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JAN. 6 COVERAGE
FBI Altered Evidence in Jan. 6 Case, Trial Paused: Lawyer
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Democrats Are Terrified Of An Educated And Informed Public
Democrats Are Terrified Of An Educated And Informed Public
By Derek Hunter
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Pillsbury is fluent in Mandarin and has served multiples presidents. In the coming months, he’ll play a key role in Heritage’s priority to counter the threat of communist China.
This week, I thought you’d enjoy listening to this episode of the Kevin Roberts Show, which features Michael Pillsbury: https://www.heritage.org/the-kevin-roberts-show
Pillsbury believes there are nine elements of Chinese strategy to overtake the United States. He outlines four of them on the podcast: making the US complacent, manipulating our allies, stealing our technology, and playing the long game.
If you’re curious, he outlines the remaining five strategies in his book called “The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower.”
If you get a chance to listen to the podcast this weekend, let me know what you think. When I see Michael next, I’ll pass along any feedback you have.
Best,
Andrew
Vice President of Development
The Heritage Foundation
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Dear Richard,
This week, America and Israel continued to work together to address shared threats and strengthen ties.
On Thursday in Israel, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Markey Milley met with his counterparts in Israel last week.
And on Monday in Washington, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
First: Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi.
Second: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday.
In all of these meetings, both American and Israeli officials reaffirmed the importance of a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and their commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
And they’ve demonstrated this commitment through more than just words and meetings: Over the past few months, America and Israel have held a series of significant joint military exercises — including the single largest U.S.-Israel military drill ever.
This support is not automatic, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It is the result of decades of education and activism on the part of AIPAC and pro-Israel Americans across the country.
Today, these clear demonstrations of partnership are especially important as Iran makes unprecedented nuclear advancements (more on this below). Together, we will continue to ensure America always stands with Israel, for the benefit of both nations.
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Iran and Saudi Arabia restore ties after years of tensions
Agreement reached in China will see Tehran and Riyadh reopen embassies; relations were severed in 2016 amid furor over Saudi execution of prominent Shiite cleric
By Jon Gambrell
An honor guard member is covered by the flag of Saudi Arabia, in Washington, on March 22, 2018. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran and Saudi Arabia on Friday agreed to reestablish diplomatic relations and reopen embassies after years of tensions between the two countries, including a devastating attack on the heart of the kingdom’s oil production attributed to Tehran.
The deal, struck in Beijing this week amid its ceremonial National People’s Congress, represents a major diplomatic victory for the Chinese as Gulf states perceive the United States slowly withdrawing from the wider Middle East. It also comes as diplomats have been trying to end a years long war in Yemen, a conflict in which both Iran and Saudi Arabia are deeply entrenched.
The two countries released a joint communique with China on the deal, which apparently brokered the agreement. Chinese state media did not immediately report on the deal.
Iranian state media posted images and video it described as being taken in China with the meeting. It showed Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, with a Saudi official and a Chinese official that state TV named as Wang Yi.
“After implementing of the decision, the foreign ministers of the both nations will meet to prepare for exchange of ambassadors,” Iranian state television said. It added that the talks had been held over four days.
Saudi Arabian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Shortly after the Iranian announcement, Saudi state media began publishing the same statement.
Tensions have been high between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The kingdom broke off ties with Iran in 2016 after protesters invaded Saudi diplomatic posts there. Saudi Arabia days earlier had executed a prominent Shiite cleric, triggering the demonstrations.
In the years since, tensions have risen dramatically across the Middle East since the US unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks in the time since, including one that targeted the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in 2019, temporarily halving the kingdom’s crude production.
Though Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels initially claimed the attack, Western nations and experts have blamed the attack on Tehran. Iran long has denied launching the attack. It has also denied carrying out other assaults later attributed to the Islamic Republic.
The Houthis seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September 2014 and forced the internationally recognized government into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition armed with US weaponry and intelligence entered the war on the side of Yemen’s exiled government in March 2015. Years of inconclusive fighting has created a humanitarian disaster and pushed the Arab world’s poorest nation to the brink of famine.
A six-month cease-fire in Yemen’s war, the longest of the conflict, expired in October despite diplomatic efforts to renew it. That led to fears the war could again escalate. More than 150,000 people have been killed in Yemen during the fighting, including over 14,500 civilians.
In recent months, negotiations have been ongoing, including in Oman, a longtime interlocutor between Iran and the US. Some have hoped for an agreement ahead of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which will begin later in March.
The US Navy and its allies have seized a number of weapons shipments recently they describe as coming from Iran heading to Yemen. Iran denies arming the Houthis, despite weapons seized mirroring others seen on the battlefield in the rebels’ hands. A United Nations arms embargo bars nations from sending weapons to the Houthis.
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Yellen’s Global Minimum Tax Is a Boon for Beijing
The proposed world-wide levy would exempt state-owned entities at the expense of capitalist competitors.
By Aharon Friedman
The U.S. Constitution specifies that Congress, not unelected bureaucrats or foreign adversaries, is in charge of crafting our nation’s tax laws. As the American people awaken to the geopolitical and economic threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party, that protection makes more strategic sense than ever. Yet Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is turning this bedrock principle on its head by writing a global tax code with the help of European bureaucrats that would redound to the benefit of Beijing. If enacted, the new rules would violate international law and harm U.S. security.
So far 142 countries have orally agreed to a global tax code known as Pillar Two. Under the framework developed by the Organization for Economic Coordination and Development, the new code would impose a 15% minimum book tax on large multinational companies. Although Congress has thus far resisted Ms. Yellen’s request to enact Pillar Two, the Treasury secretary is now presenting an ultimatum: Impose the tax increases, or watch foreign countries seize American revenue.
This is because of a central feature of Pillar Two that punishes low-tax nations that don’t comply with its rules. The global tax code does so through its “undertaxed profits rule,” which purports to allow countries to “tax”—that is, to confiscate the assets of—a covered company on the grounds that an affiliate’s taxes are too low in any other country. The global tax code thus eliminates each country’s authority to make its own tax law and prioritizes increased corporate taxation over economic growth. Never mind that such provisions violate international law and existing treaties—including with the U.S.—that prevent countries from taxing activities to which they have no connection. Yet rather than threaten to impose countermeasures on countries that attempt to tax American affiliates, Ms. Yellen is encouraging such taxation as a way to coerce Congress into accepting Pillar Two.
The complex rules benefit low-margin companies and exempt governmental entities carrying out so-called governmental functions. According to the OECD, that’s supposed to be a “broad term,” including public infrastructure and defense. The practical effect of these exemptions is to favor companies that emphasize social activism over profits, as well as state-owned enterprises, at the expense of capitalist competitors. This will benefit countries that take a broad view of government power, especially China, where President Xi Jinping is expanding state-owned enterprises under a plan known as “the state advances, the private sector retreats.”
These rules especially harm American security. In the U.S., for example, defense contractors are private-sector companies and would thus be subject to the global tax code. If their tax rates dropped below the OECD minimum—say, because of research tax credits—other countries, including China, would tax them on American operations. Defense contractors in China and in some European countries, on the other hand, are owned by their governments and would be exempt and strategically advantaged.
Pillar Two’s framework undermines U.S. security with two additional provisions. First, it establishes a special exemption for companies operating in fewer than seven countries. Beijing especially lobbied for this condition, which it will doubtless exploit given the opaqueness of the relationships between companies close to the Communist Party. Second, the framework mandates an expansive information-sharing regime among countries that have adopted the global tax code. Providing such detailed information on American defense and tech companies to the likes of China would deliver sensitive proprietary information directly into the hands of our enemies.
Another fundamental flaw is trusting China to abide by the rules. The West has little reason to take China’s word that it will do so, or to trust the books of Chinese companies operating under Beijing’s thumb. Does anyone think Mr. Xi and his affiliates will share sensitive information on Chinese companies, especially those in defense and tech, or allow other countries to tax their Chinese operations?
The global tax code is also likely to push low-income countries toward state-owned foreign investment—such as China’s Belt and Road initiative, which itself encroaches on nations’ sovereignty while sapping their natural resources. The framework targets low-income countries that offer favorable tax treatment to attract foreign money. American companies and other private firms seeking to build infrastructure in such countries will doubtless reconsider, as the OECD encourages other governments to tax these companies’ affiliates—via the undertaxed profits rule—to counter their favorable treatment.
Upholding international law that respects each country’s right to make its own domestic policy is crucial given Beijing’s threats to other nations’ sovereignty. It’s also imperative that our policy makers respect Congress’s sole authority over our tax law. The global tax code clearly violates these principles. As Ms. Yellen testifies before the House Ways and Means Committee Friday, lawmakers would do well to ask whether she will defend U.S. sovereignty by threatening to impose countermeasures on undertaxed-profits-rule action or continue to flout the Constitution.
Mr. Friedman was senior tax counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee (2007-20) and senior adviser to the assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy (2020-21).
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The collapse of the California bank is ominous. Now the question becomes does this cause The Fed to curtail their contemplated raise in rates? If they increase rates only 1/4% it would help retain liquidity in the system just as consumers begin to shift their spending patterns from general retail to grocery necessities as they draw down their COVID savings.
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Islamic Jihad official claims Israel is at its weakest
A senior Islamic Jihad official claims that Israel is weak enough to give up dozens of square kilometers of territory.
Khaled al-Batash, one of the senior officials of the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in Palestine, believes that Israel is strategically weak and military pressure may lead it to withdraw from territories in 'Palestinian territory'.
Speaking as part of "Al-Quds Week" (Jerusalem) at the headquarters of the Engineers' Association in Gaza, El-Batash said that the situation today in the West Bank is very similar to the situation before the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
"In the history of the struggle with the occupation and with all the invaders, Allah armed the Muslims with weapons and documents that cannot be overcome and gave us, Arabs and Muslims, evidence and proof that the land is ours," Al-Batsh said.
Al-Batash called on Muslims and Arabs to focus on the aspects of victory and the unity of the Arab nation and to consolidate the possible and available elements of power to fight the "conqueror," who is in his weakest period.
According to al-Batash, "The enemy cannot afford even one defeat. If the occupying forces leave Gaza, the (West) Bank, Lebanon, or any (other) arena and clear one square kilometer, the occupier will walk away from dozens of square kilometers."
Al-Batsh also estimated that the renewal of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran would return the Arab and Islamic nations to their right course.
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China is unrelenting. They are totally committed to their cause of controlling the world in four ways: militarily, commercially, technologically and psychologically.
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The Hill
Iran looks for signals of US resolve
BY LAWRENCE J. HAAS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
“The Fuhrer beams,” Joseph Goebbels said of Hitler after Germany reoccupied the Rhineland in the spring of 1936 and the West did nothing. “England remains passive. France won’t act alone. Italy is disappointed and America uninterested.”
As it turns out, Robert Kagan explains in “The Ghost at the Feast,” his new book about America’s global role between 1900 and Pearl Harbor, both Berlin and Tokyo mistook U.S. passivity in the 1930s as permanent weakness.
“[E]very German success in Europe spurred further Japanese aggression in Asia, and every Japanese victory in Asia strengthened Hitler’s resolve to press forward in Europe.” How, Kagan asks, should German and Japanese leaders have known that “there would come a point at which Americans would completely change their minds and decide that the stakes were worth risking war?”
The 1930s were no historical aberration. Ever since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 created the modern state system of international relations and the concept of territorial sovereignty, global leaders have watched events far from home and plotted accordingly, calibrating the likely response from adversaries.
These days, which leaders around the world are watching what? Of timely note, Iran’s leaders certainly are watching for signs of U.S. resolve as they decide how far to push in enriching uranium to near-nuclear weapons grade purity and seek more sophisticated air-defense systems from Russia.
In calibrating whether U.S. leaders have the stomach to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, as they’ve long threatened, or help Israel do so, Tehran is watching more than Washington’s direct response to its nuclear-related activities. It’s also looking for signs in the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Whether Washington is sending the most forceful signals is open to question.
In a report of recent days, the Institute for Science and International Security wrote that Tehran now can “produce enough weapon-grade enriched uranium” to make a bomb in 12 days and four more within a month — if it chooses to do so. In addition, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported in late January that it found uranium particles that were enriched to 83.7 percent — just shy of weapons grade, which is 90 percent — at Iran’s underground enrichment facility in Fordow.
The IAEA also reiterated its concerns that, lacking full access to Iran’s nuclear facilities and Tehran’s decision of June 2022 to remove surveillance equipment, international inspectors are far less able than they once were to monitor Iran’s nuclear activities.
At the same time, Tehran has asked Moscow for the S-400 air-defense system, presumably to help protect its nuclear facilities from a possible air strike by the United States, Israel, or some combination.
Moscow hasn’t said it would provide the S-400, but there’s good reason to think it will. For one thing, it previously provided Tehran with the less sophisticated S-300 system as part of a growing Russian-Iranian military relationship. For another, Moscow has grown more dependent on Tehran for drones and other hardware as it continues its war with Ukraine, so providing the S-400 would repay the favor.
Iran’s advances in nuclear enrichment (and in the ballistic missiles on which it could mount a nuclear warhead) and the potential that it will acquire a more sophisticated air defense system prompt the question of what Washington, Jerusalem, or both are prepared to do about it — and when.
Like at least his three most recent predecessors, President Biden says the United States won’t let Iran develop nuclear weapons and that all options remain on the table, including military action. Fine.
Should Tehran take the threat seriously?
More than once over the years, U.S. leaders have opposed Israeli plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites and denied Jerusalem the weapons to help. In recent days, Washington rejected calls by London, Paris, and Berlin to censure Tehran over its enrichment of near-weapons grade uranium, suggesting U.S. leaders retain hopes of future U.S.-Iranian cooperation and don’t want to embarrass Iran’s leaders.
The more consequential signal to Tehran about U.S. resolve may be emanating from Kyiv, however.
In his triumphant speech in Poland, Biden declared that Russia’s invasion was a test for the world’s democracies and their decisions in the coming years would determine freedom’s future. But in a private meeting with the “Bucharest Nine” nations of Eastern Europe, who feel most threatened by Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions, he backed off previous calls to oust Putin and said he wasn’t seeking to topple his regime.
While Washington and the West continue to arm Ukraine, Biden continues to slow-walk his approval of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s requests for more powerful weaponry. Most recently, he’s rejected Zelensky’s request for F-16 fighter jets (although, perhaps in a good sign for the future, the U.S. military is now assessing the skills of Ukrainian pilots to fly fighter jets).
Meanwhile, with Russian and Ukrainian forces bogged down in brutal fighting in and around Bakhmut, Kyiv’s need for resupplies of artillery shells and other weaponry is outpacing U.S. production and shipment. In response, some U.S. military officials actually suggest that Kyiv harness its resources by slowing its military efforts.
Would Washington strike Iran’s nuclear sites if that’s the only way left to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons? Does Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei think so? In light of America’s mixed messaging to both Tehran and Kyiv, one has to wonder.
Lawrence J. Haas, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, is the author, most recently, of The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire, from Potomac Books.
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