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While the U.S. government often lacks a coherent policy to deal with Communist Chinas dangerous military, political, and economic influence around the world, many in Americas private sectorbrought together by the nations largest Christian universityare stepping into the breach to do something about it.

Last week, Liberty University convened more than 630 U.S. and African CEOs, political figures, and faith leaders to network and promote joint business opportunities for U.S. companies and African nations. With those opportunities come the potential for reducing Africas heavy reliance on China for economic development and the Chinese Communist Partys influence on the continentas well as the negative impacts that influence has on the United States.

Networking the Nations CEO Summit attendees included the chief executive officers of Lowes, Hobby Lobby, and hundreds of other large and medium-sized American and African businesses, as well as the prime minister of Congo, the former president of Ghana, and delegations from several other African nations.

Dave Brat, dean of Libertys School of Business and host of the summit, said the opportunities created there will lead to growth for American businesses as well as job creation and prosperity for the African people.

Chinas role in Africa was not the sole focus of the event, but it factored in to many of the discussions there. Brat is an economist by trade and a former congressman from Virginia who for the past few years has been using his connections in Washington and at Liberty to raise awareness about just how dangerous China is becoming economically and militarily. (Full disclosure: I was Brats communications director during his first term in Congress.)

Chinas influence in Africa is exceedingly strong. It has loaned African nations massive amounts of funding that most cant repay and built them infrastructure that many couldnt have afforded on their own, making their governments beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.

In return, China has gained access to vast amounts of rare earth minerals and other natural resources on the African continent. With those resources under its control, China has the ability to disrupt the U.S. and its allies access to critical raw materials such as cobalt, which is used in many commercial, industrial, and military applications.

China also uses its influence to undermine the U.S. by pushing African nations to vote against U.S. interests at the United Nations and by promoting communism and authoritarianism throughout the continent over the U.S. preferred exports of freedom and capitalism.

At the summit, one constantly heard the phrase win-win. American leaders touted how U.S. businesses and their employees would prosper from gaining entry to new and growing markets in Africa but proclaimed how they also wanted the people of Africa to succeed at the same time.

Former Maytag Corp. CEO Lloyd Ward called the efforts market-driven industrialization in service of the Kingdom of God. Ward now works in Africa to help form partnerships with governments and the private sector to create sustainable businesses that help capture the value of countries crops, natural resources, and precious metals for the benefit of their economies and citizens as a whole.

So, how does this way of doing business help the U.S.? Fostering strong economies in Africa means fostering good trade partners, stronger democracies that are natural American allies, and stable countries that curtail security problems and avoid humanitarian catastrophes.

Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears was a featured speaker at the event. She told The Daily Signal, The free market is the best place to develop and innovate the economy of the future. The old models of simply providing aid are not enough. We must strengthen economic development to reduce African dependency on China for infrastructure investment so that it wont become a national security crisis.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts discussed why the event was important to his organization. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Civil society is all of us, including these CEOs and their companies, these leaders from Africa, and Heritage, Roberts said. Heritage, as the largest right-of-center public policy organization in the country, if not the world, must participate in events like this because weve got to work together to rejuvenate American civil society.

Roberts said the government isnt doing enough to stop the threat of the Chinese Communist Party and the spread of its influence across the globe, calling the United States policy toward China feckless both under Democrat and Republican administrations, although he noted it was starting to get on the right track under the Trump administration.

Heritage has made combating the influence of the Chinese Communist Party one of its highest priorities.

Said Brat, U.S. foreign policy toward China is a disaster, but a substantial portion of the CEO class has to take some responsibility for the relationships they are forming in China right now. This summit is one small way to counter Chinas influence in Africa, but its an important way, because its fostering business-to-business relationships without having to go through all the government bureaucracies.

Mobilizing the U.S. private sector and good old American capitalism to fight the Chinese Communist Partys influence in Africa and create a win-win for U.S. and African prosperity is an initiative that doesnt depend on whos in power in Washington to work.

If were going to stop the expansion of Chinese communism and the harm it bodes for America, civil society must step in where government is failing to act. The very future of our country depends on it.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and well consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular We Hear You feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

Read more from the original source:
Christian University and US Capitalism Team Up to Combat Communism - Daily Signal

Words matter, especially for the emotions of politics. Trigger words can evoke powerful emotions that decide votes. Decades ago, Sen. Joe McCarthy terrorized Americans by lumping pacifists, social justice advocates, labor leaders, liberals, socialists, and American communists with foreign communist regimes. An ember of McCarthyism smoldered in the GOP until MAGA fanned new life into it.

During the 20th century, various American socialist-communist movements gained followers through social justice advocacy, but few Americans favored violent revolutions or total governmental control. After our government acted to integrate the military and schools, democratize civil rights and voter rights, and upgrade womens rights, domestic communism faded away.

Internationally, violent Marxist revolutions overthrew governments and installed brutally repressive regimes, but failed to establish one-class communism. Communist nations are frauds. Every communist country features a stratification of classes and oligarchic-authoritarian leaders like regimes of the extreme right. Although strictly controlled, communist China has a thriving capitalistic economy. Authoritarians, foreign and domestic (including Donald Trump), threaten to destroy democracy.

Todays mainstream Democrats are similar to mid-20th century Republicans, but dishonest MAGA Republicans attempt to falsely link Democrats with communism and stolen elections to evoke a visceral vote. May reason prevail.

Continue reading here:
Letter: 'Communism' is not the threat - The Columbian

Charles, 67, Bournemouth

Occupation Former diplomat turned speech writer

Voting record Always Conservative. Charles voted for Brexit: I was one of the few diplomats who did

Amuse bouche While working overseas, Charles borrowed some wallabies for a reception for Fosters lager. No one had seen one at a diplomatic party before

Occupation Complaints adviser for an NHS trust

Voting record Always Labour, and remain in the EU referendum

Amuse bouche Chris much prefers Grease 2 to Grease. Its deeper, stronger, a feminist film, and the songs are better

Chris We had a chat about what we did. He told me the places hes been and the things hes done. It wasnt intimidating, but I did think: Im over my head a bit.

Charles I asked what Chriss motivating principle is, where he comes from when hes approaching anything. He said something like sympathy, empathy, passion, those sort of words. I come from a place which is more about the consent of the governed under what basis are rules set, and who sets them? Thats a big foundational disagreement, you might say, between heart and head.

Chris Our biggest difference was in how we view the world and how we want to change it. For me its more about rights, social justice, wanting a fairer and more equal society. He talked a lot about his hatred of communism.

Charles I have lived in communist countries and seen the results. The idea is that the end justifies the means; there are no limits to government. The spirit of communism is alive and well, and pops up in all sorts of places in some of these cancel culture things, the ideological uniformity in US universities, for example.

Chris He said the reason he didnt like the left is that they are mean-spirited and always assume the worst in people. Thats my experience of the right.

Charles What I dislike is the angry, aggressive, obnoxious left. Chris didnt seem to be part of that at all he seemed to have a libertarian instinct of some sort, which was fine. We could sit down and talk about ideas.

Chris We agreed about how divided and tribal the country is in the way we talk about issues, and how that is driven by social media.

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Charles Everyone is living in echo chambers and the algorithms are making it worse. They serve up the stuff they know you like because they want to send you advertising.

Chris We talked about taking the knee, which I support if someone wants to show their solidarity with people who suffer racism in football. It became a thing in 2020 and 2021 when enmity and violence against the black community was a world issue. If it had been before George Floyd was murdered by the police, and people just said they wanted to show solidarity and drive out racism, I dont think it would have had that much attention.

Charles Youve got all these people taking the knee. What attitude do you take to the people who dont take the knee? The way its presented is that if you somehow challenge it, or laugh, or boo or whatever you do to show your disapproval, then you are ipso facto a racist. Its a sort of all-or-nothing view, and that to me is obnoxious.

Chris Its not just a leftwing issue. Poppy outrage is driven by the right. Every year, TV presenters get complaints if theyre not seen to be wearing poppies or not wearing them early enough.

Charles Chris hit back over the net pretty well there, but its not clear to me that its analogous. If you dont wear a poppy, I dont go around saying youre anti-patriotic; theres no mass movement of people demanding everyone wears poppies in the same way as you would be attacked if you said taking the knee was ridiculous.

Chris I was a little bit disappointed afterwards because I didnt feel I had said enough. I felt he bamboozled me a bit. At one point I thought: What am I doing here? I have nothing to say.

Charles He seemed to go away with some things he hadnt thought about before, and to some degree I did, too. I dont know if hes a vegan or a vegetarian, but he seemed unimpressed by his courgettes, which made me warm to him, because everyones unimpressed by courgettes.

Additional reporting: Sarah Hooper

Charles and Chris ate at Arbor at The Green House, Bournemouth

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Originally posted here:
Dining across the divide: He talked about his hatred of communism a lot - The Guardian

Information is Beautiful

According to a disturbingly pleasant graphic from Information is Beautiful entitled simply 20th Century Death, communism was the leading ideological cause of death between 1900 and 2000. The 94 million that perished in China, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe easily (and tragically) trump the 28 million that died under fascist regimes during the same period.

During the century measured, more people died as a result of communism than from homicide (58 million) and genocide (30 million) put together. The combined death tolls of WWI (37 million) and WWII (66 million) exceed communism's total by only 9 million.

It gets worse when you look at the lower right of the chartThe Natural Worldwhich includes animals (7 million), natural disasters (24 million), and famine (101 million). Curiously, all of the world's worst famines during the 20th century were in communist countries: China (twice!), the Soviet Union, and North Korea.

Communism is a killer. And yet some still say they support the idea:According to a 2011 Rasmussen poll, 11% of Americans think that communism would better serve this country's needs than our current system.

See original here:
Communism Killed 94 Million People in 20th Century - Reason.com

Argentine Ambassador to China Sabino Vaca Narvaja scolded those who demonize communism and praised the Chinese Communist Party in an interview given to Chinas state-run Global Times on Tuesday.

Opposition to communism is reviving the misconceptions of the Cold War, Vaca Narvaja lamented.

The interview is part of what has become a growing emphasis in Argentine foreign policy of obsequious statements about China under socialist President Alberto Fernndez, who himself venerated mass murderer Mao Zedongs corpse during a Beijing visit this year.

Without the Communist Party, there would be no new China. These lyrics succinctly capture the fundamental reason why China has achieved unprecedented progress in human history, said Vaca Narvaja to Global Times, referencing the lyrics of one of the most long-standing pieces of musical propaganda used by the Chinese Communist Party.

Vaca Narvaja stated that he heard the song during the centennial anniversary of the Chinese communist party at Tiananmen Square in 2021 the site where the historical massacre of thousands of students and demonstrators took place.

In this June 5, 1989, file photo, a Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijings Changan Blvd. in Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)

The ambassador, who adopted the Chinese name Niu Wangdao as his own, was appointed as the head of the Argentine diplomatic mission in China in 2020. The pro-China ambassador has been instrumental in strengthening Chinas influence over the South American nation since 2021, starting with the arrangement that allowed China to send 15 million doses of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine product by the firm Sinopharm to Argentina.

Sabino Vaca Narvaja, who has never been shy with his affinity towards communist China, is the son of Fernando Vaca Narvaja, a former member of the left-wing guerrilla Montoneros who shares a granddaughter with Argentinas far-left Vice President Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner (no relation to Alberto Fernndez).

The Argentine ambassador has been heavily criticized in the past for his excessively pro-China stances. Vaca Narvaja has stood in defense of Chinas genocide of the Uyghur people by claiming that there is harmony in Xinjiang.

In reality, China has illegally detained between 1 million and 3 million Uyghurs and other minority groups in occupied East Turkistan since 2017 in concentration camps, forcing the detainees into inhumane conditions that include physical and sexual abuse, torture, slave labor, and force sterilization. China has also engaged in mass sterilization campaigns to limit the number of non-Han ethnic people born in the region.

A protester from the Uyghur community living in Turkey, holds an anti-China placard during a protest in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Vaca Narvaja was also quick to condemn Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for visiting Taiwan this month.

We are sure that this visit has been a provocation for China, and a problem for the entire international community, the ambassador claimed.

In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, center left, and Taiwanese President President Tsai Ing-wen arrive for a meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)

The government of Argentina backed Vaca Narvajas condemnation of Speaker Pelosis visit shortly afterwards.

President Fernndez traveled to Beijing in February to meet with dictator Xi Jinping and officially joined Chinas predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) during that meeting. President Fernandez availed himself of his official visit to Beijing to lay a wreath in honor of Mao, believed responsible for the killing of tens of millions of people, at his mausoleum.

Cases of Argentine ambassadors siding with the countries theyve been sent to over their own are not limited to just China alone. On Tuesday, the Argentine ambassador to Venezuela, Oscar Laborde, tacitly sided with the socialist regime of Nicols Maduro by stating that the Venezuelan-Iranian cargo airplane suspected of having ties with Iranian terrorism which the Argentine goverment seized on August 11 was instead kidnapped, echoing the narrative espoused by Venezuelas socialist regime over his countrys own.

During her presidency, Fernndez de Kirchner also faced accusations of cutting deals with the government of Iran to help it cover up its role in the deadliest terrorist attack in the nations history, the 1994 bombing for the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA). The prosecutor who built the case against Kirchner, Alberto Nisman, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head the day before he was scheduled to present his findings against Kirchner to the Argentine Congress in 2015.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitterhere.

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Argentinas Ambassador to China Rails Against Demonizing Communism in ...