Kamala Harris made a superb and wise choice when she asked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her Vice-Presidential running mate. Besides being a former high school teacher and successful junior varsity football coach, US Congressman, and a retired US Army National Guard Command Sergeant-Major (CSM), the popular Mr. Walz is a compassionate family man who cares about animals. Governor Walz also has personal experience in China, having taught classes and honeymooning there, learning rudimentary Mandarin along the way. The retired CSM is credited with first describing ex-POTUS Donald J. Trump and other Republicans as “weird,” making him the perfect opponent for former USMC corporal JD Vance who publicly confessed that he told his seven-year-old son to “shut the hell up about Pokemon” while he was on a phone call with ex-President Donald J. Trump.
Sources:
The Tim Walz cheat sheet: 10 things to know about Harris’s VP pick | US elections 2024
| The Guardian J.D. Vance Told His Son to ‘Shut The Hell Up’ About Pokemon While Talking to Trump (thedailybeast.com)
UN Warning: Infectious Diseases Spreading Rampant in the Gaza Strip
Unidentified Palestinian boy scavenging in the Gaza Strip (undated photo)
“People in the Gaza Strip are facing yet another peril: Hepatitis A is spreading including among children,” reports the UN amid chronic water scarcity and the incapability to manage sewage and waste. Since the start of the war in October 2023, UNRWA reported 40,000 cases of the disease, compared to only 85 in the same period before the conflict erupted. Hepatitis A is an inflammation of the liver caused by a virus that is transmitted through ingestion of contaminated food and water, or through direct contact with an infectious person.
“The waste management system in Gaza has collapsed. Piles of trash are accumulating in the scorching summer heat. Sewage discharges on the streets while people queue for hours just to go to the toilets,” said a UN official. When combined, they “make a dangerous recipe for diseases to spread.” Humanitarians are also preparing for the worst-case scenario of a polio outbreak following the recent discovery of the disease in sewage samples.
Meanwhile, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently implied that he believes blocking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is “justified and moral” even if it causes two million civilians to die of hunger, but the international community won’t allow that to happen.
“We bring in aid because there is no choice,” Smotrich said at a conference in Yad Binyamin hosted by the right-wing Israel Hayom outlet. “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”
Sources:
Federal Jury Convicts New York Resident of Acting as a Covert Chinese Agent
Shujun Wang (75), a naturalized US citizen of Chinese descent, pretended to be opposed to the Chinese government so he could get close to prominent activists seeking to bring democracy, reform and human rights to China. This academic and author helped start a pro-democracy organization in Queens, NY that opposes the current communist regime in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Shujun Wang was recently convicted in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY) on all four counts charging him with acting and conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the US Attorney General, criminal use of identification and making false statements to law enforcement.
“This defendant infiltrated a New York-based advocacy group by masquerading as a pro-democracy activist all while covertly collecting and reporting sensitive information about its members to the PRC’s intelligence service,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “Today’s verdict demonstrates that those who would seek to advance the Chinese government’s agenda of transnational repression will be held accountable.”
Feng He, Jie Ji, Ming Li and Keqing Lu are Ministry of State Security (MSS) officials who remain at large. Shujun Wang is scheduled to be sentenced on 9 January 2025 and faces up to 25 years in prison.
So pervasive is the espionage threat of China’s MSS to the US, the FBI opens up two credible counterintelligence investigations daily. Moreover, in 2021 CIA established the China Mission Center (CMC) , strictly dedicated to dealing with Beijing.
Source:
https://www.ft.com/content/282aed88-de6e-4356-8a46-5718943853c4
Ammunition Vending Machines Coming to Colorado
In America, accidental shootings among children occur nearly every other day.
Nearly six million residents populate the Centennial State and as of 2021, 149,382 people were issued a firearms license. An estimated 45.1% of adults report that they live in a home with guns. In an average year, 805 Colorodans die and 360 are wounded by these firearms. Including mass shootings, death rates in the Centennial State are the highest in two decades at 18:100,000. Thanks to the recent introduction of these ammunition vending machines, or “death distributors” to Colorado, these casualty counts will only increase.
In 2021, there were a total of 48,830 firearm deaths in the US, an increase of 3,608 or 8% from 2020. Today the American people are suffering from war-like casualty counts dispersed throughout the homeland. Until each state in America restricts firearms and ammunitions sales, within a few years the annual number of firearms deaths will equal, then surpass 58,220, the total number of US military fatal casualties in Vietnam.
By contrast, Canada with a total population of approximately 40 million people, suffered a grand total of 297 firearms-related homicides nationwide in 2021, a rate of 0.78 per 100,000 population.
Sources:
Ammo Vending Machine Now In Service in Colorado, Here’s Where (k99.com)
Gun-Violence-in-Colorado-2.9.2021.pdf (everytownresearch.org)
15. Colorado – Gun map: Ownership by state – statistics and rates (cbsnews.com)
https://www.thetrace.org/2023/06/children-gun-safety-accidental-shootings/
Firearms and violent crime in Canada, 2021 (statcan.gc.ca)
UN: Armed Gangs Rape 40 Victims Per Day in Haiti
The UN is calling for international reinforcements for Haiti as the country continues to spiral into anarchy. Between April and June 2024, at least 1,379 people were killed or wounded in gang warfare and 428 people kidnapped. An average of 40 women per day are raped in parts of the country. 400 Kenyan police officers trained by Canada are combatting powerful street gangs in Haiti now.
The sexual abuse of women and girls has become alarmingly commonplace, with gangs using rape as a weapon to stamp their authority on communities before shooting them dead and burning their corpses or dumping them in rubbish. Children as young as three have allegedly been raped in homes and refugee camps. In addition to the abhorrent levels of violence and anarchy, anthrax and cholera cases have been reported in parts of Haiti, which has now become the Gaza Strip of the Caribbean. US Coast Guard migrant interdiction operations are in a state of emergency as thousands of Haitians (and Cubans) continue to try and make their way to US shores.
Sources:
UN: Armed Gangs Rape 40 Victims Per Day in Haiti
https://www.paho.org/en/documents/paho-situation-report-n4-haiti-humanitarian-situation-april-1-2024
During the decades-long despotic rules of “Papa Doc” Duvalier followed by his son “Baby Doc,” the feared Tonton Macoutes enforced their brutal rule against the helpless population. Today, armed gangs in masks have taken the place of these secret policemen. (Undated photo,)
Coriolanus 