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JULY 27,  2022

AGAIN, CHINA:  Seems the Chinese are buying up land in the United States.  Why?  National security experts are sounding the alarm.  This land will not be used to grow egg rolls.  A matter of serious concern.  From Daily Mail: 

A Chinese company purchased hundreds of acres of North Dakota farmland mere minutes from a major US Air Force base, prompting national security fears as the communist country adds to its nearly 200,000 acres of US agricultural land worth $1.9 billion.

The China-based food producer, Fufeng Group, plans to build a corn-milling plant on its newly acquired 300 acres of land in Grand Forks, just 20 minutes down the road from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, where some of the nation's most sensitive drone technology is based.

The purchase raised suspicions from military officers, national security experts and lawmakers alike. 

The move could give China unprecedented access to the goings-on at the Air Force base, which also has a space-networking center that's been characterized as 'the backbone of all US military communications across the globe,' according to CNBC.

Criticism of the Fufeng purchase comes as American lawmakers have been outspoken about limiting China's ownership of valuable American agricultural land, which, as of 2019, consisted of at least 192,000 acres.

After the Fufeng Group purchased the North Dakota land for $2.6 million this year, Air Force Major Jeremy Fox wrote a memo in April characterizing the move as being emblematic of Chinese efforts to install themselves close to sensitive US defense installations.

He argued that the Fufeng property is located at just the right location for the company to intercept communications coming from the Air Force base.

'Some of the most sensitive elements of Grand Forks exist with the digital uplinks and downlinks inherent with unmanned air systems and their interaction with space-based assets,' Fox wrote. 

Such interceptions 'would present a costly national security risk causing grave damage to United States' strategic advantages.' 

'Passive collection of those signals would be undetectable, as the requirements to do so would merely require ordinary antennas tuned to the right collecting frequencies,' he said, 'This introduces a grave vulnerability to our Department of Defense installations and is incredibly compromising to US National Security.'

A spokesperson for the Air Force maintained Fox's memo was not the military's official position on the matter. 

They instead called it Fox's 'personal assessment of potential vulnerabilities' and declined to offer an opinion.

A representative for the Fufeng Group's US subsidiary said fears of espionage couldn't be further from the truth.

'I can't imagine anyone that we hire that's going to even do that,' Fufeng USA chief operating officer Eric Chutorash told CNBC, saying he knew the company 'absolutely' would not spy on US military interests.

'We're under US law, I'm an American citizen, I grew up my whole life here, and I am not going to be doing any type of espionage activities or be associated with a company that does, and I know my team feels the exact same way,' he said. 

Despite Fufeng's assurances, Fox was not the only government official raise suspicions, with the US government's U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission raising concerns in a May report.

'The location of the land close to the base is particularly convenient for monitoring air traffic flows in and out of the base, among other security related concerns,' the commission's report said.

COMMENT:  The mainstream media has not shown deep concern.  After all, it's only China.  How could those peace-loving people, who build iPads, be a threat to us?  Why, that's as silly as thinking that Japan could attack Pearl Harbor.

July 27, 2022       Permalink

JULY 26, 2022

BRILLIANT AND OPTIMISTIC:  This is one of the best essays I've read recently.  A conservative professor at the very liberal and artsy-craftsy Sarah Lawrence College argues why conservatives should not give up on colleges and universities.  Whether you agree or not, this is a must read.  From RealClearEducation:

With speakers at colleges and universities facing censorship and intimidation, and graduates from these institutions facing spiraling loan debt, it’s no wonder that many Republicans take a negative view of higher education. But the GOP shouldn’t write off the campus population.

Data from Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP) spring 2022 poll of over 2,000 Americans aged 18–29 shows that college students are not extremely liberal, and that younger Americans who hold college degrees are notably more civic-minded and engaged than their non-degree-holding counterparts. In fact, college graduates are the members of the electorate most likely to help win elections. Thus, as the battles ramp up for Congress in 2022 and the presidency in 2024, Republicans need to take another look at the collegiate demographic.

Though left-wing students make the most noise, most students on campus today identify somewhere in the political center. The IOP data are in line with many other surveys and reveal that just a third (32 percent) of college students identify as liberal, with another 21 percent claiming to be conservative. The plurality of students – 46 percent – call themselves moderates.

Proportionally, there may be more liberals on college campuses than in the national population, but even so, the discrepancy is not large. Gallup’s 2021 national average shows that on average in 2021, 37 percent of Americans described their political views as moderate, 36 percent as conservative, and 25 percent as liberal. There are certainly fewer conservatives and more liberals on college and university campuses, but there is no overwhelming liberal monolith – not with a large, presumably persuadable group residing in the middle.

What GOP leadership needs to understand much better than it currently does is that college degree-holders are more politically active than the general population. According to the IOP survey, 46 percent of college degree-holders said that they were politically engaged, compared to just 25 percent of those who have no degree or are not attending college.

Similarly, more than half (55 percent) of degree-holders reported that they intended to cast a ballot this November, while just 29 percent of those not in college said the same. And a majority of college degree-holders (63 percent) maintained that they closely follow national politics, compared with just 46 percent of non-degree holders.

These trends hold true in other areas. College students and graduates were appreciably more likely to claim having volunteered for community service (38 percent and 40 percent) compared to those who hold no degree (25 percent). While low numbers reported having participated in a government, political, or issue-related organization, degree-holders were twice as likely to report doing so (13% for degree-holders, compared to 7 percent of non-degree respondents). The same roughly two-to-one margin holds when it comes to donating money to a political campaign or cause (31 percent for degree-holders, compared to 15 percent of non-degree respondents) and posting content online, such as sharing material advocating for a political position (41 percent to 23 percent).

Degree-holders were also twice as likely to participate in rallies or demonstrations compared to non-degree holders (26 percent versus 13 percent). And when it comes to volunteering on a political campaign for a candidate or an issue, degree holders were significantly more likely to have done so, with one in five saying they did, versus just one in ten of those who are not in college or hold no degree. Conversely, nearly a third of non-degree holders (31 percent) agree with the statement that politics is not relevant to their lives, compared with just 18 percent of college degree-holders who said the same.

It’s clear, then, that American colleges and universities significantly influence the nation’s political environment. Accordingly, Republicans should try to build a greater presence on campuses, not abandon these cohorts to the Left. College students remain fairly diverse in their views, and young degree-holders are notably civically engaged. With crucial elections fast approaching, Republicans need to recognize that their party can benefit from cultivating a more active and engaged group of young citizens.

COMMENT:  I'd love to know how our readers feel about this argument.  Let us know.  Sam Abrams, who wrote the piece, has gone through the political wars, and knows his turf.  Are Republicans missing an opportunity?

July 26, 2022       Permalink