Could Iran Acquire A Nuclear Weapon – Right Now?

 From AND Magazine:

We have imposed a naval blockade of Iran. In the wake of the imposition of that blockade, Pakistan announced the opening of six land routes into Iran from its territory. Vessels now dock in Pakistan, and containers are offloaded there for overland transit into Iran. It’s a bit more tedious and labor-intensive than simply sailing into a port on the Persian Gulf, and overland transport does not substitute for super tankers when it comes to oil.

For pretty much anything else you want to send to Iran, it works just fine. We here at AND have documented time and again how the Chinese are continuing to provide the Iranians with everything they need to build drones and missiles. Are we sure they would not use the same mechanism to help the Iranians across the finish line to nuclear weapons capability?

In April 2026, Gwadar Port in Pakistan processed around 11,000 standard shipping containers. For context, the same port handled roughly 8,300 containers throughout all of 2025. A large proportion of these containers came from China. Gwadar sits roughly 400 kilometers from the Strait of Hormuz. It has a deepwater port that allows large cargo vessels to dock. Anything could come from China via Gwadar and then be trucked into Iran. We have done nothing to interdict any of the major overland routes.

Even if we think Beijing is too sober-minded to arm Iran with nuclear weapons, are we sure North Korea would not? What about Pakistan, or for that matter, some cabal of radical Islamic Pakistan generals in Islamabad?

North Korea has a well-documented history of assisting Iran, primarily in ballistic missile technology and related military cooperation, dating back to the 1980s. This relationship is supported by U.S. intelligence assessments, UN reports, congressional research, and open-source analyses.

North Korea operates sophisticated, long-standing transnational networks for smuggling weapons, dual-use technology, and related materiel to evade UN sanctions and generate revenue. These networks rely on front companies, diplomats, intelligence operatives, ship-to-ship transfers, and third-country facilitators. (Read more.)

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Tibet - Reincarnation With Communist Characteristics

 From AND Magazine:

During the recent summit with President Trump, Xi Jinping made clear his intention to “reunite” Taiwan, which is not historically part of China, with the People’s Republic. Another historically independent nation, Tibet, has already suffered this fate. Over a million Tibetans died in that “reunification” process, and for good measure, the CCP destroyed over 6000 Buddhist monasteries and temples.

But, if you want to get a full appreciation for what it means to be “reunited” with Communist China, you need to understand that Red China now presumes to control the succession of the Dalai Lama. Beijing has already occupied the physical. It now intends to occupy the metaphysical as well.

The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. The current Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso. He is 90 years old. He lives in exile in India, having fled the Chinese occupation of his country, but remains widely regarded as the symbol of Tibetan resistance to Chinese tyranny. Given his advanced age, the question of who will succeed him is more than academic.

The Tibetans employ an elaborate religious process to choose the successor to a Dalai Lama. In brief, it is believed that when a Dalai Lama passes, he is reincarnated immediately in the body of someone else. The process, then, is effectively a hunt for that new individual, usually a child.

To find the Dalai Lama, other high lamas consult oracles, watch the direction of smoke emanating from the cremation of the deceased Dalai Lama, take note of natural events, and even watch to see which way the Dalai Lama is facing when he dies. When a possible successor is identified, these lamas then interview possible successors and test them. Candidates are shown personal items belonging to the old Dalai Lama, as well as “decoys,” and must correctly identify the items that “belong” to them. This is all a matter of looking for signs and delving into a world of mysticism, faith, and ancient history.

None of which means anything to the Communist abomination that is modern China.

The Chinese have no intention of allowing a bunch of Tibetan monks to choose their spiritual leader. They have declared they will choose. They have a ministry for just this task, and, of course, they have rules and regulations. (Read more.)

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The Thucydides Trap

 From Alexander Muse on Amuse on X:

There is a particular kind of intellectual fraud that flourishes only when no one with the relevant expertise is paying attention. The “Thucydides Trap,” a phrase invented by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison and elevated since 2015 to the status of a scientific law of international relations, is exactly that sort of fraud. Earlier this week, Victor Davis Hanson, the classicist who edited the standard scholarly English edition of Thucydides used in American universities, The Landmark Thucydides, finally said the quiet thing loudly. “There is no Thucydides Trap. If there were, it would not apply to us. If it did apply to us, we would not start a war. The entire notion that Premier Xi suggested is bankrupt.”

Three sentences. The mainstream international relations field will not recover from them, and it should not.

To understand why Hanson’s intervention matters, consider the scene that prompted it. On May 14, 2026, Xi Jinping sat across from President Donald Trump in Beijing and invoked the Thucydides Trap. A Communist autocrat, sitting atop a one-party police state, cited a Harvard political scientist to lecture an American president on a Greek text written by a man Xi has almost certainly never read in the original. The premier of a regime that censors its own historians reached for the authority of the Greeks to instruct the leader of the free world about the dangers of confronting authoritarian power. The inversion is so total that it borders on satire, and yet the press dutifully reported it as wisdom.

The reader will reasonably ask: why would Xi do this? Why would the head of state of a rising, or formerly rising, China reach for an obscure academic framework to explain his position to an American president? The answer is the entire argument of this essay. Xi reached for Allison because Allison’s thesis serves Beijing’s purposes. It is, and has always been, propaganda disguised as scholarship, and its function is to teach Americans to accept their own decline as a structural inevitability rather than a policy choice. (Read more.)

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They Stole My State — America Is Next If We Don’t Wake Up

 From Tierney's Real News:

Some people keep telling me to lighten up and stop obsessing over politics. I can’t. I’m from Minnesota — and I’ve watched my home state turn into something I barely recognize. I finally had to leave because I couldn’t bear it any longer.

This isn’t abstract for me. Minnesota is where I grew up and lived ALL my life. And now it’s run by saboteurs like Tim Walz, Ilhan Omar, and Keith Ellison, alongside networks of CCP-linked operators, Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, and Somali pirates.

How did they get there? The open-border Koch Libertarians worked hand-in-glove with Democrats to embed America’s enemies in Minnesota politics — and then perfected election fraud and cheat-by-mail over the past 20 years to keep them there. It was a coup, plain and simple.

On their watch, my birth state was turned into a filthy mess where criminals and gangsters roam free and demons are promoted and rewarded. Massive welfare fraud schemes have drained billions of dollars from taxpayers. And, even worse, many conservative Minnesotans are too afraid to say anything for fear they’ll be called racist!

“Minnesota nice” isn’t just a slogan - it’s a death sentence! Everybody is walking around wearing “BE KIND” t-shirts while their enemies are picking their pockets, jacking their cars, stealing their dignity, defacing their neighborhoods and churches and endangering the future for their children! INSANE.

Minnesota was once known as one of the most beautiful and vibrant states in America. No more. Now it’s a global laughingstock! Now it’s the place where they launched the George Floyd color revolution that helped usher in nationwide Islamo-Communism. (Read more.)

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How China Helps Iran Kill Americans

 From AND Magazine:

On March 1, 2026, Iranian Shahed drones struck a U.S. command center at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait. Six U.S. Army reservists from Iowa were killed. Dozens more were injured, suffering traumatic brain injuries and shrapnel wounds.

No unclassified forensic examination of the remnants of the drones in this attack has been completed to our knowledge. More generally, however, the construction of Iranian Shahed drones has been documented extensively, and it has been well established that while these weapons are ultimately fully assembled in Iran, many if not most of their key components come from China.

The engine used in the Shahed drone is a copy of one originally designed in Germany. All of the engines are now made in China. Several different Chinese companies are involved, including Xiamen Victory Technology, Xiamen Limbach Aircraft Engine Co., Harbin Bin-Au, and Jinhua Hairun.

Xiamen Victory Technology is so proud of its contribution to the construction of Shahed drones that it even includes imagery of the drone on its website for marketing purposes. While the United States was bombing Iran, Xiamen was continuing to send marketing emails to Iran and focusing on expanding sales. (Read more.)

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What Beijing Intends

 From AND Magazine:

In light of Xi Jinping’s demand that we stand aside while China “reunites” with Taiwan, it seems appropriate to republish this interview with one of the heroes of Tibetan resistance to Communist invasion. The Chinese told the same lie about Tibet when they marched in and began the systematic erasure of Tibetan culture. (Read more.)

 

From Townhall:

 President Trump boarded Air Force One early this morning, departing China after a three-day visit with President Xi. During the visit, the two leaders discussed several issues, including ending the flow of fentanyl precursors into the U.S., Chinese investment in the U.S. economy — including the purchase of agricultural goods and U.S. oil — and cooperation on issues concerning Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. China also hosted a State Dinner for President Trump and his delegation, which also included 16 American CEOs like Elon Musk and Tim Cook. They traveled to China to talk about expanding American businesses into the Chinese markets. During the dinner, President Trump said the two countries have a "deep sense of mutual respect," and added that the U.S. relationship with China is one of the most "consequential relationships in world history." (Read more.)

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The Art of the Tariff

 From Tierney's Real News:

Trump is not going to Beijing empty-handed. He is bringing a delegation that includes leaders like Tim Cook from Apple, Elon Musk from Tesla, Larry Fink of BlackRock, and executives from Blackstone, Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup, Coherent, GE Aerospace, Goldman Sachs, Illumina, Mastercard, Meta, Micron Technology, Qualcomm and Visa. That is deliberate. Scott Bessent will be by his side. That is strategic.

The stick consists of using legally durable Section 301 tariffs targeting China’s core industrial strategy.

The carrot offers an immediate economic upside through purchase agreements, market access, and regulatory stability.

For China, the message is simple. If they cooperate, they stabilize their export machine. If they resist, they face tariffs that are far harder to challenge or delay. (Read more.)

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What Americans Can Learn From China’s Dating Hellscape

 From Chronicles:

In a Substack post titled, “You Are Not the One—Chinese Dating Dystopia,” a writer using the pseudonym Terminally_Drifting describes a dating crisis so deep and extensive that even the word “dystopia” seems like an understatement. The essay centers on a young single man, Wang Wei, an unremarkable worker at an iPhone factory who cannot find a girlfriend and spends his nights (and disposable income) watching an e-girl play on her phone, answering questions from fans, and giving shoutouts to men who send her money.

Apparently, Wei is just one among millions of excess men (sex-selective abortions have resulted in men now greatly outnumbering women in China) who will never have a wife and kids.

Even so, love and marriage should at least be possible for a man like Wei, right? Maybe he just needs to introduce himself to a girl he likes, court her, and persuade her to build a life with him? As Terminally_Drifting  explains, however, romance as such does not exist in China today. Finding a spouse has everything to do with material assets and nothing to do with real affection. This means that Wei will never find a wife “because the price of being considered eligible in his home province requires a car (minimum 80,000 RMB), an apartment (minimum 200,000 RMB down payment), and a caili, a bride price, that in rural Henan currently averages around 188,000 RMB,” and his “annual salary is approximately 42,000 RMB.”

Worse still, Wei’s mother tries to help her son by visiting the People’s Park in Shanghai and posting his personal information on an umbrella, where other concerned parents might look for a match. Sadly, this strategy rarely bears fruit and is undertaken mostly to make mothers feel like they are doing something to help.

For its part, the Chinese government appears aware of this issue and has sought to mitigate it through increased censorship, regulation, and propaganda. Evidently, a nationwide public meltdown threatened to overturn the country when a girl on a popular dating show rejected a guy because he was too poor. The government flew into action, condemned the girl, and set new parameters so that poorer men had a better chance on the show. Additionally, it has imposed restrictions on online gifts to e-girls and the time spent watching them. It even tried shaming women into marriage by warning them about the supposed growing number of old spinsters who regret their decision not to marry—all of which is pure fabrication in China. (Read more.)

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Chinoiserie in Architecture

 

From The Collector:

Located in the Sanssouci Park, the Chinesisches Haus (“Chinese House”) in Potsdam, Germany, was built between 1755 and 1764. Commissioned by Prussian king Frederick the Great, the project was headed by German master builder Johann Gottfried Büring. The Chinese House is characterized by its trefoil shape, which was inspired by the Maison du Trèfle at the Palace of Lunéville in Lorraine. Its exteriors feature four prominent gilded sandstone columns alongside several playful, life-sized gilded sculptures of Chinese musicians and tea drinkers. These were the works of German sculptors Johann Melchior Kambly, Johann Gottlieb Heymüller, and Johann Peter Benckert.

The Chinoiserie style continues in the building’s interiors with a vast collection of 18th-century porcelain and a large fresco depicting a whimsical gathering. It features numerous Chinese men standing behind a balustrade, some glancing around and others engaged in conversation. In the surroundings, there are peacocks, parrots, monkeys, statues of Buddha, and many other Chinoiserie motifs. Frederick the Great, as a fervent admirer of Chinoiserie, would later follow up with two additional Chinese-style structures. One was the Chinese Kitchen, located just a stone’s throw from the Chinese House, and the other was the Drachenhaus (“Dragon House”), located at the northern part of the Sanssouci Park. (Read more.)

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Mamdani’s Red Guards Take Shape

 From AND Magazine:

We reported some time ago on New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to create a “Department of Community Safety.” This is the initiative that gets characterized misleadingly as simply a plan to replace cops with social workers. It is much more than that. It is much more frightening than that. It is the ultimate fulfillment of the leftist vision of abolishing the police and substituting for them a cadre of individuals who will be empowered to forge the new society Mamdani and his Marxist supporters envision.

The first step in this effort has been the creation of something called the Office of Community Safety. It has an initial budget of a quarter of a billion dollars. Mamdani established the office in a March 19 executive order. The Office of Community Safety is intended as a precursor to a larger Department of Community Safety, which would have a total yearly budget of $1.1 billion, with more than $600 million coming from undefined “transfers of existing programs.” (Read more.)

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Iran's Qatar Strike Exposed China's Secret Industrial Vulnerability

 From Amuse on X:

This is the counter-intuitive turn in the argument, so it is worth pausing to set it up carefully. China produces only about 3 million cubic meters of helium per year, roughly 1.6% of world production, despite having the largest semiconductor manufacturing ambition outside of Taiwan. China’s domestic helium supply is negligible relative to its industrial appetite. For years, China closed this gap primarily through long-term supply contracts with the two largest producers, the US and Qatar. Those contracts gave Chinese fabs, research institutions, and aerospace programs a reliable pipeline of one of the most irreplaceable industrial inputs on earth, and they did so at prices that reflected relatively stable long-term supply arrangements rather than emergency spot procurement. Iran’s strikes effectively severed one of those two pipelines at the source. The Qatari helium that was contracted to flow to Chinese buyers cannot flow if the facilities that produce it are not operating. Force majeure provisions will be invoked. Allocations will be cut. And because the helium market allocates under scarcity by priority, with medical imaging and aerospace applications receiving near-full coverage and lower-priority industrial uses taking the deepest cuts, Chinese semiconductor manufacturing, which sits in the middle tier of that allocation hierarchy, is precisely where the pain is likely to concentrate. (Read more.)

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Why Did The Biden Administration Cover Up Intelligence On Chinese Interference With Our Elections?

 From AND Magazine:

Solomon’s report is based on a 7 April 2020 National Intelligence Council Assessment. That report reads in part:

“We assess that China and Russia are increasing their ability to analyze and manipulate large quantities of personal information in ways that will allow them to more effectively target and influence, or coerce, individuals and groups in the United States and allied countries. Their cyber espionage efforts have helped them acquire bulk data.”

“Adversaries almost certainly are already applying data-analysis techniques to hone their efforts against US targets.’

“Chinese intelligence officials analyzed multiple US states (redacted) election voter registration data…”

This is particularly troubling because the date of this report dovetails with the cover-up of the actions of the Chinese-affiliated election service company Konnech. In 2022, the election security firm True the Vote broke the story that a company called Konnech in Michigan was storing data on American election workers on servers in China. True the Vote leaders Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were, of course, ridiculed by the so-called mainstream press. Then, Los Angeles arrested the head of Konnech and charged him with violations of U.S. laws on the handling of personally identifiable information by storing it on servers in China.

The ridicule stopped. Even the New York Times had to issue a retraction.

Then more information came in, and the picture got a lot worse.

Konnech wasn’t just storing data in China. Konnech was using contractors inside China to do work in the United States on American election systems. This is the exact language in the criminal complaint filed by Los Angeles.

“On or about October 10, 2019, through October 4, 2022, Eugene Yu and other employees at Konnech, Inc. were providing these services to Los Angeles County using third-party contractors based in China.

“…Konnech employees known and unknown sent personal identifying information of Los Angeles County election workers to third-party software developers who assisted with creating and fixing Konnech’s internal ‘PollChief’ software.”

(Read more.)

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America’s Top Retired Generals In Beijing Conference

 From Natalie Winters:

The most consequential name on the participant list was Admiral Mike Mullen, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and once the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military.

From a United Front perspective, Mullen is the ideal validator. He no longer sets policy, but his stature remains intact. His participation in a CUSEF-supported forum allows Beijing to project an image of strategic parity — suggesting that even America’s former top military commander views engagement on CCP-curated terms as legitimate.

This is not about what Mullen said in the room. It’s about what his presence communicates. United Front work operates on symbolism and access. A retired four-star admiral in Beijing signals credibility to Chinese audiences, international partners, and wavering elites abroad. (Read more.)

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Badass

 From James Howard Kunstler:

The capture of Nicolás Maduro is driving the Lefty-left batshit crazy for a very good reason: it portends the extinction of their financial life-support, since Señor Maduro used his country as a money laundry for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, in turn, cartel drug money, to funnel gazillions through Cuba to America’s Democratic Party and its political satellites. Not even George and Alex Soros can fill that hole.

For a nearly failed state, Cuba has been able to exert undue influence on US political life through the decades. Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles was trained-up in Marxist revolution there in the 1970s and traveled to Cuba many times during her stint in Congress. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal dropped into Havana during the last election year. NGOs such as the Center for Democracy in the Americas act as distribution nodes for money that comes through Cuba and supports Lefty-left activists around the USA. Don’t be surprised if a lot of this laundered money ended up in the bank accounts of US congresspersons and senators, too. Remember this when you watch them howl on your screens. (Read more.)

 

From Tierney's Real News:

Dear America,

Here’s a question for everyone who hates Donald Trump, and I ask it with genuine curiosity and just a touch of smug clarity:

So tell me, what would you do? Because so far, all I hear is outrage with no operating instructions.

You inherit a country with $30+ trillion in debt, a border that was effectively unenforced for decades, trade deals that hollowed out manufacturing towns, endless foreign wars with no victory conditions, NATO allies who openly admitted they weren’t paying their share, a federal bureaucracy that outlives presidents, and a media class that abandoned neutrality a long time ago.

Those are facts. Not vibes. Not opinions.

Now answer the question.

Do you renegotiate trade deals and bring jobs back knowing Wall Street will scream? Or do you keep the status quo and call it “global cooperation”?

Do you pressure NATO allies to finally pay their bills, something they later admitted they did because of Trump, or do you keep sending American money so no one calls you rude?

Do you enforce existing immigration law, which Congress already passed, and accept the media hysteria? Or do you selectively ignore the law and pretend that’s compassion?

Do you pull troops out of endless wars and get accused of abandoning allies, or keep Americans dying indefinitely because withdrawal looks messy?

Do you confront a bureaucracy that slow-walks orders and leaks to the press, or do you pretend that unelected agencies undermining elected authority is just “how government works”?

And now let’s add the newest example everyone’s suddenly hyperventilating over: What do you do with Maduro?

A narco-trafficking dictator with a U.S. arrest warrant. A man who ran his country into the ground, starved his people, crushed dissent, and turned Venezuela into a cartel-run failed state.

Do you: Look the other way because “international norms”? Issue strongly worded statements while people suffer? Or do you take him into custody, put him on a plane, and let a federal court handle it, like we do with criminals?

Because that’s what leadership looks like.

This isn’t “running Venezuela for oil.” This isn’t imperialism. This isn’t some Marvel-villain fantasy. It’s law enforcement at the international level, something we used to understand before performative outrage replaced common sense.

And notice the irony: Venezuelans are dancing in the streets, while the left are losing their minds from their couches screaming about legality. (Read more.)

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How Did the Han and Tang Dynasties Help Establish the Silk Road?

 From The Collector:

The Silk Road was a web of trade routes that spanned from about 138 BCE to around 1453 CE that enabled the flow of trade items and cultures between North Africa, parts of the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. First established by China’s Han dynasty and later revived by the Tang dynasty, it is widely referred to as the first artery of global exchange because of the influence it had on Eastern and Western cultural, economic, and governance systems.

 The Han Dynasty led by Emperor Wu initially established the Silk Road as it sought to trade with regions in the West. Unfortunately, it faced constant threats from nomadic tribes. To overcome the problem, Wu sought to engage in diplomacy and extensive military campaigns. And so he dispatched an envoy, Zhang Qian, to forge alliances against the formidable Xiongnu confederation of nomadic groups that hindered the expansion of the trade routes. In 138 BCE, the Han envoy Zhang Qian undertook a mission to the Western Regions that provided invaluable intelligence. His first mission is considered to be the initial foundation of the Silk Road. 

On his second mission in 119 BCE, he established the first diplomatic ties with kingdoms such as Wusun through the exchange of items such as gold and silk. Soon, the Han Dynasty’s military was able to advance into the Hexi Corridor and Tarim Basin, creating the security needed for trade to flourish. This was achieved through major military attacks that defeated the Xiongnu and pushed them from the Hexi Corridor. The corridor harbored a key route that connected China to the Western Regions. Military bases were set up along the route to secure it. (Read more.)

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'Dreaming Against the World'

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

As I have been outlining on Hot Air, we’re planning an Anti-Communist Film Festival in 2026. One of the communist disasters we will be discussing is China’s Cultural Revolution. We would like to show the short documentary Dreaming Against the World. It depicts the life of Mu Xin (1927-2011), a brilliant yet largely forgotten artist of the 20th century. Xin was imprisoned during China’s Cultural Revolution, Mu Xin risked his life to write and paint. Dreaming Against the World tells his story. The documentary portrait filmed on location in China and New York by filmmakers Tim Sternberg and Francisco Bello has been nominated for Academy Awards. 

Taking place from 1966-1976, the Cultural Revolution was the doing of China’s “Great Helmsman,” Mao Zedong (1893-1976), the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. After the failure of Mao’s economic Great Leap Forward, a program of agricultural collectivization that resulted in tens of millions of deaths, Mao saw the Cultural Revolution as a way to finally set things right. As Whittaker Chambers knew, communists always need a “totalizing solution” to the pain of life. “Our objective is to struggle against and crush those persons in authority who are taking the capitalist road ... so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of the socialist system,” Mao said in his “Sixteen Points” declaration of 1966.

    In his book The People’s Revolution: A Cultural History (2016), China expert Frank Dikötter observes that Mao hoped his movement would make China the pinnacle of the socialist universe and make him “the man who leads planet Earth into communism.” When Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1956, Mao took that as a sign of weakness on the part of Khrushchev, a weakness to be exploited by Mao, who saw a clear path to surpassing Stalin himself in greatness. Toward this end, he launched the Cultural Revolution. A flyer from the time outlines the plan:

The whole party must follow Comrade Mao Zedong’s instructions, hold high the great banner of the proletarian Cultural Revolution, thoroughly expose the reactionary bourgeois stand of those so called ‘academic authorities’ who oppose the party and socialism, thoroughly criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois ideas in the sphere of academic work, education, journalism, literature, art and publishing, and seize the leadership in these cultural spheres.

(Read more.)

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U.K. Schools Are Becoming Luxury Products for Foreign Elites

 From First Things:

 The U.K. is facing a serious education crisis. In February, the Labour government scrapped the Latin Excellence Programme, a scheme that funded Latin education in state schools, leaving some students without a teacher just months before their GCSEs (the exams all U.K. students take at age sixteen). There was outcry on both sides of the political aisle. Apart from the practical advantages of Latin (it is an excellent basis for learning other European languages and is useful for anyone in medical or scientific fields), it was the common European language of scholarship and learning for centuries. Labour have sent a loud and clear message to those children in the state education system: This linguistic and cultural heritage is not for you. It is only for those who have the means to pay. 

Other Labour policies are ensuring that fewer and fewer middle-class families have the means to choose a better education for their children, regardless of their willingness to make financial sacrifices. Certain British schools (Eton, Harrow, Winchester, and the like) are globally recognized and have long been eye-wateringly expensive, derided by many on the left as bastions of privilege. But the reality is that most privately educated students in the U.K. attend solid mid-tier schools, which offer a structured, well-rounded education rooted in intellectual inquiry, discipline, and their cultural heritage. Sending children to these institutions is an expense that many socially mobile and aspiring parents, with careful planning and some financial sacrifices, have been able to manage. But as the Labour party promised in its campaign, 20 percent VAT was added to the education and boarding fees charged by private schools from January onward. Additionally, starting in April, all private schools will lose their charitable status, which previously provided substantial tax breaks. This move effectively prices out many of the middle-class British families that these institutions once served, meaning that schools must seek out wealthy international students who can afford full board and tuition. 

The result: The British middle-class is being pushed out of its own institutions, and private schools are morphing into luxury services for foreign elites. Many of the bigger-name schools have successfully expanded abroad. Dulwich, Harrow, and others have satellite campuses in China, the Middle East, and beyond. The demand from international clients is so high that consultants in Russia and China charge exorbitant fees to match children with the right U.K. schools and prepare them for admissions tests. But it now looks like these international elites will become the core beneficiaries of English schooling. This undermines both social mobility and the country’s own stake in its education system. 

I recently spent some time as a teacher at an independent school in England and observed first-hand the impact of this (then still forthcoming) VAT policy. Many of my best students were local, the children of doctors, dentists, and small business owners, whose families made various financial sacrifices, or pooled together with grandparents, to send two or three of their children to the school. With the news of the VAT increase, many of these families were reconsidering, calculating whether they could take on the rising fees or whether they should switch to state schools. (Read more.)

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