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Theres been discussion lately whether the U.S. is spending too much money supporting Ukraine. The argument is that its likely to be long and protracted, more people will die needlessly, and Russias eventual victory is likely. Further, that money could be used to help Americans here at home who are hurting.

I think its time for a reality check.

When World War II ended, most but not all of the animosity stopped: old allies who had fought a common enemy (Nazi Germany) were suddenly at odds. Because of agreements deemed necessary during the war, the Soviet Union gained control over a huge swath of Eastern Europe and established governments sympathetic to its communist philosophy and worldview. In a sense, it was a secular religion, a deeply held set of beliefs that guide peoples lives. Part of that philosophy included the spread of communism worldwide and the eradication of capitalism as an economic force. Since the war had devastated much of Europe, national economies there were in a shambles. Communism began to look good compared to what capitalism had brought, and communist parties sprang up in many European nations. (Unfortunately, were seeing many people question capitalism these days.)

The United States responded to the potential spread of communism in several ways. There was an information campaign, in which outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe transmitted shortwave radio programs around the world to counter propaganda coming out of communist nations. On the economic front, the Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, provided over $15 billion to spur rebuilding efforts on the continent. At the same time, the U.S. sponsored the NATO alliance of North Atlantic nations to act as a military shield against potential aggression from the USSR. It was a policy of containment, in which the USSR would not be allowed to force a communist government on other nations.

When The Wall in Berlin fell and the USSR collapsed, it looked as though the Cold War was finally over. Eastern Europe had shaken off the Soviet yoke, and Russia would concentrate on rebuilding its economy from the shambles created by 70 years of inept and misguided leadership. To be fair, weve had our own share of bungles here in America. But the Cold War never really went away: it cooled down a bit for a while, as politicians and oligarchs in Russia played musical chairs with the seats of power there. Putin is now firmly in control, and KGB-trained Putin is a hard and fast Chekist, someone who believes that the national security police must dominate throughout the entire structure of a nation. Indeed, Putin has been quoted recently as saying The KGB is now at the highest levels of the [Russian] government. Putins actions in Syria, Georgia, and now Ukraine demonstrate his unwillingness to leave well enough alone: he pushes limits wherever he can, with little regard for who is hurt in the process. He has no problem engaging in scorched earth campaigns.

The Eastern European nations who joined NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc werent forced into doing so: they had experienced Soviet domination for over four decades, and they want no more part of it. Poland in particular, part of my ethnic heritage (Im a second-generation American), has a long memory that includes Stalin splitting Poland between the Nazis and Russia until Hitler turned on Stalin. Among other things, Poles also remember the Katyn Massacre, in which over 20,000 Polish military personnel were killed, shot from behind by the Soviets, and buried in mass graves in the Katyn Forest. Czechs remember Soviet commandos landing in helicopters in 1968 to put down the Prague Spring, a brief turn toward democracy which the Soviets would not tolerate. Long-neutral Sweden and Finland, which shares an 800 mile long border with Russia, looked at what happened in Ukraine and quickly decided it was time to join NATO.

We cant attack Russia directly. They have nukes, lots of them, and we cant risk nuclear confrontation by a direct or even an indirect attack, although we should be prepared to remind Putin that we also have nukes lots of them as JFK reminded Khrushchev in 1962.

So, the question boils down to this: Shall we say that the efforts and treasury and lives spent in the Cold War amounted to nothing while Russia under Putin tries to break out of the containment his nation created for itself, and grab more territory? Or shall we reinforce our past efforts and continue to support Ukraine against naked aggression? The world is waiting for our answer, and that answer will play a major part in determining for them whether we are prepared to honor our commitments.

John Sukovich is a Newberry County resident and a retired professor of business and other IT courses from Midlands Technical College. Sukovich served in USAF intelligence in Berlin and Pakistan during the Cold War.

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The costs of war, even if its cold - newberryobserver.com

A mystery has finally been solved for Anwar, a Uyghur American, who asked that only his first name be used for fear of "too much political attention."

Anwar said he had been "unable to speak or even just communicate" with his family in Xinjiang for five years. Then, he saw his cousin's mugshot in what is known as the Xinjiang Police Files, documents and images leaked from within China and released to the public last month by the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and news media.

"I could only hope and pray for the best as I sat combing through each picture of the leaked Xinjiang Police Files," Anwar said.

Arzugul Abdurehim, cousin

After spending hours combing through countless images, Anwar found the face of his cousin, Arzugul Abdurehim, now 42, in the files.

"Anger, frustration, despair and anguish all bubbled up within me as I looked upon the mugshot of my cousin; I could tell she was handcuffed," Anwar said. "We had grown up together, and to me, she was my little sister. She was just a typical Uyghur mother, caring for her children and trying to provide them with the best."

Anwar's cousin was 39 when she was arrested for "reeducation" in 2018, according to the Xinjiang Police Files.

Anwar said he believes his cousin's crime was "her identity, that she is Uyghur."

"These pictures are only from 2018. The genocide has only gotten worse since then. I hope my other family members and loved ones are alive," Anwar said.

Metyar Ghopur, classmate

Mehmet Ali Sultan, a naturalized Uyghur American who has lived in the United States since 2011, also sifted through photos from the Xinjiang Police Files and saw familiar faces of Uyghur detainees from his hometown of Konasheher county. He found out his former high school classmate, Metyar Ghopur, was detained in 2017 by Chinese authorities.

"If it weren't for the leaked files, I would not have been able to learn of the arbitrary detention of my friend and former classmate," Sultan said in a phone interview with VOA.

"I filtered my search to only people over 30, saw a face I hadn't seen in over a decade, and recognized him immediately," Sultan said.

Ghopur's reasons "for internment" are described as "terrorism involving capital" and "digging into the expansion line."

"When I recognized his face, I was shaking and could barely hold back my tears," Sultan said.

The data within the files

Ghopur's and Abdurehim's images are two of thousands of photos taken at police stations and detention centers, including mugshots of more than 2,800 detainees. The cache of information hacked from a network of computers within Xinjiang is described by Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation as the "largest and most significant leak" so far.

The youngest Uyghur detainee in the files was 14-year-old girl when she was detained and the oldest, 73 years old.

In addition to photos, the leaked files include documents and speeches related to the Chinese government's mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, leaked to one of the foundation's researchers, Adrian Zenz. The foundation says the information has been authenticated and peer-reviewed by teams of researchers and investigative journalists.

"The person who unexpectedly reached out to the author to provide the files acted on a solely individual basis, attached no conditions to their provision or publication, and wishes to remain anonymous due to personal safety concerns," according to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation website.

Xinjiang Police Files revealed classified speeches by senior Chinese officials, internal police documents about protecting the detention camps, or what China's state media describes as vocational education and training centers.

A rule at the centers if "students" try to escape is to fire warning shots and then "shoot (them) dead" if they fail to comply, according to internal police documents from the leaked files.

Beijing, through its state media, has said in the past that the centers help students with their Mandarin language skills and give them vocational training. One center was described as similar to boarding schools where "students here go to class, play sports, and they go home once a week," reported state broadcaster China Global Television Network (CGTN) in 2019.

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation said the Xinjiang Police Files provided "a groundbreaking inside view of the nature and scale of Beijing's secretive campaign of interning between 1-2 million Uyghurs and other ethnic citizens in China's northwestern Xinjiang region."

"This is an unprecedented cache of documents directly from Xinjiang police computer servers," said Andrew Bremberg, president of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

"This was a hack, in fact not a leak, that someone kind of smuggled out but a hack of tens of thousands of documents that provide the most in-depth understanding of what is actually happening in Xinjiang over the last several years," Bremberg told VOA.

China's response

When asked about the legitimacy of the leaked data during a regular Chinese Foreign Ministry news conference on May 24, spokesman Wang Wenbin said the files were "the latest example of the anti-China forces smearing of Xinjiang."

"The lies and rumors they spread cannot deceive the world, nor can they hide the fact that Xinjiang enjoys peace and stability, its economy is thriving and its people live and work in peace and contentment," Wang told the press in Beijing.

The United States, some other Western countries and human rights groups have accused China of committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic groups in Xinjiang. Beijing has repeatedly called the accusations lies and has denied abuses.

VOA Pashto Service's Shaista Lami contributed to this story.

Editor's note: VOA took all precautions before posting photos from the Xinjiang Police Files website used for this story.

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Lost Relatives and Friends Found in Leaked Xinjiang Photos - Voice of America - VOA News

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.Although the Chinese Communist Party holds power in China, they do not represent the people of the nation. Shen Yun Performing Arts is sharing the beauty of China before communism with audiences around the world.

Greg Hutchens, a health and safety professional, used to be a professor in China. He saw firsthand how the people of China wish for an end to communism. After experiencing Shen Yun, he shared his thoughts on the performance and his time in China.

[Shen Yun] is very transcendent. Its much like Chinese culture. I lived and worked there for many years, said Mr. Hutchens.

They do not want communism, they want freedom. They want American capitalism, capitalism of any kind, he elaborated.

But you have to be a member of the Communist Party to be a teacher, to be a doctor, to be a lawyer. You have to pay under the table. They dont like communism, but people are good, theyre wholesome. They love family.

Having lived in China, Mr. Hutchens could tell that todays society was also approaching a dangerous place.

Todays family is falling apart. When the family falls apart, the culture and the country follow, he said.

The community and the society falls apart, added Lynne Hutchens, his wife.

Shen Yun is based in New York and each year it puts on an all-new production that portrays scenes in the heavens as well as Chinas 5,000 years of history. Even dances that portray modern-day China are filled with hope.

They portrayed an innocence and beauty about life and living before communism came in and crushed that beauty. Being able to see this reminds us of what can be again and inspires us to want that again, said Ms. Hutchens.

This was beauty and light, communism is oppression and darkness, added Mr. Hutchens.

Audiences around the world have found that seeing Shen Yun gave them a sense of hope.

It shows the good in people, that the divinity in each one of us can overcome that ugliness, said Ms. Hutchens. [We] can triumph over that oppression, through self-expression and through values that are shared in a community.

Mr. Hutchens said that the pandemic caused a lot of worries and concerns and added that seeing Shen Yun is a release. It goes back to a simpler time when values were much more apparent in individuals and in family life.

Shen Yun is filled with spiritual meaning, including the belief that good will be rewarded and evil punished.

Were all a piece of divinity and we have a purpose to learn so we can go back home and become even greater, said Ms. Hutchens.

We come from somewhere before this earth, we lived in another time and we come here with divinity in our spiritswe have nobility in our souls. Part of the reason were here is to find what that purpose is, and to bring glory to that individual who brought us here, added Mr. Hutchens.

Reporting by Sally Sun and Maria Han.

The Epoch Timesis a proud sponsor ofShen Yun Performing Arts. We have coveredaudience reactionssince Shen Yuns inception in 2006.

Continued here:
Former Professor in China Finds Hope in Shen Yun - The Epoch Times

Will the U.N. Human Rights Council finally take up the issue of Communist China's oppression of the Uyghurs? That's the most important question as the council begins its latest session on June 13. Since the end of its most recent regular session in April, the most damning evidence to date of Beijing's tyranny in Xinjiang province has emerged. It may be now or never for the United States and like-minded countries to push the council to hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable.

The backdrop to the new session was informed by two events. First, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet conducted an embarrassing tour of China, including Xinjiang, in late May. She praised the regime's "tremendous achievements" on human rights, while repeating Beijing's propaganda that internment camps in Xinjiang are part of "deradicalization" policies. Having worked with her at the U.N. in Geneva, I fear the commissioner will maintain these claims in the council's session. She will also likely continue to withhold her office's official report on Xinjiang, which has been three years in the making and repeatedly delayed.

The second event coincided with Commissioner Bachelet's trip, when my organization published a massive trove of documents and images from Beijing's de facto concentration camps in Xinjiang. The Xinjiang Police Files, provided to us by an anonymous hacker who broke into the province's police database, show the grim reality the commissioner ignored.

The cache contains more than 2,800 images of detained Uyghurs, many crying, in handcuffs, or behind bars, with ages ranging from 15 to 73. It also includes internal police documents detailing the methods of detention, including unmistakable phrases like "shoot first, report later." Finally, we obtained private speech transcripts in which senior Communist officials call for detaining Uyghurs en masse while stating the direct involvement of Chinese President Xi Jinping in the genocidal campaign. These images and documents, which we have independently authenticated, blatantly expose Beijing's lie that what's happening in Xinjiang is really "vocational education."

The Xinjiang Police Files deserve the Human Rights Council's full attention. At least six current membersincluding the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, France and Finlandhave already denounced Communist China in response to our reporting. Germany has even committed to changing its China policy to put a stronger emphasis on human rights.

The final member, the United States, has also reacted to our reporting by criticizing Beijing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the findings "offer further proof of arbitrary detention," and U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said she was "horrified." Yet as the council's latest session prepares to start, there is no indication any of these countries plan to run a resolution calling for an official investigation or condemnation.

This is a grave mistake. Having served at the U.N. in Geneva, I suspect the U.S. and its allies don't think such a resolution would pass. Yet that's not necessarily true. Forcing a debate is essential to bringing other countries on board and even spurring the council to rare positive action. It has happened beforemost recently with Russia, Venezuela and North Koreaand it should happen again.

The U.S. and its allies should work behind the scenes to convince like-minded countries to join it, while pressuring other nations to abstain using a combination of carrot and stick, thereby lowering the number of votes needed for passage. Most members of the Human Rights Council may not care about human rights, but they can still be encouraged to vote the right way. If the vote succeeded, the council could compel the commissioner to begin a full and honest investigation of Communist China's atrocities. Hopefully that won't be Commissioner Bachelet, who should either resign, as more than 200 human rights organizations have called for, or be replaced when her term expires later this year.

Even if a resolution did fail, it would be worth the effort, not least for the moral message it sends. The U.S. and other human-rights-loving countries could honestly say they tried to push the Human Rights Council to live up to its name. When rejoining the council last October, President Joe Biden promised the U.S. would be a "constructive voice," while Secretary Blinken vowed to "work hard to ensure the Council ... better supports those fighting against injustice and tyranny." Surely that means calling out Communist China in light of the latest evidence.

No one expects the Human Rights Council to become a beacon of freedom and justice. Yet we should still expect the council to do its job and debate real human rights abuses, particularly the most egregious violations. The latest evidence decisively dispels Beijing's longstanding denials and obfuscations. If the U.S. and its international partners don't make Communist China's oppression in Xinjiang a main focus of the council's new session, then it's hard to see it ever happening.

Andrew Bremberg is president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva from 2019 to 2021.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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The U.S. and Our Allies Must Stand Up to China on the Human Rights Council | Opinion - Newsweek

President Dwight Eisenhower was a communist agent. President Kennedy schemed to place the American military under the control of the United Nations as a step towards incorporating the United States into the Soviet Union and establishing a one-world socialist dictatorship. The Civil Rights movement, womens liberation, sex education and abortion are communist plots. Communism itself is the creation of the members of a two-hundred year old secret society called the Illuminati.

If you believe any of that, you wont like this book. On the other hand, if you dont live in fantasyland, you will find Edward H. Millers book helpful in understanding how we became a culture of alternative facts.

Miller, a professor at Bostons Northeastern University, uses the life of Robert Welch to explain how the Republican Party shifted to the extreme right and beyond.

Born in 1899 in North Carolina, Robert Welch grew up in an affluent family which revered religion and the myth of the Old South. He was highly intelligent. At 12 years old, he became the youngest student ever to enroll at the University of North Carolina. He excelled at English literature, German, French and, above all, math.

Determined to achieve the financial freedom that would allow him to lead a life of intellectual inquiry, he founded a candy manufacturing company which went bankrupt but eventually prospered, thanks in large part to a lollipop called the Sugar Daddy (this is not an alternative fact).

Roosevelts New Deal, with its government-subsidized projects, support for labour and a social safety net, horrified American business leaders. They retaliated with waves of propaganda extolling the free market, low taxes and the rugged individualism of the frontier as the foundations of American greatness.

Welch was one of those business leaders. Miller tries to explain, not altogether satisfactorily, how, of all these rightists, Welch came to believe his outlandish conspiracy theories. He suggests that his addiction to math may have made him seek out pure logical sequences as explanations of world events.

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Nevertheless, Welch did develop his theories and, according to Miller, sincerely believed them. All he had to do to save Western civilization was to reveal the truth to the American people.

For decades, Welch spread his message through radio, books, newspapers and support for organizations such as the America First Committee and authoritarians such as Charles Lindbergh and Joe McCarthy. Eventually in 1958, he decided that a more focused grassroots organization was necessary and founded the John Birch Society. Named after an American missionary killed by Chinese communists, the Society opened branches across the country to spread Welchs message and elect supporters to school boards and state and federal governments.

Although Miller is at pains to excuse Welch of being antisemitic or anti-African-American, the society attracted many notorious racists. Welchs own denials of bigotry cannot hide his views that a Zionist conspiracy contributed to the origins of communism, or that Black Americans would have been happy with their lot except for communist agitators.

Initially popular, the society began to lose mainstream Republican support when Welch attacked Eisenhower as a willing agent of the Soviet Union. However, Welchs views took on new life in the 1970s with revelations of government lies about Vietnam, Watergate, the Equal Rights (for women) Amendment campaign, the acceptance of homosexuality and the legalization of abortion.

Free-market industrialists and ultra-evangelical religious groups found common cause in opposing the emergence of a more tolerant, socially responsible country. Welch died in 1985, just before digital media arrived to lock the public into toxic echo chambers endlessly reinforcing their prejudices. Far from repudiating conspiracy theories, todays Republican Party embraces them. It seem Welchs version of truth just goes marching on.

Every night, Winnipegger John K. Collins leaves out a glass of whisky to keep the fairies at the bottom of his garden happy.

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Conservative maverick's fringe theories persist today - Winnipeg Free Press