Senator Mitch McConnell for his ties to China, and claimed that if McConnell said something that the Chinese did not like, then they could destroy the family business that he is tied to. He said that. Mitch McConnell is a Republican Senator from Kentucky and has been involved with the Senate since 1985. The Nation claims: “McConnell’s ties to the Chaos go back to the late 1980s, when James Chao began donating to the senator.” James Chao founded the company Foremost Maritime in the ’60s after moving to America from Taiwan. According to The Nation, the business is “shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters

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and foreign registrations,” while “the ownership of the company’s vessels… is obscured through a byzantine structure of tax entities.” In 1993, McConnell married James Chao’s daughter, Republican activist Elaine Chao. She eventually became Secretary of Labor in the George W. Bush cabinet. In 2008, James Chao gave Mitch McConnell and his wife a gift of between $5 and 25 million, which made him one of the wealthiest Republicans in the Senate with a net worth of around $22.8 million. In 2014, a Foremost Maritime ship called the Ping May was checked by Columbian Coast Guards in the Caribbean and found to have 40 kilograms of cocaine, an amount that at the time would have been valued at $3.3 million. In Peter Schweizer’s book Secret Empires, he writes: “While politicians and their spouses are often subject to rigid regulations on what gifts they can accept and what sort of business they can conduct, others around them, like their friends or children, have no such obstacles. So while a politician could theoretically wind up in prison for accepting $10,000

for doling out favors, establishing overseas connections that could land your children multimillion-dollar deals is harder to detect, and often legal.” Schweizer adds: “Foreign entities cannot legally make campaign contributions, so using this approach creates an alternative way to curry favor and influence America’s political leaders. Simply camouflaging these transactions as business agreements provides another shield of plausible deniability.” Perceived favors include McConnell’s defending China and urging the U.S. to be “ambiguous” about its relations with Taiwan, and Elaine Chao as Secretary of Labour trying to ease up on China’s worker’s rights practices. She also dismissed a report about Chinese espionage in 2000, claiming that China could pose no threat to the U.S. Presently, Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for tax evasion by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware. Federal authorities were extremely quiet about the investigation until after the election. The Epoch Times recently reported that 9.4 percent of Biden voters surveyed in key battleground

states would not have voted for Biden if they knew the intricacies of his son’s business dealings with China, Russia and, the Ukraine. While Joe Biden and the majority of mainstream media continue to claim that evidence from his son’s laptop is Russian disinformation, recent Vision Times articles cover evidence showing Joe Biden’s potential link to Hunter’s dealings with Chinese Nationals Gongwen Dong and Ye Jainming. The evidence includes emails, text messages, and testimony from Tony Bobulinski regarding a meeting with Ye Jainming. Jianming has ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army, and has been detained since 2018 in China for charges of bribery. A U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs report has confirmed Hunter’s questionable business dealings, and states: “The records acquired by the Committees show consistent, significant and extensive financial connections among and between Hunter Biden, James Biden, Sara Biden, Devon Archer, and Chinese nationals connected to the Communist

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declined to look into the fraud allegations, while most major media outlets roundly dismiss the claims as “baseless.” Byrne believes that Jan. 6 is the “last chance” for the American people to make their voices heard and challenge the results of the election as Congress meets. “If you bend the knee to this rigged election, they have corrupted the most elementary concept of our tradition, consent of the governed, and you never will get another chance,” he said. More than 1 million people are expected to take part in a rally in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, according to event organizers. The last stage in the “slow coup,” Byrne said, is “normalization,” during which the “media is just beating it into your head” that the results of the election were fair and legitimate. He criticized major outlets for refusing to address the fraud evidence, accusing them of “violating every precept of journalistic integrity.” On Dec. 28, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said he would object during the counting of the Electoral College votes. He is the first U.S. senator to do so, as part of an effort launched by House Republicans. “I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on Jan. 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws,” he said, referring to unconstitutional decisions by the state’s supreme court to relax the rules regarding the electoral process.

Louisville, KY — November 03: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), delivers his victory speech next to his wife, Elaine Chao, at the Omni Louisville Hotel on November 3, 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky. McConnell has reportedly defeated his opponent, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Amy McGrath, marking his seventh consecutive U.S. Senate win. Moses Robinson / Getty Images for Usher’s New Look Foundation

ATLANTA, GA — JULY 22: Hunter Biden attends Usher’s New Look Foundation — World Leadership Conference & Awards 2011 — Day 3 at Cobb Energy Center on July 22, 2011 in Atlanta, Georgia.

regime and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as well as other foreign nationals with questionable backgrounds. These connections and the vast amount of money transferred among and between them don’t just raise conflicts of interest concerns, they raise criminal financial, counterintelligence and extortion concerns.” Schweizer also named Nancy

Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein as politicians with family members who have business deals with China, and warned that the Chinese Communist government is seeking to “decapitate our political leadership by giving sweetheart deals to the family members of our political class… The question is are we going to do something or let it pass.”

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China’s Guangdong Province Suffers Power, Water Outages Amid Australian Coal Ban By Neil Campbell Vision Times

hinese social media posts complained of several cities in China’s Guangdong Province suffering from widespread power outages at midnight Dec. 21, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA). Although the climate is relatively mild in Guangdong this time of year, the outages impacted Asian winter solstice celebrations called the Dongzhi Festival. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state-run enterprise Guangdong Power Supply Bureau claimed power was restored after only an hour, blaming the outage on an equipment failure. But according to Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, a typically anti-CCP publication, the Party-owned company China Southern Power Grid described the incident as a “grid failure.” Incidentally, Apple Daily’s founder Jimmy Lai was arrested and held without bail after the Communist regime reneged on its “One Country, Two Systems” promise with the United Kingdom in 2019. Power outage may link to ban on import of Australia coal A Guangzhou resident told RFA that the incident was not an isolated one, saying there were

many outages in recent weeks. He pointed to the CCP’s sanctions against Australian coal imports as the cause: “After no outages for 10 years, suddenly this is happening again. The reason in this case is that coal supplies are too scarce, and aren’t enough [to meet demand]. I heard they are unable to generate enough electricity.” The CCP’s coal imports from Australia in 2019 amounted to $14 billion. The ban on Australian coal is part of a series of increasingly aggressive posturing by the Party after the Australian government called for investigations into the Chinese origins of the CCP Virus pandemic that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide. On December 1, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an NGO that describes its mission as promoting “a coordinated response between democratic states to challenges posed by the present conduct and future ambitions of the People’s Republic of China” launched a global campaign to purchase Australian wine to “stand against Chinese government bullying” of the Oceanic country. IPAC is exclusively composed of members from 19 governments around the world, including all members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (Australia,

Calistemon via Wikimedia CC BY SA 3.0

“Guangzhou power outage” attracted millions of hits on Sina Weibo, confirming speculation that residents had no advance notice of the outages. Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S.). RFA found the keywords “Guangzhou power outage” attracted millions of hits on Sina Weibo, confirming speculation that residents had no advance notice of the outages. Other posts found on Chinese social media revealed that water and cellular signals were also affected during the outage. A retired professor of Jiangxi University, Wang Liang, told RFA that CCP censorship had become active around reports of the outages: “Any posts about coal shortages or power outages are being deleted…The line is that it’s controllable, and that the grid is capable of meeting basic

Coal mine near Collie, Western Australia.

supply needs.” “They are blocking retweets of any Weixin (Mainland China’s version of WeChat) posts about power outages,” said Wang. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, CCP propaganda organ Global Times reported that a Party agency had met with 10 power agencies over the weekend, giving them permission to import coal “without clearance restrictions, except for Australia, in a bid to stabilize coal purchase prices.”

Radio Free Asia

A blackout in Guangzhou is shown following a power grid failure, Dec. 21, 2020

Facing Food Shortages, China Plans to Regulate Consumption By Debbie Cho Vision Times

roposed regulation On December 22, 2020 the National People’s Congress (NPC) of China brought forth a bill that will try to tackle food waste. Food wastage in China costs the country 18 million tons of food each year, which is enough to feed 30 to 50 million people — the equivalent of the populations of Australia and New Zealand combined. The bill will mandate diners at public events such as weddings and banquets to eat less. The 32-page bill includes a demand that caterers use technology surveillance to monitor diners’ excessive consumption of food. Fines of $15,300 will be applied to any broadcaster deemed to promote overeating China and food shortages

From 1958 to 1962, China experienced the “Great Leap Forward” under Mao Zedong, whose policies caused the “Great Famine” where tens of millions of Chinese citizens starved to death. The new communist government issued errant policies that attempted to move the country from an agrarian-based economy to one that was industrialized. This caused a shortage of food and left the country without the ability to feed its citizens. In the 1950s, the Chinese regime started a program to issue coupons redeemable for food and other goods. With industrialization, the country saw its economy start to boom and the use of coupons started to phase out in the 1980s, finally ending in 1993. The new wealth of the country led to changes in the food consumption of its citizens.

The Russian Presidential Press and Information Office via Wikimedia/CC BY 4.0

Will Xi Jinping limit food in his banquet with foreign leaders.

Recent events disrupt food supply The 2019 spread of African Swine Fever among China’s pig farmers left 140 million, or 40 percent, of the swine population dead. The loss of pigs caused a huge spike in prices and the loss of pork on the tables of many Chinese. The crisis saw prices of pork inflate 135 percent in Feb-

ruary of this year. Besides disrupting the lives of people around the world, the CCP virus also put China’s food supply chain in jeopardy, as restaurants were shuttered and people were ordered to stay home for months at a time. The unfulfilled orders and delivery disruptions resulted in crops rotting in fields and farm-

ers without the revenue needed to buy seeds and fertilizers. Multiple floods during the 2020 growing season further exacerbated the problem, as the Yangtze River overflowed its banks, ruining crops and putting China’s food supply in jeopardy. Regulations under Xi Jinping Even before the events of 2020 put food security under pressure, China’s leader Xi Jinping started to scrutinize food wastage as a point of concern. In August 2013 the Clean Your Plate campaign was rolled out to tackle food consumption at the individual level. The campaign encouraged consumers to be more conscientious of overeating and wastage. As a result of the campaign, Shanghai officials encouraged citizens to report on one another if they saw food wastage occurring. In Heilongji-

China Failing to Keep Up Its End of the ‘Phase One’ Trade Deal Pixabay / CC0 1.0

Continued from FRONT The phase one trade deal ended a year-and-a-half trade war between the U.S. and China that also ended Beijing’s tariffs on U.S. energy exports. The increase in China’s U.S. imports was the centerpiece of the deal, alongside pledges from the CCP that it would respect intellectual property law in a number of key areas. Increases to energy imports was the big ticket item in the promise to increase imports. 2020 was to see a $19 billion increase and 2021 was to see a $34 billion increase, a 240 percent and 440 percent increase

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respectively. A far cry from the total $8.1 billion imported as of November. Some pundits have postulated that the CCP virus pandemic and its impact on China had suppressed demand for U.S. oil and gas as global lockdowns and measures through the entire world dampened the key energy economy. However, according to Foreign Policy, China increased its imports of crude from Saudi Arabia and Russia during the first quarter of 2020 while it waited until March 2 to even remove its tariffs from U.S. oil and gas. China imported a meager

$320 million worth of oil from the U.S. in March. Because of the shortfall of oil imports in January and February, and the paltry March fulfillment of their contract, in order for the CCP to meet the Phase One Agreement’s target, it would have had to purchase approximately 3 million barrels of oil each day, which is the size of the total of all U.S. crude exports in 2019. The issues don’t lie only with energy, however. In June, the CCP reportedly told staterun agricultural firms to halt U.S. soybeans after the Trump administration said it would revoke Hong Kong’s special

Cross-Pacific trade was impacted by the Trump administration's tough policies on Communist China and the coronavirus pandemic.

status as a result of the Communist Party reneging on its quarter-century-old “one country, two systems” agree-

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ment with the UK earlier this year. According to a May article by the Center for Strategic and

ang Province, it was reported that surveillance cameras were installed at a district government to monitor workers’ leftovers in a “food waste exposure system.” Any worker caught tossing leftover food three times would be shamed by playing their footage on TV screens in the canteens. Food consumption and mukbang The Clean Your Plate campaign targeted video influences of the mukbang genre that are known for binge eating. Mukbang, the Korean term used for people uploading videos of themselves eating large quantities of food in one sitting, has a popular online viewership. The Clean Your Plate campaign has put an end to the videos in China and the newly proposed bill would apply the $15,300 fine to the content creators.

International Studies, China had already shorted its 2019 imports of manufacturing and energy by 11.7 and 33.3 percent respectively. The report projected a total shortfall to close 2020 of approximately $129 billion. Scott Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a June interview with Foreign Policy said that the trade deal on its own would not stabilize the relationship between the Trump administration and the Party. However, “if you remove the deal, then that is further evidence that both sides are throwing up their hands and see the relationship in purely competitive terms with nothing on the other side of the scale,” he said.

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DEC 31, 2020-Jan 13, 2021 |

DOJ Charges Against Zoom Employee Show Big Tech Compliance with Chinese Regulations Vision Times Staff

n Dec. 18, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a complaint and arrest warrant against Xinjiang Jin, an employee of U.S. based Zoom who worked out of the company’s mainland China offices. Jin, who goes by the name Julien, was charged with Conspiracy to Commit Interstate Harassment and Unlawful Conspiracy to Transmit Means of Identification. The investigation, which was conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office, fully acknowledges Zoom’s operations within Communist China; “[Zoom] has significant operations in the People’s Republic of China (‘PRC’) where it employs hundreds of workers who primarily focus on research and development.” The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) wanton censorship of speech, especially dissent, is core to the charges against Jin; “...the CCP regards any political dissent as a threat not only to its own political interest, but also to the PRC’s one-party system of government itself.” “To effectuate this censorship scheme, the PRC government requires electronic communications service providers that operate in the PRC, such as [Zoom], to proactively monitor users’ activities on their networks and to terminate discussions of politically sensitive topics.” The CCP also requires companies who operate within China to “respond immediately when a PRC national security or law enforcement agency demands that the service provider terminate a discussion of a politically sensitive topic.” ‘Pretextual justifications’ The Complaint reveals how the CCP uses the continual threat of its “Great Firewall of China” to block internet connectivity to companies who fail to give the Party what it wants. Jin was a “Security Technical Leader” at Zoom’s Zhejiang branch where his role was

“serving as primary liaison with PRC authorities, including law enforcement and intelligence services.” Jin targeted individuals residing in the United States, several of whom held active subscriptions with Zoom and whose calls were hosted on U.S. servers. In fact, Zoom’s platform was used as a tool for Jin to carry out his tasks at the request of the CCP. The Complaint alleges that Jin “and his co-conspirators fabricated evidence of TOS (terms of service ) violations to provide pretextual justifications to terminating the meetings, as well as certain participants’ accounts,” and that the FBI is in possession of messages from Jin to other Zoom employees about his efforts to harvest intelligence from social media on Zoom’s clients who were planning events that commemorated the June 4, 1983 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Jin primarily worked with a “high-ranking employee of [Zoom] in the United States...to effect the termination of meetings and the suspension and cancellation of user accounts.” This high-ranking U.S. employee is referred throughout the Complaint as “Employee-1”. In one account, Jin spearheaded an effort to create fake Zoom accounts with profile pictures related to terrorism and pornography. These accounts entered the meetings Jin wanted to have a pretext to take down. Then, Jin and his conspirators screenshotted their own actions and claimed the meetings were violating Zoom’s Terms of Service. The Complaint also documents an event in May where a dissident who “participated in Hong Kong politics as a prodemocracy activist” had their account terminated in advance of scheduled meetings that Jin and Employee-1 called “political”. Users hosting meetings with religious themes were targeted at Jin’s sole discretion as well. In one such case, Employee-1 both terminated a user’s account and provided Jin with their IP address and meta-

Screenshot/YouTube

Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom.

data information. The user’s IP was traced to China’s Yunnan Province. Despite Jin and his alleged coconspirators’ efforts, the CCP was not satisfied. The Party then used its ability to completely censor and control the Chinese internet to block Chinese connections to Zoom in September of 2019. Zoom was forced to meet with CCP officials and was told they could only resume operations if they complied with Party regulations. Shut down in China Zoom confirmed in a Dec. 18 blog post in response to the unsealing of the DOJ Complaint that they had been blocked by the CCP: “In September 2019, the Chinese government turned off our service in China without warning...The shutdown caused significant disruption for many of our multinational customers, who could not effectively communicate with their employees and partners in China... They urged us to take immediate action to get the service resumed.” The Complaint specifically mentions a “rectification” plan being discussed between Jin and Zoom employees between October of 2019 and June of 2020. The plan required Zoom to “proactively monitor” its platform for content the CCP feared, with Jin being made the “primary liaison” between Zoom and

The CCP uses the threat of its “Great Firewall" to cow companies into compliance.

the Party. This was confirmed by Zoom’s blog post, “in October 2019, Zoom appointed the now-former employee to serve as the government contact in China. This former employee’s job included responding to the Chinese government’s requests for account terminations, meeting terminations, and user data.” Zoom was required, under the plan, to “migrate the data storage” of more than a million U.S. based “Chinese users” to servers controlled by the Party. In addition, Zoom was instructed to provide CCP agents with “special access” to Zoom’s systems. Jin claimed in messages to employees that Zoom’s CEO had agreed with the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to use a combination of Zoom and WeChat to communicate with CCP officials when exchanging classified informa-

tion. According to messages by Jin in the Complaint, Zoom was unblocked by the Party in November of 2019. When the CCP Virus pandemic took global effect in early 2020, much of the world’s population was forced to work from home, with governments around the world using the pandemic as an excuse to implement increasingly strict lockdown. Zoom’s usage, and its stock price, skyrocketed. The Complaint alleges that the CCP took advantage of this opportunity to “impose additional controls” on Zoom’s platform and demanded a “policy of immediate remediation of any illegal conduct.” The Ministry of State Security (MSS) told Jin they didn’t want Zoom to terminate meetings held by targets immediately. First they wanted to use the opportunity to observe and collect intelligence on participants and the contents of their discussions. In no uncertain terms, the CCP was spying on Zoom’s clients and Zoom gave the Party both the tools and the wherewithal to do so. Enough is never enough But when it comes to being in cahoots with China’s red dynasty, enough is never enough. In April 2020, Jin was summoned by CCP officials. Later, he told Employee-1 that the Communist Regime instructed

YouTube’s Communist China-linked Employees By Kris Wen Vision Times

oogle’s dealings with China have always raised suspicions due to the company’s ambivalent attitude to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), behavior that appears aimed at gaining access to China’s huge market. YouTube, one of Google’s biggest subsidiaries, has employees with ties to the totalitarian Chinese regime. Tai Jinjiang has been working as a software engineer at YouTube since May 2019. He previously worked as a project manager for a Chinese company called Guangzhou Shian Technology. At this firm, Tan worked on projects on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and several intelligence agencies affiliated with the Chinese regime. Tan notes that he played a crucial role in the successful PLA certification of ShiAn terminal by the Ministry of Public

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Security, State Secrecy Bureau, and IT Evaluation Center. He apparently won “numerous staff awards” due to his excellent performance. Another software engineer at YouTube, Xiao Chen, joined the company in November 2020, prior to which he worked as a research assistant at the Sun Yat-Sen University. Interestingly, the university’s Supercomputing Center was placed on the U.S. Entity List in 2015, thus deeming it to be a national security risk. A researcher from the university who visited the U.S. was arrested by the FBI on charges of lying about his relationship with China. Xifei Huang has been working as a software engineer at YouTube since 2014. Before that, he worked as a developer at the Peking University in Beijing. Not only is the university funded by the CCP, but a number of their researchers have also been arrested by the FBI due to not disclosing ties with the Chinese regime and

Samira Bouaou / The Epoch Times

YouTube removes videos related to U.S. election fraud, but allows Chinese propaganda videos without censorship.

Video streaming platform YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, apparently has employees that have ties to the CCP.

stealing intellectual property. Fan Yang joined YouTube as a software engineer in April 2017. He has worked as a research assistant at Fudan University during which time five hackers from the university were indicted for stealing secrets from six American companies. All five of them had ties to the Chinese military. Yang also interned at

China Telecom, a company that has been accused of collaborating with the Chinese military for more than 20 years. Censorship On Dec. 9, YouTube announced that it will be removing content that discusses the fraud that took place in the 2020 presiden-

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tial election. For instance, the platform will remove any content that indicates that a presidential candidate may have won the election due to counting errors or software glitches. YouTube’s decision to curb free speech has raised broad controversy. South Australian Senator Alex Antic said that Australians rely heavily on major U.S.

them to develop the ability to “respond to a PRC demand” to terminate a meeting, account, or recording within one minute. Jin dubbed this the “one-minute processing requirement.” Employee-1 connected Jin to another U.S. based employee who could provide him with access to a remote machine, located on U.S. soil, that was connected to Zoom’s U.S. operations. This was to allow Jin to comply with demands from the MPS and MSS. According to the Complaint, Employee-1 ordered this employee to comply with Jin. Jin boasted about CCP infiltration in the United States in electronic messages with Zoom’s staff, saying the “CCP infiltrated the United States, and, even if [Zoom] withdrew entirely from the PRC, [Zoom] would still need to deal with ‘CN zf’ [shorthand for China Zhengfu, or Chinese Government] requests in order to avoid future attacks.” There was one continuous thread driving Jin and the CCP’s agents behind him: a ploy to convince U.S. employees to acquiesce to his ever-escalating demands under their threat to block Zoom’s services with the Great Firewall. In June, Jin received, upon request, a spreadsheet containing approximately 23,000 user IDs and account IDs for Zoom accounts directly from a Zoom employee. The Complaint does not make note of any resistance to this pressure from either Zoom or Employee-1. They seem to have preferred to assume the risk of their actions over the prospect of losing the business opportunity inherent in the Chinese market. According to Zoom’s blog post, the company states it has terminated Xinjiang Jin’s employment and placed all other employees involved on administrative leave pending the completion of the investigation. Xinjiang Jin is not currently in U.S. custody and is now on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. If he is captured and convicted of both counts, he faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.

firms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to consume news, facts, and opinions. “There is now enormous power to control the public discourse in the hands of a small number of organizations. It is a huge concern for Australian democracy… The continued expansion of Big Tech and the way it operates risks restricting political viewpoints, will lead to a suppression of voices, increased polarization, and bias… Conservative voices cannot and should not be sidelined,” he told The Epoch Times. Around 76 percent of Australians are estimated to use YouTube. Chang Po-yang, communications director of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party, noted that when YouTube first came out, it was seen as a beacon of free speech that allowed ordinary people to get their voices heard. But now, tech giants are controlling people’s access to information. Chang also points out the hypocrisy of YouTube removing videos related to U.S. election fraud while allowing Chinese propaganda videos to remain uncensored.

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A6 | DEC 31, 2020-Jan 13, 2021

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WHO Redefines Herd Immunity in Push for Coronavirus Vaccination By Neil Campbell Vision Times

ince March, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus pandemic became a daily focus of our lives in the western world, we have had a steady stream of mixed messages about the crisis. When it comes to the virus and the disease it causes, the “facts” change almost daily in accordance with the whims of so-called “authoritative sources” of information pushed by Big Tech and politicians all over the world. For example, early in the pandemic we were told that wearing masks is useless. Then, we were told we probably should wear a mask, but it wasn’t compulsory. As people became fatigued from a daily barrage of negative and contradictory information while working from home and living under lockdown, then many city and state governments made masking mandatory. We were told it was scientific. Some mayors, governors, and pundits even ventured to say that if we didn’t wear a cotton face covering when in public, we were very literally killing others. In Canada, a video emerged of a man who was tackled and stomped on by a group of mall security officers for not wearing a mask. Some of the security guards who assaulted the man weren’t wearing masks themselves. The man, Corporal Joshua Walker, a Canadian Armed Forces reservist, was then charged by police for assault with intent to resist

arrest and engaging in prohibited activity on the premises. As it turns out, the man, as evidenced by a video he took of himself before being assaulted, was wearing a mask. He was assaulted after calling the guards “three stooges.” In November, the largest study of its kind on masks came out of Denmark and was published in Annals of Internal Medicine. The study used a control group and followed 6000 people for a month. Both the control group and the mask group were asked to practice social distancing. The mask group was given 50 surgical masks and trained on their proper use. The study’s main criteria was “SARS-CoV-2 infection in the mask wearer at 1 month by antibody testing, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), or hospital diagnosis.” The study found that out of the 6000 people studied, “Infection with SARS-CoV-2 occurred in 42 participants recommended masks (1.8%) and 53 control participants (2.1%).” The study declared “the difference observed was not statistically significant.” It concluded, “The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use.” It adds, “The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.” Yet, this study, the largest of its kind, went largely unre-

Cavernia/CC BY-4.0

The World Health Organization has redefined herd immunity as arising by “protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.”

ported by the big media sources that tech aristocracy deems to be “authoritative.” Neither did it affect public policy makers in many parts of the world. In December, Calgary, Canada’s City Council decided to extend their mandatory mask bylaw, which extends to all indoor public spaces, including places of work, until the end of 2021. The driving force behind both the narrative and the measures put in place in North America around the CCP Virus seems to use the concept of “science” merely as both a pretext to install autocracy by declaring public health emergencies with no expiry date and to brand anyone who challenges the state of affairs as heretically “unscientific.” To achieve these ends, what-

ever they may be, no low is too low, including re-writing science itself. The World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations body that is the most “authoritative” health source there is, appears to have recently redefined the concept of herd immunity from one that was in line with the science that has stood for decades to one that is, well, more in line with the current narrative for mass vaccination. U.S. President Donald Trump defunded the $400 million per year that the United States previously gave to the body, admonishing the WHO’s mishandling of the pandemic as well as Director Tedros Ghebreyesus’s tooclose-for-comfort relationship with the Chinese Communist

UK to US Travelers Must Pass CCP Virus Test By Neil Campbell Vision Times

ravelers arriving in the United States from the UK will now require a negative CCP Virus test before being allowed to enter America, according to a Christmas Day Order issued by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The Order, signed by CDC Director Robert Redfield, mandates that travelers will be required to produce either electronic or physical evidence of a negative test conducted on a sample

collected within three days of their flight. It comes into effect at 7:01 EST on Dec. 27. The tests must be a viral test and show a “negative” result for either SARS-CoV-2 RNA or antigens. Travellers will also be required to sign and provide an attestation to the CDC of having received a negative test result. SARS-CoV-2 is the biological name for the virus that causes the disease that the CCP-friendly World Health Organization (WHO) has coined “Coronavirus Disease 2019” (COVID-19). A positive

test for SARS-CoV-2 antigens or RNA, however, does not mean the person is suffering from COVID-19. The restrictions apply to all U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, while foreign nationals are still barred from entry if they have visited the UK in the previous 14 days. The restriction on foreign nationals has been in place since March when President Trump issued a Presidential Proclamation prohibiting UK foreign nationals from entry. The same restrictions are also in place on

foreign nationals of Iran and China. The CDC’s order has put the onus on airlines to ensure that all passengers over the age of 2 have received a qualifying test and produced the required documentation. Flight crew members, people who depart from a location outside of the UK but who have a connecting flight in the UK, and children under the age of 2 are the only exemptions. On Dec. 8, the BBC reported the first vaccination from Pfizer’s batch was given to a 90-year-old grandmother

Party. The American Institute of Economic Research (AIER) reported the change to the WHO’s definition of Herd Immunity on their webpage, “...the World Health Organization – once glorious because it was mainly responsible for the eradication of smallpox – has suddenly decided to delete everything [relevant] from cell biology basics. It has literally changed the science in a Sovietlike way.” “It has removed with the delete key any mention of natural immunities from its website. It has taken the additional step of actually mischaracterizing the structure and functioning of vaccines.” AIER describes itself as a U.S. based non-partisan research advocacy organization founded in 1933. The article shows a screenshot of WHO’s “Serology” page posted in June of 2020 that is stored on archive.org, describing herd immunity as “the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.” AIER’s article praises this definition as “pretty darn accurate overall...Even the statement that the threshold is ‘not yet clear’ is correct. There are cross immunities to Covid from other coronaviruses and there is T cell memory that contributes to natural immunity.” However, in the current version of the WHO page, herd immunity has been completely redefined to imply

that the human immune system requires vaccination to be resistant to the disease the CCP Virus causes, which the WHO has coined “Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)”: The new definition defines herd immunity as a “concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.” “Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it. Read the Director-General’s 12 October media briefing speech for more detail, ” the WHO’s modified definition claims. AIER puts the WHO on blast for their new definition, “What this note at the World Health Organization has done is deleted what amounts to the entire million-year history of humankind in its delicate dance with pathogens….You could only gather from this that all of us are nothing but blank and unimprovable slates on which the pharmaceutical industry writes its signature.” The author, Jeffrey A. Tucker, AIER’s Editorial Director, doesn’t stop there, “In effect, this change at WHO ignores and even wipes out 100 years of medical advances in virology, immunology, and epidemiology...It is thoroughly unscientific – shilling for the vaccine industry in exactly the way the conspiracy theorists say that WHO has been doing since the beginning of this pandemic.” Tucker finds the claim that vaccination is some sort of protection from the virus completely absurd, “What’s even more strange is the claim that a vaccine protects people from a virus rather than exposing them to it. What’s amazing about this claim is that a vaccine works precisely by firing up the immune system through exposure.” “Why I had to type those words is truly beyond me.”

in England. She described receiving the vaccine as “the best early birthday present.” The article also said there were 800,000 doses to be distributed. On Dec. 20, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control issued a Threat Assessment Brief stating that a variant of SARS-CoV-2 with “multiple spike protein” mutations was discovered in the UK. Spike proteins are the protruding structure of a Coronavirus that give the class of virii its unique “corona” or crown-shape. The spike protein is the portion of the virus’s RNA structure that attaches to

human cells at the time of infection. If a virus does not bind to host cells in the human body, it will be quickly cleared away by the immune system. The Threat Assessment Brief said: “Preliminary analysis in the UK suggests that this variant is significantly more transmissible than previously circulating variants, with an estimated potential to increase the reproductive number (R) by 0.4 or greater with an estimated increased transmissibility of up to 70%.” It is currently unclear whether the start of vaccinations caused or is related to emergence of the mutation, or if natural causes are at play.

Facing New CCP Virus Mutation, UK Announces Stricter Christmas Lockdowns By David Wagner Vision Times

recent surge in the number of coronavirus infections in the southern UK is thought to be related to a new Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus mutation that may make it significantly more transmittable. In a press conference on Dec. 19, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stated that “we must—and will be—guided by the science.” He assured the public that, although restrictions on gatherings will cancel Christmas this year, it will help keep everyone safe so that they can hopefully enjoy Christmas together next year. He praised the advances in genome sequencing made by British

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scientists, saying that the “UK is better at obtaining information about new strains like this than any other country.” Scientists first detected the new variant of the virus, which has multiple spike protein mutations as well as mutations in other genomic regions back in September. As of Dec. 13,, there have been 1,108 people in England, 20 in Wales, 9 in Denmark, 4 in Belgium, 1 in Netherlands and 1 in Australia who are identified as having contracted the new variant of the CCP virus. It was not unexpected that the virus mutated and even though it is more transmittable, it has not been found to cause higher acuity of symptoms or make it more deadly, nor is it expected to interfere with the vaccination process. Johnson announced a list of

regions due to raise from Tier 3 to Tier 4 moving restrictions, forcing many families to cancel their Christmas plans. Countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, and Austria have initiated travel bans on the UK as well. According to MIT’s Technology Review report, “The virus would have to change substantially to ‘escape’ the current vaccine. Even if it does, vaccines can be adjusted to keep up with shape-shifting pathogens, as is the case with the annual flu shot.” The Technology Review also remarked about how the original findings of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group, which Johnson was basing his action on, had an assessment that was “somewhat less alarmist than

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Police officers speak to a group of lorry drivers as the Port of Dover remains closed on December 22, 2020 in Dover, United Kingdom.

the prime minister’s version. They also go further to claim that “The situation could prove to be a false alarm. Sometimes virus variants appear to seem to spread more easily but in fact are being propelled by luck, like a superspreader event.” The European Centre for Disease Prevention and

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Control’s Threat Assessment Brief states that “preliminary analysis in the UK suggests that this variant is significantly more transmissible than previously circulating variants, with an estimated potential to increase the reproductive number (R) by 0.4 or greater with an estimated increased transmissibility of up

to 70%.” According to the WHO, as of December 21, 2020, the global number of confirmed cases of the CCP virus is at 75,704,857, with 1,690,061 confirmed deaths. The CCP virus originated in Wuhan, central China, in late 2019. The CCP has been criticized by many countries for the lack of information they provided the rest of the world about the novel coronavirus. When doctor Li Wenliang tried to warn the public about the severity of the outbreak he was silenced and disciplined by the police, before contracting and succumbing to the CCP virus this January. Doctor Yan Limeng, a Chinese virologist who fled Hong Kong to the United States this spring, has claimed that the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

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DEC 31, 2020-Jan 13, 2021 |

Uncovering Chinese ‘Friendship’ Groups in Europe Vision Times Staff

urope has emerged as the new focus for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) global campaign of political influence. It has in more recent years beefed up the use of its so-called “friendship groups” (youxie) to extend and deepen its influence in Europe. The latest example is the pro-China policy of Jan Zahradil, vicechair of the European Parliament’s powerful International Trade Committee. Beijing has been clandestinely setting up several espionage groups for decades to undermine, subvert, and destroy European countries, the European Union, and European civilization. Hidden agendas The CCP is not interested in making friends, and there is nothing friendly about these “friendship groups.” Their role, like hundreds of other CCP groups, is espionage. “Friendship groups” make contact, make friends, and offer lucrative favors and deals to political, banking, industrial, celebrity, academics, media, and other prominent influences. In turn, these influencers pro-

mote the CCP agenda, whitewash the Party, including their sordid past and their perverse nature. The European Parliament is one of three legislative branches of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. It represents the second-largest democratic electorate in the world after the Parliament of India. The People’s Republic of China established a “friendship group” to facilitate educational and cultural exchanges and promote collaboration between Beijing and the European Union. EU-China ‘friendship group’ EU-China Friendship Group in the European Parliament was established in December 2006 in Brussels, Belgium. The EUChina Friendship Group currently has a membership of 45 MEPs (Member of European Parliament) across 7 political groups from 20 countries, 13 of whom hold key positions in the European Union, such as chair holders of political groups and leaders in parliamentary committees. Ostensibly, the group acts as a platform of amity and goodwill within European civil society. But, by analyzing the recent events related to this group,

from the Gerhard Sabathil spy probe to the latest Zahradil controversy, we can see the much darker plan of Beijing. Gerhard Sabathil was a former EU ambassador from Germany. German authorities suspected that he was at the center of a clandestine Chinese operation aimed at transmitting European secrets to Beijing. But after a year-long high profile investigation, he was cleared of all suspicions. Though Sabathil’s charges were never proven, many European governments still fear Beijing’s global aspirations and the efforts they put into influencing regional leaders. The German authorities have declined to provide details of this probe to the media, according to Politico. The same situation arose when Fraser Cameron, who directs the EU-Asia Centre, a Brussels think tank that was investigated by Belgian security services on suspicion of passing sensitive information to China. Fraser is a former UK diplomat and ex-European Commission official. He was suspected of leaking information about the EU to Chinese spies, which he later denied. Trade committee controversy The latest controversy relating

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The EU-China 'friendship group' in the European Parliament was set up in December 2006.

to the Chinese influence in the European Union involves Jan Zahradil. He is a Czech conservative MEP and current vice-chair of the International Trade Committee of the European Parliament. Zahradil is the chairman of the EU-China Friendship Group as well. With his position on the trade committee, he can influence EU trade decisions and obtain access to sensitive negotiating documents from the European Commission. According to Bloomberg, the hotel and travel expenses of the “friendship group” were regularly picked up by the Chinese government. Zahradil’s efforts to initiate trade deals between China and Europe are highly suspect. He lauded that China can seek a path to recovery, expand international cooperation, and activate foreign trade in the post-COVID-19 world. According to the Facebook post of China International Import Expo, Zahradil’s praise

Japan Sets Record $52-Billion Military Budget to Counter Communist China Vision Times Staff

rime Minister of Japan Yoshihide Suga has announced a record Ministry of Defense budget. Starting April 01, 2021, the annual military budget will be 5.34 trillion yen (approx. $51.7 billion). This is the ninth consecutive year that Japan’s annual military budget has been raised by 1.1 percent. The proposed budget includes the development of longer antiship missiles and advanced

stealth fighters to counter the threat posed by the Chinese military. Some of the main budget allocations include: $912 million will be used to build two compact warships. These warships will be operational with as few sailors as possible. This will ease the Navy’s manpower concerns, which is finding it difficult to attract new recruits from Japan’s fast aging population. $760 million is set aside for a jet fighter project led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. with the assistance of

Lockheed Martin Corp. The fighter, which is Japan’s first in three decades, is expected to be ready in the 2030’s and will cost around $40 billion. $628 million will be spent on buying six Lockheed F-35 stealth fighters. This includes two vertical-landing (STOVL) B and two shorttakeoff variants that will be operational from a converted helicopter carrier. $323 million will fund the development of a long-range anti-ship missile to defend the southwestern Okinawa islands.

Japan will also build two warships capable of carrying the brand new Aegis air and ballistic missile defense radars, which will have three times the range of the previous versions. These will be the biggest Aegisequipped ships built by Japan, easily surpassing the Maya vessel that was commissioned by the government in March. These two ships will cost an estimated $4.8 billion. Even though the Japanese government is swiftly building its military capability, some critics have accused Japan of deviating from its

came during the China International Fair for Trade in Services-CIFTIS, which was conducted in November. This was when Europe and the U.S. were highly critical of the Chinese government’s role in the coronavirus spread. Zahradil’s pro-China policy could possibly give China an edge in ongoing commerce talks with Brussels. Recently, a report highlighting this issue was published in Politico. In a retaliatory measure, Zahradil expressed his discontent regarding the article through a letter addressed to European Parliament President David Sassoli. He rejected the claims, stating that they are just baseless accusations. Another accused is Gai Lin. He is the first Chinese national to be employed by the European Parliament. He became a key player in the “friendship group” after being employed in Zahradil’s services as a parttime accredited assistant following the May 2019 European Par-

liament election. Gai’s honorary title in the “Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries,” (CPAFFC) which is part of China’s foreign affairs establishment, sparked controversies. A Czech Atlanticist think tank, Sinopsis, funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, published a 42-page report on this. The report alleges close ties between the EU-China Friendship group and the Chinese foreign affairs department. Earlier, the 2017-18 reports from the Belgian intelligence services and a paper by the Washington-based think tank, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which is close to the U.S. defense industry, also accused China of misusing international friendship groups to acquire sensitive information. All reports shed light on the CCP’s growing influence on European bodies and Western countries.

pacifist policy adopted post World War II. In June, the government was forced to suspend the deployment of the U.S. Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense system due to a huge public outcry. Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato stated that the new weapons are not intended to attack foreign bases. They are to bolster the country’s defenses. Additionally, Japan will be conducting a series of land and sea drills together with the United States and France in May next year. The exercises will be performed on uninhabited islands around Japan. The aim is to improve its capacity of providing relief during natural disasters. Some drills could also be applied to improving defense against an

incoming attack. The joint exercise between the three nations is aimed at communist China. “We want to demonstrate our presence to the region and send a message about JapanFrance cooperation… This is a message aimed at China. This is a message about multilateral partnerships and the freedom of passage,” Admiral Pierre Vandier, chief of staff of the French Navy, said to the local Sankei newspaper. Tokyo is also considering passing a law to limit land purchases by Chinese companies if they are located near military bases. In the past decade, 80 plots of land near Japanese military installations have been procured by companies from China or South Korea.

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Video Shows Chinese Incursion Into Indian Grasslands By Prakash Gogoir Vision Times

n Dec. 16, Chinese soldiers with Indian citizens entered the Indian Territory of Cakzung in civilian clothes. They were eventually driven away. Cakzung is a winter grazing pasture in the region of Ladakh in northern India. The incursion was caught on video, which went viral on Indian social media. Konchok Stanzin from a nearby village noted that his Changpa tribe hasn’t visited the Cakzung region for many years due to livestock disease. However, when they went over to graze the animals this year, there were Chinese people there who blocked them. He said that similar blocks had happened earlier as well.

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The peaceful life of Changpa nomads has been adversely affected by aggressive Chinese incursions in recent times. The community’s existence is based on migration and livestock, which has been disrupted due to border tensions. “Livestock need grassland. Due to heavy deployment, the grazing area is reduced as nomads are not being allowed to move to their seasonal pastures… This year there was also scanty rainfall in the summer. The grasslands thus don’t have enough grass. These winters are very difficult for the nomads… Livestock is Changpas’ only property. This impacts their income,” Stanzin told The Epoch Times. He also accused the Chinese government of encouraging their nomads to graze in Changpa areas. Geopolitical analyst Dr.

Brahma Chellaney said that Beijing is deploying its South China Sea tactic in India’s mountainous terrains. The CCP often sends fishermen into deep areas of the South China Sea in order to stake a claim in the waters. In the mountainous terrain of India, Beijing is using nomads and herders instead of fishermen. In both situations, civilian resources are being deployed by the communist regime for their expansionist agenda. Chellaney said that communist China is settling Han ethnic people and Tibetans loyal to the CCP along India’s borders to strengthen its territorial claim. India-China skirmishes escalated this year as soldiers from both sides engaged in aggressive melee in May. In June, another violent conflict led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and 43 Chinese. In

August and September, Indian troops took control of multiple vantage points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Retaliating against Chinese aggressiveness, the Indian government banned more than 200 Chinese apps which include those made by China’s tech giants Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance. Xi Jinping recently removed General Zhao Zongqi from his post as the Commander of the Western Theater for his involvement in the sevenmonth long military standoff with India. He was replaced with General Zhang Xudong, who has no experience on the Indian border. The Indian Army has identified 20 sensitive spots along the Line of Actual Control that have a strong possibility of more Chinese incursions once the winter

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A recent Chinese incursion in India aimed at taking over nomadic lands.

season ends and the snow melts. Reinforcements from the Indian Army and the IndoTibetan Border Police (ITBP) will soon be sent to these 20 spots. “Considering the ground situation and palpable tension along the LAC, the Indian Army does not want to further lose territory to the PLA. Intelligence reports have suggested that the Chinese troops are planning incursions at the 20 sensitive spots inside

India-claimed lines once the winter is over… Both the army and the ITBP are building new border posts and are also planning to bolster operational and infrastructure capabilities at these 20 spots along the LAC to prevent any such incursion,” a security official told The Telegraph. At present, India has deployed 50,000 troops in various locations in Ladakh. China also stationed a comparable amount of troops on its side of the border.

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A8 | DEC 31, 2020-Jan 13, 2021

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AT&T Chairman Sits on Board of China-Linked Private Equity FoUTASportscaster / Public Domain

By Neil Campbell Vision Times

n the wake of the suspicious Christmas morning bombing of an AT&T network sites located about a block away from the telecom giant’s regional offices in downtown Nashville, both the perpetrators and their motives remain unknown. Regardless of what comes to pass, there is a link between AT&T, Dominion Voting Systems, and the Chinese Communist Party that is worth taking a closer look at. This possible connection centers on AT&T Chairman William E. Kennard. Kennard, who also sits on the Board of Directors for Ford Motor Company, MetLife, Duke Energy, and Staple Street Capital, the private equity firm that is the sole owner of Dominion Voting Systems, was appointed Chairman of AT&T’s Board of Directors on Nov. 6, three days after the presidential election. The Chairman was general counsel for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 1993 to 1997 and was promoted to FCC Chairman in 1997 under Bill Clinton. He held the position until January of 2001. After leaving the FCC, Kennard joined The Carlyle Group, another private equity firm, in May of 2001, serving as the group’s Executive Director. In a 2001 article by The Guardian, former President George H.W. Bush gave “speeches for the company and is paid with stakes in the firm’s investments, believed to be worth at least $80,000 per appearance.” In 1993, billionaire George Soros invested $100 million in Carlyle Group according to an article by the Washington Post. During the Obama administration, Kennard, who also holds a seat on the Board of Trustees at Yale where he earned his law degree, was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the European Union in 2009. He served in the role until 2013. Kennard has served on the AT&T Board of Directors since 2014. Staple Street Capital and Communist China Two co-founders of Staple Street Capital, Stephen Owens and Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, also worked at Carlyle Group. Owens worked at Carlyle until 2009 when he formed Staple Street, while Yaghoobzadeh left Carlyle in 2003 and served as Cerebus Capital Management’s Vice President until Staple Street was founded. Staple Street Capital acquired Dominion Voting Systems in 2008 for an undisclosed sum. The deal was arranged by UBS

Securities LLC, which ultimately falls under the UBS Group of companies. Three of the four members on the Bloomberg profile page for UBS Securities LLC were Chinese nationals as of Dec. 4, according to The Epoch Times. The profile has since changed to reflect no Chinese names, while Staple Street’s webpage was reduced to a simple landing page with only two links. One of the Chinese names previously found in the profile was Ye Xiang, founder of VisionGain Capital who was Secretary for Foreign Financial Institutions for the People’s Bank of China (PBoC). In 2014, UBS Securities LLP arranged a private placement of $200 million for Staple Street Capital II, L.P. Staple Street Capital III, L.P. then formed in 2020 and obtained $400 million from UBS Securities LLP on Oct. 8. UBS Securities Co. is a company that falls under the UBS Group umbrella. UBS Securities Co. is headquartered in Beijing and was founded in 2006 by CCP state enterprises after Beijing Securities flopped. UBS Group and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) bought 24.99 percent of UBS Securities Co. in 2007. UBS Group was limited to an investment size under 25 percent in order to flout Communist Party rules on foreign investment. A year later, UBS Group acquired IFC’s portion of the investment. The remaining 75 percent was owned by a variety of Chinese state enterprises. Cheng Yisun was involved in the establishment of UBS Securities and served as its general manager. He said: “UBS Securities in Beijing is actually a Chinese Communist Party company and a small share of the UBS Group was given to UBS just to use the name ‘UBS.’” In 2018 when the CCP changed its ownership rules to allow majority foreign ownership of state enterprises, UBS Group increased its stake in UBS Securities Co. to 51 percent, thereby making UBS Securities Co. a subsidiary of UBS Group. Then-People’s Republic of China (PRC) Vice Premier Wang Qishan met with UBS Vice Chairman Leon Brittan in 2010. This meeting was publicized by CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily and demonstrated that UBS had become a political asset of Party officials. Wang Qishan is now PRC Vice President. In life, nothing is for free, especially $600 million in capital market infusions. Especially when it comes to shaking hands with Beijing, it can be said with certainty: gifts are debts. Although the correlations and flow of money between Staple U.S. Department of State

Official photo from circa 2009 of then-U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. William Kennard. Kennard was elected chairman of the board of AT&T in March 2020.

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One AT&T Plaza – AT&T headquarters in Dallas, Texas.

Kenzaburo Fukuhara — Pool / Getty Images

Street, UBS Group (and the CCP behind them), and Dominion Voting Systems only show a dubious and suspect series of connections, they are not evidence of foul play in the Presidential Election on their own. However, the connections allow for a case to be made that conflict of interest is in play. After all, it was Dominion’s systems that were used in each of the battleground states where Joe Biden miraculously defeated record turnouts by Trump’s supporters. Biden won each state by very slim margins; many of the voter fraud allegations in the 2020 election center on claimed discrepancies and vulnerabilities involving Dominion.

Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan in the Chinese Communist Party headquarters of Zhongnanhai on April 8, 2019, in Beijing.

Regardless of what comes to pass, there is a link between AT&T, Dominion Voting Systems, and the Chinese Communist Party that is worth taking a closer look at.

AT&T’s media empire In 2016, AT&T announced a merger with Time Warner. After President Trump of the merger that “personally, I’ve always felt that that was a deal that’s not good for the country,” the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in 2017 to block the merger alleging the deal violated antitrust laws. In 2018, a six-week trial was held in the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C. where Judge Richard Leon presided. Leon ultimately ruled in favor of AT&T and Time Warner on June 12, 2018. Three days later, AT&T announced it had acquired Time Warner.

Judge Richard Leon was appointed by George W. Bush in September, 2001. In the deal, AT&T acquired a litany of media giants, notably, HBO and Cinemax, Turner Entertainment Networks, Turner Broadcasting, Turner Sports, CNN News Group, DC Entertainment and DC Films, New Line Cinema, and all of the Warner Bros. suite of companies. CNN has been one of the most vocal “authoritative sources” claiming that there simply is no evidence at all of election fraud. In a Dec. 15 article, the network described the allegations as an “urban myth”. CNN ridiculed the Texas v Pennsylvania lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court as “Republican efforts to challenge the basic rules of American democracy by limiting access to the voting booth and potentially again seeking to undo elections they lose.” AT&T and the NSA: one big surveillance system In June of 2018, The Intercept published an article titled The Wiretap Rooms — The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities breaking down a series of National Security Agency classified documents obtained from Edward Snowden alleging that AT&T was essentially passing all Internet traffic that flowed through the U.S. to the NSA for monitoring. In 2016, The Daily Beast

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alleged that AT&T sold data to law enforcement through “Project Hemisphere.” The Intercept’s article said: “The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s ‘extreme willingness to help.’ It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers,” noting that AT&T uses its enormous market share to route traffic from other providers in America and around the world through its high-speed infrastructure. The article pointed to eight buildings in major cities in the U.S., publishing photos and their addresses, that were described as “Service Node Routing Complexes”, in which customers’ “data is then routed — in whole or in part — through the eight AT&T buildings, where the NSA taps into it.” Lead designer Hossein Eslambolchi said that he had to take a polygraph and obtain a government security clearance when he worked on the project. In essence, all data that runs through AT&T’s enormous network, whether it originates in the U.S. or internationally, including traffic sent from one international entity to another, but which is routed through AT&T for any reason, is provided to the NSA according to Snowden’s cache. NSA agents then use differ-

ent tools “to search through the full contents of emails, instant messenger chats, web-browsing histories, webcam photos, information about downloads from online services, and Skype sessions.” “The root of the issue was that the NSA’s technology was not only targeting communications sent to and from specific surveillance targets. Instead, the agency was sweeping up people’s emails if they had merely mentioned particular information about surveillance targets,” said the article. In no uncertain terms, Snowden brought the revelation that AT&T had helped the NSA to eavesdrop on the entire world. A tangled web When somebody packs an RV full of explosives next to a building and then detonates it, the motive could be anything from mental illness, a disgruntled employee, domestic or international terrorism, or perhaps simply a frustrated citizen who feels the presidential election was stolen from “We the people” at the bequest of the CCP. Perhaps someone was simply fed up with an oligarchy using its clout to spy on and lie to American citizens. Only time will reveal the reasons why the Nashville bombing occurred. Until then, we have merely a tangled web between AT&T, Dominion, and the CCP waiting to be unraveled.

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Wisdom & Wellness

DEC 31, 2020-Jan 13, 2021 |

How Emperor Xuan Approached the Task of ‘Maintaining Stability’ pixabay / CC0 1.0

Vision Times Staff

o today’s Chinese, the term “maintaining stability” (維穩) brings to mind the authoritarian policies of the communist regime, which shuts down free speech, spiritual faith, and civil society in order to strengthen its dictatorship. At the time of Emperor Xuan (91-48 B.C.) of the Han Dynasty, a famine struck Bohai and nearby counties. Bandits roamed around and became quite a significant issue for the people. Emperor Xuan needed a competent officer to handle the situation. The prime minister recommended Gong Sui. Following this suggestion, the emperor appointed Gong Sui to be the magistrate of Bohai. At that time, Gong Sui was already 70 years old. Emperor Xuan summoned him and noted that he was less imposing in person than rumor would have had him believe. With contemptuous skepticism Emperor Xuan asked him: “How will you quell the bandits?” Gong Sui replied: “Bohai County is located in a remote area, without the blessings and education of Your Holy Majesty. The people there are suffering from hunger and cold, and the local officials do not know how to provide relief. As a result, your people are

Gong Sui knew that the people were only brandishing weapons by the lakeside because they were suffering.

brandishing weapons by the lakeside. Do you want me to destroy them, or to pacify them?” After hearing this, Emperor Xuan was pleased, and said: “The reason why I chose such a virtuous talent is to pacify them.” Gong Sui said: “I have heard that handling rebels is like unraveling a complex knot. We must be patient. I hope that the Prime Minister and other officials do not constrain me with regulations so that I can handle the bandits according to the circum-

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With contemptuous skepticism Emperor Xuan asked him: “How will you quell the bandits?”

Any people they found holding farm tools were to be considered good people and not to be questioned.

The Traditional Chinese View on Relations Between Men and Women Vision Times Staff

ike all ancient civilizations, traditional Chinese philosophies had well-defined understandings of both men and women. However, such a view did not emerge with an intent to discriminate, but from a wisdom that realized that men and women are essentially different and naturally perform distinct roles, fitting in with their attributes, for the benefit of society. Family structure Traditional Chinese thought views male and female through the Taoist concept of yin and yang. Qualities like dominance, power, and firmness are considered to be yang and thus associated with the male. In contrast, submissiveness, and gentleness as yin and were associated with women. Chinese philosophers described a dominant male and a submissive female as the foundation of a society. The husband was to be yang in the relationship who worked and supported his family while the woman provided the love and care necessary for the upbringing and keeping of the family. The Record of Rituals, a collection of ancient Chinese texts, states that China’s ruling monarchs used to give immense respect to their wives. In exchange, the wife was said to maintain an attitude of

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deference in the household. In the Biographies of Exemplary Women, written in 18 B.C., the writer argues that the relationship between a husband and wife was the foundation of a stable society. Scholar Liu Xiang, born in 77 B.C., noted that morality starts with a strong family, which then reflects in the society. Violation of the yin and yang relationship between men and women was said to result in major social disorders. Considering the high number of divorces, fatherless children, and crime rates plaguing modern societies, the traditional Chinese recommendation of ensuring a strong family system with a male head and female caretaker seems to be the most stable path to maintain society. Empress Zhangsun: A role model for traditional women Empress Zhangsun, who lived in the 7th century B.C., is an excellent example of a traditional Chinese woman. She married Emperor Taizong at the age of just 13 years old and acted as an excellent wife and queen. Zhangsun was said to be compassionate, wise, and lived humbly, staying away from a luxurious lifestyle. Her wisdom and character can be understood by looking at the circumstances surrounding her death. In 635, she fell terribly ill. Emperor Taizong was advised to grant amnesty to a few prisoners and send them to a temple so as to gain the blessings

of Heaven. However, Zhangsun told her husband not to follow through with the advice since she did not want country rules to be violated for her benefit. “Life and death are a matter of destiny, and wealth and honor are the wills of Heaven. If doing good deeds can indeed extend one’s life, then I have never done bad deeds in my life. If doing good deeds does not affect one’s lifespan, then what’s the good of seeking fortune? Giving amnesty to prisoners is a national affair and the Taoist temples are quiet places. There is no need to interfere with these places because of me. Why violate the rules and principles of this country because of a woman?” she said. Empress Zha ngsu n succumbed to illness in 636

When men went to work, the women, educated in the classical arts, maintained the foundations of their house in order, which enabled peace and prosperity.

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B.C., leaving her husband — perhaps the greatest emperor of Chinese history — bereft of not only his love but also a crucial source of wisdom. She still remains a role model of how a traditional woman should be: a strong support for her husband. The strength of yin When you take in the concept of leadership, the leaders in the highest rungs understand that to lead means to serve. It is not easy nor is it possible for everyone to serve properly. To do this, one must carry the qualities of kindness, empathy, tolerance, and wisdom. The strengths of women are unique and not to be found in men. Their attributes complement each other like the sky and the earth to enable the

stances, so I have no need to ask for permission whenever I need to take action.” Emperor Xuan promised him he would have a free hand.  Endowed with this authority, Gong Sui took a four horse-drawn-carriage to Bohai County. Hearing of his arrival, the county official led his troops to greet him. Gong Sui told all the troops to return and ordered the official to remove everyone in charge of hunting down the bandits. He stated that any people they found holding farm tools were all good people and that the officials must not question them. He went on to say that only those holding weapons were bandits. Then, Gong Sui drove to the county seat alone. After hearing Gong Sui give out his instructions, the bandits immediately disbanded, abandoned their weapons, and picked up farming equipment such as hoes and pitchforks. The thefts and robberies all subsided. Gong Sui opened the granary and gave food to the poor. He also selected good officials to manage and support the people. He encouraged people to plant crops in spring and summer and to harvest and pay taxes in autumn and winter. As a result, all the families in Bohai County had savings, and both the officials and the people became wealthy. Translated by Jean Chen and edited by Leo Timm.

via Dajiyuan

Traditional Chinese thought views male and female through the Taoist concept of yin and yang.

flourishing of life in-between. When roles are defined, the order is established and there is no longer chaos in society. Ancient Chinese women were devoted and nurturing of their families and efficient in managing households. When men went to work, the women, educated in the classical arts, maintained the foundations of their house in order, which enabled peace and prosperity. In Chinese philosophy, too much of something, i.e. Yin or Yang, disrupts the balance. When men acquire feminine characteristics or women, manly attributes, the balance has completely gone off-track and will result in a society filled with misery and internal afflictions that will not survive for long.

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A10 | DEC 31, 2020-Jan 13, 2021

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From Art to Society: We Can’t Make It on Our Own By Tim Gebhart Vision Times

n 1856, on a road just outside the quaint, medieval town of Winchelsea near the coast of southern England, John Everett Millais painted a scene titled The Blind Girl. Millais’ painting The Blind Girl took us into that world with two girls who had opposing abilities. Not revealing any specific meaning in his painting, Millais left it to the viewer to glean from the painting what they will. No doubt though, he captured and highlighted a central part of our shared human experience, that we are wholly dependent upon each other to make it in our lives. Establishing the Pre-Raphaelite movement, Millais sought an alternative to the stiff and heroic neo-classical themes that were the staple of his time. He and his fellow Pre-Raphaelite companions explored narratives in their works that brought us into the feminine world of nurturing care, empathy, and intuition. The work guides us into the scene and the story of the two girl’s relationship with one another through our senses. The warm rays of the sun soak the motionless blind girl, the viewer clued in by the butterfly that safely rests on her shoulder without any trepidation. A sign “Pity the Blind” hangs around her neck as a concertina rests on her lap. She moves blades of grass through her fingers on her right hand and clasps the other girl’s hand tightly with her left. The two girls are beggars, possibly orphans which were a common sight throughout England in the mid-nineteenth century. The scene conveys a bit of commonly held wisdom that our hyper-individualized society might do well to reflect on, we live in the same situation as these girls with every aspect of our lives being dependent upon another. In the traditional view of the world, the family and the

The two girls compliment and look out for each other, not reveling in a comfortable life, but being fulfilled and enriched with a shared bond.

bonds with others were one of the most important facets of a person’s life and served many of the crucial needs a person would have, physically, psychologically, and spiritually, so even an impoverished family could live a contented and purposeful life. The emphasis was put on service towards the other and away from the self. Millais beautifully illustrated the two girls complimenting and looking out for each other, not reveling in a comfortable life, quite the opposite, but being fulfilled and enriched with a shared bond that goes beyond the value of money or material wealth. In our modern culture, the shift away from the importance of family and marriage, to the commodification of relationships has left many to face the world alone. The careful consideration, valuing in honor, being truthful, and respecting vows of marriage, for instance, have become an afterthought to emotional impulses. The removal of these sacred institutions that lifted humanity into living a noble and reverent life were purposely maligned however to steer humanity towards depravity.

Marxism and Materialism were the culprits that began to spread in the 19th century across Europe and England during Millas’ time and wreaked havoc on society, ridding people of their sacrosanct ties to each other. In the Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx stated, “therefore after, for example, the earthly family is discovered as the secret of the holy family, the former must itself be theoretically and practically destroyed.” Vladimir Lenin, the Marxist dictator of Soviet Russia, set to break familial bonds and replace them with the “state.” From Marxists came the feminist movement which pitted the sexes against each other in endless struggle which broke the sacred bonds that binded each other in servitude to one another. Lenin pushed an agenda to demean and disparage any devotion to family as oppression and force in an irreverence towards life. Lenin compared marriage, familial piety, and child-rearing to slavery. In his 1918 treatise Prophetic Words, he stated, “Human childbirth is an act which transforms the woman into an almost lifeless, bloodstained heap of flesh, tortured, tormented and driven frantic by pain.” After World War II, Marxist influence spread to the United States in the cultural sphere, via the Frankfurt School under Herbert Marcuse and Theodor W. Adorno. Their beliefs soon spread through universities, the entertainment industry, and the arts. The effects of their influence on our culture was a breakdown of the once sacred bonds and importance we placed in relationships. The celebration of drug abuse, free love, abortion, and many more cultural ills, along with the privileges allowed by modern technology, have increasingly dampened the warmth of connection and societal bonds. Millais’ painting offers a meditation back into that important aspect of the human condition that our traditional

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'The Blind Girl' (1856) is a painting by John Everett Millais. The scene was painted on the road just outside the quaint, medieval town of Winchelsea near the coast of southern England.

wisdom and values have given us, for us as a society to honor the bonds that tie us together by selflessness and servitude to others. A beautiful and richly rewarding life is one where we can unequivocally put our lives safely in other’s hands. Like the girls in the painting, they can go through life, even in its many setbacks, and confide in and enrich each other’s spirits.

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In the 19th century England, John Everett Millais established the Pre-Raphaelite movement in painting, which shifted away from the stiff and heroic, neoclassical themes that were the staple of his time.

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A11

When the Wind Decided the Fate of China Shizhao/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

Vision Times Staff

t was the year 208 AD. Chinese warlord Cao Cao (pronounced “tsao tsao”) had established his control over northern China. The emperor of the Han Dynasty was his puppet. Eight hundred thousand soldiers stood under his command. It was time for Cao to claim mastery over the entire empire. He moved 200,000 men to the Yangtze River, which splits China between north and south, and made preparations to cross. Standing against Cao Cao was Liu Bei, a distant relative of the Han imperial line who harbored dreams of restoring his family to greatness, and Sun Quan, warlord of the southeast. At the time, Liu Bei and his loyal companions, the warriors Zhang Fei and Guan Yu, were hiding on the northern bank of the Yangtze, under the protection of a local general. The general surrendered upon seeing the might of the vast armies Cao was leading their way, but Liu Bei did not yield. Liu gathered up about 10,000 men and planned his last stand at a city on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Sun Quan, knowing he would be next after Cao Cao vanquished Liu’s force, came and lent his assistance. Still, between them were only about 60,000 men and officers — hardly enough to stand a chance against the northern juggernaut. The Red Cliff But history has some wild cards, and numbers alone do not win wars. Many small rivers sprang from the Yangtze itself, making it difficult for Cao Cao’s troops to move. They were used to fighting on open plains and did not have enough boats to navigate the waters properly, let alone fight well. So instead of going to battle immediately, Cao Cao had his troops conduct drills. Sun ordered a large number of

A scene from “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” featuring Liu Bei at the Yangtze River.

special unmanned boats filled with oil and other flammable material to be sent drifting towards the enemy. But there was one problem: it was winter and the prevailing winds blew south, not east as was needed. Still, the forces of Sun Quan and Liu Bei had no other hope. What happened on the day of the operation was nothing other than fate: the wind did something it never did in winter before, and began to blow east, straight towards Cao Cao’s fleet. Sun Quan sent out his burning ships, causing a tremendous fire to break out among Cao Cao’s forces. In the confusion, Liu Bei and Sun Quan’s troops launched an attack by land. Before Red Cliff, Cao Cao had been almost certain that he would win easily. But the attack against Cao Cao’s 200,000-man army was so devastating that he escaped from the Yangtze with only a small number of his men. This was the famous Battle of the Red Cliff. Owing to a quirk of providence, Cao Cao’s invasion of southern China ended in resounding failure. China would be divided between the

Three Kingdoms — Cao’s Wei, Liu’s Shu, and Sun’s Wu — for another 60 years. The wind that birthed the Great Ming The Chinese have a saying that while men strive to achieve their goals, it is heaven that decides their success or failure. The Hongwu emperor, also known by his personal name Zhu Yuanzhang, was the founding emperor of the great Ming Dynasty. Zhu was one of just two commoners in Chinese history to successfully fight his way to the throne and rule all of China. But like the formation of the epic Three Kingdoms era, Zhu’s rise was thanks to a welltimed wind. During the last years of Mongol rule in the Yuan dynasty, there were many rebel groups who built up large armies after several rebellions in 1352. The two most powerful rebel leaders were Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang. In June 1363, while Zhu was battling another rebel group led by Zhang Shicheng in the north, Chen sent an army of 600,000

soldiers to attack the city of Hong Du, today’s Nanchang in Jiangxi Province. The city was defended by Zhu Yuanzhang’s nephew. It was August before he was able to get word of the attack to Zhu Yuanzhang, who immediately sent 200,000 men with ships to his nephew’s aid. The news of this relief force worried Chen Youliang. He turned his entire army away from Hong Du to fight Zhu Yuanzhang instead, gathering his troops to head north to Poyang Lake, where his large ships would be able to fight effectively. Zhu Yuanzhang’s forces were also converging on the lake and the two armies would soon meet. It is said in the first chapter of the “History of Ming” (one of the Twenty-four Histories) that “[Chen] Youliang’s troops numbered 600,000, and his huge ships and masts towered dozens of meters like mountains.” Zhu Yuanzhang’s ships were tiny by comparison. Chen’s captains had little more to do than ram them and they would sink. On August 30th, Zhu

launched a frontal assault of such intensity that the battle was said to be visible for over fifty miles. Twenty of Chen’s tower ships were sent to the lake bottom and one was captured. The attack almost broke Chen’s battle line. However, his forces were able to muster a counterattack and one of Chen’s best commanders nearly destroyed Zhu Yuanzhang’s own ship, which was caught on a sandbar. The battle continued into the night with neither side gaining the upper hand. Zhu’s forces had taken heavier losses than expected-including many commanders, and Chen was distraught at the loss of twenty of his prized ships. The next morning, Zhu again ordered a full head on attack on Chen’s ships, a move that was predicted by Chen. He had changed his formation accordingly, with his massive ships tightly packed at the core of the formation. After three attempts at breaking the enemy formation, several of Zhu’s commanders turned and sailed away. Back at camp, Zhu let out his full fury and executed

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The Mystery of Qin Shi Huang’s Everlasting Lamps  Vision Times Staff

in Shi Huang was the first emperor in China and his achievements were outstanding. He ended the war among kingdoms and realized the first great unification in Chinese history. He unified measurements and writing, built the Great Wall to resist foreign invasions, and thus earned his title as the great emperor. The First Emperor had great political ambitions and made tremendous achievements during his life. After his death, he left a wealth of valuable heritage for future generations. Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum is the largest in ancient China. According to historical records, Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum was built by 720,000 construction workers over a period of 37 years. A large amount of stone that was used to build the mausoleum was transported from Zhongshan and Junershan, on the north bank of the Wei River, to Linyi. The project was very difficult. Therefore, Qin Shi Huang’s

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mausoleum is known as “one of the eight wonders of the world.”  When the excavation of Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum took place, in addition to the discovery of the pit containing the Terracotta Warriors nearby, archaeologists also found everlasting lamps. When they opened the tomb, the lamps were still burning. It was indeed creepy, as if they had been lit thousands of years ago. It is because of this that many archeologists are particularly curious: Can the lamps in Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum actually have been burning for thousands of years? People in the Qin Dynasty used oil lamps. Once the oil burned out, the lamp would not light up. Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum was built thousands of years ago, and according to modern science, it is not possible that these everlasting lamps could always burn. Archaeologists have found descriptions of everlasting lamps in some ancient books, which they say are fueled by oil made from the Mermaids, and can burn for long periods. It is said that for

building the imperial mausoleum, many mermaids were captured, and oil from them was poured into the everlasting lamps. Because technology was not developed then, people could only use whale oil as fuel. According to scientific calculations, if equipped with a cubic meter of whale oil, an ordinary oil lamp could burn for nearly 5,000 days, that is, burn for about 14 years. Although the combustion time is relatively long, it is not possible to burn for thousands of years, and there is no condition for continuous combustion in closed, oxygenfree chambers. The age old mystery was finally solved by an American scholar. The American scholar believes that these lamps have not burned for thousands of years in the absence of oxygen in the tomb, and so they must have been extinguished. Later, when archaeologists opened the mausoleum and oxygen entered the chamber, the lamp wicks containing white phosphorus burned up and re-

10 of his own commanders. Luckily, before Zhu could do more damage, a staff officer stopped him and proposed a plan to destroy Chen’s vessels. Several smaller ships were loaded full of oil and reeds to act as fire ships. They were outfitted with straw dummies to appear like regular ships. But the plan hinged on one factor that the staff officer could not provide: the wind. Zhu’s force waited anxiously. Sure enough, heaven had victory in store for them. A northeastern wind began to blow, and the fire ships were immediately sent off. Many of Chen’s ships were set ablaze, and the effects were increased as a result of his decision to chain his ships together. That night, Lake Poyang became a lake of fire. Zhu Yuanzhang seized the opportunity to destroy Chen’s forces and attacked. After a small break in the fighting, on Sept. 2, Chen launched an attack on Zhu Yuanzhang’s flagship. Zhu was forced to abandon the ship and escaped just as it exploded. He realized that his ship was being targeted due to its distinctive white mast, and ordered his ships to paint all of their masts white. When the two navies once again went into battle, Chen found that all of the opposing ships had white masts. Seeing that Chen’s ships were in disarray, Zhu sent four commanders to attack the mammoth vessels with small, fast ships. He then ordered a general assault that crushed Chen’s forces. Surrounded and running out of food, Chen tried to break out and escape to safety. On the way out, he was shot in the eye by an archer on the way. Shortly afterwards, his second in command surrendered their remaining forces. This victory cleared the way for Zhu Yuanzhang to defeat the Mongols and proclaim his new dynasty.

ignited the lamps. As soon as this statement was put forward, it was unanimously agreed to by Chinese and foreign scientists, so that the mystery of the millennium has been solved. Translated by Felice and edited by Helen

When the excavation of Emperor Qin Shihuang's mausoleum took place, archaeologists found oil lamps that appeared to have been burning for thousands of years.

BrokenSphere via wikimedia CC BY-SA 2.0

The pit containing the Terracotta Warriors was also found nearby.

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A12 | DEC 31, 2020-Jan 13, 2021

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Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations: Winning the Admiration of the Gods Vision Times Staff

he ancient Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once stated: “Here is a rule to remember in the future when anything tempts you to feel bitter: Do not think ‘This is misfortune,’ but ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune.’” Marcus Aurelius was an advocate of temperance and developing the ability to take self-interest and sentiments lightly. He turned to contemplation, ever trying to sift out the frivolities of life and its many vicissitudes. Marcus Aurelius lived by the principles of stoicism, which, above all else, states that you cannot control others, but you can control your reactions to them. Essentially, your focus should not be about looking externally to understand your life, but to look within to gain insight into yourself and ultimately use the many hardships that inescapably befall you to come to greater realizations on the nature of humanity, your limitations, and your potential. We can get a glimpse into Marcus Aurelius’ private thoughts in his journals, which were intended only for his consumption. His journals were later compiled into the book Meditations after his death. “The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.” ~ Marcus Aurelius Usually, late at night when most others were fast asleep, Marcus wrote down his thoughts. The massive weight of running an empire with all of its intrigues, power struggles, famines, and the other myriad duties of state to tend to, Marcus had few people to turn to to confide in. His heavy yet calm words in Meditations reveal a soul that needed an outlet and an avenue to find solutions. The pages of Meditations are filled with the man’s elucidations and all are an internal search for principle and reason through looking within. “Today, I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own percep-

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tions — not outside.” ~ Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius’ constant examination of his own thoughts, devotion to discipline, and thus righteous action served him well throughout his life. In A.D. 173 deep in the wilds of Eastern Europe, Marcus Aurelius campaigned against the Germanic Quadi tribe that often raided weaker parts of the northern Roman Empire. Vast numbers of hysterical warriors of the tribe surrounded the palisade walls of the fort Marcus’ army constructed to protect themselves from ambush when marching. The Quadi had surrounded the fort and were seemingly about to claim victory. Legend has it that the Roman soldiers were preparing for their final moments of life as the gate of the fort was about to be breached. Marcus Aurelius kept his composure and calmly knelt down to pray. A lightning bolt instantly shattered the ground in front of the Quadi warriors. The Quadi, terrified, immediately fled the battle. The Roman soldiers were stunned and grateful for the seemingly divine intervention. Marcus became a legend thereafter, with many believing it was Marcus Aurelius’ devoted life that won the respect and admiration of the gods, who in turn saved him and his army. With the near-daily infractions you face as you journey in your life, Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations can provide wisdom to assist you in better understanding yourself to meet with adversity and use it for your development. There are anxieties, anger, and depression that can come to you through traumatic events, and they can come in great severity, but looking within and examining your responses to them, though it can be unnerving, as many spiritual practices have stated, is the key to elevating your consciousness, and to possibly win the admiration of Creation. “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

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'The Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius,' Eugène Delacroix, oil painting, 1844, The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon.

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Marcus Aurelius’ constant examination of his own thoughts, devotion to discipline, and righteous action served him well throughout his life.

Facing certain defeat at the hands of the Quadi warriors, Marcus Aurelius kept his composure and calmly knelt down to pray.

Screenshot / YouTube

The journals of Marcus Aurelius contain his private thoughts that were compiled into the book ‘Meditations’ after his death.

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