Vision Times Newspaper VOL.8 FEB 26,2021

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VOL. FEB 26 - MAR 4, 2021

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US President Joe Biden speaks to the press before departing the White House in Washington, DC, for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on February 16, 2021.

NY

EDITION

(Image:NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)

Only

6%

of

COVID-19 Relief Bill

Allotted Toward Pandemic Relief

By Steven Li

O

n Friday, the full 591page text of the $1.9 trillion Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID19) relief bill was released by Democrats, titled the “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.”

The bill immediately met with Republicans and some Democrats’ resistance due to its lack of focus, falling short on delivering pandemicending measures, protecting incomes, and supporting economic recovery.

President Joe Biden stated that while he would be open to decreasing the $1.9 trillion price tag, he insisted that the Republican demands were not aligned with the American public, which he says wants lawmakers to “act big and quickly.” Biden declared, “My hope is that Republicans in Congress listen to their constituents. According to the polls, there is overwhelming bipartisan support.”

However, a closer examination reveals that the COVID-19 relief bill is a potpourri of multiple controversial, sweeping changes.

The majority of expenses do not further public health efforts, and minimum wage increases may actually hurt the working class.

Mostly unrelated to public health

President Biden tweeted on Feb. 8, “We don’t have a second to waste when it comes to delivering the American people the relief they desperately need. I’m calling on Congress to act quickly and pass the American Rescue Plan.” If the primary purpose of the $1.9 trillion in funds is to drive the COVID19 relief effort, it should follow that the majority of funds ny@visiontimes.com

are appropriated for this purpose.

According to editor Peter Suderman from Reason, this could not be further from the truth. He reports that the President’s plan is “padded with non-urgent, pre-existing Democratic policy priorities that have, at most, only tangential relationship to the crisis at hand.”

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, reports that only 1% of funds will go towards COVID vaccines.

Only 5% of funds will truly target public health needs related to the pandemic. It leaves 94% of the $1.9 trillion funds allocated elsewhere.

CRFB explains that “nearly half of the package will be spent on poorly targeted rebate checks and state and local government aid, including to households and governments that have experienced little or no financial loss during this crisis.” Over 15% of the package, about $300 billion, will go towards “long-standing policy priorities that are not directly related to the current crisis,” including expanding Obamacare subsidies and increasing the minimum wage.

What CRFB cites as the most concerning is the inclusion of the pension bailout issue. It will only expand unemployment benefits through August, eliminating them a month earlier than President Biden proposed and several months before scheduled.

Given the longstanding concerns regarding multiemployer pensions, lawmakers should take ample time in a separate bill to reform these plans rather than haphazardly addressing them amid crisis legislation. Loss of benefits for unemployed workers is not an issue to be taken lightly in the current economic climate.

$112 million for Silicon Valley project

Many lives are hanging in the balance, yet the COVID19 relief bill is being exploited to further partisan goals. Buried in the 591-page bill is more than $100 million allocated towards a controversial Silicon Valley underground rail project in California. Section 7006 of the bill related to the House Transportation Committee includes a funding clause appropriating $30 billion towards transit networks to “prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus,” including operating expenses and capital investments.

The bill includes $1 billion in capital investment for “all projects under section 3005(b) of Public Law 11494 that received allocations for the fiscal year 2019 and 2020” except “projects open for revenue service.” Phase two of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) expansion fits this definition perfectly, and according to a Fox Business review, would receive approximately $112 million in funding.

Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa speaking with U.S. Senator John McCain’s supporters at a 2016 campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona. Ernst filed an amendment to prevent a federal minimum wage increase, which passed unanimously on Feb. 5, 2021.

(Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

This extension involves using a gigantic boring machine to drill a tunnel for rail transit under San Jose, CA and has repeatedly exceeded cost estimates. As a result, local Bay area officials have expressed outrage over the disproportionate amount of local sales tax funds going towards the project.

Could kill jobs and increase cost of living

From a superficial view, minimum wage increases are long overdue and would benefit working families.

However, detailed economic analyses have found that the changes would do more harm than good with the current state of affairs.

Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have expressed concerns about the minimum wage proposal, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recently backed a Republican amendment blocking raising the federal minimum wage to $15.

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According to a Feb. 2021 analysis titled “The Budgetary Effects of the Raise the Wage Act of 2021” by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), while an estimated 0.9 million individuals would be lifted out of poverty by 2025, 1.4 million jobs would be lost. The budget deficit would increase by $54 billion, and the prices for goods and services would be raised.

Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) echoed these sentiments, expressing concern that the bill would exacerbate unemployment and increase living costs for working families.

Furthermore, as Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said on the Senate floor at the beginning of the month, “A $15 federal minimum wage would be devastating for our hardesthit small businesses at a time when they can least afford it.”

The Republican amendment filed by Ernst to prevent a federal minimum wage increase during the pandemic passed unanimously on Feb. 5.

The “$1.9 trillion in spending the full Biden COVID19 Relief Bill could increase GDP in 2021 by 0.6 percent On a macroeconomic level, short-term gains flaunted by lawmakers would likely be at the expense of long-term disruptions in the American economy. According to an analysis conducted by a University of Pennsylvania team, based on the Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM), the “$1.9 trillion in spending in the full Biden relief plan would increase GDP in 2021 by 0.6 percent. Over time, the additional public debt resulting from the Biden plan would decrease GDP by 0.2 percent in 2022 and 0.3 percent in 2040.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has announced that Democrats plan to ram the bill through the legislative process by the end of the month. On Feb. 18, Pelosi alluded to the “reconciliation” process of approving a package with a simple majority of 51 votes instead of 60 in the Senate: “At the same time, there is communication with the Senate as to what the Byrd rule will allow in the bills as we go forward.”

Americans may rightly question why 94 percent of a $1.9 trillion bill focuses on everything except what it is named for Boosting tangential projects and forwarding partisan agendas by burying them in crisis legislation is the aim of this bill. With only 6% of funds allocated towards vaccines and COVID-19 public health efforts, the relief bill ultimately fails to address the current crisis. Simultaneously, vast amounts of hidden funding for nonessential projects will have long-term repercussions for the U.S. economy.

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U.S. Military Members Balk at Taking Experimental COVID-19 Vaccines

By Steven Li

U

.S. troops and Department of Defense (DOD) staff are refusing to take the experimental mRNA novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), according to reports by the Washington Examiner.

Air Force Brigadier General Paul Friedrichs said at a Pentagon briefing on Jan. 28, “In general, the trends are very similar to what we’re seeing in the U.S. population as a whole, that the older population has been more willing to take the vaccine.” Friedrichs said the younger population, by comparison, was “a bit more hesitant about it, and, you know, I think that’s understandable.”

Because the existing vaccines are approved for use under a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Emergency Use Authorization and have not undergone Phase III testing, the Pentagon cannot require troops and employees to take the jab.

New type of vaccine

According to the Center

for Disease Control (CDC), mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine that passes RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) instructions to your body’s cells, causing your own body to synthesize the Spike Protein of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus. The Spike Protein gives a coronavirus its distinct “crown” shape and its ability to attach to and enter cells. The thesis with mRNA vaccines is that your body will create lymphocytes in response to the Spike Protein, providing you with immunity from COVID-19, wherein your cells will break down and eliminate the mRNA afterward without issue.

Conventional vaccines, by comparison, work by injecting a weakened or inert form of a virus into your body, causing lymphocyte production in response.

Pentagon members decline vaccines While the Pentagon has declined to state how many members have declined the vaccine, the DOD only distributed 320,000 of the approximately 769,000 doses it received.

According to Voice of America, U.S. forces located in South Korea expressed considerable skepticism and reluctance to get vaccinated.

“When we initially did our screening to get an idea of who wants and doesn’t want it, there was a pretty good number of people who said, hey, I don’t want it,” said spokesperson Colonel Lee Peters.

VOA reported the military rolled out education campaigns to “combat disinformation” about the vaccines, such as having senior officers take the jab. On Jan. 8, Major General Michael Lutton was photographed taking the vaccine on Jan. 8 to encourage troops to get vaccinated.

“I think we’re hitting about the right tone, with not ceding the battlefield to the conspiracy theorists, getting the information out there, but on the other hand not being

FORT DRUM, NEW YORK - DECEMBER 10: A U.S. Army medic takes the temperature of soldiers returning home from a 9-month deployment to Afghanistan on December 10, 2020 at Fort Drum, New York. The 10th Mountain Division soldiers who arrived this week are under orders to isolate at home or in barracks, finishing their COVID-19 quarantine just before Christmas. The troops were replaced in Afghanistan by a smaller force, as the U.S. military continues to reduce troop levels Afghanistan. (Image: John Moore/Getty Images)

overbearing or strong-arming people,” said lead medical officer for U.S. Forces Korea Col. Doug Lougee.

According to the Department of Defense, the U.S. Military has experienced 139,909 cases with 1,298 hos-

pitalizations and 17 deaths out of approximately 1.3 million active-duty members.

Stars and Stripes reported on Jan. 23 that Afghanistan-based troops began receiving the Moderna vaccine doses for the remaining

Twitter Stock Rises Over $16 Billion 40 Days After Banning Trump

By Neil Campbell

S

ocial media giant Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) shares unexpectedly skyrocketed to a new all-time high of $74.96 on Friday, Feb. 19, breaking the record set in 2013 during the second month of the company’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

The bonanza comes six weeks after Twitter muzzled President Donald Trump in January by permanently banning

the 45th President’s account.

On Jan. 8, two days after the Capitol building breach, Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account in a broader effort alongside tech giants Facebook and Google to censor Trump and his supporters. Charges that the thenpresident had incited an insurrection were ultimately settled during Trump’s historic second impeachment trial, as the Senate voted to acquit.

Shortly after the ban, Twitter’s share price took a 10 per-

cent tumble, falling from a pre-ban close of $52.33 before bottoming out at a low of $44.40 two weeks later on Jan. 19.

However, the dip proved to be merely a signal that Wall Street’s giants were predictably backing up the truck and buying low in advance of a big move north.

On Feb. 1, Twitter closed at $52.66, regaining its entire $6 billion in paper losses. The company has since gained more than $16 billion in value in only 40 days after

closing Feb. 16 at $73.96, an elementary lesson on how Wall Street’s market makers use popular events and the narrative surrounding them to engineer both price swings and media reports, which benefit their ultimate goal of buying low, selling high, and making record profits for their shareholders.

Twitter executives on cloud 9

According to a Bloomberg report, Pivotal Research

Analyst Michael Levine said in calls with analysts, Twitter’s executives were quite satisfied with the developments, “Both on the earnings call and analyst call back, we felt that management led with a swagger and a confidence we have not see[n] in some time.”

Bloomberg lauds Twitter as having always “commanded a cult-like following among investors,” and attributes the record trading price of the now $58 bil-

2,500 troops and 18,000 contractors still stationed in the region. According to the article, officials declined to discuss Afghanistan’s infection rates, citing an order from the Pentagon not to discuss local case figures.

lion company to “eclips[ing] 20% growth in daily active users for five straight quarters” while being on track to do it again in the current quarter. Twitter’s proclaimed growth comes despite the removal of perhaps the most controversial President in history, one who racked up more than 50,000 tweets in 4 years to more than 88 million followers.

But earlier in the month, Twitter admitted in a Bloomberg Terminal statement that the future outlook may not be so rosy, “Looking beyond Q1, the significant pandemic-related surge we saw last year continues to create challenging comps,” the company wrote in its letter to shareholders.

COVID-19 Vaccine rollout has sped up

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VOL .8 FEB 26 - MAR 4 , 2021 |

A3

Supreme Court Throws Out Pennsylvania Mail-in Ballot Deadline Extension Challenge

By Neil Campbell

T

he U.S. Supreme Court has thrown out a Republican Party appeal against a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that usurped the provisions of the state legislature by allowing the counting of mail-in ballots up to three days after the 2020 General Election concluded.

Republicans argued the court usurped the legislature’s plenary power to set election rules and was in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas were dissenting voices in the 6-3 ruling, which dismissed the challenge as moot due to the election having been settled.

Clarence Thomas: decision ‘inexplicable’

Justice Thomas remarked, “These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle,” adding his peers’ decision was “inexplicable.”

In his dissent, Thomas said the Pennsylvania Democratic Party relied on a “vague clause in the State Constitution providing, in relevant part, that ‘[e]lections shall be free and equal’,” in their motion to the state’s Supreme Court to have the mail-in ballot deadline extended.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling met with immediate pre-election challenges as a petition for emergency relief was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by Republicans as early as Sept. 28, 2020. In Justice Thomas’s opinion, “Because the Federal Constitution, not state constitutions, gives state legislatures authority to regulate federal elections, petitioners presented a strong argument that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision violated the Constitution by overriding ‘the clearly expressed intent of the legislature’.”

However, the emergency relief was heard after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away and in the interim before President Trump’s nominated replacement, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed.

The Court was a member

Justice Neil Gorsuch speaks at the LBJ Presidential Library on Sept.

19, 2019. Gorsuch joined his peers, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, in dissent against the High Court’s decision. Alito and Gorsuch argued a decision ‘would provide invaluable guidance for future elections.’ (Image: LBJ Library on Flickr Public Domain)

Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas attends the ceremonial swearing-in ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett on the South Lawn of the White House October 26, 2020 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruling mail-in ballots could be received three days after the 2020 Presidential Election deadline. Thomas was joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito in his dissent. (Image: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

short, tied 4-4 in its decision, and failed to act. In Justices Alito and Gorsuch’s dissent, they called the deadlock an “unfortunate decision,” which “virtually ensured that this important question could not be decided before the election.”

Justice Thomas notes “We are fortunate that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision to change the receipt deadline for mail-in ballots does not appear to have changed the outcome in any federal election,” but cautions “we may not be so lucky in the future.”

Gorsuch and Alito: ‘important and recurring constitutional question’

Meanwhile Justices Alito

and Gorsuch said the case presents “an important and recurring constitutional question: whether the Elections or Electors Clauses of the United States Constitution, are violated when a state court holds that a state constitutional provision overrides a state statute governing the manner in which a federal election is to be conducted,” adding, “our review at this time would be greatly beneficial.”

“There is no reason for refusing to decide the important question that these cases pose,” said the Justices, noting that the mail-in ballot deadline extension only produced approximately 10,000 disputed ballots, far short of the 80,000 margin Joe Biden won Pennsylvania

with. So while the case could not affect the outcome of the federal election, “a decision would provide invaluable guidance for future elections,” they said.

The pair also disagreed with Respondents, who argued SCOTUS should not hear the case because the election is over and the matter does not “fall within the mootness exception for cases that present questions that are ‘capable of repetition’ but would otherwise evade review,” because the exceptional measures adopted were in response to the SARSCoV-2 novel coronavirus pandemic.

Justices Alito and Gorsuch disagreed vehemently because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rul-

ing relied on the “free and equal” wording of the State Constitution and gave “the Pennsylvania courts the authority to override even very specific and unambiguous rules adopted by the legislature for the conduct of federal elections.”

The Justices said the notion “misunderstands the applicable legal standard,” clarifying, “In order for a question to be capable of repetition, it is not necessary to predict that history will repeat itself at a very high level of specificity.”

Alito and Gorsuch also found it “highly speculative to forecast” that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will not find “materially similar” conditions in future federal elections.

Maskless Super Bowl Partying Defies COVID-19 ‘Superspreader’ Fears

By Neil Campbell

S

taunch proponents of lockdown measures and social distancing to combat the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus pandemic lambasted Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans for partying after their team won the historic Super Bowl 55 on Feb. 7. While the celebrations were widely feared to be the next “superspreader,” data following America’s biggest game shows otherwise.

According to stats from Florida Health’s COVID-19 response webpage, new cases and case positivity rate in the 14 days following the Bowl have remained flat. The daily death count has been in the single digits from Feb. 18, reaching a low of 1 on Feb. 20 and zero on Feb. 21, falling from triple and high double digits before and after the Super Bowl.

Police called on Buccaneers fans

CNN correspondent Randi Kaye pushed the measures ny@visiontimes.com

and masking agenda during the network’s coverage of the game’s afterparty when she boasted about her double mask while simultaneously shaming patrons at Tampa’s Pour House at Grand Central for not abiding by the controversial regulations on how people should live their lives.

Kaye was served a softball

by CNN Newsroom host Fredricka Whitfield to open the segment, “Despite warnings from officials and from the NFL itself, you know, we are seeing pictures emerge of massive crowds partying in Tampa’s club district…Does there remain a lot of concern about crowds who are converging and people not taking all the precautions that have been recommended?” she asked.

Randi Kaye responded, “Oh, yeah, there’s a lot of concern here, Fred, hence my double mask that I’m wearing.”

Super Bowl revelries during the pandemic

She continued “there are

a lot of people here,” aghast that “some of them are just hanging out at tables” and that “they’re not all from the same party obviously or are from the same family” before cutting to a clip of hundreds of people celebrating in Ybor City, showing “most of them are not even wearing masks.”

CNN was also upset because partygoers “were on the dance floors in a lot of these clubs and the dance floors right now during the pandemic are supposed to actually be closed.”

Kaye was evidently on the verge of panic, as she openly boasted about calling the police on Tampa’s elated fans, “I gave a call to Tampa Police to ask them what’s going on with all these people that are out and about and not wearing masks because there is a mask mandate in the City of Tampa while this pandemic is underway.”

“You’re supposed to be wearing a mask if you’re anywhere near Raymond James

Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans celebrate their victory over the Kansas City Chiefs during Super Bowl LV in a parking lot near Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida on February 7, 2021. (Image:CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)

Stadium, if you’re in a bar or a restaurant or anywhere in one of these event or entertainment areas. And you can see from the pictures and the video that we have that people are just not paying much attention to that mask mandate. They are supposed to be fined up to $500.00.”

“So I asked the Tampa Police, how many citations

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have been issued? What do you want to say in response to this? What’s being done about it?” Kaye said “A lot of people are upset about it,” but it was unclear who, other than herself, she was referring to.

“About 30,000 people a day have been coming in through Tampa International Airport and they

are very, very concerned that they are going to see a spike,” added Kaye, noting Florida’s stats were “already about a 10 percent positivity rate here.”

On Feb. 19, a research paper was published on MedRxiv studying whether NFL and NCAA games where fans attended in person had a statistical relation to the COVID-19 case count. Researchers compared data from regions that had games with in-person attendance with a control group that had games with no fans while maintaining similarities in county size, measures, and pandemic trends when comparing.

The study found the “effect of in-person attendance at NFL and NCAA games on community COVID-19 spread is not significant” because the results “did not surpass 5 new daily cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 residents on average.”

The paper has not yet been peer reviewed.

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A4 | FEB 26 - MAR 4 , 2021 VOL.8

Gates repeats Party’s ‘win-win’ rhetoric

By Neil Campbell

T

he world’s third-richest man, Bill Gates, gave an exclusive interview with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda mouthpiece Xinhua on Feb. 15, where the Microsoft cofounder praised the People’s Republic of China and its leader Xi Jinping for their proclaimed goal to reach peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.

“It’s great that President Xi is making climate a priority and wants to work with other countries on this…Without the contributions of China, many of the key ingredients (in fighting climate change) like the batteries and solar power wouldn’t be so affordable,” said Gates.

Gates also gave the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), his blessing so long as the BRI could use renewables in its energy consumption: “I hope that innovators in China can bring down the cost of green energy enough, so that China can even increase its commitment to use renewable energy in the Belt and Road Initiative.”

The BRI has been criticized as a debt-trap colonialism for many developing countries, as the Initiative often finances its projects through CCP banks, use Chinese workers and use Chinese materials in their construction. In the nowtroubled Myanmar, deposed National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi signed 33 BRI deals with the Party in 2020, giving the communist regime a railroad from the Myanmar-China border to the Bay of Bengal, building a deep sea port for the Party’s use, and a “New Yangon” industrial district in the country’s largest city, Yangon, which will be built by stateowned China Communications Construction Company.

Bill Gates

Praises Beijing for

Climate Policy in Exclusive Interview with Xinhua Gates recently gave an exclusive interview to Chinese Communist Party propaganda mouthpiece Xinhua praising the world’s largest polluter for its claims it will achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

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Joe Biden participates in a CNN town hall.

(Image: Getty Images)

If you know anything about Chinese history, the time when China has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home,” said President Biden. “The central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China. And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that.

Joe Biden

Pixabay

Gates, an author for the World Economic Forum (WEF), also repeated the “win-win” rhetoric of the CCP when he told Xinhua “climate change and innovation are areas that China and the United States could achieve big win-win results.”

In 2018, Human Rights Watch challenged Beijing in an article titled “China’s ‘Win-Win’ Resolution Is Anything But” after the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gasses introduced a resolution “Promoting the International Human Rights Cause through Win-Win Cooperation,” which was later changed to “Promoting Mutually Beneficial Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights.” HWR said that “China’s resolution is a win only for itself, and, if adopted, a serious loss for any country serious about human rights inside China and around the world.”

Similarly in 2019 at the “Summer Davos” WEF event New Champions 2019 held in Dalian, China, keynote speaker, PRC Premier Li Keqiang connected the BRI to the globalist movement when he said “The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China aims to promote inclusive development by encouraging the integration of more countries and regions into economic globalization… We welcome the active participation of all parties in order to achieve interconnected and win-win development through mutually beneficial cooperation.”

Gates, who is now the number one owner of U.S. farmland and the largest shareholder of Canadian National Railway (CNR),

CCP-Linked Harvard Center Could Be Covering Up COVID-19 Origin

By Jonathan Walker

L

ast September, Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan published a study claiming that COVID-19 was created in a Chinese government research lab. Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy published a report debunking Yan’s work.

The Harvard group characterized Yan’s conclusion as a “misleading article masquerading as science.” It dismissed her assertion that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus was created in a Chinese lab.

But an investigation by The National Pulse revealed that the Shorenstein Center has extensive ties with the CCP, the political regime after which the virus is named.

The CCP is currently spreading propaganda worldwide to shift the blame of the virus origin to other nations.

“The organization and report’s lead author is Joan Donovan, the Research Director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, which has a number of

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But an investigation by The National Pulse revealed that the Shorenstein Center has extensive ties with the CCP, the political regime after which the virus is named.

The CCP is currently spreading propaganda worldwide to shift the blame of the virus origin to other nations.

Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan (Image: Screenshot)

links to the Chinese Communist Party… The ties follow a Department of Education (DOE) inquiry into the Ivy League university for failing to disclose “hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts and contracts from foreign donors,” chiefly Chinese, according to The National Pulse.

Harvard’s Shorenstein Center has several CCP-linked fellows, including:

• Steven Dong used to be the Director of the Global Journalism Institute at Tsinghua University, the educational institution attended

by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Tsinghua University’s

journalism school dean has dubbed Marxist Journalism as the “correct political orientation.” Dong is also a political communication professor at the CCP’s Central Academy of Socialism and has lectured over 20,000 senior Chinese officials.

• Zhengrong Hu served as the Chair of the CCP State Council’s Discipline Evaluation Group of Journalism and Communication group.

He has been given a special governmental award by the State Council of China and a Cross-Century Excellent Personnel award.

• Li Xiguang was a former senior editor at CCP-backed propaganda outlet Xinhua.

He is a professor at Tsinghua

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University and a member of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Advisory Committee on Public Diplomacy.

Shorenstein Center’s analysis points to a report by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security to discredit Yan’s work. However, the John Hopkins report cites numerous studies that have also received funding from the CCP. The Shorenstein Center also quotes a report by MIT that lists its first researcher as Dr. Robert Gallo. Gallo received an award from the Chinese state-run University of Chinese Academy of Sciences last December.

He is also the co-founder of the Global Vaccine Network (GVN), with several active branches in communist China. Given such strong ties to the CCP, it is unethical to cite these studies as proof invalidating Dr. Yan’s analysis.

Support for the lab COVID-19 origin theory

The lab origin theory of the Wuhan coronavirus has several supporters. One is Matthew Pottinger, who acted as the Deputy National Security

has joined a number of western elites who have openly cozied up to the CCP since Joe Biden was inaugurated as U.S. President on Jan. 20.

‘Different norms in each country’

Speaking at a Feb. 16 town hall hosted by CNN, Biden appeared to defend Xi Jinping and the CCP’s authoritarian “social stability” rhetoric: “If you know anything about Chinese history, the time when China has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home,” said President Biden. “The central principle of Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China.

And he uses his rationale for the things he does based on that.”

Biden went on to imply that, while as U.S. president he was obligated to speak out about “what [Xi]’s doing in Hong Kong, what he’s doing with the Uyghurs in the western mountains of China and Taiwan trying to end the one China policy by making it forceful … culturally there are different norms in each country that their leaders are expected to follow.”

Earlier in the month, Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) released a six-page report outlining his Party’s concerns about the exceedingly soft stance the Biden administration has taken towards the CCP since taking power, including curious actions like suspending Donald Trump’s May 1, 2020 executive order prohibiting foreign adversaries such as China from ownership in the U.S. power grid.

Biden wedged this suspension near the end of his day 1 executive order revoking the permit of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Advisor during the Trump administration.

Last month, Pottinger revealed that the latest intelligence reports speculated that the CCP virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). It is located just 11 miles away from the seafood market where the communist regime claims it first spread.

Iain Duncan Smith, the UK’s former Tory Party leader, believes that the Chinese government’s refusal to allow experts to investigate the laboratory properly only supports the theory that the lab may have manufactured SARS-CoV-2.

“The truth is there are people who have been in those labs who maintain that this is the case… We don’t know what they have been doing in that laboratory… They may well have been fiddling with bat coronaviruses and looking at them, and they made a mistake. I’ve spoken to various people who believe that to be the case,” Smith said in a statement.

Over a year after the outbreak, the World Health Organization team visited WIV to investigate the CCP virus. However, they only spent three and a half hours in the lab, which is not enough time to conduct a thorough analysis.

Several WHO scientists complained about how the investigation was conducted.

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VOL .8 FEB 26 - MAR 4 , 2021 |

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De Facto ‘Sixth Eye’: Japan Provides China Intel, Indo-Pacific Assistance Spanning Two Administrations Horne also said, “Americans of both parties should criticize this unproductive and cynical move. President Biden looks forward to working with leaders in both parties to position America to out-compete China.”

By Neil Campbell

I

n December, Japanese diplomats provided the United States and Britain with intelligence showing the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province, said a source close to USJapan relations who wished to remain confidential, according to Kyodo News.

The source said that the U.S. increased pressure on China’s Communist regime after receiving the intelligence.

In an August interview with Nikkei, former Defence Minister Taro Kono said Japan was eager to extend cooperation with the Five Eyes intelligence alliance: “These countries share the same values…Japan can get closer to the alliance even to the extent of it being called the ‘Six Eyes.'”

The article said that some members of the alliance, including the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, sought closer cooperation with Japan regarding concern for the CCP’s military expansion.

“Many countries believe that China is trying to change the status quo unilaterally with the threat of force in the background, including in the East and South China seas, along the China-India border and in Hong Kong,” said Kono, who was still Minister of Defence at the time of the interview.“The consensus in the international community is that it should be made to pay a high price.”

Blinken on China, North Korea, and the Indo-Pacific: allied with Japan

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L) and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi (R) talk during the Japan-US bilateral meeting in Tokyo on october 6, 2020 ahead of the four Indo-Pacific nations' foreign ministers meeting. (Image:David MAREUIL / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

Japan with Five Eyes

Kono stated that a de-facto membership, rather than a formal one, would be sufficient for Japan with Five Eyes, “We will just bring our chair to their table and tell them to count us in.”

Kono was given a new role as Minister for Administrative Reform & Regulatory Reform in Prime Minister Suga’s administration after Shinzo Abe resigned as Prime Minister for health reasons in September.

The U.S. think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies lauded the addition of Japan to Five Eyes, stating, “Though Japan enjoys high levels of cooperation with Five Eyes countries, the argument for Japan to formally become the ‘sixth eye’ has strengthened in the face of China’s growing military and cyber capabilities.”

A series of emails obtained

by Rebel News in an Access

for Information request provided by another Five Eyes member, the Canadian government, in early December revealed that Human Rights Watch reported a “smartphone app that authorities are using in Xinjiang to collect a ‘vast array of personal information’ (including location, religion, finances, biometric data, whether a person uses WhatsApp, and flags people as ‘suspicious’.)”

In Beijing, the Canadian Embassy “has seen this app in use at police checkpoints in Xinjiang,” said the Canadian government’s own emails.

On Dec. 4, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued visa restrictions on CCP officials who have engaged in “coercive influence activities,” intended to spread Marxist-Leninist ideology through the Party’s United Front Work Department.

“The United Front fre-

quently intimidates members of academia, businesses, civil society groups, and Chinese diaspora communities, including members of ethnic and religious minority communities who speak out against horrific human rights abuses,” such as those in Xinjiang, Tibet, and the persecution of Falun Gong.

“These malign activities are intended to co-opt and coerce sub-national leaders, overseas Chinese communities, academia, and other civil society groups both in the United States and other countries in furtherance of the CCP’s authoritarian narratives and policy preferences.”

On Dec. 21, the State Department introduced additional visa restrictions on CCP officials who are believed to be responsible for or have participated in the persecution of spiritual practices, dissidents, journal-

ists, or peaceful protestors.

The additional restrictions notably target family members of Party officials involved in such crimes against humanity.

The CCP tests Biden’s team

The CCP seems, in part, to have retaliated to this by visiting sanctions on an extensive list of U.S. officials from the Trump administration just after Biden’s inauguration. Foreign Policy magazine interpreted that this action may have been to gauge the response of the new administration. The Biden camp was swift to condemn Beijing’s move and check the CCP. Biden’s National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne exposed Beijing’s motives in a statement to Reuters: “Imposing these sanctions on Inauguration Day is seemingly an attempt to play to partisan divides.”

Biden’s Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, told his Senate confirmation hearing that he agreed with Pompeo’s assessment of the CCP’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang as genocide.

Blinken said a starting place could be that “we should be looking at making sure that we are not importing products that are made with forced labor from Xinjiang … we need to make sure that we’re also not exporting technologies and tools that could be used to further their repression.”

According to Kyodo News, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said on Jan. 24 that he plans to visit the United States to meet with his diplomatic counterpart, Secretary Blinken, perhaps in mid-February.

Kyodo speculates that hot topics will be “China’s military rise and North Korea’s nuclear development.”

Motegi said that Blinken chose to call Japan right after his first call to Canada and told reporters, “This is proof that the Biden administration and Secretary of State Blinken value the importance of the Japan-U.S. alliance and commit to the IndoPacific region.”

English Footballer Stops Kneeling for ‘Marxist Group’ Black Lives Matter Before Games

By Neil Campbell

N

ottingham Forest Football Club player Lyle Taylor says he will no longer be taking the knee before games after learning of the revolutionary rioteer group Black Lives Matter’s (BLM) Marxist background.

In an interview with English radio station Leading Britain’s Conversation, Taylor said, “I took the decision because I felt that enough was enough… not enough people have looked into the organization that has brought this all to the fore.”

“I said before that I agree with the message that black lives do matter, and something needs to be done about that to actually teach the message that the racial inequality and the societal injustice needs to stop,” he said.

“But by the same token we are hanging our hat on a Marxist group who are… looking to defund the police, they’re looking to use sociny@visiontimes.com

etal unrest and racial unrest to push their own political agenda, and that’s not what black people are, we’re not a token gesture or a thing to hang your movement on just because it’s what’s powerful and it’s what’s going on at the moment.”

“I said before that I agree with the message that black lives do matter, and something needs to be done about that to actually teach the message.” — Lyle Taylor, Nottingham forest footballer.

Taylor said he feels it’s unfortunate that white players cannot decline the kneel without being branded racists and that he, himself, has been branded racist and been the target of racism in the past for refusing to take a knee, despite his skin color.

Marxist origins

Taylor’s comments about BLM’s Marxist roots are supported by the views of the movement’s founders. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors stated in a

Vandalized General Lee and Stonewall Jackson monument in the wake of Charlottesville riots with the Black Lives Matter slogan and the symbol for anarcho-communism. 2020 saw a summer of rioting and destruction in U.S. cities as the city and state lawmakers gave leftist revolutionary groups like Antifa, and Black Lives Matter a free pass to reign down domestic terror on citizens and their businesses. (Image:Ryan Patterson on Flickr Public Domain)

2015 interview with Real News Network that BLM was founded by community organizers in the same vein as the infamous Saul Alinsky, “Myself and Alicia, in particular, are trained organizers,” referring to co-founder Alicia Garza.

“We are trained Marxists.

We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really

tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk,” Cullors said.

Cullors told Democracy Now! in a 2018 interview that she was a trained community organizer with the Labor Community Strategy Center, which touts itself as an appreciator of the U.S. Communist Party and “especially black communists,” according to

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the New York Post.

BLM’s support for violence in American cities last summer reflect the “revolutionary” method described at the end of Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions” and “Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.”

‘Mostly peaceful’

The riots were often described as “mostly peaceful” by apologetic big media and relied almost entirely on “outrage” over the death of George Floyd as a pretext to inflict millions of dollars in damage to cities and businesses.

In an interview with Crossroads in December, author of The Devil and Karl Marx,

Paul Kengor, described why violent leftist groups appear at events ranging from those that target statues of founding fathers to gender and racial equality, “If it has to do with supporting a revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things, they’ll be there to burn down the house,” said Kengor.

“It’s all about takedown, about tearing things down.

This is a very radical, destructive ideology.”

In October, Australia’s National Rugby Team the Australian Wallabies voted unanimously to stop taking a knee before games in support of BLM. “Everyone has got their own opinions around the other situation but we want the focus to be around reflecting on our history and our past. Our focus is around the First Nations people and the Indigenous jersey; we’re not looking to make a political statement,” said coach Dave Rennie in a teleconference.

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in its political “rectification” campaigns in the People’s Republic of China. Historical experience portends a bleak future for the United States and Instead of holdthe world if the Biden-Harris adminising good-faith debates with

The tration takes the establishment’s diviopponents to reach the truth, the

sive rhetoric to its logical conclusion. establishment doubled down on

By Larry Ong CCP The CCP elite uses political campaigns casting its version of events as reality SinoInsider elite to consolidate power and “normalize” and drowning out alternative narcommunist rule over China. In most ratives. They also darkly signaled rely on political campaigns, the Party desigthe fate of those who challenge the n the eyes of establishment media, political nates a segment of the population as “insurrection” narrative or the outpundits, and politicians, there is the enemy (“counter-revolutionaries,” come of the 2020 U.S. presidential only one acceptable way to view campaigns “capitalist roader,” etc.), then relies on election. An establishment media the breach of the United States Capitol to propaganda organs to set the new polithost raised the idea of killing Amerbuilding on Jan. 6—a “domestic extremical reality and acceptable discourse. ican citizens in drone strikes for the ist” insurrection incited by then-Presi“rectify” Through indoctrination or intimidation, “crime of inciting violence, incitdent Donald Trump and an assault on society, the rest of the population is made to ing terrorism.” Former senior intelAmerican democracy. This view is prestruggle against the demonized segment ligence officials talk about dealing sented as fact and widely repeated, even consolidate lest they are struggled against. Strugwith Trump supporters (“religious though investigations into the incident power, and gle against the demonized involves vioextremists, authoritarians, fascists, are still ongoing and do not support such lence, public humiliation, economic bigots, racists, nativists, even liba black-and-white explanation. “normalize” persecution (firing people from jobs), ertarians”) as if they were overseas The establishment view has not shifted communist and death. The Chinese people are insurgents. A large-scale “de-radione iota even with the emergence of eviencouraged to report on those who calization approach” must be taken dence debunking the narrative. News rule over belong to the enemy class, even if it to “deprogram” President Trump’s reports note that the Capitol rioters China. means betraying family and friends. “political cult members,” who believe broke through barricades 20 minutes Those who fail to stay “politically cor“Joe Biden didn’t win the election,” before Trump finished his speech, rect” are at risk of being lumped in according a media interview with a where he explicitly called on his supwith the “class enemies” and perseretired senior FBI official. A New York porters to protest “peacefully.” Subsecuted. If the Chinese people are insufTimes reporter called on the Biden quent FBI work has since shown that ficiently cowed into participating in administration to appoint a “reality the Capitol breach was pre-planned, the CCP’s political campaign, the Party czar” to “put together a cross-agency not spontaneous. Conservative comwill ensure that there is bloodshed. task force to tackle disinformation and mentators have also condemned talk“Divide and conquer” is the name of domestic extremism.” Meanwhile, the ing heads in establishment media for the game, and the CCP assumes the role U.S. Congress used the establishment repeating ad nauseum horrifying of a quasi-divine “people’s savior” who narrative on the Capitol incident to details about the Capitol attack that “brings order out of chaos” (撥亂反正). press ahead with a trial to impeach new investigations have since overIn the course of a political campaign, Trump for “inciting an insurrection,” turned, particularly the “murder” of the CCP redefines morality, reconstitutes an effort that respected historian VicU.S. Capitol police officer Brian Sicktruth and falsehoods, and rebuilds socitor Davis Hanson compared to “pubnick by rioters with a fire extinguisher ety from the ground up. Successful politilic shaming like the Communist Party (medical autopsy found no evidence of cal campaigns leave the Party with an even used to make people wear dunce caps.” blunt force trauma). Many observers stronger grip on power and society, and a Professor Hanson’s reference to the have also wondered why there was a “rectified” population that is simultaneChinese Communist Party’s Cultural lack of outrage from the establishment ously in fear and awe of the commuRevolution is pertinent. We see an over the Black Lives Matter/antifa riots nist regime. uneasy echo in the establishment’s in the summer of 2020 that resulted divisive discourse in “post-insurin at least $1 billion in paid insurance rection” America and what the CCP claims, or how an unruly mob at the has done Capitol counts as an insurrection— particularly when juxtaposed with an actual coup as occurred in Myanmar on Feb. 1. nd

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Falun Gong adherents sufs fer similar brutal persecution, and Image Getty comprise the bulk of the prisoners of conscience in China whose organs have been forcibly harvested. In Communist China, divisive, vilifying rhetoric is always a prelude to tragedy. here are It may be argued that the “insurrecuncanny partion” narrative promoted by the U.S. allels between what has happened post-Jan. 6 political and media establishments will in America and the CCP political campaigns not lead to authoritarianism because they of yesteryears. The establishment is promoting are not the CCP, and America is not Comone accepted way to view the Capitol riots in pitol a C e munist China. Indeed, there is little indicathe face of evidence challenging that view, and t th n tha w o h tion that the Biden-Harris administration is is designating as enemies the segment of the . es s sinc ontaneous a h k r

acting on the “domestic war on terror” exhorAmerican population that supports former p o FBI w ned, not s t n e u n population that tations of former intelligence officials or the President Donald Trump or expresses skeptiq la Subse was pre-p h supports former President establishment media, at least at the time of cism about the outcome of the 2020 election. breac Donald Trump or expresses skepticism writing.

Yet President Joe Biden did promise The current political climate has prompted about the outcome of the 2020 election. to confront and defeat “political extremism, people to report their family and friends to The current political climate has white supremacy, [and] domestic terrorism” in the authorities—the FBI received more than prompted people to report their famhis inaugural address, while remaining vague on 100,000 such tips, according to the Washily and friends to the authorities—the their definitions.

Moreover, the current toxic politington Post. In China, virtually all the ParFBI received more than 100,000 such ical climate and authoritarian turn in America — ty’s political campaigns feature the establishtips, according to the Washington Post. arbitrary social media censorship, “cancel culture,” ment of a political orthodoxy and encourage In China, virtually all the Party’s politiand the dominance of “woke” ideologies — proinformants in a bid to turn the masses against cal campaigns feature the establishment vides fertile ground for a mode of persecution that each other. During the Cultural Revolution, of a political orthodoxy and encourage may be lesser in scale and intensity, but no less disMao’s Communist Party promoted devotion informants in a bid to turn the masses turbing than the abuses that occur under the CCP. to the Chairman and the notion of “better red against each other. During the Cultural It is now within the realm of plausibility to envithan expert”; many Chinese people turned in Revolution, Mao’s Communist Party prosion a scenario in which a Trump supporter voicing those deemed not sufficiently “red” or who moted devotion to the Chairman and non-mainstream views on social media gets reported were “guilty” of mocking Mao to the authorithe notion of “better red than expert”; on by informants, gets fired from her job for supportties. Between 1966 and 1976, millions were permany Chinese people turned in those ing “insurrection,” and is unable to secure legal represecuted in the name of preserving the “politdeemed not sufficiently “red” or who were sentation to fight her case in court because lawyers risk ically correct” establishment view at the time. “guilty” of mocking Mao to the authorbeing fired from their law firms for aiding “insurrecPerhaps more disturbing is the establishities.

Between 1966 and 1976, millions tionists.”

A more extreme scenario could see individument’s drive to label one segment of Ameriwere persecuted in the name of preservals who peacefully protest the insurrection discourse in cans as “domestic extremists” and “political ing the “politically correct” establishment public or organize investigations into irregularities in cult members.” Likewise, the CCP claimed pracview at the time. the 2020 U.S. presidential election get arrested and be titioners of the Falun Gong spiritual discipline Perhaps more disturbing is the estabsubjected to psychiatric treatment in detention as belonged to an “evil cult” when it launched its lishment’s drive to label one segment of part of “deprogramming.”

“Deprogramming” and anti-Falun Gong political campaign in 1999, Americans as “domestic extremists” and “reeducation” are already underway in Ameriand designated Islam an extremist threat to the “political cult members.” Likewise, the can schools—teachers are instructing their stuPRC when it embarked on its campaign against CCP claimed practitioners of the Falun dents on the politically correct way to underUyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. The Party did not Gong spiritual discipline belonged to an stand the Jan. 6 incident, and The New York stop at rhetoric. Today, a million or more Uyghurs “evil cult” when it launched its anti-Falun Times has rolled out “teaching resources” are incarcerated in industrial-size detention facilGong political campaign in 1999, and deswith leading questions to “help students ities in Xinjiang, where, following their political ignated Islam an extremist threat to the make sense of the rampage at the Capand social ostracization by the Party media, they PRC when it embarked on its campaign itol” and entrench the establishment’s have been subjected to brainwashing “re-educaagainst Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

The insurrection discourse. Given the tion” adopted from the Falun Gong campaign, as Party did not stop at rhetoric.

Today, a milpresent trajectory, the day is not far well as torture, rape, and slave labor. Falun Gong lion or more Uyghurs are incarcerated in off that political life in the United adherents suffer similar brutal persecution, and industrial-size detention facilities in XinStates reflects the repression of comprise the bulk of the prisoners of conscience in jiang, where, following their political and socialist Venezuela.

China whose organs have been forcibly harvested. social ostracization by the Party media, they In Communist China, divisive, vilifying rhetoric have been subjected to brainwashing “re-eduis always a prelude to tragedy. cation” adopted from the Falun Gong camThere are uncanny parallels between what has paign, as well as torture, rape, happened post-Jan. 6 in America and the CCP and slave labor. political campaigns of yesteryears. The establishment is promoting one accepted way to view the Capitol riots in the face of evidence challenging that view, and is designating as enemies the segment of the American

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religious minorities, and the evils of the regime are known to the world because generations of dissidents are determined to get the facts out regardless he die, however, is not cast. Many of the Great Firewall, heavy censorship, Americans still adhere to the counand the often steep personal costs associtry’s founding documents, values, and ated with telling the truth. principles. They believe in truth and facts, As a result, Chinese dissidents have denied Larry Ong is a and are skeptical of media spin and onethe CCP total control over what constitutes senior analyst at sided narratives. How constitutionallyreality in mainland China, and even inspired SinoInsider, a China inclined Americans respond to creeping millions to partake in a grassroots movepolitical risk consulauthoritarianism at home is of critical ment to symbolically renounce the Party. tancy based in New importance for the rest of the world—the Millions of Americans are constantly seekYork. His articles establishment media narrative is also proping out the truth, peacefully exercising their have appeared in agated and widely accepted internationally First Amendment rights in the face of intimthe National Interas the definitive account of events, shaping idation and censorship, and take political est, The Diplomat, the outlook of the free world. “Repeat a lie action where appropriate. As long as Ameriand Real Clear often enough and it becomes the truth,” as cans continue to practice the lessons taught by Defense. the popular adage goes. their Founding Fathers and stand up for their To strengthen their resolve to speak truth rights, the loss of those rights is to power, Americans can look to the examby no means ineviple set by PRC dissidents. The truth about table. the Tiananmen Square massacre, the horrendous persecution of ethnic and

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www.VisionTimes.com Image by AdobeStock

Image by AdobeStock

The Three Treasures of Life:

Integrity Wonder Self-discipline A

n old saying goes: “Only by knowing shame can we have self-esteem.” Shame is not far from reproach. With a sense of guilt and remorse, you feel ashamed of yourself when you do something wrong. You feel upset when you fall short of your efforts and let your family and friends down, as well as others’ expectations. You are sad and disappointed when you fail yourself. You must return to the three treasures

Being selfdisciplined allows for a beautiful life.

of life: integrity, wonder, and self-discipline.

When you experience shame and humiliation, you can still get back up and learn from your mistakes.

And when you do, you will find that inner spark of selfrespect there, and you may go on to live a fruitful life. It will be so when you vow to never again go beyond the bounds of decency. If you have no sense of shame, your conscience becomes wrecked and you will be prone to do

The three teasures of life: Integrity, Wonder , Selfdiscipline.

Image by MingHui.org

or say anything ridiculous or offensive.

Admitting your shame shows that you can tell right from wrong. It enables you to fulfill your dreams, do great things, and be a great person. What’s frightening is when you never want to learn from your mistakes and correct your bad behavior. If you undermine your own moral values and justify your actions in the face of all logic and reason, right there and then, if you can be honest with yourself, you will know in your heart that you still need to improve.

Only by knowing shame can you rise up and maintain your integrity and have selfrespect. To be a noble person, you can learn from shame and maintain your standards. These inner treasures are things money can’t buy.

A humble and revered heart can help you stop doing wrong. Pride always comes before a fall. By maintaining a sense of wonder, you will be able to handle yourself well. Knowing that every

VISION TIMES

action has a reaction and by thinking of others you show yourself to be a well-bred and responsible human being.

You will be able to resist temptation because you will foresee the bitterness that comes from it.

If you lose your sense of wonder and appreciation, you might become reckless and selfish, do and say whatever you want, act lawlessly, leaving you to eat the bitter fruit alone with only yourself to blame.

You will usually be able to sense danger if maintain the sense of childlike wonder. It will help you to determine your unique situation in life, observe the rules of good behavior, work in a down-to-earth manner, be a wholesome person, and keep your moral baseline. In this way, these inner treasures become your close and loyal friends.

Self-discipline

Self-discipline is one of your life’s best tools for positive change. All successful

people know how to discipline themselves. Self-discipline teaches you to rise above the humdrum and mediocrity of life. You can start with self-discipline, change yourself, and take control of your life.

Self-discipline is a determined love of life, a love of accomplishment, and by continuously improving yourself, you are empowering yourself to do better in life.

Self-discipline allows you to make better use of your time and gives you an opportunity to improve and develop your skills.

Knowing shame, having heartfelt appreciation, and practicing self-discipline is the secret to a fulfilling life.

Having a sense of shame is the beginning of wonder, and wonder is the key to self-discipline, and self-discipline is the source of freedom.

May you always cherish a humble heart, maintain a sense of wonder, and exercise self-discipline. That way life becomes rich and rewarding inside and out.

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Wall Street Behemoths Ate Reddit’s Gamestop Lunch

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CITY ____________________ STATE

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By Neil Campbell

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ccording to Wall Street behemoth JPMorgan, the fairytale spun by pundits about Reddit’s WallStreetBets organizing to “squeeze” badly positioned hedge fund short sellers of video game retailer Gamestop (NYSE: GME) in what has been affectionately dubbed the “Gamestop Rebellion” is simply false.

Peng Cheng, the JPMorgan quantitative and derivatives strategy analyst, wrote to clients in a note: “Although retail buying was portrayed as the main driver of the extreme price rally experienced by some stocks, the actual picture may be much more nuanced,” according to CNBC.

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JANUARY 22-2

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rum Am China’s Craft’s T bassador p and Administration a Sharp Eyes iw a n Visit Pla Project nned, Th e Serves as Warning to n Can E cellmephdasize Found Free World ing Value in Fina

Why the CCP k Wants Biden’s Pic n e ll e Y t NA e Jan ted Y rour DT y mina fo

About Pandemic Surveillance

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Travel pla ns Biden adm scrapped to acc om modat inistratio BlackRock Chair and CEO e n Lautra rence D. Fink attends a session nsitio n proced at the World Economic Forum ures (WEF) annual meeting in Davos

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on January 23, 2020. BlackRock is Gamestop’s largest owner at more than 9.2 million shares.

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Cong Australi ast year, China with the back nistra be ress confi diatel the pre-T that the jobs plans to The country data from these lly to to Shaanxi prescient in warning North cratic rmedbuyrump appro y retur n to candi issued by the “workric leadera local in Xian City, now be prevented from JMP Securities analyst likely Institute, states alreadyshore responded, “The Biden licly declared is most sideli ned DNA icy Presid ent-el date Joe Biden Demo ach, which is “used specifica other est dataset Yellen of ities Taiwa n’s fossil fuels Province: described train tickets, the governship group for public secudatabase has n will engage of global as U.S.Devin Ryan told CNBC the expandrsits ect in the tus in favor diplom atic explains “Think how liv- Americans of things to come of ing people, target to state DNA used to ramp up sur- administratioof-government the supplie Jan. 7.announced ng faster win, You ing U.S. Secret earlythis identify treas- total- if they allow their democracy ment staearlier rity video monitoring conunder technocratic Institutions e of tax to ondatabase . Accordi hours obvious: ment ” with of warm er been ary of Statewere s and refine Taiwa n, as the ultimate in a whole- China that uses “enga geemis- at Craft attend with an increas Xinhua, sed her desire family Mike Pomp until efforts. organ month.”officially struction and networking” in member software.” DNA itarianism “The CCP to degenerate into technoc- Repub naturally trading doubledaon “The Trum Beijin g. r ch to theGamestop has expres to ensure kind of feels: inflati propagan ion United Nation in eo (R) and Sum- veillance map,isaalready than Project is a approa The revin a manne lic of Chinawhoknow congress p admin n as facial Leaders’ Liuhe District, Nanjing city,recognit monitoring fail to paythe whileNew the York mirage U.S. Amba ng the us in racy under the excuse ofU.N. “Employers [Taiw an City. and hype are met. s (UN) Gener for this work with ent has ure The Sharp Eyes program our available tools achieve our 15th G20 e Cho to containi (ROC), the goals ssador to Presid ent] istrat ion and uted2020, seat to the sion e will occur

By Debbi al Assem helixed chart lost its around Reddit, a social mared to er 21, will spare Jiangsu Province. The The docu-U.S. governm our homes, whatfrom privacy do combatting the SARS-CoV-2landsocial insurance or people be distrib the U.N. surveilla nce y, communist no increas Tsai Ing-w bly on Septem on Novemb ranging actions by to that is design remo val mit would Kelly in enue al securit the local increas for traits of es Vision Times en main- keting US-Ta iwan no effort s to ges neighbors ber 24, 2019, ments show how the Nanjing have left?suscepIt’s like we’ve novel coronavirus pandemic.switcwho1971, haveand failed to pay fines platform rather than a of proto criticized these Jinping ic, nation group.

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By Neil hed diplo the United States col gover Presiden househ n, Yellen relati ons suspi- econom color costs. Party policy goals. hand s Chinese governm y.

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by Reute hour. The sam-led on smartphones have beenCraft edge, activity, to coming the per said, Kelly tion raise anet Yellen, , cious Board $15 that decad who e Chinese (CCP) to The U.S.rs on Jan. Craft , sayinnova onsize policies US-Ta iwan purtions to Wash ingto the preshave 10,000 was boasted that the e. l Reserv Taiwa n The article increase itor citizens. all living under under government surveilreasonable thatn instirelati Additionally, 12. ing with to say ence a ROC Budget Office logical and areas where ve 'dualharmon the Federa China relato share you leashes.s We’re betwe en slated to visit goes back could possibly was further has essiona l admi nistraheight that the Obama, has fire.” had experi could s the to World relati onsh ip estab- rural police and security including in sensiti 15, woul Jan. 13 enterprise Dajiyuan said the doca microscope, and it’s Chinese state-run tutional investors were also“play in terri- lance for a long time already,” muni panies are obligated and are ples, scientist ds and Bidenng” Yellen tion canno in Xinjia under Barackto become the Congr s this, “move must focus s central and Jan. Amer ican Trum markers d have st Chine On Jan. 11, Com-standar p admi ence of War Altho CCP China’ and logies, genetic low. where he y the the II, highistrati million nfacilibelieve with been ated t se stocks last ugh g “the revernatur when to auments used a Party-jaran anonymous Chinese inter- rank that created Sharp Eyes, the spoke very active in those force isolate fying.” on’s use' techno critica l supply data with is relativel called se… e again st ds of 3.7 s aided final spers on foreig n minis been nomin Secretary servd with, say, ing U.S. the third s workin ‘fast tracks’ US-Ta iwanBiden will not same privacy the 2015 devalu hours Chin lish during of the the renounce after aptly-named cost upwar woun ry Agent, FBI in Yellen’ Zhaoare insti- try of per- camerasactivists worry that on reshoring week because there 2018 articleyou

by Los NewalVision that offici hand the DNAAassociate a relati ons Comm not given the bank the haveAnge- net user told RFA. “A friend U.S. downese Amer ory Specialgon heavy rhetorical basis job,” but their belief Secre tary Bell U.S. autd Japan le Party Chinese unist global mar-d new Treasu administration. orderly if has, his edflow — ica would Lijian said 19, the Rights But Hum anCo., tate that surpris the world Jan. ion. workers a increase will fuel as in the United You, Supervis had horit ieson invas cancer. of Healt admi nistra like ist-Le ” a ”Marx Trum about initiating “the three Times illustrated a real- of mine in Anhui is under was happy to report tutional investors that will give Chi- chains.” Edwardpolicy breastles e yuan beparticent TrumPresid Servi has propose protections ninist confronts s before te respo “met p ing the Biden a fiscal dove and h andthe resolu wished unde r new able to your stan this China p admin ces Alex in China China ating tion genetic science the Chines onU.S. Unde admin nses.” sonnel. tice?” the be this injuswon’t be regime that exertstake signi tionpower defenses” and sought to surworldsamples, anecdote ofthe living surveillance, and he tried to r Secre Partytary could linkAzar up its ipate -back in names that have ele-with asked her opinio steps to istratiistrat y by stimul kets whenmechan 10 million ismthe the ies unrestricted Tough ion have t he States. The situation Known to on luck to rever rk of the Trump andsur- State ficant actioover against finding Krach the long-s economist, ed medi nese authorit collectof State with the econom the workers bencompan ies global Amerboost and taken awas se In was devalued chances under theof Party’s omniscibuy a plane ticket to go over- —veillance vated volume.

I think veil “nearfrom provinceand citycameras any Time icans relati secrets and been a hallma which advoof health s publi to a most tistical by ons with a Keynesian to suppor t low ionation soon after the curre nt Chinesens would be like was restor Glob a l its pei. people throu uffering dent his farewell addre foreign entities devalu shed an in the last set foot on the Keith e. She dramatirecognit succeIn spending is situat ion access to genetic The data administration, Taiiontotopray of Amazon, and for mutual ed ss,addit ing human ss, Presiarticl joiningchthe the move Trump the increas ence:improve “When a resident of seas, but he couldn’t leave level highways; district-level the “smart” home, inglikely that was also expressed dollar. The based gh brainnucleic six montdevice in the a form island sendi ons. yed approa preference and low unemabout there are he takes officewashing e accus keyranki ng while lifted from and millions were ng such China mini- certifica ing or preserv s in China such as Google, required to markers officisome as tesbe to beon to in hs. Previ a clear-e efiting from be hesitant memb , becau seand brute force.” . The family connecti ing Biden wished the incom is why als toof the highpoverty in been cated as Nigeria ers of his thought to aging itchactivregime which by theof thelast-d “raising the roads; and core governmenvillage in the Sichuan country… We can be ited placedsenioespecially with in some r offici als those ously,cam- ness” k being interest rates issue s to more urgent Pompeo Unite nistsuch cally,Anxi -Harris “mad - thethe in the form short years. trials, Trumoptions just a few island , d has already d Statesstaff the a s, of it.” recalled genetic resource human Faceboo manipulation CIA dome commu results Chine d while encour to aid stated that will lift tens of mil- acid tion. clinical had the cy the administra-be test the the much tion luck p collecte to put ent to so arms island admi stic not resolv se pursue the Nurem tion It after Communisthas incre ringtransportation tal zones, province resulting in 24/7 ityItlast week as well,” he said. to get of China set a under restriction or perseargue the South ploym vis-monology comsales ed,”berg wants African countrie pov- currenboostionally exportsaccepted 40 years But what was a miracle.” give informa On Jan. eras, in to the ROC, regulation - to “pray and asked Amer mum wage ology otherTrump CuiTrials and transfer gover nmen d that the nistra- (CCP) andunder Party ased China Morn War ed the pullans out of U.S. told at the end used by a biotechn internat order of s abroad.squares, demand. Officials in multhe top whether. you’re at value more government icans hubs, hospitals, to 9,itoring match to abiotechn small pile of gar- cuted by them, or asked According fromse tiongreatonerblast global U.S.-Taiwan for its succes for its persecpushe d for have privately t needsto dataChine Taiwa and expand The also annou resource emphasizedthe 45th President access Bioengineering, trade ing II that brougof World U.S. diplo on lions of Americ oppo se Weinhope officials economy. other nese partic cy. g indusdollar rose suspitoretail CCPwar inof America s in keepin Uygh pany, Anke u- ipatio resolu milita ry ler’s Post. vac- geneticand communities…

U.S.codes.” thus nced the Minutes expanding curren various boomin tion QR the mat e in a stable spent a good part the 60 a to bage in the gutter two years Pedes‘drink tea,’ [with state secuhome or outside.

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2020, more cipants. ritari nal Mich or offici with of big to valand new based Pompeo State Behind, , leading t from Monday topolicy rebuild our devalu t climate Yellen China d, The head of than 200 to postereffort to at Taiwa(PLA)-connected anism , Janael elimin profess tment Amba with than the lance and While Xi promote had been 2020, States, made Thursaccording theon document.

Army to accept the to a market and aired n. These als Hikdid greate . words To comba a carbon tax on to as Harvar system. nonparti Taiwa nthat fromCraft U.S. Indo- Stude and years ago. ation of Large for Sale,” to not mince “Above man, InInearly ’s cance which is more ssador and refused to Trumpby ts rules tion to move the United mand ’s trip, DNA For the Nazi the its spirit country, to renew gious r guara up largel awarded of technologies tutions such of Economics, Intern and Apple all, we COVIDand draw ing setvision a powerfu l policing ed that Pomp eo of the reported In another leaked docuday, amateur investorslled sold the with Beijin data ic Comopposition ntee intell igenc Pacif fascism his plans , and to Party Biden suppor fossil fuels such opment y. g, descri have reasserted the y to avoid a $33 islandbing to cut a means genetic to help with Freedom ational Relidiplo matic was as voiced uation of Amazon that China concern called 31, 2021 and Senate surve on from econom offers visite are restor of to allegi moves ’s gathered the uary London School y. She transie n visit ers secur illanc has other In to direc unificati the stage. sacred off ation d Taiw Sam Brown e the Activists back (L) ance of se oil.

In --Yellen million tirade contract to install 719,932 more ment, police issued Europ eshares thanjiang Europ ean world’s global e a Jan. ity. produc n comtorate as to administratio reacti ons He noted nies in Amer Berkele idea that an investig an on quesduring a l gas, and In respon of Chinese s and after top in Xincombined. Given , the SARSthis gover closed a proand thepost,state 19 testing.

7 Twitt offici als This ment to and U.C. will go so far ica, the from the that the s clear, Picture of Hikvision cameras results above ittee’s tech compa ts,te Comm an “pros acquiringe America at the State press trip. to colwas likelymitted a report efforts celebrating their cameras in Chine Shanghe. to meetpurchased. her role as gov- as coal, natura the Brookings of risinge Comm atroci undis possibility of nits gover Pomp trials answers for- officials off Chinessuch ties comas Comple made its intention to be in an electronic mall inTBei- unist Party produc rus panjing, which This infur iated ecuted eo descr er Financ with him,declin ed Departmentevent Although the China’s tioned from evidence at crime t with we emba citizens. In short, againthe coronavi to the peopl nment ting with into“achievements” 29, 2018, (CCP). wasseadded to Flickr crime again perpetrators he C CP Hikvision panies, to U.S. Instifle n from has The novel ibed stren gthen st Uygh in implethe result of popular tradinging compe serving within nt a podcas Dollars and Sense, CoV-2 as ing plant DNA on guiding May Shares for make rked on a missio in ns’ DNA. kind. Stude vowed to respo sBeiframe and from access U.S. must continuegenetic jing on May 24, 2019.the e. Our DNA collectio address would Sepshort of U.S.- ROC urs in it2013. ing of the st huma fessor to nothnotinclud Preside prote s Americathe te, light, our ed tion countr (Alex Wong Washington, ies, that same crime n, Bill the he does State Depa Genomi the ng.cs Amer t lect menting nity, the comn to te dblacklist by the so-called Sharp direct a Pentagon apps like Robinhood restrictscenes to unfairly ts. first as the Bank of Institu demic, in s being our unwav north claimi humanity” for “crimesallian Yellen describ such trips man count erednd / Getty Image D.C. eign againsce and the swabs is uncertai ernment, biotechnology vigilant to protect . While in two top Chinese surveilrtme all Amer ica great again 2020, a bankrup ering convic star, perpetrated largest andthe l Reserve tion. in Feb. 2019, a $40 tax per ton privacy concerns tember Trum p t unde r ign are norm in Xinjia that Eyes Project (雪亮 “Xue nasal , the director of the Trumpnt’s Administration for ing buying of select “meme“This for s) group, lance firms plunged on May prosecute dissiden that addi- innova icans.” “geno citizens been BGI Chinaneces campa its ad ng.” to tion of admi cide.” of the Federa and eventually world, that The al, enting sold sary has in the translating literally Evanina is a “This week niswe are here and of a widespre the 2020 president ce data implem co being owned and/or con- stocks” like Gamestop after Liang,” Newsweek reportsCCP may GNC of analyzing 22 following reports WashSince was reportceu- pany and Taiwa to ensur e that On aaresimil the noble ramifications tragic set very serious and has sharpagain condemned San Francis becoming the Counterintelligen BidenPharma in China and a new admin we inaugurate ar note, certain benefits the U.S. of the everyday to serve , Harbin . Indeed, a New lm- ington is considering banning of to the riots basedTeam China to “Bright as Snow”), a sur- National trolled by the PLA. A series being hit with a $3 billion trail, aggre ssion n are ready toAmbassador tional goals U.S. America. $770 is based citizens taking place actions that are DNA database Center (NSC), to multiple ic onfor leading up Federa l Reserve in the Capito data are overwhe the at Large extend our istration and count rhetorCo te the biotech ened of Our allegia sent letters by main nation Group them from buying U.S. comarticle revealed conthe there in edly for Interwe Sessio l during the Jan. U.S. to the veillance program designed and Security BGI was likely genetic of Executive Orders by the deposit requirement from tical its it will , such as be to “domina land ChinaalerReligi ern part best wishe nce is not Chair of York Times the Westto “provide Chinesethat 23 specia that we 6 Joint ny@visiontim ous Freed ining ingly positive offeringrural n of Cong of just as the blacklistamassing genetic to 2017.

At least of ponents, Sam in has been workmainta to persecute outgoing President blocked the Deposit Trust & Clearing million. rations, or l interests, corpo om, luck,also want them s. And that the regioBrow industry” by position forced labor, China… This provide warned ng to establish partfrom 2014 what the Trump es.com that the CCP e,” civilians. ies are states l development “biologi“all Amer ress, saying l expertis much global entitie leaving the Yellen n. nback, challenged map of its to have the CCP edofcompan Yellen a very this is forced is es potentia cures and treat- ing of telecoms giant Huawei technica - attempti The Party justifiessequenc U.S. based companies from Corporation to cover clearassociat After her icans were our childr ilization, data and to develop to target tinue n started.genetic for rified s. It’s to ing on a genetic ng put the pro- nerships with U.S. compani reserve, sterTrump said. important word, fanned their escalating tech isperform en, forced horpersecution its 21-year-long 700 million d toBiden designed administratio . life-savi Admincit“high gramthrough under theaddition pretext al of doing business with or hold- inghouse volatility. ng truth ” Capito by the assault to our nation our citizens, and at the federal uished Fellow kind of things abortions. The approximately collecting cal weapons groups.” Chi- accredite of the spirit States war. (Image: FRED DUFOUR / AFP via the underlyi later be exploited on our Trump’s Disting l.” practice to make stated, “The and “make on United that we haven fighting crime more effec- that could ing securities in PLA-conbecame a Agent ments, private genetic data isGetty Images) testing ual on Brookings seen in approval “We restor itself,” he said.

Falun to ers,” be willing certain ethnic males by forcibly “Political to help with an nce at the sory Special claim that ’t leaving seek access as the forced Gong, as well tration will rating is that ed the princ of tools to beginning in and in Reside continue on A3 tively. ns” nected companies. violence speaking donatio that a in this worldawfully long time ies to profit 2019 Supervi You, a FBI investifull array working nese state media the largest izens, attack on blood samples iple organ Our cent accord office was 51 perand earned use of the data by table. ing of its irus Disease way for compan the case has everything is an citizennation exists to Street ting in the creInstitute ing to Rasm an interv ,” said Pompeo genetic BGI Edward a background in a serve its adherents. harvest- Repo ish as Amer ies Coronav rs. In China already China accoun major Wall we chers.

2014, culmina world Our testing. compan in focused hold consume iew the from back gy of with in -19) database ussen rts, has agend Brownwith Fox fees gator wrote genealo although about right (COVID America a was not to date “The off be tolera icans. It can never government, News ch — ation of a national ies have genetic database polls show all other approach23andM Reports. profiles. with e. Furtheristry, stated, number : “What does the ted. involved in collectbanks.

212-730-6963 of the ChineseVISION ny@visiontimes.com ral approa as about Repubor left, it wasn’ Authorit 6,600 mean over 80 million Pompeo ever we must Now more than has has been data from ethnic biochemarian government of tion of artificialTIMES ing betwe his approval ratin late 2017. on a unilate t genetic such par- with said that could have agenda approximat in lican combina ? es many CCP It’s the boys unify result, genetic en authorit this the crat, and or the a ment ance, his polici 29 perce Demoaround shared values more, departbut about to ing surveill To gather 47 percen and, as had leader Xi Jintargeted men effortsfor212-73er e. Going received $1.5 nt and tioners that e numb Monetary past week’s Senof practi ed by has employed the good intelligence, 0-696 t. they “commit and rise our nation, China and its exhaustive conducted “an Uyghurs and more effectiv the partis 3 have paved to meet of a been reinforc profiles, the CCP methods. been in the 19-miTrump expressed and boldly open above hearticular because During the Chinese govthe CCP Falun Gong report of Chinese an genetic data of should strive whole nation that means the ping have been and determreview of the facts” by billion from the statistics show,” arrest e Committee Yellen dented our comm rancor and forge beat and prevent ward, wetransferchallenge In gratitude nute address a wide variety more crimes, ate Financ many times ed in 2020. How for unprece ambitions to on destin tantcountries.U.S. his Phase III trito his famil article. Those has indee ined that the CCP nomination, foreign impor “We fough . ernment in 2010. son, direc- about their reap the bene- the way y.” will the this to Trum President front ofState By conducting rus vaccine data of dissidents. ings for her d said the Times’ regarding ass and t for the CCP harg a united Mike Pence y, Vice “only p called himse the CCP’s ng ple that persecution ted the crimenot only comm questions arrest Falun the west and blood collec2019, Sophie Richard buildin includi wife and every citize princilf the als of its coronaviother coun- May was asked Cuts and Reforms in DNA sciorderpractitione that refuse program for partners, s they have itd aninstitu family, Chief, and his win true outsider tled to of advances accused publishe and as a so-called allies and rs for refusi Gong Mark tor of the China ever been equal digni n is entiteral genetic the Presid the 2017 Tax to expire in 2026. of, elabo- fits in Morocco of Staff to Council tion are listed Mead h multila ng to abu- Human Rights Watch, ency” becau to treatment, these peoplbut seek to “deny ty, s ld” and can has been able he “had regulate its human 212-730-6963 House Staff.ows, and all White that are due nt China’s tothroug tries, China and equal equal not se becau class citizen “black househo e, not participants.

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VISION TIME ties.” tion but will Board of Govern Congre ili- have their voice heard t, to expire. Biden ed to this Chair of the time as right is former , and when they tax increases to their gover While Trum over the Janet Yellen, To Yellen's no nment listen.to than audience. p will join tury. It is stain of the cenDonald pledged small club om from the ” Trump truly making less a the ny@visiontimes.c recognized households year and Yellen The Secre that.” external only serveof presidents who TIMES per tary of d one try const threats the counVISION released $400,000 lauded term, he State antly faces, a his the most Press Statemstrongly worde but said principles “America First” ent on Tuesd d that benefi America dangerous factor titled “D divers tt fa a

By Neil Campbell

r No ry Secreta US TreasuL J

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The Biden n Administratio to ng will be willi the make use of tools full array of a to hold Chin accountable. to Our approach sed date has focu on a unilateral and, approach — d as a result, coul e have been mor effective.

nt of an governme ng The authoritari leader Xi Jinpi China and its t their y open abou and have been boldl beat the west in ambitions to fits of advances reap the bene technology. The and DNA science has a regime even communist catchy festo with a published mani in China 2025. name... Made

When a resident of Anxi village in the Sichuan province of China set a match to a small pile of garbage in the gutter two years ago, a loudspeaker blared out his name and address and ordered him to extinguish the blaze immediately. He jumped with fright, quickly put out the flames and scurried away.

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Four year s ago we launche d great nati a ona effort to rebu l our country ild renew its , to spirit, and to rest ore allegiance the of governmen this t citizens. In to its sho we embarke rt, on a mission d make Am to erica great aga in for Americans all .

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VOL .8 FEB 26 - MAR 4 , 2021 |

A9

Orchids Orchid flower is one of the most exotic flowers in the world, and any floral arrangement with orchids is considered regal and grand. People in China also believe that the orchid symbolizes nobility, integrity, and friendship, making it a popular choice of flowers to gift to family and friends.

The Oriental Blossoms

H

ong Kong’s Flower Show in March 2018 opened up to much fanfare and celebration as it honored the joy of blooming flowers. This annual show is always a success as flowers have a great importance to the Chinese people.

Flowers in China are not just essential for their artistic value; they are just as important for their cultural symbolism and medicinal properties. Here’s a list of few of the most significant flowers to the Chinese culture.

By Vision Times Staff Images by AdobeStock

Chrysanthemum

Bauhinia The bauhinia is special to Hong Kong as it is considered to be the best hybrid genus in the world .

This combination of its nature and vitality is used to represent Hong Kong making it their flower emblem.

Hong Kong’s love for this flower and its cultural significance has even found a permanent place in their flag and currency.It blooms most profusely in the winters, overcoming the harsh cold.

The chrysanthemum is one of the few flowers in which the white color is appreciated for its positivity. The white chrysanthemum in Chinese culture symbolizes nobility and grace.

The flowers are also considered to be bearers of good fortune and are often used for ceremonies and special occasions. In TCM, the flower is used for its soothing and cooling properties to treat irritated eyes, high blood pressure, and migraines.

Peony The peonies symbolize a woman’s beauty and elegance, and is also considered to honor spring, life, and reproduction. Peonies have been an integral part of the Chinese culture since the beginning, and are present in abundance in the Imperial Gardens.

In China, peonies are used to heal inflammation, rheumatoid arthritis, muscle cramps, and spasms. The flower is also used to treat hepatitis, and helps combat problems of cholesterol and diabetes.

Lotus The lotus in China symbolizes the holy seat of Buddha.

The lotus also has a special place in China as it represents purity and elegance, even though it rises from the soil and muddy water.

In Chinese literature and art, the lotus is used to depict honor and longevity. The lotus flower has several medicinal properties. In TCM, it is used to treat bleeding, stress, and fevers.

Hibiscus The hibiscus in China represents fame and esteem.

It is used to commemorate men and women for their success. Medicinally, the hibiscus has many benefits. It is full of antioxidants, which help reduce fevers, clear out the respiratory tract, and help alleviate asthma, bronchitis, and coughing.

The hibiscus is also used to treat hypertension, menstrual, and heart problems, as well as diabetes. Additionally, hibiscus can be used to reduce dandruff and hair fall.

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MYSTERIES

A10 | FEB 26 - MAR 4 , 2021 VOL.8

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Unsolved Mysteries of the

Inca Civilization

By Vision Times Staff The Inca civilization is a famous ancient Indian civilization that developed in the Central Andes region of western South America. Along with the Mayan and Aztec civilizations, these civilizations are known as the "Three Ancient Indian Civilizations.” The Inca civilization has many mysteries that are unexplainable by people today.

Remains of Inca Civilization Machu Picchu

Advanced development of Inca civilization

In 1911, archaeologists discovered the remains of Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca civilization, in the hinterland of Cuzco, Peru, in the Urubamba River basin, and unearthed an ancient civilization.

According to archaeological excavations, the Inca civilization not only had excellent stone building skills, but also, the Inca empire had bronze vessels and labor tools such as knives, scythes, and axes, and their smelting and casting techniques were also very sophisticated.

The Incas also had a well-developed agricultural irrigation system, longdistance roads, and sophisticated wine-making techniques. Archaeologists believe that the Incas were also very advanced in medicine, weaving and dyeing techniques.

Their surgery, especially craniotomy and anesthesia, was among the most advanced in the world.

The site of Machu Picchu was excavated on the top of a mountain at an altitude of 3,800 meters, where there were about 400 stone houses and many stone palaces and temples.

The boulders used to build the altars of the temples weighed about a hundred tons. In addition, the Incas also erected boulders weighing hundreds of tons on the top of the mountain to serve as a sundial for the sun.

There were also various round towers built in imitation of the temple of the sun in Cuzco. These round towers were built on huge rocks and look like a single building.

Magical stone construction technology These stone construction techniques are very amazing, made of natural rock cut and stacked, but not the common four square, but complex polyhedral shape. And these polyhedral rocks are not uniform in shape. What is even more incredible is that these complex polyhedra were used to construct a building, without cement or mortar and other bonding materials. The stones are so tightly sealed that even a blade cannot be inserted in between.

The Incan agricultural terraces at Moray

O

riginally a tribe living in Lake Titicaca, the Incas came to present-day Cuzco in 1243.

From the time of their first leader, Manco Capac, to 1532, when their last leader, Atahualpa, was killed by the Spanish conquistador Pizarro, the Inca nation lasted for about three centuries, with a total of 12 generations and 13 kings.

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According to ancient Inca legends, they were "people who flew from the sky" and were "sons of the sun".

Therefore, their monarchs were the successors of the gods in the earthly world. In Inca cosmology, spacetime is divided into three layers: the lower world of Uku Pacha, which is located on the surface of the earth; Kay Pacha, the world inhabited by humans; and Hanan Pacha, the higher world above the human world, where the sun and moon reside.

There is a legend that the ancient Inca architects had a mysterious liquid that could make the rocks soft as rubber, easily cutting through tons of rock and then building them up like blocks.That's why the Incas were also called "stone magicians". But what this liquid was is still a mystery.

There is a legend that the ancient Inca architects had a mysterious liquid that could make the rocks soft as rubber, easily cutting through tons of rock and then building them up like blocks. That's why the Incas were also called "stone magicians".

But what this liquid was is still a mystery.

There is a legend that the ancient Inca architects had a mysterious liquid that could make the rocks soft as rubber, easily cutting through tons of rock and then building them up like blocks. That's why the Incas were also called "stone magicians".

But what this liquid was is still a mystery.

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The Incas also achieved high standards in the fields of astronomy, calendrics, and mathematics. The Incas measured that the earth's cycle was 365 days and 6 hours, and formulated the solar calendar accordingly. Similar to the Chinese civilization, the Inca calendar also has a lunar calendar, based on the results of the observation of the moon to develop 354 days. Inca mathematics used the decimal system.

The Incas recorded and collected information by means of knotted ropes, called "kippu" in Quechua, which means that many smaller ropes were knotted on a main rope, with knots indicating numbers, and different colors and lengths indicating different categories. Some studies suggest that the Inca civilization and the ancient Chinese civilization share a common origin. In the Chinese civilization, there is a legend of "knotted rope". The Indians carried on the "knotted rope" method.

The scientific community has been debating whether or not "kippu" is a written document. It wasn't until Harvard archaeologist Gerry Urton and his colleague, mathematician and weaving expert Kelly Bugeley, conducted a thorough computer analysis and study of the various elements of these ropes that they discovered the digital meta-recording method represented by the kippu, and succeeded in deciphering the first Inca writing - the site of the Inca palace: The city of Pruchuco.

Scientists believe that the kippu is probably a more complex form of writing than the numerical form, using the rope as a medium for writing in three dimensions, which is similar to the principles of our computer language today. ny@visiontimes.com

HEALTH

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VOL .8 FEB 26 - MAR 4 , 2021 |

By Sheng Ye Junming

f o e c n e d i v E The ng

i g A l a c i s y h P Different From

t h g u o is Th y l l a n i rig O e W What

P

eople today are bogged down by so many things. From the day-to-day hustle and bustle, work, trying to maintain relationships, and maintaining a level of mental wellness is not the easiest.

One of the best ways to create balance within starts by meditating. Try it every day, and you will start to reduce your worries about idle things, see things a bit more clearly, get to know yourself better while harmonizing yourself as a whole.

The Secret to Forgetting Your Anger in the Blink of an Eye

A

re you getting old? It’s not necessarily accurate to use the spots or wrinkles on your face to judge whether one is aging.

It's actually the strength and muscle mass of the quadriceps on the thighs that is the key to judging whether one is young. Some people, even if they were athletes when they were young, now seem to have difficulty running, moving, and jumping compared to before. Only then do they suddenly realize that their bodies are older than they thought.

All physical activities depend on the strength of your legs, therefore, if you want to resist aging, start with strength training your thighs.

There are usually 4 reasons why people fall when exercising: 1. As people age, the connection response of nerves and muscles deteriorates 2. I nsufficient exercise which leads to decreased muscle mass and strength 3. Decreased joint flexibility 4. Insufficient warm-up Motor function declines with age, most significantly in the lower limb muscles. Published in the “Japanese Journal of Geriatrics,” a study of the correlation between age and muscle mass of 4,000 people found that after the age of 20, the muscle mass of the lower limbs deteriorates faster than the upper limbs and torso, and therefore aging starts from the legs.

In the lower extremities, the standard of weakness is the quadriceps on the front of the thigh. The quadricep muscles begin to lose strength after the age of 25.

By the age of 60, the quadricep muscle has lost 60% of its mass compared to that of a 25-year-old.

Studies have found that

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for people who are injured with their legs in a cast who don’t use their thigh muscles for 2 weeks, the muscle strength of the inner thigh will be reduced by about 14%, and the quadriceps will be reduced by about 20%.

extended, and then sit back to the initial sitting position. How many seconds do you need to do this 10 times?

Lie down for a day, one day less life expectancy

Sitting, standing, and lying down can exercise the muscles of the lower limbs, and you don’t have to go to the gym.

There is a saying in Japan that "one day lying down, one day less life expectancy,” which means don’t talk about being sick and lying in bed in old age. As long as you stay in bed for a day without moving, your oxygen intake is diminished and your muscles can start to weaken.

The quadriceps on the front of the thigh is the basis of body movement. It is one of the largest and most powerful muscles in the human body. Weightbearing, running, and climbing all require leg muscle support. Fortunately, compared to the muscle weakness caused by insufficient exercise, it is relatively easy to strengthen with training.

Check your lower limb muscle strength

How do you check your lower limb muscle strength? Sit and stand up 10 times to test. For example, for a 40-year-old male, a speed of 7 seconds or less is considered fast, 8-10 seconds is considered average, but 11 seconds or more means it is time to start paying attention to maintaining muscle strength to prevent chronic diseases.

People with reduced muscle strength usually start to wheeze when going up and down stairs, and will try to take the escalator and avoid taking the stairs when taking the subway.

Test whether your thighs are older than your actual age: Sit on a chair with your back straight, cross your arms in front of your chest, stand up with your legs fully

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By Vision Times Staff

3 ways to strength lower limb muscle

1. Lunge Put your hands on your hips, lunge one foot forward and make sure your front and back feet are at the same width as your pelvis. Squat down vertically after your feet are stabilized, and straighten your chest and abdomen. Ensure both thighs and feet are at a 90 degree angle from the thighs of the front feet. When you get up, keep your upper body vertical to the ground, and change your feet after stabilizing.

This exercise can strengthen the muscles of the front and rear thigh muscles.

There is a Japanese saying: "The angry crow is laughing now", which is a metaphor for emotions change suddenly, at any given time. This is not a perfect description, but from a Buddhist standpoint, one can gain peace by knowing everything in this world is "impermanent", so it is only a matter of time before things fade into the past.

So just remember, If you are angry now, it will be a thing of the past in the next moment.

Push the anger into the past, and use that power to live in the present with a smile.

The secret to letting anger go is by trying your best to not let that emotion get the best of you.

Though it can affect you as soon as the feeling is stirred, it takes a much longer time to let it go, and that’s where mediation comes in.

2. Squat against the wall Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, with your back against the wall, and take a big step forward with your feet. Distribute the weight evenly on your two legs and squat slowly until the body, thighs, and calves are all 90° for 1 minute, or increase or decrease according to your current physical ability. This action can strengthen the muscle endurance of the lower limbs.

3. Straighten the knee and raise the leg Lie on your back, hook one foot back, raise your knee straight and keep it in the air for 5 seconds, then put it down and repeat with the other foot. Practice 100 sets per day, and adjust the repetitions according to your physical ability.

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When the body holds on to negative emotions such as anger, regret, sadness, guilt, and disdain your body gets out of rhythm and breathing becomes disordered.

M E D I T A T I O N

A Great Way to

Relieve Stress

A11

Adjust the Posture and Breathing to "Tuning your Body, Breath, and Mind” When we are depressed, the body automatically hunches over.

When the body holds on to negative emotions such as anger, regret, sadness, guilt, and disdain your body gets out of rhythm and breathing becomes disordered.

On the other hand, posture and breathing can control emotional ups and downs. There is a saying in Zen: "Adjust the body, adjust the breath, adjust the mind."

This can be accomplished by meditation, as it will adjust your posture, breathing, and inner mind.

When you decide to take up meditation there are a few things that one should consider, with the first being straightening your posture.

When sitting, form a straight line from the tailbone to the top of your head, which is called "body alignment.”

Next, deliberately slow down your breathing.

Normally the breathing rate is seven to eight breaths per minute and needs to be brought down to about three to four times a minute when doing mediation.

After fixing your posture and normalizing your breathing, your heart will naturally stabilize and you will successfully reach the "mind tuning" state.

Lastly, you can pick a good time that works best for you to do meditation. The morning or the night, whichever ever time that will have the least amount of distractions. Now you are ready to embark on a beautiful journey.

Enjoy your newly found inner peace!

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SCIENCE

A12 | FEB 26 - MAR 4 , 2021 VOL.8

Ancient

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These effigy vessels are examples of Saladoid pottery, characterized by white paint on a red background and ornate shapes.

DNA

(Image: courtesy of Corinne Hofman)

Retells Story of Caribbean’s Original Islanders

By Troy Oakes

T

he history of the Caribbean’s original islanders comes into sharper focus in a new Nature study that combines decades of archaeological work with advancements in genetic technology.

An international team led by Harvard Medical School’s David Reich analyzed the genomes of 263 individuals in the largest study of ancient human DNA in the Americas to date. The genetics trace two major migratory waves in the Caribbean by two distinct groups, thousands of years apart, revealing an archipelago settled by highly mobile people, with distant relatives often living on different islands.

Reich’s lab also developed a new genetic technique for estimating past population size, showing the number of people living in the Caribbean when Europeans arrived was far smaller than previously thought — likely in the tens of thousands, rather than the million or more reported

by Columbus and his successors.

For archaeologist William Keegan, whose work in the Caribbean spans more than 40 years, ancient DNA offers a powerful new tool to help resolve longstanding debates, confirm hypotheses, and spotlight remaining mysteries.

Keegan, curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History and co-senior author of the study, said: This moves our understanding of the Caribbean forward dramatically in one fell swoop.

The methods David’s team developed helped address questions I didn’t even know we could address.”

Archaeologists often rely on the remnants of domestic life — pottery, tools, bone, and shell discards — to piece together the past. Now, technological breakthroughs in the study of ancient DNA are shedding new light on the movement of animals and humans, particularly in the Caribbean where each island can be a unique microcosm of life.

While the heat and humidity of the tropics can quickly

These are examples of Chicoid pottery from Hispaniola, a style characterized by engraved designs and sculpted faces, often representing bats. (Image: courtesy of Corinne Hofman and Menno Hoogland)

break down organic matter, the human body contains a lockbox of genetic material: a small, unusually dense part of the bone protecting the inner ear. Primarily using this structure, researchers extracted and analyzed DNA from 174 people who lived in the Caribbean and Venezuela between 400 and 3,100 years ago, combining the data with 89 previously sequenced individuals.

The team, which includes Caribbean-based scholars, received permission to carry out the genetic analysis from local governments and cultural institutions that acted as caretakers for the human remains.

The authors also engaged representatives of Caribbean Indigenous communities in a discussion of their findings.

Two waves of people, thousands of years apart

into the Caribbean Sea, settling Puerto Rico and eventually moving westward. Their arrival ushered in the region’s Ceramic Age, marked by agriculture and the widespread production and use of pottery.

Over time, nearly all genetic traces of Archaic Age people vanished, except for a holdout community in western Cuba that persisted as late as European arrival. Intermarriage between the two groups was rare, with only three individuals in the study showing mixed ancestry.

Many present-day Cubans, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans are the descendants of Ceramic Age people, as well as European immigrants and enslaved Africans. But researchers noted only marginal evidence of Archaic Age ancestry in modern individuals.

Keegan said: “That’s a big mystery. For Cuba, it’s especially curious that we don’t see more Archaic These figures were ancestry.”

The genetic evidence offers new insights into the peopling of the Caribbean.

The islands’ first inhabitants, a group of carved by late stone tool-users, Ceramic Age peo- Changes boated to Cuba ple after AD 1200. in pottery about 6,000 Keegan has likened styles not years ago, grad- Caribbean history linked to new ually expand- to a kaleidoscope, migrations ing eastward to “dynamic combinations of eleother islands during the Du r i ng t he ments, constantly region’s Archaic Age. in motion.” (Image: Ceramic Age, CarWhere they came from courtesy of Corinne Hof- ibbean pottery remains unclear — while man and Menno Hoog- underwent at least they are more closely land) five marked shifts related to Central and in style over 2,000 South Americans than years. Ornate red to North Americans, their genet- pottery decorated with white ics do not match any particu- painted designs gave way to simlar Indigenous group. However, ple, buff-colored vessels, while similar artifacts found in Belize other pots were punctuated with and Cuba may suggest a Central tiny dots and incisions or bore American origin, Keegan said. sculpted animal faces that likely About 2,500-3,000 years ago, doubled as handles. farmers and potters related to Some archaeologists pointed to the Arawak-speakers of north- these transitions as evidence for east South America established new migrations to the islands. a second pathway into the Car- But DNA tells a different story, ibbean. Using the fingers of suggesting all of the styles were South America’s Orinoco River developed by descendants of the Basin like highways, they trave- people who arrived in the Carled from the interior to coastal ibbean 2,500-3,000 years ago, Venezuela and pushed north though they may have interacted

“

This was a systematic program of cultural erasure.

The fact that the number was not 1 million or millions of people, but rather tens of thousands, does not make that erasure any less significant.”

with and taken inspiration from outsiders. Co-first author Kendra Sirak, a postdoctoral fellow in the Reich Lab, said: “That was a question we might not have known to ask had we not had an archaeological expert on our team. We document this remarkable genetic continuity across changes in ceramic style.

We talk about ‘pots vs. people,’ and to our knowledge, it’s just pots.”

Genetics reveal family connections across islands Highlighting the region’s interconnectivity, a study of male X chromosomes uncovered 19 pairs of “genetic cousins” living on different islands — people who share the same amount of DNA as biological cousins but may be separated by generations. In the most striking example, one man was buried in the Bahamas while his relative was laid to rest about 600 miles away in the Dominican Republic.

“Showing relationships across different islands is really an amazing step forward,” said Keegan, who added that shifting winds and currents can make passage between islands difficult. “I was really surprised

to see these cousin pairings between islands.”

Uncovering such a high proportion of genetic cousins in a sample of fewer than 100 men is another indicator that the region’s total population size was small, said Reich, professor of genetics in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS and professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard, adding: “When you sample two modern individuals, you don’t often find that they’re close relative.

Here, we’re finding relatives all over the place.”

Revising estimates of Caribbean population size A technique developed by study co-author Harald Ringbauer, a postdoctoral fellow in the Reich Lab, used shared segments of DNA to estimate past population size, a method that could also be applied to future studies of ancient people. Ringbauer’s technique showed about 10,000 to 50,000 people were living on two of the Caribbean’s largest islands, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, shortly before European arrival. This falls far short of the million inhabitants Columbus described to his patrons, likely to impress them, Keegan said.

Later, 16th-century historian Bartolomé de las Casas claimed the region had been home to 3 million people before being decimated by European enslavement and disease. While this, too, was an exaggeration, the number of people who died as a result of colonization remains an atrocity, Reich said, adding: “This was a systematic program of cultural erasure. The fact that the number was not 1 million or millions of people, but rather tens of thousands, does not make that erasure any less significant.”

For Keegan, collaborating with geneticists gave him the ability to prove some hypotheses he has argued for years — while upending others, he explainined: “At this point, I don’t care if I’m wrong or right. It’s just exciting to have a firmer basis for reevaluating how we look at the past in the Caribbean. One of the most significant outcomes of this study is that it demonstrates just how important culture is in understanding human societies. Genes may be discrete, measurable units, but the human genome is culturally created.”

Provided by: Natalie Van Hoose, Florida Museum of Natural History

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