Foreign Policy and the Oil Clock

 From AND Magazine:

Gulf exports excluding Iran were back at the pre-war average in September, about 16.5 million barrels a day, Kpler tracking cited by Just the News. Iranian loadings have been near zero since the July blockade. Bessent said about 15 million barrels remain on the water, nearly all for China, and that Tehran runs out of oil to trade in about two weeks. That is his clock, not a confirmed cutoff. Just the News

Brent settled Friday at $102.25, down 6 cents. WTI finished at $91.11, down $1.76. For the week, Brent was up 0.11 percent, and WTI was down 1.6 percent. Saturday quotes were still about $102 for Brent and $91 for WTI, roughly 42 percent above the February baseline near $72. The Brent–WTI gap, about $11, is the Hormuz signature: waterborne crude is repriced, U.S. inland crude less so. Business Recorder, citing Reuters and Hormuz Monitor

The Friday dip was the diesel story, not a peace story. French President Macron chaired a G7 call. EU countries agreed to a French proposal to release part of their diesel stocks over about 20 days. It was not clear the G7 had agreed on volumes. A stock release can loosen diesel for a few weeks. It does not replace barrels that are not loading in Iran, and it does not reopen the strait. Capital Economics said another release could tip the market into a slight surplus only if the recent pickup in non-Iranian Gulf flows holds. Business Recorder (Read more.)

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China’s New Defense Mobilization Law Prepares Chinese Civilians And Companies For War

 From WLT Report:

It appears China is preparing for war. A new law enacted by China that will take effect in October will allow the Chinese government to easily transition into a wartime economy during a military conflict. The new law will essentially allow the Chinese Armed Forces to have unfettered access to all companies and civilian resources in the time of a war.

The Military Times reported more on the move by China:

China’s armed forces will get every possible resource from the home front if needed during a war, according to a change in the law to take effect in October.

And its militarily less endowed neighbors such as Taiwan and the Philippines would bear the brunt of a fully kitted People’s Liberation Army, which the updated National Defense Mobilization Law says may draw from deep within the civilian population for resources, analysts say.

Australia, Japan and the United States also would note Beijing’s revised law as they’re most likely to become involved in any Taiwan “contingency” or conflict in the South China Sea, said Carl Thayer, an Asia specialist and emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Australia, India and the United States have their own issues with Beijing, he added.

(Read more.)

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The Invasion of America

 From Tierney's Real News:

Last week, President Trump told reporters he was thinking about renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America. Many laughed and mocked him. But, in my gut I knew he wasn’t kidding—just as he wasn’t kidding about renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America or about the strategic importance of Greenland.

President Trump said: “I am changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to LAKE AMERICA by executive order. From this day forward it will be known as Lake America. Most of its volume is in the United States. We’re gonna call it Lake America — and all it takes is a good pen and some intelligence.”

I’m glad. I believe that our enemies (China, Russia, Iran) intend to use the Great Lakes as a vehicle to invade our country from the north in the states of Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Iran’s IRGC are already training thousands of troops in Canada. That’s a documented fact. WAKE UP.

Look at the map. Our adversaries—Communist China, Russia, and Iran—could exploit the Great Lakes corridor to threaten the northern states. They are already doing it with pollution and invasive species and Ilhan Omar’s tribe - not to mention they did it with the Wuhan virus! (Read more.)

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How Beijing Laundered $230 Billion in Exports

 From The Enterprise:

Consider a homeowner who installs a good deadbolt on his front door. A month later, he checks his records and finds that no one has forced the front door since the day the lock was installed. He also finds that his television is gone. The lock worked exactly as designed, which is why the thief stopped using the door. What the homeowner needs is not a better lock but a survey of his windows.

In 2018, President Trump used Section 301 to put a real tariff rate on Chinese goods, a price an importer had to actually pay at the border rather than a figure riddled with carve-outs. Chinese exporters responded, as any rational party would, to the price by looking for a cheaper route. They found one, and the route ran through Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia, and a few dozen other jurisdictions willing to sell a stitch, a stamp, and a certificate of origin.

On Thursday, the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, Peter Navarro’s shop, published a 25-page report called

The Great Transshipment Scam

. The language was blunt enough that even the Associated Press could not soften it into a story about supply chain diversification. The report describes a global architecture built for one purpose, a lattice of free trade zones, bonded warehouses, processing corridors, and re-export centers. It says plainly that the rerouting “made it look like US imports from China had dropped” while Beijing kept the factories, the workers, the tooling, and the profits. Navarro’s own summary was less clinical. For years, he said, the great transshipment scam has let communist China launder its exports. (Read more.)

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Our Sea Ports

 From ColonelRETJohn:

Not since World War II did we seriously show concern over the security of our ports from enemy threats.

Now with drones being used regularly to attack ships in the Black Sea, Mediterranean ports of Egypt, and the U.S. conducting its first drone attack against the Iranian Bandar Abbas Naval Base, the realization is that our own ports may be vulnerable to attack.

What’s to keep a drone from coming into Puget Sound in Washington State, New York Harbor, or the Chesapeake in Virginia and striking one of our many naval installations or container terminals?

Right now, not much.

The U.S. Coast Guard is in overdrive to figure out ways to ensure our ports are protected.

“Faced with a growing threat from uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs), the USCG is seeking technology not just to detect these weapons, but to defeat them. Ports and other maritime facilities are vulnerable to this kind of attack vector, and our adversaries surely know it. The effort is being led by the Coast Guard Futures Development and Integration (FD&I) Directorate, which oversees research, modeling and simulation, technology forecasting, and field experimentation. It is part of the service’s role to protect U.S. maritime assets and comes as adversary militaries and non-state actors alike, are developing a wide array of UUVs for surveillance, strike and sabotage.”

Threat actors like Iran and China watch everything we do and try to play it back at us, so it is important that the Coast Guard comes up with solutions fast to protect our ports. (Read more.)

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Catherine Herridge Uncovers Shocking Revelations About The Biden Family

 From Zero Hedge:

Herridge, a veteran Emmy-winning investigative reporter, has previously pursued stories on the Hunter Biden laptop, the Biden family's foreign business dealings, and related corruption allegations - reporting that put her at odds with CBS leadership and the broader media consensus.

In February 2024 she was among those laid off in a round of cuts. CBS then seized her reporting files, including materials involving confidential sources. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Herridge described the seizure in stark terms: "When my records were seized I felt it was a journalistic rape."

She added that "CBS News' decision to seize my reporting records crossed a red line that I believe should never be crossed by any media organization" and that "When the network of Walter Cronkite seizes your reporting files, including confidential source information, that is an attack on investigative journalism."

She has maintained that she simply "reported out the facts of the story. I called balls and strikes." The network eventually returned the files under pressure from the House Judiciary Committee and her union.

Earlier, during the 2020 campaign, the Biden team had already labeled her a "partisan, rightwing hack." Her treatment fits a pattern of institutional pushback against journalists who refused to look away from the Biden family's financial ties.

Those ties have been documented for years. House Oversight Committee investigations, led by Chairman James Comer, obtained bank records and witness accounts showing Chinese Communist Party-linked money flowing to Biden family members.

Comer stated that the documents demonstrated the family had received funds from CCP-connected entities and that family members "attempted to sell access & influence around the world." (Read more.)

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The Silk Road and Myths of Dragons

 From The Collector:

The Silk Road is one of the world’s most famous trade routes, connecting distant eastern civilizations with Eurasia. It stretched from China through Central Asia and Persia to the Mediterranean. But it was much more than just a trade route. While silk, spices, and jewels were transported, so were customs, myths, religions, and legends. One important myth that traveled along the Silk Road was about dragons. This is how Chinese ideas about dragons influenced European dragon lore, along the Silk Road.

The Silk Road was not a single road that led from China to Europe. It was a network of interconnected trade routes that meandered between the two continents until a standard route was established. The people who used this network did not call it the Silk Road, a term that was coined in the 19th century by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen. Historians believe that the beginnings of the Silk Road can be traced back to the 2nd century BC during China’s Han dynasty, when the diplomat Zhang Qian was sent to establish alliances with western lands and bring his knowledge and observations back to China. During his journey, he saw great trading potential for China, which primarily exported silk.

The Silk Road stretched for thousands and thousands of kilometers, beginning in northern China and passing through important oasis cities such as Dunhuang and Kashgar before reaching the desert regions and mountains of Central Asia. From there, caravans would travel west to Samarkand and Bukhara, continue into Persia, and eventually reach the Mediterranean through cities such as Antioch. Along this route, one of the biggest challenges was navigating complicated terrains such as the Taklamakan Desert and the Pamir Mountains. If there were signposts at all, there were not many of them. Along the way, merchants often founded smaller trading towns and colonies that served travelers.

The Silk Road was most commonly used for transporting Chinese silk, Central Asian horses, spices from South Asia, and precious metals, glass, and ceramics. However, the Silk Road was not used only by merchants but also by pilgrims, diplomats, poets, artists, and adventurers. It was often these travelers who transported ideas, including myths about dragons. (Read more.)

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President Trump Reveals America's Voting Systems Completely Corrupt

 From L. Todd Wood at CDM:

In a primetime speech from the East Room of the White House on Thursday evening, President Donald Trump issued stark warnings about the integrity of U.S. elections, declaring that "all machines are dishonest and vulnerable" and outlining what he described as systemic corruption threatening American democracy.

The address, focused on election security ahead of the November midterms, featured the president referencing newly declassified intelligence reports now available on WhiteHouse.gov. Trump stated these documents confirm extensive vulnerabilities in the nation's voting infrastructure.

"All machines are dishonest and vulnerable," Trump told the national audience. He argued that voting systems across the country have been compromised, exposing them to manipulation and undermining public trust in electoral outcomes.

The president pointed to voter registrations as corrupt nationwide, claiming inflated and inaccurate rolls have enabled ineligible voting. He similarly described mail-in ballots as "vulnerable and corrupt," citing risks of fraud, improper handling, and lack of verification as major concerns that demand immediate reform.

Trump directly accused actors inside the U.S. government and media of participating in a coverup, alleging elements of the so-called "deep state" downplayed or suppressed evidence of these issues during his first term and the 2020 election cycle. He vowed that "urgent action will be taken" to address these threats, including enhanced federal oversight and support for legislative measures like the SAVE America Act. (Read more.)

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McConnell’s Absence Gives Trump’s Voter ID Push an Unexpected Opening

 From The Daily BS:

President Donald Trump’s push for a nationwide voter ID and citizenship verification law remains stuck in the Senate, but one of its most persistent Republican opponents is suddenly off the field.

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s extended absence due to health issues has temporarily removed a reliable “no” vote from the equation, offering a small but politically significant break for supporters of the SAVE America Act. The Kentucky Republican has repeatedly bucked both Trump and much of the GOP conference on the legislation, helping stall one of the president’s signature election-security priorities.

The development does not solve the bill’s larger problem: Senate Democrats remain unanimously opposed, and Republicans still lack the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has made clear that he has no intention of detonating the chamber’s legislative filibuster to get the bill across the finish line.

“The only way you could get there is to undo or get rid of the legislative filibuster,” Thune said previously. “There aren’t even close to the votes here in the United States Senate in order to achieve that.” (Read more.)

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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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