Recently in Red China Category

Click here to view this email as a web page

Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Rick Perry Eyeing White House Run in 2016
2. Climate Change Alarmist Recants: 'I Made a Mistake'
3. China Hacked Blueprints for U.S. Fighter Jets
4. Obama Spends $8.3 Billion to Hide Medicare Cuts
5. U.S., Europe Gird for 'Carbon Trade War'
6. Germany to Publish 'Mein Kampf' Again

1. Rick Perry Eyeing White House Run in 2016

Texas Gov. Rick Perry's disclosure that he's "really interested" in running for president again in 2016 has some observers wondering if he thinks Mitt Romney won't unseat President Barack Obama in November.

In a recent interview with CBS 11 News in Dallas-Fort Worth, Perry said: "2016 is way down the road, but I'll assure you one thing -- if I decide to run for the presidency in 2016, I'll be in way before the summer of 2016, 2015 even."

Reporter Jack Fink asked: "It sounds like you're really interested?"

Perry responded: "Yeah, I am. I love this country. As long as my health stays good, as it is, and my family is supportive, I'm certainly going to give it a good examination."

Perry announced in August 2011 that he would run for president in 2012, but dropped out of the race on Jan. 9 and endorsed Newt Gingrich.

Commenting on his talk of another run in 2016, the Houston Chronicle observed: "Statements like that don't make it seem like Perry has much faith in a Republican winning the presidential election this November. And if he does [win], it doesn't seem like he has much faith in Romney being a very good president."

Another Romney rival for the 2012 GOP nomination, Rick Santorum, has also suggested he is considering a run in 2016, telling Fox News: "I feel like a young man, and hopefully I feel like a young man four years from now."

As for whether Perry will run for re-election for governor in 2014, Perry told CBS: "I'm certainly going to give that the appropriate consideration. My instincts are very positive towards it right now."

2. Climate Change Alarmist Recants: 'I Made a Mistake'

British environmental expert James Lovelock now admits he was an "alarmist" regarding global warming -- and says Al Gore was too.

Lovelock previously worked for NASA and became a guru to the environmental movement with his "Gaia" theory of the Earth as a single organism. In 2007 Time magazine named Lovelock one of its "Heroes of the Environment," and he won the Geological Society of London's Wollaston Medal in 2006 for his writings on the Gaia theory.

That year he wrote an article in a British newspaper asserting that "before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."

But in an interview this week with MSNBC, Lovelock said a book he is now writing will reflect his new opinion that global warming has not occurred as he had expected.

"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing," he said. "We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books -- mine included -- because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened.

"The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now.

"The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time. [The temperature] has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising. Carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.

"We will have global warming, but it's been deferred a bit."

MSNBC reported: "He pointed to Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' and Tim Flannery's 'The Weather Makers' as other examples of 'alarmist' forecasts of the future."

Lovelock also declared in the interview that "as an independent and a loner," he did not mind saying, "All right, I made a mistake," adding that university or government scientists might fear that admission of such a mistake could jeopardize their funding.

In response to Lovelock's interview, the Climate Depot website stated: "MSNBC, perhaps the most unlikely of news sources, reports on what may be seen as the official end of the manmade global warming fear movement."

3. China Hacked Blueprints for U.S. Fighter Jets

Chinese hackers stole the blueprints for America's new Joint Strike Fighter planes, the F-35 and F-22 -- an example of cyberattacks that can "devastate our nation," a leading congressman disclosed.

"I think it's important that the American people have a better idea of what is at risk," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management, said at a subcommittee hearing on Tuesday.

"When I look at the theft of intellectual property to the tune of $1 trillion, that's a serious economic issue for the United States.

"When I look at countries like China, who have stolen our Joint Strike Fighters, F-35 and F-22s, stolen those blueprints so they can manufacture those planes and then guard against those planes.

"Make no mistake, America is under attack by digital bombs. There are several things the American public should understand about these attacks. They are real, stealthy and persistent and can devastate our nation.

"China's cyber warfare capabilities and the espionage campaigns they have undertaken are the most prevalent of any nation state actor. China has created citizen hacker groups, engaged in cyberespionage, established cyberwar military units."

In addition to stealing vital information on America's weapons programs and security, he warned that cyberattacks could also blow up natural gas pipelines, derail trains, hack financial systems, and cause chemical plants to leak toxins, The Hill reported.

Larry Wortzel, a member of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee at a March 28 hearing that the People's Liberation Army of China has made cyberattacks a "cornerstone" of its operations.

A commission report noted that Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and British Aerospace and Engineering have reportedly experienced penetrations from China-based hackers in the past three years.

Newsmax reported last August that the Internet security firm McAfee had uncovered the largest series of cyberattacks ever -- for five years hackers infiltrated 72 organizations including defense firms and the American government -- and security experts pointed to China as the culprit.

At Tuesday's subcommittee hearing, security experts told the panel that Russia, Iran and North Korea are also experimenting with cyberattacks, Voice of America News reported.

They said threats to the U.S. electric power grid and mass transportation systems could come from foreign intelligence services, anti-American computer hackers and terrorists.

4. Obama Spends $8.3 Billion to Hide Medicare Cuts

The Obama administration is spending $8.3 billion to hide a key provision of Obamacare -- deep cuts in Medicare Advantage -- until after the November election.

Medicare Advantage offers seniors the option of choosing private insurance companies as an alternative to the government-run Medicare insurance program. So far 12 million seniors have enrolled in the program.

But President Obama has attacked the program, stating in a 2009 speech that it offers "unwarranted subsidies" that "do everything to pad [insurance companies'] profits and nothing to improve your care."

So it came as no surprise when Obama's healthcare reform plan sliced $145 billion from Medicare Advantage over the next 10 years. Medicare's own actuary reported that Obamacare would force more than 7 million seniors off their private plans and back into traditional Medicare as insurers flee the market, according to Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

To hide the cuts from seniors who would face losing Medicare Advantage just before the November election, the administration pumped $8.3 billion back into the program through "bonuses" to Medicare Advantage plans.

Those "bonuses" will make up for more than 70 percent of Obamacare's scheduled Medicare Advantage cuts, and keep the program running through the election.

The plan is so "transparently political" that the Government Accountability Office has urged the Health and Human Services Department to cancel it altogether, IBD reported, adding: "Canceling is just the beginning.

"The bigger question lawmakers must answer is this: Can it really be legal for a Cabinet agency to spend $8.3 billion in taxpayer money simply to help Obama get re-elected?"

5. U.S., Europe Gird for 'Carbon Trade War'

The European Union is setting off a confrontation with outside nations -- including the United States -- by demanding that all airlines pay a carbon tax when crossing EU airspace and landing at EU airports.

"The new EU system is portentous. It is an extension of the continent's cap-and-trade system from domestic sources to the international arena," according to Claude Barfield, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

"Though other nations protested as the rules were being formulated, the new legislation went into effect on January 1, 2012" and the tax will start being collected in 2013.

Significantly, the tax based on carbon emissions will be levied not just on the miles flown in EU airspace, but for the entire length of an aircraft's flight, Barfield reveals in an article headlined "The First Carbon Trade War?" in The American, the journal of the AEI.

That means a Korean Air jet, for instance, will have to pay a tax based not on the few hundred miles it flies over the EU but over the entire trip of several thousand miles from Korea to Europe.

The 27-member EU's action has produced threats of retaliation. More than 20 nations, including the United States, China, Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa, have met twice to discuss responses. The countries cited potential retaliatory actions including banning airlines from paying the tax and imposing commensurate levies on EU airlines flying in their airspace.

China and India have already banned their airlines from paying the tax, Russia has threatened to cancel air rights for EU airlines flying over Siberia, and China has delayed and possibly will cancel aircraft contracts with the European aerospace company Airbus worth $12 billion.

On the other hand, "the United States has equivocated," Barfield disclosed. "The House passed a bill making it illegal for U.S. airlines to comply with the EU scheme. But the State Department has thus far resisted efforts to bring the matter before the international body that sets rules for international airspace, the U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization.

"The Obama administration can drag its heels only so long before pressure from U.S. airlines and their supporters in Congress (particularly in an election year) becomes politically dangerous."

The Wall Street Journal observed: "Europe can help spark a global trade war nobody can afford over a tax nobody needs in furtherance of an anticarbon nirvana that never will come to pass."

6. Germany to Publish 'Mein Kampf' Again

Germany will officially publish Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" for the first time since the end of World War II.

Hitler wrote the first part of "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle") in 1923, while he was serving a prison sentence for attempting to overthrow the government. The second part was written a year later, after his release.

When the war ended, the rights to the anti-Semitic book became the property of the Bavarian state government, which nationalized the Nazi publication house and prohibited further publication of the work.

That prohibition remains in place today. But the rights to the book are scheduled to expire in 2015, 70 years after Hitler's death, and there are concerns that neo-Nazi groups will begin publishing and distributing copies of the work to advance anti-Semitic agendas, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports.

To counter that, the government will publish an annotated edition of the book, containing warnings to readers about the dangers of Hitler's racist doctrine.

The government will also publish a special version of the book for schools, which will emphasize the "worldwide catastrophe brought about by this way of thinking," according to Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Soeder.

An English translation will be available as well.

Bavaria will ask publishers and bookstores not to print or sell other versions of the book beside the annotated version, according to Haaretz.

Much of Hitler's 720-page book deals with the "struggle between races" and "the Jewish problem" in Germany and the rest of the world. It was originally titled "Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice."

Insider Report from Newsmax.com

Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Fuel Economy Standard ‘Kills People’
2. China Attacks U.S. on Debt Debate
3. Environmentalists Blamed for Deadly Bedbug Plague
4. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Commander to Head OPEC
5. U.S. Customs: 500,000 Troops Needed to Seal Border

1. Fuel Economy Standard ‘Kills People’

The Obama administration on July 29 announced a new fuel economy standard that requires automakers to boost their fleets’ miles per gallon by 5 percent a year until they reach 54.5 mpg by 2025.

The standard is designed to save thousands of dollars in fuel costs over the life of a vehicle, but critics say it will have another effect: a rise in motor vehicle deaths.

The president reportedly has secured agreements from General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Honda and Hyundai to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) to 35.6 in 2016 and to the higher figure nine years later, although the standard will be reviewed in 2018.

To increase their vehicles’ fuel economy, automakers will have to reduce their weight.

“So prepare to say goodbye to sport utility vehicles, pickups and minivans, the very vehicles millions of American families and businesses must rely upon every day,” the Washington Examiner observed in an editorial.

“By far the worst result, however, will be the fact that thousands will die because Obama, fanatical Big Green environmentalists, and their allies in the federal bureaucracy care more about removing micro-amounts of emissions than they do about the safety and convenience of people on the roads.”

Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit think tank, called CAFE “a regulation that, plain and simple, kills people.”

A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study in 2003 estimated that for every 100 pounds of weight removed from a car weighing under 3,000 pounds, the death rate rises more than 5 percent.

A study by the National Academy of Science found that lighter vehicles required to satisfy CAFE — which was first enacted in 1975 — were responsible for up to 2,600 highway deaths a year.

And data from the government’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, analyzed by USA Today, concluded that 7,700 people died for every one additional mpg attributed to CAFE regulation.

The Examiner concludes: “If CAFE standards were produced by a public corporation or small business instead of the federal government, the families of those killed by the regulations would have a prima facie case for a class-action lawsuit.”

2. China Attacks U.S. on Debt Debate

The Chinese government’s official mouthpiece has published a commentary attacking the United States for its handling of the debt crisis.

The opinion piece published on Xinhua, the state-run news wire, chided the U.S. for its “debt addiction” and said it was “time for Washington to revisit the time-tested common sense that one should live within one’s means.”

The commentary went on to say that American politicians need to “conduct an in-depth self-examination” and decide how to “shake off electoral politics and get difficult jobs done more efficiently.”

The article also called the battle between Democrats and Republicans over how to resolve the debt ceiling crisis “dangerously irresponsible.”

The prospect of a U.S. debt default unnerved global investors because it would hobble the global economy and roil financial markets by raising bond yields and borrowing costs, a point stressed by Xinhua.

China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt, with an estimated 60 to 70 percent of its $3.2 trillion foreign exchange reserves in American assets.

The Financial Times observed: “China has little choice but to continue investing in U.S. assets because no other market is big enough to support its purchases.”

3. Environmentalists Blamed for Deadly Bedbug Plague

Government policies on the use of pesticides have led to a resurgent population of bedbugs — including some that carry a deadly antibiotic-resistant germ.

Bedbugs had been almost completely eradicated in the United States for half a century through the use of the now-banned pesticide DDT, but their population has grown rapidly during the past decade, overwhelming hotels, hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings, according to a report from the Heartland Institute.

Canadian researchers have recently discovered bedbugs carrying methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). MRSA is a bacterial infection that is highly resistant to some antibiotics and can be deadly if it reaches the bloodstream.

H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, blames the bedbug resurgence on “poor policy decisions.”

He told Heartland Institute: “Most households have never seen a bedbug before now. But in the early 1970s, the government banned the pesticide DDT, and now we’re seeing bedbug infestations in European and North American cities.

“This is another legacy of Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring,’ the 1962 book credited with starting the environmental movement, leading to the ban of DDT.

“By banning DDT, we’ve killed people in developing countries through the spread of malaria. Now we’re subjecting the U.S. population to bedbugs and other pests and vermin.

“Government should lift the ban on DDT and other pesticides that are effective in treating pests like bedbugs.”

Angela Logomasini, director of risk and environmental policy with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees.

“We had eradicated bedbugs in the past, then we banned DDT for home use, and now they’re back. I think this policy needs to be reevaluated.”

She also said, “We need a better regulatory environment. Rather than removing products from the shelves, which is where we are today because of the precautionary principle, more evaluation and experimentation is needed.”

4. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Commander to Head OPEC

In what Iran is touting as a “blow to the West,” a senior official with the nation’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is taking over as the new head of the OPEC oil cartel.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad named as his oil minister Brig. Gen. Rostam Ghasemi, who heads Khatam al-Anbia (KAA), an industrial giant owned by the Revolutionary Guards, and he was approved by Iranian lawmakers on Wednesday.

Ghasemi’s position as oil minister means he will preside over OPEC meetings this year, because Iran holds the rotating presidency of the 12-country cartel.

KAA has been targeted for international sanctions for activities relating to Iran’s nuclear program, the Guardian reported.

Ghasemi himself was added to the U.S. Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals whose assets are frozen. Ghasemi cannot do business with Americans.

A Revolutionary Guards spokesman called the approval of Ghasemi as oil minister “a meaningful and crucial response to the attacks against the Guards from the West’s media empire.”

And an Iranian lawmaker was quoted as saying a vote for Ghasemi would be a vote for Iran’s “history of resistance.”

Britain’s Telegraph observed that “the fate of world oil prices could rest in the hands of a man who has devoted his whole life to opposing the West. Oil prices are high enough as it is, and the prospect of Iran using oil prices to hold the world to ransom is something that should give all of us sleepless nights.”

OPEC’s 12 nations, including Saudi Arabia and Iraq, account for about 79 percent of the world’s crude oil reserves and 44 percent of world production.

In 1973, Arab members of OPEC placed an embargo on oil exports to the United States and Western Europe in response to the West’s resupply of Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

5. U.S. Customs: 500,000 Troops Needed to Seal Border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin has essentially thrown in the towel on efforts to completely seal the U.S.-Mexican border, saying that would require up to half a million troops.

Speaking at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress (CAP) on Thursday, Bersin said: “We would need on the order of about 400,000 or 500,000 border patrol agents to seal the border.”

Those agents would have to be stationed “25 yards” apart along the entire length of the border, he said, adding that Americans would not want to pay “the costs that would be involved.”

CAP immigration policy director Marshall Fitz said for “the average American, who doesn’t think a lot about this and considers the United States the most powerful country in the history of the world,” it might not seem “unrealistic to think that we could actually seal the border,” CNS News reported.

He said Congress’ passing of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 “suggests that that is viable,” but called that aim unrealistic.

Bersin said he favored “satisfactory” control of the border.

But he insisted that the border is safer than it ever has been, and a CAP report authored by Fitz was cited to back that assertion.

In the Tucson, Ariz., sector, which has the highest number of illegal crossings, 616,346 people were taken into custody in 2000, the report noted.

In 2010, “only” 212,202 were taken into custody.